I went into David Michôd’s biopic “Christy” knowing nothing about its titular boxer. I knew I would be interviewing the film’s real-life subject, Christy Salters Martin, the following morning, and was delighted to see her in attendance at the press screening. She was accompanied by her wife, Lisa Holewyne, who had formerly been her adversary in the ring, as well as their dog, Champ, who had been at Christy’s side since the film’s premiere in Toronto. None of these assurances, however, made the viewing of the picture any easier. By the end, I couldn’t wrap my head around how Christy had survived all that she did.
Sydney Sweeney stars as the barrier-breaking champion who became the first female boxer to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated. What threatens to bring her down is the escalating abuse administered to her by her husband and trainer, Jim (Ben Foster). In a horrifying sequence late in the film, Jim nearly makes good on his promise to end Christy’s life if she ever planned on leaving him. How Christy manages to save herself and be a voice for domestic violence survivors is guaranteed to leave you in awe.
With Champ lying on the table between us, I spoke with Christy—and Lisa, who was seated in a corner of the room—for Cinema Femme about the experience of having their story brought to the screen, and the impact they hope it will have on viewers.
Your dog Champ reminds me so much of the dog you have in the movie.
Christy Salters Martin (CM): When I got introduced onstage at the Toronto Film Festival, Champ was introduced with me. Casey is the dog that Christy has in the movie. The director just saw me with Champ and picked out a dog that he thought looked like him. Casey is based on the real dog of the same name that I owned 23 years ago. Jim Martin actually killed that dog by drowning him. Casey was a good dog, but this little guy, Champ, has helped save my life in keeping me on track. Lisa insisted that we get a dog, and I kept saying no because I travel too much. We ended up getting Champ on a Sunday, and four days later, Champ and I went on our first trip. He’s now Executive Platinum for two years on American Airlines because we travel together every couple of weeks.
I got to interview Sydney Sweeney about a little indie she made called “Clementine,” where she plays an abuse survivor, and I could sense how serious she was in her craft. What aspects of your own experience do you feel she truly captured in this film?
CM: I don’t think there’s anything that she didn’t capture. She went to the gym and learned how to box, how to move like me, and how to do those combinations that I did. As far as the relationship with Jim Martin, we talked about it, and she got that down too. There’s just a specific look that she needed to capture, and she had it, all the way down to my expressions. To be honest, I’m not a hundred percent sure how she became attached to the film. They just called me and were like, “We have Sydney Sweeney,” and I said, “Great!” They put us on a Zoom call, which is how we first met one another. Her star is exploding right now, so it was kind of shocking to me that someone like her wanted to do this role. I think what she wants to show people is that she doesn’t have to stay in this one little stream of characters. She has a very broad range, and she can do it all.
How did you feel about the way actor Katy O’BrIan portrayed Lisa in the film?
CM: Katy actually spoke with Lisa to get her perspective on our relationship. I think Katie wanted to know what her thoughts were about Jim Martin. She wanted to know not just what she was going to be portraying, but a little bit of everything so she got her part right.
Lisa Holewyne (LH): She wanted to know things that I thought were very introspective. She’d ask me, “So you fought her and you didn’t like her—but how did you start liking her?” And I said, “Well, like most things, it was very gradual. I saw her as a human being. We sparred several times together for years, and I began arguing with people about the fact that she wasn’t really the asshole that everyone thought she was.” There was something really sad going on in her eyes that I couldn’t really figure out. Katy portrayed all of that very well.
Some of the most chilling scenes in the film are between Christy and her mother, who refuses to believe her daughter’s cries for help. This sort of situation seems all too commonplace.
CM: I think we all want to be able to reach to our mother for help and security. No matter how old you are or what your situation is, you always want your mom to have your back. It took a lot for me to reach out to my mother, because my relationship with her was already a little turbulent. I don’t even know how to put it into words what it took for me to have that conversation with my mother about the fact that I needed help. My hesitation was due to the fear I had that I would get the response from her that I ultimately got. When your own mother doesn’t believe you, who do you go to next?
What I hope that my story will do—by sharing it through this film—is it will reach those people in similar situations. I hope it will open up the eyes of parents, so that when their child does come to them for help, they will hear them. Sometimes their child won’t talk to them, but parents can still keep their eyes open and look for the signs that their child is trying to give them. That’s what I hope this movie does. When a child tells their parents, “I’m gay,” my hope is that they will be open-minded and not close the door on having a relationship with their children. They may be doing something that you don’t necessarily agree with, but they are still your child.
Was it important to the filmmakers that they portrayed Jim’s attack as accurately as possible according to your memory of it?
CM: It is portrayed very accurately, but they asked me not to be on set during the few days that it was filmed. That decision was made for different reasons. On one hand, they probably wanted to protect me, but they also felt like my presence onset put added pressure on everybody trying to get through the scene. It was already hard enough for them, and they got it really close.
LH: Jim’s slashing of Christy’s calf was actually much worse in real life. Her muscle was on the outside of her skin.
CM: It was barely hanging on.
That sequence is so powerful in the film because it seems to be unfolding in real time as we follow every excruciating step you had to make in order to get out of the house, down the driveway, and into the car of a passerby.
CM: After Jim shot me, I said a prayer to God, “Please show me some way out.” That’s when I heard Jim turn the shower water on. I picked up the gun and I left. Then I got to the car with the wrong keys, and I was just like, ‘What am I going to do?’ I had a choice to either go back and try to find the other keys, or go to the road. And I chose to go to the road and get help. Had I gone back in the house, Jim would’ve killed me.
The first car actually passed me, and in my mind, I was like, ‘How in the world can this guy pass me?! I’m standing here all bloody, I have this nine millimeter gun in my hand—oh, well that may be why he passed me.’ [laughs] So as the next guy drove up, I said to myself, “No way in hell am I letting this guy pass me.” Thank goodness he stopped and rushed me to the hospital. The driver’s name was Rick Cole, and he was my angel.
LH: Jim came out of the house shortly afterward and started running.
It was a great release, after all that tension, to see Christy not long afterward, walking down the hallways of the hospital with her walker slung over her shoulder.
CM: That is one hundred percent true. I would not walk with that walker because I felt that if I walked with it, I’d be letting Jim Martin win! That was an insult to me. No way in hell was I going to walk with it.
Has it been a gratifying experience to see this film with audiences?
CM: When I see the emotions that the film has elicited in people, I know that the film is doing what it needs to do. I needed it to be the sort of movie that touches people and wakes them up.
What were your thoughts about how the director, David Michôd, and his wife, Mirrah Foulkes, adapted your story in their script?
CM: I spent a week talking with Mirrah on the phone for hours at a time. She was in Australia, so the time difference was crazy. But she wanted to know what I thought about certain things that she and David were going back and forth on whether to have cut from the script. Eventually, she flew to Florida and went to a fight with us. One of our fighters we trained was fighting at the Florida Hall of Fame, so Mirrah got to go with us and take in all of the boxing. She later told us how that experience helped her with the writing. It gave her a better understanding of how the relationships in the boxing world work. I think the fight scenes in the film are really good. The Don King stuff is great. Chad L. Coleman did a really good job in the role. It was funny because on one of the days of filming, I was hustling up the steps as he was coming down. I said, “Oh wow, hey DK!”, and just kept on going. In my mind, he had become him.
Do you think Don saw any red flags regarding Jim’s treatment of you?
CM: I don’t think any of that mattered to him. The only thing that mattered to Don was that I put on good fights, and that the crowd responded—positively or otherwise. It didn’t matter if they liked me or not. As long as they were responding to me, that’s what was important to him.
Whose idea was it for you to have your little cameo at the end?
CM: That was David’s idea. Throughout filming, people were asking, “Christy, are you gonna be in the movie?” I was like, “I don’t think so,” and then at one point, I suggested that I could sit ringside. David said, “No, no.” I think he had the cameo that made the final cut in his mind all along.
It’s interesting to hear Christy talk to Lisa in the film about the irony of her tough persona—which led her to refer to some of her opponents as “dykes”—now that her own orientation has been made public.
CM: That use of the word was something that Jim Martin told me to do. He would tell me, “You say this, say that,” and I would tell him, “Jim, you don’t understand. I’m going to keep saying this, and someone from my past is going to come out.” I’m surprised that no one did.
LH: It was circulating within women’s boxing that she was actually gay. Someone even told me that, and I was like, “I don’t see it!” [laughs] But no one had the platform that would have enabled them to usurp Christy’s status at that time.
What do you feel boxing has given you in an enriching way?
CM: First of all, the workout itself is physically and mentally demanding. The better condition you’re in, the better shape you’re in and the better you feel physically and mentally. I’ve also been competitive from day one. My dad was an athlete, and no matter what he did, he was always going to be a winner, not a loser. So that desire to be the best was just in me. At that time, in the 90s, I was doing something that no one had really done before at that level. I mean, women had been boxing since the 1800s, but never at the level and with the exposure that I was. I really feel like Don King and I did a lot to advance women’s boxing, and without us doing what we did, I’m not sure where it would be today.
What has it been like to be on this press tour with Christy?
LH: I’ve only been on it for a limited amount of time. Christy’s much better than I am at this stuff. Put a microphone in front of me, and you won’t get anything. But put us in a party of 250 people, and I’ll figure out a way to talk to almost everybody. Christy, in real life, is much more bashful. You have been so intuitive in a lot of your questions in how you’ve recognized the ways in which Mirrah and David did not turn Christy into a stereotypical victim of domestic violence. They didn’t change who she was by making her a shrinking violet. No one would’ve believed that Christy would say something like, “Okay, Jim, whatever you want.” They make her that same in-your-face girl that she has always been. And yet, she was still abused.
I think that’s huge, and it’s believable. We have in our minds that wives who endure domestic violence are always telling their abusers, “Okay, whatever you want, dear.” But in the film, Christy is still telling Jim, “Fuck you!”, because that is who she is. And even with all that, she was still able to be mentally, emotionally and physically abused. I think that helps diminish a lot of the stereotypes regarding what an abused person is or could be. The personal dynamics within a couple are not necessarily reflected in how they present themselves publicly. That is important to keep in mind, whether it’s in regards to Christy’s domestic violence work, or simply in how we all go about observing our day to day reality.
“Christy” will be released in U.S. theaters on Friday, November 7th. For more information on Christy Salters Martin, visit her official site.
