Tamika Miller’s ‘Undercard’ spotlights an unsung boxing hero

Tamika Miller is in the ring, duking it out in the biggest fight of her career so far.

For nearly a decade, Miller, a writer and director who has helped to shape several beloved TV series like The Equalizer and Station 19, has been pushing, and yes, fighting, to get her dramatic feature film Undercard off the ground. Her time has arrived and she’s ready to finally usher her masterpiece into the ring.

The film, out today, garnered an Audience Award for Best U.S. Narrative Feature at the Newport Beach Film Festival, but before it hit screens, it was already quite the talker. The movie stars noted comedian Wanda Sykes as a boxing trainer, giving us something we seldom see, if ever, on screen: a boxing film that centers a Black woman at the helm. 

Recently, I caught up with Miller to talk about her art, her fight and why even though this is a boxing movie, it’s actually not about boxing — which is kind of the point.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

What was it about Undercard that made you say, “I have to direct this?” Was it the sports backdrop, the character journey, or something more personal?

I co-wrote this script with my writing partner, Anita M. Cal. There was a time when I was a bit obsessed with boxing as a workout, and I had a trainer I saw at a pretty well-known boxing gym in Hollywood called Wild Card Boxing Gym. And a lot of champions would come out of that gym. I just loved meeting the cast of characters that were in that gym — from the trainers, who had been former boxers, to the up-and-coming boxers who were really trying to come out of their circumstances. And it was really just my spending so much time in that gym that this story was born. And I realized I had never quite seen this story. I had never seen a woman boxing trainer training a man, potentially to a world championship title. And at the time that I was working out at that gym … there were a couple of notable women trainers, but I’ve never seen this story on screen before.

Boxing films have a very specific cinematic language — training montages, comeback arcs, redemption. How did you honor that tradition while also challenging or expanding it?

Well, I didn’t really set out to make a boxing film, to be honest. Boxing is a backdrop. Boxing is a way that we’re able to sort of help tell the story. It’s sort of another character in my respect, in my opinion. And throughout the film, the boxing sequences are pretty short. They sort of tease until we get to a larger boxing bout.

And so for me, what was really at the core and more important in the storytelling was really the relationships. That was really the meat, if you will. That was the meal. Boxing for me was sort of more of the sides. The sides are good and they’re important, but the main course, the real meat of it was really delving into these themes of motherhood and alcoholism and sobriety and these sort of intimate relationships that we have with people and how they shape us.

We’ve seen plenty of boxing dramas, but rarely with a Black female lead at the emotional center. What felt urgent or necessary about telling this story now?

Well, Undercard was 10 years in the making! I wrote [this script] over 10 years ago. This is a story that Wanda Sykes was attached to 10 years ago, and I would’ve loved to have made the film 10 years ago. But everything in its divine time. I think that what the film speaks to is something that everyone can relate to: love, acceptance, redemption, regrets.

So I think Undercard is a film that will resonate with a lot of people because we can see ourselves in one or two of these characters.

I really love to tell stories where women of color are at the center of those stories as multi-dimensional and multi-layered characters.

Audiences know Wanda for her sharp, comedic voice. What did you see in her that made you confident she could carry the dramatic weight of this role?

I’ve been a fan of Wanda, and when I [wrote] the script, I thought of Wanda because I felt that she had the range, quite frankly. And I knew there are many actresses, notable, notable dramatic actresses who could come and play this role and do a wonderful job. But I was more interested and intrigued by the idea of Wanda because we would not see this coming from her. And that was really intriguing to me. And also, I felt that her audience would go on this journey with her.

Beyond the punches thrown in the ring, what’s the emotional “fight” your protagonist is navigating?

Trying to make ends meet, trying to keep a roof over her and her daughter’s head. She’s trying to redeem herself as a fallen champion by coaching, training, potentially a champion. She’s trying to reclaim her family.

As a Black woman directing a sports drama, how did your lived experience inform the way you framed this story — visually or thematically?

I love the process of preparation, and when I set out to tell the story visually, I wanted to set it in a place that I felt was visually stunning. I set it in Liberty City, Miami. And even though it’s a working-class, maybe some pockets are poor, it is an area that’s very rich. A very rich history, and it’s colorful – literally. The buildings are very colorful. And so it was important to me that the palette, the aesthetic and the look of Undercard reflected that. I really wanted to shoot even the boxing sequences in these interior spaces in a way that we hadn’t quite seen in film before in terms of a boxing film.

The title itself is loaded. Who is the “undercard” in this film — and what does that metaphor say about how Black women are positioned in sports, in Hollywood, or in life?

Undercard is in the world of boxing and whenever there’s sort of a main event, a title fight, there are usually undercard bouts. There are these sort of preliminary fights that happen before the main event. But the word has multiple meanings in that [Wanda’s character] is someone who has been down on her luck. She is an undercard. She’s trying to come out of her circumstances as a woman, as a single mother [and] as a Black woman.

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