Why Kristen Stewart Wanted Elizabeth Banks to Be Her Boss For Charlie’s Angels

Good morning, Charlie! Kristen Stewart is proud to be one of Elizabeth Banks‘ angels.

At the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation ceremony on Wednesday night, Stewart and her Charlie’s Angels co-stars, Ella Balinska and Naomi Scott, gushed over Banks, calling her an inspirational trailblazer. Stewart spoke at length about the director, vocalizing her pride to have worked with her. And she has even more reason to be proud, as Banks is the 2019 recipient of the Pioneer of the Year Award from the foundation—the first female director to ever receive the honor.

“I’m very proud to be here, and to be her friend,” Kristen shares. “The best relationships is when you look at the person that decides to be around you often and you go, ‘I am proud of that.'”

And it’s not just their friendship Stewart is proud of. The Twilight actress has the utmost respect for Banks’ interpretation of the classic franchise, which she feels is the perfect vehicle to put intelligent women with agency at the forefront of a film.

“We’ve seen Charlie’s Angels before. The reason that we’re seeing it again is because she saw something in it that needed to be fresh and needed to be revitalized,” Stewart explains. “It’s been a really long time since we’ve seen a few women really proactively at work and really at the forefront of the things, are really at the front of the action that’s being moved forward. Nothing happens to us in this movie. Everything that happens is like we’re moving at it.”

Basically, the women are in control, and that has everything to do with Banks’ M.O. as a director. And it’s the number one reason why Stewart wanted to work with her. “She’s the farthest from a victim that I could possibly imagine, so I was like she’s the person that I want to be my boss,” Stewart reveals.

Not only is Banks the first female director to win this award, but she’s also only the fifth woman to be named Pioneer of the Year in the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation’s 78-year history. Past winners include Kathleen Kennedy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, Sherry Lansing, and Donna Langley—all film executives. In her speech, she brought up a topic that was surely a first for the event: tampons.

“I can only assume this is the fear of every man in the room, that if you give a woman a microphone, it’s all tampon talk all the time,” Banks quipped. “The best part of this speech is that when you go home, in the car later tonight or tomorrow, when you’re at work, and you have to tell this story of tonight, you now also have to say: tampons.”

Honestly, iconic.

Charlie’s Angels hits theaters this November.