When Halle Berry first read Bruised, Blake Lively was attached to star and Nick Cassavetes was set to direct. All the same, Berry felt an immediate kinship with the character of Jackie Justice, a disgraced MMA fighter looking for her comeback. Although the character was originally written for a young white woman, when the role became available six months later, Berry jumped at the chance to get involved.
Berry told Variety that those six months had her feeling “tortured,” because “I’ve been thinking of how I can reimagine it for someone like me, a Black woman in middle age — not starting life — who’s looking for a last chance, not another chance.