VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Katie Douglas On Studying School Busing In Boston For Role In ‘The Walk’

The Walk, which just premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival, tells the true story of the Boston busing crisis of the 1970s through the eyes of police officer Bill Coughlin who’s assigned to escort students between schools as a part of desegragation and explores the social backlash he faces.

Katie Douglas, who plays Coughlin’s daughter, recently sat down with uInterview founder Erik Meers to discuss studying the event for her role.

“Initially when [director] Daniel [Adams] first reached out to me with a script and offered me the part, he sent along a documentary called Busing (1976), which is actually very insightful,” Douglas shared. “I had heard about busing before, but I didn’t know the extent to what happened and it is an incredibly interesting story. You could talk about it forever. I found myself going down a wormhole trying to figure out what exactly did happen in Southie, because 80 schools opened up that summer and started praticing busing. Only Southie reacted in this incredibly violent, hateful way. It was interesting trying to figure out why that happened.”

The Walk is out in select theaters now.