Spoiler warning: Princella D. Smith’s stunning animated short “Will I Dance Again” may affect you most if you know nothing about it going in. Starring Alfre Woodard and Misty Copeland — the latter of whom executive produced — it revisits one of the worst, ugliest chapters in American history, through the eyes of a true survivor (voiced by Shea Smith). If you’re in Little Rock, you can see the film Saturday at Filmland, then come back for this interview with Smith. Or you can follow her on Instagram for updates. And now, many spoilers follow about the real events portrayed in the remarkable film.—M.M.
Princella D. Smith was hosting a radio show on Little Rock station KARN when she was asked to bring on a guest who had written a book about the Oklahoma City bombing, in which right-wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck filled with explosives outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people. Among them were the author’s two grandchildren.
Smith’s degree was in political science and communication, and she’d been interested in terrorism since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks took place in her senior year of high school. She had been so young at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing that she hadn’t paid it too much mind. But that changed when she interviewed the author of the book.
“She asked me about helping her to get it flipped into some type of production,” Smith recalls. “While we ended up parting ways, my interest in the bombing did not leave, and I decided to pursue other OKC Bombing stories with the angle of triumph over tragedy, and to try to turn it into a live action full feature film.”
Because of the many complications of making a full-length, live-action feature — especially one that involves wide-scale destruction — she decided to start with an animated short. In 2024, she released “Walk in the Light,” the story of Raymond Washburn, a hero on that day who was able to help others to safety despite his blindness. It was Oscar-qualified and nominated for an NAACP Image Award.
Now Smith has returned with another animated story of the Oklahoma City Bombing, “Will I Dance Again.” It follows Daina Bradley, who was visiting the Social Security office in the federal building with her mother, sister, and two children — a three-year-old daughter, Peachlyn Bradley, and a 3-month-old son, Gabreon DeShawn Lee Bruce. They were there to pick up a social security card for Gabreon.
When the bomb went off, Daina’s mother, Cheryl Bradley Hammon, and the two small children were killed. Daina and her sister, Falesha, were badly injured. And as the film recounts, Daina barely made it out.
The film plays Saturday morning at the Filmland film festival in Little Rock, and the city has a strong connection with the story. It’s not only where Smith first became fascinated by the bombing, but also one of the cities McVeigh considered for his attack. It was the former home of then-President Bill Clinton, who had enraged McVeigh by signing an assault weapons ban in 1994. McVeigh considered bombing the federal building in Little Rock, but ultimately decided “the plaza was too open to get as close as he wanted,” according to Jeffrey Toobin’s 2023 book about the bombing, Homegrown. McVeigh was also guided by the white-supremacist novel The Turner Diaries.
The film, which Smith wrote and directed, takes its title from Daina Bradley’s background in ballet, which she had started studying as a child, under the guidance of her mother. We asked her about enlisting Woodard and Copeland, juxtaposing animation and real-life carnage, and Daina Bradley’s significance in American history.
Princella D. Smith on ‘Will I Dance Again’
MovieMaker: I knew immediately what was happening in this film as soon as I saw Daina and her family walk past a sign for the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, because I happen to be reading Jeffrey Toobin’s Homegrown. But I’m sure a lot of viewers — especially people who weren’t born yet when Timothy McVeigh committed the murders in April 1995 — don’t know what this story is going to be. How did you write and direct the film so that it would play for audiences who know the story, and those who don’t?
Princella D. Smith: You’re exactly right. The Oklahoma City Bombing is rarely taught in American classrooms. Yet, is the largest act of domestic terrorism in the history of the United States, and the FBI has repeatedly stated that the greatest threat to America is domestic terrorism, not international terrorism.
I definitely wanted to give people the history lesson without the script or layout appearing too much like a lecture. My background in communications, love for history, background in church, and study of counterterrorism in the Middle East set me up to be able to do this. At the end of the day, when we see these large, monumental, tragic events, what we fail to remember in society sometimes is that real people are affected by these things. There are real people at the heart of these events. Long after the cameras leave, these people are dealing with the aftermath of these tragedies.
I started off trying to tell multiple stories of the OKC bombing in the form of a feature film. I interviewed a number of first responders and survivors and got their permission to include their stories into an amazing script. I am a strong writer, and I received some recognition for my screenplay from different festivals, but, as independent filmmakers know, it is very hard to flip a script into a film whether you’re trying to pitch it to a studio or raise the funds yourself to shoot it independently.
Ultimately, I decided to isolate stories of individual survivors and provide a snapshot of their stories so that I could have something to show people as a prototype or foreshadowing of what the feature film will be. The first one I did, “Walk In The Light,”was Oscar-qualified, and it was a 2025 NAACP Image Award nominee. It centered the story of Raymond Washburn, the blind Native American hero, who led five people from the rubble. I softened the imagery in that animation because I wanted children ages eight and up to be able to watch it.
With “Will I Dance Again?,” I leaned Into the tragedy, trauma, and horror that Daina Bradley endured because there is really no other way to tell her story. Trying to soften it visually would just cheapen the entire presentation. These stories are powerful. I largely left the field of politics to enter into the entertainment space because I still want to impact the world, and doing this through culture seems to be more effective.
I am also equal parts, artistic and intellectual, and I’m really enjoying using my artistic gifts. Art is a powerful tool, and film is the most influential form of communication. Someone told me years ago that “People do not want to be lectured to; they want to be entertained.” I was disturbed by how true that statement is, but nonetheless, it opens a door. It provides an opportunity. If you can use art for people to see the humanity in a story, then you can also pique their interest to learn more about the surrounding event.
Hearing about Daina losing her mother, son, daughter, and right leg provides a human window into the house of terror that is the Oklahoma City Bombing. Hopefully, people will want to explore more about the political extremism that led Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to do this and how political rhetoric in its most extreme form affects every day innocent people. I want to be intentional with my art, and telling the story this way provided in opportunity to do so.
MovieMaker; How did you bring in the great Alfre Woodard and Misty Copeland to lend their voices, and how did Misty Copeland become an executive producer?
Princella D. Smith: It has been absolutely a joy and an honor to include the incomparable Alfre Woodard and ballet virtuoso, Misty Copeland in this voice cast and to have Misty as an executive producer. I truly believe that you have not because you ask not. Both of these ladies are incredibly busy, but I reached out to their agents and told them what I was aiming to do with this story. They agreed to pass the script on to their clients, and I was over the moon when both ladies agreed to voice their respective roles.
When I wrote the feature film version of this story, I had Alfre Woodard in mind to play Cheryl Hammon, Daina Bradley’s mother. When I decided to present it as an animated, short film first, I knew the first actor’s team that I wanted to contact was Alfre’s. She was my first choice to voice this role, and I was so glad that she agreed to do it. It is also an added bonus that she is a native of the State of Oklahoma.
Everyone knows the gravity that someone like Alfre brings to any role in any film, but Alfre herself has a deep rich background in history. She has mentioned in a number of interviews that she grew up in a family of storytellers, which is not all that unusual for Black culture. She frequently refers to herself a “daughter of Greenwood” which is where the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 occurred.
Alfre is very much in touch with generations, legacy, and American history, especially as it pertains to Black Americans, so in more ways than one, two, or three, she was quite literally the perfect person to cast for this role. The thing I will most remember in casting Alfre for this film is that she put so much effort into the role.
I would never think that she would do a bad job, but she came into the studio with the script in hand and several notes with questions prepared for me. She stood up at the microphone. She did not want to sit down. She was turning this way and that trying to do method acting and putting herself in the position that Cheryl would be as she was walking up to the building, as she was suffering in the rubble, and as she was instructing Daina at her ballet session.
I did not expect Alfre to be so dialed in, but not only was she dialed in and respected my script, she really did actually respect the fact that I chose to tell this particular story. Before she left the studio, she hugged me and said: “Good job. Thanks for telling this story.” I thank her for honoring the memory of Daina’s mother, Cheryl, and I told her that Daina would appreciate it. She did.
With Misty, I really wanted a fantastic voice actor for this role. I needed femininity, strength, and an authoritative tone. I had another very strong voice actor in mind, but she declined the project. Then, I really had to think about it: “Who can voice this role with the actual cultural authority behind it?” Repeating the dance moves over and over again was very important to conveying the message of this film. The three dance terms: assemble, grand Jete, and attitude all have double meanings for Daina‘s life, especially ending on “attitude.”
I started thinking about Black dancers. Then, all of a sudden it hit me that there was really one choice that could shut down all of the other choices, and that indeed was the ballet virtuoso, Misty Copeland. I appreciated getting to ask Misty about the tone and tenor that a dance instructor would provide, and she also added some ad libs. It worked out well for the film. I asked Misty to be the executive producer because having her as a face to somewhat helm the promotion of the film would mean so much to aspiring ballerinas everywhere.
Young women coming of age can learn a lot from the lessons and images of resilience and grace packed into this 16-minute short film. Misty herself did not come from an easy upbringing, so she does understand grace under pressure and perseverance in life.
While we are talking about the cast, I really want to give a shout out to the up and comer, Shea Smith. She did a tremendous job voicing the role of Daina. The cries of agony as she was having her leg amputated, the monologue during the out of body experience, all of it. She is a tremendous talent and a fellow southerner. She is from Nashville, Tennessee!
MoveMaker: The lovely animation — by Castro Animation — reminds me of very pleasing-to-the-eye Disney films like Frozen and Moana. But then your story becomes incredibly raw, graphic and hard to watch — like an episode of The Pitt. Can you talk about your very powerful juxtaposition between those two styles?
Princella D. Smith: Thank you so much, yes, our director of animation, Gabriel Castro, is quite brilliant. My decision to present this story in the form of an animation really initially came out of necessity. In trying to turn my feature length script into an actual movie, I realized that I needed to do something that would provide people with a visual representation of what I was trying to do. It Is extremely hard to raise funds for a feature film, and when you’re talking about something with as many layers as a story about the Oklahoma City bombing, it would take quite a bit of funds, even if just for a short film to present the story properly.
Animation provided the flexibility to present both the beauty of the personal lives of the characters and then transition over into the absolute darkness of the tragedy that they experienced. I initially found it more economically feasible to create it this way on such a beautiful and flexible canvas, so that it could be presented with quality and would not look like a lesser quality film which would not have been because of a lack of creativity, but simply because I didn’t have the resources to present it properly.
I saw where “Hair Love” won an Oscar for best animated short, and how it was a tender story but also had a layer of deeper meaning to it. It did not hurt that the people accepting the Oscar looked like me, because I had not seen much Black movement in that space. The wheels of my mind started turning, and I thought about how I could present the outer body experience as well as the beautiful whimsical color and “feel” of young Black ballerinas in pink/purple outfits juxtaposed directly to the darkness and the horror of Daina Bradley losing her family and having to endure a live amputation of her right leg with no anesthesia.
I was able to fit multiple settings into “Will I Dance Again?,” including the federal building, being underneath the rubble, the dance studio, and the graveyard presented in such a vivid colorful way, as well as a dark and intense way.
And isn’t this true about life? Isn’t it true that we can just be living our own lives experiencing a bright sunny day, and then tragedy strikes with no warning? Selecting the type of animation you want to use for something like this is very interesting because since it’s such a real and powerful event.
I felt like 3D was the only way to go. However, I did not want it to entirely look like something that you would show to children. There needed to be an added layer to draw in the dramatic eye of the viewer because this animation is for mature audiences and tells a very deep story. That’s where I presented the painterly technique to Gabriel Castro, and he loved it. He ran some tests, and he agreed with my conclusion that we needed to select 3D painterly as the method for this animation.
Gabriel and his team manually created the painterly technique with individual strokes for each character and item of every background set. Therefore, you are watching a medium, animation, that many Americans so quickly assign to children, but you become deeply invested in the emotion and the very, “not so childlike” presentation of it all.
On that note, I want to point out that animation all over the world is used to present very adult and serious themes whether you’re talking about anime or political satire like South Park or cultural satire like Family Guy. There is a movement that “animation is not a genre.” What they mean is that animation can be comedy, drama, sci-if fantasy, romance, et cetera.
Animation very often carries heavy themes and even does so in films that are targeted to children like Bambi, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and the The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The themes of death and good and evil are present in all of those films, and they were marketed to children.
I always say that I grew up in the best era of Disney because I love the films of the late ’80s and the ’90s. They were not only visual spectacles, but they carried a deeper meaning. They had musical numbers. They had comedy and moments of lightness, but there was a deep thread that provided a lesson on humanity to the viewer, even if the characters were animals or a beast.
That being said, we are absolutely not marketing “Will I Dance Again,” to audiences under the age of 13. When we receive our MPA rating, I do believe they will rate it PG-13.
MovieMaker: I appreciated both the focus on the victims and survivors of this incredibly cowardly act, and specifically that this film has a Black woman as the lead protagonist. I don’t think enough has been made of the fact that McVeigh had joined the KKK before the bombing, or that he had deep, documented resentments toward both Black people and women. McVeigh murdered people of every demographic — men, women, and 19 children, including Daina’s very young children. But for all the sadness for the bombing, it’s satisfying that one of the survivors was both Black and a woman, knowing McVeigh’s resentments. Was this something that went into your decision to focus on Daina?
Princella D. Smith: You are exactly right about this. At the heart and at the literal and actual bottom of the rubble of violence and chaos of the largest act of domestic terrorism in the history of the United States was a suffering, Black woman.
It is actually a snapshot of American history and society as a whole. Daina survived and came out still standing, even if it is on a prosthetic leg. Not only that, it was her voice and her testimony at Timothy McVeigh’s federal trial that identified him as exiting the Ryder truck where he had lit the fuse to the bomb. Like Sojourner Truth and Ida B. Wells, she bravely said what needed to be said at a pivotal time in American history.
Daina did not ask for this. She was just living life, making a routine visit to the Social Security office, and she ended up at the heart of a national event seen worldwide. In the memorial and museum, you literally see coverage of it from all over the world. Whenever the Oklahoma City bombing is spoken about, it’s mentioned that 168 people died including 19 children.
What most people don’t know is that there are families who lost multiple children and that not all of the children were in the day care. Two of them were Daina Bradley’s three month old and three year-old, who would have turned four in less than a month before she was killed. Her birthday was May 6, 1991. The bombing was on April 19, 1995.
So, while Daina being a Black woman wasn’t my initial draw to the story, it became a meaningful added layer given the history of the United States and the racial dynamics of this country. Then, you add on top of that the fact that her mother was her guiding compass, and that she and her sister have each other now, it just brings in the whole other, added element of Black survival in America and the inspiration that we got her from our ancestors and our elders to move forward. The story is generational, and Black families understand this.
I established this early on, when you see little Peachlyn, twirling and dancing on the way into the building, and her grandmother, Cheryl, walking next to Daina, says: “Aren’t you just like your mama?,” something pointed out in many Black families. We love to talk about genetics and legacy! This is tied together with the second half of the flashback when Cheryl tells Daina she doesn’t understand why Dana is struggling in class because she “dances and twirls all over the house.”
There is an entire added layer to raising a Black child in America that just simply does not exist in other racial demographics. Black parents are constantly telling their Black children how to survive in a world that is not made for them and how to get through tough situations. I did not center race in this movie, but it’s there without it even having to be stated. When Cheryl goes into “yes you can” mode with Daina in the first half of the flashback, there are many Black viewers who can relate to that, including myself.
Even Shea Smith, the Black woman voice actor for Daina, told me that she too took ballet and that she had similar conversations with her mother. That is part of the story resonated with her. And then, of course, a final point on race is the fact that Misty Copeland portrays the dance instructor. What she means to Black woman dancers all over the world can’t even be quantified. It is a huge statement without even having to mention that she’s the first Black principal dancer at the American Ballet theater.
Lastly, on McVeigh, it is indeed important to note that he was unapologetic to the end. He had read The Turner Diaries, and he had internalized the political extremism that he found there. He was angry about what had happened on April 19, 1993 in Waco, and exactly two years later, he lit the fuse that murdered 168 people in Oklahoma City at the most accessible example of the federal government that he could target, the Alfred P. Murrah federal building downtown.
McVeigh had protested the federal government’s involvement in Waco during the 51-day standoff. There are photos of him there. He carried white grievance and a deep resentment and anger toward the United States government after serving in the Gulf War and then withdrawing from the process of becoming a Green Beret after hurting his ankle, and then enduring some feelings of physical inadequacy.
MovieMaker: Was Daina involved in the creation of the film? And what did she think?
Princella D. Smith: Yes. Daina provided several hours of interview time with me. … Daina answered several questions so that I was able to piece together what happened that day and to get a backdrop of what happened in her life. That’s why, even though the short film is less than 16 minutes, so much is packed into it. I had a depth of understanding of Daina‘s life and dynamics with her family.
Yes, Daina has seen the film. She has a good support system of friends in Oklahoma City. She asked them to watch it with her because in a way, it’s like reliving the trauma, and she needed the support to get through the watch. Several people have screened the film privately and provided me with reviews, but the absolute best review of this film came from Daina herself when she told me that she absolutely loved it. She appreciates how her story and her family are honored in the film. She will be attending some of the film festivals with me.
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Main image: “Will I Dance Again.” All images courtesy of the filmmaker.
Editor’s Note: Corrects Little Rock detail.
