SALT LAKE CITY — Though Tamu Smith was excited to coproduce the new film “Jane and Emma,” she could never have anticipated the struggle to come.

The film tells the story of an unlikely friendship between Jane Manning James, one of the earliest black converts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Emma Smith, the wife of the church’s founder, Joseph Smith. The type of friendship Jane and Emma had was unheard of in the 1840s, Smith said. And it was complicated.

So was tasking a group of women from diverse backgrounds and cultures to tell Jane and Emma’s story now.

“I thought, ‘This is so awesome because you have all these different ethnic backgrounds working together.’ But it was very difficult, which made me appreciate Jane and Emma even more, and their relationship. Because, honestly, they did something in 1844 that (we) really struggled to do in 2018,” said Smith, who is known for her humorous blog, Sistas in Zion, that details blacks' experiences in the church.

While Smith said she is now closer with some of the women involved in the project than she is with some of her siblings, her relationship with some of the others is still complex.

“Race actually was brought up. Cultural differences were brought up," she said. "How do you tell this story of these two women without leaving the other woman out?”

Race relations have been a controversial conversation in the U.S. for the better part of two centuries. “Jane and Emma,” in turn, explores the way race relations shaped the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ in a way that echoed for decades after, said Arthur Van Wagenen, head of distribution for Excel Entertainment, a film company owned by the church’s Deseret Book.

Why Jane?

Jane was baptized a member of the church when she was 19 after she listened to missionaries preach in her home state of Connecticut. She became “fully convinced that it was the true gospel,” she said in her autobiography — one of the most detailed historical records the church has of early black converts.

“Her story really becomes important to modern Latter-day Saints to understand that the roots of our gospel are inclusive and are egalitarian, and I think indicate something about how wide and deep and broad Joseph envisioned the kingdom of God,” Van Wagenen said.

When members of the church began to gather in Nauvoo, Illinois, Jane wanted to join them. But when she was kicked off a steamboat along with other black converts, she began the 800-mile journey on foot.

“Our feet became sore and cracked open and bled until you could see the whole print of our feet with blood on the ground. We stopped and united in prayer to the Lord; we asked God the Eternal Father to heal our feet and our prayers were answered and our feet were healed forthwith,” she wrote in her autobiography.

Eventually, her group reached Joseph Smith’s home, and they were warmly welcomed inside by Emma. Soon after, Joseph and Emma invited Jane to live with them and later offered to seal Jane to them as a daughter — a temple ceremony that faithful Latter-day Saints believe would allow Jane to be part of their family even after this life.

Jane refused, though she mentions in her autobiography that this decision was because she did not quite understand what they were offering. She spent the rest of her life petitioning church leaders to have this sealing done after Joseph Smith was killed by a mob.

After Joseph Smith died, leaders of the church eventually restricted black members of the church from participating in certain temple ceremonies and holding the priesthood — what Latter-day Saints believe is the power of God. This restriction was lifted in the 1970s by current church leaders.

“For all sorts of reasons, we committed to a different course for 136 years and then course corrected in 1978," Van Wagenen said.

The film does not shy away from these troubled roots, Van Wagenen added. It uses a fictional narrative interwoven with actual events to open a unique conversation that doesn’t quite provide all the answers.

The film even addresses the fact that Jane was, at one point, sealed to Joseph as his eternal “servant” by some of the leaders of the church in an attempt to respond to her pleadings to enter the temple, Van Wagenen said.

“That is a pretty horrific thing,” he added. “Most people on social media just assume we’re going to gloss over that fact and just assume we’re going to ignore it — and we don’t. That’s part of her reality and part of her truth."

In spite of all that, Jane found goodness in the gospel and reasons to stay, Van Wagenen said.

Why now?

Van Wagenen had initially wanted to do a film about polygamy, another controversial page in the church’s past, but was told: “not yet.” Instead, he approached the film’s director, Chantelle Squires, with the idea to do a story about Jane.

Squires had recently had a second child, gone through a divorce and “felt strongly about talking about hard things.” She was also looking for a story “about women, by women and for women.”

Soon after deciding on Jane and Emma’s story, she enlisted Melissa Leilani Larson, a veteran Latter-day Saint playwright and scriptwriter, who Squires said had a knack for navigating complicated issues with compelling narrative.

During one brainstorming session, Larson gasped and excitedly began describing an idea that had come to her. She wanted to frame the film around a fictional narrative she envisioned happening shortly after Joseph Smith’s murder.

In this narrative, Jane, who was known for her spiritual nature, would receive a vision after Joseph’s death and be compelled to return from a neighboring state where she was working at the time of Joseph’s death to Emma’s home. She would enter and see Joseph’s body lying on the table and be reunited with Emma in a moment of pure grief.

The film would be framed around this fictional scene and include flashbacks telling Jane’s real history, Larson explained.

It was then Squires said she knew the film was going to be something special because just imagining that scene helped her relate to Jane and Emma as characters.

“I would say this film is filled with truth and realities of all of the women who have worked on this project, and certainly, I’m very, very passionate, and it’s been a labor of love to tell this story for 2 1/2 years,” Squires said.

Squires said she worked hard to do justice to Jane’s story, especially because of the example and importance Jane holds in the lives of black members of the church.

“I think that one of the things that I learned throughout the making of this film was how much pain there is for African American members of the church today,” she said. “We look at things as if we are one, and we’re not."

Squires worked to pull that divide into Jane's character in the film, she said.

"I did not want to sweep that under the rug at all because I’m doing her no justice at all if I do that.”

And though Smith knows the film won’t heal that pain, she hopes it will open a conversation.

“I want people to know that, even though this film is only based on truth, I know that the spirit of Jane and Emma are there,” she said.

Few in the church are aware that black people were "at the foundation" of the restored Church of Jesus Christ, Smith said.

"They weren’t background players, they were front and center.”

“Jane and Emma” premieres Wednesday and will be released in Utah theaters Friday.

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