Speaker 1: Courst Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 2: Ladies and Gentlemen.
Speaker 3: This is Quest Love and you're listening at a QLs classic.
Speaker 3: This is from February seventy twenty and eighteen. We talked
Speaker 3: to our friend Rosario Dawson about our acting career and
Speaker 3: her political activism. We did this in Los Angeles at
Speaker 3: Sunset Sound Studios, where a lot of nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 3: and Purple Rain was recorded. So, yeah, it would be
Speaker 3: a good time to do it back with our friend
Speaker 3: Zorio dsin Courst Love Supreme Classic.
Speaker 2: Here we go, sun Sure Up Supreme Self, Bream Up
Speaker 2: sun Self. She's always in my hair. Yeah, she's always
Speaker 2: on my back. Yeah, she's uh whatever. My name is Fante.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do not beg Yeah, Zarios and kids, I
Speaker 4: have no legs.
Speaker 5: I hate road.
Speaker 6: My name is Sugar.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And I'm unstoppable. Yeah, just like that train. Yeah, and unstoppable.
Speaker 2: Going off already for worse never in l A.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's the scenario. Yeah, and it's time Yeah to
Speaker 7: interview Rosario.
Speaker 2: Bring my Road, Bring my role.
Speaker 8: It's like yeah with the original.
Speaker 9: Yeah, my rights yeah, an, let's good in a shower,
Speaker 9: supre My roll.
Speaker 8: Roll and Sea down Avenue X.
Speaker 5: That's why I flex Brooklyn in the house like Mickey Mouse.
Speaker 10: Supra roll Call, Supra, Selp Breing roll Call, Supremo Sun
Speaker 10: Sun Up, bring my rod caremon some sure roll came.
Speaker 11: I've seen you sweet feet shower.
Speaker 8: She's smart and sexy.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 5: I'm like, this took me back to like high school
Speaker 5: because it was like we go out like I used
Speaker 5: to hear that all the time. I didn't have my
Speaker 5: like Laisha. There used to be a couple of songs
Speaker 5: and I.
Speaker 2: Was like that kind of rocks.
Speaker 5: So thanks y'all, Thank you the kids.
Speaker 9: One.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, I don't know if y'all take Turma clearly.
Speaker 2: I hate you.
Speaker 5: I was going to make clearly like everything.
Speaker 2: Did you know how bad you knew instantly that was
Speaker 2: gonna be your Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You was that quiet.
Speaker 2: You was too quiet in the corner. I'm like, what
Speaker 2: you know?
Speaker 4: As soon as we found we were gonna have her.
Speaker 4: That was my first one. It was either that one.
Speaker 4: It was going to be a twenty five hour reference
Speaker 4: because that's like probably one of my favorite movies of yours.
Speaker 4: I really loved your performance in that crazy.
Speaker 8: How many written on your arm?
Speaker 5: I think it's Harmony's birthday to day or it was
Speaker 5: just Yester something like that actually.
Speaker 7: May now yeah, yeah, so many actually k okay, I
Speaker 7: just want to make sure I wasn't saying it wrong
Speaker 7: for the last fifteen whatever.
Speaker 2: You let me let an audience.
Speaker 5: In three years.
Speaker 2: Wait, ladies and.
Speaker 11: Gentlemen, welcome, Welcome to another episode of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 11: Of course love here with teams Supreme. It's like you
Speaker 11: Sugar Steve and Boss Bill and Fontigelo. Uh and today
Speaker 11: we have a good friend, Yes, we have what's up?
Speaker 2: What's up? Roario?
Speaker 11: We have actress, producer and director and singer and philanthropists
Speaker 11: and and political activists and humanitarian and and Newava New Yorker,
Speaker 11: New Way yorka a new way.
Speaker 2: Yeah that.
Speaker 11: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Rosario Dawson. Thank you for
Speaker 11: coming through. This is a very last minute request, but
Speaker 11: you came through. I appreciate it anytime.
Speaker 5: Bo love you.
Speaker 2: Where are you from in California?
Speaker 8: I'm not from in California.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean you're here lot though.
Speaker 5: Yeah I live here now? Yeah, Okay, I'm from Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: I'm raised in the Lower East.
Speaker 11: But are you from New York the way that I'm
Speaker 11: from Philadelphia?
Speaker 5: What does that mean? No, I'm from New York. I'm
Speaker 5: in New York. I still got my nine one seven.
Speaker 5: I'm there all the time, the fast the last five
Speaker 5: shows that I did for Marvel, we're all in New York.
Speaker 5: I was flying back and forth. It was insane. Man,
Speaker 5: I'm always there. There's still people who think that I
Speaker 5: live there.
Speaker 11: Okay, but I'm saying, a plane out of here, out
Speaker 11: out of out of your New York residence and your
Speaker 11: California residence. Where are where's the majority of your undergarments located?
Speaker 2: That's a very specific specific question.
Speaker 5: What are those.
Speaker 2: Very white? Real quick? Sorry? Yeah, what are those? Anyway?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 11: No, for real, Thank you for doing this for absolutely
Speaker 11: so New York. You said Brooklyn because I thought you
Speaker 11: would see.
Speaker 2: Once again, I'm always wrong. I'm always on. Well, no,
Speaker 2: I start you always alphabet city.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was raised there.
Speaker 2: So you were born in Cone yup.
Speaker 5: And conceived on AVENUEIX.
Speaker 8: So he got gain was like home.
Speaker 5: Yes, I actually I had actually been in Lincoln High
Speaker 5: School as a little fetus in my mom's belly when
Speaker 5: she was attending there. Her brothers went there as well,
Speaker 5: and she got pregnant with me when she was sixteen,
Speaker 5: and because she got justes stational diabetes, she kept passing
Speaker 5: out all the time, so she ended up falling down
Speaker 5: the stairs and having to quit school. And then she
Speaker 5: got her what she calls good enough diploma.
Speaker 8: Here ged.
Speaker 5: And eighteen years later, I'm doing a movie with Spike
Speaker 5: Lee and I'm in Lincoln High School and I got
Speaker 5: to be back all those years later, sort of validating
Speaker 5: her and vindicating her. Yes, you know, and everything and
Speaker 5: all the sacrifices she went through. It was a really
Speaker 5: powerful moment.
Speaker 2: Actually, how long were you there for? I mean before
Speaker 2: you moved.
Speaker 5: To We moved to Manhattan probably when I was like
Speaker 5: five or five, but I was always there because that's
Speaker 5: where all my family still was, so we went back
Speaker 5: all the time. A lot of my memories are in
Speaker 5: Coney Island.
Speaker 11: Actually, So, okay, can you explain You've talked about living
Speaker 11: in Lower Manhattan before, But yeah, just because I never
Speaker 11: understood the whole squatting thing. So how how did that
Speaker 11: work in the early nineties or the late eighties.
Speaker 5: Well, we moved there when I was around six and
Speaker 5: lived in this railroad apartment on Avenue A, and it
Speaker 5: was like rat infested and just like there was a
Speaker 5: lot of problems with it. And there were a bunch
Speaker 5: of squats in the neighborhood, a lot of buildings that
Speaker 5: had been abandoned, and my very tenacious young parents were like, well,
Speaker 5: we could do something about this. There's a space that's open,
Speaker 5: there's no other families in there, does no water, heater
Speaker 5: or electricity, but Dad does construction. Mom learned how to
Speaker 5: do plumbing, so they put in a sewage line. The
Speaker 5: squatters who had been living there for two years were
Speaker 5: literally pissing in buckets and taking showers with the fire
Speaker 5: hydrant for two years before we moved in, and we
Speaker 5: transformed that and that was the building that I was
Speaker 5: discovered in, So you.
Speaker 2: Guys transformed the entire block, and.
Speaker 5: Well, bit by bit, a lot of the squatters and
Speaker 5: people who survived that era. You know, it was a
Speaker 5: really crazy, scary, beautiful experience of just people who came
Speaker 5: from all around the world, and artists and struggling artists
Speaker 5: and just all types of other people who were, you know,
Speaker 5: just really marginalized or people who were really going through
Speaker 5: it and drugs and all types of things and just
Speaker 5: you know willing to you know, create a culture in
Speaker 5: the Lower East Side because no one else wanted to
Speaker 5: be there. And so even though there was like one
Speaker 5: working street lamp on the block and there was no
Speaker 5: reason to call the cops because they would not come,
Speaker 5: there was you know, great music and art and personalities
Speaker 5: and things that were coming out of it that ended
Speaker 5: up transforming the neighborhood. So it's the reason why it's
Speaker 5: so gentrified now because people, you know, the storytelling of
Speaker 5: that space gave us everything from rent to you know,
Speaker 5: CBGB's you know, like it's just it's the impact of
Speaker 5: New York at that time, and you know, Basquiat and
Speaker 5: all of those different people who in so many different
Speaker 5: spaces just transformed what the idea of that neighborhood was,
Speaker 5: which is one of the reason why I'm so proud
Speaker 5: to come from it. You know, when I grew up,
Speaker 5: it was the sort of idea of like get out.
Speaker 5: But for me it's you know, I recognize that all
Speaker 5: of those people, no sacrifices and all that art and
Speaker 5: all those wonderful things that were created when it was
Speaker 5: at It's not necessarily its best, but that was the
Speaker 5: that was the best for me because it was you know,
Speaker 5: block parties, and so it was a beautiful and powerful
Speaker 5: experience and place to come from, and I think prepared
Speaker 5: me for everything else that I've encountered in life.
Speaker 11: So how does the so how does legal wise, how
Speaker 11: does the city acknowlenge that, like.
Speaker 5: Years ago it became a building that came under you
Speaker 5: have so a lot of other buildings became co ops
Speaker 5: or got ownership in different ways. You have took over
Speaker 5: the building many years ago, but did not fully pay
Speaker 5: its taxes and do all these different things. So the
Speaker 5: building was everyone almost was almost evicted fairly recently, about
Speaker 5: two three years ago, and I got a lawyer for
Speaker 5: everybody in the building and now they've all just moved
Speaker 5: in in November as homeowners for the first time after
Speaker 5: thirty two years.
Speaker 8: Well for some people, thirty four years.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yep, man, you took your action. Yep. That's crazy.
Speaker 11: So, uh, your story is that that Larry Clark had
Speaker 11: an harmony together over Yeah.
Speaker 8: Larry harmony.
Speaker 5: It was the it was the cinematographer, it was some
Speaker 5: of the other crew members. They were scouting for locations
Speaker 5: on the block. They ended up actually shooting down the block,
Speaker 5: which is fairly unrecognizable because when you're when they're calling up,
Speaker 5: Oh my god, I'm a bad one, am I forgetting
Speaker 5: her name? Darcy? They're in the calling up for Darcy.
Speaker 5: When you see the you know, the building that she
Speaker 5: was in that she comes out of the window is
Speaker 5: still there. But when you look across at them downstairs
Speaker 5: calling from a blow, there's this empty lot that's behind her,
Speaker 5: which is now a building. But so they shot down
Speaker 5: that block, and had they not shot in the neighborhood,
Speaker 5: I probably would not have been in that movie. So
Speaker 5: they were sitting in front of you right now.
Speaker 2: They were initially they were initially shooting, and they were
Speaker 2: scouting for locations, oh scouting. Yeah.
Speaker 11: And by that point, did you have any acting experience
Speaker 11: or aspirations to the arts.
Speaker 5: Or not so much? I mean, I had written my
Speaker 5: first song when I was six, and I grew up
Speaker 5: around artists who are either poets or photographers or actors.
Speaker 5: My uncle's comic book artist, you know. So I grew
Speaker 5: up around people were artists, but also most of them
Speaker 5: having to do another job, and it just being this
Speaker 5: thing that they did because they loved it, but they
Speaker 5: weren't necessarily financially compensated for it. So when I got
Speaker 5: actually the opportunity because my when I was discovered, I
Speaker 5: was discovered for an audition. I had to audition for
Speaker 5: the role and I loved it and it was amazing,
Speaker 5: but I remember just kind of feeling like, this is
Speaker 5: not going to go anywhere because of it. But I
Speaker 5: had to take advantage of the opportunity because I grew
Speaker 5: up with people who I knew would have fought and killed.
Speaker 5: Were not killed, but they would have thought were such
Speaker 5: an opportunity.
Speaker 11: And you know, because because of Larry's unconventional style and
Speaker 11: the way those art is, how does this fly with
Speaker 11: your mom?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 5: I mean my dad came with me on the audition
Speaker 5: and Larry leans out and goes, is that your boyfriend?
Speaker 5: That's dad? And you know, I remember we were doing
Speaker 5: a rehearsal at Harmony's place or no, it was at
Speaker 5: Larry's place and harm and and I can't remember, but
Speaker 5: it was a bunch of photos from from Tulsa, which
Speaker 5: was this photography book that Larry had done in a
Speaker 5: drug den and sort of just being like interesting group
Speaker 5: of people I'm working with, and my parents. I was fifteen.
Speaker 5: I had just turned fifteen, and my parents the only
Speaker 5: thing that they balked out was that my character was
Speaker 5: supposed to be smoking. But they didn't ask to change.
Speaker 5: They didn't ask to change any lines.
Speaker 8: They didn't.
Speaker 5: They let me go to you know, I biked over
Speaker 5: to White Street to like go and to you know, audition,
Speaker 5: and well, it's like Tribecca. I remember it was just
Speaker 5: Tribeca was somewhere like around that area. And I remember
Speaker 5: my bike got stolen. I went on the very first
Speaker 5: day I went to do reversal. I came back out
Speaker 5: my bike was gone, and then I like walked around
Speaker 5: trying to see if I needed to like grab my
Speaker 5: bike out, went to different bike stores to see if
Speaker 5: some junkie had sold it or whatever. And I was
Speaker 5: like Jesus like walking on by myself at fifteen, and
Speaker 5: my parents were like, that sucks. Congratulations, you're official.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that.
Speaker 11: The movie came out of nowhere and really kind of
Speaker 11: well one of was it. It was it was a
Speaker 11: starmaker for you, but just what was what was the
Speaker 11: effect the after effect of the movie, because we'd never
Speaker 11: now it was unlike.
Speaker 2: Anything that we had ever seen before. I mean that
Speaker 2: was Yeah.
Speaker 11: No, Clueless was supposed to be the film that was
Speaker 11: supposed to establish the next generation, but Kids was the
Speaker 11: film that really established Like.
Speaker 4: Kids was Snapchat twenty years ago, like that was what
Speaker 4: social media looked like with Yeah.
Speaker 2: That shit was crazy.
Speaker 5: It's amazing how much that movie doesn't work today because
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, the whole premise of just trying
Speaker 5: to find someone you would just sort of like see
Speaker 5: where they're tagged themselves in their last social media post
Speaker 5: is or But it's a beautiful moment that got sort
Speaker 5: of captured of what New York doesn't look like that anymore.
Speaker 8: Kids.
Speaker 5: You know, a lot of the same behaviors are going on,
Speaker 5: but it's just a different energy around it that I
Speaker 5: just feel so glad that that got immortalized, actually, because
Speaker 5: that was a lot of what my child had looked like,
Speaker 5: and it's and there was a lot of beauty to
Speaker 5: it. It was a lot of you know, did you know
Speaker 5: those violence and abuse and just dangers and being a
Speaker 5: latchkey kid and all these different kinds of things. But
Speaker 5: the fact that still all these years later, I have
Speaker 5: parents who come up to me and go. That opened
Speaker 5: my eyes to the world and what my personal experience was.
Speaker 5: And I did so many things afterwards to protect myself.
Speaker 5: And this is the movie I decided to sit down
Speaker 5: with my teenager now to start this conversation. On my
Speaker 5: daughter's fourteen I can't imagine watching that movie with her.
Speaker 11: Well, it's weird now because I mean, it's just back
Speaker 11: then when you're watching it it came out what ninety five, like,
Speaker 11: it's so much more dream now that that kids seems
Speaker 11: rather a tame in comparison. And well, yeah, it's I mean,
Speaker 11: it's still real, but I'm just saying that it's even
Speaker 11: crazier now some twenty plus years later.
Speaker 2: That you disagree with me. No, no, no, I'm following you.
Speaker 2: I see we're going oh oh.
Speaker 11: But I'm well, yeah, I'm just saying that, how do
Speaker 11: you how do you feel that it's faired in.
Speaker 2: Time?
Speaker 5: Like as I think the reason why it still resonates
Speaker 5: with people is because it feels so honest and raw,
Speaker 5: and there was just it was a different time. There
Speaker 5: wasn't wasn't like the movie was made to be a
Speaker 5: cult classic or made to make a whole ton of money.
Speaker 5: Or like, you know, it was really about sort of
Speaker 5: revealing and capturing a moment. And I think that honesty
Speaker 5: is something that still resonates to you. I look at
Speaker 5: Princess Nokia video and I'm like kids look at you know,
Speaker 5: like I see how much it's carried on for so long,
Speaker 5: and it and it it it, It's made precious and
Speaker 5: beautiful something that was not ordinarily looked at as precious
Speaker 5: or beautiful that is now I think continued after all
Speaker 5: of these years, just feeling like something really authentic and
Speaker 5: powerful and just as necessary as sort of like the
Speaker 5: super filtered way of looking at things that we have
Speaker 5: now where everything is so like glossy or whatever.
Speaker 4: How much of that is important, how much of it
Speaker 4: was like scripted, and how much of it was kind
Speaker 4: of ad lib because it feels it part I think
Speaker 4: why it resonates so much is because part of it
Speaker 4: feels like a documentary, like some of it.
Speaker 2: Is like.
Speaker 5: Based on like Harmony wrote at that when he was nineteen.
Speaker 5: He locked himself into a room for about two three
Speaker 5: weeks and wrote it out, and it was based on
Speaker 5: all of the experiences he'd had with all of his
Speaker 5: scared of friends and just folks and washed Ustar Park
Speaker 5: and all just the people that they knew. How was
Speaker 5: he and so they just put it all nineteen So
Speaker 5: they put it all together as one story in one day,
Speaker 5: which is that's what makes it so outrageous. But almost
Speaker 5: everything that happened in the movie is actually stuff that
Speaker 5: actually had happened to one or himself or his friends,
Speaker 5: and then he just dramatized it. But that's why I
Speaker 5: think it also resonates because there is truth to it.
Speaker 5: And then on top of that, everyone was a non actor.
Speaker 5: I'd never acted before Chloe, Chloe had Chloe was his
Speaker 5: best friend. He'd written it for her. They had cast
Speaker 5: someone else who was an actual actress that then they
Speaker 5: fired and then hired Chloe, like the weekend before we
Speaker 5: started shooting, and it was just everyone, you know, just
Speaker 5: real skater kids, Harold, everybody just justin. It was just
Speaker 5: all of us just like chilling and hanging with each other.
Speaker 5: And the language was written by a friend who you know,
Speaker 5: spoke like a teenager, and so we all it just
Speaker 5: felt really like there wasn't anything about it that felt
Speaker 5: really inorganic. I was in high school. This is how
Speaker 5: the kids were talking. It made sense, so it didn't
Speaker 5: feel like acting. It had been in Shakespeare, I think
Speaker 5: everyone would have been sweating.
Speaker 11: She said that Harmony was four years older than you
Speaker 11: at the time at the time, That's what I meant,
Speaker 11: like I needed to reference for how much older than
Speaker 11: he was in the actual cast he was writing for Okay,
Speaker 11: so he was a teenager himself.
Speaker 9: Do you guys still have a relationship everybody, like, you know,
Speaker 9: at least the team who was together most every day,
Speaker 9: especially like Chloe, and see each other.
Speaker 5: We like some some folks more than others. I mean, unfortunately,
Speaker 5: we've also lost quite a few people justin what Yeah
Speaker 5: he killed himself yeah years ago.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, I didn't know.
Speaker 4: Because then he was in the other one, Ken Park
Speaker 4: that I think Larry directed.
Speaker 2: Tiff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll see Leo, I'll see you know, you see people,
Speaker 5: and it's awesome that you know so many of them
Speaker 5: are still working or doing different things and becoming parents
Speaker 5: or you know, it's just it's a pretty wild journey.
Speaker 5: I have to say.
Speaker 8: It's interesting foundation to start relationships with.
Speaker 6: The soundtrack for that movie was really great too.
Speaker 5: Daddy never understood.
Speaker 11: So how uh, how did you jump start your actual
Speaker 11: career in from that film, like did you instantly just
Speaker 11: get an agent? And like, Okay, why this isn't a
Speaker 11: one off for me, I can do this for real, Like, well.
Speaker 5: I'd only worked on the film about four days and
Speaker 5: then I got what yeah, and then I got like
Speaker 5: a thousand dollars I think from working on the movie.
Speaker 5: But of course my parents took it right and because
Speaker 5: I was fifteen. And then we went to Texas because
Speaker 5: my dad's extended family was there and he hadn't seen
Speaker 5: them for years, and my mom would go on vacation.
Speaker 5: It was the summer, so we ended up going on
Speaker 5: vacation and moving to Texas because my mom was always
Speaker 5: trying to get out of New York City to Garland,
Speaker 5: right outside of Dallas. So I ended up like two
Speaker 5: weeks three weeks after you know, wrapping movie to Garland,
Speaker 5: Texas and then doing all of that and you know,
Speaker 5: glamour shots and you know, winter Ball and all of
Speaker 5: that interesting stuff. And I took a theater one on
Speaker 5: one class because I you know, it was like I
Speaker 5: did this movie and it was kind of cool. I
Speaker 5: didn't tell anyone I did the movie, but I had
Speaker 5: had this experience that I really liked that. I thought
Speaker 5: maybe I should explore some more. And then I got
Speaker 5: this call from Larry and Harmony saying that they had
Speaker 5: a photo shoot with Harper's Bizarre and that they wanted
Speaker 5: all of us to come back to New York for
Speaker 5: the shoot. And I didn't realize they had put me
Speaker 5: as the k and the kids in posts and the
Speaker 5: on the poster, so they really wanted me back, and
Speaker 5: it had taken them a really long time to track
Speaker 5: me down to Texas. They're like, what you're doing in Texas?
Speaker 5: And then they'd had this already done, this midnight screening
Speaker 5: at Sundance that had just made everyone super excited about it,
Speaker 5: put a lot of buzz on it. So then they
Speaker 5: flew me out to New York. I was now sixteen,
Speaker 5: and I did this photo shoot for Harper's Bizarre, and
Speaker 5: then I had decided I did not want to go
Speaker 5: back to Texas, so I convinced my parents to let
Speaker 5: me stay in New York without them and got roommates
Speaker 5: and finished up high school, and I ended up getting
Speaker 5: an agent from conversation my parents.
Speaker 8: See.
Speaker 5: The reason why they even let me do the movie
Speaker 5: in the first place is I had already been babysitting
Speaker 5: for years. I had been tutoring for years. I ended
Speaker 5: up becoming a pre calculus and calculus tutor. I took
Speaker 5: civil engineering at Columbiuni at a I. Yeah, I took
Speaker 5: civil engineering clumb University. I had taken pre calculus and
Speaker 5: calculus did at the Cooper Union.
Speaker 8: Yeah. It was a really I was a smarty pants.
Speaker 8: I didn't.
Speaker 5: I mean, my family knew very well that I was
Speaker 5: not interested in having a boyfriend and having sex and
Speaker 5: doing any of that kind of stuff. Because my mom
Speaker 5: had got pregnant with me at sixteen. I was like
Speaker 5: new to control. Yeah, and I was also kind of
Speaker 5: not always no no, no, no no no. Like my daughter
Speaker 5: was like, oh cool, So grandma was a teenage mom
Speaker 5: and then she had you. That's awesome.
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, wow.
Speaker 11: So how much time laps between Was he Got Game
Speaker 11: your second film?
Speaker 8: He got Game?
Speaker 5: No? But He Got Game was my senior film. So
Speaker 5: I did that film when I was eighteen. That was
Speaker 5: the film I did getting out of high school. So
Speaker 5: it's just a couple of years later I turned eighteen.
Speaker 5: On one of my auditions, like Spike made me audition
Speaker 5: for that movie. Like fifteen twenty times. Really, I had
Speaker 5: to keep going in because he was having me read
Speaker 5: with a bunch of different people, So I don't I
Speaker 5: don't even know who I was up against.
Speaker 8: I just know I.
Speaker 5: Read with like a ton of different basketball players. And
Speaker 5: I remember I was still at the it was at
Speaker 5: the last couple of months of high school, and I'd
Speaker 5: be going, I'm like, I just read with Alan Iverson
Speaker 5: today and they're.
Speaker 12: Like, oh, yes, I would read ready, I'll be there.
Speaker 2: We talk about practice.
Speaker 9: Zario between starting in Kids and then your next situation
Speaker 9: was Spike in retrospec. Looking back, how did how did
Speaker 9: that help you in your career? Because it seems like
Speaker 9: those are like some real into trenches experiences, especially for
Speaker 9: the beginning, Like how did how did do you look
Speaker 9: back at that and say, Okay, well, now I was
Speaker 9: prepared for this.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean when you start off with Kids and
Speaker 5: the Kids is such an incredible film because it's so raw.
Speaker 5: It's kids, and it's you know, it's honest and it's
Speaker 5: vulnerable and it's stark, and you know it's about HIV
Speaker 5: and AIDS and latchkey kids and what are kids up
Speaker 5: to when their parents aren't looking and society isn't caring.
Speaker 5: And I mean it was so powerful and provocative and
Speaker 5: important to and still resonates today. That's how authentic and
Speaker 5: remarkable it is. That like the bar was set really high,
Speaker 5: and that's the reason why I was even visible to
Speaker 5: someone like Spike. And then I remember when I got
Speaker 5: cast and he got came. Spike's like, yo, so you
Speaker 5: got to help realin out and I'm like, dude, like
Speaker 5: I don't. I don't know what I'm doing, Like I
Speaker 5: just I'm just starting off myself. Have him like you know,
Speaker 5: Denzel around and he's like no, and Spikes whole thing
Speaker 5: is like, if I've cast you, I don't make mistakes,
Speaker 5: so do the job I hired you for.
Speaker 8: So it was interesting.
Speaker 5: It was sort of like this reverse sort of confidence
Speaker 5: builder of just going well, I trust him and I
Speaker 5: believe in him, and I love Spike's work, So if
Speaker 5: he's saying I can do it, then I'm guessing I'm
Speaker 5: gonna have to manifest how to.
Speaker 8: Do this and acting and show up, you know.
Speaker 5: So it was really interesting and he would leave sometimes
Speaker 5: like he'd literally be like, Yo, the game's about to start. Peace,
Speaker 5: you can finish this he laughed when we were doing
Speaker 5: the Wonder Wheel scene. Oh he laughed, and Spike and
Speaker 5: and Ray was sick because he we'd already done the cyclone.
Speaker 5: We'd have massive headaches and he's guzzling pepto bismol on
Speaker 5: this wonder Wheel. I'm by myself with this like vombity
Speaker 5: guy beautiful, awesome, remarkable, vomity guy trying to do.
Speaker 8: This sexy scene and Spikes live piece.
Speaker 2: I got a game.
Speaker 11: Game it was ninety seven. Yeah, yeah, my thoughts where
Speaker 11: he was watching Jordans or something. But was it intimidating
Speaker 11: because I also know that Denzel is a very even
Speaker 11: though you had a few scenes with him one or yeah,
Speaker 11: then that one with the karate chap to the next scene.
Speaker 5: Same thing with Unstoppable, one scene. I've got to do
Speaker 5: a movie with Denzel that actually has me have more
Speaker 5: than one scene with him. All of my stuff and
Speaker 5: Unstoppable is on the is over the phone and it
Speaker 5: was literally this other dude who we called White Denzel,
Speaker 5: who sounds just like Denzel but is not Denzel, but
Speaker 5: he would do his voice and innotations. So all of
Speaker 5: my acting stuff except for the actual day I was
Speaker 5: on set with Denzel white.
Speaker 2: Room talking about you'll.
Speaker 6: See about that we're training day three with you, and that's.
Speaker 5: Not like, you know, when people come up to me
Speaker 5: and go I really liked you and Alexander, I have to.
Speaker 9: Say oh, because you only oh and I like you?
Speaker 5: Thank you?
Speaker 11: So uh anyway, anyway, we're back. So yeah, so you're
Speaker 11: saying that, how how awkward or intense was that film?
Speaker 11: Because I felt as though that film and a lot
Speaker 11: of our eyes we're seeing you as la la.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I still got called cast la la people screaming
Speaker 5: down the block. I'm like, why why would you be
Speaker 5: in love with that girl?
Speaker 11: And the first time I met you, I was like, man,
Speaker 11: she's the furthest thing from I know.
Speaker 5: I remember Derek Jeter, I think hit up Spike and
Speaker 5: was like, y'all I want to meet or whatever, and
Speaker 5: Spike was like Juter and I'm like, I'm going to
Speaker 5: show up in sweats and that's exactly what I did.
Speaker 5: And Derek was like and I was like, I am
Speaker 5: not Laala, like even remotely, not even a little bit.
Speaker 5: And you know, because how many times did we hang
Speaker 5: out during that time? I never like, did I wash
Speaker 5: my hair?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 5: Who h nice, what are you gonna doa can? I
Speaker 5: just met her.
Speaker 2: I actually thought was cool. I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: she's a nerd.
Speaker 11: Okay, nice to meet you. But actually we met the
Speaker 11: weirdest circumstances was Tarik's party the first time we met.
Speaker 5: I think so actually, and I was just thinking about
Speaker 5: recently this time that we went to mister Chows together. Yo,
Speaker 5: do you remember that?
Speaker 2: You don't know the half of it.
Speaker 5: I remember we went there and I was there and
Speaker 5: everybody's still sarted, launching into these stories about like y'all
Speaker 5: remember that time your mom's attacked you with the knife
Speaker 5: getting and it turned into this crazy conversation about mama,
Speaker 5: bases about mama and.
Speaker 8: Like how your family members.
Speaker 5: So were like, I'm gonna make you more scared of
Speaker 5: me than the drug dealers, keep you in check.
Speaker 2: No harsh love. All right. So the thing is this,
Speaker 2: this is one of the Knights where d pool day,
Speaker 2: I can't sing like whatever.
Speaker 11: We was at like Radio City Music for a week,
Speaker 11: so to these nights he canceled sickness or whatever, so
Speaker 11: we had the night off. So and most was also
Speaker 11: on the show. So we thought, okay, let's go to
Speaker 11: mister Chiles. And you know, I was not on mister
Speaker 11: Childs's budget, so I'll explain the second half of this
Speaker 11: dinner thing anyway, So we're sitting in this back then,
Speaker 11: mister Chiles was the standard, you know, the illustrio. You know,
Speaker 11: you go to mister Child's. I think like Leonardo was
Speaker 11: there at night. He ignored us and just said said
Speaker 11: to most and maybe Brazario, but everyone else.
Speaker 2: We were like minions.
Speaker 11: So it was like ten of us and me and
Speaker 11: Moses brothers. Like you know, like when when black people
Speaker 11: get together, we share the worst whooping stories ever, that's
Speaker 11: like our favorite thing, like to share who has the
Speaker 11: worst tragedy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we bond, right, But like.
Speaker 5: My my boyfriend at the time was there, and he
Speaker 5: grew up in Hawaii, barefoot surfing and like with hippie parents.
Speaker 5: So he walked out of their traumatized, like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: that's abuse.
Speaker 8: That was his mother did that?
Speaker 5: Why were they laughing?
Speaker 2: It was like the worst the abuse, the funnier the story.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and everyone wanted to one up each other.
Speaker 11: Like yeah, but most of those brothers, oh god, Umi,
Speaker 11: yeah yeah, yeah, mom, I never mean his mom. She's
Speaker 11: quick with the switch anyway, So the check right, and
Speaker 11: this is the first time I'm looking at a four
Speaker 11: figure check because I made the mistake of in typical
Speaker 11: mirror fashion, I was you know, I showed up late.
Speaker 11: So Most was like, oh, it's cool, I'm gonna take
Speaker 11: the liberty and just you know, I'll pre order for everyone.
Speaker 11: So I was like, cool, because I'm not thinking that
Speaker 11: I'm ever going to be subject to a meal that's
Speaker 11: going to cost twelve hundred dollars. So Most just ordered
Speaker 11: one of everything off the menu. On top of that shit,
Speaker 11: he ordered you a birthday cake and it wasn't even
Speaker 11: your birthday.
Speaker 2: I'm like, nigga, you're trying to stump on my dollars.
Speaker 9: Wasn't one of the moment where it's like, let's just
Speaker 9: split this equally, no matter or whatever.
Speaker 2: So something happened.
Speaker 11: Something happened, and I knew something was up when four people.
Speaker 2: Brought check and the check looked like four people.
Speaker 11: It looked like not even war in peace. The shit
Speaker 11: looked like the Koran like it was a check, and.
Speaker 4: It looked like a mile long, and it looked like
Speaker 4: the damn when you go to CVS to print out
Speaker 4: that you get.
Speaker 9: With So wait, I need you to dissect this moment
Speaker 9: because at this moment, all of y'all still at a
Speaker 9: certain tax bracket.
Speaker 8: So how long do you look at the check? Because
Speaker 8: you know you don't want to look too long. I
Speaker 8: want to want to cool.
Speaker 2: But motherfucker, I had diarrhea. I played.
Speaker 11: Because I mean back then in two thousand, you know,
Speaker 11: like I was probably on an allowance that between my
Speaker 11: record habit and my sneaker habit, you know, a twelve
Speaker 11: hundred dollars dinner check could wipe me out.
Speaker 5: You're on top ramen for the next three weeks.
Speaker 2: Yo. I was living off of the d and the
Speaker 2: tour bus and anyway.
Speaker 11: So I went to the bathroom, and you know, Most
Speaker 11: was like all trying to gauge you in another abuse story,
Speaker 11: kind of behind your back. I was like, Yo, the
Speaker 11: bathroom now, so me, Most and his two brothers are
Speaker 11: now in the bathroom.
Speaker 2: Fighting over twelve hundred dollars.
Speaker 11: DM, Like we're counting it in the bathroom, and the
Speaker 11: bill was twelve hundred and I think we collectively scrapped
Speaker 11: together like eight hundred and nineteen dollars and we're like, yo, that.
Speaker 2: I can't do so I begged.
Speaker 11: I begged, and Tina at the last minute shout out
Speaker 11: to Tina fairst. I said, Tina, do not tell Shuan
Speaker 11: g don't tell Rich Please swipe the roots card on
Speaker 11: on this thing and get us out of this predicament.
Speaker 11: And I just prayed, and she picked up and came
Speaker 11: to the last minute and saved us.
Speaker 2: Amazing never again.
Speaker 8: Most oh, y'all dinner like for real, like most.
Speaker 2: Probably that's the last you get in line.
Speaker 5: And you were none the wiser I got invited, dog
Speaker 5: was I got a birthday cake.
Speaker 11: I was like, that's when I got married because I
Speaker 11: looked at him like, yo, dog, is not even her birthday, but.
Speaker 2: You know what.
Speaker 11: The cake was like one hundred and nineteen But like, yo, dog,
Speaker 11: I hope it was the best cake you have.
Speaker 2: Eight No, I couldn't eat. I lost.
Speaker 11: I was trying to regurgitate the food and give it
Speaker 11: back to them. How bad, you know.
Speaker 5: But I think about that story a lot because I
Speaker 5: think about like it's it took that comes up for
Speaker 5: me over so many years, especially at this moment that
Speaker 5: we're in right now. I mean for so many years,
Speaker 5: like you know, we got this times up thing that's
Speaker 5: happening right now, which is really powerful, and all of
Speaker 5: these people who are coming out about harassment and abuse
Speaker 5: and just you know, we've got sexual predator in chief
Speaker 5: in office, and like just so many different things that
Speaker 5: are kind of coming on. And after years of being
Speaker 5: on the board of v Day and Lori's Side Girls
Speaker 5: Club and so many organizations and traveling around the world
Speaker 5: to places like Congo and talking to people from abuse
Speaker 5: and having been abused myself as a kid, and you know,
Speaker 5: just so many different things and recognizing how often we
Speaker 5: really do marginalize the pain that we've gone through and
Speaker 5: how we excuse the harsh sort of realities that we
Speaker 5: sort of live in. And it's been really beautiful to
Speaker 5: see over the years people get their come upance and
Speaker 5: be able to kind of grow past that and become incredible, wonderful,
Speaker 5: beautiful people who are championing light and love and compassion
Speaker 5: and empathy and just seeing people like knowing fully well
Speaker 5: what they went through to get to this position, Like
Speaker 5: even watching jay z and concert just talking about like, yo,
Speaker 5: I came from ugliness and I did ugly things to
Speaker 5: get here and now I'm here because I kept speaking
Speaker 5: into the future what I wanted to create because I
Speaker 5: didn't how many people when I was a teenager, I
Speaker 5: went to their funerals, And there are a lot of
Speaker 5: people whose funerals that I went to, and there's a
Speaker 5: lot of people who have who are really tortured and
Speaker 5: traumatized from not just the neighborhoods and the circumstances they
Speaker 5: grew up in, but from the harsh love that their
Speaker 5: parents and grandparents felt that they needed to wield in
Speaker 5: order to quote unquote protect them and that stuff really,
Speaker 5: you know, And it was just interesting because we were
Speaker 5: right in that moment. It was still something that was
Speaker 5: kind of really blind to me how much we tolerate
Speaker 5: because it's our normal and how you know, like as
Speaker 5: a parent, now that's just not something that's acceptable parents.
Speaker 2: How do you guys view you know, corporate punishment.
Speaker 8: Well, not just corporate conversation has changed now.
Speaker 9: It's not as acceptable to see people talking about that loud,
Speaker 9: like it is.
Speaker 11: Like we would laugh at you know, white people saying
Speaker 11: like oh, time out, you know, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But it's like, how do you.
Speaker 11: How do you minister that now so that you don't
Speaker 11: traumatize your kids?
Speaker 4: And I think for me, I mean, I got boys,
Speaker 4: so you know it's I think some with boys, there
Speaker 4: is a little particular raising young black boys, like you
Speaker 4: have to let them know that the world is not
Speaker 4: gonna be fair, and that generally my message to them
Speaker 4: I have. My boys are seventeen and twelve. But I
Speaker 4: remember telling my twelve year old, I'm like, listen, your
Speaker 4: childhood is gonna end in like another year. Like that's
Speaker 4: pretty much when black childhood ends. Once you're no longer
Speaker 4: cute and cut lee and all that stuff, homie, you're
Speaker 4: a threat. You get a little height on you, your voice,
Speaker 4: get a little deeper, your you know, hands, get a
Speaker 4: little big Like, dude, you're not the same. So versus
Speaker 4: when you're eight and nine and it's you and your
Speaker 4: buddies at the mall or at Chuck E Cheese or
Speaker 4: whatever the fuck. It's all these cute little boys. But
Speaker 4: take thirteen year olds and it's for y'all. Now y'all
Speaker 4: are game, you know what I mean, So you just
Speaker 4: have to be cognitive of that. So to me, I
Speaker 4: in terms of just beaten, that's something that I mean,
Speaker 4: I definitely got a lot of beatens as a kid.
Speaker 4: My boys I can probably count on one hand the
Speaker 4: number of times I ever had to spank them, like ever,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying throughout their life. For me,
Speaker 4: it's just more so just a thing of just having
Speaker 4: conversations with them and just trying to understand that you know,
Speaker 4: you can talk to me about anything. If you bring
Speaker 4: something to me, you won't get in trouble for it
Speaker 4: if you get out ahead of it. But if I
Speaker 4: find out some ship, that's your ass. So that's what
Speaker 4: I mean, growing, Yeah, I mean, that's that's how it
Speaker 4: is me. And then too, I think we have to
Speaker 4: think of for me, a big thing was like just
Speaker 4: just as black Americans or just all people of color,
Speaker 4: I think you have to think about where our shit
Speaker 4: comes from and all of it.
Speaker 2: That ship comes from slavery, you know what i mean.
Speaker 4: Like I remember being a kid and like my grandmother
Speaker 4: making us pick switches, you know what i mean.
Speaker 2: I'm sure, like you probably.
Speaker 9: Sure that in the village that we never put our
Speaker 9: hands on you.
Speaker 4: But that picking on like some slave ship, nigga, Like
Speaker 4: that's because that's not that goes beyond discipline, that's human,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. Like that's I'm gonna fuck
Speaker 4: with you and make you pick your own punishment, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, Like that's psychology, that's some psychological
Speaker 4: abuse shit.
Speaker 2: So even think about like, damn.
Speaker 5: Exactly, King Leopold never stepped a foot in the Congo
Speaker 5: and they that's exactly what they would do, is have
Speaker 5: slaves beat other slaves, you know. And that's this how
Speaker 5: they created apartheid. Like they went and looked at what
Speaker 5: worked in multiple different countries and places around slavery to
Speaker 5: compile something together that would exactly gaslight people and have
Speaker 5: them turning against each other. And I feel like that's
Speaker 5: the moment that we're in right now, where those device,
Speaker 5: those those tools for divisiveness are being exposed, and we're
Speaker 5: recognizing how much we've been siloed from each other and
Speaker 5: and being in competition and creating violence and being marginalized
Speaker 5: so that we actually think we're the minority, but we're not.
Speaker 5: We're not right at all and the world around and
Speaker 5: you know, and that part of that was exactly those
Speaker 5: things of like you know, my family members who martyred
Speaker 5: themselves and sacrificed, and it was all about you know,
Speaker 5: forfeiting needs for these other strategies and I was raised
Speaker 5: in that and it was incredibly corrosive to the spirit
Speaker 5: and energy. And it's never mind all the stuff that
Speaker 5: you see in culture that also demoralizes you and puts
Speaker 5: you down and marginalizes you. But you got to recognize that,
Speaker 5: like that hate and that fear and those traumas also
Speaker 5: came from your family and that they didn't know any
Speaker 5: better because that's how they were raised. Like it's just
Speaker 5: like the fact that we're at this point right now
Speaker 5: where we can really break that cycle, and a lot
Speaker 5: of that is like I love the conversation I was
Speaker 5: talking to people like Patrit's Colors, who's like, going, we
Speaker 5: need to have self care and it's not about me,
Speaker 5: just as you know, one of the founding members of
Speaker 5: Black Lives Matter, going, I need to take care of
Speaker 5: myself because you know, look at Erika Garner just dying
Speaker 5: right now from an enlarged heart. You know, like that's
Speaker 5: that's a broken heart and someone who didn't get the
Speaker 5: chance to mourn, who's been fighting and fighting and fighting
Speaker 5: and now can't raise her child. It's like, you know,
Speaker 5: we have to take care of ourselves. But also we
Speaker 5: didn't hurt ourselves and we also need to have a
Speaker 5: conversation that where we're really taking care of ourselves. So
Speaker 5: I go back to that conversation often because in that
Speaker 5: when we made light of all of that abuse and trauma,
Speaker 5: and I feel like the conversation that's happening now is
Speaker 5: going really investigating it and going was that good? Was
Speaker 5: that necessary? I mean, it made sense for that time,
Speaker 5: but it no longer works. It's not and not even
Speaker 5: that it necessarily really made sense for that time either,
Speaker 5: but it's no longer excusable. But we truly know better.
Speaker 8: Because I hear y'all and it makes sense.
Speaker 9: But then there's something inside of me just having an
Speaker 9: Alma's moment that makes me go, I was a child
Speaker 9: who got beatens, right, not just the switch moment, but
Speaker 9: and it used to be a moment where I was
Speaker 9: proud to say, yes, I got beat and I'm a
Speaker 9: proud child that I'm not going to do the same
Speaker 9: to my children. But now it's so weird because those
Speaker 9: words coming out of your mouth are now offensive. It's
Speaker 9: not politically correct to say, like, but I remember ten
Speaker 9: years ago talking to peers and being like, hey, I
Speaker 9: got beat them and beat my hands.
Speaker 5: Yeah, of course, it's just we we thought it was
Speaker 5: normal and we knew the thing and I complated is
Speaker 5: that there was love behind it, right.
Speaker 8: And that's what I said. It wasn't like I was there.
Speaker 9: And it's a certain pride and me not I don't
Speaker 9: want to say me being fearful of my mother, but
Speaker 9: it's a certain respect level because although she is two
Speaker 9: feet shorter than me and one hundred pounds smaller, I'm
Speaker 9: not fucking with her. But that's not my best friend.
Speaker 9: But I think it some of that was because of
Speaker 9: the beating.
Speaker 8: It's just a weird.
Speaker 2: But there's a way you have to.
Speaker 4: I think there's a way you can establish, you know,
Speaker 4: respect and establish those boundaries that may not necessarily involve
Speaker 4: hitting your kids, you know what I mean. You know,
Speaker 4: for me, I've just never had that issue with my boys,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: They just don't.
Speaker 4: And so I remember when Tamir Rice got killed and
Speaker 4: I sat my son down at the time, who was eleven,
Speaker 4: I think or ten, and I was like, this, this kid,
Speaker 4: you will be twelve in two years, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, And they just shot and killed this kid,
Speaker 4: just so he was aware of the world that he's living.
Speaker 4: In and so just having those kinds of conversations just
Speaker 4: help you to understand that. It's like, listen, I'm telling
Speaker 4: you these things because I care.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: And if you do something that is out of pocket, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm a scream on you, but it's because I'm trying
Speaker 4: to save your fucking life, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Like I'm being hard on you because I'm trying to
Speaker 4: protect you, and I may not that may not necessarily
Speaker 4: mean I gotta, you know, put hands on you. And
Speaker 4: as long as they understand that. With my boys, they
Speaker 4: get it. So I just personally haven't had a lot
Speaker 4: to do that.
Speaker 5: I think that's just the tools just keep getting refined.
Speaker 5: The relationship you have with your mom is because you
Speaker 5: two love each other and you're both good people and
Speaker 5: you want to have that dynamic. Did it have to
Speaker 5: go and be created in the way that it was.
Speaker 5: That's arguable it, you know, because you're I'm seeing now
Speaker 5: I can have a relationship with my kid that doesn't
Speaker 5: involve those things and I can still get that same
Speaker 5: thing and without having to excuse some laps of judgment
Speaker 5: and art, you know, and violence and abuse because that
Speaker 5: wasn't necessary. It was an avenue. We grew up in it. Though,
Speaker 5: Like that's why I keep going back to that conversation,
Speaker 5: because it was like, these are all really good, really talented,
Speaker 5: really smart people, but we're all tolerating this thing because
Speaker 5: it's our normal.
Speaker 8: Is what it is.
Speaker 5: It is what it is, it's it's part of culture.
Speaker 5: And now the culture is really transfer formed. And like
Speaker 5: that's the thing where it's interesting where I don't necessarily
Speaker 5: agree about how outrageous young people are, and I think
Speaker 5: that's always sort of been there, But there's this other
Speaker 5: beautiful and I get it because there's a lot of
Speaker 5: argument against calling with millennials and young people about entitled,
Speaker 5: but there is something really empower amazing about how entitled
Speaker 5: young people feel like they have a voice. They have
Speaker 5: twenty four hour channels dedicated to them. We didn't have that.
Speaker 5: We had a couple of cartoons and then that was
Speaker 5: it. It was an adult world. And now kids are catered to.
Speaker 5: They have access to information that doesn't have to come
Speaker 5: from their teachers or their parents or their neighborhood. They
Speaker 5: can really and so at a very younger age, they're
Speaker 5: expressing themselves and feeling entitled to those opinions, and so like,
Speaker 5: you know, you're getting a different pushback than just like
Speaker 5: a sassy teenager talking to you. You're getting this really
Speaker 5: young person who feels like they have to they can
Speaker 5: express themselves, which was not the same thing. But my
Speaker 5: mother or my grandmother went through in it was like yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, that.
Speaker 2: Did not exist. They are they're more informed.
Speaker 5: Are information is power, and so that's.
Speaker 2: More informed than we were at that age.
Speaker 5: I mean for sure, you know, and it took us
Speaker 5: a long time for us to get to like this
Speaker 5: level of you know, non violent communication and all of
Speaker 5: this stuff is happening to us in our twenties and
Speaker 5: thirties and forties, and that's happening in teenagers now and
Speaker 5: younger and that that's pretty and seeing them assert themselves
Speaker 5: and going, don't you like you're gonna you don't talk
Speaker 5: to me that way, you don't hit you don't hit
Speaker 5: me like that. Like it's not just that we're deciding that,
Speaker 5: you know, we've decided we want to change, it's these
Speaker 5: kids going, what do you think put your hand down?
Speaker 2: Well, well, now they ain't never said that to me.
Speaker 2: Now that'll get you fucked up?
Speaker 4: Yeah, with your hand, nigga, what you got on this mortgage?
Speaker 4: Nigga about that?
Speaker 8: I still have that.
Speaker 5: I take that from the will Smith thing where you
Speaker 5: tell those kids all, he said, used to tell us
Speaker 5: kids all the time, like clean my room. That's my room. No,
Speaker 5: you ain't paying no rent, that's my room.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But I struggle, I mean I struggle with that though
Speaker 4: I do. I struggle with it just in the sense
Speaker 4: of like I'm always thinking about I don't know if
Speaker 4: you will remember, it was like some experiment that some
Speaker 4: scientists did like years This is like in the sixties
Speaker 4: and seventies, but it was basically this experiment where they
Speaker 4: took these fish and they had them in the bowl.
Speaker 4: They had them the fish tank, and so they put
Speaker 4: the fish in the fish tank, and they had one
Speaker 4: side of the fish of the tank closed off, so
Speaker 4: the fish can only go into the bowl into like
Speaker 4: this little border or whatever. So then they remove the border,
Speaker 4: and the fish still stayed on the side, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean. And so for me, that's kind of
Speaker 4: the thing with what it was raising like you know,
Speaker 4: black boys, it's like I look at like white kids,
Speaker 4: like if you've be in the airport and you just
Speaker 4: see white kids just be everywhere, just be running all
Speaker 4: the funk around and they mamas don't stop them. They
Speaker 4: just let them go. And we're always as a kid,
Speaker 4: not like that.
Speaker 5: On the plane to Africa, the kids are running around.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, us in our place y place. Again, it's culture, right,
Speaker 5: and what's what's what's accepted, and what's and the fear
Speaker 5: that's built into it, and you know all of those
Speaker 5: things where we do that, we put up that border
Speaker 5: ourselves and don't step out. But if you see that
Speaker 5: difference in people you know over there, then that's what's
Speaker 5: the difference between them and US America.
Speaker 2: They different.
Speaker 8: I'm just saying, yeah.
Speaker 11: So of course you're legendarily known for your political activism.
Speaker 11: What made you, yeah, I believe it or not. I
Speaker 11: don't know if you know this, what made you want
Speaker 11: to step into that realm? Because nine times out of ten,
Speaker 11: you know, once a person reaches a certain place in
Speaker 11: their their career, their profession, they might get in a
Speaker 11: comfortable place where it's like, well, I don't want to
Speaker 11: rap my boat. And you know, you have this sort
Speaker 11: of Harriet Tubman thing about you where it's like you
Speaker 11: you ride for your people, and every time I turn around,
Speaker 11: you're either you know, doing some girls club thing or
Speaker 11: you're always i'd see you do more social work than
Speaker 11: I do your professional work. But then again, you know,
Speaker 11: you know, if you're getting Marvel money, then I'm getting.
Speaker 2: Like, okay, we're getting money.
Speaker 11: You know, I'm sure that affords you, you know, time
Speaker 11: to balance. Yeah, like, how do you balance your professional career?
Speaker 11: And you know, why do you feel it's such a
Speaker 11: need to be politically and socially involved in the lives
Speaker 11: of the uh?
Speaker 2: I guess disenfranchised or.
Speaker 5: Well, I grew up before you know, Kimblee Crenshaw sort
Speaker 5: of coined intersectionality with her remarkable ted talk and work.
Speaker 5: I grew up understanding the intersectionality of my mom being
Speaker 5: a teenage mom and lack of education and home and
Speaker 5: security and jobs, you know, and like, you know, the
Speaker 5: voice my mom would put on, Hi, I'm Isabelle celest doson,
Speaker 5: you know, and to try to get a job, and
Speaker 5: then suddenly she'd show up and the job was no
Speaker 5: longer available and the apartment was no longer available because
Speaker 5: she's a six foot tall Puerto Rican from the Bronx
Speaker 5: and she sounded different on the phone, but you know,
Speaker 5: and and growing up in New York with a you know,
Speaker 5: housing crisis and AIDS and HIV and and you know,
Speaker 5: this heroin and crack epidemic and just so many different
Speaker 5: things that it's like, you know, my mom worked in
Speaker 5: organizations and she used to campaign, and so many other
Speaker 5: people that I grew up with, and there were also
Speaker 5: broken people who could also really be you know, abusive
Speaker 5: and terrible and traumatized. And so it was like this
Speaker 5: weird dichotomy of people. But it was always still people
Speaker 5: that I saw who were not perfect, who did not
Speaker 5: have it all together, who were also still going, I'm
Speaker 5: going to help. You know, these are people who didn't
Speaker 5: have anything, and it was poor people helping people. So
Speaker 5: and then the very first movie I do is about
Speaker 5: HIV and AIDS and rape and kids in New York
Speaker 5: City and it's you know, and it shot up and
Speaker 5: it made an impact, and I had so many incredible
Speaker 5: conversations with people who had revelations about their behavior from
Speaker 5: watching the movie. And so for me, it was always intertwined.
Speaker 5: I grew up around activists. I went into film through
Speaker 5: sort of advocacy, and so I recognized really early on
Speaker 5: that the more I kept myself quote unquote relevant doing
Speaker 5: work consistently, the more I could continue to also promote
Speaker 5: the heroes and heroines that I grew up with, who
Speaker 5: were the ones who were pushing back against discriminatory housing
Speaker 5: laws and you know, working to get drug addicts off
Speaker 5: the streets and making better school programs for kids and
Speaker 5: so just it was always something that I did forever.
Speaker 5: But it's it's interesting now being you know, in sort
Speaker 5: of like this times Up group with all these amazing
Speaker 5: actresses and women and you know, over just a couple
Speaker 5: of months and all these different people who've put out
Speaker 5: their stories so bravely, and you know, the whistleblowers who
Speaker 5: have lost work over it, and now it's time to
Speaker 5: celebrate them. The Rose McGowan's and the Annabelasias and the
Speaker 5: you know, Anthony Rafts, Terry Crews, Corey Feldman, you know,
Speaker 5: Ashley Judd, Olivia Munn, Like it's important to say these
Speaker 5: people's names because they lost work, they mire Sorvino like,
Speaker 5: their careers were attacked, and I you know, and and
Speaker 5: someone said something really beautiful yesterday of just talking about
Speaker 5: how because of the way she grew up, she self
Speaker 5: soothed and was able to sort of find other avenues
Speaker 5: to express herself and to have success or just to
Speaker 5: be working or you know, keeping herself busy and finding
Speaker 5: you know, vitality in her life when that work did
Speaker 5: dry up. And but when she did that, she was
Speaker 5: also marginalizing her talent and her access because suddenly that
Speaker 5: worked right up.
Speaker 8: So rather than really.
Speaker 5: Address how it cost her her career, she just was like,
Speaker 5: I don't really want to do it, or you know,
Speaker 5: oh it's totally cool, or maybe actually I can't do it.
Speaker 5: And the psychological sort of abuse that that was, and
Speaker 5: I look at it as well, because it's like, you know,
Speaker 5: I see certain performances or I see certain people now,
Speaker 5: and I see characters out there that look like me
Speaker 5: that were roles that I never would have had access
Speaker 5: to over so many years. And I've always worked, but
Speaker 5: I had to do a lot of independent work, and
Speaker 5: you know, and it's and so I very often did
Speaker 5: not get paid. I got paid scale when I was
Speaker 5: on both Spikeley movies, you know, and Denzel getting you
Speaker 5: know whatever how many millions or whatever he was getting.
Speaker 5: You know, it's like and it doesn't mean I didn't
Speaker 5: do great work, and it doesn't mean you know how
Speaker 5: many stuff but I didn't get I don't get nominated
Speaker 5: for stuff. And I don't know if that has to
Speaker 5: do with anything, but I know I'm one of the
Speaker 5: few who's always pushed back and been very radical about
Speaker 5: a lot of different issues. And people have always asked
Speaker 5: me for years, has that cost you work? And since
Speaker 5: I've always worked, I never really thought about it, but
Speaker 5: I haven't had access to the work that I really
Speaker 5: want to do necessarily, And it's interesting to me to
Speaker 5: kind of think, like, has it affected my work?
Speaker 8: Like I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't know, Like I don't has it has it
Speaker 5: stopped me from getting on certain lists? I know for sure,
Speaker 5: you know, sort of being a Bernie person didn't make
Speaker 5: a lot of people in Hollywood very happy with me,
Speaker 5: you know, And and so I wonder what that effect is,
Speaker 5: you know, necessarily for speaking up on behalf of trans
Speaker 5: rights and you know, gay rights and children's rights and
Speaker 5: anti abuse and education and housing all the different things
Speaker 5: that I've you know, fought for for so many years.
Speaker 5: You know, I don't know if it's cost me anything,
Speaker 5: but I do know I have constantly redirected my energy
Speaker 5: and just kind of kept moving forward rather than really
Speaker 5: kind of look at, well, why didn't that turn into
Speaker 5: more work? Actually I got a lot of praise for that, Like,
Speaker 5: I know, I did a really great job in that,
Speaker 5: like seven pounds was really powerful or this was really powerful?
Speaker 5: And how come that? Like, and I'm working with people
Speaker 5: who I also know didn't get recognized because Will wouldn't
Speaker 5: get that attention, Spike wouldn't get that attention. I'd see
Speaker 5: their frustration as well, being the huge names that they
Speaker 5: were and how often their work was marginalized. So it's
Speaker 5: like you see a pattern that's definitely there. Whether it's
Speaker 5: because you're outspoken, or because you're of color, or because
Speaker 5: you're a woman or whatever it is, but they're are
Speaker 5: a lot of voices that have been marginalized for years
Speaker 5: because of discrimination.
Speaker 2: What is that?
Speaker 9: I just I was just curious, what is that role?
Speaker 9: Because when you think back of all the roles you
Speaker 9: have played has been very diverse, But what is that role?
Speaker 9: Did you think that you're missing out on in that way? Like,
Speaker 9: I mean, I I the opportunity, No.
Speaker 5: I mean I can definitely see there's you know, I'm not.
Speaker 5: I don't you know that when I look at what
Speaker 5: things I have, Like I auditioned for seven pounds, I
Speaker 5: auditioned for Sin City, I auditioned, like these are roles
Speaker 5: that I fought for. These are not like, you know,
Speaker 5: and so there's this impression that like I got offered
Speaker 5: all this stuff all the time, but actually fight for
Speaker 5: a lot of the stuff. But it's it's you know,
Speaker 5: so it's interesting, like you know, there's sort of this
Speaker 5: idea of what that looks like. And then I meet
Speaker 5: other people in my peers and they're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm turning on this moment. I'm like.
Speaker 11: Saying that even at this stage in your career twenty plus,
Speaker 11: that you're still.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I still I guess it's not to say
Speaker 5: I don't like don't get offers or this or that,
Speaker 5: and I'm very grateful for like the position that I'm in,
Speaker 5: but I have to you know, it's it's just it's
Speaker 5: really interesting to recognize how, especially as women, you know,
Speaker 5: to be in this group of women now who are
Speaker 5: talking to each other and to see across the board
Speaker 5: how significant it feels for all of us because you know,
Speaker 5: there aren't like those men's groups, there's this confidence like, oh,
Speaker 5: you're a Chris too, You're Chris. You're Chris. You're Chris.
Speaker 5: You all get franchises, you know. And it's like all
Speaker 5: of us ladies are like pitted against each other. And
Speaker 5: how many times have I auditioned against Kerrie Washington and
Speaker 5: Lucy Low and whatever?
Speaker 8: And it was like, oh, this is the diversity character.
Speaker 8: So we're all in.
Speaker 5: Competition speak, Yeah, we're all the we're the like so
Speaker 5: there's one of us and then all men. And so
Speaker 5: like it's we're always taught where we're given this idea
Speaker 5: like you're you're welcome even though you're doing just as
Speaker 5: much work and for a fraction of the pay. But
Speaker 5: like if you say anything, you know, know that you're replaceable,
Speaker 5: which doesn't feel like the same thing that we hear
Speaker 5: from our male counterparts. And so like that's and and
Speaker 5: so there's like that's where there's a lot of anger
Speaker 5: from a lot of especially the women who are coming
Speaker 5: forward right now and have been coming forward for years,
Speaker 5: because it absolutely cost them work. I don't know that
Speaker 5: I can definitively say that for myself, but I know
Speaker 5: I have been a very outspoken person for a lot
Speaker 5: of years and.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and that capacity.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, like I don't know what
Speaker 5: that's cost me or not, Like I don't know if
Speaker 5: I had only specifically dedicated myself to acting and performing
Speaker 5: and doing the parties and doing the you know, all
Speaker 5: of that and playing that game, if I had, But
Speaker 5: instead I took I did a job. I was like, great,
Speaker 5: now I have press and I'm going to talk about
Speaker 5: this issue here. Thank you for that, and you know,
Speaker 5: and you know, now it's so beautiful now to see
Speaker 5: these people who are are making really good money and
Speaker 5: aren't having access to social media, which I didn't have
Speaker 5: at that time to be able to really speak out
Speaker 5: to people and still grow their success at the same
Speaker 5: time as talking about these issues.
Speaker 8: That wasn't an option for me.
Speaker 11: Go ahead, wait, let me just get this kind of
Speaker 11: a three part question. But how did you Because I
Speaker 11: know that no woman in Hollywood is unscathed, Yeah, but
Speaker 11: how do you deal with whatever the Weinstein's or the
Speaker 11: Rattiners of Hollywood, which I'm sure there's a lot of
Speaker 11: them and some that haven't been touched yet, But.
Speaker 2: How do you navigate your way through that landmine?
Speaker 11: Well, what's the difference between you know, Okay, I get
Speaker 11: creepy vibes from this one, and oh, this one has
Speaker 11: such a claim and it's such an honor to be
Speaker 11: in this one's movies because of his legacy and his lineage.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, like, how do you.
Speaker 5: I mean again, because I didn't ever really play like
Speaker 5: that game. You know, there are people I avoided in general,
Speaker 5: or I did what I had to do work wise.
Speaker 5: I always treated it like Okay, I got to come
Speaker 5: here and do this party or do whatever, and then
Speaker 5: I'm out. Like I never I didn't do hey, let's go. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I very much avoided that. And if anything, that was
Speaker 5: one of the things that I thought about yesterday is
Speaker 5: like because I was I was raped in lested as
Speaker 5: a child with you know, with one with a family
Speaker 5: member and one with the babysitter. So for me, it
Speaker 5: was I grew up with this sort of understanding that
Speaker 5: the world isn't safe, and so I have going into
Speaker 5: this industry of course, I mean from kids, you know,
Speaker 5: and like.
Speaker 8: How old are you, Larry?
Speaker 5: Why are you shooting these kids that dress like or
Speaker 5: not dressed like this? You know, I've I've definitely just
Speaker 5: had for a very long time. I just assume all
Speaker 5: everybody has some sort of dark potential story. So I
Speaker 5: walked into most and so did I excuse or did
Speaker 5: I ignore or did I as just navigate around all
Speaker 5: of that? Yeah, because it was it's except quote unquote tolerated.
Speaker 5: It's what's been passed down by family members who go
Speaker 5: that happened to me too, Baby, should be just gonna
Speaker 5: move on.
Speaker 8: You know, if my mom said to me, see.
Speaker 9: What I'm saying, my mom said to me, every woman
Speaker 9: in your life has been raped or es actually assaulted
Speaker 9: at some point.
Speaker 2: Now happening.
Speaker 5: We're taught like that's just how you got to deal
Speaker 5: with it, you know, like we're you know, we were
Speaker 5: sitting in one of these meetings and it was saying,
Speaker 5: you know a lot of people's first jobs is going
Speaker 5: into the waitressinger industry and that's a two dollars I
Speaker 5: think thirteen cent an hour pay, so basically the first
Speaker 5: job out of the house. Whatever trauma or not trauma
Speaker 5: you experienced there. Now you're going into the space where
Speaker 5: you're being told we're revealing clothes. Deal with that scumbag
Speaker 5: because maybe they'll give you a good tip. So now,
Speaker 5: pussy grabber in chief is potentially the good tipper. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and you know, so how do you then go to
Speaker 5: hr How do you then when you start building up
Speaker 5: ever go those power dynamics are always exploited. You saw
Speaker 5: it at home, you saw it in your community, you
Speaker 5: saw it at school, you see it all. It's pervasively
Speaker 5: all around the world. At what point do you have
Speaker 5: the gumption to go no where? Like I know that
Speaker 5: most of the world's enslaved, but underground row would road
Speaker 5: later we're gonna say this isn't okay. It doesn't matter
Speaker 5: if it's the law, it's not okay. And the reason
Speaker 5: why people can be fired like this and all the
Speaker 5: stuff that's going on right now is because people behind
Speaker 5: the scenes for many years have been working to put
Speaker 5: those anti discriminatory you know laws in place and in
Speaker 5: contracts for so long that they all need to be bettered.
Speaker 5: NDA's got to go, Like all these different things have
Speaker 5: to happen. But like this moment was a long time
Speaker 5: building and coming from a lot of heroes and heroines
Speaker 5: that'll never be recognized. Who did that dirty work when
Speaker 5: no one cared? When it was totally like where the
Speaker 5: story was, you know, We're not going to talk about
Speaker 5: what Bill Cosed, Beer Woody Allen did because they make
Speaker 5: great projects and this generation is going, uh, no, you
Speaker 5: ruined those projects for me because you did bad things.
Speaker 5: That's actually how that story is told, and that's really
Speaker 5: that's a huge transformation from how I grew up.
Speaker 8: When I grew up, it was like, it is what
Speaker 8: it is.
Speaker 5: It's been secret and you separated and it's totally fine,
Speaker 5: and to finally be in so my activism really felt separate,
Speaker 5: you know, like it like I do this over here
Speaker 5: and I try to help with the girls, and I
Speaker 5: try to make the inroads that I can, but I
Speaker 5: understand that I have to navigate this really carefully in
Speaker 5: my industry. And now that's starting to change, which is
Speaker 5: really powerful.
Speaker 2: All Right. Part two, that sort of question is, all right,
Speaker 2: knowing that you are now in this.
Speaker 11: Community of actresses that are in conversation and you know,
Speaker 11: you guys are talking to each other daily, is there
Speaker 11: a general awareness because I know that well, you know,
Speaker 11: I know that you are in the minority of this,
Speaker 11: being a woman of color and not white. Is there
Speaker 11: a general understanding that there's still a harder level for
Speaker 11: women of color in the acting community to even get
Speaker 11: fair you know, basic treatment, not even fair treatment, but
Speaker 11: basic treatment.
Speaker 5: A million Oh they do, Yeah, because we are we
Speaker 5: are definitely pushing for that. When we're saying like fifty
Speaker 5: to fifty by twenty twenty, trying to change the boards,
Speaker 5: trying to change all the different power dynamics. It's not
Speaker 5: just going white, cisgender women. It's understanding that that needs
Speaker 5: to be inclusive of lgbt t Q, LGBTQ i A people.
Speaker 2: It needs to be down because so many letters been added.
Speaker 5: I know, it's so much the intersectionality. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 5: I think it's it. I think it's just you know,
Speaker 5: this idea of like that representing people of all that's
Speaker 5: disabled persons that like, it's it's much bigger than even
Speaker 5: just brown and white and black, you know and Latina
Speaker 5: an Asian. Like it's it's a bigger it's a bigger issue.
Speaker 5: But it's also you know, we got this beautiful letter
Speaker 5: from the farm workers who, you know, they are picking
Speaker 5: our food and vulnerable to rape daily because they're out
Speaker 5: there in the fields on their own, and they were
Speaker 5: so moved by so many of these stories that they
Speaker 5: wrote a letter in solidarity with us, and we wrote
Speaker 5: a letter back and one of the things I pushed
Speaker 5: back on it was like, you know, they really made
Speaker 5: it much more inclusive. It's not just women, so Times
Speaker 5: Up is women, but the legal Defense fund that we're
Speaker 5: funding that goes for you know, quote unquote low wage
Speaker 5: or some you know, kind of workers across the nation,
Speaker 5: male and female, beyond the binary of understanding, like the
Speaker 5: fact that women have come together, which I think is
Speaker 5: really important. We do need women to be able to
Speaker 5: feel we've been so cut off from each other. I
Speaker 5: think it's really powerful and really beautiful, and there's so
Speaker 5: much healing that needs to happen among women. But I
Speaker 5: love that women came together to tell these stories and
Speaker 5: are also recognizing the men who've come forward and are
Speaker 5: recognizing that with the money that we're raising to help
Speaker 5: people to push back against their predators and hold them
Speaker 5: accountable legally, that they need those funds. And the fifteen
Speaker 5: million dollars that have already been raised in just the
Speaker 5: past couple of weeks, nine thousand donations goes to disabled persons, LGBTQI.
Speaker 8: Hey people, men and women, Like I.
Speaker 5: Mean, it's it's really beautiful that like women are coming
Speaker 5: to the rescue, but we're inviting them, our male allies
Speaker 5: to help us out, but we're not waiting for them.
Speaker 5: And that's to me one of the most provocative things.
Speaker 9: And to build on what Amir said, though, is there
Speaker 9: a conversation because I feel like, especially now with an understanding,
Speaker 9: that we don't understand each other as much as we think.
Speaker 5: You know what I mean, especially me too, means very
Speaker 5: different things.
Speaker 8: But especially for people of color.
Speaker 9: You know, as people of color in this country, we've
Speaker 9: been we have to know some basic things about white folks.
Speaker 8: It's in our history.
Speaker 9: For the first eighteen years of our lives, we are
Speaker 9: taught about white folks. White folks have the option of
Speaker 9: learning about black people right So on the hills of
Speaker 9: what Amir said, you know, I always find it interesting
Speaker 9: with white women how it's a woman's movement, it's women
Speaker 9: got their right to vote. But there is a whole
Speaker 9: disconnect of talking like I hate when I hear women
Speaker 9: talk about women's suffrage and white women seem to forget
Speaker 9: that women of black women could not vote until nineteen
Speaker 9: sixty five, where you were voting eighteen sixty whatever.
Speaker 5: Also, the Native American women who were the models for
Speaker 5: the suffragette movement, who never who never get recognized. That's right.
Speaker 5: So like it's you know, like the it didn't like
Speaker 5: have a bunch of people leaving from England and showing
Speaker 5: up here and going I'm gonna create three branches of government. No,
Speaker 5: you got that from natives. If you were living and
Speaker 5: have and had an incredible democracy, that was the first democracy.
Speaker 5: These were not just people walking around with you know,
Speaker 5: fingers up in the air like this. This was These
Speaker 5: were whole communities with leadership where the women were recognized,
Speaker 5: men were recognized, trans people were recognized as having two
Speaker 5: spirits and considered valuable to the community. Like that is
Speaker 5: still that's an added on a conversation. I'm just saying
Speaker 5: it's not at the beginning of the conversation. So absolutely
Speaker 5: it's been That's why I'm in that space, right, Okay,
Speaker 5: that's why Gabrielle Union's in that space, and Rashida's in
Speaker 5: that space. In America's in that space, and all of
Speaker 5: us are being really assertive about you know, making sure
Speaker 5: like and we're going just going, we have to have
Speaker 5: fifty to fifty by twenty twenty. Well, what does that
Speaker 5: exactly mean, you know, like, how many of those how
Speaker 5: diverse does that fifty to fifty look, you know, and
Speaker 5: really making sure that that's really understood that if we're
Speaker 5: talking about having a world and that that reflect you know,
Speaker 5: having an industry that's reflective of the world, that means
Speaker 5: we got to look at the statistics of what this
Speaker 5: world actually looks like. And right now those numbers don't exist.
Speaker 5: And what's one of the things that's interesting of like
Speaker 5: doing the research on this is like, if there's one
Speaker 5: woman out of ten on a board, three quarters of
Speaker 5: men think that it's diverse enough, and a third of
Speaker 5: women think it's diverse enough. But there's actually you know,
Speaker 5: or a little bit more I think, actually think that, okay,
Speaker 5: well we've got a diverse board. Now there's one out
Speaker 5: of ten, you know, and never mind that if she'll
Speaker 5: ever be or whatever, you know.
Speaker 8: And that one woman does she underdo what do women
Speaker 8: understand at that point?
Speaker 2: Though?
Speaker 9: That diverse doesn't just mean one white woman sitting there?
Speaker 9: Are you happy now that you see one white woman
Speaker 9: sitting there? But do you even notice that there's something
Speaker 9: else missing?
Speaker 8: Absolutely?
Speaker 5: And so like, and that's again goes back to the
Speaker 5: psychological stuff of like what we are conditioned to believe
Speaker 5: we can have and how much we we we get
Speaker 5: so excited about the little bit that we get that
Speaker 5: we celebrate as opposed to canntinuing to push for what
Speaker 5: we actually need, let alone deserve or want, but like
Speaker 5: need and.
Speaker 9: How do you see this translating, especially since it's Hollywood,
Speaker 9: how do you see this translating to the everyday person,
Speaker 9: especially when we're talking about like, I mean, do we
Speaker 9: even does lily lead better even matter anymore? Like how
Speaker 9: you see this translating into fair pay for women period?
Speaker 5: You know what I mean?
Speaker 8: It's not basic.
Speaker 5: This is like we're raising you know, we're trying to
Speaker 5: change code of context. We're trying to change laws, like
Speaker 5: we're trying to change the lay up the you know,
Speaker 5: we're talking about changing the people are at the top,
Speaker 5: the studios and the agencies, the ones who do all
Speaker 5: that hiring. You're never like agencies will poach other people
Speaker 5: to meet their quotas they will poach other women or
Speaker 5: people of color from other agencies, which means you only
Speaker 5: rob them and create more disparaty in those other spaces,
Speaker 5: as opposed to growing them and going I'm gonna make
Speaker 5: sure I'm gonna start with the interns and grow this
Speaker 5: talent and make sure it's diverse from the get you know.
Speaker 5: Like that's the conversation that we're having, and right now
Speaker 5: we're getting people going like, yeah, we'll do it, and
Speaker 5: it's like, I don't think you understand what we're saying
Speaker 5: the people we want to see on this board, because
Speaker 5: if we change that, If we change that, then we
Speaker 5: change the hiring practices, we change the stories that we tell.
Speaker 5: When there are a majority of women on a set,
Speaker 5: suddenly women aren't geting, like it erases a lot of
Speaker 5: the sexual harassment and abuse that exists right now. Like
Speaker 5: we can do all we want to change the laws
Speaker 5: about like going after perpetrators, but you got to start
Speaker 5: where we gotta. We gotta you know, we're and we're
Speaker 5: doing that and that's why that fund is there. But
Speaker 5: at the same time, if we don't really address what
Speaker 5: creates those environments to begin with, we're just going to
Speaker 5: keep putting a band aid to try to stop this
Speaker 5: bleeding wound. And we have to change that, and that's
Speaker 5: not gonna go very easily. I mean, I'm sure, like
Speaker 5: that's an interesting conversation. I've talked to a lot of people,
Speaker 5: especially at our age, where it's like, you work so
Speaker 5: hard in your different industries to get to the top,
Speaker 5: and then you recognize when you when you're really successful,
Speaker 5: white women included, you're like, I'm surrounded by older white men,
Speaker 5: Like that's the top. Like and then people and I
Speaker 5: think like that moment where people get so like disinterested
Speaker 5: or unhappy in their thirties and forties is not like
Speaker 5: just like age, but literally because you realize you sacrificed
Speaker 5: your whole life to get into that room, and you
Speaker 5: realize that room is not someplace that you're is and
Speaker 5: not comforting and not like and it's not something that
Speaker 5: like because that's where the keys have been held, you know,
Speaker 5: like getting an education as a woman or a person
Speaker 5: of color that was illegal. So like, bit by bit,
Speaker 5: over many years, we have gotten ourselves into all of
Speaker 5: those spaces, but there are still some spaces that have
Speaker 5: really siloed from us, and we are trying at this
Speaker 5: point to break into those spaces. And once you get
Speaker 5: up there, that's the world. That's the world that creates
Speaker 5: all the rules and the laws and the stories and
Speaker 5: the culture and whatever and that's so far the keys
Speaker 5: are still very tightly kept.
Speaker 11: Well that sort of leads to my part three question
Speaker 11: is Okay, so I guess twenty seventeen was the purging period.
Speaker 2: Build and destroy whatever, or destroy and rebuild. So the.
Speaker 11: You're saying that twenty twenty is kind of the in
Speaker 11: game goal to set these things in place, or that's
Speaker 11: where we're.
Speaker 5: You know, it's not an impossibility to think about having
Speaker 5: there's there's It's like, what was it Chris who made
Speaker 5: that joke about Barack being Like, it wasn't that suddenly,
Speaker 5: for the first time in American history there was a
Speaker 5: black man who was capable of being president. It was
Speaker 5: just that this was the first time that we allowed
Speaker 5: a person of color to be president.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: So it's like, I feel like that's the space that
Speaker 5: we're in right now. The conversation's really pushing and going.
Speaker 5: This could have changed a long time ago, and now
Speaker 5: it's time for it to change. And the only way
Speaker 5: to do that is to push for it. Like you
Speaker 5: if you don't reach for it, if you don't push
Speaker 5: for it, if you don't organize and strategize and do
Speaker 5: all these different things, that's the long game. You know
Speaker 5: it was it was you know, I forget her name,
Speaker 5: which is unfortunate. Is a white woman who paid for
Speaker 5: you know, the Montgomery bus strike to last for a year.
Speaker 5: She had volunteered and said, you, okay, I know you
Speaker 5: guys can't lose work over this, so and the strike
Speaker 5: is really important, so I'll pay for it as long
Speaker 5: as it lasts, not knowing it was going to last
Speaker 5: a year, and she passed her word and continued to
Speaker 5: pay so that they really after a year, we're like,
Speaker 5: damn it, you guys are really not going to take
Speaker 5: these buses. We need to work like so that's the
Speaker 5: Those are the stories that we're not told of how
Speaker 5: long it takes, the kind of allies that we need,
Speaker 5: and this is like so it's great there, everyone's going
Speaker 5: to wear black at the Golden Globes and do all
Speaker 5: these different symbolic things. But we are really truly of
Speaker 5: the understanding that this is the long game and we
Speaker 5: have to an.
Speaker 11: Will you guys unionize And I mean not that I
Speaker 11: want all the information spilled or whatever, but.
Speaker 5: Saga is a union.
Speaker 8: We have a union, and it needs to be better.
Speaker 8: Women woman's been president before, so yeah, it's not, it's.
Speaker 5: Not it's it's it's but you know, there's just just
Speaker 5: you know, I think as we were saying, you know,
Speaker 5: it's like it's interesting, you know, having been a burne
Speaker 5: person and then last year and then getting like ostracized
Speaker 5: and like a targeted and attacked for you brought us
Speaker 5: Trump and don't even think about talking about DACA because
Speaker 5: you brought us Trump. And I'm like, I don't remember
Speaker 5: you being there on the streets with us when we
Speaker 5: were fighting under Obama to get DACA passed. You know, Like,
Speaker 5: so this idea that you know now that you're angry,
Speaker 5: now that you're showing up, that that suddenly erases all
Speaker 5: of the work that other people did is crazy. But
Speaker 5: and so I get a lot of the anger from
Speaker 5: even a lot of the women who are like, what's
Speaker 5: up with this moment that everyone's capitalizing on me revealing
Speaker 5: my story that cost me work and now you guys
Speaker 5: are all going, yeah, and we're gonna raise a bunch
Speaker 5: of money and do like it's like, you know, does
Speaker 5: that without really recognized maybe how that makes them feel
Speaker 5: is going, well, I get that, and how can we
Speaker 5: fix it? How can we make it better? Because people
Speaker 5: are showing up. I don't know what would have happened
Speaker 5: had the election gone differently, had the primaries gone I
Speaker 5: don't who knows all those different things. But what I
Speaker 5: do know right now is that people around the world
Speaker 5: are pushing back because of Brexit, because of all of
Speaker 5: these different things that are going on around the world.
Speaker 5: We have tens of thousands, tens of millions, you know,
Speaker 5: refugees around the world, and and a female robot that
Speaker 5: just got citizenship in Saudi Arabia and know Sophia the robot,
Speaker 5: and and also as a female, while people are fighting
Speaker 5: to have their gender recognized. Like that's a really like
Speaker 5: even as we're starting to catch up on our upsets
Speaker 5: and our issues of now it's about to go down
Speaker 5: in the next few years in a really really big way,
Speaker 5: and we're still fighting for minimum wage upens. Like there's
Speaker 5: a lot of work to wrap our heads around, and
Speaker 5: we cannot keep looking past. And I can recognize I
Speaker 5: could have absolutely been more constructive in my communication. I
Speaker 5: was very angry during the election because for me, I
Speaker 5: saw an opportunity to take money out of politics. That's
Speaker 5: what it was, that the corruption that exists, the only
Speaker 5: way to change it is to take money out of politics.
Speaker 5: It's the it's the it's everything, and now it's that
Speaker 5: here and now it's here. So like, how do we
Speaker 5: work together? And if you're saying you were a united,
Speaker 5: you know together, stronger together kind of person, then that's
Speaker 5: then we need to do that right now, because this
Speaker 5: is we cannot keep being divided and angry and making
Speaker 5: this blue red whatever, you're deplorable, you're you know whatever, like,
Speaker 5: we cannot keep doing that. We are we are hurting ourselves.
Speaker 5: And the reality is most of us really want to
Speaker 5: see true progress. We want to see the environment change.
Speaker 5: We want to have we want our children to have
Speaker 5: access to things that we didn't have access to, and
Speaker 5: right now they're looking at less. It looks like twenty twenty, okay.
Speaker 9: And twenty twenty is gonna be the year of fixing
Speaker 9: everything that he took us five ten years back on
Speaker 9: and looks like as well, like the progress might.
Speaker 2: Twenty twenty, twenty twenty, it was midterm time.
Speaker 5: But the midterm time yeah too.
Speaker 2: But when it comes to to start twenty eighteen, we
Speaker 2: got to start right now.
Speaker 5: That's the whole point. And a lot of people have
Speaker 5: not paid attention to the local elections, which are where
Speaker 5: these people get their power first, and they get their relationships,
Speaker 5: and they get their networks, and they get their lobbyists,
Speaker 5: and they get their revolving door and their corporations and
Speaker 5: all this kind of stuff, and it removes them from
Speaker 5: the process. Because of all the developed countries in the world,
Speaker 5: we do not vote, we don't show up, that doesn't
Speaker 5: that doesn't exist in Australia and all these other places
Speaker 5: around world. It literally is baffling to see how many
Speaker 5: people pay attention and.
Speaker 9: Our credit is like, we did well this this first
Speaker 9: primary that went on in New York, it went on
Speaker 9: New Jersey.
Speaker 5: Some things are changed, yes, and they're and they're continuing
Speaker 5: to do so. And that's what makes me so excited
Speaker 5: and and and and just so blown away by this moment.
Speaker 5: And I you know, and I'm and I want to
Speaker 5: keep pushing for more because I know we need it,
Speaker 5: including from myself.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: So I took a non violent communications course and I like, well,
Speaker 5: I don't mind getting locked up for a cause. I
Speaker 5: did that for you know, democracy awakening and pushing back
Speaker 5: to get money out of politics and to you know,
Speaker 5: to overturn, the overturning of the Voting Rights Act, and
Speaker 5: like those are I'm always happy to be arrested for
Speaker 5: stuff like that is still act exactly. But you know,
Speaker 5: I think that there's there's just so many I mean,
Speaker 5: like young people and like just people in general. There's
Speaker 5: just access to information that you know that other people
Speaker 5: just did not have before. We don't need This is
Speaker 5: a leader full moment, specifically because for the first time
Speaker 5: we don't need an individual leader. We can go and
Speaker 5: go to YouTube and watch Martin Luther King speak like
Speaker 5: we don't like, we don't we're not not right now.
Speaker 5: This is the moment where no one's waiting. You don't like,
Speaker 5: there's no excuse for your saying I'm waiting for this
Speaker 5: person to you know, move me and and make me
Speaker 5: feel like I need to get off off my butt
Speaker 5: and vote or register or organize or do whatever. It's like.
Speaker 5: Look it up on YouTube and it's and you're watching
Speaker 5: it like that in the same way there you're watching
Speaker 5: something live, so it feels the same, like a better
Speaker 5: view and it's powerful, like you know, but we've you know,
Speaker 5: those stories have been told in a way. You know,
Speaker 5: you look at you know, the the March on Washington
Speaker 5: and everyone's black and white, and everyone's so beautiful and
Speaker 5: dressed in suits, and like, you know, and and you know,
Speaker 5: we we have a day that recognizes it that we
Speaker 5: forget what a huge act of civil disobedience that was,
Speaker 5: you know, like we forget just how dangerous that actually was,
Speaker 5: and that that's actually required to really move forward. So
Speaker 5: uh so, Luke Cage, Actually the second season is really
Speaker 5: going to be amazing.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, I got finished, got finished taping.
Speaker 8: Okay, you can't tell us nothing, of course not. I'm
Speaker 8: trying to go around.
Speaker 2: When is it? When is it premiere? I don't know.
Speaker 8: Actually really really can't tell us nothing.
Speaker 5: No, I actually really just don't know. And you're on
Speaker 5: your computer, you can look it up. Okay, powerful, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean? Like I love that show.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, are good now.
Speaker 9: I was just gonna say, it's nothing like seeing a
Speaker 9: superhero and Harlem and seeing just those moments between the
Speaker 9: meth demands.
Speaker 8: It's just dope to have a hero as hip hop, yeah,
Speaker 8: and walking around being bulletproof and the hoodie.
Speaker 5: It's like participate in his community and doing it for
Speaker 5: hire too, Like that's like one of the interesting things
Speaker 5: about going is like I could why don't I get
Speaker 5: paid for this, like you know what I mean? And
Speaker 5: compensation and like people who sacrifice and martyr themselves so
Speaker 5: much for the greater good and that's how we're raised
Speaker 5: to do. We forget to take care of ourselves.
Speaker 8: And it's like that.
Speaker 2: I really love that.
Speaker 5: Actually the hero for higher kind of idea, Like that's
Speaker 5: all well and good, you can fly, but I'm down
Speaker 5: here fighting petty crimes. I ain't no Batman sitting on
Speaker 5: a bunch of millions, you.
Speaker 2: Know what I mean, like CrossFit, Bill Gates and ship.
Speaker 5: Because I didn't know that. But Black Panthers the richest
Speaker 5: character makes he's a prince because.
Speaker 2: Because of the what you call it, got more money,
Speaker 2: the metal that they make the I think that's so human.
Speaker 4: No, I forgot the name, the fictional name of it,
Speaker 4: but it's the medal that they have in Wakanda that
Speaker 4: that's how.
Speaker 2: That's where the comes from.
Speaker 8: Not diamonds but metal metal yet, gotcha?
Speaker 11: So yeah, I feel like by twenty twenty eight or
Speaker 11: twenty thirty two, you're probably going to run for office.
Speaker 5: Hmmmm, is that what you want?
Speaker 2: I mean it's as president.
Speaker 5: Why not I don't know what if she wants it,
Speaker 5: but we had the governator. I'm really hoping Dwayne the
Speaker 5: Rock Johnson runs.
Speaker 8: We already have a wrestler as a governor, so why
Speaker 8: not John?
Speaker 11: Yeah, I feel like, you know, in about fifteen years,
Speaker 11: you're going to just be full time.
Speaker 2: You got to jump in the pool to clean out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't really clean out this one.
Speaker 8: Would you be local?
Speaker 5: How you I would do? I want to thank you
Speaker 5: my love, senator, like congress woman. Probably at some point,
Speaker 5: I mean down the line. If that it's something that
Speaker 5: shows up, I could see doing it.
Speaker 8: Right now.
Speaker 5: I'm more I'm still wanting to be in this space
Speaker 5: of storytelling and hiring and you know, working with really
Speaker 5: remarkable people and stretching myself as an artist and like
Speaker 5: maybe directing and producing and like being part of that
Speaker 5: shift of consciousness of storytelling and and who we you know,
Speaker 5: lift up in those stories.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 5: I think that's really really important because the culture I
Speaker 5: think needs a dramatic shift, and that's that's a really
Speaker 5: important access point. But I could see, like when I
Speaker 5: get a little older running for the office.
Speaker 2: I'm calling it now your victory part, I am.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I gotta be you and Babito because
Speaker 5: I gotta lie right.
Speaker 11: Alternate, Fine, Okay, we're still a pop culture podcast. Yes
Speaker 11: we're serious and we're political. So just in these final minutes,
Speaker 11: just damn now, I feel like.
Speaker 9: Because has been in like two different well three different
Speaker 9: worlds for real, for real, but even on the music
Speaker 9: industry side of things, because you've had, like you said,
Speaker 9: you've had a friendship with jay Z for over two decades,
Speaker 9: the same thing with a mirror. It's been an interesting
Speaker 9: ride for you in that way as well, Prince Prince
Speaker 9: as well.
Speaker 8: So that's funny.
Speaker 9: I had a whole question well so on the strength
Speaker 9: of the sexual assault though, that's kind of I was
Speaker 9: going to go back to that and say, you know,
Speaker 9: do you see the differences and how long it's going
Speaker 9: to take on that side of things versus the music
Speaker 9: part of things, like the movie versus music.
Speaker 8: You know, it's kind of like a.
Speaker 2: T for the music industry, And do you see the
Speaker 2: r Kelly's.
Speaker 5: Already getting and has been getting a lot of flak
Speaker 5: for a long time enough it never does anything, but
Speaker 5: I think that, I mean, we're seeing it in so
Speaker 5: many different capacities because it's political, it's in the film industry,
Speaker 5: it's with farm workers, it's with you know, our TV personalities.
Speaker 5: It's like, you know, I mean, I think there's a
Speaker 5: lot of spaces that are that are now being uh
Speaker 5: you know, looked at and transformed. And so no, I
Speaker 5: don't I don't think that there's any space right now
Speaker 5: that's invulnerable to being kind of held to a different standard.
Speaker 5: So I think that's actually really important. But again, that's
Speaker 5: our media and so many other things, and you know,
Speaker 5: it's people's bread and butter. That's the reason why so
Speaker 5: many of these producers got away with this behavior for
Speaker 5: so long, because even though they make all their money
Speaker 5: from those actors and directors and all those different people,
Speaker 5: Like the producer is the one that's there for thirty years.
Speaker 5: So the agent's like going to deal with that producer
Speaker 5: knowing full well they're giving up this actress to some
Speaker 5: predator because they can replace her. But that's do with
Speaker 5: the money, you know, Harry Weinstein paying for the Golden
Speaker 5: Globes for how many years, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: and developing them specifically so that you know, it was
Speaker 5: a gateway into the oscars, you know.
Speaker 9: On the flip side on the music business, which is
Speaker 9: kind of built on the backs. I mean, I think
Speaker 9: I say built on the backs, but in the last
Speaker 9: twenty thirty years, it's kind of been built on the
Speaker 9: backs of women in a way of looking at them
Speaker 9: in a certain way. To change the culture in the
Speaker 9: office when the music and the visuals saying something different,
Speaker 9: it has to kind of bring the music industry back
Speaker 9: on a little further back than the movie business.
Speaker 5: To me, Yeah, but that's why some people a chance
Speaker 5: to rapper are so provocative and interesting right now, and
Speaker 5: Princess Nokia and people who are pushing back against that.
Speaker 5: That's why. You know, there's a history in that with
Speaker 5: music for a long time. How many incredible musicians from
Speaker 5: Motown times and whatever who were not paid even though
Speaker 5: they were the amazing singers. They were the ones that
Speaker 5: got people turning on their radios and paying attention, but
Speaker 5: they didn't write the music, so they ain't get any money.
Speaker 5: And how many of them, you know, La Loupe died
Speaker 5: alone penniless, you know what I'm saying, like pennyless, Like
Speaker 5: that's not okay. And these are some of the heroines
Speaker 5: and heroes of our culture that you know, has provocatively
Speaker 5: transformed all of us but did not get recognized at
Speaker 5: the time. So there's there's a long history of that
Speaker 5: that has existed, and I think that's a big part
Speaker 5: of it is having not you know, again, not siloing
Speaker 5: ourselves to this generation and going this is just what
Speaker 5: it looks like here, but really seeing the history there
Speaker 5: so that we can really learn from it and go
Speaker 5: no more, you know what I mean. It really it
Speaker 5: really takes that. But if you kind of keep us
Speaker 5: passing it on and accepting it and just kind of
Speaker 5: going that's just the way it is, then it'll continue
Speaker 5: to perpetuate.
Speaker 4: But prior to prior to this, to the met Too movement,
Speaker 4: were there conversations between actresses that, hey, you know, don't
Speaker 4: work with so and so, or if you work with
Speaker 4: so and so aware.
Speaker 5: Years ago, you know what I mean. Like, so, yeah,
Speaker 5: there's some of that and not as well, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean, because again we're really of kept from
Speaker 5: each other. We only see each other these awards shows oftentimes.
Speaker 11: You know, it's like top of that, like I mean,
Speaker 11: Harvey was serious with this defense system and like you
Speaker 11: thought your life was on line.
Speaker 5: So still to this day, there are a lot of
Speaker 5: people who are really scared of like you know they
Speaker 5: have you know, there are people there are because of
Speaker 5: all of these stories coming out. There were people being
Speaker 5: called by fake reporters, people who have been abused or
Speaker 5: raped or attacked who were being called by fake reporters
Speaker 5: just to see just like not talk, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean, Like that's crazy, people who are being followed.
Speaker 5: H Argenta had to leave Italy. Like the idea that
Speaker 5: like this is still like just because we're in this
Speaker 5: incredible moment, like that these women who are coming forward
Speaker 5: to men who are coming forward or safe is still
Speaker 5: not I mean, we're in the thick of it.
Speaker 9: So have you prepared yourself for the Savannah Guthree moment?
Speaker 9: I like to say, because as we as more people
Speaker 9: are getting exposed, we are saying that they are closer
Speaker 9: and closer to us, or people that we might not
Speaker 9: have suspected, or just just more so eventually, if not
Speaker 9: have already happened to you, somebody clothes may be accused
Speaker 9: or you know, may have a story.
Speaker 8: How do you handle that?
Speaker 9: As Rosario, because you are such a mouthpiece for this movement,
Speaker 9: I have been on the border of Videre, which is
Speaker 9: going to be twenty next well this year. And you know,
Speaker 9: the statistic is one in three women will be rape, killed,
Speaker 9: or beaten in her lifetime.
Speaker 5: So that means you know people, but how do you
Speaker 5: deal with knowing.
Speaker 2: The person who's the rapist perpetrator?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know a lot of you perpetrators and rapists.
Speaker 5: Like that's just that's theory. I grew up around that,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, Like, it's what I would
Speaker 5: like to do is be able to get comfortable with
Speaker 5: the idea that they don't exist. But I've always suspected them,
Speaker 5: Like you know, that's the thing about trauma and abuse
Speaker 5: is that like it puts you in a position where
Speaker 5: I just especially because what do they always say when
Speaker 5: it's like the person who's raped their child or you know,
Speaker 5: blocked up some kid in a basement, they are the
Speaker 5: nicest person you never would have suspected. So even if
Speaker 5: they're nice and they're great and they seem to have
Speaker 5: a happy marriage and wonderful children, I'm still suspecting that.
Speaker 5: That's how I just grew. I grew up as an
Speaker 5: abused person. So like I you know, for me, it's
Speaker 5: you know, it's I'm I'm. It doesn't mean like I
Speaker 5: didn't know. I've worked with almost so many of the
Speaker 5: people who've already been named, and I didn't know the
Speaker 5: capacity to which a lot of them regardless of it,
Speaker 5: but I suspected them, even the ones who didn't seem
Speaker 5: skivier were like quote unquote the I just I pretty
Speaker 5: much suspect everybody because that's just most of my time
Speaker 5: is spent when I'm not working in activist circles, so
Speaker 5: I'm with women and children and men who were abused
Speaker 5: by the people who love them the most. No matter
Speaker 5: how much like I would, I would really like for
Speaker 5: me to to get to to exercise that demon for
Speaker 5: myself where I can actually just be with someone and
Speaker 5: not suspect them of something horrible, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: Like I, you know, to just to to have that likeness,
Speaker 5: you know, to to to not have to bear that
Speaker 5: birden all the time of like having it's it is
Speaker 5: really heavy, and I know I recognize that in so
Speaker 5: many different people. And that's what's like. People want to
Speaker 5: just work. They don't want to be victims, they don't
Speaker 5: want to be so vivers. They want to just work,
Speaker 5: you know, and for some reason, these perpetrators go out
Speaker 5: there and then they kind of like lay low for
Speaker 5: a little bit and then they come right back up
Speaker 5: and make their money. But these women disappear, you know,
Speaker 5: these men disappear, and it's like that's not okay, Like
Speaker 5: that's the the whistleblowers need to be championed now, and
Speaker 5: that the conversation needs to be changed so that we
Speaker 5: can't just do really good work like one Billion Rising,
Speaker 5: which has been going on for a few years now
Speaker 5: with v Day is about celebrating the one billion women
Speaker 5: who are rape killed or beatn in our lifetime and
Speaker 5: going and the very first one was about dancing, like
Speaker 5: let's just have What would the world look like if
Speaker 5: women could go and get fetch water in Africa, or
Speaker 5: go and be a you know, a waitress, or change,
Speaker 5: you know, change the linens in a hotel without fear
Speaker 5: of being raped.
Speaker 8: What would that look like?
Speaker 5: What art would be created? What harmony and beauty and
Speaker 5: love and celebration would we exist in in vibration where
Speaker 5: we live in all the time without this understood accepted
Speaker 5: idea that we're vulnerable, Like what would that look like?
Speaker 5: And let's show what that looks like rather than just
Speaker 5: being out there screaming like, oh, we got to stop
Speaker 5: does violence. Let's dance and like transform from that way.
Speaker 5: And I think that's what's really beautiful, is like there's
Speaker 5: a lot of people were coming together because how many
Speaker 5: activists die alone, how many of them get cancer and
Speaker 5: do all these different things because they're so traumatized and
Speaker 5: they and it's horrible and it's not okay, and that
Speaker 5: needs to transform. There needs to be a lot more health.
Speaker 5: I know that for myself, how much how sick I
Speaker 5: was getting in the past couple of years, put myself
Speaker 5: in the hospital over it. You know, how many relationships
Speaker 5: and things that became really bad because I got more
Speaker 5: caustic and angry and resentful. I know, and I'm fine,
Speaker 5: literally and even just the past couple of months of
Speaker 5: my learning to do that and what that truly means.
Speaker 5: And it doesn't mean that I haven't told that advice
Speaker 5: to other people, but I actually it just wasn't I
Speaker 5: didn't know how to do it.
Speaker 8: I've talked to this.
Speaker 5: Amazing transactivist Bambie talk about intersectionality, you know, and she
Speaker 5: was a sex worker. She's Latina, she's trans, she's I mean,
Speaker 5: so many different things, and then she's going, you know,
Speaker 5: I get a massage every two weeks, and I was like,
Speaker 5: that's it's not something to skip over. That's a really
Speaker 5: big deal. Because even with all the success and things
Speaker 5: that I've had, getting a massage, going on a nice vacation,
Speaker 5: doing anything, I had a hard time, even on social media,
Speaker 5: saying I'm doing this awesome thing because I grew up
Speaker 5: with so many people and I still know so many people,
Speaker 5: including family, that are struggling to just put food on
Speaker 5: the table. And it just I grew up with martyrs,
Speaker 5: you sacrifice, you didn't eat, shame, guilt, like you just
Speaker 5: grew up with that, and to like to be able
Speaker 5: to push bast that and just go, well, I'm getting
Speaker 5: sick all the time. I'm in pain all the time,
Speaker 5: and I do need to sleep, and I do need
Speaker 5: to eat well, and I do need to take care
Speaker 5: of myself because I can actually do all that other
Speaker 5: work better if I prioritize myself. And that's not something
Speaker 5: to feel bad about. But I didn't grow up that way.
Speaker 5: My grandmother didn't eat for you. She literally looked like mahogany.
Speaker 5: You actually would actually know that reference. I tell people
Speaker 5: do and they're like, what does that mean. I'm like,
Speaker 5: she looked emaciated for years because she all she did
Speaker 5: was drink bustello and smoke cigarettes because she had five
Speaker 5: kids and she was a single parent and she had
Speaker 5: to make sure they ate. And my mom like took
Speaker 5: years ago to realize that the reason why she likes
Speaker 5: burnt meat and like the burnt rice is because she
Speaker 5: was always fed last.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: Even though she had four brothers and it was a
Speaker 5: matriarcha household with her mother and grandmother, they always sped
Speaker 5: themselves last because of that sort of traditional men first
Speaker 5: kind of the psychological kind of insanity that that was.
Speaker 5: So it's like that's that was passed on to me,
Speaker 5: that that that idea of behavior. And this is the
Speaker 5: first time because I don't want my daughter to sacrifice herself.
Speaker 8: How it is why Uncle Rad I'll have to wash dishes.
Speaker 8: I don't want to stay. He just easy sits. You know,
Speaker 8: it's not my first job.
Speaker 5: Fifteen here's my money.
Speaker 2: Take it. I worked for that.
Speaker 8: That's my money.
Speaker 5: And you're a movement has to Texas almost ruin my
Speaker 5: whole last but like you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 5: it's it's it, but you just so that's what you're
Speaker 5: taught and raised. And I'm really pushing for a whole other.
Speaker 5: Like it's beautiful, Like Climbing Poetry just got this incredible
Speaker 5: huge parcel of land upstate New York and they've been
Speaker 5: working for five years with this like curriculum that they're
Speaker 5: building so people can learn about activism and advocacy and
Speaker 5: all these diferent kinds of things, but also built into
Speaker 5: it as health and wellness and care and they have
Speaker 5: spaces for our aging activists to come and live and
Speaker 5: live out their time because they recognize climbing poetry.
Speaker 8: Is it beautiful? No, I'm just gonna look it up,
Speaker 8: but I think everybody else.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And it's really like there's stuff like that that
Speaker 5: is coming up that where people are really recognizing we
Speaker 5: can't keep sacrificing and martyring ourselves, you know, for Lacausa,
Speaker 5: like we actually have to really take care of us.
Speaker 5: We we want to have our elders. So have a
Speaker 5: trans person be older than thirty five is a revelation
Speaker 5: to have, you know, the different activists that we have
Speaker 5: be in their eighties, like the Lord is a revelation
Speaker 5: because they don't normally exist, right, you know, it's a miracle.
Speaker 2: Wow, we got it earful, like.
Speaker 8: We need Like you dropped a couple of organization names
Speaker 8: and things that I feel like people need.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and also just because literally like coming here and
Speaker 5: made me again think about that dinner and like how
Speaker 5: much I've been reflecting on that lately, about like and
Speaker 5: I love how the story is so different from you,
Speaker 5: but I go back to that story all the time.
Speaker 5: I was just like walking out of there and it
Speaker 5: was the first time like I remember walking on and
Speaker 5: being like that was just abusive, that's terrible, And I
Speaker 5: was like wait what oh wow, like it like the
Speaker 5: fact that that didn't like I didn't even appre like
Speaker 5: I was like, I just accepted it, like that was
Speaker 5: just normal. Members. This was a fun night that we
Speaker 5: all had dinner and laugh like I'm talking about. And
Speaker 5: then I was like, yeah, maybe everybody's showing each other's
Speaker 5: scars from being hit with a or a cast I
Speaker 5: heard pot from across the room at Charming.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Boy, okay, so uh for of course you don't
Speaker 2: don't know when season two.
Speaker 8: Is coming over you got your computer.
Speaker 2: What else are already googled the dates? Night out there yet? Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll hit up chair. See uh.
Speaker 8: It happens here frequently.
Speaker 11: So what do you what do you have coming up
Speaker 11: in the future as far as projects are concerned, God,
Speaker 11: damn it, there's so much we didn't asked. We didn't
Speaker 11: ask about the Prince the nineteen damn it, let's ask.
Speaker 8: My weird question was about.
Speaker 2: Just won't yeah, wait for.
Speaker 11: Us to do it anyway, our rapid fire last minute questions. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 11: how did you do that? Nineteen ninety nine? The poetry thing?
Speaker 5: Well, you've done a lot, you did because I talked
Speaker 5: to you about it at that time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: At the time, I was like the teen I was
Speaker 5: shooting a film with Usher and Chicago.
Speaker 2: Which.
Speaker 8: I remember. I remember that.
Speaker 2: You probably see it. Yeah, film, I I've seen that
Speaker 2: one in in the mix where he was the d J.
Speaker 5: Got that.
Speaker 4: She's all right, he was he was the DJ and
Speaker 4: she's all that. That was fucking funny though Little Kim
Speaker 4: was in that as well. She was the black she
Speaker 4: was the diversity higher. Little Kim got that one. But yeah,
Speaker 4: you were yeah, that's right. You weren't like because that
Speaker 4: was the one where we were a cop, right or
Speaker 4: you were the girlfriend of Usher.
Speaker 2: I thought like nineteen was okay. Again, that was the
Speaker 2: one where like his dad was a cop, or was
Speaker 2: a firefighter and died.
Speaker 5: Thing of like the Canada.
Speaker 8: School was homeless school.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then they got there was a you know,
Speaker 5: the it was the like shut down the space of
Speaker 5: security guard.
Speaker 2: Fort Whittaker was the cop. That's I remember that. All
Speaker 2: all Usher moves.
Speaker 5: Ran Vanessa Williams like the principal william.
Speaker 8: Like, I hang on her daughter. You know you guys
Speaker 8: like lyon babe. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: So the nineteen ninety nine they called me.
Speaker 5: He called me out of the blue and said, I wrote,
Speaker 5: I'm doing the nineteen ninety nine remix album and I
Speaker 5: want you said, you're the voice of a generation, and
Speaker 5: I want you to read this poem or piece because
Speaker 5: it would sound weird if I said it, so you
Speaker 5: should read it. And I was like, huh, exactly, la la,
Speaker 5: of course that makes sense. And then you know, so
Speaker 5: I got to go to Paisley Park and everything was pretty.
Speaker 8: Did marry I'm a basketball player?
Speaker 2: Did not? She did? Yes, Anthony, it was a joke.
Speaker 8: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: I was lost in my hand. But for the last.
Speaker 4: Reason, give me a reason to press this button. Amazing
Speaker 4: you were in Now I'm thinking about lighted Up. Now
Speaker 4: watch I might have to watch.
Speaker 2: Was there soundtrack to it? Was a usher movie?
Speaker 8: A good soundtrack?
Speaker 2: Was right? Yeah, I'm gonna tell mynother to the check
Speaker 2: double up? So yeah. Like and also with how did
Speaker 2: you get on She Lives in My Lap?
Speaker 5: That was interesting because Andre three thousand asked me to
Speaker 5: be in a music video for that song and I
Speaker 5: said sure and he was like, cool, So we're still
Speaker 5: doing some stuff on the song. Do you want to
Speaker 5: come by the studio? So then I came by the
Speaker 5: studio and he was like, you know, did you jump
Speaker 5: on the track? So then I jumped on the track
Speaker 5: and then we never did the video. I'm on the track?
Speaker 11: Interesting, okay, okay, So yeah, but I was going to say,
Speaker 11: have you did you have any aspirations to sing and
Speaker 11: do that? Because you were also you did Shakespeare in
Speaker 11: the Park.
Speaker 5: You did which version of it? Yeah? Two gentlemen of Verona.
Speaker 2: Yeah I wanted to see that, but Rent and.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love singing. Actually, that's the thing I always
Speaker 5: wanted to do, was sing and so when I did
Speaker 5: rent and I'm on set and I'm singing and dancing
Speaker 5: and I'm getting paid for it, I was like, this
Speaker 5: is the most remarkable thing in the entire world. I
Speaker 5: can't even believe it. This is incredible. So yeah, I
Speaker 5: still really love that. There's that's that's a that's the
Speaker 5: space where it's like, you know, part of that think
Speaker 5: part of the healing thing is just doing things that
Speaker 5: you actually love for no reason. I don't know I
Speaker 5: want to be like doing big tours or it's not
Speaker 5: like a career that I want to exploit that, but
Speaker 5: I just love singing, love dancing.
Speaker 11: You went to music music camp, No no, you told
Speaker 11: me wait when you did Josie and the Pussycats, like
Speaker 11: they were teaching you how to do.
Speaker 5: Play the base a little bit of electric bash.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, I thought they put you through like a No, that.
Speaker 5: Would have been amazing. But that was one of those
Speaker 5: ones that are more like eighties movie where they were
Speaker 5: like you're cast and then here's the band that's actually
Speaker 5: going to be Now you're gonna lip sing too well.
Speaker 5: Rents was actually us singing, which was really amazing.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, No, I not the same thing.
Speaker 11: I liked Josie because it was real and you're thinking,
Speaker 11: you're saying Josy.
Speaker 5: Ahead of its time.
Speaker 8: Did y'all see the new Josey? Y'all see what they
Speaker 8: look like on Riverdale?
Speaker 12: Hell?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Do you watch Netflix? Like, do you have every shows
Speaker 8: on Netflix? Obviously?
Speaker 5: Yes, I just finished watching Sensate that I met right
Speaker 5: every everything I want my seven other person to.
Speaker 8: So mad they missed they switched to African do but yes,
Speaker 8: it's everything. I want that so bad.
Speaker 5: I heard they just made like a big special like
Speaker 5: movie whatever, so they canceled it and then but they
Speaker 5: did shoot something to kind of because it's kind of
Speaker 5: a cliffhanger that just left us song. But that is
Speaker 5: like probably one of the most interesting kind of stories
Speaker 5: that I've seen in a long time. That wasn't like
Speaker 5: a Black Mirror episode or Twilight Zone where I just
Speaker 5: got really Dugley art like it's so amazing, but like
Speaker 5: this was like really different, but like like I want that,
Speaker 5: like is that possible?
Speaker 9: Like mostly evoking like I was moved and that sex
Speaker 9: looked so amazing.
Speaker 5: See that sex where I'm like, yeah, this is just
Speaker 5: totally exploitative because it's the sexiest. I mean, it's really
Speaker 5: they have an actual transactress, Like I mean, it's like
Speaker 5: so it's diverse, it takes place over different parts of
Speaker 5: the world. There's accents in different languages, and and like
Speaker 5: it's it's beautiful.
Speaker 8: It's kind of sense.
Speaker 5: It is like, I think, my favorite thing that's existing
Speaker 5: out there in that sense I've ever seen, I guess
Speaker 5: sci fi kind of idea like or whatever, Like you know,
Speaker 5: it's just, you know, I think that we could tap
Speaker 5: into that part of ourselves that we could you know,
Speaker 5: psychically connected and be bonded to other people in the world,
Speaker 5: and then we could tap into them. So it's like
Speaker 5: I don't need to know kung fu or this or that,
Speaker 5: but like when I need that capacity and it really
Speaker 5: I think the message so beautifully of that is like
Speaker 5: really recognizing who you are and your value and doing
Speaker 5: that really powerfully and beautifully, and then sharing your space
Speaker 5: with the other interconnected people that you're in so that
Speaker 5: when like it doesn't matter if you can't do that thing,
Speaker 5: because you know someone who can.
Speaker 9: That Korea moment was so amazing. Like her story the spoilers, sorry,
Speaker 9: the story not just saying her.
Speaker 8: Storyline was on.
Speaker 5: That it is it's really powerful, beautiful.
Speaker 2: On the trigger.
Speaker 8: That's what happened. Nobody watched you.
Speaker 2: One question we were talking about sex scenes.
Speaker 4: A question I always had for you was about Trance,
Speaker 4: which I really love that movie, Like I really I
Speaker 4: really enjoyed that movie.
Speaker 2: The nude scene.
Speaker 5: What is an interesting contract? Yeah, going through that my
Speaker 5: lawyer and then being like, okay, so they cannot show
Speaker 5: the literal hood, Like this is a very interesting conversation.
Speaker 5: I haven't even gotten on set yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: No, it's uh, you know, I'm I'm all for hair.
Speaker 5: So it made me mad that like it came off. Yes,
Speaker 5: you know, so like you know that, but that's the
Speaker 5: whole thing in the movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so how many times did you have to
Speaker 4: take that? And how is it you in a room
Speaker 4: full of people or what's that like?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it was as many people as like
Speaker 5: barely needed to be in there, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: It's always you know that that kind of stuff is
Speaker 5: usually done pretty well, though it's not to say that,
Speaker 5: you know, on many different sets, many different people including
Speaker 5: myself or not taking advantage of like changes on the
Speaker 5: day that are actually illegal. But some oftentimes we don't know.
Speaker 5: H So you know that's that's some of the interesting
Speaker 5: things about sitting down with Sag of just going, well,
Speaker 5: we need to have this on the books, and like
Speaker 5: that does exist, and you're like, we don't know that
Speaker 5: the novice actress or actor going on set does not
Speaker 5: know that they have this right or not. You know,
Speaker 5: but yeah, no, on that one, I mean, it's it's
Speaker 5: I mean that was definitely one of the most remarkable
Speaker 5: experiences I'd ever had, you know, when you think about
Speaker 5: Danny and the work that he's done, like going back
Speaker 5: to kids, like that was an amazing moment for Robert
Speaker 5: and Danny and like there was just a group of
Speaker 5: like that that was the a era of independent film
Speaker 5: and like this complete provocation of storytelling that hadn't existed before,
Speaker 5: and that definitely was built off the backs of people
Speaker 5: like you know, Cassavetti's and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 5: But like it was a huge turning for you know, filmmaking.
Speaker 5: And I got to work with that person. Wow, And
Speaker 5: like you know in the and I've gotten to work
Speaker 5: with a lot of those people, you know, so it's
Speaker 5: like everyone to Kevin Smith, you know, like so you're
Speaker 5: on set with these folks who have really totally different
Speaker 5: kind of you know, like who came there as like
Speaker 5: nerds and like film lovers and like you know, really
Speaker 5: changed storytelling in a lot of ways. And so you're
Speaker 5: on set with Spiker this you know, like I got
Speaker 5: to be on these sets with people who were you know,
Speaker 5: really created an environment where you're showing up and you're
Speaker 5: rehearsing and you're taking it super seriously, like and they're
Speaker 5: established and they've done something. So it's not the same
Speaker 5: thing as like a lot of you know, first time
Speaker 5: directors or the things that I've worked with, which is
Speaker 5: a whole other experiences was really powerful and you know,
Speaker 5: pushes you to and challenges you in different ways. But
Speaker 5: this one is like, you know, these are people who
Speaker 5: you know, can say we're going to have a couple
Speaker 5: of weeks of rehearsal and we're going to do this
Speaker 5: and this is what we you know, and like get
Speaker 5: like incredibly, you know, I'm on on you know, on
Speaker 5: on twenty fifth hour Man with some of the most
Speaker 5: amazing actors and like people and their process so different
Speaker 5: and like that's you know, that's been my acting school.
Speaker 5: I've learned so much from so many of the people
Speaker 5: that I've had the opportunity to work with.
Speaker 4: So a question about twenty fifth hour. I need to
Speaker 4: know the part where you're on the couch and you're
Speaker 4: eating cheese whiz.
Speaker 2: Was that scripted or.
Speaker 8: Honey cheese with was it?
Speaker 5: Was it whizz?
Speaker 2: I think she would know.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, I'm trying to remember was it was
Speaker 4: the Maybe it looked like the container was cheese whiz.
Speaker 4: It might have been honey in it, but I can
Speaker 4: specifically remember it was.
Speaker 2: I thought it was cheese whiz.
Speaker 6: An important moment in that movie.
Speaker 2: It's very important.
Speaker 6: I mean, whether it's a cheese wiz or honey.
Speaker 2: Well, no, no, Well, this is why all these years
Speaker 2: I thought the ship was All these years I thought.
Speaker 5: You had actually you met home where recently I saw
Speaker 5: one of your story, Yes, I thought, yeah.
Speaker 2: He was he wasn't.
Speaker 4: All these years I thought it was cheese whiz, and
Speaker 4: I thought it was a great detail because I thought.
Speaker 5: I've seen the movie in a long time.
Speaker 2: I'm py sure, but I love the fact that was honey.
Speaker 5: And if it's not, it was.
Speaker 8: But I'm pretty.
Speaker 2: Random detail of yo. But that's the type of duty is.
Speaker 4: I love it like no, because what it resonated me,
Speaker 4: like the message that I took from it or that
Speaker 4: the time was that you can have like a woman
Speaker 4: that's like as fine as your dawson, but.
Speaker 2: She cheese was out the jaw and she can steal
Speaker 2: something disgusting like that. That ship is horrible.
Speaker 8: It is horrible.
Speaker 2: Jesuis is not a food like that ship is a
Speaker 2: that's a Latin feeling. Man, No, I hear you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: y'all got that. But I thought it was I thought
Speaker 2: it was cheese was all these years amazing? But I
Speaker 2: thought that was just a great to go back. I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure it was now i'm watching today.
Speaker 5: Maybe maybe peanut butter, but I can't imagine it was.
Speaker 2: Okay, So yeah, I are you singing fame right now?
Speaker 8: Singing peanut butter, jelly Pi, That's what I thought.
Speaker 2: Singing a song from fame.
Speaker 11: As far as your your your acting career or your
Speaker 11: entertainment career, like, are there anything? Are there anything? Is
Speaker 11: there anything left that you've yet to conquered that you
Speaker 11: wish to do?
Speaker 5: I always film or behaving chest of corset drama, heving
Speaker 5: heaving chests, yo, that's so funny because it's a classic
Speaker 5: piece of every I want to do some really dope,
Speaker 5: like fun comedy stuff as well.
Speaker 8: Like I really love that I got to do that
Speaker 8: with Top.
Speaker 5: Five, and I've had some opportunities and stuff like that,
Speaker 5: but like you know, like I love I love that world.
Speaker 5: It's such a different timing and energy and kind of
Speaker 5: pushing myself in that way.
Speaker 8: You do that, I love, I love top Did you
Speaker 8: already have your haircut like that?
Speaker 9: Or was it.
Speaker 5: Was like, I'm not one of the things. I was like,
Speaker 5: I am not as New York is gonna be one
Speaker 5: hundred and eight degrees, I am not wearing a wig.
Speaker 5: I will be miserable you and he was like, if
Speaker 5: you do this movie, I will be fine with your
Speaker 5: hair like that. And then it was interesting. I remember
Speaker 5: I had wanted to cut my hair like that for
Speaker 5: a really long time, and then I ended up doing
Speaker 5: it for Sin City two and then thinking this is
Speaker 5: going to cost me a lot of work, and then
Speaker 5: I ended up being able to wear it in Top
Speaker 5: five and in dareduble Oow. It was a whole big
Speaker 5: thing with Marvel for a really really long time about
Speaker 5: what to do with my hair, and then they were
Speaker 5: like who cares? And I was really surprised. And then
Speaker 5: I realized how dark they were shooting it and you
Speaker 5: don't even notice it.
Speaker 11: That's something I've never even thought about, Like you do
Speaker 11: you have to warn your agent like I think I
Speaker 11: want to go blind today or oh yeah.
Speaker 5: They were like everyone was freaked out because it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, I you know Sin City two. I think
Speaker 5: I shot like three days on. They were like, you're
Speaker 5: cutting your shaping your head for three days do you
Speaker 5: know how long that's gonna take to?
Speaker 2: How long is it?
Speaker 8: But you can't fake that?
Speaker 5: Like it's gotta wanted to show up and do something
Speaker 5: fun for the movie?
Speaker 2: How long does it take to grow back to it?
Speaker 5: Actually grew for me, My hair grows really fast, so
Speaker 5: it was like another in like a year, my hair
Speaker 5: was already half.
Speaker 8: As long as a black girl. That's gonna take another
Speaker 8: ten years.
Speaker 2: Come all right? So you want to do a comedy
Speaker 2: and an a period piece with I want.
Speaker 5: To produce more. I want to tell stories that I'm
Speaker 5: not necessarily acting in.
Speaker 8: What is the story you want to make? First?
Speaker 5: I am telling you, Okay, let somebody else seal it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's just totally the way that it is. But I
Speaker 5: have like shows that I want to create and and
Speaker 5: and all types of things. I think it's just really
Speaker 5: important because again, like to see the movies and the
Speaker 5: reflection of the type of storytelling and the casting that
Speaker 5: I want to see, and to just wait around for
Speaker 5: someone else to put that together not gonna happen. So
Speaker 5: like you have to make it happen. And that's what
Speaker 5: I really want to do.
Speaker 2: We're power to you. Thanks from your enough to your ears.
Speaker 5: When I call you for that soundtrack.
Speaker 2: That I just want to, I just want to.
Speaker 5: I know you long since passed the balking out of Ford.
Speaker 2: I just want to j K. T.
Speaker 4: Raley on Black Streets, I just want to tell you again,
Speaker 4: going back to Trance, you set a line in there
Speaker 4: that like really changed my life. I'm serious, man, it's
Speaker 4: real ship to be angry, it is to be a victim.
Speaker 4: And like that totally changed my outlook on like the
Speaker 4: way I look at anger. Like whenever I have to
Speaker 4: pull myself getting angry, I think myself, like, am I
Speaker 4: really victim?
Speaker 2: And the ship? I ain't no victim?
Speaker 5: That well, Marvin said that best you know, destroy yourself,
Speaker 5: you children for rage. Okay, so I'm just I'm taking
Speaker 5: it's a sin to treat your body bad. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: I really I've been listening to that song and I
Speaker 5: said those lines, and I still succumbed to the devil
Speaker 5: of anger really, really fiercely these past couple of years.
Speaker 5: And I think it's just because I did not actually
Speaker 5: really have the access or words to really understand the
Speaker 5: space that I was in and what I needed to
Speaker 5: do to meet my needs so that that wouldn't happen.
Speaker 2: Do you go to therapy?
Speaker 5: I've taken some, and but really I have to say
Speaker 5: the Non Violent Communications book that exists has been really
Speaker 5: powerful to recognize what are faux feelings like disrespect, Like
Speaker 5: you can't feel disrespect, you can feel anger because your
Speaker 5: need for respect is not getting met, and like those
Speaker 5: are different things. So, like you know, it's not about
Speaker 5: blame or judgment. The only thing that's kind of hokey
Speaker 5: about it is like they have they say it's either
Speaker 5: jackal speak or giraffes speak. So internally your inner critic
Speaker 5: or how you yell at someone else, or how you
Speaker 5: self empathizer you give other empathy jackals because you know
Speaker 5: the spitting, biting are and then the giraffe because they
Speaker 5: have perspective and they have one of the largest hearts
Speaker 5: in the animal kingdom to reach all of those extremities.
Speaker 5: But otherwise it's about needs and really recognizing what true
Speaker 5: needs are, like for respect and community. And it goes
Speaker 5: beyond for me what I was taught survival, especially growing
Speaker 5: up in a spot. It's about food, water, sheltering, but
Speaker 5: like love, friendship, shared reality, connection, community, compassion, those are needs.
Speaker 5: Like a child will die if it's not touched, you know,
Speaker 5: it needs. We need each other, and those are the
Speaker 5: things that I've always forfeited for these strategies, and I
Speaker 5: finally learned that I need to warn when something's not
Speaker 5: getting met, not just keep bashing my head at it
Speaker 5: and trying to make it or force it to happen,
Speaker 5: or sacrifice to make it happen. It's about going, Okay,
Speaker 5: the strategy isn't working, and I have to figure out
Speaker 5: another avenue to get my need men. And that's that's
Speaker 5: something I've just picked up in the past couple months,
Speaker 5: which has been really life changing.
Speaker 2: Thank you for.
Speaker 5: Nonviolent communication by Marshall Rosenberg, who died unfortunately, but he would.
Speaker 5: Do you know conflict resolution? I mean like you're talking
Speaker 5: about with like tribes that had been generationally fighting each
Speaker 5: other and you killed my son, so I killed your
Speaker 5: son and being able to sit there and go Can
Speaker 5: you at least both agree that your need for safety
Speaker 5: is not being met, which is why then you're being
Speaker 5: violent with each other. Can we just agree and then
Speaker 5: just to that so that we could see each other
Speaker 5: as our humanity and we can figure out a way
Speaker 5: to communicate and negotiate for both of our needs to
Speaker 5: be met rather than just beating each other and fighting
Speaker 5: each other indefinitely. And there is an audio book, So
Speaker 5: thank you for You're very welcome.
Speaker 2: Wow, man, that the more you know and knowing us
Speaker 2: at the battle, Jeffrey aid Joe. All right, So any
Speaker 2: more questions about.
Speaker 12: Isaac Joe.
Speaker 8: Jeffrey is Yeah, Joe was Jeffrey Isaac Joe?
Speaker 2: He wasn't.
Speaker 8: Did you know that gullible isn't in the dictionary? Family?
Speaker 11: Now, wait a minute, before we signed off, this one
Speaker 11: question I have to ask, how in God's name did
Speaker 11: you get pre we're going to play nice and friendly
Speaker 11: with each other guns and roses? How did you get
Speaker 11: them motherfuckers to play your birthday party.
Speaker 5: At that club, like Axel Axel, Yeah, And it was incredible,
Speaker 5: like for your thirtieth absolutely, no, it was like twenty
Speaker 5: seventh or twenty eighth birthday because your mom hit me up.
Speaker 11: It was like something Roses going to play at the
Speaker 11: at the and I was like, wait, the club only holds,
Speaker 11: like I know, it was really several hundred. I was like,
Speaker 11: I think about this something. I think a fight happened
Speaker 11: between Tommy he Will Figure and some and they.
Speaker 5: Were sat at the same booth and like Tommy's girlfriends
Speaker 5: got like offended because I think Axel sat down and
Speaker 5: moved her drink or whatever, and Tommy like leapt over
Speaker 5: the table. Mom mom was standing there and watching. She
Speaker 5: was like, yo, he tried to eat Axel Rose.
Speaker 2: Never thought that for him.
Speaker 5: And then and then the security threw him out because
Speaker 5: it was like sorry to break it to you, but
Speaker 5: this is Axel's night, like he's gonna perform, And it
Speaker 5: was amazing because I remember we asked and then of
Speaker 5: course he said no because it was it would be
Speaker 5: an acoustic performance and he'd never done an acoustic performance.
Speaker 5: And then he came back and was like, you know what, Actually,
Speaker 5: I've never done an acoustic performance. That would be really cool.
Speaker 5: And it was his idea to put the lyrics of
Speaker 5: his music like karaoke styles scrolling in the back because
Speaker 5: he didn't go on until super late, and he knew
Speaker 5: everyone was gonna be really drunk, stupidly horribly inefficiently screaming
Speaker 5: the lyrics into his face and it's so small they
Speaker 5: would all be like right on top of each other.
Speaker 5: He was like, I am not going to painfully go
Speaker 5: through that. And then it was like he dedicated. He
Speaker 5: sang to me, he's saying happy birthday. He dedicated sweet
Speaker 5: Childmund to me in November.
Speaker 2: I mean it was like, okay, amazing, I'm gonna ask again.
Speaker 5: My friend Jamison was had they were doing something in town.
Speaker 5: He was like, should I ask? And I was like yeah,
Speaker 5: And then I guess he was just the timing.
Speaker 2: He just thought.
Speaker 5: And he came out and he was and he was
Speaker 5: corn roll.
Speaker 8: That was amazing. That was like childhood like amazing.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, yeah, I couldn't believe that happened that night.
Speaker 8: I love you, this is fun.
Speaker 2: Well, I need you to throw parties from me. Nobody
Speaker 2: will come you got a couple months.
Speaker 5: I'm inviting you. You need to come through when we yo.
Speaker 5: So I have a fashion line based in Ghana. We're
Speaker 5: across we do all our teasonal stuff and we've been
Speaker 5: doing this for a few years now and we just
Speaker 5: did an awesome fashion show in September in New York
Speaker 5: and it was incredible. One of my friends invited Paula
Speaker 5: Aduwel and it was like incredible.
Speaker 8: Jojo Abbott performed I.
Speaker 9: May.
Speaker 8: It's called Studio one eighty nine.
Speaker 5: And our whole thing is fashion Rising, so going and
Speaker 5: getting people work so that then they can put their
Speaker 5: own kids through school, so it's sustainable, you know, activism
Speaker 5: and advocacy, and it's been amazing. We're based in a crowd.
Speaker 5: We have a store in New York and Elizabeth Street
Speaker 5: and between Houston and Bleeker, and we do men's and
Speaker 5: women's and home and Indigo and bautique and it's really beautiful.
Speaker 5: And someone invited Paula Abdul and our whole like fashion
Speaker 5: show is like a dance party. It was incredible and
Speaker 5: like everyone like Jesse Boykin's at Third was in it.
Speaker 5: And we've had like Delphine Thala's taken photographs for us
Speaker 5: and like Lion Babe is shown. I mean, we've had
Speaker 5: like incredible people who are you know, young Paris and
Speaker 5: people over the years. Princess Nokia just came to our
Speaker 5: spot in in in a larda and I came through.
Speaker 5: Most has come through and like thrown on some of
Speaker 5: our you know, indigo kimonos and stuff, and that's really dope.
Speaker 5: But like you know, I want you to come because
Speaker 5: I think you'd really love it. And it was amazing
Speaker 5: because we had this dance party and then Paul Abdul
Speaker 5: was there and she started dancing with me and I
Speaker 5: was like, oh my God, who would have known I
Speaker 5: needed to create an artisanal African clothing brand and God
Speaker 5: to live about my childhood dream of dancing with these
Speaker 5: clothes are amazing. Thank you, Brima, I will tell.
Speaker 11: Her, Brima you said some Okay, Well, thank you very
Speaker 11: much of Rosario for coming on se.
Speaker 2: We appreciate it.
Speaker 11: We learned a lot, and I still say a lot
Speaker 11: to think about. I still say that you're running for president.
Speaker 5: I would I really the idea of being president is
Speaker 5: so scary to me because the second art work you've
Speaker 5: got let on your hands the second you start as
Speaker 5: a senator or congress person, though, I could be start
Speaker 5: fighting from day one because war is not peace, so
Speaker 5: I could be fighting against having that. So that's why
Speaker 5: that looks interesting to me.
Speaker 11: Okay, congress Woman Dawson, Senator Dawson, Senator Dawson, and uh
Speaker 11: DJ and that after.
Speaker 5: Party, that's the first one to be DJ wika DJ.
Speaker 2: Senator Dawson.
Speaker 5: I want to be like a hype woman. Yeah, y'all.
Speaker 11: Anyway, after party, anyway on behalf of Fonticolo, Boss Bill Sugar,
Speaker 11: Steve sweet Feet and.
Speaker 2: Thank you Rizario quest Love signing off and we'll see
Speaker 2: you in the next Cora. Thank you.
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