Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm SAMFORCOSO. Welcome on to
Speaker 1: the show today. I'm joined by actor and producer Tessa Thompson.
Speaker 1: For the past decade, you've probably noticed Thompson on screen
Speaker 1: doing well a little bit of everything. She's played a
Speaker 1: film student turn radio host in Dear White People, activist
Speaker 1: Diane Nash, and sell an aspiring musician in the Creed franchise,
Speaker 1: Valkyrie in Thor Ragnarok and Avengure's Endgame. She's also starred
Speaker 1: in more personal projects like Sorry to Bother You and
Speaker 1: Sylvie's Love. Her most recent performance comes in Passing, directed
Speaker 1: by Rebecca Hall, based on the book by Nella Larson.
Speaker 1: The film, set in nineteen twenties New York, focuses on
Speaker 1: Irene Redfield, played by Thompson. She's a mother to two
Speaker 1: children and a wife to a doctor played by Andre Holland,
Speaker 1: and in spite of the pangs of being black in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties America, the red Fields appear to be humming along,
Speaker 1: living in a spacious brownstone in Harlem, that is, until
Speaker 1: Irene has a chance encounter with an old childhood friend, Claire.
Speaker 1: Claire is a light skinned black woman passing for white,
Speaker 1: married to a white man, unaware of her race. After
Speaker 1: all the time that has passed, Claire hopes to renew
Speaker 1: a friendship with Irene. They're reunion, while initially welcomed by Irene,
Speaker 1: begins to undo the stability of the red Field home.
Speaker 1: Here's a clip from the trailer. Pardon me, I don't
Speaker 1: mean to stare, but I think I know you clam
Speaker 1: So you haven't ever thought to what you ever thought
Speaker 1: of passing? No? Why should I Now? I have everything
Speaker 1: I've ever wanted. This is my husband, John, will you
Speaker 1: Does he know you dislike new girls? Mister Bell, you
Speaker 1: don't know, not at all. I hate them. Isn't she
Speaker 1: extraordinarily beautiful? I suppose have you ever thought of what
Speaker 1: you do? If John found out, I'd do what I
Speaker 1: want more than anything. Right now, I'm come on here
Speaker 1: to live with you. You think they'd be satisfied? Being
Speaker 1: quite satisfied for all of us passing for something or other,
Speaker 1: aren't we? That was a clip from Passing, now available
Speaker 1: on Netflix. For her lead performance, Thompson is in the
Speaker 1: Oscar Conversation for Best Actress, but she has a curious
Speaker 1: relationship to the circus of Hollywood, perhaps because she grew
Speaker 1: up in Los Angeles with creative parents, her father a musician,
Speaker 1: her mother a painter and sculptor. In turn, Thompson's aspirations
Speaker 1: extend beyond acting. She's interested instead, I think in the
Speaker 1: long game, which is why she recently created her production company,
Speaker 1: Viva Maud. With this company, she says, her aim is
Speaker 1: to inspire new voices to feel like they have a
Speaker 1: home that's safe to cultivate stories they want to tell,
Speaker 1: stories primarily made by focused on people of color. But
Speaker 1: the name Viva Maud is in reference to the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one film Harold and Maud, you know the one.
Speaker 1: It was initially panned by critics, underperforming at the box office.
Speaker 1: In fact, the movie, directed by Hal Ashby, only became
Speaker 1: profitable about a decade later, in nineteen eighty three, the
Speaker 1: year Thompson was born. It took a minute before becoming
Speaker 1: that cult classic we know and love. Like Thompson, it
Speaker 1: played the long game. And so here's some of her story,
Speaker 1: charting where she is today, the formative pit stops that
Speaker 1: led her to this performance in Passing, and how she
Speaker 1: plans to change the film industry in the years to come.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy that's a Thomson. Hi, how do
Speaker 1: you feel being on the show? I feel great. You know.
Speaker 1: I listened to this show a lot, which I said
Speaker 1: to you before. I don't know if you believe me.
Speaker 1: I believed you the other fifty I also mean, And
Speaker 1: so in a way it feels kind of surreal because I,
Speaker 1: you know, I've listened to you and I hear your voice,
Speaker 1: and now I hear it in my headphones which I'm wearing,
Speaker 1: but I'm here, you know what I mean. It feels
Speaker 1: meta or not meta. It feels it's strange. It's strange.
Speaker 1: It feels strange, but I I really have enjoyed listening
Speaker 1: to your show so much and all of the incredible
Speaker 1: people that have been on it. You're being nice to
Speaker 1: me now, No, I just find it's soothing first and foremost.
Speaker 1: I've had, you know, many moments that have been yeah,
Speaker 1: really insightful and impactful and in general made me feel
Speaker 1: less alone during a weird, lonely time. That was the goal.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it was going to work. And honestly,
Speaker 1: I made every one who makes this show, and it's
Speaker 1: like a village. I think he made all of us
Speaker 1: feel less alone last year and now especially this year.
Speaker 1: So that's as much as we're gonna be able to
Speaker 1: talk about me, though. I think we have to cut
Speaker 1: it off right here. Okay, deal, we have to cut
Speaker 1: it off. Well, here's the thing. You and I have
Speaker 1: met a few times. Yes, it's mostly been a bunch
Speaker 1: of nonsense. Yes, there'll be plenty of nonsense on this,
Speaker 1: but I want to I want to get into some
Speaker 1: things because I didn't know a whole lot, and now
Speaker 1: I have some questions. Okay, don't get nervous. I prefer
Speaker 1: to ask questions and to answer them. I get three,
Speaker 1: you get one, Okay, fair enough. I'm like, aunt, you're
Speaker 1: a beautiful dog in the other room. Coltrane, Hey gets
Speaker 1: a shout out. We've never had a dog in the
Speaker 1: studio before. Oh wow, this is what we do for you.
Speaker 1: That's so sweet. Thank you. I did call ahead to
Speaker 1: ask if it would be okay. I like that you're
Speaker 1: mentioning that. Well. I just want I want everyone listening
Speaker 1: feeling less alone, to understand I don't just bring this
Speaker 1: dog everywhere, but thanks for having us. We're happy to
Speaker 1: have you. I rewatched Passing last night and I want
Speaker 1: to start here. The making of this film seemed challenging,
Speaker 1: in part because this character you're playing is a repressed person.
Speaker 1: You have to keep a lot in. So in making this,
Speaker 1: you compared the film and the character to the lead
Speaker 1: in A Woman Under the Influence by John Cassavetti's Now
Speaker 1: That film involves a woman slowly unraveling, passing has some
Speaker 1: of the same I want to start here. How do
Speaker 1: you navigate that creating a character that slowly unravels on screen?
Speaker 1: Is it possible to not unravel offscreen? No, so you're
Speaker 1: saying you did. I did. Yeah. I was really fascinated
Speaker 1: by the idea of repression. As you said, I am
Speaker 1: someone that personally puts a pretty large premium on freedom,
Speaker 1: or the idea of it, and this film explores, as
Speaker 1: does Nella Larson's rich book, the idea or the question. Rather,
Speaker 1: it's like, how free are we really to be our
Speaker 1: own people? And inside of that, Irene, the character I
Speaker 1: play as someone who, as you say, is holding a
Speaker 1: lot in, but it's requisite inside of the performance to
Speaker 1: have all the things inside that you're holding. And that
Speaker 1: was challenging, and so it just meant that sometimes offscreen,
Speaker 1: I had to go somewhere else and have a scream
Speaker 1: or have a cry, which is not I've never had
Speaker 1: that experience while working. Was that therapeutic? Yeah, it was therapeutic.
Speaker 1: And then I also think, you know, it was twenty
Speaker 1: three days. We didn't have a lot of time to
Speaker 1: make the movie, so that was a part of the challenge,
Speaker 1: but it meant that there was a finite amount of
Speaker 1: time that I was going to feel undone. I knew
Speaker 1: there would be an end, and so I think there
Speaker 1: is also a pleasure and indulging in that. You go like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you got twenty three days to be a real basket case,
Speaker 1: you know, internally, and to be excavating stuff that's ugly,
Speaker 1: and because you weren't a basket case before or after that,
Speaker 1: that's debatable. I sort of think this, and everyone has
Speaker 1: different approaches to acting, but for me, I think there's
Speaker 1: a fair amount of sort of either accentuating making greater
Speaker 1: the things that exist in you are minimizing them to
Speaker 1: have access to character. And so what I really understood
Speaker 1: about Irene is someone that lives very squarely in her head.
Speaker 1: That I get. I can be heady, you feel that way.
Speaker 1: I don't feel trapped in it, but I feel I'm
Speaker 1: having robust conversation up there. Sometimes it's a thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of thoughts on the margins of
Speaker 1: this character. You would take passages from the book and
Speaker 1: put them on your script to kind of unpack the interiority, Yeah,
Speaker 1: of that character. What is that process? It's a new
Speaker 1: one because I had never worked on an adaptation. I'd
Speaker 1: never had source material to work with. So Irene is
Speaker 1: someone that has like four thoughts, five thoughts, and none
Speaker 1: of them come out. Sometimes, you know, at least I
Speaker 1: get one in on her. But so I use sort
Speaker 1: of Nella's language, those dense passages describing the things that
Speaker 1: Irene is thinking and feeling, to sort of score my
Speaker 1: script and understand what the internal life of the character
Speaker 1: and what I was trying to communicate. I know, you're
Speaker 1: presented with a whole bunch of different parts at all times.
Speaker 1: The reason I think you wanted to make this movie
Speaker 1: comes pretty early in the film, and it's a scene
Speaker 1: I just wanted to watch. Oh no, we're gonna watch
Speaker 1: it now. We're gonna watch it now. Okay. This is
Speaker 1: early on in the film. Passing starring Tessa Thompson and
Speaker 1: actor Bill Camp. Things aren't always what they seem you
Speaker 1: nobody could tell from looking at them. No, most surprising.
Speaker 1: Tell me, can you always tell the difference? Oh? Now
Speaker 1: you really are sounding ignorant? No, I mean it feelings
Speaker 1: of changship or something like that. You stop talking to
Speaker 1: me like you're writing a piece for the National Geographic.
Speaker 1: I can tell SAME's you and I suppose I'm times
Speaker 1: there is a thing, a thing that can't be registered. Yes,
Speaker 1: I understand what you me English. Yeah, lots of people
Speaker 1: pass all the time. It's easy for a Negro to
Speaker 1: pass for white. I'm not sure it'd be so simple
Speaker 1: for a white person pass for colored. Have I thought
Speaker 1: of that? Why should you? Sometimes? I think you will
Speaker 1: put yes and in a way if you can, why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you sposed to say, I'm not. I'm curious. Rewatching
Speaker 1: that scene? What were you thinking about that day? In particular?
Speaker 1: Was such a there was something really powerful about being
Speaker 1: in a room with a lot of black people dancing,
Speaker 1: you know, like I don't know the film itself as
Speaker 1: a real intimacy, and there's a claustrophobia to it in
Speaker 1: a way, and that scene just with all those background
Speaker 1: artists and dancers and musicians, and the world sort of
Speaker 1: felt opened up. It was nice because I had been
Speaker 1: day twenty one of whatever personal spiral I was in,
Speaker 1: and this was like a scene where you be like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: there's other people. Other people exist, which is nice. The
Speaker 1: line and the film, we're all passing for something or another.
Speaker 1: That seems like the central thesis of the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is that why you wanted to make it? In part,
Speaker 1: it's exactly why I wanted to make it. To me,
Speaker 1: the film wasn't really isn't really about race. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: about the ways in which none of us fit too
Speaker 1: squarely in the boxes that we either put ourselves in
Speaker 1: or put in. And I just think that's fascinating. I've
Speaker 1: always been really interested in identity in the ways in
Speaker 1: which we construct it. Also, just there's so many takes
Speaker 1: if you sort of read about what people see inside
Speaker 1: of Nella's work, particularly in Passing. For some folks it's,
Speaker 1: you know, about repressed homosexuality. For others, it's a novel
Speaker 1: that is about or a novella that's about you know,
Speaker 1: marital strife, and it's kind of all those things. I
Speaker 1: love the idea of making a piece of work where
Speaker 1: it's reception, there's just such diversity of thought. The way
Speaker 1: that it lands on the audience members is more about
Speaker 1: them than it does about what we made. This is
Speaker 1: the part where you ask me what I thought? What
Speaker 1: did you think? No? No, but I'm curious what did
Speaker 1: you think? I mean? Honestly, my first impression is kind
Speaker 1: of the thing you're talking about and what I brought up,
Speaker 1: which is that it lives in this ambiguity both within
Speaker 1: the frame and then how people actually respond to it
Speaker 1: in the theater, how everyone who has seen it I
Speaker 1: think has a different response. And just to have a
Speaker 1: movie that's doing that, I think is valuable. Well, I
Speaker 1: think the film itself is also passing in a way.
Speaker 1: It's like performing its idea of where it wants to
Speaker 1: exist inside of Hollywood iconography, which we know for decades
Speaker 1: we'll never know. We'll know where it lands for some
Speaker 1: people in time. Maybe I sort of love the idea,
Speaker 1: and this is much probably to the chagrin of people
Speaker 1: that I work with. But the idea of being sort
Speaker 1: of under valued, not entirely seen in your time does
Speaker 1: not bother me. Yes, this is why you created your
Speaker 1: production company. Yeah, with Harold and Mods. Yeah, it took
Speaker 1: like thirteen years for anyone to care about that film
Speaker 1: for it to make a profit, until the year you
Speaker 1: were born, until the year I was born. Hey, you've
Speaker 1: done your research. Do you have someone doing that or
Speaker 1: do you do that? I'd say it's ninety percent me.
Speaker 1: This week it's eighty five percent me, fifteen percent Shiloh Fagan,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Chanafy. Now I want to sit with that
Speaker 1: line you just had about our inability to fit squarely
Speaker 1: into boxes. This is an idea Nella Larson was writing
Speaker 1: about in nineteen twenty nine. Yeah, it's also something Zora
Speaker 1: Neil Hurston was interrogating one year prior, in nineteen twenty eight.
Speaker 1: Here's the passage, but in the main, I feel like
Speaker 1: a brown bag of miss Llanny prop against a wall,
Speaker 1: against a wall in company with other bags white, red,
Speaker 1: and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered
Speaker 1: a jumble of small things, priceless and worthless. A first
Speaker 1: water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, a
Speaker 1: key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty
Speaker 1: knife blade, old shoes save for a road that never
Speaker 1: was and never will be, a nail bent under the
Speaker 1: weight of things too heavy for any nail, A dried
Speaker 1: flower or two still a little fragrant in your hand?
Speaker 1: Is the brown bag on the ground before you? Is
Speaker 1: the jumble it held? So much like the jumble in
Speaker 1: the bags? Could they be emptied? That all might be
Speaker 1: dumped in a single heap, and the bags refilled without
Speaker 1: altering the content of any greatly? A bit of colored
Speaker 1: glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is
Speaker 1: how the great stuffer of bags filled them in the
Speaker 1: first place. Larsen's book was talking about not squarely fitting
Speaker 1: into Yeah, that passage from Hurston is talking about the
Speaker 1: content of those boxes, and I just wondered where that
Speaker 1: landed with you. Another reason, actually why I really wanted
Speaker 1: to make Passing is this idea of what gets to
Speaker 1: be cannon No one ever handed me Nella Larson's work.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it existed, and that felt astounding to me,
Speaker 1: and so making this also felt like an attempt to
Speaker 1: sort of cannonize someone that should have been I sort
Speaker 1: of think. I feel like inside of the novella Passing
Speaker 1: is this argument that Nella is having with herself. There is,
Speaker 1: on one hand, this character who in our Rendering is
Speaker 1: played by Ruth snegga that sort of defies, you know, righteousness,
Speaker 1: that wants to live with a sort of vigor that
Speaker 1: you know says, I will stomp on everything in my
Speaker 1: path because I will be on my path. I will
Speaker 1: live life on my own terms. And there's this other
Speaker 1: woman in my character, Irene, that decides to live by
Speaker 1: rules is the way to be. And I feel like
Speaker 1: there's this struggle inside of Larsen herself to sort of
Speaker 1: contend with these two very different ideas of how to
Speaker 1: exist in the world, and that I really am that
Speaker 1: I understand and think is fascinating with that. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I also I think we all do to a certain extent.
Speaker 1: And then you add in the intersections of race, class, gender,
Speaker 1: the time in which you can textualize it with the
Speaker 1: time in which we exist, and all of that gets
Speaker 1: more complicated. The thing that felt so fascinating to me,
Speaker 1: and why it felt remarkable that Nella wasn't more celebrated
Speaker 1: in her time and even in ours, is that she
Speaker 1: was writing about all those intersections before there was language
Speaker 1: around it. I've been sitting with the words and work
Speaker 1: of Belle Hooks, who we lost recently and has been
Speaker 1: so impactful for me. I feel like Nello was wrestling
Speaker 1: with so many of those ideas well before people were
Speaker 1: doing that, which is a part of the reason why
Speaker 1: I think when the book was released in twenty nine
Speaker 1: people didn't see it for actually what it was. In
Speaker 1: a way. A friend said to me the other night,
Speaker 1: She'd rather be a slow burn than burnout, and I
Speaker 1: was like, huh so in that way, I guess it's
Speaker 1: you know, Nella has been a very slow burn like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like it too. I'd rather be a slow burn
Speaker 1: than burnout. I wonder what she would have preferred. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And some folks are meant to like burn bright right
Speaker 1: and like burnout quick. I think part of what the
Speaker 1: film is reckoning with, and the same could be true
Speaker 1: of Belle Hooks's work, is that and not fitting neatly
Speaker 1: into that square box. You're trying to gain access to
Speaker 1: your full self. Yeah, And I wondered for you, is
Speaker 1: acting the best way you know how to access that
Speaker 1: full self? I hope so. Otherwise I'm really wasting my
Speaker 1: time with this limited time that I have here in
Speaker 1: this place, you know, I mean, the job literally is
Speaker 1: contending with self unpacking, interrogating. I think the more interesting
Speaker 1: thing is that I feel like, even though that is
Speaker 1: solitary in its way, it connects me to people. You say,
Speaker 1: this podcast takes a village. Making a film, a piece
Speaker 1: of work takes a village, takes a zip code, you know, like,
Speaker 1: it takes a lot, a lot of people, And so
Speaker 1: in the making of it, I'm connected to people. And
Speaker 1: then also when you release something, it's not yours anymore,
Speaker 1: it belongs to people. I think feeling connected to other
Speaker 1: people's humanity actually makes me feel fuller inside of my own.
Speaker 1: Putting a pause on the conversation for a second, we'll
Speaker 1: be right back with Tessa Thompson after this quick break.
Speaker 1: Before the break, you were talking about that connection you
Speaker 1: find while acting. Yeah, but I've been trying to pinpoint
Speaker 1: where your desire to even want to do this work began.
Speaker 1: And I have a theory and I'm fascinated to know.
Speaker 1: You grew up in Los Angeles. Your parents divorced that
Speaker 1: are on age two or three. They didn't actually divorce
Speaker 1: because they never married, but they separate. In turn. You
Speaker 1: stay in California. Your father moves to Fort Green. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every once in a while, you'd call him, yes, and
Speaker 1: in calling him, he would leave a voicemail. It's actually
Speaker 1: important to note that this is actually before he had moved.
Speaker 1: So I would see him a lot because we lived
Speaker 1: in the same city and I split my time between
Speaker 1: my parents. But I would also call him a lot,
Speaker 1: and yes, I would leave voicemails, but it wasn't a
Speaker 1: standard voicemail. What was happening typically different voices, characters, songs, bits,
Speaker 1: ongoing bits. Do you remember any of these? Well, I
Speaker 1: remember them because they've been played to me. My dad
Speaker 1: like digitizes stuff, and so I've heard these recordings. Do
Speaker 1: you have you? Yeah, Hi Mark, it's Diane. My favorite
Speaker 1: one is one where I've like called many times that
Speaker 1: day and I just I'm like, hi, Dad, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to do a voice or anything this time, as
Speaker 1: if like he you know, would have been fooled. My
Speaker 1: dad actually indulged me a lot. My dad loved to
Speaker 1: like photograph and he still doesn't. He had all these
Speaker 1: early camcorders and super eight cameras, and he would sort
Speaker 1: of use me sometimes as a light subject, you know,
Speaker 1: like in the frame. You'd be like stand there, and
Speaker 1: so he would also like let me DP and hand
Speaker 1: me a camera, and so some of my early experiences,
Speaker 1: most all of my early experiences were sort of around Hollywood,
Speaker 1: hanging out with my dad, being on camera, using a camera.
Speaker 1: As a kid, you said, I was always interested in
Speaker 1: songwriting and playing guitar. My dad would be a person
Speaker 1: that would give me an entrance into that, but because
Speaker 1: he was good at it, that terrified me. My mom
Speaker 1: is also really gifted. She can make anything with her hands,
Speaker 1: and my stepmom as a photographer. Usually when people hear
Speaker 1: about creative parents, they think it's this inviting, nurturing, but
Speaker 1: it was probably also daunting. Yeah, I think it is daunting.
Speaker 1: I think when you're trying to construct what you want
Speaker 1: to be, there's like a necessary moment when you rebel
Speaker 1: against what you might be based on what your parents are.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Growing up in Los Angeles, I
Speaker 1: think for a long time I couldn't imagine myself wanting
Speaker 1: to act because like so many people did here, you know.
Speaker 1: And in a similar way, it's like my dad's a musician,
Speaker 1: Like I'm going to do something else, I'm going to
Speaker 1: stake my own claim. But my parents were ye hugely
Speaker 1: inviting in terms of this sounds crass, but they didn't
Speaker 1: care about what I might become. And there's freedom in that.
Speaker 1: Some people may hear that and they think, why don't
Speaker 1: they care? You know, I imagine I'm not a parent,
Speaker 1: but I imagine as a parent, what your children become
Speaker 1: is also like such a huge source of your own fulfillment,
Speaker 1: you know, and what you've done right. And my parents
Speaker 1: don't have that kind of ego attached to parenthood. Like
Speaker 1: I think, they really just see me. It's not really
Speaker 1: about what I do or make. It's sort of who
Speaker 1: I am. And I think that gave me a certain
Speaker 1: amount of freedom. And also I think in terms of performing,
Speaker 1: I was like it was like a secret, you know.
Speaker 1: I was sort of like doing it without really letting
Speaker 1: anybody my parents know. I was like working away at
Speaker 1: this thing. I still actually have to remind myself to
Speaker 1: invite my family and friends more into what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: It feels like this thing I sort of do in secret,
Speaker 1: and then you know, in my life in a real
Speaker 1: way that has nothing to do with work. Why did
Speaker 1: it have to be in secret? I guess in a
Speaker 1: way because it feels like when you invite people into
Speaker 1: your dreams and aspirations and ambitions. Then you have people
Speaker 1: that you I don't know, there's like accountability or something
Speaker 1: could disappoint. Yeah, it could disappoint. It felt good to
Speaker 1: keep those things for myself and see how it would
Speaker 1: pan out. This is fascinating though, when you go to
Speaker 1: high school. You know a lot of kids in high
Speaker 1: school they like to start a band. They're like by sports,
Speaker 1: They're like to not do homework. We were talking earlier
Speaker 1: about a film that's showing us that we need to
Speaker 1: better define people, and by better defining them, actually lose
Speaker 1: all definition. Yeah, and part of this thinking it goes
Speaker 1: back to nineteen twenty eight nineteen twenty nine where the
Speaker 1: film is set. But for you, it seemed to start
Speaker 1: in high school where you create this racial harmony club
Speaker 1: that sounds like something I just made up. It's a
Speaker 1: crazy name. It doesn't hold up like it's not great branding.
Speaker 1: It's not terrible branding. I didn't come up in the name,
Speaker 1: by the way, I didn't sure. I'm positive. I'm positive
Speaker 1: Rebecca Hart. You, Rebecca Hall, created the name Rebecca Heart.
Speaker 1: What was this club? This It wasn't so much a club,
Speaker 1: so it was an experiment. You took twenty kids from
Speaker 1: the five basic racial groups the way that like now
Speaker 1: the government would identify you, and it's like, oh, weekend
Speaker 1: long sleepover on the campus grounds and talk about perceptions
Speaker 1: of self, perceptions of all the other racial identities in
Speaker 1: safe spaces, and then you dialogue together where you sort
Speaker 1: of you've made these lists of things that you stereotypes
Speaker 1: about the other, and then you sit together in dialogue
Speaker 1: and sort of face some of those ideas and have
Speaker 1: conversations around early experiences of trying to unpack like where
Speaker 1: your perceptions of each other with regards to race, where
Speaker 1: they come from. What high schooler comes up with this
Speaker 1: kind of idea. Tell me how this happened. I would
Speaker 1: just say an autogoyed school. And I would witness this
Speaker 1: phenomenon at lunch that this school itself was like pretty
Speaker 1: segregated racially. There were like different pockets where people would
Speaker 1: hang out, and maybe because of my mixed race identity,
Speaker 1: there was like I mean, I think in general, in
Speaker 1: high school, you're inclined to not feel a sense of belonging,
Speaker 1: you know. I felt that, as any high schooler does.
Speaker 1: But I was also very aware of the ways in
Speaker 1: which I may have felt that because of the way
Speaker 1: that people oriented theirselves. I think in having conversations with
Speaker 1: my high school friends at the time, this seemed like
Speaker 1: a way to address that. And also we were coming
Speaker 1: off of a time not when we were at school,
Speaker 1: but there was a recent sort of history of kind
Speaker 1: of race related violence that was also gang related. But
Speaker 1: this was the late nineties. Yeah, when you think back
Speaker 1: on that teenage self, who do you see? I see
Speaker 1: someone really eager to do something that felt useful, to
Speaker 1: be an instigator. Did that lead you to acting from there?
Speaker 1: Maybe it was also around that time, maybe a year later,
Speaker 1: that I also discovered acting in a real way. I
Speaker 1: started doing plays, and I took a film class and
Speaker 1: are really interested in like Shakespeare in the classics, And
Speaker 1: I remember doing a Shakespeare play and being like bad,
Speaker 1: you know, like knowing that I was bad, and wanting
Speaker 1: to just be better, like wanting to win. But you don't.
Speaker 1: You can't like win at that stuff. It's so subject.
Speaker 1: You want to produce the most tears out of the audience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no metric for how you win. But I just
Speaker 1: wanted to continuously get better. You were motivated to do
Speaker 1: something and to make something of yourself. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: knew that early. Yeah. If I can like trace a
Speaker 1: fundamental desire it was present in me. Then I think Actually,
Speaker 1: in the last couple of years, I think I've feel
Speaker 1: less embarrassed by ambition. Why would you be embarrassed, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think because when your sort of dreams
Speaker 1: feel like they are just about you, that feels embarrassing,
Speaker 1: when they feel tethered to something that feels bigger than you.
Speaker 1: I find that kind of ambition frankly less embarrassing. I
Speaker 1: think it is less embarrassed. It is absolutely It's like
Speaker 1: always been that for me. Now I just have a
Speaker 1: clear pathway, a pathway in language, yeah, pathway in language, yeah,
Speaker 1: and community. I'm curious about this because you, as an
Speaker 1: ambitious young twenty something going out on auditions, you would
Speaker 1: have this sports like tactic walking into the room. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious where this came from, both the confidence and
Speaker 1: the tactic. This is embarrassing talking about this, but here
Speaker 1: we go. So this is like very vintage Hollywood. This
Speaker 1: is like a lot of people that are dressed vaguely
Speaker 1: the same in a waiting room, waiting to go in
Speaker 1: the casting director hardly looks up from their paper. The
Speaker 1: whole experience feels very rushed, you know, and you feel
Speaker 1: like one of many. And so I would do this thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I discovered this thing that would help
Speaker 1: help me, which is you'd walk in and they say
Speaker 1: like sit there if you want to sit in the
Speaker 1: chair or stand there, and I would just move the
Speaker 1: chair before I would sit in it, which is to say, like,
Speaker 1: I'm allowing myself to take up space at autonomy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a situation where you have none. And that was
Speaker 1: just helpful for me. How did you know to do that?
Speaker 1: I think it just occurred to me. Maybe I did
Speaker 1: it once and then realize everything in me relaxed after
Speaker 1: doing it. Yeah, kind of realizing how to yeah, how
Speaker 1: to take up space, I guess, which I think is
Speaker 1: also particularly then I think just hard to do. As
Speaker 1: like a young black person trying to make stuff. How
Speaker 1: do you take up space when you enter these massive
Speaker 1: films like Creed or Thor or Men and Black? How
Speaker 1: do you do that on a movie that costs one
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars? You know, working in collaboration with people
Speaker 1: that want to give you space, that have hopefully hired
Speaker 1: you because of your unique contribution, and then there are
Speaker 1: like many little battles that you win inside of it.
Speaker 1: It's been really interesting to work with Ryan Coogler on
Speaker 1: Creed one, his first sort of outing into the studio space,
Speaker 1: and watch him navigate that with such grace. Some battles
Speaker 1: he didn't win, and some he did. I think that's
Speaker 1: the negotiation with art and commerce. But I think at
Speaker 1: the other end of it is this idea that you
Speaker 1: could potentially do something that is subversive inside of this
Speaker 1: big space that people globally are getting engaged with, and
Speaker 1: that to me is really interesting. Was Ryan Coogler's grace
Speaker 1: part of the inspiration that led you to think I
Speaker 1: could make a company on my own? Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: his grace, watching his grace, watching so many people that
Speaker 1: have had proximity to do that. It takes brilliance and
Speaker 1: patience to learn, you know, how to make the work
Speaker 1: you want to make inside of these systems, and that
Speaker 1: at a certain point also might decide, like, I want
Speaker 1: to make my own system. Now that I understand what
Speaker 1: it means, what it looks like to have a seat
Speaker 1: at the table, I just I'd like to make my
Speaker 1: own table. What does that look like. I think that's
Speaker 1: a part of, you know, creating this company, which is
Speaker 1: not to say that we're not going to be in
Speaker 1: collaboration with or working with the studios our deal set
Speaker 1: up at Hbohbo Max. We're working inside of a system,
Speaker 1: but we're trying to find our own way. You know,
Speaker 1: someone that I worked really closely with who was an
Speaker 1: independent producer before, named Kishori, who's really brilliant. We had
Speaker 1: really early conversations in the construction of the company and
Speaker 1: the kind of stories that we want to tell, and
Speaker 1: she made this brilliant show called Random Acts of Flyness.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that they talked about a
Speaker 1: lot in that writer's room is how do we talk
Speaker 1: about blackness without talking about whiteness? How do we talk
Speaker 1: about queerness without talking about heterosexuality? And I thought that
Speaker 1: was so fascinating. So it's sort of finding new ways
Speaker 1: of of thinking, of ideating around story and then setting
Speaker 1: the table and inviting folks that think and feel in
Speaker 1: similar ways, that want to make work, not just want
Speaker 1: to make the same kind of work, but want to
Speaker 1: make it for the same reasons. Invite them over and
Speaker 1: have plenty food and drink and time and space to build.
Speaker 1: You know something, Terrence Nance, who made the show you're
Speaker 1: talking about. If you look at his earlier work date
Speaker 1: back to Oversimplification of Our Beauty, Yeah, now to this show,
Speaker 1: and he's done a whole bunch in between. I do
Speaker 1: know for him, his definition of what he's wanted to
Speaker 1: do has changed in the way that all of ours does.
Speaker 1: And as we leave this, I'm wondering, how is it
Speaker 1: change for you after the last two years. I feel
Speaker 1: really sensitive to what the offering is. I guess what
Speaker 1: it feels like, what does that mean? It's been such
Speaker 1: a hard time for people. I think you spoke to
Speaker 1: this idea of making work. Why you make this show,
Speaker 1: Why I enjoy this show, that it makes me feel
Speaker 1: less alone. I think that's like always been at the
Speaker 1: heart of why I want to do what I do.
Speaker 1: I tell stories. In the industry, I feel like recently
Speaker 1: there's a lot of conversation around like making things that
Speaker 1: feel hopeful. I think a lot about what hope means,
Speaker 1: really what it means, And something that feels very hopeful
Speaker 1: to me is to offer something that feels really true,
Speaker 1: even inside of its pain, but that there's a promise
Speaker 1: of growth that to me feels like hope. You know,
Speaker 1: the stories that I remember, like watching something in a
Speaker 1: cinema and being like, you know, like very juvenile idea
Speaker 1: that I wanted to make something. I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: hard to sort of describe in words, but it's more
Speaker 1: a feeling that you leave sort of bolstered, that you've
Speaker 1: seen something that helps you make sense of what this is,
Speaker 1: what this life that we're living is, which is daunting
Speaker 1: and terrifying and too much sometimes, you know, but to
Speaker 1: feel held in the for a moment, it's like huge.
Speaker 1: Three years ago, you gave a moving speech at the
Speaker 1: Essence Awards. I don't remember what I said. No, you
Speaker 1: gave a speech unless it was your sister, who wasn't
Speaker 1: the audience was wearing sunglasses. Yeah she was. She looks
Speaker 1: so cool. She always looks cool. I know she's much
Speaker 1: close than both of us. Definitely combined. Yeah, no, thanks,
Speaker 1: I thought, combined, we can maybe take her. Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: you're right, she's cooler. Okay, you're giving the speech, and
Speaker 1: about two and a half minutes into it, you say,
Speaker 1: I know the system has favored black women with fair complexions.
Speaker 1: This truth has Yes, benefited me, and it's also left
Speaker 1: me with a profound anger and confusion as to why
Speaker 1: I would be in the pursuit of gaining success inside
Speaker 1: of such ugliness. In the three years since you gave
Speaker 1: that speech, are you still angry and confused? Not as
Speaker 1: much as I was in I know now with more certainty,
Speaker 1: what I can do, what actionable things I can do
Speaker 1: to try to dismantle that system. And this is work
Speaker 1: that I'll do until I can no longer do it,
Speaker 1: and then someone else will do it. And people are
Speaker 1: doing it with me. It's just the way that it goes.
Speaker 1: That's one of the big games of Viva mode and
Speaker 1: now produce or a work is like, what stories can
Speaker 1: I help get told that have space for a wide
Speaker 1: variety of projections of blackness, and in particular black women
Speaker 1: that get to lens with tenderness, black women that are
Speaker 1: not me, you know, that are all shades and sizes.
Speaker 1: Let them take up space. The thing you want to
Speaker 1: do with the company, if I'm getting it right, is
Speaker 1: a little bit what's happening here in Passing, which is
Speaker 1: creating a story with characters that have idiosyncrasies, that are
Speaker 1: flawed and fullhearted and as we leave this, I was
Speaker 1: thinking about how as a kid you would spend time
Speaker 1: with your grandmother's and you'd often look at old photographs
Speaker 1: of them where they would have these hats and gloves
Speaker 1: that you would never wear in the modern age, but
Speaker 1: you did get to wear in passing. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I'm thinking about this because I've met your family,
Speaker 1: but I'm thinking about it now. Have you had a
Speaker 1: moment in the last year with this movie out in
Speaker 1: the world. We're the full circle nature of all that
Speaker 1: that you got to be some part of them in
Speaker 1: this film. Yeah. There are so many women that I've known,
Speaker 1: my grandmother's my mother included, and so many women that
Speaker 1: I have been that I feel like are embedded into
Speaker 1: Irene and that I was calling on while making that
Speaker 1: because I think there's a lot that both of these
Speaker 1: women in the film are contending with that have to
Speaker 1: do with them in relation to patriarchy that they exist in.
Speaker 1: But then I think this full circle moment that you're
Speaker 1: talking about the enormity of it really hit me. I
Speaker 1: was on the cover of Ebony magazine and thinking about
Speaker 1: my grandmother who passed when I was a teenager, Like
Speaker 1: what that would have meant to her. Thinking about the
Speaker 1: women that are on those covers, what they meant to
Speaker 1: my grandmother, how they connected her to her own beauty
Speaker 1: and brilliance, and then to imagine that I'm now by
Speaker 1: proxy one of those women, and also that I come
Speaker 1: from her, like yeah, yeah, that's like a that was
Speaker 1: a yeah, that was a moment for me. And my
Speaker 1: grandfather would have elected to He came from Bolio, Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: drove produce all around the country. Also, I feel like
Speaker 1: there is this impetus to want to be cool about
Speaker 1: the things, you know, that we do, the chances that
Speaker 1: we get, and I like to participate. I like to
Speaker 1: keep it cool. And then every so often I think
Speaker 1: about my grandparents, in particular my maternal grandfather, who came
Speaker 1: from Mexico, you know, who was a performer or himself
Speaker 1: who had a residency I learned recently and doing some research.
Speaker 1: He like played, he was like a big band leader,
Speaker 1: and he was in Chicago for a while. I had
Speaker 1: like a stint there. What I am getting to do
Speaker 1: my grandparents like couldn't even dream of In a way,
Speaker 1: it's hard to be too cool when he really think
Speaker 1: about that, Well, I thank you for not being that
Speaker 1: cool on the show. I'm not that cool anyways. It
Speaker 1: turns out you're all right. You've done so much and
Speaker 1: yet there's so much more to be done. I don't
Speaker 1: know what that is. Yeah, I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: keep thinking of you walking into an audition moving that
Speaker 1: damn chair. I didn't move this chair, by the way,
Speaker 1: this chair I said, exactly where you put it, happily.
Speaker 1: It makes it sounds like I'm like a dictator trying
Speaker 1: to piment. So bad at that. Try a good okay, compliment,
Speaker 1: take two. Here we go. It wasn't about the chair.
Speaker 1: It was about you claiming some autonomy in a space
Speaker 1: that is actively working against anyone who's trying to be autonomous.
Speaker 1: And my hope for the years to come and your
Speaker 1: work on screen, with your company life outside of it,
Speaker 1: is that you keep moving the chair. Thank you so much?
Speaker 1: Is that okay? Yes, that's Atompson. Thank you very much,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Thanks for having me anytime, and
Speaker 1: that's our show. Special thanks to the team at Shelter
Speaker 1: PR Lauren Gold, Alexandra Billamos Reinoso, and Kara Tree Picchio.
Speaker 1: I'd also like to thank Jennifer McCann at Netflix, and
Speaker 1: of course, the inimitable Tessa Thompson. Her new film Passing
Speaker 1: is available to stream on Netflix. To learn more about
Speaker 1: Tessa's work, visit our show notes at talk easypod dot com.
Speaker 1: Once you're there, you'll find our back catalog of over
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty episodes with artists and activists including
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Speaker 1: Caitlin Dryden. Today's Talk was edited by Kaitlyn Dryden and
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Speaker 1: San Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll
Speaker 1: see you back here next Sunday with Quest Life. Until that,
Speaker 1: stay safe and so on.