June 2, 2022 • 42 mins
Erika Alexander is an award-winning actress best known for her roles as Pam Tucker on The Cosby Show and Maxine Shaw on Living Single. She also stars in films like the award winning Get Out.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
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(00:30):
Erica Alexander is an award winning actress, best known for
her roles as Pam Tucker on The Cosby Show and
Maxine Shaw on Living Single. She also stars in films
like the award winning Get Out. Most people who dream
of becoming an actress, you know, think of having to
(00:51):
go through many, many years of auditions before they get
that first role. But your breakthrough came super asked, how
did that happen? I was attending an arts program, performing
arts program in Philadelphia in the Freedom Theater. It's called
New Freedom Theater. It was a six week program and
in the fifth week movie came to town, the merchant
(01:12):
Ivory Film, and they were looking for black girls and
Latina girls to auditions for the film, and so we
were all encouraged to do it, and so we did,
and after several auditions and you know, a few weeks
went by, they made their choice and I was the
lead in it. And it was a film called My
Little Girl, and I got um not only a chance
(01:34):
to you know, being a professional setting, but also get
a SAG card and gave me healthcare and things like that.
So there were other opportunities that were connected to it
that were really consequential for me. But it was just
a matter of sort of being picked in a big
open call, which is pretty unusual. And merchant Ivory is
kind of like the the holy Grail for actors. I mean,
(01:57):
that's no shabby first all man, you know what merchant
Tiree is, but most people don't because it doesn't even
exist anymore. But before Merrimax, it was considered a very
high toned production company, certainly coming out of England, and
they did a lot of work with Helen and Bonnet
Carter and and that type of thing. Very English, you know,
(02:18):
very polished. But this was unusual. It was a woman,
Connie Kaiserman, who was making her film debut. This was
her experience. She was a white young woman who went
to school in the sort of the higher toned area
of Philadelphia, and she did a summer program and she
was very influenced by this young woman she met in
(02:41):
it and I should say a girl and it was
called My Little Girl, and so this was her conversation
about her experience, and it was an opportunity for me,
but it was her story. What do you really remember
most about the first film you ever did being chosen
at all? I guess I remember more being um feeling
guilty because I had just joined the program and there
(03:03):
were girls who had gone to New Freedom Theater for
many years. So it was a summer program that I
was in, but it was on the year. It had
girls going all year around. So if you've ever gone
to ballet school or that type of thing, they might
have a special summer program, but there are girls who
are ballerinas who come all the time. And Genese Roderick
was the person I was up against when it came
(03:25):
down to it, and everyone kept saying, Oh, Genese is
gonna get it, Genese is gonna get it. And I
had no film or television or any sort of background
with acting that much except for that experience, and then
I ended up getting it, and Genese was from Philly
and I was from Arizona. So I felt like I
was an interloper, and I felt really guilty, and I
didn't know that that would be the case. I didn't
(03:46):
think that they picked me. So I remember that an
overwhelming sense of guilt. And then how soon after that
did you land on the Cosby Show? Many years went by,
It seems like many years I did. Then it was
about after school specials and there were mini series that
were being done. That was the age of the mini series.
So I did George Washington to Forging a Nation. I
(04:07):
played the slave owning with Martha Washington slave who I
found it later ran away, and George Washington pursued her
his whole time until he died. He was really limited
person in that way. And Um. Then I did a
tour around the world with the Royal Shakespeare Theater. We
did the movie in Paris. I had already done some
plays in the public with Joseph pat and that's where
(04:29):
Camille Cosby saw me. Camil Cosby is the best friend
of Gloria Foster, and I was at the Public Theater
playing um Joseph Papp's last play The Forbidden City by
Bill Gunn and apparently she went home and said to
Bill Cosby, her husband, You've got to see Gloria in
this this uh theater pieces off Broadway show which Gloria's
(04:52):
genius actors. She was the woman who was in the
Matrix who said, um light skinned woman who said to
Keanu Reeves, have a cookie, you'll feel writer's reign. She
was a light skinned woman. She didn't do a lot
of film work, but she was fantastic and didn't get
her opportunity. There was amazing theater actress. Apparently he's she
said to build got to see Gloria and this girl
(05:13):
I was the girl she was talking about. He never
saw the play. But I had been auditioning for the
Cosby Show for years because it was the only game
in town. If you were black. There weren't that many
shows for you to be on. If you're black young,
there were very few things you could be on. So
maybe Rosanne, maybe Cosby Show, a Law and Order that
was it, or an after school special. And so I
was brought in. I was called to his house. Could
(05:36):
you be to his house in an hour? And Cash
and director met me there and he created the growth
of cousin pan for me on the spot. But apparently
I was a gift for his wife. That's what I
was told. How has the legacy of Bill Cosby impacted
you to today? Yeah, you know. It was a fantastic opportunity.
(05:58):
I mean again, it was the only game in town.
You weren't going to be cast as an on Jennu
anywhere except maybe on stage, which was a typical place
where I was casting a GENUW. But if you were
young and I was in my team, still they didn't
place black females in roles that of oh' Juliet or
damnsel and distress or the object of desire, any of
those things. Scarlet your hands and or any of these
(06:19):
people now might be you had to wait to be
a foster child, as slave or prostitute. Those are my
first roles. But when I got on the Cosby Show,
that was the biggest you place you could be. And
for him to have created a role for me for
whatever reason, I was told by a stranger that I
was a gift and he knew he knew a lot
(06:39):
of details that only somebody very close to one of
them would know, So I I knew he knew he
was what he was talking about I didn't know at
the time that it was perhaps through Camille Cosby conjoining
him to go to the play, and then maybe as
some kind of again, I don't know what their relationship is.
Like he gave her, you know, he said, Okay, call
(07:03):
this young lady to my house and and and then
gave me a role. So that's a weird thing. Just
happens to be a byproduct of it. But it changed
my life because suddenly I was doing film and theater,
but I was on the big show in America in
the last road they created for the show. I grew
up in an era when the Cosby Show was like
(07:25):
it right, like I would look forward to Thursdays because
the Cosby Show is on. And even for me, it's
very hard to sort of reconcile what I thought of
as such a highlight, a joyous childhood memory with who
built Cosby turned out to be? How has that been
for you? Who was so much more deeply affected by it.
(07:47):
It's unfortunate that he wasn't who we all thought he was.
There's almost nothing more to say. If you grew up
with somebody and they turn out to be, uh, you know,
have very complicated history with women, and that's being kind.
And then also the accusations are so profound, you know,
(08:09):
it's like you wonder who you were working with. Here's
what I can say about that. I'm preacher's daughter, and
I have always lived in a world of contradictions, because
who shows up at churches but sinners and people who
are not always what they seem, including pastors and teachers
and all sorts of other people. So he's not unlike
anybody who's in this human condition, who may present a
(08:33):
false face and then once it's exposed, everyone's a little destroyed. Um,
he more than most people, had influence of great majority
of the world because of what he stood for with
children and his commitment to education and HBC used what
he did for black people. It's extraordinary. So I come
(08:53):
to reckon it with it the way everyone else does,
except that I never thought that anybody was perfect, and
there's a lot of people who really put people on pedestals. Obviously,
this is more than just talking about a simple flaw
or fault. This is talking about assault, This is talking
about rape. This is talking about using your power to
(09:16):
put people who are not in the position that you're
in in a place that not only destroys their self esteem,
but can affect their lives for a very long time.
So I think that we talk a lot about Bill
Cosby because there's been a lot of men with those
powers that have been allowed to prosper and been a
(09:37):
propped up by corporations who are making money off of them,
and um, we should all endeavor to make sure that
they can't prosper. More importantly, that they can be if
they've done these things, held accountable because of that contradiction.
Is there any part of you that that roots for
him and all of this? What I do is I
(09:59):
root for the healing of spirit obviously that come from
a very dark spot. And so I wouldn't be my
father's daughter if I said here and were rooted for
his demise. I couldn't be a black person in America
and not have compassion for our position because we were
raped and assaulted for hundreds of years on this land
(10:21):
with impunity, and what did it teach us to hurt others?
I don't know his entire background. What I do know
is that he was in a position of learning. He
was a he was a doctor, he had been exalted,
and there was a lot of ways he could have
gotten help, But I think that that type of thing
acting on you, you don't get to help you need
(10:42):
because you don't know you're sick. I don't know what
it is. I'm not even qualified to talk about it.
All I know is he gave me a job, he
gave me an opportunity, and he was one of the
most profoundly transformational characters in American history, not black people
in American history. And how can you root for anything
(11:05):
except for healing all over? It seems to like throughout
at least the early years of your career. And I'm
curious that this is still today. You have been placed
in an arena of you are a black actress or
you are a black creator, and that only certain roles
are available. Is that still? Is that still the industry? Yes,
(11:26):
it is, it's still the industry. It's hard to talk
about it without seeing that you're downing things. But colorism
is real, and so if you're blond and you're blue eyed,
and you're a woman, they're more likely to be seen
as something that's again protected and more the ideal of
what a true American woman is. And then it falls off.
(11:49):
At that point you know, dark haired white women, you
know less. So then you go to brown skinned Latina,
Middle Eastern all that. Then you go to light skinned
black women, you know, and then you go to dark
skinned women like me and Biola and Octavia Spencer and
those types of things. And if you look at what
(12:10):
the types of roles we typically get to play, and
I'm not talking about now, there's a little bit more,
much more variety, but overall, it is the help. It
is the the nurturer, the caregiver, the nanny. This that
because those are positions of white people are used to
seeing us in UM. I think that with that power,
(12:31):
I think white women haven't done as much as they
needed to do to create opportunities for characters to do that.
Thank God for shan To Rhymes she did UM. Up
until that point, Diane Carroll was the only black woman
on network TV whoever had a show UM, And that
to me is unacceptable. There have been white women in
positions who could have created that. But then again, I
(12:53):
imagine they might have and they ran into the big
daddy at the door at the studio that said, no,
So have we been in positions to do better? Perhaps
have we had enough power to push through maybe not.
I mean I try to look at the whole piece.
There's stomach issues, there's the will, there are people who
(13:13):
have the will but not the way. And then more importantly,
there's how comfortable do we feel? As Violet Davis said
in some clip I saw all the other day with
her doing E Pray Love, and we need to start
seeing them essential sexual, powerful people but also complicated, three dimensional.
The way that we're talking about Cosby is the way
(13:33):
we should talk about all men and characters. It seems
optically when you read and you see the data like
the last couple of years have been sort of a
racial reckoning in America, where there are more quotas and
more attention and more interest in diversifying what we see
(13:54):
on the screen, whether it's TV or film. Has that
not hit Hollywood? In reality? That more just optics or
do you feel the change? There's definite change, except the
optics make it look like there's more change than there is.
If you ask the people who do the data studies
that you see l A, they say everything's expanded. All
(14:14):
sorts of opportunities have expanded. There's more channels, they're more um,
you know, platforms for people to have um content. But
then they do the data and the percentage still is
almost the same. So I think that people are seeing
more because there's more ways into your consciousness, but it
doesn't necessarily mean that it's having impact or it's as
(14:37):
much as we think. So I don't want to say
that there's not real movement there. The almost certainly is.
And people see one black Panther movie and say, oh, look,
Marvel did a black Panther movie. Um, and let's give
props to the great Jack Kim Kirby and and stand
leave for creating black hero within the Marvel universe. And
that's cool, But look at how many other Marvel movies
(15:00):
there are with White Year Roads. I mean, you know
that's one and that took how many years, like Forever,
and then, um, people might say, well what about women
as it? Well, you've got one of the women, you've
got you know, these types of different things. It's not
enough going on for women. There's nothing going on for
disabled people. Well maybe okay, we had their devil who's blind,
you know, that type of thing. And then what do
(15:22):
we do for agism? You know, let's talk about that.
I mean, there's so many marginalized people and indigenous almost
they're not even seen. The Asians are stepping up and
putting a lot of their efforts inside of You see
crazy rich Aasans, You see you know Shang Chai chi
going on. It's a powerful transition happening right now. In
(15:46):
twenty eighteen, there were more children of color being born
in America than white children. Is certainly gonna be a
rebrowning of America and the world, which is a majority
of color. World were now with its own weapons and
its own entertainment take center state, So you know happen
well right now as we're seeing it, it's probably not
(16:09):
as profound as people think. And now a quick break.
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You grew up in Arizona until you were eleven or twelve,
and you're one of six kids, one of six? Yes,
(16:52):
what's your relationship with your family like now? My father
has passed away, my mother is still here. She's very
much central to how I think she was. They were
both orphans and one of six. Um. I always say,
I spent the first seleven years of my life in
a hotel called Starlife of Root sixty six. I'm very pragmatic.
I believe in doing your best right now to help
(17:15):
a system that only can change if people care enough
to participate. And UM, I think that that's the real
difference is that I don't buy into fairy tales too
much because I haven't seen one yet. And um, all
I see is hard work and people making sacrifices and
no matter what they're suffering or enduring, trying to promote
(17:38):
unity and or love in some kind of real world way.
So I love my mother. She's UM. If I get
any of my imagination or any of my sweetness, If
I have any sweetness, it comes from her. From her.
She's a very beautiful person and very kind and naive,
and yet very wise. People call her like black Yoda.
(18:03):
And my father was a real firebrand. He was charismatic,
he was handsome in a black way, dark skin, he
had to go tooth on his front, tooth um. That
was when it was something that was a prestige and
status and not some sort of rapper persona. And he
also was, like I said, when a man of many parts.
(18:26):
He wasn't necessarily what he always showed himself to be
the people. He was ridiculously talented and seen as a healer.
He had been a boy preacher from since he was six,
and back in the Punecostal tradition, you can be a
preacher that young, but you're also used in kind of
because he was so talented, I think he learned the
(18:47):
wrong lessons and he saw too much of of people
taking advantage of him. But then he also learned it
because he was so good. And this is no shade
to white people. They've never seen anything like him except
for Martin Luther King and these types of really powerful,
charismatic black men that were coming out of the sixties,
(19:08):
and they wanted a little piece of that necesanities. And
so I think when the Lutheran Church took him up.
They saw an opportunity to support and have a new
voice in there in their midst and I think they
were smart to do so. But I also thought and
my father took advantage of this sort of crush they
had on him. And I find that at different times
in America, we we find these black men and were
(19:29):
getting we fall in love with them, get crushes, and
we don't often see exactly who they are, or we
don't support who they need to be. And I think
black people are the same way that we have a profound,
weird relationship with whiteness that's been put on us. So
I'm not blaming us. I'm just saying that we are
at odds at it at all times. And it's so
(19:52):
weird how we're all woven together in this world and
we don't see that we have each other's blood. We
have Irish blood and the Scottish, all this stuff. We're
cousins with cousins through the struggle with cousins through actual
blood blood, and yet we sat here and fight and
have all these deformities in psychological mental incapacities, and um,
(20:13):
we really are in UM. I just think America is
so much there's so much for our future that we
could learn from each other, but we can't if we
see each other's is not family, and we are profoundly family.
Speaking of how much there is to do in the world,
how do you choose where to put your efforts? There's
(20:35):
only one of you, so which causes and which efforts
have you chosen? Uh? As as the place is to
put your attention, I put my attention mostly on women
and girls. I think that women are an example of
sustainable future for us all. I think that they always
(20:56):
make the village better. I was the most traveled surrogate
for Hillary Clinton, and she sent me around the world
to learn from people and be around people who I
could have a template for in a blueprint. I'm grateful
to her for that. She because of that, I was
around uh John Lewis and got a chance to produce
(21:18):
her his his documentary Good Trouble. Because of her, I've
met Maya Angel, Louin Um, Jana van Zandt, and Stephanie Tubbs,
and Sheila jack Jackson Lee. I just did a reparations
documentary that follows Sheila Jackson Lee with HR forty and
Reparations and Robert Rue Simmons, the all the women who
passed the first reparations bill in American history, and we
(21:39):
watched that in real time when it never happened again,
but she did it. These are women, and I've met
amazing women running Google with all these diversity and diversity positions.
I've met you, I've met Amy. I think I've I'm
most likely drawn to strong women because I don't believe
that they get enough help. People think that they have
(21:59):
a lot of power and have it all together because
they're so massively um able. What they're often the least supported,
and people are scared of. Often strong women, I'm not UM.
I see them as being profoundly vulnerable, and um, if
we're going to win this world, I'm going to help
(22:20):
the people who I feel like will be the most
attacked and could use hopefully the strength and how I
see them to shield them a little bit from the
world and say I see you, and what can I
do to help talk to us about finding Tamika. I
was sometimes speak at I don't know events or for causes,
(22:41):
but um, I was speaking somewhere in Alabama, and there
was a black man named David Person who I stayed
in touch with him, when do you kind of touch
with me? And said, Erica, there's this woman that I met.
Her name is Rebecca Howard. Her nice went missing in
two thousand five, Tamika Houston and Tonika Houston. UM is
the poster child for black and missing women and girls
(23:04):
and this phenomenon that Quinn Eiffel, the great journalist called
the missing White women's syndrome, and maybe you could do
something about it in a podcast that would really be enlightening,
enlightening and UM. I have a partner in Ben arn
On at color Farm Media, and we have been doing
film and telling. We call ourselves the Mottown of film,
television and Tech, and we've been trying to find really
(23:27):
great partners and we said, why not, We'll take this on.
I have to tell you, I didn't think that it
would get any funding, because it's the hardest thing to
ever do. We do fun things project by project. But
we went out with it. And I had just done
The Breakfast Club with Charlemagne the God and he had
asked me to do a preparations podcast with the Black Effect,
(23:47):
and so we didn't a companion piece. Since we were
doing the documentary. We knew it would take so much time.
But he said, yo, Queen, remember that other thing you
pitched me finding Tamika. I just got a deal at
Audible with Kevin Hard. Why don't you come over there
and do it there. So that's what we did last year.
We geared up and we did fighting. Tamika found James T. Green,
who was a great executive producer. His cousin Chenisia had
(24:11):
gone missing. A lot of these people had had missing
women and girls in their lives, and they said, we're
gonna do the best we can with this project, and
so we did it. It's a true crimes podcast through
Audible series. There's ten episodes. And we sent her to
Mika Houston, who went missing in two thousands for just
(24:32):
before her twenty five birthday. Um it turns out she
was killed and murdered buying an acquaintance, UM, a so
called boyfriend, whether we know that not to be true
or not. And she kept haunting people and their dreams
and talking to Sye Gigs psycho who would actually helped
find the police find her all these years. So with
(24:55):
her permission, I asked her if she would allow us
to tell her story and as long as she sort
of kept a little distance from me because I said,
I don't know whether I believe in any of that
or not, but I know you're talking to people and
I hear you through them. So if you let me,
you will tell your story as a true crime story,
but also as a ghost story and neo noir story.
(25:17):
They would tell the real, three dimensional version of who
this girl was. Why was that important? Because if she's
only seen based upon the most salacious facts around her
death and demise, she's putting again into um what I
call the culture ghetto. I wanted her to be a
non genus. I wanted her to be seen as a
(25:37):
person who had flaws herself and who it might have
stepped into a boundary she didn't understand, but who also
was young and beautiful and had young love and dreams
and those types of things, and the type of of real,
generous person she was. So that's what it is. It's
called finding to people. Finding TMKA is a podcast, it's
an audio series, and then you also have a graphics
(25:57):
series that you've done which is now getting into an
f T is like how do you keep diversifying the
places and the mediums through what you're making things I
amy only do that because and I shouldn't say only.
It's given me an opportunity to build my skill sets.
But it's because you can't seem to walk down the
(26:19):
road on a straight freeway, you know, you always have
to do detours because there's people who say no to you.
So I have a graphic novel series called Concrete Park.
We went out me and my ex husband who's also
a creative partner of mine, Tony per Year. Tony wrote
is the first African America to write a movie that
made over a hundred million dollars. He wrote Eracer. With
(26:41):
all he had accomplished what I had accomplished, we went
out and we pitched this series or film that we
were trying to do. We went a lot of places
and a lot of mostly executives. Actually all of them
were white, and some of them really took it on seriously.
But like this is cool because Tony was very visual.
He had a background as James Patterson's pro jay and advertising,
(27:01):
so he knew how to lay out things and he
always had a great eye. He's a really wonderful artist
that way. But with all that, could not get out
of that, and we had a really faithful meeting with
an executive um at a studio who was the president
of the studio, and we started to pitch our idea
Comfrey Parker. He said, let me stop you right there.
He said, black people don't like science fiction because they
(27:23):
don't see themselves in the future. We looked at him,
we were wondering why. And he tells us about this
movie they made and from one comment from an audience
member when they did the focus test, there was a
young man in the audience who kept looking at the
screen after it was over and stayed there and they said,
do you have any questions, sir, And he said, yeah,
I just want to know how that get to Mars. Now,
(27:43):
this is a story that's being told to us by
the president of a studio. And well Tony stops him.
He says, let me tell you something about black people.
Who says, for black people to past this painful, the
president precarious, but the future is free. We always live
in the future. He said, you got your whole American
future from black people. He said, we're the aliens that
you took from across the ocean to rock your world,
(28:04):
to make your planets to world, and that's why you
have rock and roll in blues and wrap and R
and B and all these things. And by the way,
he says, you may not know this, but two of
the biggest science fiction writers in the world, Samuel Delaney
and Octavia Butler, And if you haven't been paying attention,
Will Smith is the number one science fiction star in
(28:25):
the world at the time. He had done independence in
a minute, black all that, and this dude to no
one had ever interrupted his diet tribe or his rant,
so needless to say, he wasn't gonna be funding our
thing or take it on. And we were walking out
of this feeling a little more than a little down
because we've waited so long and we've gone everywhere. And
(28:45):
Tony said, oh fuck it, I'll draw it. And he
taught himself after me how to draw an illustrate comics.
So then by the end of the year we were
a dark horse published comic. We were the best American comic.
But were we trying to be comic book creators? No,
we were just trying to be filmmakers. But we became
comic bookmakers. I became a podcast creator to make of
(29:08):
something about a story that they probably wouldn't tell on
film and television. I became a director to tell the
reparation story because I thought it was important and I
knew the players. So that's what I'm doing. It's building
out a resume of skills, but it really would be
nice if I could just act, Like, now a quick break.
(29:33):
You married the second man you ever dated, and you
were married for twenty years. What hasn't been like since
the divorce? He's your creative partner, Like, what's your relationship? Like? Again,
I'm a preacher's daughter. I didn't go out much. I've
been working in film and television since I was fourteen.
I didn't hang out of bars. I didn't go to
dropped out of college to go on that tour with
(29:53):
the Royal Shakespeare. So all the places I might have
met people, I didn't. And then I was working in
these when he six shows a year with Living Single,
that's a play a week. You don't get out. And
my manager calls me and said that an artist wanted
to paint me. That's all you have to say to
an actress. Of course, I want to meet this artist.
(30:16):
And so they set up a dinner at a restaurant
in Venice, and uh, he insulted me in some way,
and I remember going, how dare he? How dare he
insult me? He said something, Um, it was just sort
of dismissive, and I didn't know. I was pretty vulnerable
about maybe how I came off and um, but I
(30:36):
still wanted to let him paint me. So I showed
up for the photography and he took some pictures and
the whole time, he says, yapping his butt off and
talking a mile a minute, and I go, this is
person knows more than anybody have ever met. I've never
seen anything like this before. And he's talking about Motown,
he's talking about plants, he's talking about this, he's talking
about that. He's talking about how the world Internet is
(30:58):
gonna sho show up. And he's got all these computers
on his floor and boxes that he's bought with all
his Eraser money. And he says, I don't know what
what's gonna happen, Erica, but content will be keen. And
he was right. At the time, there was dial up
and all the stuff, and no one knew what the
web was. And I kept telling person people I was
dating somebody who was on the Worldwide Web, and people
(31:18):
are like, what are you talking about? But I thought
he was the future, not just for me, but in
his mind and out of his mouth. I was so
enamored with what he knew. And at the time, I
think because I hadn't gone to college, that sort of
pulled me in. I had insecurities about my own knowledge
and about my own grasp of what the world was.
(31:41):
I think that was a lot of the attraction. And plus,
Tony is very charismatic, and I like charismatic strong men.
And I met his mother. She was a strong woman.
She had married a black man and had been disowned
by her own family. And Dorothy was a white woman
that you did not trifle with. She had estabbed in
New York Queens Library, you know, the Langston Hughes collection.
(32:04):
She was a race woman in her own way. She
was an abolitionist. And I thought, wow, that's a version
of a type of woman that I hadn't seen except
for people like Hillary Clinton, and I had seen them
in the black and and in brown. But I really
just thought, I I'd like to be her. So I
fell in love with with his mother and his father,
(32:25):
and his father was a world too, veteran and classy
and had been a pullman porter and had done union
munitions and equipment in UM World War Two, and he
had a story to tell. But he was also a
pioneering salesman. I wrote a script that went viral online
Madman script called Uptown Saturday Night, and it was talking
(32:46):
about his life Leon Early or Leon per year. He
was an adopted person too, and so there was a
lot of things that mapped on. I got married to
Tony and then I realized we just didn't get along
right now was great friends, but we didn't get along.
We weren't necessarily a match there, and so I stayed
twenty years, twenty years to figure that out. I mean,
(33:08):
what happens after twenty years that you're friendly, like you
know what? This is the day I'm just gonna break
this thing up because I didn't want to survive it anymore.
I wanted to thrive at something that I thought was
more in line with who I was supposed to be.
And we were both miserable and we knew it. Um
at that point, you're not even being intimate the way
you need to be. So how can you really say
that you have a partnership? You can be friends and
(33:31):
you want the best for each other, and some of
the wanting the best for each other is admitting that's
not necessarily a match in that way. I had are
still started to listen to different versions of what love
could be. Listen to Alan de Botton who's talking about
romanticism and how we've sort of locked into that as
opposed to really realizing what partnership in relationships are. I
(33:51):
had to re learn that this whole thing we're seeing
on TV was a bunch of bullcrap, and they fed
it to us wholesale, especially as women, that we're supposed
to have this thing and we're supposed to be so mates.
And also the crap they didn't really teach us any
real skill sets about how to build a relationship and
what it would look like if it went raw. And
they say, oh, go to go to therapy, But what
(34:11):
if the other person doesn't want to get the therapy,
or what if nothing comes of that, or what if
you're just misaligned? Is it possible that you're not selling
out your background? Someone like me saying well that's against God,
and said, well God's not living with him. I am shoot,
I mean, what am I supposed to do? So I
I just did what I thought was best for me
at the time, and I knew I was a decent person,
(34:33):
and I wanted to get out of position to not
be happy when I was at home and not feel
like I was um also leaning into the worst version
of myself because I'm taking out my frustration on this
man and this relationship as opposed to being the really
up beat person I knew I could be. So we
parted and and then and um, that's why we're friends, said,
(34:56):
everyone goes. I can't believe how friendly you are with
Tony's like, he's never left. I said, he will never leave.
He's I didn't leave him because he was a bad man.
I left because I knew there was a better version
of us somewhere. So we're gonna do the speed round,
and I will ask the first question, Erica, who leaves
you star struck? I love politicians, I love people, grassroots organizers.
(35:20):
I'm star struck by Stacey Abrams. I of course would
be starstruck if I could be by Harry Tubman and
Shirley Chisholm, those people. I was star struck definitely by
Hillary Clinton, but as I came to know her and
saw the work that she did and the sacrifice she
had made. Um. It grounded me and made me realize
(35:40):
just how human people are, and they can create wicked
which is out of all of us. But we have
to find a way to communicate the goodness and the
humanity and us all. What book are you reading right now?
I'm reading Cormick McCarthy's um the Uh. It's something about
a child something child whatever, but a Cormick piccard book.
I really love him and I think he's a fantastic writer.
(36:03):
What is your nighttime routine? My nighttime routine is I
always because I'm an actress, I always washed and take
my makeup. I always take a shower always. UM. I
feel like water is healing. I want to wash the
day off, and it makes me feel fresh in my nest.
What is your favorite way to spend a day off.
My favorite thing to do is look through my stuff.
(36:24):
I don't know that sounds crazy, but I like to
rummage through and and look through the books or the
papers on the floor. I see ideas written down that
I might have gotten to. I see um suggestions that
people might have given me. I just like to be
like some sort of free range child, but like I'm
a free range human and just do whatever I want
(36:45):
without any conversation about time or any any spills. A
little reckless, but that's what I like. I like to
rummage through my stuff. Okay, so Lou Burns is our
secret weapon. Lou has been listening to this episode and
he always asks the final and usually the best question,
No pressure live. I'm just blown away at your perspective.
(37:11):
It is powerful and I'm listening to you and I
imagine I'm like they need to put you on like
the View, you know those type of shows where we're
where people were talking about things. You have a perspective
that's just like enrich In like full you know, I'll
tell you good story about over who I saw last week.
(37:32):
I had not seen Wipbi Goldberg. And since we did
Long Walk Home, which was a movie with Sissy Spaceic
about the Montgomery bussing in Alabama and um I was
filming the Wu Tang Clan Wu Tang Shout out to
them and we were in New Jersey and um we
were filming near her and the woman's house that was
(37:54):
owned that we were filming filming, and said, I'm gonna
bring my friend over and it was whippy. Goldberg said, Whoopy,
I haven't seen you since then. It was like weird
because I was like twenty nine when I did that film.
Octavia Spencer was one of the pas. We all played
together in the parking lot in Alabama. This is how
long ago it was. And I said to I said,
(38:15):
do you see what your effect on me and my dna?
I said, the Max braids. That's because I had just
worked with her. That's Whoopie go for, I said, Felicia Rashad.
I had just worked with her. I was playing a lawyer.
I kind of was doing my best Felicia rasha but
in my own funky way. Cecily Tyson. I had just
worked or met her actually, and she told me, don't
(38:38):
you ever let anybody tell you what to do with
your hair. And so I had the strength to do
these things and move forward. But they were all imprinting
on me. And I said, I hope you know how
grateful I am. And I got a chance to say
thank you, so thanks for mentioning the view. I saw
the route tank and I never saw you play a
role like that before. Thank you. You know, you know,
(38:59):
here's the thing about um Rison, who I call Bobby.
He said, you know Erica, he said, Arika. In order
to um you know, have you get that role of Linda?
Linda did? I had to ask all my brothers and sisters,
you know, if you it was cool. He has eleven
brothers and sisters. I was like, for real, but I
(39:22):
I was honored because I said, you mean eleven children
approved and said she can play our mother. So I said,
I'll do my best. And then again I asked Miss Linda.
I said, Miss Linda, your children want to see you.
I don't know what it is. They already seeing me,
so just let me get out of the way and
I'll do my best, you know, to to show up
for you because they miss you. And that's what I did.
(39:45):
It's fun to be on the Hutang clan. I was
over there playing around Mari VM people's just doing his thing.
We're doing all sorts of themed episodes on season three,
so you gotta check that out. And then also I'm
on The Run the World, which is on Stars playing
the Great bar Ballot, which co created by Evtney Bowser
who did Living Single. So all some of the things
that you think are taken away from you. They're given
(40:06):
to you tenfold, pressed down and push, you know, falling
over as they say, and I'm I'm wait before I
might be the world's biggest Erica Alexander Fan I really
like her. She's seriously awesome. For sense of purpose is
very unusual, and you don't see that in a lot
of people. And I think when you meet her or
(40:28):
you listen to her, you're like, of course she's successful
because she's like she's a badass. I would always bet
on Erica. That is a good way to put it.
I would always bet on Erica. She is incredibly direct
and authentic, and it's clear that she's had that sense
of purpose that you talk about since she was really young.
And it's really interesting to hear her talk about how
(40:49):
she has worked not only in TV, Button theater, Button film,
and then graphic novels, podcasts, activism right gone into all
of these. A friend Arena I thought one thing that
was like super honest and very it made me appreciate
her even more. She was like, I love to act.
I wish I could just act all the time, but
(41:09):
because there's not enough roles written for me or creative
for people who look like me, I've had to become
a writer, I've had to become a producer and activist.
I thought that was striking. I think the thing, the
one thing I would add to everything Erica said to
us which was incredible, is that she's also really really
fun in real life, Like she is the most fun
(41:30):
And to me, I think that's really interesting because sometimes
the people who are brilliant at their craft and work
so so hard are not that, but Erica is that. Well.
When she came to our Alaska Airlines event, like she
was the life of the party. She really was. She was.
She was a huge personality. She made everyone feel comfortable.
She was warm and friendly to everyone, and you don't
(41:52):
often see that, especially with someone who's had such great
success like she has. Thanks for listening to What's Her
Story with Sam and Amy. We would appreciate it if
you leave a review wherever you get your podcasts, and
of course, connect with us on social media at What's
Her Story podcast. What's Her Story with Sam and Amy
(42:12):
is powered by my company, The Riveter at The Riveter
dot c O and Sam's company, park Place Payments at
park place payments dot com. Thanks to our producer Stacy
Parra and our male perspective. Blue burns,
I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to What's
Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a show
about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and personal journeys. Together,
we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors, and leaders
of the world's most iconic brands. Listen every Thursday or
join the conversation anytime on Instagram at What's Her Story Podcast.
(00:30):
Erica Alexander is an award winning actress, best known for
her roles as Pam Tucker on The Cosby Show and
Maxine Shaw on Living Single. She also stars in films
like the award winning Get Out. Most people who dream
of becoming an actress, you know, think of having to
(00:51):
go through many, many years of auditions before they get
that first role. But your breakthrough came super asked, how
did that happen? I was attending an arts program, performing
arts program in Philadelphia in the Freedom Theater. It's called
New Freedom Theater. It was a six week program and
in the fifth week movie came to town, the merchant
(01:12):
Ivory Film, and they were looking for black girls and
Latina girls to auditions for the film, and so we
were all encouraged to do it, and so we did,
and after several auditions and you know, a few weeks
went by, they made their choice and I was the
lead in it. And it was a film called My
Little Girl, and I got um not only a chance
(01:34):
to you know, being a professional setting, but also get
a SAG card and gave me healthcare and things like that.
So there were other opportunities that were connected to it
that were really consequential for me. But it was just
a matter of sort of being picked in a big
open call, which is pretty unusual. And merchant Ivory is
kind of like the the holy Grail for actors. I mean,
(01:57):
that's no shabby first all man, you know what merchant
Tiree is, but most people don't because it doesn't even
exist anymore. But before Merrimax, it was considered a very
high toned production company, certainly coming out of England, and
they did a lot of work with Helen and Bonnet
Carter and and that type of thing. Very English, you know,
(02:18):
very polished. But this was unusual. It was a woman,
Connie Kaiserman, who was making her film debut. This was
her experience. She was a white young woman who went
to school in the sort of the higher toned area
of Philadelphia, and she did a summer program and she
was very influenced by this young woman she met in
(02:41):
it and I should say a girl and it was
called My Little Girl, and so this was her conversation
about her experience, and it was an opportunity for me,
but it was her story. What do you really remember
most about the first film you ever did being chosen
at all? I guess I remember more being um feeling
guilty because I had just joined the program and there
(03:03):
were girls who had gone to New Freedom Theater for
many years. So it was a summer program that I
was in, but it was on the year. It had
girls going all year around. So if you've ever gone
to ballet school or that type of thing, they might
have a special summer program, but there are girls who
are ballerinas who come all the time. And Genese Roderick
was the person I was up against when it came
(03:25):
down to it, and everyone kept saying, Oh, Genese is
gonna get it, Genese is gonna get it. And I
had no film or television or any sort of background
with acting that much except for that experience, and then
I ended up getting it, and Genese was from Philly
and I was from Arizona. So I felt like I
was an interloper, and I felt really guilty, and I
didn't know that that would be the case. I didn't
(03:46):
think that they picked me. So I remember that an
overwhelming sense of guilt. And then how soon after that
did you land on the Cosby Show? Many years went by,
It seems like many years I did. Then it was
about after school specials and there were mini series that
were being done. That was the age of the mini series.
So I did George Washington to Forging a Nation. I
(04:07):
played the slave owning with Martha Washington slave who I
found it later ran away, and George Washington pursued her
his whole time until he died. He was really limited
person in that way. And Um. Then I did a
tour around the world with the Royal Shakespeare Theater. We
did the movie in Paris. I had already done some
plays in the public with Joseph pat and that's where
(04:29):
Camille Cosby saw me. Camil Cosby is the best friend
of Gloria Foster, and I was at the Public Theater
playing um Joseph Papp's last play The Forbidden City by
Bill Gunn and apparently she went home and said to
Bill Cosby, her husband, You've got to see Gloria in
this this uh theater pieces off Broadway show which Gloria's
(04:52):
genius actors. She was the woman who was in the
Matrix who said, um light skinned woman who said to
Keanu Reeves, have a cookie, you'll feel writer's reign. She
was a light skinned woman. She didn't do a lot
of film work, but she was fantastic and didn't get
her opportunity. There was amazing theater actress. Apparently he's she
said to build got to see Gloria and this girl
(05:13):
I was the girl she was talking about. He never
saw the play. But I had been auditioning for the
Cosby Show for years because it was the only game
in town. If you were black. There weren't that many
shows for you to be on. If you're black young,
there were very few things you could be on. So
maybe Rosanne, maybe Cosby Show, a Law and Order that
was it, or an after school special. And so I
was brought in. I was called to his house. Could
(05:36):
you be to his house in an hour? And Cash
and director met me there and he created the growth
of cousin pan for me on the spot. But apparently
I was a gift for his wife. That's what I
was told. How has the legacy of Bill Cosby impacted
you to today? Yeah, you know. It was a fantastic opportunity.
(05:58):
I mean again, it was the only game in town.
You weren't going to be cast as an on Jennu
anywhere except maybe on stage, which was a typical place
where I was casting a GENUW. But if you were
young and I was in my team, still they didn't
place black females in roles that of oh' Juliet or
damnsel and distress or the object of desire, any of
those things. Scarlet your hands and or any of these
(06:19):
people now might be you had to wait to be
a foster child, as slave or prostitute. Those are my
first roles. But when I got on the Cosby Show,
that was the biggest you place you could be. And
for him to have created a role for me for
whatever reason, I was told by a stranger that I
was a gift and he knew he knew a lot
(06:39):
of details that only somebody very close to one of
them would know, So I I knew he knew he
was what he was talking about I didn't know at
the time that it was perhaps through Camille Cosby conjoining
him to go to the play, and then maybe as
some kind of again, I don't know what their relationship is.
Like he gave her, you know, he said, Okay, call
(07:03):
this young lady to my house and and and then
gave me a role. So that's a weird thing. Just
happens to be a byproduct of it. But it changed
my life because suddenly I was doing film and theater,
but I was on the big show in America in
the last road they created for the show. I grew
up in an era when the Cosby Show was like
(07:25):
it right, like I would look forward to Thursdays because
the Cosby Show is on. And even for me, it's
very hard to sort of reconcile what I thought of
as such a highlight, a joyous childhood memory with who
built Cosby turned out to be? How has that been
for you? Who was so much more deeply affected by it.
(07:47):
It's unfortunate that he wasn't who we all thought he was.
There's almost nothing more to say. If you grew up
with somebody and they turn out to be, uh, you know,
have very complicated history with women, and that's being kind.
And then also the accusations are so profound, you know,
(08:09):
it's like you wonder who you were working with. Here's
what I can say about that. I'm preacher's daughter, and
I have always lived in a world of contradictions, because
who shows up at churches but sinners and people who
are not always what they seem, including pastors and teachers
and all sorts of other people. So he's not unlike
anybody who's in this human condition, who may present a
(08:33):
false face and then once it's exposed, everyone's a little destroyed. Um,
he more than most people, had influence of great majority
of the world because of what he stood for with
children and his commitment to education and HBC used what
he did for black people. It's extraordinary. So I come
(08:53):
to reckon it with it the way everyone else does,
except that I never thought that anybody was perfect, and
there's a lot of people who really put people on pedestals. Obviously,
this is more than just talking about a simple flaw
or fault. This is talking about assault, This is talking
about rape. This is talking about using your power to
(09:16):
put people who are not in the position that you're
in in a place that not only destroys their self esteem,
but can affect their lives for a very long time.
So I think that we talk a lot about Bill
Cosby because there's been a lot of men with those
powers that have been allowed to prosper and been a
(09:37):
propped up by corporations who are making money off of them,
and um, we should all endeavor to make sure that
they can't prosper. More importantly, that they can be if
they've done these things, held accountable because of that contradiction.
Is there any part of you that that roots for
him and all of this? What I do is I
(09:59):
root for the healing of spirit obviously that come from
a very dark spot. And so I wouldn't be my
father's daughter if I said here and were rooted for
his demise. I couldn't be a black person in America
and not have compassion for our position because we were
raped and assaulted for hundreds of years on this land
(10:21):
with impunity, and what did it teach us to hurt others?
I don't know his entire background. What I do know
is that he was in a position of learning. He
was a he was a doctor, he had been exalted,
and there was a lot of ways he could have
gotten help, But I think that that type of thing
acting on you, you don't get to help you need
(10:42):
because you don't know you're sick. I don't know what
it is. I'm not even qualified to talk about it.
All I know is he gave me a job, he
gave me an opportunity, and he was one of the
most profoundly transformational characters in American history, not black people
in American history. And how can you root for anything
(11:05):
except for healing all over? It seems to like throughout
at least the early years of your career. And I'm
curious that this is still today. You have been placed
in an arena of you are a black actress or
you are a black creator, and that only certain roles
are available. Is that still? Is that still the industry? Yes,
(11:26):
it is, it's still the industry. It's hard to talk
about it without seeing that you're downing things. But colorism
is real, and so if you're blond and you're blue eyed,
and you're a woman, they're more likely to be seen
as something that's again protected and more the ideal of
what a true American woman is. And then it falls off.
(11:49):
At that point you know, dark haired white women, you
know less. So then you go to brown skinned Latina,
Middle Eastern all that. Then you go to light skinned
black women, you know, and then you go to dark
skinned women like me and Biola and Octavia Spencer and
those types of things. And if you look at what
(12:10):
the types of roles we typically get to play, and
I'm not talking about now, there's a little bit more,
much more variety, but overall, it is the help. It
is the the nurturer, the caregiver, the nanny. This that
because those are positions of white people are used to
seeing us in UM. I think that with that power,
(12:31):
I think white women haven't done as much as they
needed to do to create opportunities for characters to do that.
Thank God for shan To Rhymes she did UM. Up
until that point, Diane Carroll was the only black woman
on network TV whoever had a show UM, And that
to me is unacceptable. There have been white women in
positions who could have created that. But then again, I
(12:53):
imagine they might have and they ran into the big
daddy at the door at the studio that said, no,
So have we been in positions to do better? Perhaps
have we had enough power to push through maybe not.
I mean I try to look at the whole piece.
There's stomach issues, there's the will, there are people who
(13:13):
have the will but not the way. And then more importantly,
there's how comfortable do we feel? As Violet Davis said
in some clip I saw all the other day with
her doing E Pray Love, and we need to start
seeing them essential sexual, powerful people but also complicated, three dimensional.
The way that we're talking about Cosby is the way
(13:33):
we should talk about all men and characters. It seems
optically when you read and you see the data like
the last couple of years have been sort of a
racial reckoning in America, where there are more quotas and
more attention and more interest in diversifying what we see
(13:54):
on the screen, whether it's TV or film. Has that
not hit Hollywood? In reality? That more just optics or
do you feel the change? There's definite change, except the
optics make it look like there's more change than there is.
If you ask the people who do the data studies
that you see l A, they say everything's expanded. All
(14:14):
sorts of opportunities have expanded. There's more channels, they're more um,
you know, platforms for people to have um content. But
then they do the data and the percentage still is
almost the same. So I think that people are seeing
more because there's more ways into your consciousness, but it
doesn't necessarily mean that it's having impact or it's as
(14:37):
much as we think. So I don't want to say
that there's not real movement there. The almost certainly is.
And people see one black Panther movie and say, oh, look,
Marvel did a black Panther movie. Um, and let's give
props to the great Jack Kim Kirby and and stand
leave for creating black hero within the Marvel universe. And
that's cool, But look at how many other Marvel movies
(15:00):
there are with White Year Roads. I mean, you know
that's one and that took how many years, like Forever,
and then, um, people might say, well what about women
as it? Well, you've got one of the women, you've
got you know, these types of different things. It's not
enough going on for women. There's nothing going on for
disabled people. Well maybe okay, we had their devil who's blind,
you know, that type of thing. And then what do
(15:22):
we do for agism? You know, let's talk about that.
I mean, there's so many marginalized people and indigenous almost
they're not even seen. The Asians are stepping up and
putting a lot of their efforts inside of You see
crazy rich Aasans, You see you know Shang Chai chi
going on. It's a powerful transition happening right now. In
(15:46):
twenty eighteen, there were more children of color being born
in America than white children. Is certainly gonna be a
rebrowning of America and the world, which is a majority
of color. World were now with its own weapons and
its own entertainment take center state, So you know happen
well right now as we're seeing it, it's probably not
(16:09):
as profound as people think. And now a quick break.
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You grew up in Arizona until you were eleven or twelve,
and you're one of six kids, one of six? Yes,
(16:52):
what's your relationship with your family like now? My father
has passed away, my mother is still here. She's very
much central to how I think she was. They were
both orphans and one of six. Um. I always say,
I spent the first seleven years of my life in
a hotel called Starlife of Root sixty six. I'm very pragmatic.
I believe in doing your best right now to help
(17:15):
a system that only can change if people care enough
to participate. And UM, I think that that's the real
difference is that I don't buy into fairy tales too
much because I haven't seen one yet. And um, all
I see is hard work and people making sacrifices and
no matter what they're suffering or enduring, trying to promote
(17:38):
unity and or love in some kind of real world way.
So I love my mother. She's UM. If I get
any of my imagination or any of my sweetness, If
I have any sweetness, it comes from her. From her.
She's a very beautiful person and very kind and naive,
and yet very wise. People call her like black Yoda.
(18:03):
And my father was a real firebrand. He was charismatic,
he was handsome in a black way, dark skin, he
had to go tooth on his front, tooth um. That
was when it was something that was a prestige and
status and not some sort of rapper persona. And he
also was, like I said, when a man of many parts.
(18:26):
He wasn't necessarily what he always showed himself to be
the people. He was ridiculously talented and seen as a healer.
He had been a boy preacher from since he was six,
and back in the Punecostal tradition, you can be a
preacher that young, but you're also used in kind of
because he was so talented, I think he learned the
(18:47):
wrong lessons and he saw too much of of people
taking advantage of him. But then he also learned it
because he was so good. And this is no shade
to white people. They've never seen anything like him except
for Martin Luther King and these types of really powerful,
charismatic black men that were coming out of the sixties,
(19:08):
and they wanted a little piece of that necesanities. And
so I think when the Lutheran Church took him up.
They saw an opportunity to support and have a new
voice in there in their midst and I think they
were smart to do so. But I also thought and
my father took advantage of this sort of crush they
had on him. And I find that at different times
in America, we we find these black men and were
(19:29):
getting we fall in love with them, get crushes, and
we don't often see exactly who they are, or we
don't support who they need to be. And I think
black people are the same way that we have a profound,
weird relationship with whiteness that's been put on us. So
I'm not blaming us. I'm just saying that we are
at odds at it at all times. And it's so
(19:52):
weird how we're all woven together in this world and
we don't see that we have each other's blood. We
have Irish blood and the Scottish, all this stuff. We're
cousins with cousins through the struggle with cousins through actual
blood blood, and yet we sat here and fight and
have all these deformities in psychological mental incapacities, and um,
(20:13):
we really are in UM. I just think America is
so much there's so much for our future that we
could learn from each other, but we can't if we
see each other's is not family, and we are profoundly family.
Speaking of how much there is to do in the world,
how do you choose where to put your efforts? There's
(20:35):
only one of you, so which causes and which efforts
have you chosen? Uh? As as the place is to
put your attention, I put my attention mostly on women
and girls. I think that women are an example of
sustainable future for us all. I think that they always
(20:56):
make the village better. I was the most traveled surrogate
for Hillary Clinton, and she sent me around the world
to learn from people and be around people who I
could have a template for in a blueprint. I'm grateful
to her for that. She because of that, I was
around uh John Lewis and got a chance to produce
(21:18):
her his his documentary Good Trouble. Because of her, I've
met Maya Angel, Louin Um, Jana van Zandt, and Stephanie Tubbs,
and Sheila jack Jackson Lee. I just did a reparations
documentary that follows Sheila Jackson Lee with HR forty and
Reparations and Robert Rue Simmons, the all the women who
passed the first reparations bill in American history, and we
(21:39):
watched that in real time when it never happened again,
but she did it. These are women, and I've met
amazing women running Google with all these diversity and diversity positions.
I've met you, I've met Amy. I think I've I'm
most likely drawn to strong women because I don't believe
that they get enough help. People think that they have
(21:59):
a lot of power and have it all together because
they're so massively um able. What they're often the least supported,
and people are scared of. Often strong women, I'm not UM.
I see them as being profoundly vulnerable, and um, if
we're going to win this world, I'm going to help
(22:20):
the people who I feel like will be the most
attacked and could use hopefully the strength and how I
see them to shield them a little bit from the
world and say I see you, and what can I
do to help talk to us about finding Tamika. I
was sometimes speak at I don't know events or for causes,
(22:41):
but um, I was speaking somewhere in Alabama, and there
was a black man named David Person who I stayed
in touch with him, when do you kind of touch
with me? And said, Erica, there's this woman that I met.
Her name is Rebecca Howard. Her nice went missing in
two thousand five, Tamika Houston and Tonika Houston. UM is
the poster child for black and missing women and girls
(23:04):
and this phenomenon that Quinn Eiffel, the great journalist called
the missing White women's syndrome, and maybe you could do
something about it in a podcast that would really be enlightening,
enlightening and UM. I have a partner in Ben arn
On at color Farm Media, and we have been doing
film and telling. We call ourselves the Mottown of film,
television and Tech, and we've been trying to find really
(23:27):
great partners and we said, why not, We'll take this on.
I have to tell you, I didn't think that it
would get any funding, because it's the hardest thing to
ever do. We do fun things project by project. But
we went out with it. And I had just done
The Breakfast Club with Charlemagne the God and he had
asked me to do a preparations podcast with the Black Effect,
(23:47):
and so we didn't a companion piece. Since we were
doing the documentary. We knew it would take so much time.
But he said, yo, Queen, remember that other thing you
pitched me finding Tamika. I just got a deal at
Audible with Kevin Hard. Why don't you come over there
and do it there. So that's what we did last year.
We geared up and we did fighting. Tamika found James T. Green,
who was a great executive producer. His cousin Chenisia had
(24:11):
gone missing. A lot of these people had had missing
women and girls in their lives, and they said, we're
gonna do the best we can with this project, and
so we did it. It's a true crimes podcast through
Audible series. There's ten episodes. And we sent her to
Mika Houston, who went missing in two thousands for just
(24:32):
before her twenty five birthday. Um it turns out she
was killed and murdered buying an acquaintance, UM, a so
called boyfriend, whether we know that not to be true
or not. And she kept haunting people and their dreams
and talking to Sye Gigs psycho who would actually helped
find the police find her all these years. So with
(24:55):
her permission, I asked her if she would allow us
to tell her story and as long as she sort
of kept a little distance from me because I said,
I don't know whether I believe in any of that
or not, but I know you're talking to people and
I hear you through them. So if you let me,
you will tell your story as a true crime story,
but also as a ghost story and neo noir story.
(25:17):
They would tell the real, three dimensional version of who
this girl was. Why was that important? Because if she's
only seen based upon the most salacious facts around her
death and demise, she's putting again into um what I
call the culture ghetto. I wanted her to be a
non genus. I wanted her to be seen as a
(25:37):
person who had flaws herself and who it might have
stepped into a boundary she didn't understand, but who also
was young and beautiful and had young love and dreams
and those types of things, and the type of of real,
generous person she was. So that's what it is. It's
called finding to people. Finding TMKA is a podcast, it's
an audio series, and then you also have a graphics
(25:57):
series that you've done which is now getting into an
f T is like how do you keep diversifying the
places and the mediums through what you're making things I
amy only do that because and I shouldn't say only.
It's given me an opportunity to build my skill sets.
But it's because you can't seem to walk down the
(26:19):
road on a straight freeway, you know, you always have
to do detours because there's people who say no to you.
So I have a graphic novel series called Concrete Park.
We went out me and my ex husband who's also
a creative partner of mine, Tony per Year. Tony wrote
is the first African America to write a movie that
made over a hundred million dollars. He wrote Eracer. With
(26:41):
all he had accomplished what I had accomplished, we went
out and we pitched this series or film that we
were trying to do. We went a lot of places
and a lot of mostly executives. Actually all of them
were white, and some of them really took it on seriously.
But like this is cool because Tony was very visual.
He had a background as James Patterson's pro jay and advertising,
(27:01):
so he knew how to lay out things and he
always had a great eye. He's a really wonderful artist
that way. But with all that, could not get out
of that, and we had a really faithful meeting with
an executive um at a studio who was the president
of the studio, and we started to pitch our idea
Comfrey Parker. He said, let me stop you right there.
He said, black people don't like science fiction because they
(27:23):
don't see themselves in the future. We looked at him,
we were wondering why. And he tells us about this
movie they made and from one comment from an audience
member when they did the focus test, there was a
young man in the audience who kept looking at the
screen after it was over and stayed there and they said,
do you have any questions, sir, And he said, yeah,
I just want to know how that get to Mars. Now,
(27:43):
this is a story that's being told to us by
the president of a studio. And well Tony stops him.
He says, let me tell you something about black people.
Who says, for black people to past this painful, the
president precarious, but the future is free. We always live
in the future. He said, you got your whole American
future from black people. He said, we're the aliens that
you took from across the ocean to rock your world,
(28:04):
to make your planets to world, and that's why you
have rock and roll in blues and wrap and R
and B and all these things. And by the way,
he says, you may not know this, but two of
the biggest science fiction writers in the world, Samuel Delaney
and Octavia Butler, And if you haven't been paying attention,
Will Smith is the number one science fiction star in
(28:25):
the world at the time. He had done independence in
a minute, black all that, and this dude to no
one had ever interrupted his diet tribe or his rant,
so needless to say, he wasn't gonna be funding our
thing or take it on. And we were walking out
of this feeling a little more than a little down
because we've waited so long and we've gone everywhere. And
(28:45):
Tony said, oh fuck it, I'll draw it. And he
taught himself after me how to draw an illustrate comics.
So then by the end of the year we were
a dark horse published comic. We were the best American comic.
But were we trying to be comic book creators? No,
we were just trying to be filmmakers. But we became
comic bookmakers. I became a podcast creator to make of
(29:08):
something about a story that they probably wouldn't tell on
film and television. I became a director to tell the
reparation story because I thought it was important and I
knew the players. So that's what I'm doing. It's building
out a resume of skills, but it really would be
nice if I could just act, Like, now a quick break.
(29:33):
You married the second man you ever dated, and you
were married for twenty years. What hasn't been like since
the divorce? He's your creative partner, Like, what's your relationship? Like? Again,
I'm a preacher's daughter. I didn't go out much. I've
been working in film and television since I was fourteen.
I didn't hang out of bars. I didn't go to
dropped out of college to go on that tour with
(29:53):
the Royal Shakespeare. So all the places I might have
met people, I didn't. And then I was working in
these when he six shows a year with Living Single,
that's a play a week. You don't get out. And
my manager calls me and said that an artist wanted
to paint me. That's all you have to say to
an actress. Of course, I want to meet this artist.
(30:16):
And so they set up a dinner at a restaurant
in Venice, and uh, he insulted me in some way,
and I remember going, how dare he? How dare he
insult me? He said something, Um, it was just sort
of dismissive, and I didn't know. I was pretty vulnerable
about maybe how I came off and um, but I
(30:36):
still wanted to let him paint me. So I showed
up for the photography and he took some pictures and
the whole time, he says, yapping his butt off and
talking a mile a minute, and I go, this is
person knows more than anybody have ever met. I've never
seen anything like this before. And he's talking about Motown,
he's talking about plants, he's talking about this, he's talking
about that. He's talking about how the world Internet is
(30:58):
gonna sho show up. And he's got all these computers
on his floor and boxes that he's bought with all
his Eraser money. And he says, I don't know what
what's gonna happen, Erica, but content will be keen. And
he was right. At the time, there was dial up
and all the stuff, and no one knew what the
web was. And I kept telling person people I was
dating somebody who was on the Worldwide Web, and people
(31:18):
are like, what are you talking about? But I thought
he was the future, not just for me, but in
his mind and out of his mouth. I was so
enamored with what he knew. And at the time, I
think because I hadn't gone to college, that sort of
pulled me in. I had insecurities about my own knowledge
and about my own grasp of what the world was.
(31:41):
I think that was a lot of the attraction. And plus,
Tony is very charismatic, and I like charismatic strong men.
And I met his mother. She was a strong woman.
She had married a black man and had been disowned
by her own family. And Dorothy was a white woman
that you did not trifle with. She had estabbed in
New York Queens Library, you know, the Langston Hughes collection.
(32:04):
She was a race woman in her own way. She
was an abolitionist. And I thought, wow, that's a version
of a type of woman that I hadn't seen except
for people like Hillary Clinton, and I had seen them
in the black and and in brown. But I really
just thought, I I'd like to be her. So I
fell in love with with his mother and his father,
(32:25):
and his father was a world too, veteran and classy
and had been a pullman porter and had done union
munitions and equipment in UM World War Two, and he
had a story to tell. But he was also a
pioneering salesman. I wrote a script that went viral online
Madman script called Uptown Saturday Night, and it was talking
(32:46):
about his life Leon Early or Leon per year. He
was an adopted person too, and so there was a
lot of things that mapped on. I got married to
Tony and then I realized we just didn't get along
right now was great friends, but we didn't get along.
We weren't necessarily a match there, and so I stayed
twenty years, twenty years to figure that out. I mean,
(33:08):
what happens after twenty years that you're friendly, like you
know what? This is the day I'm just gonna break
this thing up because I didn't want to survive it anymore.
I wanted to thrive at something that I thought was
more in line with who I was supposed to be.
And we were both miserable and we knew it. Um
at that point, you're not even being intimate the way
you need to be. So how can you really say
that you have a partnership? You can be friends and
(33:31):
you want the best for each other, and some of
the wanting the best for each other is admitting that's
not necessarily a match in that way. I had are
still started to listen to different versions of what love
could be. Listen to Alan de Botton who's talking about
romanticism and how we've sort of locked into that as
opposed to really realizing what partnership in relationships are. I
(33:51):
had to re learn that this whole thing we're seeing
on TV was a bunch of bullcrap, and they fed
it to us wholesale, especially as women, that we're supposed
to have this thing and we're supposed to be so mates.
And also the crap they didn't really teach us any
real skill sets about how to build a relationship and
what it would look like if it went raw. And
they say, oh, go to go to therapy, But what
(34:11):
if the other person doesn't want to get the therapy,
or what if nothing comes of that, or what if
you're just misaligned? Is it possible that you're not selling
out your background? Someone like me saying well that's against God,
and said, well God's not living with him. I am shoot,
I mean, what am I supposed to do? So I
I just did what I thought was best for me
at the time, and I knew I was a decent person,
(34:33):
and I wanted to get out of position to not
be happy when I was at home and not feel
like I was um also leaning into the worst version
of myself because I'm taking out my frustration on this
man and this relationship as opposed to being the really
up beat person I knew I could be. So we
parted and and then and um, that's why we're friends, said,
(34:56):
everyone goes. I can't believe how friendly you are with
Tony's like, he's never left. I said, he will never leave.
He's I didn't leave him because he was a bad man.
I left because I knew there was a better version
of us somewhere. So we're gonna do the speed round,
and I will ask the first question, Erica, who leaves
you star struck? I love politicians, I love people, grassroots organizers.
(35:20):
I'm star struck by Stacey Abrams. I of course would
be starstruck if I could be by Harry Tubman and
Shirley Chisholm, those people. I was star struck definitely by
Hillary Clinton, but as I came to know her and
saw the work that she did and the sacrifice she
had made. Um. It grounded me and made me realize
(35:40):
just how human people are, and they can create wicked
which is out of all of us. But we have
to find a way to communicate the goodness and the
humanity and us all. What book are you reading right now?
I'm reading Cormick McCarthy's um the Uh. It's something about
a child something child whatever, but a Cormick piccard book.
I really love him and I think he's a fantastic writer.
(36:03):
What is your nighttime routine? My nighttime routine is I
always because I'm an actress, I always washed and take
my makeup. I always take a shower always. UM. I
feel like water is healing. I want to wash the
day off, and it makes me feel fresh in my nest.
What is your favorite way to spend a day off.
My favorite thing to do is look through my stuff.
(36:24):
I don't know that sounds crazy, but I like to
rummage through and and look through the books or the
papers on the floor. I see ideas written down that
I might have gotten to. I see um suggestions that
people might have given me. I just like to be
like some sort of free range child, but like I'm
a free range human and just do whatever I want
(36:45):
without any conversation about time or any any spills. A
little reckless, but that's what I like. I like to
rummage through my stuff. Okay, so Lou Burns is our
secret weapon. Lou has been listening to this episode and
he always asks the final and usually the best question,
No pressure live. I'm just blown away at your perspective.
(37:11):
It is powerful and I'm listening to you and I
imagine I'm like they need to put you on like
the View, you know those type of shows where we're
where people were talking about things. You have a perspective
that's just like enrich In like full you know, I'll
tell you good story about over who I saw last week.
(37:32):
I had not seen Wipbi Goldberg. And since we did
Long Walk Home, which was a movie with Sissy Spaceic
about the Montgomery bussing in Alabama and um I was
filming the Wu Tang Clan Wu Tang Shout out to
them and we were in New Jersey and um we
were filming near her and the woman's house that was
(37:54):
owned that we were filming filming, and said, I'm gonna
bring my friend over and it was whippy. Goldberg said, Whoopy,
I haven't seen you since then. It was like weird
because I was like twenty nine when I did that film.
Octavia Spencer was one of the pas. We all played
together in the parking lot in Alabama. This is how
long ago it was. And I said to I said,
(38:15):
do you see what your effect on me and my dna?
I said, the Max braids. That's because I had just
worked with her. That's Whoopie go for, I said, Felicia Rashad.
I had just worked with her. I was playing a lawyer.
I kind of was doing my best Felicia rasha but
in my own funky way. Cecily Tyson. I had just
worked or met her actually, and she told me, don't
(38:38):
you ever let anybody tell you what to do with
your hair. And so I had the strength to do
these things and move forward. But they were all imprinting
on me. And I said, I hope you know how
grateful I am. And I got a chance to say
thank you, so thanks for mentioning the view. I saw
the route tank and I never saw you play a
role like that before. Thank you. You know, you know,
(38:59):
here's the thing about um Rison, who I call Bobby.
He said, you know Erica, he said, Arika. In order
to um you know, have you get that role of Linda?
Linda did? I had to ask all my brothers and sisters,
you know, if you it was cool. He has eleven
brothers and sisters. I was like, for real, but I
(39:22):
I was honored because I said, you mean eleven children
approved and said she can play our mother. So I said,
I'll do my best. And then again I asked Miss Linda.
I said, Miss Linda, your children want to see you.
I don't know what it is. They already seeing me,
so just let me get out of the way and
I'll do my best, you know, to to show up
for you because they miss you. And that's what I did.
(39:45):
It's fun to be on the Hutang clan. I was
over there playing around Mari VM people's just doing his thing.
We're doing all sorts of themed episodes on season three,
so you gotta check that out. And then also I'm
on The Run the World, which is on Stars playing
the Great bar Ballot, which co created by Evtney Bowser
who did Living Single. So all some of the things
that you think are taken away from you. They're given
(40:06):
to you tenfold, pressed down and push, you know, falling
over as they say, and I'm I'm wait before I
might be the world's biggest Erica Alexander Fan I really
like her. She's seriously awesome. For sense of purpose is
very unusual, and you don't see that in a lot
of people. And I think when you meet her or
(40:28):
you listen to her, you're like, of course she's successful
because she's like she's a badass. I would always bet
on Erica. That is a good way to put it.
I would always bet on Erica. She is incredibly direct
and authentic, and it's clear that she's had that sense
of purpose that you talk about since she was really young.
And it's really interesting to hear her talk about how
(40:49):
she has worked not only in TV, Button theater, Button film,
and then graphic novels, podcasts, activism right gone into all
of these. A friend Arena I thought one thing that
was like super honest and very it made me appreciate
her even more. She was like, I love to act.
I wish I could just act all the time, but
(41:09):
because there's not enough roles written for me or creative
for people who look like me, I've had to become
a writer, I've had to become a producer and activist.
I thought that was striking. I think the thing, the
one thing I would add to everything Erica said to
us which was incredible, is that she's also really really
fun in real life, Like she is the most fun
(41:30):
And to me, I think that's really interesting because sometimes
the people who are brilliant at their craft and work
so so hard are not that, but Erica is that. Well.
When she came to our Alaska Airlines event, like she
was the life of the party. She really was. She was.
She was a huge personality. She made everyone feel comfortable.
She was warm and friendly to everyone, and you don't
(41:52):
often see that, especially with someone who's had such great
success like she has. Thanks for listening to What's Her
Story with Sam and Amy. We would appreciate it if
you leave a review wherever you get your podcasts, and
of course, connect with us on social media at What's
Her Story podcast. What's Her Story with Sam and Amy
(42:12):
is powered by my company, The Riveter at The Riveter
dot c O and Sam's company, park Place Payments at
park place payments dot com. Thanks to our producer Stacy
Parra and our male perspective. Blue burns,
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