April 28, 2021 • 28 mins
Minnie questions Jeremy O. Harris, playwright, actor, and philanthropist. Jeremy retells his disappointment in getting cut from drama school, and finally rediscovering his voice as an artist at the prestigious MacDowell artist residency. Plus, Jeremy shares the origins of his play, Slave Play (which also happens to be the play with the most Tony nominations in Broadway history).
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
My darling. I gotta tell you, I'm always thrilled to
speak to you. So Jeremy's boyfriend and me and my
boyfriend are good friends. But when we walked down the street,
I do talk to Jeremy, Moore and Anderson and are
one a kind of like the grown ups, and me
and Jeremy are kind of like the kids who were like, well,
let's get candy, and my other guys are like, let's
(00:21):
get carfy. Let's Kenny and Calf. Me exactly. Hello, I'm
mini driver and welcome to many questions. I've always loved
Pruce's questionnaire. It was originally an eighteenth century parlor game
meant to reveal an individual's true nature. But with so
many questions, there wasn't really an opportunity to expand on anything.
(00:43):
So I took the format of Pruce's questionnaire and adapted
What I think are seven of the most important questions
you could ever ask someone. They are when and where
were you happiest? What is the quality you like least
about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you?
(01:03):
What question would you most like answered, What person, place,
or experience has shaped you the most? What would be
your last meal? And can you tell me something in
your life that has grown out of a personal disaster.
The more people we ask, the more we begin to
see what makes us similar and what makes us individual.
(01:27):
I've gathered a group of really remarkable people who I
am honored and humbled to have had a chance to
engage with. My guest today is Jeremy oh Harris. It's
hard to know where to begin an introduction to Jeremy
because to me, he is a force that has such
diverse impact. It feels limiting to say specifically what he
(01:47):
does or who he is, And actually part of his
fundament seems to be challenging the way in which we
quantify a lot of things. So it's probably right that
I don't know what to say. He is definitively the
author the highly acclaimed Slave Play, which has become the
most nominated non musical play in the history of the Tonys,
with twelve nominations. I won't say explicitly what the play
(02:10):
is about, because you should see it or find it
and read it and think. But the super redux version
is that it addresses themes of sexuality and racial trauma
in America. Out magazine called him the queer black savior
theater needs. I would rejoin and editor to say he
is the queer black savior we all need, and if
systems are grumbling, as they surely seem to be, voices
(02:33):
like Jeremy's are the ones I'd like to hear loudest
during the rebuild. He writes under different names, he explores
different mediums of art, acting, playwriting, screenwriting, producing, and as
a person and a rare talent at the forefront of
a new generation of emerging artists, he is dismantling the
idea of personal success and fame being the endgame. By
using carved out fees from big deals in fashion and
(02:55):
in television to establish funds and micro grants for theaters
and libraries. He is quite literally lifting up and creating
opportunities for others in his community and beyond. Whenever I
talk to him, I feel like I'm talking to the future,
a super tall, hot, progressive future. Correct me, jere I
(03:18):
mean if I'm wrong, but I believe Slave Play became
the most nominated Tony in the history of the Tony's.
It's the most nominated Tony ever, It's the most nominated
to It's been it's a Tony that has been nominated
so many times its name is now Anthony Slave play
(03:38):
was nominated more times than any other than any other play.
I think Hamilton's has the most of any thing best
because musical is cheat and can have more. You know,
He's best score, best book, best orchestrations, like, we don't
get those. So now, what relationship, real or fictionalized, defines
(04:05):
love for you? Oh that's so good. Um, I mean
I'm probably so dark. It's probably like you know, the
Young Girl and the Soldier and blasted the Sarah Kane play,
like really dark. Oh my god, I mean I really
really really love Magnolia. I really love Earl Partridge and
(04:27):
his Wife that Julianne Moore plays. She married this guy
for money and then as he's dying, she realizes how
much she loves him. That is kind of what being
in love is like for me. Obviously, adoreless person. You're
able to be in public the face of the adoring partner,
but in private moments you're like, oh, wow, you're smelly.
You touched me all the time, you do, you know,
(04:47):
whatever the thing is, and then like you know, the
minute that you shut the bathroom door, You're like, where
are they? I need their warmth again, you know, because
there's something about human beings where like you kind of
want to nip the person that's closest to you. It's
like what we do with our parents, you know. And
the minute that you've gotten someone into your trust circle,
you do in your mind convince yourself that they're not
everything you want in the minute that they're about to leave,
(05:09):
where they could go that's to you wanted the best.
And I think that part of the work of being
a good partner and a good person love is to
minimize the moments of nipping that are natural and normal,
and lean into who you are to the world, and
lean into who you are when they're about to leave
in those moments when it's just you two lying in bed. So,
(05:29):
do you think that the specter of loss is then
part of the defining factor of love for you? The
idea that that person will be lost to you, or
could be lost to you, but ultimately will be lost
to you is actually what gives love of shame. Yes,
I actually think that having a recognition that this person
could be gone at any second should be the founding
(05:50):
principle of any love magicure and or any healthy relationship,
because that that would mean that you would treat it
a little bit better. You wouldn't take it for granted.
And I think that oft and we we take people
for granted because we think that we're going to be eternal,
you know. But even when I think about the fact
that thirty years feels like it's passed so quickly, I'm
just like, I'm going to be out of here. Even
(06:11):
if I lived to seventy or eighty, you know, I'm
gonna be out of here in a moment. I know.
It's a heartbeat, it's a heart Maybe that's also this time.
I don't know about you, but since this pandemic, I
felt like time has stretched, it's time slowed down. Time
stop being this thing that I was always chasing after
and actually became so present because all of the distraction
(06:34):
and all of those branches that were really a lot
of dead wood, kind of a cut away. But also,
don't you feel like those three months at the very
top of the year felt like forever, like at the
very top of quarantinshure. Well, now I think about it
from right now, I do, But at the time it
felt like days were stretchy. It felt like nine am
lasted until four. It felt like every moment was every
(06:59):
conversation Shan, everything that we cooked, everything that we ate,
every embrace. Yes, it felt distilled. You know, you couldn't
really have written it. And it's been believable or been
anything other than sort of Ryan Murphy kind of giant.
You'll never believe this. Here. Let me put on a
(07:19):
giant show for you. It's actually still Ryan Murphy. It's
like it's Ryan Murphy and Shonda. Ryan's actually doing a
cross over episode. It really is. It is exactly. It's
them just passing back a script over a weekend and
each of them perhaps drinking slightly more than the other
with each new draft, and it's getting more and more
insane and more and more ridiculous. All right, downing, So
(07:54):
can you tell me in your life about something that
has grown out of a personal disaster stuff? I mean,
there's been so many things, but I think the thing
and I know this because I went this amazing healer
and the swaman was like, wow, what happened when you
were nineteen? Like it's still living in your body. She's like,
it feels like a big trauma. And I was like, Oh,
that's so weird. That was the year that I got
(08:15):
cut from drama school. You know, I went to this
drama school. They accepted fifty two kids, only twenty sis
got to stay. I liked it because it sounded like
Survivor or a big Brother or something like. They turned
training to be an actor into the Bachelor, and so
I was really excited because I worked my ass off
and like I had done the math, I was like, great,
inside of my section, I'm in the top five percent.
(08:38):
If they're cutting half of us, I can't be cut
from my section. But there are five black men here,
and amongst them, I'm definitely the weirdest one. So either
they're gonna want me because I'm the weirdest one, or
they're gonna be like, even though he's one of the best,
he's gonna get cut because he's really weird. So I
just did everything I could be weird myself over the year.
So I came to school with really long hair. I
(08:59):
cut off all with my hair, like halfway through the year.
He was like radical transformation, And you know, I worked
really hard, and I was still one of the people
that got cut, and some of the cruelest things that
I've ever been said to me were said to me
when I was eighteen years old about why I was cut,
saying was true of other actors. And you know how
this is like these people are working with people at
the beginning of their development into young adults, and like
(09:22):
decided to say this the kinest things to them because
they can because Heinu's things are said to them. They
said a whittling down every year, and we were a
part of the lucky community because they stopped whittling people
down the second and third years, so it was just
like one cut instead of multiple. I think that is
so hideous because it means you could never actually relax.
It's like the hunger. Yes, it's like you totally know
(09:44):
that there's a Gaillo scene hanging above your head every
day that you go to school. I mean, what a
dreadful way to try and learn. Yeah. One of my
closest friends there, Erica, who also got cut. You know,
she had come from a school where she had never
done a play before in her life. She got into
a drama school, I having never done a play before
her life, and she didn't more than one for me,
And it's like let's that girl get in, Like she
just gets to stay for all four years, because like
(10:05):
what the fuck? But she came from a really rough
community and she wasn't used to going to a room
with a bunch of white kids and crying. She's like,
I don't cry in front of people. You don't do that.
She's in these classes with all these kids, many of
whom come from privilege, who are able to weep form
command all the time about anything, and her teachers are like,
you feel too hard, but you don't want to share yourself.
(10:25):
She's like, no one's giving me a reason to cry, Like,
give me a scene, I'll do that. Then I'm just
gonna sit and cry and gossip with you. Anyway. That
was really difficult for me, and I'll never forget that.
One of my professors told me, she's like, well, Jeremy,
you're just not castable. Yeah, She's like, you have the
face of the child, a body of demand. You won't
be cast into your at least thirty five forties. So
you should think about going to grad school for acting.
(10:46):
And right now, you know you seem to like writing,
so do that. And I was like what what? But
it's incredible because of what did come out of that, Well, Yeah,
because I immediately decided I was going to prove her
I could be castable. So I got asked every major
show that was happening in Chicago at the time. And
then two years later I went to l A and
that was when I started telling me I was a writer,
(11:07):
which is what they had told me at school, and
my entire identity changed after that. It's so extraordinary. I
think I overuse the matrixes of reference points of touchstone
in my life, but I do often think, like you
know the scene where he goes to see the oracle
and she tells him he's not the one. I just
think that those moments in our lives where life is
(11:29):
telling you, no, it's absolutely not you, it's not you
at all, they are the moments out of which the
most grows because you have to disagree with it in
order to carry on in a way, or you have
to become something else. Yes, I was the only kid
in my class to graduate from drama school without an agent.
You know, it's just me and my mom and all
these other kids standing with their agents and their parents
(11:50):
after the last performance with like warm white wine, and
I was like everyone has an agent here except me,
and my mom was like, well, I don't have an
agent either. That's amazing. That's literally something my mom would
say to me. Yeah. I mean it was really hard
and it was really harsh. I think it's really interesting though,
that the people who were so unsupportive of you as
(12:11):
an actor told you that you were a writer and
that you should go and do that, and the fact
that you actually did go and do that, and now
you can be an actor, you can be a writer,
you can do whatever you want. It's interesting. I like
it when the people who were apparently limiting us, we're
actually giving us exactly what we needed to grow. Yes, yes,
(12:31):
it's everything. Were you a student when he wrote Slave Play? Yeah? Yeah,
my god, Jeremy. Basically, Slave Play haunted all three years
of my graduate degree because in my first year I
started working on it and writing it, and then my
second year we put it up in the fall and
there was a big fallout with the administration and a
(12:53):
lot of my professors who really hated the play and
tortured me. And then the next half of the year
I was trying to get some of the people who
were really messed up about that fire um and then
in my third year I wrote a thesis play about
how that experience had been the worst thing ever while
the play was going up in the city. What was
the central beef that they had with your play? Well,
(13:17):
it was mainly a power thing, which is one of
the reasons why it was most frustrating and really drawing,
because it had very little to do with the actual
like nuts and bolts of my play, as I could
see visa vie their relationship to the other work that
was happening around me. It was more so the fact
that they told me to cut twenty minutes out of
the play and I said, I don't want to do that.
(13:37):
That note doesn't make sense to me, and they said, well,
we're telling you to do this, and it was about
like this power thing, and I think the more I've
dug in my heels and was like, no, I think
that's a bad note, the more angry they got. And
it was just like the Battle of wills that ended
with a professor yelling at me and sending me really
hate his emails and just having like a full mental spiral.
Do you think it made you connect? Forced each connect
(14:00):
with the thesis of the play even more because you
were defending it so profoundly. Do you think that you
you kind of bonded with your play more because of
that extreme conflict? Well, yeah, I mean I think it
may be bond with the performers, especially the performer playing Knisha.
A lot at Yale is played by this woman named
Intra Neet Crow Legacy, who's an amazing actress. And obviously,
(14:24):
as you've you've been to drama school, you know that
when someone's actually just doing a power play, they'll change
their tactics really well. And so the tactic became, well,
it's not about the twenty minutes in that part so much.
It's just that those twenty minutes are so bad that
the endings the worst thing I've ever seen. I can't
believe this actress is doing this. If you're not gonna
change these twenty minutes, you have to change the ending.
(14:44):
And so I tried to change the ending, and I
came back and his actors was like, why are you
changing this? Your play is saying this to me. She
said something to the room about her character and why
she understood what was happening in the play. That was like,
my secret, it's for why I had written the play.
It's like someone's naming all the reasons why I had
written the play from the point of view of acting
(15:05):
in this thing, and so I felt so immediately um indicated. Yeah,
And it also made me know that at the end
of the day, great performers, they are great ensemble are
more important than teachers. No wonder how many you know,
McArthur Pullitzer, O bis they've won. You know what I mean? Well,
you'd think that. But by the way, speaking as someone
(15:28):
who has worked with extraordinarily collaborative people and then slightly
more autocratic directors and producers, I must say that it's
very refreshing to hear you say that, Jeremy, because it
is a collaboration. You're all working towards the same thing.
And I think sometimes actors certainly get the reputation that
(15:48):
it's really just about self aggrandizement. And I really is
biggest soliloquy as opposed to no best idea wins. Yes,
And I love because you're a writer and an actor
and a director and a kind of conceiver of art
that you recognize that. I feel vindication as an actor
knowing that you say what you bring him when you're
inside a character, you can sometimes give a perspective that
(16:11):
is unique because you're living inside your particular piece of
this greater piece of work. One of the things that's
most invigorating about getting all of these Tony nominations is
that twelve Tony nominations have very little to do with
Jeremy o' harris writing this play right, and everything to
do with the community of people around this play that
I wrote. Those things really matter to me because the
(16:34):
family that we made with this play was really tight,
and we listened really well to each other. And I
think what's really exciting what the Tony is that everyone
seeing James Society, Morier, Jachina Cala Congo, Annie McNamara, Shalia Latour,
Auntie Blanks and Wood, Lindsay Jones, G G D D
Clint and Robert and not to mention like Paul Sullivan
(16:55):
and it ain't a who were the three actors of
our eight that didn't get nominated, but who obviously play
the gift twelve nominations, they're still being celebrated as well,
the community saying like, no, you guys really came together
and you fought for each other. And that makes me
soory because Arena and Shalia were in the first reading
of its play, So I just wanted to say that
Slave Player also did something really extraordinary. Jeremy insisted on
(17:20):
there being a subsidized ticket program so that when you
would go to buy a ticket, you would be also
able to buy a ticket for someone who maybe couldn't
afford to go to the theater. And what that did
for the community and the anomaly that that was I'm
really genuinely hope becomes a normal practice on Broadway in
(17:42):
the West End, in every theater loving city in the world.
It was extraordinary the amount of first time ticket buyers
or theater girls who went to see Slave Blay because
they were able to what that speaks to you about
community and what that speaks to you about what the
theater is always purporting to be about, which is about
coming together and than the stories of our community. For
the community, that was one of the most amazing. I mean,
(18:04):
beyond the extraordinary impact of the play and what it
forced us all to meditate on and think about and
talk about forever, is that notion of community for me
and availability to everybody, not just to the famous people,
the rich people, the white people, but to everybody. It's
(18:25):
an incredibly special play for so many reasons. When I
hope that it stops being an anomaly and actually just becomes,
you know, the norm same. I mean, it's really nice
to be an anomaly because it means you're special, you're
one of a kind. But when being one of a
kind means that you're like opening the doors for more
people than it's not fun. You want to know that
more people are doing that so that this thing you
(18:46):
love a can survive and be can be experienced by
as many people as possible. What person, place, or experience
(19:07):
has most altered your life, well, I think I think
because she's constantly offering the direction of my life. It
would have to be my mom, because she had me
when she was nineteen and came to a community that
does not have very many opportunities for people of color,
especially women of color, and worked really hard to psyphon
(19:29):
off as many opportunities as she could for me, even
if that meant denying herself certain opportunities. And so that's
why I think she's most afted in my life. She
put me in the private school so that she couldn't
afford to send me to and she's always sounded like
an extraordinary person. She's the absolute Disneys and I wouldn't
be the person I am now without her. Um. I
(19:52):
love that. I love that. I'm glad it's your mom.
So here we go. I would like you to please
tell me where and when you were happiest. This is
really it is actually really funny because I just answered
this question for g Q and and for some reason
(20:14):
felt like a fake answer at the time. But the
more I think about, the more real it sounds in
my head. I think I felt the happiest when I
was at McDowell in New Hampshire, which is where I
went when I was twenty six year old. It's where
I decided I was going to go to grad school,
and it was where I really, for the first time
in my life, I felt like an artist because I've
(20:38):
been welcomed into this historic colony of artists. For people
who don't know McDowell, it's the oldest artistic commune in
the country. James Baldwin wrote Giovanni's room there. Tanahusey Coats
wrote there the color purple is written there. I'm naming
only the black people like Lennard Bernstein went there and
it's artists of all disciplines. It's painters, writers, composers, playwrights.
(21:02):
And you endowed with this. You invited, you singled out
and invited. No, you're not invite, you apply. So it's
an application process is highly competitive. So many writers I
know haven't gotten in. And it's a place that's really
rare because you can be there with someone who's won
four pool and surprises, you know, Michael Chaban, can be
there with someone who's only written a short play, which
(21:24):
is what I had done. Like I had only written
a thirty minute play. I had no real credits. I
just had good recommendations. And you tell them what you
want to write while you're there, and I told him
I want to write this play called Daddy. And so
I got there, you know, and I'm sitting at a
table with the likes of Michael, Alma Raida and Adrian
Nicole LeBlanc, and I was like, great, what it was?
(21:44):
It was really lovely. But I think that there was
a moment there when I had such insane imposter syndrome,
because you know, I started out as an actor, I
didn't start out as a playwright. And I lived in
l A for six years sort of telling people I
was the play right because I didn't want to tell
people I was an actor. And then one day someone
was just like, well, are you actually a writer? And
I was like, I think I am. And then I
(22:05):
started writing, but I still felt like I was tricking
people right, like that I was illegitimate. And meanwhile, I'm
telling my mom, who's working three jobs to support herself,
my sister and me, well past the age that people
get supported. Where I'm coming from, there's no idea of
the young artist who gets helped from their mom at
twenty four to help pay their rent. Right. My mom
(22:26):
is doing something that's like a huge anomaly for our community.
And I keep promising her, like I promise you, mom,
if you just help me out one more time, it's
gonna work out. Just give me a few more years,
another month, like if I don't figure it out by
the time I'm thirty, I'll go back to school and
become a lawyer or something. And so I was there.
I had all this imposter syndrome, and then one day
someone was talking about something and someone turned me like, Jeremy,
what do you think? And I was like, well, I
(22:48):
think this. I don't know if you've ever read this thing,
and I can't remember exactly what it was, but everyone
the table was like, wow, oh my god, that's so impressive,
because that's so great, and the like changed the course
of the thing. Everyone started asking more questions about what
I just said, and in that moment I realized whoa, Like,
I'm really here, and I went outside to have a
cigarette and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, who is the MacArthur Genius
Grant winning writer of Random Family, came up to me
(23:11):
and was like, that was so beautiful what you just
said back there, and I was like, it's so weird.
Everyone here feels so beyond me, Like I don't know
that I can even catch up with where they are
in the world, and the fact they care about what
I have to say is so weird. And She's like,
why is it weird we're all sitting at the same table.
In that moment, I think I felt so happy because
it felt like this thing I've been promising my mom
(23:33):
that like my difference meant that I was, that I
was a part of a community of artists, was finally affirmed. Right,
All of our hard work was affirmed in that moment,
so do you feel a sense of belonging and the
vindication of everything that your mom had believed in you
and put into it qualifies that happiness? Yes, it shapes
(23:55):
that happiness. I love that Jeremy. I'm looking at the
Barack Obama book right now. He's so handsome. He's so handsome.
He's so handsome and so kind, and I love his
wife so much. It's almost like they're superheroes. I do.
I put them in the same category. I really want
to interview him because he's been saying some really interesting
(24:16):
things recently. He did this interview about his book. He
was just like talking too, how crazy the Republican Party
it's got. Now. He's like, you know, there's just so
much crazy stuff. You know, one minute they're saying Hillary
Clinton is running a pedophile ring, and the next minute
they're saying that Joe Biden is a socialist, Like who
are these people? And it's just like, I get what
he's trying to say, but also like saying Joe Biden
(24:40):
is a socialist, it's not as egregious an idea as
someone running a pedophile ring, But the fact that those
two things are in the same level in that anecdote
said something Freudian, and I'm just like, someone needs to
mind this because you also came out of the gate.
It's like, you know, this wild progressive, and yet like
he's aligning himself so often with this in drists, in
(25:00):
our parties and ways that I find he definitely doesn't
have to unless that's just really how he feels, in
which case it makes me a little sad. But I
want to challenge him on some of that. Oh my god,
I so now I want to hear that Jeremy Harris, Brock,
Obama and Tod. I think that would be really good
because I was st talking about sex because he's a leo,
so he walks around with pelvis first. You know, he
(25:22):
has like a real like b D about him, which
I think was the most attractive thing. And I just
kind of we're talking about like I was like, but
you were a nerd. But when did you start getting late?
Like was it in college or was it in grad school?
Like when did you start to know him your sexual power?
When did your not get its freak on? Yeah? Exactly exactly,
But I want to know that now too. I didn't
even know I wanted to know that until you just
(25:43):
said that. Now I'm going to think about it a lot.
I mean, it's kind of hot and also feels naughty. Yes,
And in his book apparently he talked about how he
used to say the word fag in the seventies. And
I want to be like, but did you ever make
up with a guy? Because you feel like you did.
It's so funny here we are kind of federating a
bomb or like putting him on his pedestinal. Meanwhile, you're like,
(26:05):
did you kiss a guy? Because I feel like you did.
That's what we all really want to know. Come on,
I can't wait to see you again. I can't wait
to see you again. And I thank you with all
my heart for doing this. I'm thrilled about the idea
of everything that you are going to do. It makes me,
It makes me happy. Thank you. In closing, I would
(26:30):
like to tell you that Jeremy co wrote this movie Zola,
which a Nick's a Bravo based on tweet spy Asaiah King.
Jicks also directed the movie, and it's out June. This woman,
as Iah King tweeted, in real time and experience she
decided to be a part of. And I won't give
(26:51):
anything away but it is. It's an extraordinary premise and
I really cannot wait to see the finished film. It
premiered at Sundance last year. Jeremy also is adapting with
the Ziza Barnes Britt Bennett's novel The Vanishing Half, which
I also can't wait to see, and that will also
be out later this year. Mini Questions is hosted and
(27:15):
written by Me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer
Morgan Lavoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby
by Mini Driver, additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced
by Me and man Gesh Hetty Cador. Special thanks to
(27:38):
Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella and
a Nick Oppenheim at w kPr, de La Pescadore, Kate
Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support
Henry Driver two
My darling. I gotta tell you, I'm always thrilled to
speak to you. So Jeremy's boyfriend and me and my
boyfriend are good friends. But when we walked down the street,
I do talk to Jeremy, Moore and Anderson and are
one a kind of like the grown ups, and me
and Jeremy are kind of like the kids who were like, well,
let's get candy, and my other guys are like, let's
(00:21):
get carfy. Let's Kenny and Calf. Me exactly. Hello, I'm
mini driver and welcome to many questions. I've always loved
Pruce's questionnaire. It was originally an eighteenth century parlor game
meant to reveal an individual's true nature. But with so
many questions, there wasn't really an opportunity to expand on anything.
(00:43):
So I took the format of Pruce's questionnaire and adapted
What I think are seven of the most important questions
you could ever ask someone. They are when and where
were you happiest? What is the quality you like least
about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you?
(01:03):
What question would you most like answered, What person, place,
or experience has shaped you the most? What would be
your last meal? And can you tell me something in
your life that has grown out of a personal disaster.
The more people we ask, the more we begin to
see what makes us similar and what makes us individual.
(01:27):
I've gathered a group of really remarkable people who I
am honored and humbled to have had a chance to
engage with. My guest today is Jeremy oh Harris. It's
hard to know where to begin an introduction to Jeremy
because to me, he is a force that has such
diverse impact. It feels limiting to say specifically what he
(01:47):
does or who he is, And actually part of his
fundament seems to be challenging the way in which we
quantify a lot of things. So it's probably right that
I don't know what to say. He is definitively the
author the highly acclaimed Slave Play, which has become the
most nominated non musical play in the history of the Tonys,
with twelve nominations. I won't say explicitly what the play
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is about, because you should see it or find it
and read it and think. But the super redux version
is that it addresses themes of sexuality and racial trauma
in America. Out magazine called him the queer black savior
theater needs. I would rejoin and editor to say he
is the queer black savior we all need, and if
systems are grumbling, as they surely seem to be, voices
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like Jeremy's are the ones I'd like to hear loudest
during the rebuild. He writes under different names, he explores
different mediums of art, acting, playwriting, screenwriting, producing, and as
a person and a rare talent at the forefront of
a new generation of emerging artists, he is dismantling the
idea of personal success and fame being the endgame. By
using carved out fees from big deals in fashion and
(02:55):
in television to establish funds and micro grants for theaters
and libraries. He is quite literally lifting up and creating
opportunities for others in his community and beyond. Whenever I
talk to him, I feel like I'm talking to the future,
a super tall, hot, progressive future. Correct me, jere I
(03:18):
mean if I'm wrong, but I believe Slave Play became
the most nominated Tony in the history of the Tony's.
It's the most nominated Tony ever, It's the most nominated
to It's been it's a Tony that has been nominated
so many times its name is now Anthony Slave play
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was nominated more times than any other than any other play.
I think Hamilton's has the most of any thing best
because musical is cheat and can have more. You know,
He's best score, best book, best orchestrations, like, we don't
get those. So now, what relationship, real or fictionalized, defines
(04:05):
love for you? Oh that's so good. Um, I mean
I'm probably so dark. It's probably like you know, the
Young Girl and the Soldier and blasted the Sarah Kane play,
like really dark. Oh my god, I mean I really
really really love Magnolia. I really love Earl Partridge and
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his Wife that Julianne Moore plays. She married this guy
for money and then as he's dying, she realizes how
much she loves him. That is kind of what being
in love is like for me. Obviously, adoreless person. You're
able to be in public the face of the adoring partner,
but in private moments you're like, oh, wow, you're smelly.
You touched me all the time, you do, you know,
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whatever the thing is, and then like you know, the
minute that you shut the bathroom door, You're like, where
are they? I need their warmth again, you know, because
there's something about human beings where like you kind of
want to nip the person that's closest to you. It's
like what we do with our parents, you know. And
the minute that you've gotten someone into your trust circle,
you do in your mind convince yourself that they're not
everything you want in the minute that they're about to leave,
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where they could go that's to you wanted the best.
And I think that part of the work of being
a good partner and a good person love is to
minimize the moments of nipping that are natural and normal,
and lean into who you are to the world, and
lean into who you are when they're about to leave
in those moments when it's just you two lying in bed. So,
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do you think that the specter of loss is then
part of the defining factor of love for you? The
idea that that person will be lost to you, or
could be lost to you, but ultimately will be lost
to you is actually what gives love of shame. Yes,
I actually think that having a recognition that this person
could be gone at any second should be the founding
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principle of any love magicure and or any healthy relationship,
because that that would mean that you would treat it
a little bit better. You wouldn't take it for granted.
And I think that oft and we we take people
for granted because we think that we're going to be eternal,
you know. But even when I think about the fact
that thirty years feels like it's passed so quickly, I'm
just like, I'm going to be out of here. Even
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if I lived to seventy or eighty, you know, I'm
gonna be out of here in a moment. I know.
It's a heartbeat, it's a heart Maybe that's also this time.
I don't know about you, but since this pandemic, I
felt like time has stretched, it's time slowed down. Time
stop being this thing that I was always chasing after
and actually became so present because all of the distraction
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and all of those branches that were really a lot
of dead wood, kind of a cut away. But also,
don't you feel like those three months at the very
top of the year felt like forever, like at the
very top of quarantinshure. Well, now I think about it
from right now, I do, But at the time it
felt like days were stretchy. It felt like nine am
lasted until four. It felt like every moment was every
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conversation Shan, everything that we cooked, everything that we ate,
every embrace. Yes, it felt distilled. You know, you couldn't
really have written it. And it's been believable or been
anything other than sort of Ryan Murphy kind of giant.
You'll never believe this. Here. Let me put on a
(07:19):
giant show for you. It's actually still Ryan Murphy. It's
like it's Ryan Murphy and Shonda. Ryan's actually doing a
cross over episode. It really is. It is exactly. It's
them just passing back a script over a weekend and
each of them perhaps drinking slightly more than the other
with each new draft, and it's getting more and more
insane and more and more ridiculous. All right, downing, So
(07:54):
can you tell me in your life about something that
has grown out of a personal disaster stuff? I mean,
there's been so many things, but I think the thing
and I know this because I went this amazing healer
and the swaman was like, wow, what happened when you
were nineteen? Like it's still living in your body. She's like,
it feels like a big trauma. And I was like, Oh,
that's so weird. That was the year that I got
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cut from drama school. You know, I went to this
drama school. They accepted fifty two kids, only twenty sis
got to stay. I liked it because it sounded like
Survivor or a big Brother or something like. They turned
training to be an actor into the Bachelor, and so
I was really excited because I worked my ass off
and like I had done the math, I was like, great,
inside of my section, I'm in the top five percent.
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If they're cutting half of us, I can't be cut
from my section. But there are five black men here,
and amongst them, I'm definitely the weirdest one. So either
they're gonna want me because I'm the weirdest one, or
they're gonna be like, even though he's one of the best,
he's gonna get cut because he's really weird. So I
just did everything I could be weird myself over the year.
So I came to school with really long hair. I
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cut off all with my hair, like halfway through the year.
He was like radical transformation, And you know, I worked
really hard, and I was still one of the people
that got cut, and some of the cruelest things that
I've ever been said to me were said to me
when I was eighteen years old about why I was cut,
saying was true of other actors. And you know how
this is like these people are working with people at
the beginning of their development into young adults, and like
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decided to say this the kinest things to them because
they can because Heinu's things are said to them. They
said a whittling down every year, and we were a
part of the lucky community because they stopped whittling people
down the second and third years, so it was just
like one cut instead of multiple. I think that is
so hideous because it means you could never actually relax.
It's like the hunger. Yes, it's like you totally know
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that there's a Gaillo scene hanging above your head every
day that you go to school. I mean, what a
dreadful way to try and learn. Yeah. One of my
closest friends there, Erica, who also got cut. You know,
she had come from a school where she had never
done a play before in her life. She got into
a drama school, I having never done a play before
her life, and she didn't more than one for me,
And it's like let's that girl get in, Like she
just gets to stay for all four years, because like
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what the fuck? But she came from a really rough
community and she wasn't used to going to a room
with a bunch of white kids and crying. She's like,
I don't cry in front of people. You don't do that.
She's in these classes with all these kids, many of
whom come from privilege, who are able to weep form
command all the time about anything, and her teachers are like,
you feel too hard, but you don't want to share yourself.
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She's like, no one's giving me a reason to cry, Like,
give me a scene, I'll do that. Then I'm just
gonna sit and cry and gossip with you. Anyway. That
was really difficult for me, and I'll never forget that.
One of my professors told me, she's like, well, Jeremy,
you're just not castable. Yeah, She's like, you have the
face of the child, a body of demand. You won't
be cast into your at least thirty five forties. So
you should think about going to grad school for acting.
(10:46):
And right now, you know you seem to like writing,
so do that. And I was like what what? But
it's incredible because of what did come out of that, Well, Yeah,
because I immediately decided I was going to prove her
I could be castable. So I got asked every major
show that was happening in Chicago at the time. And
then two years later I went to l A and
that was when I started telling me I was a writer,
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which is what they had told me at school, and
my entire identity changed after that. It's so extraordinary. I
think I overuse the matrixes of reference points of touchstone
in my life, but I do often think, like you
know the scene where he goes to see the oracle
and she tells him he's not the one. I just
think that those moments in our lives where life is
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telling you, no, it's absolutely not you, it's not you
at all, they are the moments out of which the
most grows because you have to disagree with it in
order to carry on in a way, or you have
to become something else. Yes, I was the only kid
in my class to graduate from drama school without an agent.
You know, it's just me and my mom and all
these other kids standing with their agents and their parents
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after the last performance with like warm white wine, and
I was like everyone has an agent here except me,
and my mom was like, well, I don't have an
agent either. That's amazing. That's literally something my mom would
say to me. Yeah. I mean it was really hard
and it was really harsh. I think it's really interesting though,
that the people who were so unsupportive of you as
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an actor told you that you were a writer and
that you should go and do that, and the fact
that you actually did go and do that, and now
you can be an actor, you can be a writer,
you can do whatever you want. It's interesting. I like
it when the people who were apparently limiting us, we're
actually giving us exactly what we needed to grow. Yes, yes,
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it's everything. Were you a student when he wrote Slave Play? Yeah? Yeah,
my god, Jeremy. Basically, Slave Play haunted all three years
of my graduate degree because in my first year I
started working on it and writing it, and then my
second year we put it up in the fall and
there was a big fallout with the administration and a
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lot of my professors who really hated the play and
tortured me. And then the next half of the year
I was trying to get some of the people who
were really messed up about that fire um and then
in my third year I wrote a thesis play about
how that experience had been the worst thing ever while
the play was going up in the city. What was
the central beef that they had with your play? Well,
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it was mainly a power thing, which is one of
the reasons why it was most frustrating and really drawing,
because it had very little to do with the actual
like nuts and bolts of my play, as I could
see visa vie their relationship to the other work that
was happening around me. It was more so the fact
that they told me to cut twenty minutes out of
the play and I said, I don't want to do that.
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That note doesn't make sense to me, and they said, well,
we're telling you to do this, and it was about
like this power thing, and I think the more I've
dug in my heels and was like, no, I think
that's a bad note, the more angry they got. And
it was just like the Battle of wills that ended
with a professor yelling at me and sending me really
hate his emails and just having like a full mental spiral.
Do you think it made you connect? Forced each connect
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with the thesis of the play even more because you
were defending it so profoundly. Do you think that you
you kind of bonded with your play more because of
that extreme conflict? Well, yeah, I mean I think it
may be bond with the performers, especially the performer playing Knisha.
A lot at Yale is played by this woman named
Intra Neet Crow Legacy, who's an amazing actress. And obviously,
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as you've you've been to drama school, you know that
when someone's actually just doing a power play, they'll change
their tactics really well. And so the tactic became, well,
it's not about the twenty minutes in that part so much.
It's just that those twenty minutes are so bad that
the endings the worst thing I've ever seen. I can't
believe this actress is doing this. If you're not gonna
change these twenty minutes, you have to change the ending.
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And so I tried to change the ending, and I
came back and his actors was like, why are you
changing this? Your play is saying this to me. She
said something to the room about her character and why
she understood what was happening in the play. That was like,
my secret, it's for why I had written the play.
It's like someone's naming all the reasons why I had
written the play from the point of view of acting
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in this thing, and so I felt so immediately um indicated. Yeah,
And it also made me know that at the end
of the day, great performers, they are great ensemble are
more important than teachers. No wonder how many you know,
McArthur Pullitzer, O bis they've won. You know what I mean? Well,
you'd think that. But by the way, speaking as someone
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who has worked with extraordinarily collaborative people and then slightly
more autocratic directors and producers, I must say that it's
very refreshing to hear you say that, Jeremy, because it
is a collaboration. You're all working towards the same thing.
And I think sometimes actors certainly get the reputation that
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it's really just about self aggrandizement. And I really is
biggest soliloquy as opposed to no best idea wins. Yes,
And I love because you're a writer and an actor
and a director and a kind of conceiver of art
that you recognize that. I feel vindication as an actor
knowing that you say what you bring him when you're
inside a character, you can sometimes give a perspective that
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is unique because you're living inside your particular piece of
this greater piece of work. One of the things that's
most invigorating about getting all of these Tony nominations is
that twelve Tony nominations have very little to do with
Jeremy o' harris writing this play right, and everything to
do with the community of people around this play that
I wrote. Those things really matter to me because the
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family that we made with this play was really tight,
and we listened really well to each other. And I
think what's really exciting what the Tony is that everyone
seeing James Society, Morier, Jachina Cala Congo, Annie McNamara, Shalia Latour,
Auntie Blanks and Wood, Lindsay Jones, G G D D
Clint and Robert and not to mention like Paul Sullivan
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and it ain't a who were the three actors of
our eight that didn't get nominated, but who obviously play
the gift twelve nominations, they're still being celebrated as well,
the community saying like, no, you guys really came together
and you fought for each other. And that makes me
soory because Arena and Shalia were in the first reading
of its play, So I just wanted to say that
Slave Player also did something really extraordinary. Jeremy insisted on
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there being a subsidized ticket program so that when you
would go to buy a ticket, you would be also
able to buy a ticket for someone who maybe couldn't
afford to go to the theater. And what that did
for the community and the anomaly that that was I'm
really genuinely hope becomes a normal practice on Broadway in
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the West End, in every theater loving city in the world.
It was extraordinary the amount of first time ticket buyers
or theater girls who went to see Slave Blay because
they were able to what that speaks to you about
community and what that speaks to you about what the
theater is always purporting to be about, which is about
coming together and than the stories of our community. For
the community, that was one of the most amazing. I mean,
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beyond the extraordinary impact of the play and what it
forced us all to meditate on and think about and
talk about forever, is that notion of community for me
and availability to everybody, not just to the famous people,
the rich people, the white people, but to everybody. It's
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an incredibly special play for so many reasons. When I
hope that it stops being an anomaly and actually just becomes,
you know, the norm same. I mean, it's really nice
to be an anomaly because it means you're special, you're
one of a kind. But when being one of a
kind means that you're like opening the doors for more
people than it's not fun. You want to know that
more people are doing that so that this thing you
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love a can survive and be can be experienced by
as many people as possible. What person, place, or experience
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has most altered your life, well, I think I think
because she's constantly offering the direction of my life. It
would have to be my mom, because she had me
when she was nineteen and came to a community that
does not have very many opportunities for people of color,
especially women of color, and worked really hard to psyphon
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off as many opportunities as she could for me, even
if that meant denying herself certain opportunities. And so that's
why I think she's most afted in my life. She
put me in the private school so that she couldn't
afford to send me to and she's always sounded like
an extraordinary person. She's the absolute Disneys and I wouldn't
be the person I am now without her. Um. I
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love that. I love that. I'm glad it's your mom.
So here we go. I would like you to please
tell me where and when you were happiest. This is
really it is actually really funny because I just answered
this question for g Q and and for some reason
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felt like a fake answer at the time. But the
more I think about, the more real it sounds in
my head. I think I felt the happiest when I
was at McDowell in New Hampshire, which is where I
went when I was twenty six year old. It's where
I decided I was going to go to grad school,
and it was where I really, for the first time
in my life, I felt like an artist because I've
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been welcomed into this historic colony of artists. For people
who don't know McDowell, it's the oldest artistic commune in
the country. James Baldwin wrote Giovanni's room there. Tanahusey Coats
wrote there the color purple is written there. I'm naming
only the black people like Lennard Bernstein went there and
it's artists of all disciplines. It's painters, writers, composers, playwrights.
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And you endowed with this. You invited, you singled out
and invited. No, you're not invite, you apply. So it's
an application process is highly competitive. So many writers I
know haven't gotten in. And it's a place that's really
rare because you can be there with someone who's won
four pool and surprises, you know, Michael Chaban, can be
there with someone who's only written a short play, which
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is what I had done. Like I had only written
a thirty minute play. I had no real credits. I
just had good recommendations. And you tell them what you
want to write while you're there, and I told him
I want to write this play called Daddy. And so
I got there, you know, and I'm sitting at a
table with the likes of Michael, Alma Raida and Adrian
Nicole LeBlanc, and I was like, great, what it was?
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It was really lovely. But I think that there was
a moment there when I had such insane imposter syndrome,
because you know, I started out as an actor, I
didn't start out as a playwright. And I lived in
l A for six years sort of telling people I
was the play right because I didn't want to tell
people I was an actor. And then one day someone
was just like, well, are you actually a writer? And
I was like, I think I am. And then I
(22:05):
started writing, but I still felt like I was tricking
people right, like that I was illegitimate. And meanwhile, I'm
telling my mom, who's working three jobs to support herself,
my sister and me, well past the age that people
get supported. Where I'm coming from, there's no idea of
the young artist who gets helped from their mom at
twenty four to help pay their rent. Right. My mom
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is doing something that's like a huge anomaly for our community.
And I keep promising her, like I promise you, mom,
if you just help me out one more time, it's
gonna work out. Just give me a few more years,
another month, like if I don't figure it out by
the time I'm thirty, I'll go back to school and
become a lawyer or something. And so I was there.
I had all this imposter syndrome, and then one day
someone was talking about something and someone turned me like, Jeremy,
what do you think? And I was like, well, I
(22:48):
think this. I don't know if you've ever read this thing,
and I can't remember exactly what it was, but everyone
the table was like, wow, oh my god, that's so impressive,
because that's so great, and the like changed the course
of the thing. Everyone started asking more questions about what
I just said, and in that moment I realized whoa, Like,
I'm really here, and I went outside to have a
cigarette and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, who is the MacArthur Genius
Grant winning writer of Random Family, came up to me
(23:11):
and was like, that was so beautiful what you just
said back there, and I was like, it's so weird.
Everyone here feels so beyond me, Like I don't know
that I can even catch up with where they are
in the world, and the fact they care about what
I have to say is so weird. And She's like,
why is it weird we're all sitting at the same table.
In that moment, I think I felt so happy because
it felt like this thing I've been promising my mom
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that like my difference meant that I was, that I
was a part of a community of artists, was finally affirmed. Right,
All of our hard work was affirmed in that moment,
so do you feel a sense of belonging and the
vindication of everything that your mom had believed in you
and put into it qualifies that happiness? Yes, it shapes
(23:55):
that happiness. I love that Jeremy. I'm looking at the
Barack Obama book right now. He's so handsome. He's so handsome.
He's so handsome and so kind, and I love his
wife so much. It's almost like they're superheroes. I do.
I put them in the same category. I really want
to interview him because he's been saying some really interesting
(24:16):
things recently. He did this interview about his book. He
was just like talking too, how crazy the Republican Party
it's got. Now. He's like, you know, there's just so
much crazy stuff. You know, one minute they're saying Hillary
Clinton is running a pedophile ring, and the next minute
they're saying that Joe Biden is a socialist, Like who
are these people? And it's just like, I get what
he's trying to say, but also like saying Joe Biden
(24:40):
is a socialist, it's not as egregious an idea as
someone running a pedophile ring, But the fact that those
two things are in the same level in that anecdote
said something Freudian, and I'm just like, someone needs to
mind this because you also came out of the gate.
It's like, you know, this wild progressive, and yet like
he's aligning himself so often with this in drists, in
(25:00):
our parties and ways that I find he definitely doesn't
have to unless that's just really how he feels, in
which case it makes me a little sad. But I
want to challenge him on some of that. Oh my god,
I so now I want to hear that Jeremy Harris, Brock,
Obama and Tod. I think that would be really good
because I was st talking about sex because he's a leo,
so he walks around with pelvis first. You know, he
(25:22):
has like a real like b D about him, which
I think was the most attractive thing. And I just
kind of we're talking about like I was like, but
you were a nerd. But when did you start getting late?
Like was it in college or was it in grad school?
Like when did you start to know him your sexual power?
When did your not get its freak on? Yeah? Exactly exactly,
But I want to know that now too. I didn't
even know I wanted to know that until you just
(25:43):
said that. Now I'm going to think about it a lot.
I mean, it's kind of hot and also feels naughty. Yes,
And in his book apparently he talked about how he
used to say the word fag in the seventies. And
I want to be like, but did you ever make
up with a guy? Because you feel like you did.
It's so funny here we are kind of federating a
bomb or like putting him on his pedestinal. Meanwhile, you're like,
(26:05):
did you kiss a guy? Because I feel like you did.
That's what we all really want to know. Come on,
I can't wait to see you again. I can't wait
to see you again. And I thank you with all
my heart for doing this. I'm thrilled about the idea
of everything that you are going to do. It makes me,
It makes me happy. Thank you. In closing, I would
(26:30):
like to tell you that Jeremy co wrote this movie Zola,
which a Nick's a Bravo based on tweet spy Asaiah King.
Jicks also directed the movie, and it's out June. This woman,
as Iah King tweeted, in real time and experience she
decided to be a part of. And I won't give
(26:51):
anything away but it is. It's an extraordinary premise and
I really cannot wait to see the finished film. It
premiered at Sundance last year. Jeremy also is adapting with
the Ziza Barnes Britt Bennett's novel The Vanishing Half, which
I also can't wait to see, and that will also
be out later this year. Mini Questions is hosted and
(27:15):
written by Me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer
Morgan Lavoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby
by Mini Driver, additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced
by Me and man Gesh Hetty Cador. Special thanks to
(27:38):
Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella and
a Nick Oppenheim at w kPr, de La Pescadore, Kate
Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support
Henry Driver two
Host
Minnie Driver
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