April 26, 2022 • 39 mins
Actor, producer and director Numa Perrier is making space for herself. Her autobiographical film “Jezebel,” about a young woman grieving for her mother while working as a cam girl in Las Vegas, breaks new ground in independent cinema for its complex candor. Roxane talks to her about how a girl from a Washington state farm ended up making TV and movies. Plus, Roxane on the hell that is contemporary air travel.
Mentions:
The Monet-Rothko Exhibit in France https://www.giverny-lareserve.com/en/monet-rothko-exhibition-at-the-musee-des-impressionismes-de-giverny/
“Jezebel” on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/title/81235729
App for Black and Sexy TV https://apps.apple.com/us/app/black-sexy-tv/id1050795028
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
As many listeners know, I traveled too much. Recently, I
had the opportunity to spend ten days in Paris from
my youngest brother's wedding. This was my second trip in
Paris remains probably one of my favorite cities in the world.
During that time, we had the opportunity to visit the
Museum of Impressionism in Giverny, France, which is about forty
(00:21):
kilometers outside of Paris, and right now they have an
amazing exhibit of Monet plus Rothkoe, which is really, when
you think about it, quite the unexpected pairing. Rothcoe is
one of my favorite painters, and every time I stand
in front of one of his canvases, I am odd
and that was certainly the case in Givernye. It's a
fairly small exhibit, but impeccably curated and presented. In addition
(00:44):
to biographical information about each artist, pieces from each are
placed in conversation with one another across a series of spaces.
If you happen to be across the pond in the
next few months, you will not regret a short road trip.
In addition to the museum, it's actually an entire complex.
You can wander through Monay's gardens and his lily pond.
(01:06):
There's the country mansion where he did much of his work,
and there's this place where you stand just in front
of that front door and look out at these lush
gardens that have been beautifully maintained over the years. And
it's not hard to understand why when he's work is
so beautiful. From Luminary. This is the Rock Sande Gay Agenda,
(01:29):
The Bad Feminist Podcast of Your Dreams. I am Roxanne Gay,
your favorite bad feminist and the Rock Sanda Gay Agenda.
I talked about something that's on my mind, and then
I talked with someone interesting to find out what's on
their mind. On this week's agenda. Yes Travel. Yesterday I
(01:49):
flew back to the United States and Charles de Gaull
Airport was a chaotic mess. Apparently, earlier in the week,
Delta had canceled two big flights, and so all of
those passengers plus yesterday's passengers, congealed into a mass of
sweaty and irritable humanity. Getting to the airport two and
a half hours early was barely enough time to check
(02:10):
our bags, show our COVID paperwork, pass through customs, make
it through security, and then trudged literally to the very
last gate with the longest jet bridge in the history
of jet bridges. As we waited in line after line
after line, lines that were supposedly expedited, I was struck
by the absolutely wild and inappropriate behavior around us. People
(02:32):
in airports tend to behave so very badly. We were
all in the same britty shitty situation, but many people
thought that their individual circumstance was the most urgent. There
was one man who was particularly insistent about moving ahead
in the customs line because his flight departed at ten ten. Now,
many of us in the line were on that same flight.
(02:54):
Debbie and I were actually on a flight at ten twenty.
But he, for whatever reason, was certain that his urgency
was the was pressing. As you might imagine, things got
rowdy until he got near the front of the line,
where a hero in blue held his ground and did
not let any of the people trying to cut the
line pass. And to that man, and that man only,
I say good day. Normally, I just let these kinds
(03:17):
of things go. Travel is stressful enough in and of itself,
and I don't need to further stress myself out by
trying to micromanage or dwell too much on the behaviors
of others who may not be at their best. But
yesterday nearly pushed me over the edge. There was a
white woman who started to do that thing to get
ahead in the line, where she just acted like she
(03:38):
was the saddest and most fragile woman in the world.
And when she too reached my hero in blue, he
refused to let her pass, and so she did what
you would expect her to do, which is to start crying,
acting like he had mortally wounded her. And then the
white woman behind him started comforting the crying woman, and
they had this moment of white woman's solidarity, and I thought, Ah,
(04:02):
there's the fifty three percent of white women who voted
for Donald Trump. As I thought about the politics of
the line, which was really the politics of sharing public
spaces with others, I felt a frustration that I often
experienced when I see people who act entitled and don't
seem to feel any kind of regret or remorse or
reflection about that entitlement. I was surging with resentment that
(04:26):
again I often feel when I see people doing things
I would never dare to do, not because I don't
have negative thoughts or inclinations, but because I know that
I would never receive the same leeway that others do.
If I tried to cut the line, someone would probably
call security, and indeed that sort of happened. Upon landing
at GfK, I have global entry, which means that I
(04:48):
don't have to wait in the ridiculous line. I can
just go up to a little kiosk and put in
my passport, take a picture, and pretty much off you go.
So I did my thing at the kiosk, but for
the first time ever, it printed out a blank receipt.
I showed my blank receipt to this CBP officer and
he told me to go to the front of the line,
in front of Booth nine. So I tried to do that,
(05:10):
tired and hot and sweaty, and all of the people
in the line behind me started yelling. They were like,
you are not going before me, like they were viscerally furious.
They would not let me go, even though a law
enforcement officer had given me the permission. So I gave
up and I went to the back of that line.
But in the span of eight hours, I saw firsthand
(05:32):
how the rules are different for how people get to
be in spaces, and it takes a lot of time
and energy to figure out which rules apply to you
and which don't, Which brings me to today's guest on
the Roxanne Gay Agenda, someone who, through her work, is
redefining the rules for what it means to be who
she is and do the work that she does. I
(05:56):
first encountered Numa Perrier's work in her twenty nineteen film Jezebel,
which she wrote, directed, and started, and being so intimately
involved in the project makes sense because the story was,
after all, based on her experiences working as a cam girl.
The movie is told from a really specific point of view,
and it offers a frank depiction of what sex work
(06:17):
can look like, of how grief is fraught and uneven terrain,
and how we can assert control in our lives in
unexpected ways. The movie premiered at south By Southwest and
was voted the south By Southwest Critics Pick. The film
also won Best Feature Film and Best Director at the
American Black Film Festival. New Maparier is a maker. She
(06:40):
gets things done. Before she made Jezebel on a shoestring budget,
she was the co writer, producer, Showrunners star and even
set in costume designer for several successful web series that
were developed for a streaming platform, Black and Sexy TV
that she co founded. She slated to produce and star
in The Erotic, a bio pick about the incredible poet
(07:01):
ud Your Lord, and later this year, a movie starring
Gabrielle Union called The Perfect Find is coming out on Netflix.
She's also starring in an upcoming thriller called Fuzzy Head
from the director Wendy McComb. She's very busy, she's very talented.
New Maparier. Welcome to the Roxane Gay Agenda. Wow, thank you.
I love the way you say my name. Do I
(07:23):
say it right? You say it beautifully? Thank you. Now
not many people can say this anymore. But you actually
grew up on a farm with nine siblings. Now what
was that like growing up in Washington State on a
farm the farm days. Yes, well it was a very boring,
(07:52):
you know, from child point of view. Um I felt
very bored there, and I was always questioning how all
my parents were able to, like, what were they doing
to kind of entertain themselves day to day because there
was really not much to do. But um I was
adopted and so my those were my adopted parents who
(08:14):
were on the farm. My adopted father was a farmer
from Georgia, so it was just in his blood to
always have a farm of some sort, live off the land.
His education stopped that I think the fifth grade. So
his intelligence was around the animals and the land and
making your own food, and so he was a maker
(08:36):
in that way, and my mother just kind of went along.
And there were so many of us kids that the
minute we woke up, we had our farm chores to do.
I had to feed our little goat called Billy, and
had you know, the cliche names. Our cow's name was Dolly.
(08:57):
We had a pig named Wilbur. The goats name was Billy.
You know. We had a dog named Benji. But so
it was just really you know, that farm life, just
like animals and digging in the dirt. And it was
a really ripe space for me to start writing. That's
where I first started writing. Would be wandering out into
(09:18):
the pasture with my little spiral notebook and just you know,
dreaming up things and writing things. And I think it
was a great place for my imagination to bloom because
I was so bored. But yeah, it was a beautiful
life in a way, but it was also the opposite
(09:38):
of that at the same time, so that I was
it the opposite of that? Was it the remote nature
of it? Yes, Well, the town that we lived in
was really called a village because the population was two
hundred and fifty. So if you can imagine our family,
you know, eight black kids, a black father, a white mother,
(10:02):
living in a pretty broke down but very large farmhouse
amongst other dairy farmers and fishermen. And yeah, we were
just very very unusual family and we weren't we weren't
welcome there, but we were there. That was a big
(10:24):
part of it. And I think just my parents not
really being the most loving that you know, there was
a lot of abuse in the family that we wouldn't
have pegged as abuse at the time. It was just
kind of part of how we lived. So, you know,
all of these things were kind of whirling and happening
(10:44):
in the three years we were there, and then we
skipped town and moved to Oregon. But yeah, that was
Washington State diversity exactly. So you started to write and
explore your creativity. When did you first know that you
were creative and that you wanted to do something creative
with your life pretty young, I would say, maybe five
(11:08):
or six years old. I was writing since I was
about seven years old, out on the farm, um just
writing poetry. I was doing that. I was writing romance.
So from a pretty young age, I wanted to be
a movie star and I was writing, but not knowing
(11:30):
that writing was a career. It was just something that
brought me joy and pleasure and release. When did it
change where you thought, maybe this is something I can do, Because,
like you, I wrote constantly. I wrote a lot as
a kid, but it never occurred to me I could
do anything with it, largely because I had I have
Haitian parents who are loving and supportive, but also, like
(11:54):
you know, you need to be a lawyer and engineer
or a doctor, and so it just never seemed like
a possibility. And it only really did seem like a
possibility in my late thirties. And so when for you
did you think, Okay, I can actually maybe make a
go of it. I think once I realized that it
was actually a career, because I also remember being really
(12:15):
young again, maybe five or six years old, and separate
from artistic pursuits, so much pressure from parents asking you,
what what do you want to do with the rest
of your life when you're only five or six years old,
When you remember that, and it's like they do expect
an answer, you know, there's that wave of disappointment if
you don't have an answer that feels it was like
(12:37):
something they might approve of. So I remember saying to
my mom um when I was maybe six years old,
that I wanted to be a juror and I thought
that was a job. So and I'm you know, seeing
something on TV and I understood just that little piece
of the legal system, that there could be a quorum
(12:57):
of people that debate and consider and bring justice to
as to a situation. And she said, that's not a job,
and so, you know, she said that wasn't a job.
I was like, oh, And then quickly from she says, yeah, yeah, exactly,
(13:17):
but it's like it's a duty, right, you know, that
you don't get paid for. So I quickly pivoted from
that into I could see that you could have a
career as an actor because I could see examples of
that on my TV. But being a writer, I guess
I knew you could write a book by you know,
and that that could be a livelihood. When I was
(13:39):
a teenager, so I had dreams of writing books, but
in terms of writing movies, writing TV, not untiling. Maybe
I was in my twenties that I know that there was, Oh,
there's a path for that, there's a way, and oh
I could be a director to this is how movies
get made. It was all a lowly unraveling process because
(14:02):
I had no examples of that whatsoever. I didn't know
how a movie got made. I just would just see
it on the TV. When did you start to learn
how a movie gets made and that directing is a
thing you can do, and what drew you to making
films and television. I think it was in my acting classes.
(14:22):
When I moved out to to here, to l A,
to Los Angeles, UM, I was in an acting class
where there were also directors, and it was a very
kind of well rounded study where we read plays every week,
and so there was kind of a play critique class
alongside the writing. There were directors in the class who
(14:45):
would direct scenes and put them on stage, and I
would just notice that when they did their work, our
teacher would give them a critique or an assessment that
was really different than an assessment I would get as
an after just putting my own monologue up there. And
so I became really fascinated about that process and how
(15:05):
the director got to make all these choices about the wardrobe,
where people stood, you know, when the lights came on.
I loved that. I loved being able to just get
inside of all the things I was interested in because
I've always loved lighting, and I've always loved costume, I've
always love set design, and it just pulled in everything
(15:27):
that gets me excited, and I realized, oh, you know,
and of course it was like only guys were directing
in the acting class, and there was like one woman,
you know, in the whole school that was directing stuff,
and you know, everyone was like, oh, you know, she's
she's directing too, you know, and those early examples of
(15:48):
women like her and then other women that I saw,
you know, move forward and make films where I said, oh,
there's a path, there's a way I want to do
this too, and so yeah, it was it was that
type of progression. Once you figured out you could do this,
you actually ended up doing all kinds of interesting things,
(16:09):
from web series to making a feature film. So I
would love to talk a little bit about jess A Bell,
which takes place in Vegas, and it's based on your
own life. How do you end up in Vegas? So
my family moved from the farm to Oregon to small
town California. UM. Then my father was very ill with
(16:33):
heart failure, so we moved back to his home Georgia,
where he passed away. And then we moved to South
Carolina where he had some family to kind of get
us through that. And then my mother's health took a dive.
That's how we ended up in Las Vegas because there
were doctors in Las Vegas. She had a good friend
(16:56):
that had moved to Las Vegas and they had decided
to moving together. Maybe they were lovers, just not realizing
they decided to move in together because she had just
gone through a divorce. My mother had just lost her
husband and they were in Las Vegas where there was
better options for her health, etcetera, etcetera. So the whole
(17:17):
family moved to Las Vegas, and that was the biggest
city I've ever lived in, even though Las Vegas was
kind of a a big city but a small town
at the same time. And then this is before Las
Vegas kind of rebranded at the time, they hadn't rebranded
into a family vacation stop. They were still very much
(17:40):
about what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas and city
type of thing, you know, And so all the billboards
that I saw were always like scant to the clad
of women, you know, gentlemen's clubs and when like tits
out everywhere, you know, and gambling and you know, everything
just in your face, but you weren't allowed to do it.
(18:00):
But you were seeing these images coming at you all
the time. You know. That was kind of defining for
me as a you know, fifteen year old. Yeah, but
we stayed there until my mother passed away, and that's
when the story of Jezebel really evolved, defining in what way, Well,
I think at that time, I was facing the idea
(18:24):
that I wouldn't have a mom forever, you know, and
that with that her illness was terminal, but not like
rapidly impending death, but just that, you know, prepare yourself
because you know your mother may not make it to
see you graduate high school or so I was really,
you know, contending with those things and thinking about just
(18:45):
what I wanted to do with myself as a young woman,
like and how would I get myself to Los Angeles?
Which was my goal, you know, And so every decision
that I made and everything that I was influenced by
was about how will I be on my own? How
will I achieve my now that I had these big ambitions,
(19:07):
how would I achieve them really without a support system,
you know, like how would I move through the world
without parents? You know, just like they're go going for it. Yeah.
I felt like Las Vegas was defining in that way
because everything around you was telling you, as soon as
you turn eighteen, not a day before, but the minute
(19:29):
you turn eighteen, you can be a cocktail waitress, you
can be a show girl, you can go dance at
this club. You know. The lure of like quicker money
and independence was always right there, kind of hovering for
you to step into that world. Was it easy or
difficult or somewhere in between to step into that world
(19:50):
yourself and then to depict it on screen. I think
it was pretty easy because I was fascinated by it,
and my sister was. You know, this is depict did
in the movie as well. My sister had been doing
phone sex for a couple of years, and when I
was living with her, I could hear her doing I
could hear her on her calls, you know, with no
(20:12):
door in between us at all. So um, there was
kind of a normalization, not just in the city of
Las Vegas, but within our own household. Once my mother
had passed away and me and my sister were just
figuring stuff out. So she kind of helped, I guess,
give me permission in a way that it would be
okay if I wanted to try it out. I could
make a lot of money as a cam girl, because
(20:35):
cam girl was a very new thing, and I was
fascinated by the novelty of it, by the idea that
I could make money stack that money and moved to
l A and the whole thing fascinated me. And it
wasn't hard to step into because it all felt so
anonymous and playful and you know, interesting and yeah, and
(20:56):
it was really like it was really a real job
where you go in, clocked it and we did your hours,
you clocked out, you gotta check on Friday, you deposited
that check, and you know, life got better. So yeah,
it wasn't there many years. Yeah, I did phone sex
many years ago, and I wrote about it and Hunger
(21:17):
a little bit, And I think the most surprising thing
for people is learning that it's an actual job, like
and back in the day, like we went into an
office and we worked in these little booze and we
did like crossroad puzzles to kill time, we had lunch breaks.
You know, it's it's, you know, a job as a job,
as a job, no matter like what you're doing in
(21:37):
that and so, you know, one of the things I
appreciated about the movie was that it didn't offer really
a lot of editorial commentary on the nature of sex work.
It just was work. Another thing I really appreciated was
just like the emotional intimacy of the film about dealing
with grief and siblings, and you have these two women
(22:01):
who are really supporting a household even though they have
so much other things going on, and there's this claustrophobic
nous because you shot the movie in an actual apartment.
Were you happy with how the movie turned out. I'm
so happy with it. I wouldn't change anything of hearing.
(22:22):
I love it. It's a truly independent film. No one
told me what to do. I called all the shots,
you know, there was no like, let's send it in
and see what they think, you know, and test it
out on people. I mean though I did have you know,
a little um kind of tastemaker screenings as I was editing.
But you know, every decision came down to me what
(22:46):
moved me, and I trusted that that would be a
worthy contribution and I think it is. But yeah, I
loved the way it turned out. It's everything that I
intended it to be. UM and then some you know,
with what all the things that are wonderful actors brought
to it, let it go even you know, even further.
(23:07):
So do you like being the decision maker and always
and having that creative control? Yes, yes, I need that,
you know. And I have this director friend who has
worked more than me, and I went to her when
I had my first interview for a TV job, and
(23:28):
she told me, you know, just make sure that you
say that, UM, you love to collaborate in the interview
and that you know, you make it clear that you can,
you know, work well with others, which I feel like
I do, and I remember that was a great piece
of advice, to make sure that you stay and communicate
that in some way. UM. But That doesn't take away
(23:52):
at all from the fact that I love being the
decision maker. I loved running my own streamer. I love that.
That feels great to me. So more of that, Yes,
how do you develop the confidence to be that decision
maker to write something, direct it, produce act, make the
(24:13):
cost or design the costumes. And how how do you
trust in yourself? Because I am a control freak. I
love being the decision maker and always and all things,
but sometimes I'm always I'm nervous, like am I making
the right decisions? Am I doing the right things for
this project? Etcetera? So how do you develop that confidence
and then maintain it or do you do it despite
(24:36):
not having confidence? Yeah, those doubts and you know, falling
in and out of love, that's what I kind of
call it. With something like with Jezebel during the edit,
that is such a test of your endurance and choices
because it's really worried. The control of your craft comes
in even more. You have to, you know, take all
(24:56):
of this footage and hopefully feel good about that footage.
But even if you feel great about it, how are
you going to put it all together? And I went
through a year of depression, trying to continue to raise
the money to fulfill post production, but also the ups
and downs of doubting my film, doubting the story, doubting
(25:20):
how it was going to turn out, doubting if I
even really had something here or not. And it's these
kind of violent creative mood swings that happened. And once
it happened, once I felt the pattern of that, and
it's like kind of remind me of my minstrual cycle,
I was like, Oh, this is that thing coming up.
(25:42):
And right now I'm not in love with the thing,
and I'm going to be in bed for some days
and I'm not gonna want to see people. I'm embarrassed.
But on the other side of that, which you know,
Phil is coming around the bend, I'm going to be
really excited about my movie again, and I'm I'm going
to discover this nugget or this scene, or you know,
(26:03):
my editor is going to come back to me with something,
and it just refreshes you and rejuvenates the whole thing.
Now I have understanding that that can be part of
the process or part of my process, so I expect
it in a way that there maybe that happening. Um
and that's how I get through it by just being
aware that it's waves. It's waves of doubt, it's waves
(26:26):
of you know, just feeling down about other things that
affect how you're viewing your own work. I've looked at
you know, your body of work thus far, and you
do all kinds of different things. And I try to
do that too. I love just you never know what
I'm going to do next, and part rocks and know
(26:49):
what we're going to know? Do you think that's the
Haitian part? Though? You know what you ask an important question?
I do? I actually do in part think it is
the Asian part, because Haitians, as you know, we can
be very contrary, very sort of You're not going to
conquer me. You're not going to conquer me, and you're
(27:12):
not gonna see me coming either, right, And you're gonna
underestimate me, and that's fine, but I'm going to teach
you not to do that again. You're gonna learn today, today, tomorrow,
and yesterday. This is a teachable moment, it is, I mean,
and unfortunately so many people have a lot to learn
(27:33):
about underestimating Haitian women. That's right, it's you that's going
to get hurt. And so imagine my surprise when I
saw that you recently collaborated with the visual artist Derek
for Sure on his show Magic Mystery and Last how
did you come to that project? So Derek is a lovely, lovely,
(27:53):
lovely human being. I adore his work. I adore his
approach to the work. I think I saw his work
first in like two thousands, thirteen or fourteen, UM. He
was part of a group show and his one painting
that he had there. I just felt so pulled into it,
kind of in a magical way, and I was like,
(28:15):
who is this artist and what is this about? It's
kind of this very textured painting on newspaper of a cheerleader.
So it just it just spoke to me and we connected.
We became very good friends over the years, being able
to really talk about kind of what I was talking about,
those waves of the creative process, you know, the kind
(28:39):
of emotional despair of not knowing if you have anything,
but then being so confused because you could have swore
that you had something so brilliant three days before, and
just really you know, questioning your your mental space. He
was someone that I could call and talk through those things,
and I was someone he could call and talk through
(29:00):
those things. So, you know, his body of work expanding,
My body of work expanded. And he called me and
told me about this show. It's gonna be about magic. Oh. Also,
he loves doing immersive experiences, and I love doing immersive experiences.
So any film that I make, I would love to
have an art installation accompanying that film. I don't care
(29:22):
if it's the most Hollywood mainstream thing. I love having
more than one entry point. So all of these things
we agree on. He calls me he's doing a show
on magic, and he's looking for a writer and director
to do this magic show, which is like James come
true for me, But he didn't ask me to do it.
He was kind of ticktoeing around it and saying, you know,
(29:44):
do you maybe you know know someone in l A
that could? Do you know any magicians? Or do you
you know know anybody you know? And then he kind
of threw black women woman in there, like do you
know a black woman who could? So I stopped him
like I was like, Derek, I don't really know how
(30:04):
to say this, but are you And I really wasn't sure.
I said, are you asking me to do it, or
are you really asking me to help you find someone
to do it because you don't think I'm the right
person for it, but you think I could find the
right person for you. Which one is it? You know?
I was just like, cut the cop, what is it?
He's like, oh, you know, I didn't want to ask
you because I didn't want you to be awkward if
(30:26):
you didn't want to do it. But I figured if
you wanted to do it, you would speak up the
way you are, so it's speaking up. I would love
to do it. And he sent me a book and
we started researching and uh, yeah, that's where the process
for that began, the writing and putting that show together.
(30:46):
Are you an art collector? I am a budding, hopeful
aspiring Derek owes me art, but he knows exactly he does. Yeah,
I'm a budding aspiring I want to be. I want
to be. I want to be that art collector. And
(31:08):
like when I walk into the spot, they're like, oh, ship,
here she come to rack up. Yeah, you know, And
I asked that because I mean, listeners have no way
of knowing this. But I ran into you recently at
the gen Viev Gaine yard opening in Los Angeles at
fiel Metta Galleries. And she has a show opened that's
(31:30):
closing on May seven called Strange Fruit and I think
it's Yeah, it's called Strange Fruit and it was a
great show. I'm a huge fan of her work. She's
so incredibly talented and she works across media and and
when I saw you there, I was like, oh, yes,
another Haitian woman who's into art es. I was stilled
(31:53):
to see you. They're very into art. I work in
that space. I used to throw art shows. I called
them One Night's Dance um, and I would just gather
all of the women who I knew like had art
in the back of their closets that was really good,
but they weren't doing anything with it. And we do
these shows. And yeah, I love the art world, you know.
(32:14):
I consider myself just toggling between the movie world and
the art world. Speaking of One Night Stands, I know
that you co founded a streaming service called Black and
Sexy TV. You know you love your doing all kinds
of things. I love it. I'm just like, what else
did you do? So I would love for you to
talk a little about what is it like to run
(32:35):
a streaming service. Well, it was absolutely thrilling, very hard work,
like pushing a boulder up um slippery mulholland canny and
you know, um, you know, every time you're pushing up,
you're slipping down at the same time. But it's like
you're headed to this really beautiful view. And because I
(32:56):
like to be in charge, because I like to move quickly,
running a streamer, which was really the early for really
one of the first, you know, one of the first
um independent streamers, definitely one of the first of only
indie streamers for black people, you know, with a very
bold black title, Black and Sexy TV. And I loved
(33:20):
it because I was always in production. I was either
in a writing room, directing something, acting in something, in
post production on something, hearing pictures from other people. And
for about eight years, I didn't encounter any white person
having to approve any thing I made or wanted to make.
(33:46):
If there was a quorum, it was a quorum of
black people who were on the same creative page as me. Mostly,
you know, we had our differences. You know, we're no
longer a collective, but you know, for the time that
we were all running that thing together, that was some
powerful ship because I then had to kind of reorient
(34:10):
myself to having, you know, to listen to and get
approval of people, you know, outside of my culture. And
that was a little bit of an adjustment to make,
but I loved it. I would do it again in
a heartbeat, maybe, you know, with some changes, but you
(34:30):
know you won't see me coming, but I'll be back.
I like it. I like it. You know, what would
you do differently next time? I would put more black
women front and center. We had that. I would do
more of that now. I know. You've also been working
on a project called Blood Mother, which is a feature
(34:52):
film set in Haiti, And is that still happening? It is?
It is? I owe it's with a action company who
I owe something to right now. So, uh, you know,
in terms of like updated outline, um, and I'm like, sorry,
I got caught up, you know, you know, trying to
put my kids through school. Um. But it's coming. I'm like,
(35:14):
it's coming, it's coming. But Blood Mother is that Haitian
story because I was adopted um when I was very little.
But then I went back to Haiti to meet my
blood mother, and while I was there, I had a
culture shock and pay culture shock and a lot of shame.
(35:37):
Ran having that culture shock, a lot of anger, a
lot of confusion, and then in my experience with this woman,
my blood mother, I started feeling very unsafe and started
having kind of these notions of am I being set
(35:57):
up to be kidnapped? Is someone gonna snatch me? And
I can't really differentiate whether those things were based in
reality or those things were not, because you know, my
blood mother is a bit of a dubious character and
would and had used me for financial gain before. Um.
So the film, what I did is I kind of
(36:21):
amplified that feeling of fear and distrust and culture shock
into a story about what it is to not be
able to trust your mother. And so it's a thriller. Yeah,
you know, it's interesting You've You've picked up on something
that I think is very complicated about Haiti. Yeah, you
(36:45):
never know what's going to happen. You never know what
people are really about. And it's not because the people
are inherently evil or anything like that. It's that the
circumstances of the country are such that people have to
resort to all kinds of things to survive. And yeah,
(37:06):
you don't really know what you don't sometimes even the
trust of like are the lights going to stay on
through this dinner that we're having? Like that's a running joke,
you know. And so I, you know, really took all
those things and amplified how far that could go in
(37:29):
someone's mind who wants to belong so bad because all
I wanted to do was belonged. But I felt so
isolated because I didn't speak enough of the language, hard
any of the language. And then you don't know if
people are making fun of you. Of course they are,
you know, but to what degree? And is there something
more sinister under that sometimes? Or is it just all?
(37:50):
You know? We are also a very secretive culture, and
I think that that runs through my blood no matter
who I was raised by, Like that is also in me.
So oh yes, with the movie that I owe another
draft too is dealing um with the intricacies of that.
So what's next for you? And like what's on your
(38:12):
professional agenda? I am finishing up this romantic comedy for Netflix,
which I really can't wait for people to see because
I found my way into that genre in a way
that's like really delightful to me. Um, it's still very sexy.
It's a very sexy, romantic comedy. So that is very
(38:34):
very close to the finish line. So I think summer fall,
um that will come out, and then I guess circling
back to like Blood Mother and add your Lord and um.
You know the things that I'm doing out of House
of Numa, out of my production arm. I'm excited to
see everything that comes out of House of Numa Numa
(38:56):
Perry A, thank you so much for joining me on
the Rock sand Gay Agenda. You are a delight and
I'm a real fan. You can keep up with me
and this podcast on social media on Twitter at r
g a Y and Instagram at Roxanne Gay seven four.
Our email is Roxanne Gay Agenda at gmail dot com
and we would love to hear from you from Luminary.
(39:16):
The Roxanne Gay Agenda is produced by Curtis Fox. Our
researchers Yesagna more No. Production support is provided by Caitlin
Adams and Meg Pillow. Hi'm Roxanne Gay, your favorite bad feminist.
Thank you every so much for listening.
As many listeners know, I traveled too much. Recently, I
had the opportunity to spend ten days in Paris from
my youngest brother's wedding. This was my second trip in
Paris remains probably one of my favorite cities in the world.
During that time, we had the opportunity to visit the
Museum of Impressionism in Giverny, France, which is about forty
(00:21):
kilometers outside of Paris, and right now they have an
amazing exhibit of Monet plus Rothkoe, which is really, when
you think about it, quite the unexpected pairing. Rothcoe is
one of my favorite painters, and every time I stand
in front of one of his canvases, I am odd
and that was certainly the case in Givernye. It's a
fairly small exhibit, but impeccably curated and presented. In addition
(00:44):
to biographical information about each artist, pieces from each are
placed in conversation with one another across a series of spaces.
If you happen to be across the pond in the
next few months, you will not regret a short road trip.
In addition to the museum, it's actually an entire complex.
You can wander through Monay's gardens and his lily pond.
(01:06):
There's the country mansion where he did much of his work,
and there's this place where you stand just in front
of that front door and look out at these lush
gardens that have been beautifully maintained over the years. And
it's not hard to understand why when he's work is
so beautiful. From Luminary. This is the Rock Sande Gay Agenda,
(01:29):
The Bad Feminist Podcast of Your Dreams. I am Roxanne Gay,
your favorite bad feminist and the Rock Sanda Gay Agenda.
I talked about something that's on my mind, and then
I talked with someone interesting to find out what's on
their mind. On this week's agenda. Yes Travel. Yesterday I
(01:49):
flew back to the United States and Charles de Gaull
Airport was a chaotic mess. Apparently, earlier in the week,
Delta had canceled two big flights, and so all of
those passengers plus yesterday's passengers, congealed into a mass of
sweaty and irritable humanity. Getting to the airport two and
a half hours early was barely enough time to check
(02:10):
our bags, show our COVID paperwork, pass through customs, make
it through security, and then trudged literally to the very
last gate with the longest jet bridge in the history
of jet bridges. As we waited in line after line
after line, lines that were supposedly expedited, I was struck
by the absolutely wild and inappropriate behavior around us. People
(02:32):
in airports tend to behave so very badly. We were
all in the same britty shitty situation, but many people
thought that their individual circumstance was the most urgent. There
was one man who was particularly insistent about moving ahead
in the customs line because his flight departed at ten ten. Now,
many of us in the line were on that same flight.
(02:54):
Debbie and I were actually on a flight at ten twenty.
But he, for whatever reason, was certain that his urgency
was the was pressing. As you might imagine, things got
rowdy until he got near the front of the line,
where a hero in blue held his ground and did
not let any of the people trying to cut the
line pass. And to that man, and that man only,
I say good day. Normally, I just let these kinds
(03:17):
of things go. Travel is stressful enough in and of itself,
and I don't need to further stress myself out by
trying to micromanage or dwell too much on the behaviors
of others who may not be at their best. But
yesterday nearly pushed me over the edge. There was a
white woman who started to do that thing to get
ahead in the line, where she just acted like she
(03:38):
was the saddest and most fragile woman in the world.
And when she too reached my hero in blue, he
refused to let her pass, and so she did what
you would expect her to do, which is to start crying,
acting like he had mortally wounded her. And then the
white woman behind him started comforting the crying woman, and
they had this moment of white woman's solidarity, and I thought, Ah,
(04:02):
there's the fifty three percent of white women who voted
for Donald Trump. As I thought about the politics of
the line, which was really the politics of sharing public
spaces with others, I felt a frustration that I often
experienced when I see people who act entitled and don't
seem to feel any kind of regret or remorse or
reflection about that entitlement. I was surging with resentment that
(04:26):
again I often feel when I see people doing things
I would never dare to do, not because I don't
have negative thoughts or inclinations, but because I know that
I would never receive the same leeway that others do.
If I tried to cut the line, someone would probably
call security, and indeed that sort of happened. Upon landing
at GfK, I have global entry, which means that I
(04:48):
don't have to wait in the ridiculous line. I can
just go up to a little kiosk and put in
my passport, take a picture, and pretty much off you go.
So I did my thing at the kiosk, but for
the first time ever, it printed out a blank receipt.
I showed my blank receipt to this CBP officer and
he told me to go to the front of the line,
in front of Booth nine. So I tried to do that,
(05:10):
tired and hot and sweaty, and all of the people
in the line behind me started yelling. They were like,
you are not going before me, like they were viscerally furious.
They would not let me go, even though a law
enforcement officer had given me the permission. So I gave
up and I went to the back of that line.
But in the span of eight hours, I saw firsthand
(05:32):
how the rules are different for how people get to
be in spaces, and it takes a lot of time
and energy to figure out which rules apply to you
and which don't, Which brings me to today's guest on
the Roxanne Gay Agenda, someone who, through her work, is
redefining the rules for what it means to be who
she is and do the work that she does. I
(05:56):
first encountered Numa Perrier's work in her twenty nineteen film Jezebel,
which she wrote, directed, and started, and being so intimately
involved in the project makes sense because the story was,
after all, based on her experiences working as a cam girl.
The movie is told from a really specific point of view,
and it offers a frank depiction of what sex work
(06:17):
can look like, of how grief is fraught and uneven terrain,
and how we can assert control in our lives in
unexpected ways. The movie premiered at south By Southwest and
was voted the south By Southwest Critics Pick. The film
also won Best Feature Film and Best Director at the
American Black Film Festival. New Maparier is a maker. She
(06:40):
gets things done. Before she made Jezebel on a shoestring budget,
she was the co writer, producer, Showrunners star and even
set in costume designer for several successful web series that
were developed for a streaming platform, Black and Sexy TV
that she co founded. She slated to produce and star
in The Erotic, a bio pick about the incredible poet
(07:01):
ud Your Lord, and later this year, a movie starring
Gabrielle Union called The Perfect Find is coming out on Netflix.
She's also starring in an upcoming thriller called Fuzzy Head
from the director Wendy McComb. She's very busy, she's very talented.
New Maparier. Welcome to the Roxane Gay Agenda. Wow, thank you.
I love the way you say my name. Do I
(07:23):
say it right? You say it beautifully? Thank you. Now
not many people can say this anymore. But you actually
grew up on a farm with nine siblings. Now what
was that like growing up in Washington State on a
farm the farm days. Yes, well it was a very boring,
(07:52):
you know, from child point of view. Um I felt
very bored there, and I was always questioning how all
my parents were able to, like, what were they doing
to kind of entertain themselves day to day because there
was really not much to do. But um I was
adopted and so my those were my adopted parents who
(08:14):
were on the farm. My adopted father was a farmer
from Georgia, so it was just in his blood to
always have a farm of some sort, live off the land.
His education stopped that I think the fifth grade. So
his intelligence was around the animals and the land and
making your own food, and so he was a maker
(08:36):
in that way, and my mother just kind of went along.
And there were so many of us kids that the
minute we woke up, we had our farm chores to do.
I had to feed our little goat called Billy, and
had you know, the cliche names. Our cow's name was Dolly.
(08:57):
We had a pig named Wilbur. The goats name was Billy.
You know. We had a dog named Benji. But so
it was just really you know, that farm life, just
like animals and digging in the dirt. And it was
a really ripe space for me to start writing. That's
where I first started writing. Would be wandering out into
(09:18):
the pasture with my little spiral notebook and just you know,
dreaming up things and writing things. And I think it
was a great place for my imagination to bloom because
I was so bored. But yeah, it was a beautiful
life in a way, but it was also the opposite
(09:38):
of that at the same time, so that I was
it the opposite of that? Was it the remote nature
of it? Yes, Well, the town that we lived in
was really called a village because the population was two
hundred and fifty. So if you can imagine our family,
you know, eight black kids, a black father, a white mother,
(10:02):
living in a pretty broke down but very large farmhouse
amongst other dairy farmers and fishermen. And yeah, we were
just very very unusual family and we weren't we weren't
welcome there, but we were there. That was a big
(10:24):
part of it. And I think just my parents not
really being the most loving that you know, there was
a lot of abuse in the family that we wouldn't
have pegged as abuse at the time. It was just
kind of part of how we lived. So, you know,
all of these things were kind of whirling and happening
(10:44):
in the three years we were there, and then we
skipped town and moved to Oregon. But yeah, that was
Washington State diversity exactly. So you started to write and
explore your creativity. When did you first know that you
were creative and that you wanted to do something creative
with your life pretty young, I would say, maybe five
(11:08):
or six years old. I was writing since I was
about seven years old, out on the farm, um just
writing poetry. I was doing that. I was writing romance.
So from a pretty young age, I wanted to be
a movie star and I was writing, but not knowing
(11:30):
that writing was a career. It was just something that
brought me joy and pleasure and release. When did it
change where you thought, maybe this is something I can do, Because,
like you, I wrote constantly. I wrote a lot as
a kid, but it never occurred to me I could
do anything with it, largely because I had I have
Haitian parents who are loving and supportive, but also, like
(11:54):
you know, you need to be a lawyer and engineer
or a doctor, and so it just never seemed like
a possibility. And it only really did seem like a
possibility in my late thirties. And so when for you
did you think, Okay, I can actually maybe make a
go of it. I think once I realized that it
was actually a career, because I also remember being really
(12:15):
young again, maybe five or six years old, and separate
from artistic pursuits, so much pressure from parents asking you,
what what do you want to do with the rest
of your life when you're only five or six years old,
When you remember that, and it's like they do expect
an answer, you know, there's that wave of disappointment if
you don't have an answer that feels it was like
(12:37):
something they might approve of. So I remember saying to
my mom um when I was maybe six years old,
that I wanted to be a juror and I thought
that was a job. So and I'm you know, seeing
something on TV and I understood just that little piece
of the legal system, that there could be a quorum
(12:57):
of people that debate and consider and bring justice to
as to a situation. And she said, that's not a job,
and so, you know, she said that wasn't a job.
I was like, oh, And then quickly from she says, yeah, yeah, exactly,
(13:17):
but it's like it's a duty, right, you know, that
you don't get paid for. So I quickly pivoted from
that into I could see that you could have a
career as an actor because I could see examples of
that on my TV. But being a writer, I guess
I knew you could write a book by you know,
and that that could be a livelihood. When I was
(13:39):
a teenager, so I had dreams of writing books, but
in terms of writing movies, writing TV, not untiling. Maybe
I was in my twenties that I know that there was, Oh,
there's a path for that, there's a way, and oh
I could be a director to this is how movies
get made. It was all a lowly unraveling process because
(14:02):
I had no examples of that whatsoever. I didn't know
how a movie got made. I just would just see
it on the TV. When did you start to learn
how a movie gets made and that directing is a
thing you can do, and what drew you to making
films and television. I think it was in my acting classes.
(14:22):
When I moved out to to here, to l A,
to Los Angeles, UM, I was in an acting class
where there were also directors, and it was a very
kind of well rounded study where we read plays every week,
and so there was kind of a play critique class
alongside the writing. There were directors in the class who
(14:45):
would direct scenes and put them on stage, and I
would just notice that when they did their work, our
teacher would give them a critique or an assessment that
was really different than an assessment I would get as
an after just putting my own monologue up there. And
so I became really fascinated about that process and how
(15:05):
the director got to make all these choices about the wardrobe,
where people stood, you know, when the lights came on.
I loved that. I loved being able to just get
inside of all the things I was interested in because
I've always loved lighting, and I've always loved costume, I've
always love set design, and it just pulled in everything
(15:27):
that gets me excited, and I realized, oh, you know,
and of course it was like only guys were directing
in the acting class, and there was like one woman,
you know, in the whole school that was directing stuff,
and you know, everyone was like, oh, you know, she's
she's directing too, you know, and those early examples of
(15:48):
women like her and then other women that I saw,
you know, move forward and make films where I said, oh,
there's a path, there's a way I want to do
this too, and so yeah, it was it was that
type of progression. Once you figured out you could do this,
you actually ended up doing all kinds of interesting things,
(16:09):
from web series to making a feature film. So I
would love to talk a little bit about jess A Bell,
which takes place in Vegas, and it's based on your
own life. How do you end up in Vegas? So
my family moved from the farm to Oregon to small
town California. UM. Then my father was very ill with
(16:33):
heart failure, so we moved back to his home Georgia,
where he passed away. And then we moved to South
Carolina where he had some family to kind of get
us through that. And then my mother's health took a dive.
That's how we ended up in Las Vegas because there
were doctors in Las Vegas. She had a good friend
(16:56):
that had moved to Las Vegas and they had decided
to moving together. Maybe they were lovers, just not realizing
they decided to move in together because she had just
gone through a divorce. My mother had just lost her
husband and they were in Las Vegas where there was
better options for her health, etcetera, etcetera. So the whole
(17:17):
family moved to Las Vegas, and that was the biggest
city I've ever lived in, even though Las Vegas was
kind of a a big city but a small town
at the same time. And then this is before Las
Vegas kind of rebranded at the time, they hadn't rebranded
into a family vacation stop. They were still very much
(17:40):
about what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas and city
type of thing, you know, And so all the billboards
that I saw were always like scant to the clad
of women, you know, gentlemen's clubs and when like tits
out everywhere, you know, and gambling and you know, everything
just in your face, but you weren't allowed to do it.
(18:00):
But you were seeing these images coming at you all
the time. You know. That was kind of defining for
me as a you know, fifteen year old. Yeah, but
we stayed there until my mother passed away, and that's
when the story of Jezebel really evolved, defining in what way, Well,
I think at that time, I was facing the idea
(18:24):
that I wouldn't have a mom forever, you know, and
that with that her illness was terminal, but not like
rapidly impending death, but just that, you know, prepare yourself
because you know your mother may not make it to
see you graduate high school or so I was really,
you know, contending with those things and thinking about just
(18:45):
what I wanted to do with myself as a young woman,
like and how would I get myself to Los Angeles?
Which was my goal, you know, And so every decision
that I made and everything that I was influenced by
was about how will I be on my own? How
will I achieve my now that I had these big ambitions,
(19:07):
how would I achieve them really without a support system,
you know, like how would I move through the world
without parents? You know, just like they're go going for it. Yeah.
I felt like Las Vegas was defining in that way
because everything around you was telling you, as soon as
you turn eighteen, not a day before, but the minute
(19:29):
you turn eighteen, you can be a cocktail waitress, you
can be a show girl, you can go dance at
this club. You know. The lure of like quicker money
and independence was always right there, kind of hovering for
you to step into that world. Was it easy or
difficult or somewhere in between to step into that world
(19:50):
yourself and then to depict it on screen. I think
it was pretty easy because I was fascinated by it,
and my sister was. You know, this is depict did
in the movie as well. My sister had been doing
phone sex for a couple of years, and when I
was living with her, I could hear her doing I
could hear her on her calls, you know, with no
(20:12):
door in between us at all. So um, there was
kind of a normalization, not just in the city of
Las Vegas, but within our own household. Once my mother
had passed away and me and my sister were just
figuring stuff out. So she kind of helped, I guess,
give me permission in a way that it would be
okay if I wanted to try it out. I could
make a lot of money as a cam girl, because
(20:35):
cam girl was a very new thing, and I was
fascinated by the novelty of it, by the idea that
I could make money stack that money and moved to
l A and the whole thing fascinated me. And it
wasn't hard to step into because it all felt so
anonymous and playful and you know, interesting and yeah, and
(20:56):
it was really like it was really a real job
where you go in, clocked it and we did your hours,
you clocked out, you gotta check on Friday, you deposited
that check, and you know, life got better. So yeah,
it wasn't there many years. Yeah, I did phone sex
many years ago, and I wrote about it and Hunger
(21:17):
a little bit, And I think the most surprising thing
for people is learning that it's an actual job, like
and back in the day, like we went into an
office and we worked in these little booze and we
did like crossroad puzzles to kill time, we had lunch breaks.
You know, it's it's, you know, a job as a job,
as a job, no matter like what you're doing in
(21:37):
that and so, you know, one of the things I
appreciated about the movie was that it didn't offer really
a lot of editorial commentary on the nature of sex work.
It just was work. Another thing I really appreciated was
just like the emotional intimacy of the film about dealing
with grief and siblings, and you have these two women
(22:01):
who are really supporting a household even though they have
so much other things going on, and there's this claustrophobic
nous because you shot the movie in an actual apartment.
Were you happy with how the movie turned out. I'm
so happy with it. I wouldn't change anything of hearing.
(22:22):
I love it. It's a truly independent film. No one
told me what to do. I called all the shots,
you know, there was no like, let's send it in
and see what they think, you know, and test it
out on people. I mean though I did have you know,
a little um kind of tastemaker screenings as I was editing.
But you know, every decision came down to me what
(22:46):
moved me, and I trusted that that would be a
worthy contribution and I think it is. But yeah, I
loved the way it turned out. It's everything that I
intended it to be. UM and then some you know,
with what all the things that are wonderful actors brought
to it, let it go even you know, even further.
(23:07):
So do you like being the decision maker and always
and having that creative control? Yes, yes, I need that,
you know. And I have this director friend who has
worked more than me, and I went to her when
I had my first interview for a TV job, and
(23:28):
she told me, you know, just make sure that you
say that, UM, you love to collaborate in the interview
and that you know, you make it clear that you can,
you know, work well with others, which I feel like
I do, and I remember that was a great piece
of advice, to make sure that you stay and communicate
that in some way. UM. But That doesn't take away
(23:52):
at all from the fact that I love being the
decision maker. I loved running my own streamer. I love that.
That feels great to me. So more of that, Yes,
how do you develop the confidence to be that decision
maker to write something, direct it, produce act, make the
(24:13):
cost or design the costumes. And how how do you
trust in yourself? Because I am a control freak. I
love being the decision maker and always and all things,
but sometimes I'm always I'm nervous, like am I making
the right decisions? Am I doing the right things for
this project? Etcetera? So how do you develop that confidence
and then maintain it or do you do it despite
(24:36):
not having confidence? Yeah, those doubts and you know, falling
in and out of love, that's what I kind of
call it. With something like with Jezebel during the edit,
that is such a test of your endurance and choices
because it's really worried. The control of your craft comes
in even more. You have to, you know, take all
(24:56):
of this footage and hopefully feel good about that footage.
But even if you feel great about it, how are
you going to put it all together? And I went
through a year of depression, trying to continue to raise
the money to fulfill post production, but also the ups
and downs of doubting my film, doubting the story, doubting
(25:20):
how it was going to turn out, doubting if I
even really had something here or not. And it's these
kind of violent creative mood swings that happened. And once
it happened, once I felt the pattern of that, and
it's like kind of remind me of my minstrual cycle,
I was like, Oh, this is that thing coming up.
(25:42):
And right now I'm not in love with the thing,
and I'm going to be in bed for some days
and I'm not gonna want to see people. I'm embarrassed.
But on the other side of that, which you know,
Phil is coming around the bend, I'm going to be
really excited about my movie again, and I'm I'm going
to discover this nugget or this scene, or you know,
(26:03):
my editor is going to come back to me with something,
and it just refreshes you and rejuvenates the whole thing.
Now I have understanding that that can be part of
the process or part of my process, so I expect
it in a way that there maybe that happening. Um
and that's how I get through it by just being
aware that it's waves. It's waves of doubt, it's waves
(26:26):
of you know, just feeling down about other things that
affect how you're viewing your own work. I've looked at
you know, your body of work thus far, and you
do all kinds of different things. And I try to
do that too. I love just you never know what
I'm going to do next, and part rocks and know
(26:49):
what we're going to know? Do you think that's the
Haitian part? Though? You know what you ask an important question?
I do? I actually do in part think it is
the Asian part, because Haitians, as you know, we can
be very contrary, very sort of You're not going to
conquer me. You're not going to conquer me, and you're
(27:12):
not gonna see me coming either, right, And you're gonna
underestimate me, and that's fine, but I'm going to teach
you not to do that again. You're gonna learn today, today, tomorrow,
and yesterday. This is a teachable moment, it is, I mean,
and unfortunately so many people have a lot to learn
(27:33):
about underestimating Haitian women. That's right, it's you that's going
to get hurt. And so imagine my surprise when I
saw that you recently collaborated with the visual artist Derek
for Sure on his show Magic Mystery and Last how
did you come to that project? So Derek is a lovely, lovely,
(27:53):
lovely human being. I adore his work. I adore his
approach to the work. I think I saw his work
first in like two thousands, thirteen or fourteen, UM. He
was part of a group show and his one painting
that he had there. I just felt so pulled into it,
kind of in a magical way, and I was like,
(28:15):
who is this artist and what is this about? It's
kind of this very textured painting on newspaper of a cheerleader.
So it just it just spoke to me and we connected.
We became very good friends over the years, being able
to really talk about kind of what I was talking about,
those waves of the creative process, you know, the kind
(28:39):
of emotional despair of not knowing if you have anything,
but then being so confused because you could have swore
that you had something so brilliant three days before, and
just really you know, questioning your your mental space. He
was someone that I could call and talk through those things,
and I was someone he could call and talk through
(29:00):
those things. So, you know, his body of work expanding,
My body of work expanded. And he called me and
told me about this show. It's gonna be about magic. Oh. Also,
he loves doing immersive experiences, and I love doing immersive experiences.
So any film that I make, I would love to
have an art installation accompanying that film. I don't care
(29:22):
if it's the most Hollywood mainstream thing. I love having
more than one entry point. So all of these things
we agree on. He calls me he's doing a show
on magic, and he's looking for a writer and director
to do this magic show, which is like James come
true for me, But he didn't ask me to do it.
He was kind of ticktoeing around it and saying, you know,
(29:44):
do you maybe you know know someone in l A
that could? Do you know any magicians? Or do you
you know know anybody you know? And then he kind
of threw black women woman in there, like do you
know a black woman who could? So I stopped him
like I was like, Derek, I don't really know how
(30:04):
to say this, but are you And I really wasn't sure.
I said, are you asking me to do it, or
are you really asking me to help you find someone
to do it because you don't think I'm the right
person for it, but you think I could find the
right person for you. Which one is it? You know?
I was just like, cut the cop, what is it?
He's like, oh, you know, I didn't want to ask
you because I didn't want you to be awkward if
(30:26):
you didn't want to do it. But I figured if
you wanted to do it, you would speak up the
way you are, so it's speaking up. I would love
to do it. And he sent me a book and
we started researching and uh, yeah, that's where the process
for that began, the writing and putting that show together.
(30:46):
Are you an art collector? I am a budding, hopeful
aspiring Derek owes me art, but he knows exactly he does. Yeah,
I'm a budding aspiring I want to be. I want
to be. I want to be that art collector. And
(31:08):
like when I walk into the spot, they're like, oh, ship,
here she come to rack up. Yeah, you know, And
I asked that because I mean, listeners have no way
of knowing this. But I ran into you recently at
the gen Viev Gaine yard opening in Los Angeles at
fiel Metta Galleries. And she has a show opened that's
(31:30):
closing on May seven called Strange Fruit and I think
it's Yeah, it's called Strange Fruit and it was a
great show. I'm a huge fan of her work. She's
so incredibly talented and she works across media and and
when I saw you there, I was like, oh, yes,
another Haitian woman who's into art es. I was stilled
(31:53):
to see you. They're very into art. I work in
that space. I used to throw art shows. I called
them One Night's Dance um, and I would just gather
all of the women who I knew like had art
in the back of their closets that was really good,
but they weren't doing anything with it. And we do
these shows. And yeah, I love the art world, you know.
(32:14):
I consider myself just toggling between the movie world and
the art world. Speaking of One Night Stands, I know
that you co founded a streaming service called Black and
Sexy TV. You know you love your doing all kinds
of things. I love it. I'm just like, what else
did you do? So I would love for you to
talk a little about what is it like to run
(32:35):
a streaming service. Well, it was absolutely thrilling, very hard work,
like pushing a boulder up um slippery mulholland canny and
you know, um, you know, every time you're pushing up,
you're slipping down at the same time. But it's like
you're headed to this really beautiful view. And because I
(32:56):
like to be in charge, because I like to move quickly,
running a streamer, which was really the early for really
one of the first, you know, one of the first
um independent streamers, definitely one of the first of only
indie streamers for black people, you know, with a very
bold black title, Black and Sexy TV. And I loved
(33:20):
it because I was always in production. I was either
in a writing room, directing something, acting in something, in
post production on something, hearing pictures from other people. And
for about eight years, I didn't encounter any white person
having to approve any thing I made or wanted to make.
(33:46):
If there was a quorum, it was a quorum of
black people who were on the same creative page as me. Mostly,
you know, we had our differences. You know, we're no
longer a collective, but you know, for the time that
we were all running that thing together, that was some
powerful ship because I then had to kind of reorient
(34:10):
myself to having, you know, to listen to and get
approval of people, you know, outside of my culture. And
that was a little bit of an adjustment to make,
but I loved it. I would do it again in
a heartbeat, maybe, you know, with some changes, but you
(34:30):
know you won't see me coming, but I'll be back.
I like it. I like it. You know, what would
you do differently next time? I would put more black
women front and center. We had that. I would do
more of that now. I know. You've also been working
on a project called Blood Mother, which is a feature
(34:52):
film set in Haiti, And is that still happening? It is?
It is? I owe it's with a action company who
I owe something to right now. So, uh, you know,
in terms of like updated outline, um, and I'm like, sorry,
I got caught up, you know, you know, trying to
put my kids through school. Um. But it's coming. I'm like,
(35:14):
it's coming, it's coming. But Blood Mother is that Haitian
story because I was adopted um when I was very little.
But then I went back to Haiti to meet my
blood mother, and while I was there, I had a
culture shock and pay culture shock and a lot of shame.
(35:37):
Ran having that culture shock, a lot of anger, a
lot of confusion, and then in my experience with this woman,
my blood mother, I started feeling very unsafe and started
having kind of these notions of am I being set
(35:57):
up to be kidnapped? Is someone gonna snatch me? And
I can't really differentiate whether those things were based in
reality or those things were not, because you know, my
blood mother is a bit of a dubious character and
would and had used me for financial gain before. Um.
So the film, what I did is I kind of
(36:21):
amplified that feeling of fear and distrust and culture shock
into a story about what it is to not be
able to trust your mother. And so it's a thriller. Yeah,
you know, it's interesting You've You've picked up on something
that I think is very complicated about Haiti. Yeah, you
(36:45):
never know what's going to happen. You never know what
people are really about. And it's not because the people
are inherently evil or anything like that. It's that the
circumstances of the country are such that people have to
resort to all kinds of things to survive. And yeah,
(37:06):
you don't really know what you don't sometimes even the
trust of like are the lights going to stay on
through this dinner that we're having? Like that's a running joke,
you know. And so I, you know, really took all
those things and amplified how far that could go in
(37:29):
someone's mind who wants to belong so bad because all
I wanted to do was belonged. But I felt so
isolated because I didn't speak enough of the language, hard
any of the language. And then you don't know if
people are making fun of you. Of course they are,
you know, but to what degree? And is there something
more sinister under that sometimes? Or is it just all?
(37:50):
You know? We are also a very secretive culture, and
I think that that runs through my blood no matter
who I was raised by, Like that is also in me.
So oh yes, with the movie that I owe another
draft too is dealing um with the intricacies of that.
So what's next for you? And like what's on your
(38:12):
professional agenda? I am finishing up this romantic comedy for Netflix,
which I really can't wait for people to see because
I found my way into that genre in a way
that's like really delightful to me. Um, it's still very sexy.
It's a very sexy, romantic comedy. So that is very
(38:34):
very close to the finish line. So I think summer fall,
um that will come out, and then I guess circling
back to like Blood Mother and add your Lord and um.
You know the things that I'm doing out of House
of Numa, out of my production arm. I'm excited to
see everything that comes out of House of Numa Numa
(38:56):
Perry A, thank you so much for joining me on
the Rock sand Gay Agenda. You are a delight and
I'm a real fan. You can keep up with me
and this podcast on social media on Twitter at r
g a Y and Instagram at Roxanne Gay seven four.
Our email is Roxanne Gay Agenda at gmail dot com
and we would love to hear from you from Luminary.
(39:16):
The Roxanne Gay Agenda is produced by Curtis Fox. Our
researchers Yesagna more No. Production support is provided by Caitlin
Adams and Meg Pillow. Hi'm Roxanne Gay, your favorite bad feminist.
Thank you every so much for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.