Episode Transcript
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The following is a paid podcast.iHeartRadio's hosting of this podcast constitutes neither an
endorsement of the products offered or theideas expressed. Welcome to Becoming the Journey.
This show will be a series ofconversations that will inspire listeners along their
life's journey. This show's mission isto cultivate a community of mentorship by sharing
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our experiences in our life's journey.Nobody's journey is a straight line, so
no matter where you are in yours, this show is for you. Meet
Grace Loverrae, Hi listeners, andthanks for tuning in to Becoming the Journey
on WOR seven ten iHeartRadio. Today'sshow is about pioneering, tenacity, beating
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to your own drama and creativity tenfold. Those are all the traits wrapped up
into My guest and friend Tanya Pinkinsborn in Chicago, educated at Carnegie Ellen,
Columbia College Chicago, and California WesternSchool of Law. She is a
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Tony Award winner and nominated for andhas won several other awards in the entertainment
industry. She is a writer,director, singer, artist and actress and
a true champion for social justice.Welcome, Tanya, thank you for being
here. I have a curious question. As much as I know you school
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of law, how did that comeabout? I mean, you were aspiring
from a young age, from whatI know, to be in the entertainment
industry, or maybe I don't know. I don't know that I aspired to
be in the entertainment industry. Istarted working very young, and because my
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mother had such a hard time keepingwork and I kept getting off her job
after job after job. In myyounger years, felt like you just don't
turn down work. So I justkept getting work, like just kept getting
work and more work. Then whenI went through my second divorce and custody
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battle where I lost custody of mychildren, and I started representing myself and
started an organization with some other womenwho had gone through the same thing.
Everyone said I just had a knackfor it. I was really really good
with the law, at understanding it, at writing the briefs, at coming
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up with novel remedies. And whileI was at Columbia Chicago, I went
to I don't know, some sortof panels they had of different schools,
and I had this long conversation withsomeone from Columbia, West Columbia. I'm
sorry, California Western School of Law, which was one of two two year
law programs, because my reason fornot going to law school is like,
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I don't want to see in anotherthree years in school. And they said,
we have a two year program,and I had this great conversation with
the deans. I had just comeback from China with Ruth Gruber, who
if you know her, she waseighty five then, and it was nineteen
ninety five, the last time theWorld Women's Conference has ever been held in
the entire world. And I wentwith Ruth for New Women magazine and we
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talked about that and I applied andgot in with a presidential scholarship. So
it was kind of like things happened, and at that time in my life,
I just when things happened, Ikind of said, Okay, it's
meant to be. I'll follow thatnice. Okay, So what point were
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you actually started to appear And you'veappeared on stage in theater, You've done
daytime TV from what all my childrenfor a long time. You've got I
believe thirty six films behind you andthirty eight TV shows. I have no
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idea you've been around since before nineteeneighty. Yeah, I've been working professionally
since I was about twelve, soover fifty years. Well I'm sixty one,
so that's forty nine years or something. No, yeah, no,
it's forty nine years working professionally inthe business. I think I got my
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first union card when I was abouttwelve. So, and if anyone doesn't
know, so Tanya is African American. And as much as we've come a
long way, what was it likeback then for you in the entertainment industry.
Well, I'm from Chicago. Chicagohad a lot of industrial and McDonald's
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was there, and a lot ofcorporations, so there were just a lot
of opportunities for work. And Iwould say I think the standards beauty were
very white centric. So I rememberI was the smile for a campaign called
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Have a Coke and a Smile,and I remember sitting in these meetings and
them were talking about, well,her nose is kind of big. You
know, I did get the campaign, but you know that was I didn't
have an aquiline nose. So yeah, I think that that those standards are
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no more, but certainly fifty yearsago that was the standard of beauty,
aqualine nose, fair skin, straighthair, and certainly throughout my career,
depending on the kind of work Iwanted to have, Like if I wanted
to be thought of as a seriousactress, I'd have to have my hair
short, maybe natural, But ifI wanted to be like a TV star
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in movies, I'd have to getmy hair long and you know, glamorous.
And I was very a that dependingon what kind of audition I was
going for, the look really mattered, not the color, the look.
The look. Okay, interesting,What did you prefer doing? I mean,
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you wanted Tony, but you've donea lot of TV, You've done
a lot of film. What's yourpreference? I mean, what excites you?
Variety? I get bored really easily. I've accepted that I need to
multitask, so you know, thisyear I was working on a feature film
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and creating an original concert and Ilike to be doing a lot of things
at the same time that I justget bored really, really easily. And
is that always? Growing up?You know, I read a lot.
My mother used to say she couldnot punished me by saying I couldn't go
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outside because I was happiest alone inmy room. I think I read the
World Book Encyclopedia cover to cover andjust had an imagination and I lived in
this imaginary world. One of myfavorite things was getting the Sears Wish Book,
and it was like I would playwith all of those toys in that
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wish book, you know, comingup to Christmas, and it didn't almost
matter what I got because I'd hadsuch a great time in my imagination.
So that's, you know, myimagination I credit with taking me from Chicago
to New York and to all thethings that have happened in my life.
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Like I watched All My Children fromthe time it first came on when I
was seven years old, and Idreamed of being on Pine Valley, and
I grew up and I got towork in Pine Valley. So yeah,
I sort of I think that Ibecause from childhood so many things that I
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dreamed of, like winning a TonyAward, actually happened. I have a
strong belief that if I can imagineit, it can be you dreamed it
real fantastic And how long were youon All my Children? Just so my
listener is no, Well, Istarted off on World Turns my first audition
for soap in New York was forAll my Children, and I knew I
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was going to get it, andI didn't and I didn't get it,
Yeah, Debbie Morgan exactly. Andso I did a lot of theater and
regional theater. And Joan din Chekawas the original casting director of All My
Children. She has walked on andso she cast Susan Lucien, all of
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those characters that you grew to loveand about I'd say it was about ten
or eleven years later. I wasdoing Jelly's Last Jam at the Mark tapeer
Form and a friend of mine,Cynthia Martel, said she was going to
test for a role on All myChildren that I hadn't even heard of.
So I called my agent and Isaid, you know, they're already at
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the test deals for this role onAll my Children. Would you call them
and ask them if they would seeme? And Joan Duncheka remembered me from
twelve years before, and so Iwent in and at the final audition where
you were doing a screen test,and I booked the role of Olivia Freikutahi
and I was on and off forabout fifteen years. Wow, But did
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it bore you because you are doingother things at the time, or no,
well we kind of was really boringto me. I mean when I
got my first nighttime series, whichwas a show, an Aaron Smelling show
called University Hospital, which shot inVancouver, I was really bored. Yeah,
bored. I was like, getme off the show. Like you're
under contract and they own you.You can't do other things, and they're
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not using me enough. You know, I'm coming in one day a month
or something. No, I'm frustrated. So even on all my children,
I was doing things one without theirpermission because other people just were like,
win is your day off? Willshoot you on your day off? And
they eventually penalized me and made megive back ten thousand dollars of my salary
every time I did another job,even if the job was like a twelve
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hundred dollars job I have to take. You know, they charged me ten
thousand dollars just because you were undercontract with them, sort of an exclusive.
Uh yeah, I did not knowthat. I doubt they did that
to Susan Lucci, but they didthat to me. Does that still go
on today? I don't know.I know that for me I just would
not want to get into one ofthose contracts. I mean sometimes I get
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auditions in my you know, likethree years ago, someone wanted me to
sign a nine year contract for ashow, and I was like, Nope,
nope, I don't want to besigned up to anybody for nine years.
So leading into that that conversation going, now, you have now decided
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that you again will no longer bethat you wanted to be your own person.
You're writing your thoughts, your cast, your movie, your funding.
You funded movies yourself, and youdid The red Pill? Was that your
first first feature? First feature?Can you tell us a little bit about
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the Red Pill and what what yourimagination made you write something like that?
What in your mind made you formy listeners, explain what the red Pill
is? Well, let me gobefore I get to that, because I
started off not being very interested infilm, and I got interested in film
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really in the last maybe ten twelveyears since I moved back to New York
in two thousand eleven. That's whenI got interested in film. And I
applied to all the programs, youknow, and I didn't get in them.
And listening to Ava di Verne talkingabout how she didn't go to film
school, but she just made afilm. And I had decided I was
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going to make a movie, andI had written a script and I went
down to Antiga to shoot a likea sampler of it, and the person
who went down as my producer said, I'd like to co write this with
you, and I was like,great, I love collaborating. But through
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the next year she didn't come forwardto collaborate, like she wasn't available.
But I had decided I was makinga film. I like, I'm making
a film. It might not bethat it's clearly not going to be that
film, but I'm going to makea film because that's a commitment I made
to myself, so didn't know whatit was going to be. Was visiting
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a neighbor of mine up in Shelived in Hudson County, North Chatham,
and the first time I went tovisit her house, I was like,
Oh, your house is like wherescary movies happen. And she's like,
I don't know if that's a complimentor not, Like would you let me
make a scary movie at your house? And she's like, I think so.
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And I visited her house many moretimes, stayed there alone and the
summer of twenty nineteen. In July, there was a weekend in the United
States where there were mass shootings atpublic events, two weekends in a row,
on like the Friday and the Saturday, or the Saturday and the Sunday.
But that happened two weeks in arow. And she's a very optimistic
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person. I mean, I thinkI'm pretty optimistic, but I guess you
could say I tend on the glasseshalf empty kind of. And so we
were discussing these mass shootings and shewas saying, Oh, it's just so
random. And I said to her, you think it's random, but what
if it was part of a biggerorganization that had a leader with a thousand
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year plan. And of course thisis coming out of my mind, but
I was thinking of that infamous person. And it was in that moment that
I began to think about forty fivein that way, and what if that
was going on? And could Iwrite a story that explored that the idea
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that this wasn't this violence we wereexperiencing wasn't random, And specifically my experience
as a black female in America livingin a liberal state, and and when
I express some of my ideas theways in which I get dismissed. So
Red Pill is a story about adiverse group of friends, you know,
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West Indian, British, white,Eastern European black, who are going canvassing
in what would have been a redstate the weekend of the twenty twenty election,
and they meet this force that isa female force that stops them in
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their tracks. And they are partof a larger plan. And those that
are stopping them in their tracks?Are they the white supremist Well, it
is a group of women that arecalled the red Pill women, the red
Pill women. I know how muchyou love horror. I love horror,
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and I'm not crazy about horror,but I know you love horror. So
in a sense, red Pill ishorror, socio political horror, socio political
horror. Correct, how do yousee that social political horror now? I
mean, has it changed since thatRed Pill movie? Has it gotten worse
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for us? You know, atthe time that I was writing it,
and when I would pitch it topeople, and you know, I was
trying to raise money for it,everybody was like, Tom, You're that's
so far fetched. I think thatit becomes you know, and then When
it came out, people were like, did you write this after January sixth?
I think that it becomes more prescientwith each passing day. I don't
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know that worse. Yeah, Yeah, things are rough. Yeah, we're
in a We're in a tough toughtime right now, particularly because of income
inequality. I mean, I've reachedthis point where I'm like, don't ask
anybody for help except those nine peoplewho have more wealth than the ninety three
percent of people on the planet,Like they have the money to fix the
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problems. The rest of the peopleare struggling to survive. Yeah, and
unfortunately we do live in an intertingegovernment right now. I get that,
I agree, and young people aremore parasocial than anything else. I don't
know how to cure it, butmovies like yours kind of bring a message
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home. At least we hope itdoes. A little unknown fact you teach
at Fordham a film in a filmclass or an acting class, well,
you know, because of the veryspecifics of my teaching, Denzel Washington went
to Fordham and so he funded achair where they could bring a professional person
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in for a semester. So Iam the thirteenth Denzel Washington Endowed Chair at
Fordham University, and I can reallyteach whatever I want. I have a
lot more leeway than the other teachers, and I feel very much because I've
taught at a lot of universities thatyou kind of have to help raise them,
you know. So I teach thema lot about the business, about
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business decisions, about how to managetheir money, their finances, their life,
and yes, we do some actingright now. I was talking to
you earlier about Jean Bouliea's theory abouta simulation in simulacra and the fact that
young people today often experience very fewreal things, that their entire world is
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a simulation of something, a TV, a screen of something, and the
head of the department, may Andrales, wanted me to teach them Meisner work
and Meisner as I was taught it, it was about living truthfully and fully
in imaginary circumstances. And after afew weeks with them, I realized that
they're all dissociative and that that istheir truthful, and that's their truthful.
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This dissociative way of being is theirtruth and so trying to teach them to
live truthful, I've got to getthem to this other experience of a reality
that isn't their reality, that's myreality. But they don't have to be
in that reality very often, andthey think of that reality as traumatic or
abusive. But that is the realitythat artists thrive in and that other people
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come to witness the work that comesout of that. So it's been challenging,
challenging in a good way. CanI stay awake at night trying to
figure it out? Like two weeksago, I was told repeatedly that I
misgendered a couple of my students,and I couldn't, for the life of
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me figure out how. And whatwas interesting is the students who I had
supposedly misgendered weren't the ones speaking up. The rest of the class was speaking
up. And so I was rackingmy brain all week. And what I
had came up with was, ifyour pronouns are she, her, you
can't use they. That's what Ithought it must have meant, and so
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that was what I was telling myself, but I wasn't really sure. And
so yesterday I said, we're justgoing to have to have this really uncomfortable
conversation and I said, you know, I was accused of misgendering. You
two did not say I misgendered you. That's curious to me. So one
of them said, you didn't missgenderme. This other one said, you
called me he I said, Ithought I said they, because I had
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made a decision that I was goingto they everybody just to avoid being misgendered.
And we had a really important conversationwhere, you know, the two
trans individuals basically said, you know, they everybody is a kind of erasure
because you're trying to avoid misgendering andyou're erasing me. And so they were
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like, try, you know,if you mess up and you say he
go he she and move on.And one of them was like, I
don't even want to hear that.I'm sorry, you know, they said.
She said that everyone in this classroomhas misgendered me at some point in
time, and you know, Iget misgendered every day. She said,
everyone in my family misgenders me.She said, I'm more concerned about people
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being murdered or people being denied theirhormones or their medicines. She said,
the challenge with you as my actingcoach is that when I'm in the middle
of a scene, if I'm youknow, engaged in a character and then
I get misgendered. She says,it's kind of a violence on her because
now she's in different worlds, notbeing seen and trying to do the work.
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And so I was really glad thatI took the time to have that
conversation with them. And I said, okay, I am. You know,
I try to pronounce names and Ican't pronounce and let people laugh at
me because I feel like it buildsbridges. But I said, my generation
feels like you all are just waitingto go gotcha, and so we don't
want to, you know, makemistakes. But here in this class,
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I don't want to walk on eggshellsto try to teach you all how to
be authentic. Do you find thatacting will change now because and I know
you and I have had this conversationabout they're not in touch with the emotion
of a character or or actually intune with themselves to be able to come
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outside of themselves to become that character. Do you think that's going to change
the way people the way actors andactresses or performers perform in film or TV
because of that, I mean,we're worried about AI and digital it's already
changed. I think, you know, I almost feel like my students,
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you know, they're there. Everything'sa performance. It's a performance. They're
all very funny, they all arevery you know. They they said they
want to work on polish. I'mlike, you're doing polish. I'm trying
to get you to get rid ofall of that, like, because I
don't know that everybody can see it, but I can see what's really going
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on, and so I'm trying toteach them to be present with people and
to really see them. And Isaid that that's not part of our socialization.
We are socialized to pretend not tosee if someone is upset, we're
we're but that's not good acting becausewe all do see it. And we
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go to art to have that catharticexperience of seeing something real and authentic that
in our real life we can't experienceit, but we can have the catharsis
when someone else experiences it. Soyou know, I've gone to see some
work of late and the mediocrity forme is born of the fact that nobody
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can hurt anybody's feeling anymore, becausethat's abuse. You know, If I
tell you, you know what youreally can't sing. I'm being abusive and
it's like I went to a showwhere literally these people couldn't sing. It
was painful. You just felt likedid anybody look at them? Did anybody
direct them? Or is it likeyou want to do it and you're good
and we're going to support you indoing it. And it's like it was
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a two hour show and it waslike you made people pay for this.
Well, isn't that something that happen? I can't remember her name with Funny
Girl? What happened? I don'tknow, Well, I can't think of
her name right now, but sheperformed. They had her perform on stage
because they couldn't get Leah. Idon't remember her name, but she's I
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know who that will be exactly.And it was a har show. I
mean, she was beaten down,in badgered and whatnot, and they knew,
you know, she was just sortof a feeling. But why would
that be fair to do something likethat because producers is all about the show
and that's it. But you know, the way you talk about your class
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and I mean, you know,I talk with a lot of people who
work with young people and they allsay the same thing. No matter.
What it is is they're devoid offeeling. And I don't know why young
people today are they afraid to feel. What many of the teachers have said
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is that they feel like they feelso much that it's too much, that
it's too much. And you know, some of my students have asked me,
like, I want to do theheavy roles, the emotional roles,
but I don't want to sacrifice myown mental health. And there was an
article recently, I can't remember where, but it was called I was wrong
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about trigger warnings. And this journalistwas someone who wrote about sexual violence,
and so in the context of herwork, trigger warnings were important. And
then she chronicles how trigger warnings gotto go everywhere. A trigger warning became
if I disagreed with you, itwas now a trigger warning. And what
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she talked about is that it's likewe've aired towards this side of if anything
bad happened to you, you're goingto be damaged by it, and we've
ignored the fact that a lot ofpeople go through some really bad stuff and
come out stronger for it for it. Gail she wrote a whole book called
Passages about the victorious personality, peoplewho have gone through incredibly traumatic things and
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come out victorious who survived these thingsand go on to do great things in
the world. We've sort of ignoredthat that sometimes trauma is the very thing
that causes someone to have to riseup and be more than they ever thought
they could be. And so Ifeel like what I've been. You know,
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I told my students I like tomove fast and break things, but
clearly I can't do that with you. So, you know, I've started
working with them with an exercise whichis known as the repetition, and my
experience of it is it's been taughtvery badly for about forty years. My
first experience with it, it's SandyMeisner's method. I worked with Sandy Meisner.
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I worked with William H. Macy. I worked with Stephen Schachter and
William Esper So I worked with thepeople who originated this work. And you
can't teach this work if you aren'tauthentic, because it becomes you know,
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some of my one of my studentsyesterday said I used to hate this exercise,
and another one said it was taughtto us like we're just supposed to
be mean to each other, andit can feel trit It's like you have
a gray sweater in, you havea brown shirt on. You have a
great sweater and you have a brownshirt on. Well, yes, that's
how the game begins. But ifyou sit with someone for a while,
you start to see what's happening intheir body and you can't help but know,
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oh you're uncomfortable. Oh you're feelingworried. Oh you know you start
to just when you just sit withsomeone and look at them. And so
the exercise is about really seeing someonein taking them in so that the repetition
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is not about your shirt or yourhair or your hat. It's about what
do I see? And then whensomeone is seen, that does something to
them because we're so seldom seen,and then that makes things happen into them
that changes what you saw, andso the repetition becomes what your dialogue would
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be. But it's gibberish. Butwhen people are truly seeing and responding those
repetition words say so many things.It's and you understand that the dialogue is
not what's carrying the communication. Thebehavior, what's going on in your body
is carrying the communication. And ifyou have someone who isn't able to look
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at someone's body and say what's goingon in their body because it would be
rude or impolite or abusive. Thenyou can't teach them how to be authentic.
And so much of the work,or people who I've seen who have
supposedly studied this work, it's notgood. It's not authentic because you have
to be vulnerable. And I thinkthat that conversation I had with my students
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yesterday about the pronouns really got theminto something real, and so the work
that I saw with them yesterday wasfar more vulnerable. And some of their
comments were, you know, normallyI'm always thinking about, you know,
what's my objective and what's the thing, and what's the audience doing. Oh
the audience laughed, and you're like, I forgot about myself because I was
so caught up in them. AndI said, that's what you should be
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doing when you're on stage. Youshould be giving all your attention over there
and just responding honestly to that person. And that's the performance that we come
to see. Very interesting. Youare listening to Becoming the Journey on WOR
seven ten and my guest is TanyaPinkins, So I'm gonna kind of quote
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something that you've said. Okay,correct me if it's wrong, because sh
okay, I empty myself and letsomething move in through and as me,
I let go of the outcome.I'm not afraid to fail or do it
wrong. In fact, if thereis no risk of failure, I'm not
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interested in the opportunity. Tell yourstory, build a world, and don't
try to please anyone but yourself.I said that. Do you remember that
I said that? You did saythat, ergo the red pill and and
all of the work that I donow. And I was just going to
say the women of what is it? Women of? It wasn't mine?
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But okay, the work that I'mcreating, I'm like, what am I
going to leave in the world?And you know, I'm just telling stories
or painting things that are interesting tome, and hopefully somedays someone will find
it in a garbage pail and goI like that. I'm going to take
that home and be inspired by that. By the way, to my listeners,
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nothing of hers is going to goon the garbage pail, because I've
seen her art. She's amazing andif anyone is interested, she's got a
voice like like an angel. Soyeah, okay, renegade. You've been
called a renegade. Okay, whywhy do you actually for you that's an
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endearing term. Yeah. I don'tthink there's anything wrong with that. Why
do people say that about me?Probably because I speak up and out even
if it's going to cost me ajob or an opportunity. And that brings
me to the me too movement,which we've talked about and something cold times
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up. Let's talk about that.So I was received an email at some
point to come to this. Idon't even know what it was called,
but I got this email. Iwas just like, oh God, all
these white women trying to do something. I'm not interested. And then I
got a call from a woman thati Martha Plumpton. Actually Martha Plumpton called
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me and she was like, areyou gonna do this? It's gonna be
Jessica chest Stain's house. I'm like, I love Jessica Chestain. I get
to go to Jessica Testain's house.I'm coming, so I guess there.
Her house's her apartment is like ahouse. It's spectacular, but the room
is like a who's who of alisters on the West Coast. It's Meryl
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Streep, it's that one with thebig eyes. It's huh, Reese Witherspoon.
Yes, well that's on the that'son the other west coast, the
East coast. It's Sarah Jessica Parker. It's like, who's who. And
it was fifty of them. Imean America Ferrera of course, Jessica Chesting,
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Michelle Williams. It was just like, oh my god, if these
women are in it, the worldcan change. I really was like,
they can do it. Yeah,that didn't happen. But what was times
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up? That was times up thatit was the beginning of it where it
was meetings in people's homes before itbecame times up, which is a trademarked
organization. And by the time thathappened, we were told we could not
tweet it anymore because it was abrand that people could buy into, you
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know, by the time that happened. But didn't it wasn't this group got
together to fight sexual harassment or championYeah. I think it was not just
sexual harassment. It was all kindsof ways in which women are discriminated against
in film and television and theater andAmerican are women in the hospitality industry and
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farm workers. It was really tostop sexual violence against anyone, women,
children, anyone, to end sexualviolence in the workplace. And that extended
to why is it all always malesound designers who were sticking their hands in
your panties and done your raw,you know, why don't they have more
(35:05):
women doing that job? So thatwas the point. And there were a
group of people who were the quotesilence breakers, who had sacrificed their careers
by speaking out and naming names.And Gloria Steinem had said very clearly that
they should be the leaders of thisgroup because they have the lived experience of
(35:28):
what this is. But it didn'twork out that way. And how does
that compare to the Me Too movement? So me Too was founded by Toronto
Burke. It was something that hadno money, no funding. Toronto was
struggling to make ends meet, andshe was just getting out in her community
and trying to help girls in school, particularly Black girls are criminalized and experience
(35:52):
a lot of sexual violence in school. And so this was a grassroots organization
that you know, she was fundingout of her pocket and not getting any
money or not getting any speaking engagement, or if she was speaking, no
one was paying her or even transportingher. And then a celebrity and I
can't remember who it was, Alana, I can't remember who it was.
(36:14):
Alyssa Milano tweeted it and then peoplewanted to credit it to Alyssa Milano.
I don't know that Alyssa Milano saidit was hers. But it became big
when this white celebrity, uh tweetedit, and then you know, people
were like, wait a minute,Torona Burke is the person who originated this,
but I you know, I've interviewedToronto and even several years into the
(36:36):
movement, she still wasn't getting thepaid opportunities to talk about it. Well
the credit, right, well thecredit. Uh you had a little bit
of controversy with that Me Too movement. Yeah, well I think you told
me when we were driving home oneday. Oh yeah, that you kind
of was called into a room bya huge management company and you kind of
(37:01):
and they were told they were tellingyour whoever was there, to keep quiet.
One thing that did happen to mewas a lot of times up meetings
occurred at CIA. CIA was HarveyWeinstein's management company, so you know,
(37:22):
those clients were complaining to their agentsthose clients knew, and so it struck
me as a bit strange. Isaid, the way I described it is,
why are the chickens meeting at theFox's Den? And I remember,
you know, the first big meetingthat happened there, and everything was very
elite, like you had to beon the list, and you know,
(37:45):
I remember submitting some very high profilenames and they couldn't get on the list.
And so I would bring in anybodyI could bring in because I felt
that there was power in this movement. I really believed. And at that
particular meeting, I think feel waslike Shonda Rhimes was saying. You know,
she made a point of saying shegave up rousing, you know,
(38:07):
really fantastic speech to get us allexcited about what was happening. But she
says something like, you know,the only reason we're meeting at CA is
because this is the only place largeenough to hold all of us that we
could get for free. And mymind is like free, why we need
free? You all are like tenmillionaires. Not only why do you need
(38:27):
free? But anybody would give youtheir place for free just to say that
you were in their space. AndI was like, if that is really
the reason why we're at CIA,because I don't think we should be at
CIA. Needless to say, themeeting stayed at CIA, and the people
who I connected to who offered,you know, theaters and community centers that
were even bigger, were never contacted. So let's get back just a little
(38:51):
bit. And yes, CIA andHarvey Weinstein and how many women in that
group didn't speak up? I mean, was it real? I mean,
were they willing to really speak up? Oh? Yes? And they did.
Then in those private meetings people toldvery very personal stories. Yes,
(39:13):
it was very very personal. ButI had a sense that there were people
in that in those rooms who thatwasn't their experience, or if it was
their experience, they weren't. Ihad a sense of this movement was being
managed. The movement was being managed. It became a brand, and it
(39:37):
became less about actually helping people orrectifying the damage that had been done to
women who had spoken up, thenabout managing a brand and getting ahead of
who was going to be the nextperson to come out, so that okay,
if that one's going to come out, well let's do the damage,
you know, let's do our damagecontrol. That's the sense I had,
(39:58):
and I stayed, you know,on the email lists just to see what
else, because I became friends witha lot of the silence breakers, so
I was getting their experience of beingpushed out and pushed aside and hearing who
the next person was that, youknow, after it came out through some
other mechanism. Then of course,you know, times Up would take credit
(40:20):
for something that was coming from youknow, somebody else, and and and
sometimes it was people who were beinguplifted within the Times Up movement who were
the next person that was coming outgoing to be out it? Right?
Have we come a long way withthis? No, you're shaking your head,
but my my listeners can't see yourhead. So no. I think
(40:40):
that women are the most hated peoplein the America, more hated than black
people or indigenous people. And Ithink women are the most hated beings on
the planet. And I think it'sbecause we control the means of production,
we have the most power, anduh yeah, we're not going to have
a woman president anytime soon. Womenare just just hated. And I you
(41:07):
know, I've spent a lot ofenergy studying sexual violence. And I don't
know if you saw the show PrimaFage this year on Broadway, which was
with Jody Comer, was really quitebrilliant. This lawyer who defends people who've
been accused of sexual violence and tellingyou all the techniques and how she does
(41:28):
it, and then it happens toher and she realizes that the lawyers are
going to do these things to her, and she says, the law is
just made wrong to deal with sexualviolence because it breaks who you are,
It breaks your being. So allthese questions that are being asked of you
(41:50):
in court about what were you feelingand what were you thinking? That person
doesn't the person who existed before thesexual violence doesn't exist anymore, and so
the system can't even address this breakin your being that comes from that.
And I feel like there's a wasa woman named Charlotte desser B. I
think she died in twenty twenty two. She was in the DOE under Ronald
(42:15):
Reagan when he had planned to getrid of the DOE and she was fired
because she released all of these documentsfrom the Department of Education about its mission
being to create compliance citizens. Andshe wrote a book, many books,
but one was The Deliberate dumbing Downof America and these specific strategies that the
(42:37):
DOE uses to create compliant citizens.And I have imagined that nothing makes a
more compliance citizen than when you sexuallyabuse somebody, that somebody, some you
know, primitive person a long timeago, sexually violated somebody and then realized
that that person suddenly just did whateverthey wanted to do. Were coward all
(43:00):
the time. And I feel likewe don't consciously knowledge acknowledge how much sexual
violence there is in our world andhow it is used to keep people compliant,
women compliant, not just women,no men too. Really, how
(43:21):
is that? Because the men andboys who are sexually violated, and I've
talked to a lot of them,and I know about the fact that when
Me Too was happening, there wasan alternate movement of the men and that
was shut down. You know.I know people who did the interviews,
who told their stories, and itwas threatened that the New York Times and
(43:43):
the ly Times would cease to existif they published those stories. I spoke
to union leaders who had multiple membersof their union who were accused, and
they were going to handle it themselves. I was a union leader and I
knew that my elected officials would notdo what I still believe is necessary to
make a difference. And so insteadof even taking it to my elected,
(44:07):
I took it out to the membershipin Chicago, in LA in New York,
and I said, let's the membersvote on this. Didn't take it
to the committee that I sit on. The members voted overwhelmingly that they not
only wanted to implement, but tofund a third party reporting system for people
(44:28):
to go and talked about this.And I watched the elected decide that that
wasn't a good idea, but theywould give them a committee to talk about
it. And I resigned my positionas an elected because I realized there was
too much complicity to this sexual violencewithin the industry and within the unions themselves.
(44:54):
Just as curiosity, how does amale get sexually abused? How we
know how women do? And thisis coming from me, Okay, well,
they get raped, they get sodomiyed, they get asked, they get
touched, fondled by other women,by men, by men, men by
(45:15):
men too. But here's a storythat a union leader told me. She
said she was getting great. She'slike, you know, this man called
me to tell me that like fortyyears ago, he went to an audition
and a producer took off his shirt, and I mean, like, what
does he want me to do aboutit? I didn't even know was he
(45:36):
calling me. And I really couldn'tbelieve that she was saying that. I
said, a producer taking off ashirt forty years ago, and this person
has been carrying it and waiting tobe able to tell that to someone forty
years ago. That was some trauma. Okay, that person was traumatized and
they've been holding him for forty yearswaiting to tell And that's a different time.
(46:00):
Yes, absolutely, okay, Butyou know there's a a I forget.
There's a movie on Netflix right now, documentary about this school where all
the boys were being raped and theteacher who was doing it is interviewed.
When I was on Karen Hunter Show, we had a lot of men call
call in and talk about babysitters abusingthem and then they're told, hey,
(46:23):
you know you should like that,but they don't their kids and boys are
less mature than girls. That's notcool. It's not okay. No,
no, the do you think?No. Way back when the sex scenes
in film and TV were really tothe imagination today, they're open. Do
(46:49):
you think that kind of provokes moresexual harassment or no? Because the BDSM
community is a community of consent.The king community is the most consensual community
I have ever engaged with. Itis like, you don't even you ask
(47:14):
permission to speak to someone. Andso there are communities, and I don't
know how long that is, butthere are communities that respect and acknowledge consent,
which is you know, that's sucha tiny community in the world,
and I think that these young peopletoday are asking for more consent. Essentially,
(47:37):
the entertainment has been like, youknow, you're lucky to be here,
be grateful, you know, whateverhappens. There was one point at
which my students at NYU said thatBill Esper, not Bill Osper. William
H. Macy had said to thestudents, you know, sometimes you're gonna
go to an audition. They're gonnaask you to take your shirt off.
It happens as if that was normal, and I'm like, you're an icon.
You can't say that to girls.And now they think that they should
(47:58):
be ready for that because this bigmovie starts said that that's what I should
be expecting. Incredible young actors andactresses children that perform. Back in the
day, parents weren't allowed on set. Where are those I mean, is
(48:20):
it the same today. I thinkwe've changed the rules. I think,
yes, we've changed the rules.Parents are on set. There are other
people on set. You know.I don't know that I would really want
my kids doing that, But Ithink there are more rules. I think
there's a little bit of rules toprotect these kids so their parents don't take
all their money, but not much. I think that the union keeps like
ten percent. It's a tough business. It's it's a tough business for the
(48:46):
adults, so for the kids.But then, you know, someone said
that part of some of the sexualviolence against children they thought, I'm not
saying I agree with it, isthat we see these movies where their sex
acts with children, but they're adultsplaying the children, and that encourages people
to think that, well, that'swhat someone twelve looks like or something like
(49:07):
that, And I'm like, Idon't know, no, I look,
I think a young person being onset in a TV series, movie,
or whatever you want to call it, every day, I think they don't
actually create or know their own personality. It's impossible because they're always in character,
(49:34):
and so a damaged child, youknow, a child is a damaged
adult, so says Sara Poli.And you have to kind of believe that,
Like when you're performing every day,every day, every day for a
couple of years. You know,how do you become yourself? How do
(49:55):
you know who you are? Well, one of the things I tell my
student in college, I said,you know, it's a privilege to go
to college. You're getting some trainingwheel time to figure out who you are
because prior to this, you weresomebody else's property and you liked what they
gave you, Like, you didn'thave the ability to explore what do I
really like? What do I reallywant to eat? When do I really
want to go to bed? Likecollege, if you get to go to
(50:19):
college, is a privileged time tohave this training wheel time to explore what
is me and what are my interests? Right? A lot of young people
in the entertainment industry do not goto college. Right. They don't get
this. They don't free time todo that, that's right. They spend
their life pleasing, pleasing, pleasing, pleasing, right, pleasing hundreds of
(50:39):
people on set all day every day. And I know you and I I
had asked this question because I heardit from somebody else where. They said
they heard from some performer that shewas herself when she was acting. She
was more of herself, came outin the acting, but in real life
(51:00):
she was really acting. Yeah,I would say that was definitely true for
me for a good part of mylife and career. And why is that?
I mean, isn't it difficult togo through life acting when you're not
acting? Well, I don't thinkthat it's a choice that you're aware of.
It's just like for me, whenI was on stage, I could
(51:22):
have all of the emotions that existed, and I think it's for most people.
There's just a certain range of emotionand behavior that is allowed in real
life. And I tended to bevery, very shy, and so I
had to develop this outgoing social personbecause when you're in this business, you
(51:45):
got to go talk to people andyou got to do all that, and
so I had to create that characterto be in order to work. Well,
we are running out of time,So before I say goodbye, I'm
going to ask you one question,and that is how do you inspire today?
How do I inspire other people?How do I get inspired. Well,
(52:06):
we know how you get inspired bybeing creative, and just how would
you inspire? I mean, youare inspired at some point, how would
you inspire? I don't know,because I think that's so different for every
single person. You know, Ilike variety, They're people who like consistency,
so things that would be exciting tome. There's some people that that's
(52:27):
just not gonna going to interest themat all. And so I think as
I'm teaching, I've got fifteen students, like I'm like, some of them
just they're not going to like myclass and they're not going to get anything
out of it. And every weekI try to figure out, Okay,
what can I give them to servethem next week? I think this next
week, I'm going to tell themmy personal story because I think so much
(52:50):
of the world right now is curated. Look at my Facebook life and my
Instagram life, and I'm going tojust tell them, like my authentic,
not interesting, sometimes ugly story,so that some of them who have those
can go, oh it's okay,that's okay. I don't bet I don't
have a Facebook, Instagram curated life. Well, your life inspires me,
(53:13):
and I am so happy that weare friends, Thank you, Thanks everyone
for listening to this episode with TanyaPinkins of Becoming the Journey. We'd love
you to keep tuning in. Pleasedo follow us on Instagram at Becoming the
Journey and if there's a topic anybodywould be interested in, let us know.
(53:37):
Love you you have been listening toBecoming the Journey hosted by Grace Lovery.
Tune in weekly to hear more conversationsthat will inspire listeners along their life's
journey. The proceeding was a paidpodcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this podcast constitutes
neither an endorsement of the products offeredor the ideas expressed
The following is a paid podcast.iHeartRadio's hosting of this podcast constitutes neither an
endorsement of the products offered or theideas expressed. Welcome to Becoming the Journey.
This show will be a series ofconversations that will inspire listeners along their
life's journey. This show's mission isto cultivate a community of mentorship by sharing
(00:21):
our experiences in our life's journey.Nobody's journey is a straight line, so
no matter where you are in yours, this show is for you. Meet
Grace Loverrae, Hi listeners, andthanks for tuning in to Becoming the Journey
on WOR seven ten iHeartRadio. Today'sshow is about pioneering, tenacity, beating
(00:46):
to your own drama and creativity tenfold. Those are all the traits wrapped up
into My guest and friend Tanya Pinkinsborn in Chicago, educated at Carnegie Ellen,
Columbia College Chicago, and California WesternSchool of Law. She is a
(01:07):
Tony Award winner and nominated for andhas won several other awards in the entertainment
industry. She is a writer,director, singer, artist and actress and
a true champion for social justice.Welcome, Tanya, thank you for being
here. I have a curious question. As much as I know you school
(01:32):
of law, how did that comeabout? I mean, you were aspiring
from a young age, from whatI know, to be in the entertainment
industry, or maybe I don't know. I don't know that I aspired to
be in the entertainment industry. Istarted working very young, and because my
(01:55):
mother had such a hard time keepingwork and I kept getting off her job
after job after job. In myyounger years, felt like you just don't
turn down work. So I justkept getting work, like just kept getting
work and more work. Then whenI went through my second divorce and custody
(02:15):
battle where I lost custody of mychildren, and I started representing myself and
started an organization with some other womenwho had gone through the same thing.
Everyone said I just had a knackfor it. I was really really good
with the law, at understanding it, at writing the briefs, at coming
(02:36):
up with novel remedies. And whileI was at Columbia Chicago, I went
to I don't know, some sortof panels they had of different schools,
and I had this long conversation withsomeone from Columbia, West Columbia. I'm
sorry, California Western School of Law, which was one of two two year
law programs, because my reason fornot going to law school is like,
(02:59):
I don't want to see in anotherthree years in school. And they said,
we have a two year program,and I had this great conversation with
the deans. I had just comeback from China with Ruth Gruber, who
if you know her, she waseighty five then, and it was nineteen
ninety five, the last time theWorld Women's Conference has ever been held in
the entire world. And I wentwith Ruth for New Women magazine and we
(03:23):
talked about that and I applied andgot in with a presidential scholarship. So
it was kind of like things happened, and at that time in my life,
I just when things happened, Ikind of said, Okay, it's
meant to be. I'll follow thatnice. Okay, So what point were
(03:44):
you actually started to appear And you'veappeared on stage in theater, You've done
daytime TV from what all my childrenfor a long time. You've got I
believe thirty six films behind you andthirty eight TV shows. I have no
(04:05):
idea you've been around since before nineteeneighty. Yeah, I've been working professionally
since I was about twelve, soover fifty years. Well I'm sixty one,
so that's forty nine years or something. No, yeah, no,
it's forty nine years working professionally inthe business. I think I got my
(04:27):
first union card when I was abouttwelve. So, and if anyone doesn't
know, so Tanya is African American. And as much as we've come a
long way, what was it likeback then for you in the entertainment industry.
Well, I'm from Chicago. Chicagohad a lot of industrial and McDonald's
(04:49):
was there, and a lot ofcorporations, so there were just a lot
of opportunities for work. And Iwould say I think the standards beauty were
very white centric. So I rememberI was the smile for a campaign called
(05:11):
Have a Coke and a Smile,and I remember sitting in these meetings and
them were talking about, well,her nose is kind of big. You
know, I did get the campaign, but you know that was I didn't
have an aquiline nose. So yeah, I think that that those standards are
(05:31):
no more, but certainly fifty yearsago that was the standard of beauty,
aqualine nose, fair skin, straighthair, and certainly throughout my career,
depending on the kind of work Iwanted to have, Like if I wanted
to be thought of as a seriousactress, I'd have to have my hair
short, maybe natural, But ifI wanted to be like a TV star
(05:54):
in movies, I'd have to getmy hair long and you know, glamorous.
And I was very a that dependingon what kind of audition I was
going for, the look really mattered, not the color, the look.
The look. Okay, interesting,What did you prefer doing? I mean,
(06:15):
you wanted Tony, but you've donea lot of TV, You've done
a lot of film. What's yourpreference? I mean, what excites you?
Variety? I get bored really easily. I've accepted that I need to
multitask, so you know, thisyear I was working on a feature film
(06:39):
and creating an original concert and Ilike to be doing a lot of things
at the same time that I justget bored really, really easily. And
is that always? Growing up?You know, I read a lot.
My mother used to say she couldnot punished me by saying I couldn't go
(07:01):
outside because I was happiest alone inmy room. I think I read the
World Book Encyclopedia cover to cover andjust had an imagination and I lived in
this imaginary world. One of myfavorite things was getting the Sears Wish Book,
and it was like I would playwith all of those toys in that
(07:21):
wish book, you know, comingup to Christmas, and it didn't almost
matter what I got because I'd hadsuch a great time in my imagination.
So that's, you know, myimagination I credit with taking me from Chicago
to New York and to all thethings that have happened in my life.
(07:43):
Like I watched All My Children fromthe time it first came on when I
was seven years old, and Idreamed of being on Pine Valley, and
I grew up and I got towork in Pine Valley. So yeah,
I sort of I think that Ibecause from childhood so many things that I
(08:03):
dreamed of, like winning a TonyAward, actually happened. I have a
strong belief that if I can imagineit, it can be you dreamed it
real fantastic And how long were youon All my Children? Just so my
listener is no, Well, Istarted off on World Turns my first audition
for soap in New York was forAll my Children, and I knew I
(08:26):
was going to get it, andI didn't and I didn't get it,
Yeah, Debbie Morgan exactly. Andso I did a lot of theater and
regional theater. And Joan din Chekawas the original casting director of All My
Children. She has walked on andso she cast Susan Lucien, all of
(08:46):
those characters that you grew to loveand about I'd say it was about ten
or eleven years later. I wasdoing Jelly's Last Jam at the Mark tapeer
Form and a friend of mine,Cynthia Martel, said she was going to
test for a role on All myChildren that I hadn't even heard of.
So I called my agent and Isaid, you know, they're already at
(09:07):
the test deals for this role onAll my Children. Would you call them
and ask them if they would seeme? And Joan Duncheka remembered me from
twelve years before, and so Iwent in and at the final audition where
you were doing a screen test,and I booked the role of Olivia Freikutahi
and I was on and off forabout fifteen years. Wow, But did
(09:35):
it bore you because you are doingother things at the time, or no,
well we kind of was really boringto me. I mean when I
got my first nighttime series, whichwas a show, an Aaron Smelling show
called University Hospital, which shot inVancouver, I was really bored. Yeah,
bored. I was like, getme off the show. Like you're
under contract and they own you.You can't do other things, and they're
(10:00):
not using me enough. You know, I'm coming in one day a month
or something. No, I'm frustrated. So even on all my children,
I was doing things one without theirpermission because other people just were like,
win is your day off? Willshoot you on your day off? And
they eventually penalized me and made megive back ten thousand dollars of my salary
every time I did another job,even if the job was like a twelve
(10:22):
hundred dollars job I have to take. You know, they charged me ten
thousand dollars just because you were undercontract with them, sort of an exclusive.
Uh yeah, I did not knowthat. I doubt they did that
to Susan Lucci, but they didthat to me. Does that still go
on today? I don't know.I know that for me I just would
not want to get into one ofthose contracts. I mean sometimes I get
(10:45):
auditions in my you know, likethree years ago, someone wanted me to
sign a nine year contract for ashow, and I was like, Nope,
nope, I don't want to besigned up to anybody for nine years.
So leading into that that conversation going, now, you have now decided
(11:05):
that you again will no longer bethat you wanted to be your own person.
You're writing your thoughts, your cast, your movie, your funding.
You funded movies yourself, and youdid The red Pill? Was that your
first first feature? First feature?Can you tell us a little bit about
(11:31):
the Red Pill and what what yourimagination made you write something like that?
What in your mind made you formy listeners, explain what the red Pill
is? Well, let me gobefore I get to that, because I
started off not being very interested infilm, and I got interested in film
(11:54):
really in the last maybe ten twelveyears since I moved back to New York
in two thousand eleven. That's whenI got interested in film. And I
applied to all the programs, youknow, and I didn't get in them.
And listening to Ava di Verne talkingabout how she didn't go to film
school, but she just made afilm. And I had decided I was
(12:16):
going to make a movie, andI had written a script and I went
down to Antiga to shoot a likea sampler of it, and the person
who went down as my producer said, I'd like to co write this with
you, and I was like,great, I love collaborating. But through
(12:37):
the next year she didn't come forwardto collaborate, like she wasn't available.
But I had decided I was makinga film. I like, I'm making
a film. It might not bethat it's clearly not going to be that
film, but I'm going to makea film because that's a commitment I made
to myself, so didn't know whatit was going to be. Was visiting
(13:01):
a neighbor of mine up in Shelived in Hudson County, North Chatham,
and the first time I went tovisit her house, I was like,
Oh, your house is like wherescary movies happen. And she's like,
I don't know if that's a complimentor not, Like would you let me
make a scary movie at your house? And she's like, I think so.
(13:26):
And I visited her house many moretimes, stayed there alone and the
summer of twenty nineteen. In July, there was a weekend in the United
States where there were mass shootings atpublic events, two weekends in a row,
on like the Friday and the Saturday, or the Saturday and the Sunday.
But that happened two weeks in arow. And she's a very optimistic
(13:52):
person. I mean, I thinkI'm pretty optimistic, but I guess you
could say I tend on the glasseshalf empty kind of. And so we
were discussing these mass shootings and shewas saying, Oh, it's just so
random. And I said to her, you think it's random, but what
if it was part of a biggerorganization that had a leader with a thousand
(14:20):
year plan. And of course thisis coming out of my mind, but
I was thinking of that infamous person. And it was in that moment that
I began to think about forty fivein that way, and what if that
was going on? And could Iwrite a story that explored that the idea
(14:46):
that this wasn't this violence we wereexperiencing wasn't random, And specifically my experience
as a black female in America livingin a liberal state, and and when
I express some of my ideas theways in which I get dismissed. So
Red Pill is a story about adiverse group of friends, you know,
(15:11):
West Indian, British, white,Eastern European black, who are going canvassing
in what would have been a redstate the weekend of the twenty twenty election,
and they meet this force that isa female force that stops them in
(15:35):
their tracks. And they are partof a larger plan. And those that
are stopping them in their tracks?Are they the white supremist Well, it
is a group of women that arecalled the red Pill women, the red
Pill women. I know how muchyou love horror. I love horror,
(16:00):
and I'm not crazy about horror,but I know you love horror. So
in a sense, red Pill ishorror, socio political horror, socio political
horror. Correct, how do yousee that social political horror now? I
mean, has it changed since thatRed Pill movie? Has it gotten worse
(16:27):
for us? You know, atthe time that I was writing it,
and when I would pitch it topeople, and you know, I was
trying to raise money for it,everybody was like, Tom, You're that's
so far fetched. I think thatit becomes you know, and then When
it came out, people were like, did you write this after January sixth?
I think that it becomes more prescientwith each passing day. I don't
(16:51):
know that worse. Yeah, Yeah, things are rough. Yeah, we're
in a We're in a tough toughtime right now, particularly because of income
inequality. I mean, I've reachedthis point where I'm like, don't ask
anybody for help except those nine peoplewho have more wealth than the ninety three
percent of people on the planet,Like they have the money to fix the
(17:15):
problems. The rest of the peopleare struggling to survive. Yeah, and
unfortunately we do live in an intertingegovernment right now. I get that,
I agree, and young people aremore parasocial than anything else. I don't
know how to cure it, butmovies like yours kind of bring a message
(17:37):
home. At least we hope itdoes. A little unknown fact you teach
at Fordham a film in a filmclass or an acting class, well,
you know, because of the veryspecifics of my teaching, Denzel Washington went
to Fordham and so he funded achair where they could bring a professional person
(18:00):
in for a semester. So Iam the thirteenth Denzel Washington Endowed Chair at
Fordham University, and I can reallyteach whatever I want. I have a
lot more leeway than the other teachers, and I feel very much because I've
taught at a lot of universities thatyou kind of have to help raise them,
you know. So I teach thema lot about the business, about
(18:22):
business decisions, about how to managetheir money, their finances, their life,
and yes, we do some actingright now. I was talking to
you earlier about Jean Bouliea's theory abouta simulation in simulacra and the fact that
young people today often experience very fewreal things, that their entire world is
(18:48):
a simulation of something, a TV, a screen of something, and the
head of the department, may Andrales, wanted me to teach them Meisner work
and Meisner as I was taught it, it was about living truthfully and fully
in imaginary circumstances. And after afew weeks with them, I realized that
they're all dissociative and that that istheir truthful, and that's their truthful.
(19:11):
This dissociative way of being is theirtruth and so trying to teach them to
live truthful, I've got to getthem to this other experience of a reality
that isn't their reality, that's myreality. But they don't have to be
in that reality very often, andthey think of that reality as traumatic or
abusive. But that is the realitythat artists thrive in and that other people
(19:37):
come to witness the work that comesout of that. So it's been challenging,
challenging in a good way. CanI stay awake at night trying to
figure it out? Like two weeksago, I was told repeatedly that I
misgendered a couple of my students,and I couldn't, for the life of
(19:57):
me figure out how. And whatwas interesting is the students who I had
supposedly misgendered weren't the ones speaking up. The rest of the class was speaking
up. And so I was rackingmy brain all week. And what I
had came up with was, ifyour pronouns are she, her, you
can't use they. That's what Ithought it must have meant, and so
(20:22):
that was what I was telling myself, but I wasn't really sure. And
so yesterday I said, we're justgoing to have to have this really uncomfortable
conversation and I said, you know, I was accused of misgendering. You
two did not say I misgendered you. That's curious to me. So one
of them said, you didn't missgenderme. This other one said, you
called me he I said, Ithought I said they, because I had
(20:44):
made a decision that I was goingto they everybody just to avoid being misgendered.
And we had a really important conversationwhere, you know, the two
trans individuals basically said, you know, they everybody is a kind of erasure
because you're trying to avoid misgendering andyou're erasing me. And so they were
(21:07):
like, try, you know,if you mess up and you say he
go he she and move on.And one of them was like, I
don't even want to hear that.I'm sorry, you know, they said.
She said that everyone in this classroomhas misgendered me at some point in
time, and you know, Iget misgendered every day. She said,
everyone in my family misgenders me.She said, I'm more concerned about people
(21:30):
being murdered or people being denied theirhormones or their medicines. She said,
the challenge with you as my actingcoach is that when I'm in the middle
of a scene, if I'm youknow, engaged in a character and then
I get misgendered. She says,it's kind of a violence on her because
now she's in different worlds, notbeing seen and trying to do the work.
(21:56):
And so I was really glad thatI took the time to have that
conversation with them. And I said, okay, I am. You know,
I try to pronounce names and Ican't pronounce and let people laugh at
me because I feel like it buildsbridges. But I said, my generation
feels like you all are just waitingto go gotcha, and so we don't
want to, you know, makemistakes. But here in this class,
(22:17):
I don't want to walk on eggshellsto try to teach you all how to
be authentic. Do you find thatacting will change now because and I know
you and I have had this conversationabout they're not in touch with the emotion
of a character or or actually intune with themselves to be able to come
(22:41):
outside of themselves to become that character. Do you think that's going to change
the way people the way actors andactresses or performers perform in film or TV
because of that, I mean,we're worried about AI and digital it's already
changed. I think, you know, I almost feel like my students,
(23:04):
you know, they're there. Everything'sa performance. It's a performance. They're
all very funny, they all arevery you know. They they said they
want to work on polish. I'mlike, you're doing polish. I'm trying
to get you to get rid ofall of that, like, because I
don't know that everybody can see it, but I can see what's really going
(23:25):
on, and so I'm trying toteach them to be present with people and
to really see them. And Isaid that that's not part of our socialization.
We are socialized to pretend not tosee if someone is upset, we're
we're but that's not good acting becausewe all do see it. And we
(23:45):
go to art to have that catharticexperience of seeing something real and authentic that
in our real life we can't experienceit, but we can have the catharsis
when someone else experiences it. Soyou know, I've gone to see some
work of late and the mediocrity forme is born of the fact that nobody
(24:07):
can hurt anybody's feeling anymore, becausethat's abuse. You know, If I
tell you, you know what youreally can't sing. I'm being abusive and
it's like I went to a showwhere literally these people couldn't sing. It
was painful. You just felt likedid anybody look at them? Did anybody
direct them? Or is it likeyou want to do it and you're good
and we're going to support you indoing it. And it's like it was
(24:30):
a two hour show and it waslike you made people pay for this.
Well, isn't that something that happen? I can't remember her name with Funny
Girl? What happened? I don'tknow, Well, I can't think of
her name right now, but sheperformed. They had her perform on stage
because they couldn't get Leah. Idon't remember her name, but she's I
(24:52):
know who that will be exactly.And it was a har show. I
mean, she was beaten down,in badgered and whatnot, and they knew,
you know, she was just sortof a feeling. But why would
that be fair to do something likethat because producers is all about the show
and that's it. But you know, the way you talk about your class
(25:15):
and I mean, you know,I talk with a lot of people who
work with young people and they allsay the same thing. No matter.
What it is is they're devoid offeeling. And I don't know why young
people today are they afraid to feel. What many of the teachers have said
(25:37):
is that they feel like they feelso much that it's too much, that
it's too much. And you know, some of my students have asked me,
like, I want to do theheavy roles, the emotional roles,
but I don't want to sacrifice myown mental health. And there was an
article recently, I can't remember where, but it was called I was wrong
(26:00):
about trigger warnings. And this journalistwas someone who wrote about sexual violence,
and so in the context of herwork, trigger warnings were important. And
then she chronicles how trigger warnings gotto go everywhere. A trigger warning became
if I disagreed with you, itwas now a trigger warning. And what
(26:22):
she talked about is that it's likewe've aired towards this side of if anything
bad happened to you, you're goingto be damaged by it, and we've
ignored the fact that a lot ofpeople go through some really bad stuff and
come out stronger for it for it. Gail she wrote a whole book called
Passages about the victorious personality, peoplewho have gone through incredibly traumatic things and
(26:45):
come out victorious who survived these thingsand go on to do great things in
the world. We've sort of ignoredthat that sometimes trauma is the very thing
that causes someone to have to riseup and be more than they ever thought
they could be. And so Ifeel like what I've been. You know,
(27:06):
I told my students I like tomove fast and break things, but
clearly I can't do that with you. So, you know, I've started
working with them with an exercise whichis known as the repetition, and my
experience of it is it's been taughtvery badly for about forty years. My
first experience with it, it's SandyMeisner's method. I worked with Sandy Meisner.
(27:27):
I worked with William H. Macy. I worked with Stephen Schachter and
William Esper So I worked with thepeople who originated this work. And you
can't teach this work if you aren'tauthentic, because it becomes you know,
(27:48):
some of my one of my studentsyesterday said I used to hate this exercise,
and another one said it was taughtto us like we're just supposed to
be mean to each other, andit can feel trit It's like you have
a gray sweater in, you havea brown shirt on. You have a
great sweater and you have a brownshirt on. Well, yes, that's
how the game begins. But ifyou sit with someone for a while,
you start to see what's happening intheir body and you can't help but know,
(28:12):
oh you're uncomfortable. Oh you're feelingworried. Oh you know you start
to just when you just sit withsomeone and look at them. And so
the exercise is about really seeing someonein taking them in so that the repetition
(28:32):
is not about your shirt or yourhair or your hat. It's about what
do I see? And then whensomeone is seen, that does something to
them because we're so seldom seen,and then that makes things happen into them
that changes what you saw, andso the repetition becomes what your dialogue would
(28:53):
be. But it's gibberish. Butwhen people are truly seeing and responding those
repetition words say so many things.It's and you understand that the dialogue is
not what's carrying the communication. Thebehavior, what's going on in your body
is carrying the communication. And ifyou have someone who isn't able to look
(29:17):
at someone's body and say what's goingon in their body because it would be
rude or impolite or abusive. Thenyou can't teach them how to be authentic.
And so much of the work,or people who I've seen who have
supposedly studied this work, it's notgood. It's not authentic because you have
to be vulnerable. And I thinkthat that conversation I had with my students
(29:40):
yesterday about the pronouns really got theminto something real, and so the work
that I saw with them yesterday wasfar more vulnerable. And some of their
comments were, you know, normallyI'm always thinking about, you know,
what's my objective and what's the thing, and what's the audience doing. Oh
the audience laughed, and you're like, I forgot about myself because I was
so caught up in them. AndI said, that's what you should be
(30:00):
doing when you're on stage. Youshould be giving all your attention over there
and just responding honestly to that person. And that's the performance that we come
to see. Very interesting. Youare listening to Becoming the Journey on WOR
seven ten and my guest is TanyaPinkins, So I'm gonna kind of quote
(30:26):
something that you've said. Okay,correct me if it's wrong, because sh
okay, I empty myself and letsomething move in through and as me,
I let go of the outcome.I'm not afraid to fail or do it
wrong. In fact, if thereis no risk of failure, I'm not
(30:48):
interested in the opportunity. Tell yourstory, build a world, and don't
try to please anyone but yourself.I said that. Do you remember that
I said that? You did saythat, ergo the red pill and and
all of the work that I donow. And I was just going to
say the women of what is it? Women of? It wasn't mine?
(31:15):
But okay, the work that I'mcreating, I'm like, what am I
going to leave in the world?And you know, I'm just telling stories
or painting things that are interesting tome, and hopefully somedays someone will find
it in a garbage pail and goI like that. I'm going to take
that home and be inspired by that. By the way, to my listeners,
(31:37):
nothing of hers is going to goon the garbage pail, because I've
seen her art. She's amazing andif anyone is interested, she's got a
voice like like an angel. Soyeah, okay, renegade. You've been
called a renegade. Okay, whywhy do you actually for you that's an
(32:02):
endearing term. Yeah. I don'tthink there's anything wrong with that. Why
do people say that about me?Probably because I speak up and out even
if it's going to cost me ajob or an opportunity. And that brings
me to the me too movement,which we've talked about and something cold times
(32:25):
up. Let's talk about that.So I was received an email at some
point to come to this. Idon't even know what it was called,
but I got this email. Iwas just like, oh God, all
these white women trying to do something. I'm not interested. And then I
got a call from a woman thati Martha Plumpton. Actually Martha Plumpton called
(32:50):
me and she was like, areyou gonna do this? It's gonna be
Jessica chest Stain's house. I'm like, I love Jessica Chestain. I get
to go to Jessica Testain's house.I'm coming, so I guess there.
Her house's her apartment is like ahouse. It's spectacular, but the room
is like a who's who of alisters on the West Coast. It's Meryl
(33:14):
Streep, it's that one with thebig eyes. It's huh, Reese Witherspoon.
Yes, well that's on the that'son the other west coast, the
East coast. It's Sarah Jessica Parker. It's like, who's who. And
it was fifty of them. Imean America Ferrera of course, Jessica Chesting,
(33:36):
Michelle Williams. It was just like, oh my god, if these
women are in it, the worldcan change. I really was like,
they can do it. Yeah,that didn't happen. But what was times
(33:57):
up? That was times up thatit was the beginning of it where it
was meetings in people's homes before itbecame times up, which is a trademarked
organization. And by the time thathappened, we were told we could not
tweet it anymore because it was abrand that people could buy into, you
(34:21):
know, by the time that happened. But didn't it wasn't this group got
together to fight sexual harassment or championYeah. I think it was not just
sexual harassment. It was all kindsof ways in which women are discriminated against
in film and television and theater andAmerican are women in the hospitality industry and
(34:45):
farm workers. It was really tostop sexual violence against anyone, women,
children, anyone, to end sexualviolence in the workplace. And that extended
to why is it all always malesound designers who were sticking their hands in
your panties and done your raw,you know, why don't they have more
(35:05):
women doing that job? So thatwas the point. And there were a
group of people who were the quotesilence breakers, who had sacrificed their careers
by speaking out and naming names.And Gloria Steinem had said very clearly that
they should be the leaders of thisgroup because they have the lived experience of
(35:28):
what this is. But it didn'twork out that way. And how does
that compare to the Me Too movement? So me Too was founded by Toronto
Burke. It was something that hadno money, no funding. Toronto was
struggling to make ends meet, andshe was just getting out in her community
and trying to help girls in school, particularly Black girls are criminalized and experience
(35:52):
a lot of sexual violence in school. And so this was a grassroots organization
that you know, she was fundingout of her pocket and not getting any
money or not getting any speaking engagement, or if she was speaking, no
one was paying her or even transportingher. And then a celebrity and I
can't remember who it was, Alana, I can't remember who it was.
(36:14):
Alyssa Milano tweeted it and then peoplewanted to credit it to Alyssa Milano.
I don't know that Alyssa Milano saidit was hers. But it became big
when this white celebrity, uh tweetedit, and then you know, people
were like, wait a minute,Torona Burke is the person who originated this,
but I you know, I've interviewedToronto and even several years into the
(36:36):
movement, she still wasn't getting thepaid opportunities to talk about it. Well
the credit, right, well thecredit. Uh you had a little bit
of controversy with that Me Too movement. Yeah, well I think you told
me when we were driving home oneday. Oh yeah, that you kind
of was called into a room bya huge management company and you kind of
(37:01):
and they were told they were tellingyour whoever was there, to keep quiet.
One thing that did happen to mewas a lot of times up meetings
occurred at CIA. CIA was HarveyWeinstein's management company, so you know,
(37:22):
those clients were complaining to their agentsthose clients knew, and so it struck
me as a bit strange. Isaid, the way I described it is,
why are the chickens meeting at theFox's Den? And I remember,
you know, the first big meetingthat happened there, and everything was very
elite, like you had to beon the list, and you know,
(37:45):
I remember submitting some very high profilenames and they couldn't get on the list.
And so I would bring in anybodyI could bring in because I felt
that there was power in this movement. I really believed. And at that
particular meeting, I think feel waslike Shonda Rhimes was saying. You know,
she made a point of saying shegave up rousing, you know,
(38:07):
really fantastic speech to get us allexcited about what was happening. But she
says something like, you know,the only reason we're meeting at CA is
because this is the only place largeenough to hold all of us that we
could get for free. And mymind is like free, why we need
free? You all are like tenmillionaires. Not only why do you need
(38:27):
free? But anybody would give youtheir place for free just to say that
you were in their space. AndI was like, if that is really
the reason why we're at CIA,because I don't think we should be at
CIA. Needless to say, themeeting stayed at CIA, and the people
who I connected to who offered,you know, theaters and community centers that
were even bigger, were never contacted. So let's get back just a little
(38:51):
bit. And yes, CIA andHarvey Weinstein and how many women in that
group didn't speak up? I mean, was it real? I mean,
were they willing to really speak up? Oh? Yes? And they did.
Then in those private meetings people toldvery very personal stories. Yes,
(39:13):
it was very very personal. ButI had a sense that there were people
in that in those rooms who thatwasn't their experience, or if it was
their experience, they weren't. Ihad a sense of this movement was being
managed. The movement was being managed. It became a brand, and it
(39:37):
became less about actually helping people orrectifying the damage that had been done to
women who had spoken up, thenabout managing a brand and getting ahead of
who was going to be the nextperson to come out, so that okay,
if that one's going to come out, well let's do the damage,
you know, let's do our damagecontrol. That's the sense I had,
(39:58):
and I stayed, you know,on the email lists just to see what
else, because I became friends witha lot of the silence breakers, so
I was getting their experience of beingpushed out and pushed aside and hearing who
the next person was that, youknow, after it came out through some
other mechanism. Then of course,you know, times Up would take credit
(40:20):
for something that was coming from youknow, somebody else, and and and
sometimes it was people who were beinguplifted within the Times Up movement who were
the next person that was coming outgoing to be out it? Right?
Have we come a long way withthis? No, you're shaking your head,
but my my listeners can't see yourhead. So no. I think
(40:40):
that women are the most hated peoplein the America, more hated than black
people or indigenous people. And Ithink women are the most hated beings on
the planet. And I think it'sbecause we control the means of production,
we have the most power, anduh yeah, we're not going to have
a woman president anytime soon. Womenare just just hated. And I you
(41:07):
know, I've spent a lot ofenergy studying sexual violence. And I don't
know if you saw the show PrimaFage this year on Broadway, which was
with Jody Comer, was really quitebrilliant. This lawyer who defends people who've
been accused of sexual violence and tellingyou all the techniques and how she does
(41:28):
it, and then it happens toher and she realizes that the lawyers are
going to do these things to her, and she says, the law is
just made wrong to deal with sexualviolence because it breaks who you are,
It breaks your being. So allthese questions that are being asked of you
(41:50):
in court about what were you feelingand what were you thinking? That person
doesn't the person who existed before thesexual violence doesn't exist anymore, and so
the system can't even address this breakin your being that comes from that.
And I feel like there's a wasa woman named Charlotte desser B. I
think she died in twenty twenty two. She was in the DOE under Ronald
(42:15):
Reagan when he had planned to getrid of the DOE and she was fired
because she released all of these documentsfrom the Department of Education about its mission
being to create compliance citizens. Andshe wrote a book, many books,
but one was The Deliberate dumbing Downof America and these specific strategies that the
(42:37):
DOE uses to create compliant citizens.And I have imagined that nothing makes a
more compliance citizen than when you sexuallyabuse somebody, that somebody, some you
know, primitive person a long timeago, sexually violated somebody and then realized
that that person suddenly just did whateverthey wanted to do. Were coward all
(43:00):
the time. And I feel likewe don't consciously knowledge acknowledge how much sexual
violence there is in our world andhow it is used to keep people compliant,
women compliant, not just women,no men too. Really, how
(43:21):
is that? Because the men andboys who are sexually violated, and I've
talked to a lot of them,and I know about the fact that when
Me Too was happening, there wasan alternate movement of the men and that
was shut down. You know.I know people who did the interviews,
who told their stories, and itwas threatened that the New York Times and
(43:43):
the ly Times would cease to existif they published those stories. I spoke
to union leaders who had multiple membersof their union who were accused, and
they were going to handle it themselves. I was a union leader and I
knew that my elected officials would notdo what I still believe is necessary to
make a difference. And so insteadof even taking it to my elected,
(44:07):
I took it out to the membershipin Chicago, in LA in New York,
and I said, let's the membersvote on this. Didn't take it
to the committee that I sit on. The members voted overwhelmingly that they not
only wanted to implement, but tofund a third party reporting system for people
(44:28):
to go and talked about this.And I watched the elected decide that that
wasn't a good idea, but theywould give them a committee to talk about
it. And I resigned my positionas an elected because I realized there was
too much complicity to this sexual violencewithin the industry and within the unions themselves.
(44:54):
Just as curiosity, how does amale get sexually abused? How we
know how women do? And thisis coming from me, Okay, well,
they get raped, they get sodomiyed, they get asked, they get
touched, fondled by other women,by men, by men, men by
(45:15):
men too. But here's a storythat a union leader told me. She
said she was getting great. She'slike, you know, this man called
me to tell me that like fortyyears ago, he went to an audition
and a producer took off his shirt, and I mean, like, what
does he want me to do aboutit? I didn't even know was he
(45:36):
calling me. And I really couldn'tbelieve that she was saying that. I
said, a producer taking off ashirt forty years ago, and this person
has been carrying it and waiting tobe able to tell that to someone forty
years ago. That was some trauma. Okay, that person was traumatized and
they've been holding him for forty yearswaiting to tell And that's a different time.
(46:00):
Yes, absolutely, okay, Butyou know there's a a I forget.
There's a movie on Netflix right now, documentary about this school where all
the boys were being raped and theteacher who was doing it is interviewed.
When I was on Karen Hunter Show, we had a lot of men call
call in and talk about babysitters abusingthem and then they're told, hey,
(46:23):
you know you should like that,but they don't their kids and boys are
less mature than girls. That's notcool. It's not okay. No,
no, the do you think?No. Way back when the sex scenes
in film and TV were really tothe imagination today, they're open. Do
(46:49):
you think that kind of provokes moresexual harassment or no? Because the BDSM
community is a community of consent.The king community is the most consensual community
I have ever engaged with. Itis like, you don't even you ask
(47:14):
permission to speak to someone. Andso there are communities, and I don't
know how long that is, butthere are communities that respect and acknowledge consent,
which is you know, that's sucha tiny community in the world,
and I think that these young peopletoday are asking for more consent. Essentially,
(47:37):
the entertainment has been like, youknow, you're lucky to be here,
be grateful, you know, whateverhappens. There was one point at
which my students at NYU said thatBill Esper, not Bill Osper. William
H. Macy had said to thestudents, you know, sometimes you're gonna
go to an audition. They're gonnaask you to take your shirt off.
It happens as if that was normal, and I'm like, you're an icon.
You can't say that to girls.And now they think that they should
(47:58):
be ready for that because this bigmovie starts said that that's what I should
be expecting. Incredible young actors andactresses children that perform. Back in the
day, parents weren't allowed on set. Where are those I mean, is
(48:20):
it the same today. I thinkwe've changed the rules. I think,
yes, we've changed the rules.Parents are on set. There are other
people on set. You know.I don't know that I would really want
my kids doing that, But Ithink there are more rules. I think
there's a little bit of rules toprotect these kids so their parents don't take
all their money, but not much. I think that the union keeps like
ten percent. It's a tough business. It's it's a tough business for the
(48:46):
adults, so for the kids.But then, you know, someone said
that part of some of the sexualviolence against children they thought, I'm not
saying I agree with it, isthat we see these movies where their sex
acts with children, but they're adultsplaying the children, and that encourages people
to think that, well, that'swhat someone twelve looks like or something like
(49:07):
that, And I'm like, Idon't know, no, I look,
I think a young person being onset in a TV series, movie,
or whatever you want to call it, every day, I think they don't
actually create or know their own personality. It's impossible because they're always in character,
(49:34):
and so a damaged child, youknow, a child is a damaged
adult, so says Sara Poli.And you have to kind of believe that,
Like when you're performing every day,every day, every day for a
couple of years. You know,how do you become yourself? How do
(49:55):
you know who you are? Well, one of the things I tell my
student in college, I said,you know, it's a privilege to go
to college. You're getting some trainingwheel time to figure out who you are
because prior to this, you weresomebody else's property and you liked what they
gave you, Like, you didn'thave the ability to explore what do I
really like? What do I reallywant to eat? When do I really
want to go to bed? Likecollege, if you get to go to
(50:19):
college, is a privileged time tohave this training wheel time to explore what
is me and what are my interests? Right? A lot of young people
in the entertainment industry do not goto college. Right. They don't get
this. They don't free time todo that, that's right. They spend
their life pleasing, pleasing, pleasing, pleasing, right, pleasing hundreds of
(50:39):
people on set all day every day. And I know you and I I
had asked this question because I heardit from somebody else where. They said
they heard from some performer that shewas herself when she was acting. She
was more of herself, came outin the acting, but in real life
(51:00):
she was really acting. Yeah,I would say that was definitely true for
me for a good part of mylife and career. And why is that?
I mean, isn't it difficult togo through life acting when you're not
acting? Well, I don't thinkthat it's a choice that you're aware of.
It's just like for me, whenI was on stage, I could
(51:22):
have all of the emotions that existed, and I think it's for most people.
There's just a certain range of emotionand behavior that is allowed in real
life. And I tended to bevery, very shy, and so I
had to develop this outgoing social personbecause when you're in this business, you
(51:45):
got to go talk to people andyou got to do all that, and
so I had to create that characterto be in order to work. Well,
we are running out of time,So before I say goodbye, I'm
going to ask you one question,and that is how do you inspire today?
How do I inspire other people?How do I get inspired. Well,
(52:06):
we know how you get inspired bybeing creative, and just how would
you inspire? I mean, youare inspired at some point, how would
you inspire? I don't know,because I think that's so different for every
single person. You know, Ilike variety, They're people who like consistency,
so things that would be exciting tome. There's some people that that's
(52:27):
just not gonna going to interest themat all. And so I think as
I'm teaching, I've got fifteen students, like I'm like, some of them
just they're not going to like myclass and they're not going to get anything
out of it. And every weekI try to figure out, Okay,
what can I give them to servethem next week? I think this next
week, I'm going to tell themmy personal story because I think so much
(52:50):
of the world right now is curated. Look at my Facebook life and my
Instagram life, and I'm going tojust tell them, like my authentic,
not interesting, sometimes ugly story,so that some of them who have those
can go, oh it's okay,that's okay. I don't bet I don't
have a Facebook, Instagram curated life. Well, your life inspires me,
(53:13):
and I am so happy that weare friends, Thank you, Thanks everyone
for listening to this episode with TanyaPinkins of Becoming the Journey. We'd love
you to keep tuning in. Pleasedo follow us on Instagram at Becoming the
Journey and if there's a topic anybodywould be interested in, let us know.
(53:37):
Love you you have been listening toBecoming the Journey hosted by Grace Lovery.
Tune in weekly to hear more conversationsthat will inspire listeners along their life's
journey. The proceeding was a paidpodcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this podcast constitutes
neither an endorsement of the products offeredor the ideas expressed
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