“Her Entertainment Story” with guest Tonya Pinkins

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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. Meek,
Grace, Loverrae, Hi listeners,and thanks for tuning in to Becoming
the Journey on WOR seven ten iHeartRadio. Today's show is about pioneering, tenacity,

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beating to your own drama and creativitytenfold. Those are all the traits
wrapped up into My guest and friend, Tanya Pinkins born in Chicago, educated
at Carnegie Ellen, Columbia College Chicago, and California Western School of Law.

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She is a Tony Award winner andnominated for and has won several other awards
in the entertainment industry. She isa writer, director, singer, artist
and actress and a true champion forsocial Justice. Welcome, Tanya, thank
you for being here. I havea curious question. As much as I

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know you school of law, howdid that come about? I mean,
you were aspiring from a young age, from what I know, to be
in the entertainment industry, or maybeI don't know. I don't know that
I aspired to be in the entertainmentindustry. I started working very young,

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and because my mother had such ahard time keeping work and I kept getting
off her job after job after job. In my younger years, felt like
you just don't turn down work.So I just kept getting work, like
just kept getting work and more work. Then when I went through my second

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divorce and custody battle where I lostcustody of my children, and I started
representing myself and started an organization withsome other women who had gone through the
same thing. Everyone said I justhad a knack for it. I was
really really good with the law,at understanding it, at writing the briefs,

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at coming up with novel remedies.And while I was at Columbia Chicago,
I went to I don't know,some sort of panels they had of
different schools, and I had thislong conversation with someone from Columbia, West
Columbia. I'm sorry, California WesternSchool of Law, which was one of
two two year law programs, becausemy reason for not going to law school

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is like I don't want to say, been another three years in school,
and they said we have a twoyear program. And I had this great
conversation with the deans. I hadjust come back from China with Ruth Gruber,
who if you know her, shewas eighty five then, and it
was nineteen ninety five, the lasttime the World Women's Conference has ever been
held in the entire world. AndI went with Ruth for New Women magazine

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and we talked about that and Iapplied and got in with a presidential scholarship.
So it was kind of like thingshappened, and at that time in
my life, I just when thingshappened, I kind of said, Okay,
it's meant to be. I'll followthat nice. Okay, So what

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point were you actually started to appearAnd you've appeared on stage in theater,
You've done daytime TV from what allmy children for a long time. You've
got I believe thirty six films behindyou and thirty eight TV shows. I

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have no idea you've been around sincebefore nineteen eighty. Yeah, I've been
working professionally since I was about twelve, so over fifty years. Well I'm
sixty one, so that's forty nineyears or something. No, yeah,
no, it's forty nine years workingprofessionally in the business. I think I

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got my first union card when Iwas about twelve. So, and if
anyone doesn't know, so Tanya isAfrican American. And as much as we've
come a long way, what wasit like back then for you in the
entertainment industry. Well, I'm fromChicago. Chicago had a lot of industrial

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and McDonald's was there, and alot of corporations, so there were just
a lot of opportunities for work.And I would say I think the standards
of beauty were very white centric.So I remember I was the smile for

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a campaign called Have a Coke anda Smile, and I remember sitting in
these meetings and they were talking about, well, her nose is kind of
big. You know, I didget the campaign, but you know that
was I didn't have an aqualline nose. So yeah, I think that that

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those standards are no more, butcertainly fifty years ago that was the standard
of beauty, aqualine nose, fairskin, straight hair, and certainly throughout
my career, depending on the kindof work I wanted to have, Like
if I wanted to be thought ofas a serious actress, I'd have to
have my hair short, maybe natural, But if I wanted to be like

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a TV star in movies, I'dhave to get my hair long and you
know, glamorous. And I wasvery where that depending on what kind of
audition I was going for, thelook really mattered, not the color,
the look. The look. Okay, interesting, what did you prefer doing?

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I mean, you wanted Tony,but you've done a lot of TV,
You've done a lot of film.What's your preference? I mean,
what excites you? Variety? Iget bored really easily. I've accepted that
I need to multitask, so youknow, this year I was working on

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a feature film and creating an originalconcert and I like to be doing a
lot of things at the same time. That I just get bored really,
really easily. And is that always? Growing up? You know, I
read a lot. My mother usedto say she could not punished me by

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saying I couldn't go outside because Iwas happiest alone in my room. I
think I read the World Book Encyclopediacover to cover and just had an imagination
and I lived in this imaginary world. One of my favorite things was getting
the Sears Wish Book, and itwas like I would play with all of
those toys in that wish book,you know, coming up to Christmas,

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and it didn't almost matter what Igot because I'd had such a great time
in my imagination. So that's,you know, my imagination I credit with
taking me from Chicago to New Yorkand to all the things that have happened
in my life. Like I watchedAll My Children from the time it first

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came on when I was seven yearsold, and I dreamed of being on
Pine Valley, and I grew upand I got to work in Pine Valley.
So yeah, I sort of Ithink that I because from childhood so
many things that I dreamed of,like winning a Tony Award, actually happened.
I have a strong belief that ifI can imagine it, it can

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be you dreamed it real fantastic Andhow long were you on All my Children?
Just so my listener is no,Well, I started off on World
Turns my first audition for soap inNew York was for All my Children,
and I knew I was going toget it, and I didn't and I

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didn't get it. Yeah, DebbieMorgan exactly. And so I did a
lot of theater and regional theater.And Joan din Cheko was the original casting
director of All My Children. Shehas walked on and so she casts Susan
Lucian, all of those characters thatyou grew to love and about. I'd
say it was about ten or elevenyears later. I was doing Jelly's Last

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Jam at the mark Taper Form anda friend of mine, Cynthia Martel,
said she was going to test fora role on All my Children that I
hadn't even heard of. So Icalled my agent and I said, you
know, they're already at the testdeals for this role on All my Children.
Would you call them and ask themif they would see me? And
Joan Duncheko remembered me from twelve yearsbefore, and so I went in and

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at the final audition where you weredoing a screen test, and I booked
the role of Olivia Freikutahi and Iwas on and off for about fifteen years.
Wow, But did it bore youbecause you were doing other things at
the time, or no, well, we kind of was really boring to

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me. I mean when I gotmy first nighttime series, which was a
show, an Aaron Smelling show calledUniversity Hospital, which shot in Vancouver,
I was really bored. Yeah,bored. I was like, get me
off the show. Like you're undercontract and they own you. You can't
do other things, and they're notusing me enough. You know, I'm
coming in one day a month orsomething. No, I'm frustrated. So

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even on all my children, Iwas doing things one without their permission because
other people just were like, winis your day off? Will shoot you
on your day off? And theyeventually penalized me and made me give back
ten thousand dollars of my salary everytime I did another job, even if
the job was like a twelve hundreddollars job I have to take. You
know, they charged me ten thousanddollars just because you were under contract with

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them, sort of an exclusive.Uh yeah, I did not know that.
I doubt they did that to SusanLucci, but they did that to
me. Does that still go ontoday? I don't know. I know
that for me, I just wouldnot want to get into one of those
contracts. I mean sometimes I getauditions in my you know, like three
years ago, someone wanted me tosign a nine year contract for a show,

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and I was like, Nope,nope, I don't want to be
signed up to anybody for nine years. So leading into that that conversation going,
now, you have now decided thatyou again will no longer be that
you wanted to be your own person. You're writing your thoughts, your cast,

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your movie, your funding. Youfunded movies yourself, and you did
The red Pill? Was that yourfirst first feature? First feature? Can
you tell us a little bit aboutthe red Pill and what what your imagination

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made you write something like that?What in your mind made you for my
listeners, explain what the red Pillis? Well, let me go before
I get to that, because Istarted off not being very interested in film,
and I got interested in film reallyin the last maybe ten twelve years
since I moved back to New Yorkin two thousand eleven. That's when I

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got interested in film. And Iapplied to all the programs, you know,
and I didn't get in them.And listening to Ava di Verne talking
about how she didn't go to filmschool, but she just made a film.
And I had decided I was goingto make a movie, and I
had written a script and I wentdown to Antiga to shoot a like a

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sampler of it, and the personwho went down as my producer said,
I'd like to co write this withyou, and I said, great,
I love collaborating. But through thenext year she didn't come forward to collaborate,
like she wasn't available. But Ihad decided I was making a film.

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I like, I'm making a film. It might not be that,
it's clearly not going to be thatfilm, but I'm going to make a
film because that's a commitment I madeto myself, so didn't know what it
was going to be. Was visitinga neighbor of mine up in She lived
in Hudson County, North Chatham,and the first time I went to visit

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her house, I was like,Oh, your house is like where scary
movies happen. And she's like,I don't know if that's a compliment or
not, Like would you let memake a scary movie at your house?
And she's like, I think so. And I visited her house many more
times, stayed there alone, andthe summer of twenty nineteen. In July,

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there was a weekend in the UnitedStates where there were mass shootings at
public events, two weekends in arow, on like the Friday and the
Saturday, or the Saturday and theSunday. But that happened two weeks in
a row. And she's a veryoptimistic person. I mean, I think
I'm pretty optimistic, but I guessyou could say I tend on the glasses

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half empty kind of. And sowe were discussing these mass shootings and she
was saying, Oh, it's justso random. And I said to her,
you think it's random, but whatif it was part of a bigger
organization that had a leader with athousand year plan. And of course this

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is coming out of my mind,but I was thinking of that infamous person.
And it was in that moment thatI began to think about forty five
in that way, and what ifthat was going on? And could I
write a story that explored that theidea that this wasn't this violence we were

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experiencing wasn't random, And specifically myexperience as a black female in America living
in a liberal state, and whenI express some of my ideas the ways
in which I get dismissed. SoRed Pill is a story about a diverse

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group of friends, you know,West Indian, British, white, Eastern
European black, who are going canvassingin what would have been a red state
the weekend of the twenty twenty election, and they meet this force that is

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a female force that stops them intheir tracks. And they are part of
a larger plan. And those thatare stopping them in their tracks? Are
they the white supremist Well, itis a group of women that are called

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the red Pill women, the redPill women. I know how much you
love horror. I love horror,and I'm not crazy about horror, but
I know you love horror. Soin a sense, red Pill is horror,
socio political horror, socio political horror. Correct, how do you see

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that social political horror now? Imean, has it changed since that Red
Pill movie? Has it gotten worsefor us? You know, at the
time that I was writing it,and when I would pitch it to people,
and you know, I was tryingto raise money for it, everybody
was like, Tom, You're that'sso far fetched. I think that it

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becomes you know, and then whenit came out, people were like,
did you write this after January sixth? I think that it becomes more prescient
with each passing day. I don'tknow that worse. Yeah, Yeah,
things are rough. Yeah, we'rein a We're in a tough tough time

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right now, particularly because of incomeinequality. I mean, I've reached this
point where I'm like, don't askanybody for help except those nine people who
have more wealth than the ninety threepercent of people on the planet, Like
they have the money to fix theproblems. The rest of the people are
struggling to survive. Yeah, andunfortunately we do live in an intertinge government

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right now. I get that,I agree, and young people are more
parasocial than anything else. I don'tknow how to cure it, but movies
like yours kind of bring a messagehome. At least we hope it does.
A little unknown fact you teach atFordham a film in a film class

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or an acting class, well,you know, because of the very specifics
of my teaching. Denzel Washington wentto Fordham and so he funded a chair
where they can bring a professional personin for a semester. So I am
the thirteenth Denzel Washington endowed chair atFordham University, and I can really teach
whatever I want. I have alot more leeway than the other teachers,

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and I feel very much, becauseI've taught at a lot of universities that
you kind of have to help raisethem, you know. So I teach
them a lot about the business,about business decisions, about how to manage
their money, their finances, theirlife, and yes, we do some
acting right now. I was talkingto you earlier about Jean Bourreire's theory about

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a simulation in simulacra and the factthat young people today often experience very few
real things, that their entire worldis a simulation of something, a TV,
a screen of something, and thehead of the department, may Andraalis,
wanted me to teach them Meisner work, and Meisner as I was taught

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it, it was about living truthfullyand fully in imaginary circumstances. And after
a few weeks with them, Irealized that they're all dissociative and that that
is their truthful, and that's theirtruthful. This dissociative way of being is
their truth and so trying to teachthem to live truthful, I've got to
get them to this other experience ofa reality that isn't their reality, that's

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my reality. But they don't haveto be in that reality very often,
and they think of that reality astraumatic or abusive. But that is the
reality that artists thrive in and thatother people come to witness the work that
comes out of that. So it'sbeen challenging, challenging in a good way.

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Can I stay awake at night tryingto figure it out? Like two
weeks ago, I was told repeatedlythat I misgendered a couple of my students,
and I couldn't, for the lifeof me figure out how. And
what was interesting is the students whoI had supposedly misgendered weren't the ones speaking
up. The rest of the classwas speaking up. And so I was

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racking my brain all week. Andwhat I had came up with was,
if your pronouns are she, her, you can't use they. That's what
I thought it must have meant,and so that was what I was telling
myself, but I wasn't really sure. And so yesterday I said, we're
just going to have to have thisreally uncomfortable conversation. And I said,

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you know, I was accused ofmisgendering. You two did not say I
misgendered you. That's curious to me. So one of them said, you
didn't misgender me. This other onesaid, you called me he I said,
I thought I said they, becauseI had made a decision that I
was going to they everybody just toavoid being misgendered. And we had a
really important conversation where, you know, the two trans individuals basically said,

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you know, they everybody is akind of erasure because you're trying to avoid
misgendering and you're erasing me. Andso they were like, try, you
know, if you mess up andyou say he go he she and move
on. And one of them waslike, I don't even want to hear
that. I'm sorry, you know, they said. She said that everyone
in this classroom has misgendered me atsome point in time, and you know,

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I get misgendered every day. Shesaid, everyone in my family misgenders
me. She said, I'm moreconcerned about people being murdered or people being
denied their hormones or their medicines.She said, the challenge with you as
my acting coach is that when I'min the middle of a scene, if
I'm you know, engaged in acharacter and then I get misgendered. She

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says, it's kind of a violenceon her because now she's in different worlds,
not being seen and trying to dothe work. And so I was
really glad that I took the timeto have that conversation with it. And
I said, okay, I am. You know, I try to pronounce
names and I can't pronounce and letpeople laugh at me because I feel like
it builds bridges. But I said, my generation feels like you all are

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just waiting to go gotcha, andso we don't want to, you know,
make mistakes. But here in thisclass, I don't want to walk
on eggshells to try to teach youall how to be authentic. Do you
find that acting will change now becauseand I know you and I have had

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this conversation about they're not in touchwith the emotion of a character or or
actually in tune with themselves to beable to come outside of themselves become that
character. Do you think that's goingto change the way people the way actors
and actresses or performers perform in filmor TV because of that, I mean,

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we're worried about AI and digital it'salready changed. I think, you
know, I almost feel like mystudents are you know, they're there.
Everything's a performance. It's a performance. They're all very funny, they all
are very you know. They theysaid they want to work on polish.
I'm like, you're doing polish.I'm trying to get you to get rid

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of all of that, like,because I don't know that everybody can see
it, but I can see what'sreally going on, and so I'm trying
to teach them to be present withpeople and to really see them. And
I said that that's not part ofour socialization. We are socialized to pretend
not to see if someone is upset, we're we're but that's not good acting

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because we all do see it.And we go to art to have that
cathartic experience of seeing something real andauthentic that in our real life we can't
experience it, but we can havethe catharsis when someone else experiences it.
So, you know, I've goneto see some work of late and the

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mediocrity for me is born of thefact that nobody can hurt anybody's feeling anymore,
because that's abuse. You know,if I tell you, you know,
what you really can't sing? I'mbeing abusive and it's like I went
to a show where literally these peoplecouldn't sing. It was painful. You
just felt like did anybody look atthem? Did anybody direct them? Or

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is it like you want to doit and you're good and we're going to
support you in doing it. Andit's like it was a two hour show
and it was like you made peoplepay for this. Well, isn't that
something that happen? I can't rememberher name with Funny Girl? What happened?
I don't know, Well, Ican't think of her name right now,
but she performed. They had herperform on stage because they couldn't get

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Leah. I don't remember her name, but she's I know who that won
exactly. And it was a harshow. I mean, she was beaten
down, in badgered and whatnot,and they knew, you know, she
was just sort of a feeling.But why would that be fair to do
something like that because producers is allabout the show and that's it. But

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you know, the way you talkabout your class and I mean, you
know, I talk with a lotof people who work with young people and
they all say the same thing.No matter. What it is is they're
devoid of feeling. And I don'tknow why young people today are they afraid

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to feel. What many of theteachers have said is that they feel like
they feel so much that it's toomuch, that it's too much. And
you know, some of my studentshave asked me, like, I want
to do the heavy roles, theemotional roles, but I don't want to
sacrifice my own mental health. Andthere was an article recently, I can't

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remember where, but it was calledI was wrong about trigger warnings. And
this journalist was someone who wrote aboutsexual violence, and so in the context
of her work, trigger warnings wereimportant. And then she chronicles how trigger
warnings got to go everywhere. Atrigger warning became if I disagreed with you,

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it was now a trigger warning.And what she talked about is that
it's like we've aired towards this sideof if anything bad happened to you,
you're going to be damaged by it, and we've ignored the fact that a
lot of people go through some reallybad stuff and come out stronger for it
for it. Gail she wrote awhole book called Passages about the victorious personality,

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people who have gone through incredibly traumaticthings and come out victorious who survived
these things and go on to dogreat things in the world. We've sort
of ignored that that sometimes trauma isthe very thing that causes someone to have
to rise up and be more thanthey ever thought they could be. And

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so I feel like what I've been. You know, I told my students
I like to move fast and breakthings, but clearly I can't do that
with you. So, you know, I've started working with them with an
exercise which is known as the repetition, and my experience of it is it's
been taught very badly for about fortyyears. My first experience with it,

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it's Sandy Meisner's method. I workedwith Sandy Meisner. I worked with William
H. Macy. I worked withStephen Schachter and William esper Soo. I
worked with the people who originated thiswork. And you can't teach this work
if you aren't authentic, because itbecomes you know, some of my one

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of my students yesterday said I usedto hate this exercise, and another one
said it was taught to us waslike, we're just supposed to be mean
to each other, and it canfeel trit It's like you have a gray
sweater on, you have a brownshirt on, you have a great and
you have a brown shirt on.Well, yes, that's how the game
begins. But if you sit withsomeone for a while, you start to
see what's happening in their body andyou can't help but know, oh you're

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uncomfortable. Oh you're feeling worried.Oh you know you start to just when
you just sit with someone and lookat them. And so the exercise is
about really seeing someone in taking themin so that the repetition is not about

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your shirt or your hair or yourhat. It's about what do I see?
And then when someone is seen,that does something to them because we're
so seldom seen, and then thatmakes things happen into them. That changes
what you saw, and so therepetition becomes what your dialogue would be.

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But it's gibberish. But when peopleare truly seeing and responding those repetition words
say so many things. It's andyou understand that the dialogue is not what's
carrying the communication. The behavior,what's going on in your body is carrying
the communication. And if you havesomeone who isn't able to look at someone's

(29:18):
body and say what's going on intheir body because it would be rude or
impolite or abusive. Then you can'tteach them how to be authentic. And
so much of the work or peoplewho I've seen who have supposedly studied this
work, it's not good. It'snot authentic because you have to be vulnerable.
And I think that that conversation Ihad with my students yesterday about the

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pronouns really got them into something real, and so the work that I saw
with them yesterday was far more vulnerable, and some of their comments were normally
I'm always thinking about, you know, what's my objective and what's the thing
and what's the audience doing. Ohthe audience laughed, and she was like,
I forgot about myself because I wasso caught up in them. And
I said, that's what you shouldbe doing when you're on stage. You

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should be giving all your attention overthere and just responding honestly to that person.
And that's the performance that we cometo see. Very interesting. You
are listening to Becoming the Journey onWOR seven ten and my guest is Tanya
Pinkins, So I'm gonna kind ofquote something that you've said. Okay,

(30:27):
correct me if it's wrong, becauseokay, I empty myself and let something
move in through and as me,I let go of the outcome. I'm
not afraid to fail or do itwrong. In fact, if there is
no risk of failure, I'm notinterested in the opportunity. Tell your story,

(30:52):
build a world, and don't tryto please anyone but yourself. I
said that. Do you remember thatI said that? You did say that,
ergo the red pill and and allof the work that I do now.
And I was just going to say, the women of what is it?
Women of? It wasn't mine?But okay, the work that I'm

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creating, I'm like, what amI going to leave in the world?
And you know, I'm just tellingstories or painting things that are interesting to
me, and hopefully somedays someone willfind it in a garbage pail and go
I like that. I'm going totake that home and be inspired by that.
By the way, to my listeners, nothing of hers is going to

(31:38):
go on the garbage pail, becauseI've seen her art. She's amazing and
if anyone is interested, she's gota voice like like an angel. So
yeah, okay, renegade. You'vebeen called a renegade, Okay, why

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why do you actually for you?That's an endearing term. Yeah. I
don't think there's anything wrong with that. Why do people say that about me?
Probably because I speak up and outeven if it's going to cost me
a job or an opportunity. Andthat brings me to the me too movement,

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which we've talked about and something coldtimes up. Let's talk about that.
So I was received an email atsome point to come to this.
I don't even know what it wascalled, but I got this email.
I was just like, oh God, all these white women trying to do

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something. I'm not interested. Andthen I got a call from a woman
that i Martha Plumpton. Actually MarthaPlumpton called me and she was like,
are you gonna do this? It'sgonna be Jessica chest Stain's house. I'm
like, I love Jessica Chastain.I get to go to Jessica test Stain's
house. I'm coming, so Iguess there. Her house's her apartment is
like a house. It's spectacular,but the room is like a who's who

(33:08):
of a listers on the West Coast. It's Meryl Streep. It's that one
with the big eyes. It's uhReese Witherspoon. Yes, well that's on
the that's on the other west coast, the East coast. It's Sarah Jessica
Parker. It's like who's who.And it was fifty of them. I

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mean America Ferrera of course, JessicaTesting, Michelle Williams. It was just
like, oh my god, ifthese women are in it, the world
can change. I really was like, they can do it. Yeah,

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that didn't happen. But what wastimes up? That was times up that
it was the beginning of it whereit was meetings in people's homes before it
became times up, which is atrademarked organization. And by the time that
happened, we were told we couldnot tweet it anymore because it was a

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brand that people could buy into,you know, by the time that happened,
Right, But didn't it wasn't thisgroup got together to fight sexual harassment
or champion Yeah. I think itwas not just sexual harassment. It was
all kinds of ways in which womenare discriminated against in film and television and

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theater, and American are women inthe hospitality industry and farm workers. It
was really to stop sexual violence againstanyone, women, children, anyone,
to end sexual violence in the workplace. And that extended to why is it

(34:59):
all always male sound designers who weresticking their hands in your panties and done
your braw you know, why don'tthey have more women doing that job?
So that was the point. Andthere were a group of people who were
the quote silence breakers, who hadsacrificed their careers by speaking out and naming
names, and Gloria Steinem had saidvery clearly that they should be the leaders

(35:24):
of this group because they have thelived experience of what this is. But
it didn't work out that way.And how does that compare to the Me
Too movement? So me Too wasfounded by Toronto Burke. It was something
that had no money, no funding. Toronto was struggling to make ends meet,

(35:45):
and she was just getting out inher community and trying to help girls
in school, particularly Black girls arecriminalized and experience a lot of sexual violence
in school. And so this wasa grassroots organization that you know, she
was funding out of her pocket andnot getting any money or not getting any
speaking engagement, or if she wasspeaking, no one was paying her or

(36:07):
even transporting her. And then acelebrity and I can't remember who it was,
Alana, I can't remember who itwas. Alyssa Milano tweeted it and
then people wanted to credit it toAlyssa Milano. I don't know that.
Alyssa Milano said it was hers.But it became big when this white celebrity,
uh tweeted it, and then youknow, people were like, wait

(36:28):
a minute, Toroana Burke is theperson who originated this. But you know,
I've interviewed Toronto and even several yearsinto the movement, she still wasn't
getting the paid opportunities to talk aboutit. Well the credit, right,
well the credit. Uh you hada little bit of controversy with that me
too movement. Yeah, well Ithink you told me when we were driving

(36:50):
home one day. Oh yeah,that you kind of was called into a
room by a huge management company andyou kind of and they were told they
were telling your whoever was there,to keep quiet. One thing that did
happen to me was a lot oftimes up meetings occurred at CIA. CIA

(37:16):
was Harvey Weinstein's management company, soyou know, those clients were complaining to
their agents. Those clients knew,and so it struck me as a bit
strange. I said, the wayI described it is, why are the
chickens meeting at the Fox's Den?And I remember, you know, the

(37:39):
first big meeting that happened, andeverything was very elite, like you had
to be on the list, andyou know, I remember submitting some very
high profile names and they couldn't geton the list. And so I would
bring in anybody I could bring inbecause I felt that there was power in
this movement. I really believed.And at that particular meeting, I think

(38:00):
feel was like Shonda Rhimes was saying. You know, she made a point
of saying she gave a rousing,you know, really fantastic speech to get
us all excited about what was happening. But she said something like, you
know, the only reason we're meetingat CIA is because this is the only
place large enough to hold all ofus that we could get for free.

(38:21):
And my mind is like free,why we need free? You all are
like ten millionaires, Not only whydo you need free? But anybody would
give you their place for free justto say that you were in their space.
And I was like, if thatis really the reason why we're at
CIA, because I don't think weshould be at CIA. Needless to say,
the meeting stayed at CIA, andthe people who I connected to,
who offered, you know, theatersand community centers that were even bigger,

(38:46):
were never contacted. So let's getback just a little bit. And yes,
CIA and Harvey Weinstein and how manywomen in that group didn't speak I
mean, was it real? Imean, were they willing to really speak
up? Oh? Yes? Andthey did. Then in those private meetings

(39:08):
people told very very personal stories.Yes, it was very very personal.
But I had a sense that therewere people in that in those rooms who
that wasn't their experience, or ifit was their experience, they weren't.
I had a sense of this movementwas being managed. The movement was being

(39:32):
managed. It became a brand,and it became less about actually helping people
or rectifying the damage that had beendone to women who had spoken up,
then about managing a brand and gettingahead of who was going to be the
next person to come out, sothat okay, if that one's going to

(39:52):
come out, well let's do thedamage, you know, let's do our
damage control. That's the sense Ihad, and I stayed you know,
on the email lists just to seewhat else, because I became friends with
a lot of the silence breakers,so I was getting their experience of being
pushed out and pushed aside and hearingwho the next person was that, you

(40:14):
know, after it came out throughsome other mechanism. Then of course,
you know, times Up would takecredit for something that was coming from you
know, somebody else, and andand sometimes it was people who were being
uplifted within the Times Up movement whowere the next person that was coming out
going to be out it? Right? Have we come a long way with

(40:34):
this? No, you're shaking yourhead, but my my listeners can't see
your head. So no. Ithink that women are the most hated people
in the America, more hated thanblack people or indigenous people. And I
think women are the most hated beingson the planet. And I think it's
because we control the means of production, we have the most power, and

(40:58):
uh yeah, we're not going tohave a woman president anytime soon. Women
are just just hated. And Iyou know, I've spent a lot of
energy studying sexual violence. And Idon't know if you saw the show Prima
Fage this year on Broadway, whichwas with Jody Komer, was really quite

(41:20):
brilliant. This lawyer who defends peoplewho've been accused of sexual violence and telling
you all the techniques and how shedoes it, and then it happens to
her and she realizes that the lawyersare going to do these things to her,
and she says, the law isjust made wrong to deal with sexual
violence because it breaks who you are, It breaks your being. So all

(41:47):
these questions that are being asked ofyou in court about what were you feeling
and what were you thinking that persondoesn't the person who existed before the sexual
violence doesn't exist anymore, and sothe system can't even address this break in
your being that comes from that.And I feel like there's a was a

(42:08):
woman named Charlotte desser B. Ithink she died in twenty twenty two.
She was in the DOE under RonaldReagan when he had planned to get rid
of the DOE and she was firedbecause she released all of these documents from
the Department of Education about its missionbeing to create compliance citizens. And she

(42:29):
wrote a book, many books,but one was The Deliberate dumbing Down of
America and these specific strategies that theDOE uses to create compliant citizens. And
I have imagined that nothing makes amore compliance citizen than when you sexually abuse
somebody, that somebody, some youknow, primitive person a long time ago,

(42:53):
sexually violated somebody and then realized thatthat person suddenly just did whatever they
wanted to who were coward all thetime. And I feel like we don't
consciously knowledge acknowledge how much sexual violencethere is in our world and how it
is used to keep people compliant,women compliant, not just women, no

(43:19):
men too. Really, how isthat? Because the men and boys who
are sexually violated, and I've talkedto a lot of them, and I
know about the fact that when MeToo was happening, there was an alternate
movement of the men and that wasshut down. You know. I know
people who did the interviews, whotold their stories, and it was threatened

(43:42):
that The New York Times and theOnly Times would cease to exist if they
published those stories. I spoke tounion leaders who had multiple members of their
union who were accused, and theywere going to handle it themselves. I
was a union leader and I knewthat my elected officials would not do what
I still believe is necessary to makea difference, and so instead of even

(44:05):
taking it to my elected, Itook it out to the membership in Chicago,
in LA in New York, andI said, let's the members vote
on this. Didn't take it tothe committee that I sit on. The
members voted overwhelmingly that they not onlywanted to implement, but to fund a
third party reporting system for people togo and talked about this. And I

(44:30):
watched the elected decide that that wasn'ta good idea, but they would give
them a committee to talk about it. And I resigned my position as an
elected because I realized there was toomuch complicity to this sexual violence within the

(44:50):
industry and within the unions themselves.Just as curiosity, how does a male
get sexually abused? How we knowhow women do? And this is coming
from me, Okay, well,they get raped, they get sodomiyed,
they get asked, they get touched, fondled by other women, by men,

(45:15):
by men, men by men too. But here's a story that a
union leader told me. She saidshe was being great, She's like,
you know, this man called meto tell me that like forty years ago
he went to an audition and aproducer took off his shirt, and I
mean, like, what does hewant me to do about it? I

(45:35):
didn't even know was he calling me? And I really couldn't believe that she
was saying that. I said,a producer taking off a shirt forty years
ago, and this person has beencarrying it and waiting to be able to
tell that to someone forty years ago. That was some trauma. Okay,
that person was traumatized and they've beenholding it for forty years waiting to sell.

(45:58):
And that's a different time. Yes, absolutely, okay. But you
know there's a a I forget.There's a movie on Netflix right now,
documentary about this school where all theboys were being raped and the teacher who
was doing it is interviewed. WhenI was on Karen Hunter Show, we

(46:19):
had a lot of men call callin and talk about babysitters abusing them and
then they're told, hey, youknow you should like that, but they
don't their kids and boys are lessmature than girls. That's not cool,
It's not okay. No, no, the do you think no? Way

(46:39):
back when the sex scenes in filmand TV were really to the imagination,
today they're open. Do you thinkthat kind of provokes more sexual harassment or
no. Because the BDSM community isa community of consent. The King community

(47:07):
is the most consensual community I haveever engaged with. It is like you
don't even you ask permission to speakto someone. And so there are communities,
and I don't know how long thatis, but there are communities that
respect and acknowledge consent, which isyou know, that's such a tiny community

(47:29):
in the world. And I thinkthat these young people today are asking for
more consent. Essentially, the entertainmenthas been like, you know, you're
lucky to be here, be grateful, you know, whatever happens. There
was one point at which my studentsat NYU said that Bill Esper, not
bill Asper. William H. Macyhad said to the students, you know,
sometimes you're gonna go to an audition. They're gonna ask you to take

(47:50):
your shirt off. It happens asif that was normal, and I'm like,
you're an icon. You can't saythat to girls. And now they
think that they should be ready forthat because this big movie starts. Said
that that's what I should be expecting. Incredible young actors and actresses, children
that perform back in the day parentsweren't allowed on set. Where are those

(48:20):
I mean, is it the sametoday? I think we've changed the rules.
I think, yes, we've changedthe rules. Parents are on set,
there are other people on set.You know. I don't know that
I would really want my kids doingthat, But I think there are more
rules. I think there's a littlebit of rules to protect 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

(48:45):
tough business for the adults, sofor the kids. But then, you
know, someone said that part ofsome of the sexual violence against children they
thought, I'm not saying I agreewith it, is that we see these
movies where their sex acts with children, but they're adults playing the children,
and that encourages people to think that, well, that's what someone twelve looks

(49:06):
like or something like that, andI'm like, I don't know, no,
I look, I think a youngperson being on set in a TV
series, movie, or whatever youwant to call it, every day,
I think they don't actually create orknow their own personality. It's impossible because

(49:31):
they're always in character, and soa damaged child. You know, a
child is a damaged adult, sosays Sarah Polly, And you have to
kind of believe that, Like whenyou're performing every day, every day,
every day for a couple of years. You know, how do you become

(49:55):
yourself? How do you know whoyou are? Well, one of the
things I tell my stufudents in college, I said, you know, it's
a privilege to go to college.You're getting some training wheel time to figure
out who you are because prior tothis, you were somebody else's property and
you liked what they gave you,Like, you didn't have the ability to
explore what do I really like?What do I really want to eat?

(50:15):
When do I really want to goto bed? Like college, if you
get to go to college, isa privileged time to have this training wheel
time to explore what is me andwhat are my interests? Right? A
lot of young people in the entertainmentindustry do not go to college. Right,
They don't get this. They don'tfree time to do that, that's
right. They spend their life pleasing, pleasing, pleasing, pleasing, right,

(50:38):
pleasing hundreds of people on set allday every day. And I know
you and I I had asked thisquestion because I heard it from somebody else
where. They said they heard fromsome performer that she was herself when she
was acting. She was more ofherself, came out in the acting,

(51:00):
but in real life she was reallyacting. Yeah, I would say that
was definitely true for me for agood part of my life and career.
And why is that? I mean, isn't it difficult to go through life
acting when you're not acting? Well, I don't think that it's a choice
that you're aware of. It's justlike when for me, when I was

(51:21):
on stage, I could have allof the emotions that existed, and I
think it's for most people. There'sjust a certain range of emotion and behavior
that is allowed in real life.And I tended to be very, very
shy, and so I had todevelop this outgoing social person because when you're

(51:45):
in this business, you got togo talk to people and you got to
do all that, and so Ihad to create that character to be in
order to work. Well, weare running out of time. So before
I say goodbye, I'm going toask you one question, and that is
how do you inspire today? Howdo I inspire other people? How do

(52:05):
I get inspired? Well, weknow how you get inspired by being creative,
and just how would you inspire?I mean, you are 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, I like variety.
They're people who like consistency, sothings that would be exciting to me.

(52:25):
There's some people that that's just notgonna going to interest them at all.
And so I think as I'm teaching, I've got fifteen students, like I'm
like, some of them just they'renot going to like my class and they're
not going to get anything out ofit. And every week I try to
figure out, Okay, what canI give them to serve them next week?
I think this next week, I'mgoing to tell them my personal story

(52:47):
because I think so much of theworld right now is curated. Look at
my Facebook life and my Instagram life, and I'm going to just tell them,
like my authentic, interesting, sometimesugly story, so that some of
them who have those can go,oh it's okay, that's okay. I

(53:07):
don't bet. I don't have aFacebook, Instagram curated life. Well,
your life inspires me, and Iam so happy that we are friends.
Thank you. Thanks everyone for listeningto this episode with Tanya Pinkins of Becoming
the Journey. We'd love you tokeep tuning in. Please do follow us

(53:29):
on Instagram at Becoming the Journey andif there's a topic anybody would be interested
in, let us know. Loveyou you have been listening to Becoming the
Journey hosted by Grace Lovery. Tunein weekly to hear more conversations that will
inspire listeners along their life's journey.The proceeding was a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's

(53:51):
hosting of this podcast constitutes neither anendorsement of the products offered or the ideas expressed