December 14, 2025 • 58 mins
The Black Effect Presents... Keep It Positive, Sweetie!
In this episode of 'Keep It Positive, Sweetie,'host Crystal Renee Hayslett sits down with the multi-talented Brian Jordan Jr., known for his role on Tyler Perry's 'Sisters.' Brian shares his journey from his childhood in Louisiana, through his struggles and triumphs in the entertainment industry, to his recent ventures, including his passion project 'Riley the Musical.' He reflects on the impact of Hurricane Katrina, his educational path, and the importance of black representation in theater. Brian also opens up about the personal challenges he has faced, such as body image issues and the pressures of public life. With a focus on his growth, faith, and the people who have supported him along the way,
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Calling all my Sweetish to the forefront. I'm your host,
Christophe and this is the Keep It Positive.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Sweetish Show.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to the Keep It Positive, Sweetie Show, the place
where we he'll grow and learn together. This week's guest
is a multi talented actor, singer, director, and storyteller Brian
Jordan Junior. You know him from Tyler Perry Sisters. But
today we are diving into the man behind the music,
the message and the movement Kip's Family. Without further ado,
(00:32):
please welcome my dear friend, my clothes made Brian Jordan Junior.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Oh close, maide, my friend. Hello, you're here.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Finally, finally, fine, look at us, look at us.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
All growing up. I've come a long way since twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah, a long, long way, long way.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
People have no idea, but we're gonna get into it.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
But you are from Louisiana, yes, Baton Rouge by way
of New Orleans.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
A lot of people know you from the His show Sisters.
They know you as Mari's Web. But I want to
know Brian Jordan Junior. I know Brian, but I want
the audience to know who you are. Take us back
to young Brian. We want to just build this whole conversation.
I really want to know where you come from, who
you are at your core, and how it shaved who
you are today.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Wow, young Brian, he was something else.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
I've always been a kid that had a big opinion
and a big dreams, whatever it was, I've wanted to
be so many different things. I wanted to be Michael
Jackson for like the first six years of my life,
and then I wanted to be a football player, and
then and then I wanted to be one again and
then not, and then I realized that I wasn't going
to be professional, but I did play. But I grew
(01:45):
up in rural Louisiana, moved to Baton Rouge after the hurricane,
and I stayed in Baton Rouge for college. And I
grew up in a big family, yeah, four brothers and sisters,
single mother, and low socioeconomic But I knew that I
wanted to do more. I knew that I wanted to
(02:07):
be more, but I just couldn't quite figure out what
that more was until I went to college.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
And then I found the theater. I found the.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Theater, and I was able to understand just the dexterity
of myself whenever I could play different characters. And I
met Debbie Allen my freshman year of college because she
was doing residencies in bat and Rouge and I auditioned
and she saw something in me because I couldn't dance
or I really didn't have any training, but she saw
(02:36):
something in me that she knew could be trained.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Wow, that's important.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
Absolutely, And so shout out to Debbie Allen. I mean,
she's she's everybody's goat. I mean, she doesn't get the
credit that she deserves, but I'm gonna always give her credit.
And she she gave me so many opportunities to train,
and she guided me in the right directions to go
to drama school in New York and the rest is history.
But little Brian still kind of lives in me today.
(03:02):
He was funny, and he loved to eat, he loved
to cook, and he loved to throw it on, you know,
clothes and all the things.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
So, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Love that you talked about moving to Baton Rouge after
the hurricane, and you're talking about Hurricane Katrina. That was
something that the entire world saw happen, but.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
We didn't live it. Yes, can you take us back
to that time?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
And was it like what we saw on the news
or was it Because I recently watched the documentary on
Netflix and it was heartbreaking to like really hear the
testimonies of the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Can you talk about your experience?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (03:38):
You know, I can't watch the documentaries. I think I
watched one way back. It's been twenty years, yeah, and
I was in the ninth grade whenever it happened. I
often like to speak to the documentaries because I think
that it was such a subcultural disaster that the rest
(04:00):
of the world can digest it as a thing that
seemed so far away. I feel like it put New
Orleans and Louisiana because it was, you know, the southern
cities of Louisiana, La Fayete, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans
were heavily impacted. And then there was another hurricane that
came right after it that nobody talks about, Gustave, And so.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
We went a long time.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
I mean beyond what you saw, like the Field Superdome
and the people swimming to safety and being on the roofs,
the larger issue was the lack of support that we
had thereafter, and electricity was gone for I think that
we went almost two months without lights, and obviously the
water was messed up if it was on, and there
(04:41):
was food and security, and people were looking for housing
and people had to start their lives over they lost
everything and starting in new schools. Just think about all
the kids who had just started new schools and so
it's something that was very difficult.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
But I think that.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
That type of disaster, and this may sound morbid, but
I always think about those type of disasters happening. I
could say that I've lived through about four hurricanes that
weren't as bad, but we've lost electricity for a very
extended period of time.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
There's been floods, you know, Louisiana. It's just that type
of place.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
But when you go into like a COVID, that is
a disaster where you see the loss of lives and
you're able to conflate that with something that you were
able to experience as a child. I think that that's
what helped me to kind of get through it, because
disaster wasn't a stranger to me, I know. And there's
always a silver lining on the cloud. And I think
that clouds are apropos to a hurricane because it was scary,
(05:38):
I mean as a kid, and just there wasn't enough warning.
I always say that there wasn't enough warning. And you
look up one day and it's one thing, and then
the next and it's disaster, and you're like trying to
get out and trying to find somewhere to go, and
trying to find food and water and shelter and light,
and just a lot of families who had afford to
(06:00):
just get up and evacuate, you know. But thank god
we made it and I didn't lose any family members
and Katrina, thank god. But it was a difficult time
and it's difficult to watch. I mean there are even times,
and I know that you and I share this experience
when we were housed in quarantine.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I was gonna ask you about that because that was
they're basically FEMA trailer.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Absolutely, they were exactly like them.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I remember you making a statement about that.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
You were like, I couldn't sleep the smell of it.
The smell of it just it smelled like a FEMA trailer.
It smelled like that type of thing, and just just
a reminder and those small reminders. I mean, even when
it rains, I don't like to drive into rains and
I think that that had something to do with that.
And thank God for therapy to work through those things.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yes, absolutely, but.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Yeah, we we just Hurricane Katrina was huge, but I
mean living in Baton Rouge Gustav was actually more impactful
in the aftermath. And there was a huge flood that
happened in two thousand and six, I think, and people
lost everything. It's just, you know, it's a constant struggle
with the sea level being so low. Yes, and not
(07:08):
to talk too much about it, but just the rebuilding.
I always like to say this. The rebuilding has been
so challenging for the city, for the state still now,
I mean twenty years later, it's just not the same economically,
it's not the same. And so you know, shout out
to Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, shout out Louisiana.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
We went for Essence Festival this year and there's so
much culture and so much history there.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And the food is.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
The food, Yes, so good.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Your journey took you from LSU to NYU and Tish
and then to Debbie Allen's School of dance. How did
that journey shape the artist that you are today?
Speaker 4 (07:45):
I think that when you live in Louisiana, and you
stay in Louisiana for undergrad or you stay there for college.
When you move somewhere else, it's like living in another country.
Louisiana is such a cultural it's such as cultural difference
in the rest of the world.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
But also I think that I went to an all.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Black high school, and when I left that all black
high school and went to college at a PWI and
then to drama school at another PWI in a very
white based industry theater, I learned so much about what
my place was in the world and what I had
to offer the world, and what people felt that I
had to offer the world, and all those type of things.
(08:23):
And so understanding that there was a world outside of
just the segregated Louisiana that I had grown up in
was interesting. But then, you know, there was even a
thing with like language. You know, I'm from Louisiana and
I had an accent and it was trained out of me,
and so people always talk about the way that I speak.
Now They're just like, I can't tell that you're from Louisiana,
And I'm like, but you can do it one time,
(08:44):
just one time for your bib. It's just that be
quiet Christau No, But you know, just those things. It
was assimilation that I learned and just being a black
man in a super white space. Coming from Louisiana, where
I went to a school that I would selling I
was at an all black school, you know, and just
to understand that the celebration was over when I went
(09:06):
into manhood was so jarring and it changed my mind
just about how I wanted to live my life and
the things that I wanted to do and the stories
that I wanted to tell and the people that I
wanted to tell the stories too. And I think that
I've been blessed to be able to have the avenues
to tell those stories. But that journey was interested, And
you know, I spoke a little bit about Debbie Allen,
(09:27):
but she's really the reason that I've clung to arts
education and that has really helped me to like navigate
my path because I didn't.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Coming from Louisiana.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
It was either you an athlete that did well, you
work at the plant, and if you was a girl,
you was becoming a nurse. And that's just what it was.
It's industrial and nobody's going to say how I want
to be a TV star, you know, like shut up,
you know, but that's what I said, and God saw fit,
you know, for it to happen.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
But it's because I was able.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
To navigate through LSU and then take whatever money and
whatever thing I knew that Miss Allen could help me, know,
and go to New York and struggle with that.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, got New York in itself is a struggle. And
then going to.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
School and absolutely absolutely and being kicked out of school
and having to go back, and I went through all
the things.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, let's talk about that. Yes, So I people think
it's just a smooth journey. They don't understand the ebbs
and flows.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Oh, there's so much in this country when it comes
to education. First off, the price is astronomical, ridiculous. And
so when you decide that you're going to do something
and then you can get scholarship money or our fellowship,
which is what I had, you have to follow rules.
And some of the rules were like you can't audition,
(10:46):
but of course I was like, I want to audition
for things.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Oh wow, so you couldn't audition wise they didn't.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Want you to audition or work on other things when
you were in school. Wow, And so I was doing
a fellowship and I lost it and I lost the
money and I couldn't pay anymore, and so I had
to not do I mean, I couldn't pay for it,
so I had to stop going. So I didn't get
kicked out, they just kicked out the money. And so yeah,
(11:13):
I had to figure it out, and I spent I
spent some nights on the train in New York. Wow,
just trying to figure it out. I and some of
my family probably won't even know this, because I was
determined not to go home. I would spend n I
mean there's friends that I have in New York that
I always have who we would get a dollar slice
of pizza and cut it and have I've slept on trains,
(11:33):
I've slept on sofas. I've done the things until I
just couldn't do it anymore. And thank God that I
had sense enough to move to Atlanta after all that,
you know, because it helped me to get a foundation
and get the credits and just do the things.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
But New York was hard. New York made a man
out of me.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I always say that, listen, if you can survive in
New York, you can literally make it anywhere. That's like,
you carry so much confidence and you're not a monolith,
and you boldly walk in every single space that God
has created for you. In finding that because you talked
about how you weren't celebrated once you left your all
(12:11):
black school and finding yourself and finding.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
That confidence, what has been some of the.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Biggest struggles that you faced navigating this industry.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
I think that the first thing about confidence is it
hasn't always been there, even if I pretended that it
was there. There was something that I was determined to achieve,
and I didn't really know how I was going to
achieve it, but I felt like if I at least
pretended to believe in myself, yeah, that somebody be Jesus,
that somebody would believe it, And so I would pretend
(12:40):
a lot. If I can be honest, I didn't really
believe that I could have all this until maybe twenty eighteen,
and then my life changed right after that. Whenever I decided,
whenever I believed for real, Yes, because I think that
we spend so much time trying to convince other people
that we don't even do the work to make ourselves be,
and so belief to me now that I understand what
(13:02):
belief is to me, It is.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Understanding that whatever you.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Desire, you deserve it, no matter what the odds are,
no matter what has happened before you or what will
happen after you, what you deserve is what you desire.
And so then that came the a plum. And so
the challenges that I have with the a plum is
people just like Brian is over confident. Maybe maybe Brian
is arrogant. Maybe Brian because I am someone who and
(13:28):
I've grown to be better about it. But I in
my youth, I found myself in spaces where I was
the youngest person a lot, and I had a lot
of opinions, and I had a lot to say, and
older people just say, hey, you know, you don't know everything.
And I thought I knew a lot, you know, And
I've learned that I didn't didn't know. But the challenges
(13:50):
were continuing to be confident in the face of our position,
in the face of failure, in the face of knows
which you know, you know the knows, and when you're black,
and trying to tell the stories that may not only
speak to black people, or trying to tell the black
stories to the people who don't understand blackness, or who
don't want to understand blackness. That's challenging, and it's still
(14:14):
a challenge. And we'll leave here with it being a
challenge because that's just what we've been born into and
it's a special challenge, just one that is unique and
rich with tradition and.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Overcoming. And so what makes us any difference?
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Right?
Speaker 2 (14:28):
That's so true. You talked about twenty eighteen was the year.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
You actually started believing in yourself, and in twenty nineteen
you were cast all Right, the number one show hit
show for nine seasons Tyler Perry Sisters as Maurice Web.
I remember sitting in the back of the room the
day that you did your audition and I.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Was like that that's Maurice.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yes, no, I knew it. I was like, that's him,
and I just saw it. I want you to take
us back to that day when you got the audition
and you knew you were coming to Tyler Perry Studios
for the moment.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
You woke up, the moment I woke up.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
I actually was in New Orleans that day because I
was filming a film called Christmas Bells, which.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Was actually on BT Plus.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Now I think they were just filming and trying to
sell it then, and I was flown in because I
had done a self tape for Sisters to audition for
Calvin and for it was Calvin and for Aaron. And
then Maurice came to me after those two auditions and
they were like, well, Maurice's recurring, and I was like,
I want to do the men who are going to
(15:34):
have a job like I don't. I don't want to
do like God bless Maurice and whatever he got going on.
I'm trying to be on the TV, you know. And
so I actually got to Atlanta, and I was living
in Atlanta at the time, and so I went and
got in my car to drive to the audition and
the car wouldn't start. I don't know if you remember
the car that I was driving whenever we did season one.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
I remember it's like a shoe storing or something.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
It was.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
I would call it Coroling Martin. That was the name
of my car, and Coroling Martin was a Toyota Corolla
that was actually gifted to me by Brittany Inge.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Shout out to Brittany che.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
I got to call her name. It was gifted to
me her and her mom said, how much money you got?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (16:15):
And I said nothing, And they gifted me a car.
And that car, you know, it had lived. She had
lived her life. Coroling Martin Corolla Martin is non binary,
and so Corolling Martin had a shoestring tied to the hood.
It wanted under the hole in the hood to the
(16:35):
rest of the car because the hood would just do
whatever he wanted to do. And that day it didn't
want to start, and so I had to get a
jump before I came.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
It was the battery.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Got a jump, and then I drove to Tyler Perry
Studios and I asked God. I said, hey, God, my guy,
I need you to get me there and back and
I'm good. And he got me there, and I thought
I went in there with four It was Maurice's, Gary, Aaron,
and Cal and that's what the four characters. A lot
of the guys were called back for a lot of characters.
(17:03):
And I was sitting there learning it was about sixty
pages of stuff, sitting there going through it and seeing
all these you know, you go to a tele periodition
and everybody will swole up in buff and I'm just like, hi, guys,
you know, it's me from the theater. And so I
went into the audition and mister Pierre was in there.
I didn't know that he would be there. And he's like,
(17:25):
we have Maurice for him. I'm like, okay, and so
he's like, can you read this? He gave me a
new side that I had never seen before. Can you
read this? And I'm like yeah, and I cold read it.
And that was it.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
And I did not think that I got the job.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
What do you know that when I don't tell this
story often enough? But I left out of that room.
It was a big theater, y'all, and it was full
of people, but you can't really see if you could
just see heads in the shadows, and there's his light
on you. And I remember leaving there. And then right
after I left, mister p left.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
You were, like I said, I didn't drove him out
of here.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
I thought that I'd ran him up out of there,
but I guess I learned that he had saw what
he needed to see. Yes, And what a blessing that was.
Because I did book Maurice, which was the recurring character,
but after my audition it changed and it wasn't recurring anymore.
And I think that he went from seven episodes to seventeen.
Come on, and the rest is history. Here we are
two hundred episodes later, more than two hundred episodes.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
It's wild, It is wild, and I'm old.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
You are still young.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Thanks everybody when you go out in the streets.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Maurice Maurice.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
But who is the man behind Maurice That people may
not know because some people cannot differentiate the character who
Brian George Jr.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Is Maurice?
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Well, ah, that's good. Yeah, Maurice is such an escape
from who I am. Yeah, and I think that we
have so many things in common, you know obviously, like
humor is something that I and then you know that
you know how I love to be funny. I love
to laugh. But Brian is a person who has such
a big heart for people. And I just love to
(19:07):
take care of people. It's my love language. I love
to cook for people and do things. I just love it.
I love big events, I love sports, I love talking crap,
I love spades. I love, you know, to work out,
and like the last year, I really fallen in love
with that, which we know Maurice don't love that. And
(19:28):
Brian is someone who is who stands on the shoulders
of a lot of black women who have shown me
the importance of what a man can be to a
woman in a friendship and as a brother. And I
think that Maurice is kind of that too, But I
(19:49):
know that, And I'll never stop talking about just how
black women have helped me to build my career. And
I mean obviously gave me life, but in the absence
of like a father figure, and it just other people
around me who could be father figures even in my career,
like black women have been, you know, a guide in life.
(20:10):
When I talk about Dabie Allen, I'll continue to say
her name because she just saw it me to slap
me upside my head, you know, And yeah, it cursed
me out enough so that I knew what, you know,
I understood the values. And so now I'm probably harder
than she is because it's that old school training that
got me to the point where I am. But Brian
is is a lover of God and a love of people, yeah,
(20:31):
And a love of the art, yes he is. And
a love of fine things and beautiful clothes, fine people,
and fine food, you know, fine film, yeah, fine, fine,
very fine.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I love that after being thrust because you've been in
the industry for a long time, but now you are
well known. What are some of the ways that you
had to adjust Because I know people.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
We think we're ready, but then it's like, whoa, this
is a lot, yo.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
No one can ever prepare you for that to be
in the public guy, And thrust is the correct word,
because you know, I'm so glad we're having this conversation together.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
COVID happened at the.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Beginning of our shows, and we were tucked away during
seasons one and two, and then we were thrown out
into this open world without a mask and that thing
went crazy and I dealt with security issues and and
you know, I mean people have come to my home,
come into my home. I've had to move and find,
(21:34):
you know, safer places. I have to move throughout the
world in a different way than I would normally move,
you know, And that is one part of it. But also,
you know, body image has been the biggest.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
I wanted to talk to you about that.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
The biggest. It's been the biggest challenge. It is the
biggest challenge.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
I have to be honest, because I made a joke
earlier about walking into a room of men that look
a certain type of way in film. They're film and
TV especially, you know, with sisters in the land of
if I can be honest Black television, there is a
(22:15):
conventional standard of beauty that I did not meet, and
I didn't realize it.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
It just happened.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
And then it happened even more because I was on
TV every week, and then it was in person, and
it was people who thought that they would being complementary
about how I looked on TV and how different I
looked in person or how you know.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
And then I started to struggle with.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Feeling like a leading man but not looking like one.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
And it's still a struggle.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
And I know that I'm speaking for a lot of
people who may not be able to speak, who may
not be able to speak because weight fluctuates. And I've
it's never been a thing for me being a big guy,
and I just was a big guy. I just always
have been a big guy in finding my way to
success and being compared to people every day, seeing public
(23:11):
opinion every day about comparison, and looking at yourself in
every gallery, shoot every photo of shoot every picture, looking
at yourself on camera and what angle's working. I just
I had to develop a system for myself because I
knew that I wanted to change. But I think that initially,
probably the first three years of Sisters, my change was
(23:33):
based in what other people looked like. Wow, it was
I was comparing myself to people all the time, and
people who I loved and admired and I and it
wasn't like I was.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
It was a negative thing.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
It was just like I'm standing around the best friends
that I have, my brother's Cheeto and devales and they
look great and they have like abs and I'm literally
over here just like fighting for my life.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
And it was tough.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
It is tough, and so even now as I navigate,
and obviously I've lost some weight since then. Thank you
so much. It's such a journey, though, Chris. It's it's
it is such a journey, and I think I'm finally
finding my footing, which it requires a lot of discipline.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Let's talk about that discipline, because you're running now, working out,
You've always in the gym?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Was it the food that.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Was absolutely a a.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
I love to eat and still today I do, but
I think that I had to figure out what was
more important. And I still love to eat and I
still do eat, but it's in a very different ways.
It's in a very different way. And I found ways
to enjoy the things that I need and not the
things that I desire. Yes, and I also found cardio
(24:45):
that I like, and which is running and like looking
at people. And you know, I live in a different
city now and running it's like the culture of running
is different.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
It is in New York.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
And so I run, and I've gotten up to about
six and a half miles a day. What yeah, I'm
so I just run blocks and you know, I run
and walk. I run and walk. I ain't gonna lie
back and forth, but I am, and I'm getting those
calories down and it helps, and it feels good. And
(25:15):
if I lift heavy, and people not to do a
fitness thing, because you know, anytime somebody lose weight and
they become billy blanks. But I I lift heavy and
it helps because you lose that weight in their skins
start to do something different.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
And you know how I feel about skin.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
So I lift heavy, and I and I run, and
I and I do I cycle too. I switch it
up because I get bored with things. I'm a creative.
I get bored with things and I just really fast.
I intermitting fast, and I go into the last minute
where I'm starving, and then it makes the meal so
good no matter what it is.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Oh my goodness, like, oh main, God, this solidest show.
God tastes like a porterhouse.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
God, it tastes like a fried work chop. I've had
a fried pork chop sandwich.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
I haven't had a pork chop since college.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
I know we think we better than but we can
get up onder a pork chop sandwich.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Listen, a white bread, Hey.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Listen, little white bread. I'm going now tear up a
fried pork chop.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Lovely though those are those things are lovely, so silly,
I can't eat that anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah, but I'm proud of you.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
I'm so proud of you because as your friend, like
I would see you working out and even it's the
unspoken dialogue that we have where like, I know this
is something that you struggle with internalist, and I can
see you trying to work towards it. So I'm just
so proud of you that you found a way to
work out and do it in a way that you love.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Even when you walked in today like you just.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Your glow is different, and I can tell us internal
not just external.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Yeah, yeah, you gotta figure out.
Speaker 4 (26:54):
I was working out from the wrong place and trying
to accomplish something based on somebody else. To find your
own body and find the best body that you have,
because you're just We're born with everything that we have
that we need, we really are, and so I just
had to find because it was in here, it was
up under here. It's still a little more up in here,
(27:17):
but you know, it's still I want to just drive
the point home because I don't want to say it
was a struggle.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
It is a struggle.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
And I'm finding something new every day and working through
something new. And when I say and find something new,
sometimes it's finding something new that I feel I need
to change, that I feel it need to work on.
And now that I've lost the weight, now I need
to do this. Now this looks different, Now this fits
different now, you know. And it's a challenge. But I
think that challenges are not something that will stop.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
No.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
I think that challenges make us stronger so that when
new challenges come, we're able to attack them with more armor.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Absolutely well, I think it comes with evolutions every time
we evolve. It's something else, and it's so refreshing to
hear a man speak on there because a lot of
times you hear women talk about dysmorphia and how we nitpick.
I just talked about it Saturday at the event, about
how we just we're our own worst critics and we're
picking at every little thing that people look at us
and like, oh my god, you look amazing, and then
(28:11):
some people are like, is she pregnant?
Speaker 3 (28:13):
You look fat?
Speaker 2 (28:13):
You know, but all though, but we look at me
and we're like, if I could just fix this or
tweak that.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
So just to speak to men who may feel the
same way, to let them know they're not alone in this.
And also we can be kinder to each other, you know,
because we're all dealing with something.
Speaker 4 (28:30):
I mean, even even hearing somebody's and kinder to each other,
like not being mean, but also just speaking to everything.
I mean, every time I see you, I'm just like
Jesus now, I really mean that in a godly way.
I'm like, wow, Crystal's here. Hey, ain't no use of lying.
(28:51):
We hear you know what I'm saying. But that kindness
to each other, it's just humanity.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
We need it.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
We need it right now in the world.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah, you know, for sure, we are nine seasons in.
This is unheard of for many shows.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Absolutely, you know six five to six seasons is normally thengege.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Accomplishment, Yeah, huge and huge.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
What are some lessons that you learned on Sisters, from
either your castmates or from Tyler during this time, because
I know.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
You know, yeah, I'll start with without I'll say, but
I'll start with Tyler because I don't think that Tyler
Perry gets the credit that he deserves for more than
what he gets. I think that people talk about the
amount of capital that he's amassed and all those things,
but nobody is talking about the master class and techniques
(29:42):
that it requires for someone to amass that on their own.
Come on, and I've watched him take those things every
single thing because he doesn't have to do anything.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
He has done the things, yes, for thirty years.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Yeah, And I watch him with my own eyes stand
in front of me and take on every single piece
of production and post production and pre production into account.
And he knows how to do everything himself. And I
will say that's probably the biggest lesson that I've gotten
in all of this, because as I move into my
own projects, like with Riley that I've been developing for
(30:20):
eight years. I knew that I could not go into
Riley the way that I wanted to until I can
afford to own it outright.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yes, And I've watched TP.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Literally be able to not only own it, but own
it like this owns it and you can't tell him
anything about it. You can't tell him anything about the audience,
about the content, about the deals, about the financing, about
the time, about anything, because he understands it.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
He created it. He has created a method.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
So when I am what people will call a well
studied actor until you hear about the stand of Slavsky
methods and all of the things the Shakespeare and I
am at Pentameter and the August Wilsonian method.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
But Tyler Perry has a method.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
There is a method that he has developed when it
comes to the development and the execution of television, film
and theater.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
I mean, hey, I don't know if there is a
more famous playwright in the history of the world. Like
people know him for those plays, and people forget that
too because he hasn't done plays in a long time.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
But that's how I found Tyler Perry. That's how I mean.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
It's the first player I ever saw, you know, on
a VHS at my grandmother's house. Yep, And people forget that,
and I think that that is such an important landmark
in time, and to be aligned with that in such
a historical way, like Sisters, it's just so gratifying because
I feel like I'm a little part of that history.
And from my castmates, you know, my castmates has shown
(31:59):
me so much about enterprise and finance and building wealth
from whatever you have, like you and like Devo, you know,
I've learned so much from you guys, and you guys
have been so giving and open with the advice and
with the help. Because this thing could go away. It
(32:21):
changes fast too. I mean you can go from being
on TV and then there's COVID, and then there's no auditions,
and then there's nothing, and then there's a strike right
after COVID, you know. And so I feel like I
was able to live through those things because I found
family and my castmates, and I found advice and knowledge
and wisdom and people that I could listen to and
trust that they had my best interests at heart. And
(32:43):
so those are the two biggest things like that business
acumen and the way that he was able Tyler was
able to develop this conglomerate, and then the family that
I found in you in Devou and Cheeto and kJ
and Ebony and everybody.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
You know.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
That helped me to move through the world with an
understanding that I wouldn't have otherwise.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
That is so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
There's a level of we talked about discipline, but also
a level of humility that comes on taking different characters.
And for me taking on Fatima, I used to judge
her all the time. Have there ever been moments where
you're reading the script and you catch yourself judging Maurice.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
All the time?
Speaker 4 (33:27):
Every time Maurice is crazy, he is, he could say
some awful things to people. He makes crazy decisions, and
he's put himself in a lot of different places that
don't make sense. Cyclical things, And that's such the opposite
of me, Like, if I see a cycle, I'm like,
I'm not doing that again, you know. But there is
(33:48):
a thing about playing characters that I enjoy, and it
is literally you can do whatever you want, and if
you don't judge the character, you can play this thing
so outright that it helps somebody who may not make
the same kind of decisions that you made, right, And
Maurice is someone who before I played him.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
I did not know him, So it's easy to judge
somebody else, you know.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
But then I'm like, you find after, I mean, after
so much text and so many episodes, you find that
there's a method to everybody's madness and there is a
reason why we all make decisions.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
And so I try my best not to judge it,
but I'll be lying it. I mean, I'm reading scripts.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
I'm like mo, mo, please, just doing anything, saying anything,
And I understand a lot of it is comedic, but
I also understand that there's so many people, and I've
been able to meet so many people who identify with
Maurice and they are like him, and I'm like, wow,
thank god you did an audition.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Right, right, because you took my job.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
But you know, I just didn't know anybody like that
like that before, and I was able to build him
into an amagulamation of so many people that I knew.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
But yeah, you it's difficult to.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
Not judge characters in such a crazy world that you
know sisters is and and but the beauty of it
is that it helps you to live the life of
two people. When we've done this for so long, you're
able to learn from even their mistakes in your own life.
And it's kind of a cheat code.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
No, for sure. For sure.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Now I want to talk to you about Riley. He said,
you've been working on this for eight years. When you
said that, it reminded me of Tyler's jazz Man Blues.
That was the first gripty road and he had sat
on it for years.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Really, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Yes, that was the very first.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yes, yeah, it was his very first movie that he wrote,
and it was he brought it back up around twenty fifteen,
put it back down.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Wow, that's why.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
So was that similar for you when it came to Riley.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
Yeah, because, I mean Riley was not something. Riley is
not something that I made any money from. And so
the biggest thing for me about Riley was I had
to put it down when I had to work. You know,
you have to focus on other things so that you
can eat and live. And so I started Riley in
twenty seventeen. Whenever I looked around, and I was really
really in the Broadway world, in the theater world, and
(36:16):
there were no roles where strong black men led unless
they were playing strong black men who had lived before.
And I was interested in telling a story about a
black community that was proud and a black man at
the center who wasn't trophy, who wasn't a drug dealer
or a slave or a doop singer. I was very
interested in telling the story of just a young black
(36:38):
man who was going to school like I did, like
many of us do. And it started off as a
play because I wasn't writing music, which is so crazy
that I've written all these songs now, but I wasn't
writing music, and I was did a reading of it,
and it was like missing something. I was like an
HBCU experience is one that is music, Like you have
to have music, you have to I started looking for
(37:01):
writers and I could not find one that I like.
And you know, Crystal, my standards are very high, and
I just I mean, I think I went through four
and five musicians.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
I just could not find one that could stick.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
What does it sound like?
Speaker 3 (37:15):
My close made just like yes.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
And so then I said, you know what, I'm gonna
do it myself. Come on, I'm gonna write it myself.
And then I wrote a song and I would call
my friend I'd sing it and they was like, that's good,
and I say, it's all right, I'll write another one.
And then I think that today, I think that for
Riley the Musical, I've written fifty four songs what and
there we've kept thirty two in the musical and they're
(37:40):
nineteen on the album. So yeah, and so I said
on it, I sat on it, and I will walk
away and go back. And the name has changed six times,
and the stories have changed because it's been eight years,
and so you have to do if it's a trending story,
you can't talk about the trending story from twenty eighteen.
You have to keep moving the data. And so it's
changed so many times. But I'm so happy that I'm
(38:00):
finally getting the chance to bring it to the world,
and it's been so successful. Surprisingly, I'm so surprised that
people like it like this.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Why are you surprised?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (38:09):
You just sit in your room and your Chris crossed
your legs and you write songs and.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Then you know you're just sitting there. Yeah, and you
just never know.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
I think that we all have dreams, and who's to
say that people will like them. You know, I think
I'm a hard critic, and so I just assume everybody
else will be one. Two And I'm just blessed and
honored to be able to share with the world.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Now, you did not attend an HBCU. So where did
you get the insiration.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
From the people around me? I will say number one,
but number two. When I was in high school, I
talked about the black private school that I went to.
It was the Southern University Laboratory High School, so it
was on the campus of Southern University and in college,
and the professors would teach us, we would be involved
in all the activities, and it was such an escape
(38:56):
from what I had experienced in middle school because when
I got there, it was the African American people who
cared so much about the way that this school was presented.
I said, the pride, and you know, in an HBCU
everything is pulled and high. My name is Brian Jordan Junior,
and I am a senior mas com. You know, it's
all of that, and I'd never seen it before. And
(39:18):
there was a plum and a confidence about blackness, about
academia and about the customs, traditions and ideas of black colleges.
That was so impressive to me. And I know that
the world doesn't know that. The world doesn't, especially the
modern world, They don't see it. And what I continue
to see is the influences of HBCU life in other things,
(39:42):
in other things that weren't black. But nobody knows that
these Land Grant and Bell Tower institutions were founded because
sharecropping was deemed unconstitutional, and they gave money to people
to start colleges for agricultural and mechanical studies so that
they can continue to be found. And what has come
(40:02):
from that is Kamala Harris and Stacy Abrams and Debbie
Allen and Tcharaji Henson and wonderful people who have gone
to these huge collegesh Oprah.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Octavia Spencer, Chadwick Boseman. I mean, we can go on
and on, and they have.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
Really shown the vivid illustration of blackness, how you can
give us something really really small and we'll turn it
into a whole thing. And so I knew that if
I gotten to this point and no one had told
the story, it didn't matter if I went to HBCU,
it mattered that I went to upperbound programs at HBCUs,
that I went to football camps at HBCUs, that I
went to national youth sports programs at HBCUs that helped
(40:45):
to rear me and foster my gifts.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
As a child, and even the communities.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
I mean, if you live in Atlanta, you know what
time it is when it's spelled house home coming if
you're from Tennessee, and even if you didn't, if you
go to Middle Tennessee University, you know what Tennessee State
is about.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
And you celebrate the homecoming zone much, you know.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
And it's just about what the black colleges mean to
Black academia, but also the black communities.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
It raises us all and it pulls us all up.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
I love that you also directed and choreographed The Wiz
at Theater. Yes, what did doing a classic like The Wiz?
How did that help get you ready.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
To do Riley?
Speaker 3 (41:27):
Absolutely? It was way more instrumentally than I even thought.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
I'm a strategic thinker, and so I knew that directing
The Wiz would help to establish my name in a
theatrical place that would help me to bring because I've
been playing in this Riley to roll out the outfits
that all the school stuff that y'all have seen. I've
been planning this for like four years. I knew I
just had to have a certain amount of money to
do it. And when I directed The Wiz, first off,
(41:52):
shout out to Kenny Leon, who is the founder and
creative True Color Theater and has been a mentor of
mine for a long time. Kenny, you know, and Jemil
jud who's the artistic director there, gave me the opportunity
to direct The Whiz. And what I found in The
Wiz is so many people hadn't seen theater before, or
(42:13):
they hadn't seen theater since they saw a Medea play,
and they came to the show because they loved Maurice.
And we sold that show out. I think that I
went and did press for the show, and within seventy
two hours we sold out twenty nine performances of that show.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Wow, quickly oversold. We sold the whole thing out.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
That's amazing.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
And it was a lot of people who were saying,
this is my first play, what and I feel like
and I call it the Lemon Pepper Wiz because I
was strategic about making oz like you know, Emerald City
feel like Atlanta. And so the tin Man was at
Cascade and The Lion was at the Mary Marquis, and
it was just a lot of things that I included.
I mean, qu Parker was the tin Man, you know.
(42:51):
I was strategic about what Atlanta needed to see in
the Whiz, right, because we have to make theater these
days whenever, you know, digital is so in front of
our face, and everything is so quick to get and
you want people to come and see live things that
you don't have video of, you have to make it
something that people will want to see. And so that
taught me that there is a huge market for black theater. Yes,
(43:15):
if you bring it to the people who it's for,
which is another Tiler period lesson. I ain't gonna keep
doing the Tiler Perio lessons, but to serve the people
the things that they if you're creating it for the people,
serve it to the people, you know. And so I
learned then that there was there's so many stories that
need to be told. And then now we're living in
a time where last year was the biggest season on
Broadway and the history of Broadway, and the largest grossing
(43:39):
show was led by a black man. Othello, you know,
and so shout out to Denzel Washington, shout out to
the people who are showing that black stories and black
eyep is important, is marketable, is potent.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
And so the Wiz taught me that.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
It taught me that there is room for black theater
even in mainstream because they're trying to make you believe
that it doesn't belong.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
But the Wizard was great. It was a great experience.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
How did you balance the creative and the business side
of bringing rally to fruition, because I know that's a lot,
especially doing it independently.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
Well, the balance is you may want a lot more
than what you can afford, and so you have to
you have to make those decisions. And the business of
being on sisters and learning from people around me, learning
from people who had taken their finances and independently place
their money and their own things, you know, it helped
(44:39):
me to understand the balance of things and what could
be more profitable and what is long game and what
you need to pull back on.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Because me, I'm just like, I do it big.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
I want all the things, I want all the artists
I want to you know, everything I want sixty five
dancers and a forty seven piece orchestra, and I'm like, hey, brother,
pull it on back, you know.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
And so I learned a lot of lessons. I did
a lot of.
Speaker 4 (45:02):
Scaling back on what I dreamed and putting people in
the right places so that they can reach the right people,
and understanding how to merge social and digital with the
live theater aspect, and just finding the balance because you know,
if it was up to me, it would. I mean,
the social thing I struggle, Crystal is the goat. I
(45:23):
struggle with the social and the digital stuff. But this
really pulled me out. And I was very intentional about
doing that because I know that's the way to get
to the people. And I wasn't gonna waste my money,
come on, okay, okay on the things.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
And so you had to.
Speaker 4 (45:39):
I had to figure out what would be long lasting,
what would reach the people, and what would get me
on Keep it positive, sweetie.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
So it worked.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
You are so silly. I love that.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
It's so funny because I'm going on a live show
tour for keeping Positive, sweetie, And like you, I like
all the things I want.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Led screen pyrol. Everything I want to come from the roof.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
That's exactly right. Why not?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
And they're like, Okay, Crystal, if we do this, you're
not gonna make.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Any money, that's right.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Like, so, do you want to leave home with money
or do you I mean leave the show going home
with some money? Or do you want to put it
all in the show?
Speaker 3 (46:22):
So give me the money, A little bit money, Yeah,
you know, list a little We still have a gowns.
I can't wait. The gowns, nice gowns, kes kex archive, listen, museum, Yeah,
all the things, the mass that's it.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Please no, but I totally I get it. I get it.
You've called Raleigh a story that's both personal and cultural.
In your own words, what does Riley represent to you?
Speaker 4 (46:53):
I think that if I had you say it in
a short amount of words, I think that Riley represents
what it looks like when black people decide not to
struggle anymore, my lord, what it looks like when black
people decide to not wait on the celebration of others,
(47:14):
and what it looks like when black people decide that
there is wealth and real estate in our own selves.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
And that's what Riley is.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
I mean, Riley is a story about a black football
player who went to a white high school, but he
decides to honor his mother's life by going to the
Black college, and he is kind of a fish out
of water, but he gets there and he realizes that
that's where he belongs in There is something that was
just ancestral about it, and it's a celebration of the
(47:44):
Black college. It's not filled with scandal and feel with
the things that are baity to people. It is filled
with why people pile up on Southwest flights to come
to Atlanta on the weekend to go to a spell
House home coming and just be out up in traffic.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
It is the reason.
Speaker 4 (48:02):
It gives you a level of importance that is not
something that you can buy. We're born into that importance, Yes,
We're born into that ancestral like landmark soil, that is
just who we are. And I feel like there has
not been an adequate adaptation or storytelling of that since.
(48:23):
And this is no shade to anything that has come after.
But I feel like when we look at things that
have inspired me with Riley, it's a different world. It's
school days, those things that really had that close connection
to the celebration of these colleges and institutions, and so yeah,
that's what Riley is. It's a celebration of blackness and
independence of blackness and what it looks like to learn
(48:45):
and to be intelligent and to teach.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
You know. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
If there's any advice that you could give to young
artists who are trying to just navigate this industry, who
are trying to, like you, create their own content, what
is the advice that you would give them.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
We are all dreamers, and I think that I had
a crazy dream last night. And I'm gonna get to
the point with this, but I had a crazy dream
last night and it just didn't make any sense.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
Most dreams don't make any sense.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Sometimes you're like, what was that about?
Speaker 3 (49:20):
They don't.
Speaker 4 (49:21):
And even when you wake up and you tell your mom,
who is a nurse and who's been struggling to take
care of four kids her whole life, that I'm going
to be a movie at a TV star, that dream
to your mama sounds crazy. It's because it is. It's
such a small amount of people who can do it.
But there are people who can do it. And so
(49:43):
when you dream crazy, you have these big dreams, you
have to do the same amount of work that the
dream is. So if the dream is insane, doing insane
amount of work to dream dreams don't make sense. So
you have to do a senseless amount of work. That
means waking up and going to the gym if you
don't want to. That means eating so way if you
don't want to. That means putting together looks if you
can't afford stylist or getting the styllars if you need it.
(50:04):
It means going to every class that you can go to,
singing every song that you can sing, training and dance,
training in theater, reading, going to people and helping them,
getting help with tape.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
It means doing the impossible. These dreams are impossible.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
There's a song that says dream the impossible dream, but
nobody talks about the impossible work. Boy, nobody talks about
the impossible work. And so I would encourage people. If
you want to accomplish the dream, accomplish the work.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
It has to match.
Speaker 4 (50:34):
Yes, And so you see people who you love on TV,
like Fatima, and then you also see Fatima on brand campaigns,
on this podcast, on film on doing everything. She's our
fashion goal, like she is doing all the things because
her dream is impossible and she's doing the impossible amount
of work.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
So that's what I've encourage.
Speaker 4 (50:54):
But just work, do the work, and if you're tired,
go to sleep and wake up and work again. You
can't out work, you cannot. Talent can never outwork ethic.
When you have that work ethic, that's what's going to
take you through. Yes, work, work, work.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
I love that. Ooh that is so good.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
I wanted to ask you all, know if we've ever
talked about this, but with all the work, how do
you ground yourself when it gets too heavy?
Speaker 4 (51:20):
I struggle with that, really, yeah, because I think that
what has happened is, and this is personal. I have
for so long been so laser focused on the work
that a lot of my life is kind of taken
a vaccine. Like I'm not married, I don't have kids,
I don't you know, and so much of that personal
stuff I found to be less significant because I was working.
(51:43):
So I'm in the point now I'm getting a little
bit older and it's looking a little lone that you
stand around in your house and it's like, oh, yeah,
you're about all right. You know, you can't find nobody
sit at the breakfast table, you know, But I I.
Speaker 3 (52:02):
There.
Speaker 4 (52:02):
I found I find ground and like solace and just
neutrality in other human like friends, and even a phone conversation,
a facetimeing. You call me every now and then and
we be on their phone. We go for two hours. Right,
You're like, oh lord, I gotta go, do you know?
Speaker 3 (52:19):
It's just how it is.
Speaker 4 (52:20):
But that helps to ground me, just talking to other people,
being with other people. And I feel like a lot
of my life is work, even when I'm enjoying it.
Like I can get grounded in my own things, especially
if I'm like auditioning for something or learning the script
or filming, you know, on something else. It helps me
to just go into something I care about that I
(52:41):
love that I developed like a child like Riley, you know.
But I find that in family and in food.
Speaker 3 (52:48):
I like to cook.
Speaker 2 (52:50):
I tell you, he can cook. I I why don't
you move to New York too far?
Speaker 3 (52:55):
I know you gotta just you be up there all
the time. Please for me. She can also cook.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
We can cook.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
We're actually twins.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
No, literally, everything you're sounding like like the.
Speaker 4 (53:09):
Same people were like the same person with both air signs. Anyway,
I find that in just and just the right people.
And I also find it in just understanding when to
leave things, when to stop talking to certain people, when not,
when to say no. That's a whole nother podcast episode
to say no. But but you you, I have been
(53:31):
able to build a nucleus inside of myself that no
matter what's going on around me, I know where to
go when I need stillness, when I need peace. And
that that has come with therapy, that has come with age,
and it's also come with just the knowledge of just
being around people who I've seen do the same things.
And God, of course you know understanding that the possibility
(53:57):
is just not to preach but people, there's so much
to be said about different religions or you know, modern
day will make you feel like, you know, subscribing to
any type of organized religion, it's something that is less
than smart or less than scientific. But I think that
in my life, without a doubt, I know that none
(54:20):
of this would be possible without God. And I know it,
and so it ain't even up for a discussion for me.
And so God and the way that I pray and
the way that I manifest has been just a beautiful,
beautiful thing because there is proof, Yes, there is proof,
Like even when you get in a situation where you
feel like this is the worst thing that could ever
possibly happen, how many times have you been in that
(54:41):
worst thing that it happens and then it gets figured out?
And so I think that I always say it, say
it to myself, but I say it to other people too.
How many times does God have to show you until
you're able to say, you know what?
Speaker 2 (54:53):
You got it?
Speaker 3 (54:54):
Please?
Speaker 1 (54:55):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (54:55):
Because we love to try to figure it out ourselves.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
We do. We can't fit taking a deeper hole.
Speaker 4 (55:00):
I mean, go sit down somewhere really, you know. But yeah,
I find I find my centering God.
Speaker 3 (55:07):
I find it in art. I find it in food.
I find it in fashion.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (55:12):
I love little piece of clothes.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Listen, I need to start a garment.
Speaker 3 (55:15):
We need to stop.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
I gotta let's put ourselves now. I'm putting myself in it.
Speaker 3 (55:21):
Please maybe A I'm trying to think with us.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
I got coming up?
Speaker 1 (55:25):
Okay, unless it's like for work, a shopping fast until
the holidays, like till.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
Let's tomorrow, neveryone.
Speaker 4 (55:33):
It is currently the holidays, the holidays, I can do
a shopping fast until like.
Speaker 3 (55:40):
Until the New Year. Okay till the New year sixty days.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
Yeah, for ourselves that if it's shopping like for Christmas
for your family, that doesn't count.
Speaker 3 (55:48):
I'm gonna put them in it too. Hey, guys, you
saw it here first time. Got fast.
Speaker 4 (55:53):
I don't know when this airs, but today is what
is it October twenty for We're gonna say twenty four
just because of the stuff that I have. People before
supposed stated check this is it, guys, and so I'm
gonna fa It's Crystal's fault. I'm going to fast. Merry
Christmas to you all.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
Jesus is the reason for the season.
Speaker 4 (56:16):
Yes he oh, yes, he yes, oh yes he is, yes,
all that, all of that, Yeah, cancel Christmas, guys.
Speaker 3 (56:27):
It's about God.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Amen. I love you. I love you more, No, seriously,
I'm so proud of you. I have watched you grow.
Oh I'm not gonna cry today.
Speaker 1 (56:44):
I've watched you grow immature over the years, and just
the artist that you are, the man that you are,
the friend that you are.
Speaker 2 (56:53):
I couldn't ask for a better friend. And I'm just I'm.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
Happy to have you and share my platform with you,
just to share you with the world even more because
I don't think you do this enough to like actually
let people in. So thank you for allowing me to
interview you and just have that conversation so that they
can know you more, because you are truly an incredible human.
Speaker 2 (57:14):
I just love you.
Speaker 3 (57:15):
Thank you for this comfortable and safe space.
Speaker 2 (57:18):
Yeah, no, seriously, I love it. So tell the people
where we can find you. You got merch?
Speaker 4 (57:23):
You are?
Speaker 2 (57:24):
Are you still on the college tour?
Speaker 4 (57:25):
I just wrapped the college tool. Okay, thank you, thank you. Yeah,
I just wrapped the college to it. But there will
be merch available at hbcusical dot com. We're also working
on a collaboration line that I can't speak to now,
but it's going to be crazy.
Speaker 3 (57:39):
I can't wait you to show you this. I can't
wait to show you this stuff.
Speaker 4 (57:42):
And of course Instagram, Twitter, TikTok at Brian Jordan Junior
and also at Riley. The mixtape go stream it everywhere
that you stream. It's out there. It did really great
numbers in the first week, crazy and so I'm so
so blessed. Thank you so much, Chris, you are well.
Speaker 1 (58:04):
That was such an inspiring conversation with Brian and a
reminder that when you trust your calling. You can create
something bigger than yourself. Thank you for tuning in to
another episode of the Keep It Positive Sweetie Show. Don't
forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this with
someone who can use a little positivity. Until next time,
I will see you guys, and make sure to keep
(58:24):
it positive.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Sweety right
Calling all my Sweetish to the forefront. I'm your host,
Christophe and this is the Keep It Positive.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Sweetish Show.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to the Keep It Positive, Sweetie Show, the place
where we he'll grow and learn together. This week's guest
is a multi talented actor, singer, director, and storyteller Brian
Jordan Junior. You know him from Tyler Perry Sisters. But
today we are diving into the man behind the music,
the message and the movement Kip's Family. Without further ado,
(00:32):
please welcome my dear friend, my clothes made Brian Jordan Junior.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Oh close, maide, my friend. Hello, you're here.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Finally, finally, fine, look at us, look at us.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
All growing up. I've come a long way since twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah, a long, long way, long way.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
People have no idea, but we're gonna get into it.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
But you are from Louisiana, yes, Baton Rouge by way
of New Orleans.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
A lot of people know you from the His show Sisters.
They know you as Mari's Web. But I want to
know Brian Jordan Junior. I know Brian, but I want
the audience to know who you are. Take us back
to young Brian. We want to just build this whole conversation.
I really want to know where you come from, who
you are at your core, and how it shaved who
you are today.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Wow, young Brian, he was something else.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
I've always been a kid that had a big opinion
and a big dreams, whatever it was, I've wanted to
be so many different things. I wanted to be Michael
Jackson for like the first six years of my life,
and then I wanted to be a football player, and
then and then I wanted to be one again and
then not, and then I realized that I wasn't going
to be professional, but I did play. But I grew
(01:45):
up in rural Louisiana, moved to Baton Rouge after the hurricane,
and I stayed in Baton Rouge for college. And I
grew up in a big family, yeah, four brothers and sisters,
single mother, and low socioeconomic But I knew that I
wanted to do more. I knew that I wanted to
(02:07):
be more, but I just couldn't quite figure out what
that more was until I went to college.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
And then I found the theater. I found the.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Theater, and I was able to understand just the dexterity
of myself whenever I could play different characters. And I
met Debbie Allen my freshman year of college because she
was doing residencies in bat and Rouge and I auditioned
and she saw something in me because I couldn't dance
or I really didn't have any training, but she saw
(02:36):
something in me that she knew could be trained.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Wow, that's important.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
Absolutely, And so shout out to Debbie Allen. I mean,
she's she's everybody's goat. I mean, she doesn't get the
credit that she deserves, but I'm gonna always give her credit.
And she she gave me so many opportunities to train,
and she guided me in the right directions to go
to drama school in New York and the rest is history.
But little Brian still kind of lives in me today.
(03:02):
He was funny, and he loved to eat, he loved
to cook, and he loved to throw it on, you know,
clothes and all the things.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
So, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Love that you talked about moving to Baton Rouge after
the hurricane, and you're talking about Hurricane Katrina. That was
something that the entire world saw happen, but.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
We didn't live it. Yes, can you take us back
to that time?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
And was it like what we saw on the news
or was it Because I recently watched the documentary on
Netflix and it was heartbreaking to like really hear the
testimonies of the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Can you talk about your experience?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Absolutely?
Speaker 4 (03:38):
You know, I can't watch the documentaries. I think I
watched one way back. It's been twenty years, yeah, and
I was in the ninth grade whenever it happened. I
often like to speak to the documentaries because I think
that it was such a subcultural disaster that the rest
(04:00):
of the world can digest it as a thing that
seemed so far away. I feel like it put New
Orleans and Louisiana because it was, you know, the southern
cities of Louisiana, La Fayete, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans
were heavily impacted. And then there was another hurricane that
came right after it that nobody talks about, Gustave, And so.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
We went a long time.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
I mean beyond what you saw, like the Field Superdome
and the people swimming to safety and being on the roofs,
the larger issue was the lack of support that we
had thereafter, and electricity was gone for I think that
we went almost two months without lights, and obviously the
water was messed up if it was on, and there
(04:41):
was food and security, and people were looking for housing
and people had to start their lives over they lost
everything and starting in new schools. Just think about all
the kids who had just started new schools and so
it's something that was very difficult.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
But I think that.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
That type of disaster, and this may sound morbid, but
I always think about those type of disasters happening. I
could say that I've lived through about four hurricanes that
weren't as bad, but we've lost electricity for a very
extended period of time.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
There's been floods, you know, Louisiana. It's just that type
of place.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
But when you go into like a COVID, that is
a disaster where you see the loss of lives and
you're able to conflate that with something that you were
able to experience as a child. I think that that's
what helped me to kind of get through it, because
disaster wasn't a stranger to me, I know. And there's
always a silver lining on the cloud. And I think
that clouds are apropos to a hurricane because it was scary,
(05:38):
I mean as a kid, and just there wasn't enough warning.
I always say that there wasn't enough warning. And you
look up one day and it's one thing, and then
the next and it's disaster, and you're like trying to
get out and trying to find somewhere to go, and
trying to find food and water and shelter and light,
and just a lot of families who had afford to
(06:00):
just get up and evacuate, you know. But thank god
we made it and I didn't lose any family members
and Katrina, thank god. But it was a difficult time
and it's difficult to watch. I mean there are even times,
and I know that you and I share this experience
when we were housed in quarantine.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I was gonna ask you about that because that was
they're basically FEMA trailer.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Absolutely, they were exactly like them.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
I remember you making a statement about that.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
You were like, I couldn't sleep the smell of it.
The smell of it just it smelled like a FEMA trailer.
It smelled like that type of thing, and just just
a reminder and those small reminders. I mean, even when
it rains, I don't like to drive into rains and
I think that that had something to do with that.
And thank God for therapy to work through those things.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yes, absolutely, but.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Yeah, we we just Hurricane Katrina was huge, but I
mean living in Baton Rouge Gustav was actually more impactful
in the aftermath. And there was a huge flood that
happened in two thousand and six, I think, and people
lost everything. It's just, you know, it's a constant struggle
with the sea level being so low. Yes, and not
(07:08):
to talk too much about it, but just the rebuilding.
I always like to say this. The rebuilding has been
so challenging for the city, for the state still now,
I mean twenty years later, it's just not the same economically,
it's not the same. And so you know, shout out
to Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, shout out Louisiana.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
We went for Essence Festival this year and there's so
much culture and so much history there.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And the food is.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
The food, Yes, so good.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Your journey took you from LSU to NYU and Tish
and then to Debbie Allen's School of dance. How did
that journey shape the artist that you are today?
Speaker 4 (07:45):
I think that when you live in Louisiana, and you
stay in Louisiana for undergrad or you stay there for college.
When you move somewhere else, it's like living in another country.
Louisiana is such a cultural it's such as cultural difference
in the rest of the world.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
But also I think that I went to an all.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Black high school, and when I left that all black
high school and went to college at a PWI and
then to drama school at another PWI in a very
white based industry theater, I learned so much about what
my place was in the world and what I had
to offer the world, and what people felt that I
had to offer the world, and all those type of things.
(08:23):
And so understanding that there was a world outside of
just the segregated Louisiana that I had grown up in
was interesting. But then, you know, there was even a
thing with like language. You know, I'm from Louisiana and
I had an accent and it was trained out of me,
and so people always talk about the way that I speak.
Now They're just like, I can't tell that you're from Louisiana,
And I'm like, but you can do it one time,
(08:44):
just one time for your bib. It's just that be
quiet Christau No, But you know, just those things. It
was assimilation that I learned and just being a black
man in a super white space. Coming from Louisiana, where
I went to a school that I would selling I
was at an all black school, you know, and just
to understand that the celebration was over when I went
(09:06):
into manhood was so jarring and it changed my mind
just about how I wanted to live my life and
the things that I wanted to do and the stories
that I wanted to tell and the people that I
wanted to tell the stories too. And I think that
I've been blessed to be able to have the avenues
to tell those stories. But that journey was interested, And
you know, I spoke a little bit about Debbie Allen,
(09:27):
but she's really the reason that I've clung to arts
education and that has really helped me to like navigate
my path because I didn't.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Coming from Louisiana.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
It was either you an athlete that did well, you
work at the plant, and if you was a girl,
you was becoming a nurse. And that's just what it was.
It's industrial and nobody's going to say how I want
to be a TV star, you know, like shut up,
you know, but that's what I said, and God saw fit,
you know, for it to happen.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
But it's because I was able.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
To navigate through LSU and then take whatever money and
whatever thing I knew that Miss Allen could help me, know,
and go to New York and struggle with that.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, got New York in itself is a struggle. And
then going to.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
School and absolutely absolutely and being kicked out of school
and having to go back, and I went through all
the things.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, let's talk about that. Yes, So I people think
it's just a smooth journey. They don't understand the ebbs
and flows.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
Oh, there's so much in this country when it comes
to education. First off, the price is astronomical, ridiculous. And
so when you decide that you're going to do something
and then you can get scholarship money or our fellowship,
which is what I had, you have to follow rules.
And some of the rules were like you can't audition,
(10:46):
but of course I was like, I want to audition
for things.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Oh wow, so you couldn't audition wise they didn't.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Want you to audition or work on other things when
you were in school. Wow, And so I was doing
a fellowship and I lost it and I lost the
money and I couldn't pay anymore, and so I had
to not do I mean, I couldn't pay for it,
so I had to stop going. So I didn't get
kicked out, they just kicked out the money. And so yeah,
(11:13):
I had to figure it out, and I spent I
spent some nights on the train in New York. Wow,
just trying to figure it out. I and some of
my family probably won't even know this, because I was
determined not to go home. I would spend n I
mean there's friends that I have in New York that
I always have who we would get a dollar slice
of pizza and cut it and have I've slept on trains,
(11:33):
I've slept on sofas. I've done the things until I
just couldn't do it anymore. And thank God that I
had sense enough to move to Atlanta after all that,
you know, because it helped me to get a foundation
and get the credits and just do the things.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
But New York was hard. New York made a man
out of me.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I always say that, listen, if you can survive in
New York, you can literally make it anywhere. That's like,
you carry so much confidence and you're not a monolith,
and you boldly walk in every single space that God
has created for you. In finding that because you talked
about how you weren't celebrated once you left your all
(12:11):
black school and finding yourself and finding.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
That confidence, what has been some of the.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Biggest struggles that you faced navigating this industry.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
I think that the first thing about confidence is it
hasn't always been there, even if I pretended that it
was there. There was something that I was determined to achieve,
and I didn't really know how I was going to
achieve it, but I felt like if I at least
pretended to believe in myself, yeah, that somebody be Jesus,
that somebody would believe it, And so I would pretend
(12:40):
a lot. If I can be honest, I didn't really
believe that I could have all this until maybe twenty eighteen,
and then my life changed right after that. Whenever I decided,
whenever I believed for real, Yes, because I think that
we spend so much time trying to convince other people
that we don't even do the work to make ourselves be,
and so belief to me now that I understand what
(13:02):
belief is to me, It is.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Understanding that whatever you.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Desire, you deserve it, no matter what the odds are,
no matter what has happened before you or what will
happen after you, what you deserve is what you desire.
And so then that came the a plum. And so
the challenges that I have with the a plum is
people just like Brian is over confident. Maybe maybe Brian
is arrogant. Maybe Brian because I am someone who and
(13:28):
I've grown to be better about it. But I in
my youth, I found myself in spaces where I was
the youngest person a lot, and I had a lot
of opinions, and I had a lot to say, and
older people just say, hey, you know, you don't know everything.
And I thought I knew a lot, you know, And
I've learned that I didn't didn't know. But the challenges
(13:50):
were continuing to be confident in the face of our position,
in the face of failure, in the face of knows
which you know, you know the knows, and when you're black,
and trying to tell the stories that may not only
speak to black people, or trying to tell the black
stories to the people who don't understand blackness, or who
don't want to understand blackness. That's challenging, and it's still
(14:14):
a challenge. And we'll leave here with it being a
challenge because that's just what we've been born into and
it's a special challenge, just one that is unique and
rich with tradition and.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Overcoming. And so what makes us any difference?
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Right?
Speaker 2 (14:28):
That's so true. You talked about twenty eighteen was the year.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
You actually started believing in yourself, and in twenty nineteen
you were cast all Right, the number one show hit
show for nine seasons Tyler Perry Sisters as Maurice Web.
I remember sitting in the back of the room the
day that you did your audition and I.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Was like that that's Maurice.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yes, no, I knew it. I was like, that's him,
and I just saw it. I want you to take
us back to that day when you got the audition
and you knew you were coming to Tyler Perry Studios
for the moment.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
You woke up, the moment I woke up.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
I actually was in New Orleans that day because I
was filming a film called Christmas Bells, which.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Was actually on BT Plus.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Now I think they were just filming and trying to
sell it then, and I was flown in because I
had done a self tape for Sisters to audition for
Calvin and for it was Calvin and for Aaron. And
then Maurice came to me after those two auditions and
they were like, well, Maurice's recurring, and I was like,
I want to do the men who are going to
(15:34):
have a job like I don't. I don't want to
do like God bless Maurice and whatever he got going on.
I'm trying to be on the TV, you know. And
so I actually got to Atlanta, and I was living
in Atlanta at the time, and so I went and
got in my car to drive to the audition and
the car wouldn't start. I don't know if you remember
the car that I was driving whenever we did season one.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
I remember it's like a shoe storing or something.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
It was.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
I would call it Coroling Martin. That was the name
of my car, and Coroling Martin was a Toyota Corolla
that was actually gifted to me by Brittany Inge.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Shout out to Brittany che.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
I got to call her name. It was gifted to
me her and her mom said, how much money you got?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Wow?
Speaker 4 (16:15):
And I said nothing, And they gifted me a car.
And that car, you know, it had lived. She had
lived her life. Coroling Martin Corolla Martin is non binary,
and so Corolling Martin had a shoestring tied to the hood.
It wanted under the hole in the hood to the
(16:35):
rest of the car because the hood would just do
whatever he wanted to do. And that day it didn't
want to start, and so I had to get a
jump before I came.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
It was the battery.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Got a jump, and then I drove to Tyler Perry
Studios and I asked God. I said, hey, God, my guy,
I need you to get me there and back and
I'm good. And he got me there, and I thought
I went in there with four It was Maurice's, Gary, Aaron,
and Cal and that's what the four characters. A lot
of the guys were called back for a lot of characters.
(17:03):
And I was sitting there learning it was about sixty
pages of stuff, sitting there going through it and seeing
all these you know, you go to a tele periodition
and everybody will swole up in buff and I'm just like, hi, guys,
you know, it's me from the theater. And so I
went into the audition and mister Pierre was in there.
I didn't know that he would be there. And he's like,
(17:25):
we have Maurice for him. I'm like, okay, and so
he's like, can you read this? He gave me a
new side that I had never seen before. Can you
read this? And I'm like yeah, and I cold read it.
And that was it.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
And I did not think that I got the job.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
What do you know that when I don't tell this
story often enough? But I left out of that room.
It was a big theater, y'all, and it was full
of people, but you can't really see if you could
just see heads in the shadows, and there's his light
on you. And I remember leaving there. And then right
after I left, mister p left.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
You were, like I said, I didn't drove him out
of here.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
I thought that I'd ran him up out of there,
but I guess I learned that he had saw what
he needed to see. Yes, And what a blessing that was.
Because I did book Maurice, which was the recurring character,
but after my audition it changed and it wasn't recurring anymore.
And I think that he went from seven episodes to seventeen.
Come on, and the rest is history. Here we are
two hundred episodes later, more than two hundred episodes.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
It's wild, It is wild, and I'm old.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
You are still young.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Thanks everybody when you go out in the streets.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Maurice Maurice.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
But who is the man behind Maurice That people may
not know because some people cannot differentiate the character who
Brian George Jr.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Is Maurice?
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Well, ah, that's good. Yeah, Maurice is such an escape
from who I am. Yeah, and I think that we
have so many things in common, you know obviously, like
humor is something that I and then you know that
you know how I love to be funny. I love
to laugh. But Brian is a person who has such
a big heart for people. And I just love to
(19:07):
take care of people. It's my love language. I love
to cook for people and do things. I just love it.
I love big events, I love sports, I love talking crap,
I love spades. I love, you know, to work out,
and like the last year, I really fallen in love
with that, which we know Maurice don't love that. And
(19:28):
Brian is someone who is who stands on the shoulders
of a lot of black women who have shown me
the importance of what a man can be to a
woman in a friendship and as a brother. And I
think that Maurice is kind of that too, But I
(19:49):
know that, And I'll never stop talking about just how
black women have helped me to build my career. And
I mean obviously gave me life, but in the absence
of like a father figure, and it just other people
around me who could be father figures even in my career,
like black women have been, you know, a guide in life.
(20:10):
When I talk about Dabie Allen, I'll continue to say
her name because she just saw it me to slap
me upside my head, you know, And yeah, it cursed
me out enough so that I knew what, you know,
I understood the values. And so now I'm probably harder
than she is because it's that old school training that
got me to the point where I am. But Brian
is is a lover of God and a love of people, yeah,
(20:31):
And a love of the art, yes he is. And
a love of fine things and beautiful clothes, fine people,
and fine food, you know, fine film, yeah, fine, fine,
very fine.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
I love that after being thrust because you've been in
the industry for a long time, but now you are
well known. What are some of the ways that you
had to adjust Because I know people.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
We think we're ready, but then it's like, whoa, this
is a lot, yo.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
No one can ever prepare you for that to be
in the public guy, And thrust is the correct word,
because you know, I'm so glad we're having this conversation together.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
COVID happened at the.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
Beginning of our shows, and we were tucked away during
seasons one and two, and then we were thrown out
into this open world without a mask and that thing
went crazy and I dealt with security issues and and
you know, I mean people have come to my home,
come into my home. I've had to move and find,
(21:34):
you know, safer places. I have to move throughout the
world in a different way than I would normally move,
you know, And that is one part of it. But also,
you know, body image has been the biggest.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
I wanted to talk to you about that.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
The biggest. It's been the biggest challenge. It is the
biggest challenge.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
I have to be honest, because I made a joke
earlier about walking into a room of men that look
a certain type of way in film. They're film and
TV especially, you know, with sisters in the land of
if I can be honest Black television, there is a
(22:15):
conventional standard of beauty that I did not meet, and
I didn't realize it.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
It just happened.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
And then it happened even more because I was on
TV every week, and then it was in person, and
it was people who thought that they would being complementary
about how I looked on TV and how different I
looked in person or how you know.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
And then I started to struggle with.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Feeling like a leading man but not looking like one.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
And it's still a struggle.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
And I know that I'm speaking for a lot of
people who may not be able to speak, who may
not be able to speak because weight fluctuates. And I've
it's never been a thing for me being a big guy,
and I just was a big guy. I just always
have been a big guy in finding my way to
success and being compared to people every day, seeing public
(23:11):
opinion every day about comparison, and looking at yourself in
every gallery, shoot every photo of shoot every picture, looking
at yourself on camera and what angle's working. I just
I had to develop a system for myself because I
knew that I wanted to change. But I think that initially,
probably the first three years of Sisters, my change was
(23:33):
based in what other people looked like. Wow, it was
I was comparing myself to people all the time, and
people who I loved and admired and I and it
wasn't like I was.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
It was a negative thing.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
It was just like I'm standing around the best friends
that I have, my brother's Cheeto and devales and they
look great and they have like abs and I'm literally
over here just like fighting for my life.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
And it was tough.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
It is tough, and so even now as I navigate,
and obviously I've lost some weight since then. Thank you
so much. It's such a journey, though, Chris. It's it's
it is such a journey, and I think I'm finally
finding my footing, which it requires a lot of discipline.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Let's talk about that discipline, because you're running now, working out,
You've always in the gym?
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Was it the food that.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Was absolutely a a.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
I love to eat and still today I do, but
I think that I had to figure out what was
more important. And I still love to eat and I
still do eat, but it's in a very different ways.
It's in a very different way. And I found ways
to enjoy the things that I need and not the
things that I desire. Yes, and I also found cardio
(24:45):
that I like, and which is running and like looking
at people. And you know, I live in a different
city now and running it's like the culture of running
is different.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
It is in New York.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
And so I run, and I've gotten up to about
six and a half miles a day. What yeah, I'm
so I just run blocks and you know, I run
and walk. I run and walk. I ain't gonna lie
back and forth, but I am, and I'm getting those
calories down and it helps, and it feels good. And
(25:15):
if I lift heavy, and people not to do a
fitness thing, because you know, anytime somebody lose weight and
they become billy blanks. But I I lift heavy and
it helps because you lose that weight in their skins
start to do something different.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
And you know how I feel about skin.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
So I lift heavy, and I and I run, and
I and I do I cycle too. I switch it
up because I get bored with things. I'm a creative.
I get bored with things and I just really fast.
I intermitting fast, and I go into the last minute
where I'm starving, and then it makes the meal so
good no matter what it is.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
Oh my goodness, like, oh main, God, this solidest show.
God tastes like a porterhouse.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
God, it tastes like a fried work chop. I've had
a fried pork chop sandwich.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
I haven't had a pork chop since college.
Speaker 4 (26:05):
I know we think we better than but we can
get up onder a pork chop sandwich.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Listen, a white bread, Hey.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Listen, little white bread. I'm going now tear up a
fried pork chop.
Speaker 4 (26:15):
Lovely though those are those things are lovely, so silly,
I can't eat that anymore.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah, but I'm proud of you.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
I'm so proud of you because as your friend, like
I would see you working out and even it's the
unspoken dialogue that we have where like, I know this
is something that you struggle with internalist, and I can
see you trying to work towards it. So I'm just
so proud of you that you found a way to
work out and do it in a way that you love.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Even when you walked in today like you just.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Your glow is different, and I can tell us internal
not just external.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
Yeah, yeah, you gotta figure out.
Speaker 4 (26:54):
I was working out from the wrong place and trying
to accomplish something based on somebody else. To find your
own body and find the best body that you have,
because you're just We're born with everything that we have
that we need, we really are, and so I just
had to find because it was in here, it was
up under here. It's still a little more up in here,
(27:17):
but you know, it's still I want to just drive
the point home because I don't want to say it
was a struggle.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
It is a struggle.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
And I'm finding something new every day and working through
something new. And when I say and find something new,
sometimes it's finding something new that I feel I need
to change, that I feel it need to work on.
And now that I've lost the weight, now I need
to do this. Now this looks different, Now this fits
different now, you know. And it's a challenge. But I
think that challenges are not something that will stop.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
No.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
I think that challenges make us stronger so that when
new challenges come, we're able to attack them with more armor.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Absolutely well, I think it comes with evolutions every time
we evolve. It's something else, and it's so refreshing to
hear a man speak on there because a lot of
times you hear women talk about dysmorphia and how we nitpick.
I just talked about it Saturday at the event, about
how we just we're our own worst critics and we're
picking at every little thing that people look at us
and like, oh my god, you look amazing, and then
(28:11):
some people are like, is she pregnant?
Speaker 3 (28:13):
You look fat?
Speaker 2 (28:13):
You know, but all though, but we look at me
and we're like, if I could just fix this or
tweak that.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
So just to speak to men who may feel the
same way, to let them know they're not alone in this.
And also we can be kinder to each other, you know,
because we're all dealing with something.
Speaker 4 (28:30):
I mean, even even hearing somebody's and kinder to each other,
like not being mean, but also just speaking to everything.
I mean, every time I see you, I'm just like
Jesus now, I really mean that in a godly way.
I'm like, wow, Crystal's here. Hey, ain't no use of lying.
(28:51):
We hear you know what I'm saying. But that kindness
to each other, it's just humanity.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
We need it.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
We need it right now in the world.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Yeah, you know, for sure, we are nine seasons in.
This is unheard of for many shows.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Absolutely, you know six five to six seasons is normally thengege.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Accomplishment, Yeah, huge and huge.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
What are some lessons that you learned on Sisters, from
either your castmates or from Tyler during this time, because
I know.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
You know, yeah, I'll start with without I'll say, but
I'll start with Tyler because I don't think that Tyler
Perry gets the credit that he deserves for more than
what he gets. I think that people talk about the
amount of capital that he's amassed and all those things,
but nobody is talking about the master class and techniques
(29:42):
that it requires for someone to amass that on their own.
Come on, and I've watched him take those things every
single thing because he doesn't have to do anything.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
He has done the things, yes, for thirty years.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Yeah, And I watch him with my own eyes stand
in front of me and take on every single piece
of production and post production and pre production into account.
And he knows how to do everything himself. And I
will say that's probably the biggest lesson that I've gotten
in all of this, because as I move into my
own projects, like with Riley that I've been developing for
(30:20):
eight years. I knew that I could not go into
Riley the way that I wanted to until I can
afford to own it outright.
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yes, And I've watched TP.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Literally be able to not only own it, but own
it like this owns it and you can't tell him
anything about it. You can't tell him anything about the audience,
about the content, about the deals, about the financing, about
the time, about anything, because he understands it.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
He created it. He has created a method.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
So when I am what people will call a well
studied actor until you hear about the stand of Slavsky
methods and all of the things the Shakespeare and I
am at Pentameter and the August Wilsonian method.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
But Tyler Perry has a method.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
There is a method that he has developed when it
comes to the development and the execution of television, film
and theater.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
I mean, hey, I don't know if there is a
more famous playwright in the history of the world. Like
people know him for those plays, and people forget that
too because he hasn't done plays in a long time.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
But that's how I found Tyler Perry. That's how I mean.
Speaker 4 (31:37):
It's the first player I ever saw, you know, on
a VHS at my grandmother's house. Yep, And people forget that,
and I think that that is such an important landmark
in time, and to be aligned with that in such
a historical way, like Sisters, it's just so gratifying because
I feel like I'm a little part of that history.
And from my castmates, you know, my castmates has shown
(31:59):
me so much about enterprise and finance and building wealth
from whatever you have, like you and like Devo, you know,
I've learned so much from you guys, and you guys
have been so giving and open with the advice and
with the help. Because this thing could go away. It
(32:21):
changes fast too. I mean you can go from being
on TV and then there's COVID, and then there's no auditions,
and then there's nothing, and then there's a strike right
after COVID, you know. And so I feel like I
was able to live through those things because I found
family and my castmates, and I found advice and knowledge
and wisdom and people that I could listen to and
trust that they had my best interests at heart. And
(32:43):
so those are the two biggest things like that business
acumen and the way that he was able Tyler was
able to develop this conglomerate, and then the family that
I found in you in Devou and Cheeto and kJ
and Ebony and everybody.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
You know.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
That helped me to move through the world with an
understanding that I wouldn't have otherwise.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
That is so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
There's a level of we talked about discipline, but also
a level of humility that comes on taking different characters.
And for me taking on Fatima, I used to judge
her all the time. Have there ever been moments where
you're reading the script and you catch yourself judging Maurice.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
All the time?
Speaker 4 (33:27):
Every time Maurice is crazy, he is, he could say
some awful things to people. He makes crazy decisions, and
he's put himself in a lot of different places that
don't make sense. Cyclical things, And that's such the opposite
of me, Like, if I see a cycle, I'm like,
I'm not doing that again, you know. But there is
(33:48):
a thing about playing characters that I enjoy, and it
is literally you can do whatever you want, and if
you don't judge the character, you can play this thing
so outright that it helps somebody who may not make
the same kind of decisions that you made, right, And
Maurice is someone who before I played him.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
I did not know him, So it's easy to judge
somebody else, you know.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
But then I'm like, you find after, I mean, after
so much text and so many episodes, you find that
there's a method to everybody's madness and there is a
reason why we all make decisions.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
And so I try my best not to judge it,
but I'll be lying it. I mean, I'm reading scripts.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
I'm like mo, mo, please, just doing anything, saying anything,
And I understand a lot of it is comedic, but
I also understand that there's so many people, and I've
been able to meet so many people who identify with
Maurice and they are like him, and I'm like, wow,
thank god you did an audition.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
Right, right, because you took my job.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
But you know, I just didn't know anybody like that
like that before, and I was able to build him
into an amagulamation of so many people that I knew.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
But yeah, you it's difficult to.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
Not judge characters in such a crazy world that you
know sisters is and and but the beauty of it
is that it helps you to live the life of
two people. When we've done this for so long, you're
able to learn from even their mistakes in your own life.
And it's kind of a cheat code.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
No, for sure. For sure.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Now I want to talk to you about Riley. He said,
you've been working on this for eight years. When you
said that, it reminded me of Tyler's jazz Man Blues.
That was the first gripty road and he had sat
on it for years.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Really, I didn't know that.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Yes, that was the very first.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yes, yeah, it was his very first movie that he wrote,
and it was he brought it back up around twenty fifteen,
put it back down.
Speaker 3 (35:50):
Wow, that's why.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
So was that similar for you when it came to Riley.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
Yeah, because, I mean Riley was not something. Riley is
not something that I made any money from. And so
the biggest thing for me about Riley was I had
to put it down when I had to work. You know,
you have to focus on other things so that you
can eat and live. And so I started Riley in
twenty seventeen. Whenever I looked around, and I was really
really in the Broadway world, in the theater world, and
(36:16):
there were no roles where strong black men led unless
they were playing strong black men who had lived before.
And I was interested in telling a story about a
black community that was proud and a black man at
the center who wasn't trophy, who wasn't a drug dealer
or a slave or a doop singer. I was very
interested in telling the story of just a young black
(36:38):
man who was going to school like I did, like
many of us do. And it started off as a
play because I wasn't writing music, which is so crazy
that I've written all these songs now, but I wasn't
writing music, and I was did a reading of it,
and it was like missing something. I was like an
HBCU experience is one that is music, Like you have
to have music, you have to I started looking for
(37:01):
writers and I could not find one that I like.
And you know, Crystal, my standards are very high, and
I just I mean, I think I went through four
and five musicians.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
I just could not find one that could stick.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
What does it sound like?
Speaker 3 (37:15):
My close made just like yes.
Speaker 4 (37:19):
And so then I said, you know what, I'm gonna
do it myself. Come on, I'm gonna write it myself.
And then I wrote a song and I would call
my friend I'd sing it and they was like, that's good,
and I say, it's all right, I'll write another one.
And then I think that today, I think that for
Riley the Musical, I've written fifty four songs what and
there we've kept thirty two in the musical and they're
(37:40):
nineteen on the album. So yeah, and so I said
on it, I sat on it, and I will walk
away and go back. And the name has changed six times,
and the stories have changed because it's been eight years,
and so you have to do if it's a trending story,
you can't talk about the trending story from twenty eighteen.
You have to keep moving the data. And so it's
changed so many times. But I'm so happy that I'm
(38:00):
finally getting the chance to bring it to the world,
and it's been so successful. Surprisingly, I'm so surprised that
people like it like this.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Why are you surprised?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (38:09):
You just sit in your room and your Chris crossed
your legs and you write songs and.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Then you know you're just sitting there. Yeah, and you
just never know.
Speaker 4 (38:16):
I think that we all have dreams, and who's to
say that people will like them. You know, I think
I'm a hard critic, and so I just assume everybody
else will be one. Two And I'm just blessed and
honored to be able to share with the world.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Now, you did not attend an HBCU. So where did
you get the insiration.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
From the people around me? I will say number one,
but number two. When I was in high school, I
talked about the black private school that I went to.
It was the Southern University Laboratory High School, so it
was on the campus of Southern University and in college,
and the professors would teach us, we would be involved
in all the activities, and it was such an escape
(38:56):
from what I had experienced in middle school because when
I got there, it was the African American people who
cared so much about the way that this school was presented.
I said, the pride, and you know, in an HBCU
everything is pulled and high. My name is Brian Jordan Junior,
and I am a senior mas com. You know, it's
all of that, and I'd never seen it before. And
(39:18):
there was a plum and a confidence about blackness, about
academia and about the customs, traditions and ideas of black colleges.
That was so impressive to me. And I know that
the world doesn't know that. The world doesn't, especially the
modern world, They don't see it. And what I continue
to see is the influences of HBCU life in other things,
(39:42):
in other things that weren't black. But nobody knows that
these Land Grant and Bell Tower institutions were founded because
sharecropping was deemed unconstitutional, and they gave money to people
to start colleges for agricultural and mechanical studies so that
they can continue to be found. And what has come
(40:02):
from that is Kamala Harris and Stacy Abrams and Debbie
Allen and Tcharaji Henson and wonderful people who have gone
to these huge collegesh Oprah.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Octavia Spencer, Chadwick Boseman. I mean, we can go on
and on, and they have.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
Really shown the vivid illustration of blackness, how you can
give us something really really small and we'll turn it
into a whole thing. And so I knew that if
I gotten to this point and no one had told
the story, it didn't matter if I went to HBCU,
it mattered that I went to upperbound programs at HBCUs,
that I went to football camps at HBCUs, that I
went to national youth sports programs at HBCUs that helped
(40:45):
to rear me and foster my gifts.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
As a child, and even the communities.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
I mean, if you live in Atlanta, you know what
time it is when it's spelled house home coming if
you're from Tennessee, and even if you didn't, if you
go to Middle Tennessee University, you know what Tennessee State
is about.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
And you celebrate the homecoming zone much, you know.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
And it's just about what the black colleges mean to
Black academia, but also the black communities.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
It raises us all and it pulls us all up.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
I love that you also directed and choreographed The Wiz
at Theater. Yes, what did doing a classic like The Wiz?
How did that help get you ready.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
To do Riley?
Speaker 3 (41:27):
Absolutely? It was way more instrumentally than I even thought.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
I'm a strategic thinker, and so I knew that directing
The Wiz would help to establish my name in a
theatrical place that would help me to bring because I've
been playing in this Riley to roll out the outfits
that all the school stuff that y'all have seen. I've
been planning this for like four years. I knew I
just had to have a certain amount of money to
do it. And when I directed The Wiz, first off,
(41:52):
shout out to Kenny Leon, who is the founder and
creative True Color Theater and has been a mentor of
mine for a long time. Kenny, you know, and Jemil
jud who's the artistic director there, gave me the opportunity
to direct The Whiz. And what I found in The
Wiz is so many people hadn't seen theater before, or
(42:13):
they hadn't seen theater since they saw a Medea play,
and they came to the show because they loved Maurice.
And we sold that show out. I think that I
went and did press for the show, and within seventy
two hours we sold out twenty nine performances of that show.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Wow, quickly oversold. We sold the whole thing out.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
That's amazing.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
And it was a lot of people who were saying,
this is my first play, what and I feel like
and I call it the Lemon Pepper Wiz because I
was strategic about making oz like you know, Emerald City
feel like Atlanta. And so the tin Man was at
Cascade and The Lion was at the Mary Marquis, and
it was just a lot of things that I included.
I mean, qu Parker was the tin Man, you know.
(42:51):
I was strategic about what Atlanta needed to see in
the Whiz, right, because we have to make theater these
days whenever, you know, digital is so in front of
our face, and everything is so quick to get and
you want people to come and see live things that
you don't have video of, you have to make it
something that people will want to see. And so that
taught me that there is a huge market for black theater. Yes,
(43:15):
if you bring it to the people who it's for,
which is another Tiler period lesson. I ain't gonna keep
doing the Tiler Perio lessons, but to serve the people
the things that they if you're creating it for the people,
serve it to the people, you know. And so I
learned then that there was there's so many stories that
need to be told. And then now we're living in
a time where last year was the biggest season on
Broadway and the history of Broadway, and the largest grossing
(43:39):
show was led by a black man. Othello, you know,
and so shout out to Denzel Washington, shout out to
the people who are showing that black stories and black
eyep is important, is marketable, is potent.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
And so the Wiz taught me that.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
It taught me that there is room for black theater
even in mainstream because they're trying to make you believe
that it doesn't belong.
Speaker 3 (44:02):
But the Wizard was great. It was a great experience.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
That's amazing.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
How did you balance the creative and the business side
of bringing rally to fruition, because I know that's a lot,
especially doing it independently.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
Well, the balance is you may want a lot more
than what you can afford, and so you have to
you have to make those decisions. And the business of
being on sisters and learning from people around me, learning
from people who had taken their finances and independently place
their money and their own things, you know, it helped
(44:39):
me to understand the balance of things and what could
be more profitable and what is long game and what
you need to pull back on.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
Because me, I'm just like, I do it big.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
I want all the things, I want all the artists
I want to you know, everything I want sixty five
dancers and a forty seven piece orchestra, and I'm like, hey, brother,
pull it on back, you know.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
And so I learned a lot of lessons. I did
a lot of.
Speaker 4 (45:02):
Scaling back on what I dreamed and putting people in
the right places so that they can reach the right people,
and understanding how to merge social and digital with the
live theater aspect, and just finding the balance because you know,
if it was up to me, it would. I mean,
the social thing I struggle, Crystal is the goat. I
(45:23):
struggle with the social and the digital stuff. But this
really pulled me out. And I was very intentional about
doing that because I know that's the way to get
to the people. And I wasn't gonna waste my money,
come on, okay, okay on the things.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
And so you had to.
Speaker 4 (45:39):
I had to figure out what would be long lasting,
what would reach the people, and what would get me
on Keep it positive, sweetie.
Speaker 3 (45:48):
So it worked.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
You are so silly. I love that.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
It's so funny because I'm going on a live show
tour for keeping Positive, sweetie, And like you, I like
all the things I want.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Led screen pyrol. Everything I want to come from the roof.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
That's exactly right. Why not?
Speaker 2 (46:09):
And they're like, Okay, Crystal, if we do this, you're
not gonna make.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Any money, that's right.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
Like, so, do you want to leave home with money
or do you I mean leave the show going home
with some money? Or do you want to put it
all in the show?
Speaker 3 (46:22):
So give me the money, A little bit money, Yeah,
you know, list a little We still have a gowns.
I can't wait. The gowns, nice gowns, kes kex archive, listen, museum, Yeah,
all the things, the mass that's it.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Please no, but I totally I get it. I get it.
You've called Raleigh a story that's both personal and cultural.
In your own words, what does Riley represent to you?
Speaker 4 (46:53):
I think that if I had you say it in
a short amount of words, I think that Riley represents
what it looks like when black people decide not to
struggle anymore, my lord, what it looks like when black
people decide to not wait on the celebration of others,
(47:14):
and what it looks like when black people decide that
there is wealth and real estate in our own selves.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
And that's what Riley is.
Speaker 4 (47:23):
I mean, Riley is a story about a black football
player who went to a white high school, but he
decides to honor his mother's life by going to the
Black college, and he is kind of a fish out
of water, but he gets there and he realizes that
that's where he belongs in There is something that was
just ancestral about it, and it's a celebration of the
(47:44):
Black college. It's not filled with scandal and feel with
the things that are baity to people. It is filled
with why people pile up on Southwest flights to come
to Atlanta on the weekend to go to a spell
House home coming and just be out up in traffic.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
It is the reason.
Speaker 4 (48:02):
It gives you a level of importance that is not
something that you can buy. We're born into that importance, Yes,
We're born into that ancestral like landmark soil, that is
just who we are. And I feel like there has
not been an adequate adaptation or storytelling of that since.
(48:23):
And this is no shade to anything that has come after.
But I feel like when we look at things that
have inspired me with Riley, it's a different world. It's
school days, those things that really had that close connection
to the celebration of these colleges and institutions, and so yeah,
that's what Riley is. It's a celebration of blackness and
independence of blackness and what it looks like to learn
(48:45):
and to be intelligent and to teach.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
You know. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
If there's any advice that you could give to young
artists who are trying to just navigate this industry, who
are trying to, like you, create their own content, what
is the advice that you would give them.
Speaker 4 (49:07):
We are all dreamers, and I think that I had
a crazy dream last night. And I'm gonna get to
the point with this, but I had a crazy dream
last night and it just didn't make any sense.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
Most dreams don't make any sense.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
Sometimes you're like, what was that about?
Speaker 3 (49:20):
They don't.
Speaker 4 (49:21):
And even when you wake up and you tell your mom,
who is a nurse and who's been struggling to take
care of four kids her whole life, that I'm going
to be a movie at a TV star, that dream
to your mama sounds crazy. It's because it is. It's
such a small amount of people who can do it.
But there are people who can do it. And so
(49:43):
when you dream crazy, you have these big dreams, you
have to do the same amount of work that the
dream is. So if the dream is insane, doing insane
amount of work to dream dreams don't make sense. So
you have to do a senseless amount of work. That
means waking up and going to the gym if you
don't want to. That means eating so way if you
don't want to. That means putting together looks if you
can't afford stylist or getting the styllars if you need it.
(50:04):
It means going to every class that you can go to,
singing every song that you can sing, training and dance,
training in theater, reading, going to people and helping them,
getting help with tape.
Speaker 3 (50:15):
It means doing the impossible. These dreams are impossible.
Speaker 4 (50:19):
There's a song that says dream the impossible dream, but
nobody talks about the impossible work. Boy, nobody talks about
the impossible work. And so I would encourage people. If
you want to accomplish the dream, accomplish the work.
Speaker 3 (50:33):
It has to match.
Speaker 4 (50:34):
Yes, And so you see people who you love on TV,
like Fatima, and then you also see Fatima on brand campaigns,
on this podcast, on film on doing everything. She's our
fashion goal, like she is doing all the things because
her dream is impossible and she's doing the impossible amount
of work.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
So that's what I've encourage.
Speaker 4 (50:54):
But just work, do the work, and if you're tired,
go to sleep and wake up and work again. You
can't out work, you cannot. Talent can never outwork ethic.
When you have that work ethic, that's what's going to
take you through. Yes, work, work, work.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
I love that. Ooh that is so good.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
I wanted to ask you all, know if we've ever
talked about this, but with all the work, how do
you ground yourself when it gets too heavy?
Speaker 4 (51:20):
I struggle with that, really, yeah, because I think that
what has happened is, and this is personal. I have
for so long been so laser focused on the work
that a lot of my life is kind of taken
a vaccine. Like I'm not married, I don't have kids,
I don't you know, and so much of that personal
stuff I found to be less significant because I was working.
(51:43):
So I'm in the point now I'm getting a little
bit older and it's looking a little lone that you
stand around in your house and it's like, oh, yeah,
you're about all right. You know, you can't find nobody
sit at the breakfast table, you know, But I I.
Speaker 3 (52:02):
There.
Speaker 4 (52:02):
I found I find ground and like solace and just
neutrality in other human like friends, and even a phone conversation,
a facetimeing. You call me every now and then and
we be on their phone. We go for two hours. Right,
You're like, oh lord, I gotta go, do you know?
Speaker 3 (52:19):
It's just how it is.
Speaker 4 (52:20):
But that helps to ground me, just talking to other people,
being with other people. And I feel like a lot
of my life is work, even when I'm enjoying it.
Like I can get grounded in my own things, especially
if I'm like auditioning for something or learning the script
or filming, you know, on something else. It helps me
to just go into something I care about that I
(52:41):
love that I developed like a child like Riley, you know.
But I find that in family and in food.
Speaker 3 (52:48):
I like to cook.
Speaker 2 (52:50):
I tell you, he can cook. I I why don't
you move to New York too far?
Speaker 3 (52:55):
I know you gotta just you be up there all
the time. Please for me. She can also cook.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
We can cook.
Speaker 3 (53:05):
We're actually twins.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
No, literally, everything you're sounding like like the.
Speaker 4 (53:09):
Same people were like the same person with both air signs. Anyway,
I find that in just and just the right people.
And I also find it in just understanding when to
leave things, when to stop talking to certain people, when not,
when to say no. That's a whole nother podcast episode
to say no. But but you you, I have been
(53:31):
able to build a nucleus inside of myself that no
matter what's going on around me, I know where to
go when I need stillness, when I need peace. And
that that has come with therapy, that has come with age,
and it's also come with just the knowledge of just
being around people who I've seen do the same things.
And God, of course you know understanding that the possibility
(53:57):
is just not to preach but people, there's so much
to be said about different religions or you know, modern
day will make you feel like, you know, subscribing to
any type of organized religion, it's something that is less
than smart or less than scientific. But I think that
in my life, without a doubt, I know that none
(54:20):
of this would be possible without God. And I know it,
and so it ain't even up for a discussion for me.
And so God and the way that I pray and
the way that I manifest has been just a beautiful,
beautiful thing because there is proof, Yes, there is proof,
Like even when you get in a situation where you
feel like this is the worst thing that could ever
possibly happen, how many times have you been in that
(54:41):
worst thing that it happens and then it gets figured out?
And so I think that I always say it, say
it to myself, but I say it to other people too.
How many times does God have to show you until
you're able to say, you know what?
Speaker 2 (54:53):
You got it?
Speaker 3 (54:54):
Please?
Speaker 1 (54:55):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (54:55):
Because we love to try to figure it out ourselves.
Speaker 2 (54:57):
We do. We can't fit taking a deeper hole.
Speaker 4 (55:00):
I mean, go sit down somewhere really, you know. But yeah,
I find I find my centering God.
Speaker 3 (55:07):
I find it in art. I find it in food.
I find it in fashion.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (55:12):
I love little piece of clothes.
Speaker 2 (55:13):
Listen, I need to start a garment.
Speaker 3 (55:15):
We need to stop.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
I gotta let's put ourselves now. I'm putting myself in it.
Speaker 3 (55:21):
Please maybe A I'm trying to think with us.
Speaker 2 (55:24):
I got coming up?
Speaker 1 (55:25):
Okay, unless it's like for work, a shopping fast until
the holidays, like till.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
Let's tomorrow, neveryone.
Speaker 4 (55:33):
It is currently the holidays, the holidays, I can do
a shopping fast until like.
Speaker 3 (55:40):
Until the New Year. Okay till the New year sixty days.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
Yeah, for ourselves that if it's shopping like for Christmas
for your family, that doesn't count.
Speaker 3 (55:48):
I'm gonna put them in it too. Hey, guys, you
saw it here first time. Got fast.
Speaker 4 (55:53):
I don't know when this airs, but today is what
is it October twenty for We're gonna say twenty four
just because of the stuff that I have. People before
supposed stated check this is it, guys, and so I'm
gonna fa It's Crystal's fault. I'm going to fast. Merry
Christmas to you all.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
Jesus is the reason for the season.
Speaker 4 (56:16):
Yes he oh, yes, he yes, oh yes he is, yes,
all that, all of that, Yeah, cancel Christmas, guys.
Speaker 3 (56:27):
It's about God.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Amen. I love you. I love you more, No, seriously,
I'm so proud of you. I have watched you grow.
Oh I'm not gonna cry today.
Speaker 1 (56:44):
I've watched you grow immature over the years, and just
the artist that you are, the man that you are,
the friend that you are.
Speaker 2 (56:53):
I couldn't ask for a better friend. And I'm just I'm.
Speaker 1 (56:56):
Happy to have you and share my platform with you,
just to share you with the world even more because
I don't think you do this enough to like actually
let people in. So thank you for allowing me to
interview you and just have that conversation so that they
can know you more, because you are truly an incredible human.
Speaker 2 (57:14):
I just love you.
Speaker 3 (57:15):
Thank you for this comfortable and safe space.
Speaker 2 (57:18):
Yeah, no, seriously, I love it. So tell the people
where we can find you. You got merch?
Speaker 4 (57:23):
You are?
Speaker 2 (57:24):
Are you still on the college tour?
Speaker 4 (57:25):
I just wrapped the college tool. Okay, thank you, thank you. Yeah,
I just wrapped the college to it. But there will
be merch available at hbcusical dot com. We're also working
on a collaboration line that I can't speak to now,
but it's going to be crazy.
Speaker 3 (57:39):
I can't wait you to show you this. I can't
wait to show you this stuff.
Speaker 4 (57:42):
And of course Instagram, Twitter, TikTok at Brian Jordan Junior
and also at Riley. The mixtape go stream it everywhere
that you stream. It's out there. It did really great
numbers in the first week, crazy and so I'm so
so blessed. Thank you so much, Chris, you are well.
Speaker 1 (58:04):
That was such an inspiring conversation with Brian and a
reminder that when you trust your calling. You can create
something bigger than yourself. Thank you for tuning in to
another episode of the Keep It Positive Sweetie Show. Don't
forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this with
someone who can use a little positivity. Until next time,
I will see you guys, and make sure to keep
(58:24):
it positive.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Sweety right
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