Speaker 1: Welcome to Checking In with Michelle Williams, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and The Black Effect. Okay, everybody, h thank y'all
Speaker 1: for tuning in to another episode of Checking In.
Speaker 2: I get the privilege.
Speaker 1: I'm truly honored, truly humble to interview one of my
Speaker 1: favorite humans ever on this planet.
Speaker 2: She is a three time Emmy Award winning.
Speaker 1: Co host of ABC's The View, New York Times bestselling author.
Speaker 1: I fell in love with her first of all because
Speaker 1: she is an attorney, a legal analyst, as well as
Speaker 1: a sought after speaker.
Speaker 2: Y'all already know. Y'all know who it is. Please welcome
Speaker 2: Sonny Houstin.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: You know, I remember the first time we met. I
Speaker 3: mean I had watched you for form, of course, but
Speaker 3: I remember the first time we met. We were you
Speaker 3: were walking out of a Japanese restaurant. I was walking
Speaker 3: into a Japanese restaurant and you were like, Sonny Housen
Speaker 3: and I was like, I know, Michelle Williams does not
Speaker 3: know who I am. So it was great and it's
Speaker 3: been great to keep in touch since then.
Speaker 2: Yes, ma'am, it has been great.
Speaker 1: It has just been awesome over the years, because you know,
Speaker 1: I am a bootleg attorney. My college was criminal justice,
Speaker 1: so I would stay tuned and peeled into cases that
Speaker 1: made like mainstream television. And what inspired me so much
Speaker 1: was to see women of color bringing it as it
Speaker 1: related to the legal parts of all these cases that
Speaker 1: were going on. I mean, killing it sure confident. There
Speaker 1: are times where you had to set people in their place,
Speaker 1: or there are times you had to be.
Speaker 2: Like, no, the person did it.
Speaker 1: How do y'all not see it?
Speaker 2: How do they not singing it?
Speaker 1: So I'm just appreciative of you. I'm appreciative you've been
Speaker 1: what ten seasons or more on the View?
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I was just reminded of that my someone on the
Speaker 3: View I had said during an interview six years and
Speaker 3: she was like, no, you started guest hosting with us
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve, and I was like what She was like, yep,
Speaker 3: Barbara got you into the rotation in twenty twelve, and
Speaker 3: so I was a guest co host for a lot,
Speaker 3: like half the shows in a year, and then I've
Speaker 3: been on the show formally as a full time co
Speaker 3: host since for seven years. It went by really.
Speaker 2: Quickly, doesn't it. Go by quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's like I started guest co hosting, but
Speaker 3: at the time I was working at CNN, so it
Speaker 3: was it was, you know, they wanted me to start
Speaker 3: at the View, but I really couldn't because I have
Speaker 3: a contract and CNN at the time was like, no,
Speaker 3: you can't get out of your contract, which in a
Speaker 3: way was a good thing for me because I was
Speaker 3: reporting out in the field. I was doing the things
Speaker 3: that you you were just talking about. You know, I
Speaker 3: was covering the Trayvon Martin trill well, the George Zimmerman trial,
Speaker 3: but the Trayvon's murder, and I was, you know, covering
Speaker 3: Casey Anthony who murdered, in my opinion, her, you know,
Speaker 3: her baby, And so I was. I was in the
Speaker 3: thick of a lot of heavy stuff that was really
Speaker 3: important to me. And so in a way it was
Speaker 3: great to be able to do that that heavy lifting
Speaker 3: and give voice to our community and then get on
Speaker 3: the View and have a little bit of fun. So
Speaker 3: it was it was a good balance.
Speaker 2: Got it. The foundation of checking in is mental health.
Speaker 1: And just mentioned that, you know, you had to cover
Speaker 1: some heavy cases.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, I named.
Speaker 1: All these brilliant things that you do. But some of
Speaker 1: the most brilliant things that you are is a wife
Speaker 1: and mother. Yes, someone's daughter, someone's friend. How were you
Speaker 1: able to handle all of these heavy moments as far
Speaker 1: as your mental health is concerned.
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting. I'm learning how to handle it better.
Speaker 3: I am someone who tended to internalize things. You know,
Speaker 3: I was the calm in the storm. I had a
Speaker 3: pretty chaotic upbringing because I grew up in the South
Speaker 3: Bronx projects and I saw a lot of violence and addiction,
Speaker 3: and so I was always the kid with the book
Speaker 3: that was looking for an escape from my surroundings. And
Speaker 3: it kind of grounded me. And my faith grounded me.
Speaker 3: You know. I'm Catholic, went to Catholic schools. I had
Speaker 3: a really good friendship with a nun believe it or not, sister,
Speaker 3: and she passed a couple of years ago, and I
Speaker 3: still to this day have a really good friendship with
Speaker 3: two priests, Father Edward Beck and Father Bob, and so
Speaker 3: I was able to turn to them. I didn't turn
Speaker 3: to a traditional therapists, but I turned to them for guidance,
Speaker 3: you know, like faith guidance, Like how do I do this?
Speaker 3: Especially when I was covering a lot of the heavy stuff,
Speaker 3: and it's hard, I will say, not only covering those issues,
Speaker 3: but covering them as a public figure, and it's especially
Speaker 3: hard on your family. And you don't think about that,
Speaker 3: or at least I didn't think about that when I
Speaker 3: first started. I just want to tell people's stories. I
Speaker 3: just want to make sure people knew about Trayvon. I
Speaker 3: wanted to make sure you know that people knew about
Speaker 3: George Floyd. I just it was important to me that
Speaker 3: people knew about what was going on community. I prosecuted
Speaker 3: child sex crimes and trafficking. That was the business that
Speaker 3: I was in when I was a prosecutor, and I
Speaker 3: pretty much put myself last all the time. I wanted
Speaker 3: to make sure my daughter was okay, my son was okay,
Speaker 3: my husband was okay, and I was doing the work.
Speaker 3: But I wasn't as concerned about myself. And I would
Speaker 3: say within the past five years, especially with the help
Speaker 3: of Joy Behar and Whoopee and my co hosts asking me,
Speaker 3: are you okay? And I started kind of taking stock
Speaker 3: in that and I was like, some days I'm great,
Speaker 3: but some dames, I'm actually not okay. And it's okay
Speaker 3: to say I'm not okay, it's okay to say I
Speaker 3: think I'm going to have to take a mental health
Speaker 3: day off today because I need to know. I live
Speaker 3: on kind of a modified farm, So I'm like, I
Speaker 3: need to go out with my chickens, I need to
Speaker 3: tend to my beehives. I need to be with my
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty pound New Finland dogs. I need
Speaker 3: to just spend some time for me. And that's been
Speaker 3: extremely helpful. But it took me a minute to understand
Speaker 3: what self care meant and how if I am not
Speaker 3: good and centered mentally, that I am not good and
Speaker 3: centered for anybody else. And it's helped me on the
Speaker 3: show as well. For sure, it's helped me a lot well.
Speaker 2: I think also people feel like you should have.
Speaker 1: Yourself already emotionally put together before you get out on
Speaker 1: that stage. Everyone, And just so you know, respectfully, I
Speaker 1: don't want to just have this whole interview be about
Speaker 1: your first morning job.
Speaker 2: Right on the view.
Speaker 1: But I can imagine, like I because I follow the
Speaker 1: View on social media, I follow you, I follow you
Speaker 1: on social media? Right, people a little cruel to me,
Speaker 1: huh No, that's why they have her on the show
Speaker 1: for her expert and being able to handleize things.
Speaker 2: But as a human, as a woman.
Speaker 1: We want to know how are people really truly feeling?
Speaker 1: And my hat goes off to you and every every
Speaker 1: woman on that platform who has to take a chance
Speaker 1: in sharing their personal views on stuff, and like, no,
Speaker 1: they mean this, well, this is real.
Speaker 2: This ain't scripted, This is for rescripted.
Speaker 3: It's not scripted. And you know, anybody that knows me,
Speaker 3: you know me, anyone that knows me personally. I'm a
Speaker 3: very well researched person. I try to be as thoughtful
Speaker 3: as possible, but I back up everything that I say
Speaker 3: with data and statistics and receipts as Joy likes to
Speaker 3: call them. And so it does surprise me when I
Speaker 3: say things like you know, I'm not saying this, but
Speaker 3: Christopher Ray, the head of the FBI, is that the
Speaker 3: biggest threat to our country is white supremacy and domestic
Speaker 3: terrorism and that the black community is under attack. And
Speaker 3: then I get someone like Megan Kelly who gets on
Speaker 3: her podcast that's watched by hundreds of thousands of people,
Speaker 3: I think, and puts pictures of my home on her
Speaker 3: podcast and starts talking about my children and really puts
Speaker 3: me in danger for what I'm saying. Factually, you know,
Speaker 3: I am not saying that I haven't made it. I'm
Speaker 3: not saying that my kid doesn't go to Harvard. I'm
Speaker 3: not saying that my children aren't in private schools. But
Speaker 3: but I'm the exception and not the rule. Why should
Speaker 3: I be the anomaly? And until my community is the
Speaker 3: rule and my success is my community's success and not
Speaker 3: the exception, then I'm going to keep on speaking up
Speaker 3: and speaking out. And it is hurtful when people come on,
Speaker 3: you know, go on social media and think they can
Speaker 3: call me a race bader or a racist or and
Speaker 3: that those are the nice things.
Speaker 2: What does everything have to be about race?
Speaker 3: Like? How m does everything go? I'm giving you the
Speaker 3: statistic like, unfortunately, in this country, the cruel legacy of
Speaker 3: slavery and racism has bled into everything, every institution that
Speaker 3: we have, And when I talk about it based in fact,
Speaker 3: I get attacked. And I now, though, if I'm being honest,
Speaker 3: I have a social media team. I do not read
Speaker 3: the comments. Woopy Goldberg told me to do that for
Speaker 3: my health. She said, if you read the comments, you
Speaker 3: may start filtering yourself, and they're painful and they're hurtful
Speaker 3: because I happen to be much more of an introverted
Speaker 3: person than people think I am. So I was taking
Speaker 3: things seriously and Joy Behart was like, don't.
Speaker 2: Worry about it.
Speaker 3: You open up your mouth. Fifty percent of the country
Speaker 3: hates you, fifty percent of the country loves you. It
Speaker 3: doesn't matter as long as your family and your friends
Speaker 3: love you. And so through the years, through the past
Speaker 3: ten years, I wouldn't say that I've gotten a thicker skin,
Speaker 3: but I understand human nature more, and I understand that
Speaker 3: these people are people that are probably very unhappy. Some
Speaker 3: of them don't have the education in these topics that
Speaker 3: they need. Some people are watching things like Fox News
Speaker 3: on a loop and they're fearful of their neighbors. They're
Speaker 3: going out and shooting their neighbors instead of talking to
Speaker 3: their neighbors and asking for a cup of sugar and
Speaker 3: some milk. You know. And I say that because I
Speaker 3: live in a great community. My neighbors will come over
Speaker 3: and ask me for things. My neighbors will say, you
Speaker 3: know your dog has been born, and you know it's
Speaker 3: nine o'clock at night, can you put the dog in
Speaker 3: and I'm not going to pull out a gun and
Speaker 3: shoot my neighbor because my dog has woken up their baby.
Speaker 3: So I have learned now that you know, part of
Speaker 3: human nature can be very dark, but doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: I have to be a part of that. I can
Speaker 3: give voice, I can spread love, and I I can
Speaker 3: be unaffected by that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really can press in. We can end this
Speaker 1: right now. That's how graceful you are talking about this.
Speaker 1: And I'm hoping that by the end of this podcast
Speaker 1: you have empowered.
Speaker 2: People to continue to speak up.
Speaker 1: Like you said, people will love you and people will
Speaker 1: hate you, but focus on the ones that love you.
Speaker 1: But yes, the social media team, I'm sure will have
Speaker 1: to keep an eye out for people that you might
Speaker 1: even have to report to the authorities.
Speaker 3: So they do, and I have had to do that.
Speaker 1: Yes, people take it, they take their little Twitter fingers
Speaker 1: a tinge too far.
Speaker 3: They take it too far. And you know it was Michelle.
Speaker 3: I was telling my a friend of mine who hadn't
Speaker 3: been to my home for about a year. I won't
Speaker 3: even give him the breath, but he also decided to
Speaker 3: kind of put my address out there to his viewers
Speaker 3: and within maybe an hour, I had people at my
Speaker 3: front door, you know, with signs. I mean they people
Speaker 3: have a lot of time on their hands. I mean
Speaker 3: I feel like they should be working and being with
Speaker 3: their families. But they had signs, and I never had gates.
Speaker 3: I live on a very big property with my dogs
Speaker 3: and my chickens and my beehives.
Speaker 2: We don't get to that because I'm like, we'll get
Speaker 2: to that. I have all of that, and I never
Speaker 2: had gates.
Speaker 3: And I know all of my neighbors, and my children
Speaker 3: grew up playing basketball with their neighbors and we have
Speaker 3: a fire pit and they would sit around the fire pit.
Speaker 3: But you know, long story short, Disney had to pay
Speaker 3: for me to have security. I have gates around my property.
Speaker 3: Now I have cameras all around my property. All because
Speaker 3: one hateful person decided that they didn't like what my
Speaker 3: opinion was and he had a lot of power. He
Speaker 3: doesn't have it anymore. But you know, it's a terrible
Speaker 3: thing when people are so irresponsible, and they're irresponsible on
Speaker 3: social media as well. Social media has a lot of good.
Speaker 3: You know, you and I sometimes will connect and DM
Speaker 3: and how you doing and this and that, and that's wonderful.
Speaker 3: You've had the Arab spring and women in Iran. Girls
Speaker 3: in Iran.
Speaker 2: Have reached out to me.
Speaker 3: Believe it or not, I've had women in Afghanistan that
Speaker 3: are in hiding reach out to me. They're such good
Speaker 3: that can happen. But there is a lot of garbage
Speaker 3: out there and people are taking advantage of it, and
Speaker 3: I refuse to be a part of that. So now
Speaker 3: my team does screen a lot and they'll say, listen,
Speaker 3: you've got an Afghan judge. This's reached out to you,
Speaker 3: which you like that message, And I'm like, yeah, send
Speaker 3: that message along because that's someone that I will make
Speaker 3: sure knows that I care. That's where I am now
Speaker 3: in my life, and I'm hoping that social media will
Speaker 3: get better. I'm hoping people will get better, I hope.
Speaker 1: So they're saying that things get worse before they get better.
Speaker 1: So I hope that we are in the turnaround of
Speaker 1: the worst.
Speaker 2: Me too, I really, really, really really do.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, thank you for sharing all that you've shared
Speaker 1: up to this point.
Speaker 2: I want to congratulate you.
Speaker 1: You just had a brand new book called Summer on
Speaker 1: Sack Harbor.
Speaker 2: Some of your first book called Summer on the Bluffs. Y'all.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you how busy Miss Sunny is. I'm exaggerating,
Speaker 1: probably lying a little bit, but it's been about two
Speaker 1: years I've been trying to get her on be because
Speaker 1: she sent me her very first book, Summer on the Bluffs.
Speaker 1: What attracted me to the book in the first place
Speaker 1: was the cover and my favorite, one of my favorite
Speaker 1: colors being that bright pink color. Where some are on
Speaker 1: the Bluffs is written, and so I just was just
Speaker 1: so excited at one of my favorite people sent me
Speaker 1: her book.
Speaker 2: I just want to know, how have you found time
Speaker 2: to find all these books? What is I write?
Speaker 3: And it's hard because you know, my son's in college now,
Speaker 3: but he was home when I was writing that book.
Speaker 3: He took a gap year. He was home. I wrote
Speaker 3: the book during the pandemic and my daughter was home,
Speaker 3: and my husband's home. Both of my parents were home.
Speaker 3: And what I decided to do was just it was
Speaker 3: so important to me to get this book out that
Speaker 3: I put myself on the schedule. I was like, I'm
Speaker 3: going to write from eleven pm when everybody finally goes
Speaker 3: to sleep, everybody except my daughter. Pull onma, she's a
Speaker 3: night ourl like I am, and I'm going to write
Speaker 3: definitely into one. But because I got to I get
Speaker 3: up around six. Yeah, I get up early, and if
Speaker 3: I'm doing Good Morning America, then I'm really getting up early.
Speaker 3: But I just make an appointment with myself, you know,
Speaker 3: to carve that time out. I put my fireplace on.
Speaker 3: When I'm writing in the winter or the damp spring,
Speaker 3: I get myself a nice cup of tea or a
Speaker 3: glass of red wine, and I just start writing, you know,
Speaker 3: And I write kind of traditionally. I write pen to paper,
Speaker 3: which my editor writes pen to paper too, so it
Speaker 3: works for us. And then I send it to where
Speaker 3: I'm collaborating with. I have these great ladies that I
Speaker 3: send written stuff to which I'm sure they're like, they
Speaker 3: hate it, and then they'll type it up for me
Speaker 3: and give me suggestions. And that's generally my process. Sometimes
Speaker 3: my process has included I write a couple chapters and
Speaker 3: I invite my family into the living room. I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I want y'all to read this. Have I missed it?
Speaker 3: Do you have questions? And that's been very helpful. So
Speaker 3: somewhere on the Bluffs, I did that a lot I
Speaker 3: didn't do it as much with Summer on Sad because
Speaker 3: I was a little more used to writing by then.
Speaker 3: But it's a I make priorities, like my kids are
Speaker 3: my priority. They're both athletes, and so I have to
Speaker 3: go to a lot of track meets and football games
Speaker 3: and swim meets. But when they're fed and in their rooms,
Speaker 3: they should be doing their homework or a sleep, then
Speaker 3: it's me time. And my joy is writing. You know,
Speaker 3: I've always written. I was a journalism major.
Speaker 1: So did you ever think that, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: author these books.
Speaker 3: I wanted to. I was a journaler when I was
Speaker 3: probably twelve or thirteen. When I had my kids, there
Speaker 3: weren't a lot of books centering black children. There are
Speaker 3: so many more now twenty years later, but with mine,
Speaker 3: there weren't. I make them up, you know. And my
Speaker 3: daughter was like, please write Princess Paloma's Adventures. And I'd write,
Speaker 3: you know, Princess Looma's Adventures. And so I knew I
Speaker 3: had stories. I knew I had stories in me. And
Speaker 3: the impetus for these books was I was traveling, and
Speaker 3: I keep on trying to remember what I was traveled for.
Speaker 3: It was it could have been Ferguson. I was on
Speaker 3: the ground in Ferguson during the unrest. Ben Crump invited
Speaker 3: me to come and just see what's going on. And
Speaker 3: I wanted something light to read, because when you start
Speaker 3: to read case files and you start to read about
Speaker 3: black trauma, it's like the last and I'm a preparer,
Speaker 3: so I will have been prepared by the time I
Speaker 3: got on the airplane. I want to read something else.
Speaker 3: I don't want to see a movie, a sad movie
Speaker 3: or anything like that. I want to be on the beach.
Speaker 3: I want Stella to get her groove back. I want
Speaker 3: to do something like that. And I went into the
Speaker 3: book store at the airport and I didn't see any
Speaker 3: black people on the cover. If I'm being honest, because
Speaker 3: that's to tell you know. You start looking through the
Speaker 3: books and you're like, is there any black or brown
Speaker 3: people on the cover? And if I find one, and
Speaker 3: then I start flipping through it, I didn't see anything,
Speaker 3: and I was like, how is this possible? A big
Speaker 3: old bookshop with the most popular books and all these
Speaker 3: black people traveling, there's no black books. And I at
Speaker 3: that moment just started thinking, well, maybe I'll write a
Speaker 3: beach read, but not just any beach read. A beach
Speaker 3: read centering black and brown people and our relationships and
Speaker 3: our motherhood and sisterhood and our men and love and
Speaker 3: infidelity and sex and just everything that we go through
Speaker 3: in life. And I put it together in a proposal.
Speaker 3: I sent it to my agent and he was like,
Speaker 3: you know, you got some here, right, And I said really,
Speaker 3: I was like, you think so because I want to
Speaker 3: read it. Tony Morrison said, if there's a book you
Speaker 3: want to read and you can't find it, then you
Speaker 3: write it. So do you think someone would buy this?
Speaker 3: And sure enough we had a book deal, a three
Speaker 3: book deal. I thought it was just going to be
Speaker 3: one book within a week. It was about a week.
Speaker 3: HarperCollins came back said, this is not a one off.
Speaker 3: This is a trilogy set in these three different places,
Speaker 3: places where black people were allowed to own black beach
Speaker 3: front you know, communities, and unfortunately, in the United States
Speaker 3: at a certain time, there's only three, not including Bruce's
Speaker 3: Beach of course, and not including Chicken Beach in Atlantic City.
Speaker 3: And I just I just started writing. I just started
Speaker 3: writing because I've summer on Sag Harbor for twenty years.
Speaker 2: We're there.
Speaker 3: My friend Erica has a house in Highland Beach. Her family,
Speaker 3: you know, has had generational wealth for a long time.
Speaker 3: I go visit her.
Speaker 2: We're there.
Speaker 1: This is real, Like, it's real. I've seen you post
Speaker 1: about it, you know what I mean. And those of
Speaker 1: y'all that are listening. I love when the conversations flow
Speaker 1: to where like I had this question about lack of
Speaker 1: diversity for Beach reads, and here we are talking about
Speaker 1: how and what made you write Summer on the Bluffs
Speaker 1: and Summer on Sack Harbor.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm like, what an amazing opportunity in the book.
Speaker 1: You know that you have incorporated so many important messages
Speaker 1: with Guard University and even you spotlight the deep history
Speaker 1: of like we said, black communities that have frequented.
Speaker 2: Beach towns like Harbor.
Speaker 1: So did you know that this rich history existed before
Speaker 1: you started the process?
Speaker 2: I did?
Speaker 3: I did. I read Our Kind of People by Larry
Speaker 3: Graham Lawrence Graham. No one's if you haven't read it,
Speaker 3: you got to read this book. Yeah, I'm not saying
Speaker 3: it just because he was my friend. He passed away
Speaker 3: just a few years ago, way too young, but he
Speaker 3: was this brilliant man who he wrote another book called
Speaker 3: The Senator and the Socialite about the first black Senator.
Speaker 3: He wrote an expos about the Greenwich country Club. He
Speaker 3: went to Princeton and I believe Yale no Harvard Law School,
Speaker 3: and basically pretended to be a busboy at the Greenwich
Speaker 3: Greenwich Country Club and sort of got the inside scoop
Speaker 3: of race relations. And so he did all this investigative
Speaker 3: journalism and then finally wrote Our Kind of People, which
Speaker 3: discussed black excellence from the late eighteen hundreds, not like
Speaker 3: black trauma and not about reconstruction, where I'm not saying
Speaker 3: there's not a place for that, because our history is
Speaker 3: being a race. So we need to read about slavery,
Speaker 3: we need to read cast, we need to read the
Speaker 3: sixteen nineteen project. But what Larry did was he gave
Speaker 3: us the Bible of Black excellence. And he wrote about
Speaker 3: the divine nine. You know, I'm an Aka. He wrote
Speaker 3: about Jack and Jill, he wrote about the links. And
Speaker 3: it was incredible to me that there were these beachfront
Speaker 3: properties that people owned in the late eighteen hundreds. In
Speaker 3: Martha's Vineyard in Highland Beach, Frederick Douglass owned a home there.
Speaker 3: His descendants still own homes there and they would summer
Speaker 3: on the beach, and I didn't. Once I read that,
Speaker 3: I was like, well, I'm going to go visit. And
Speaker 3: that's how I started going into to starting to visit
Speaker 3: these places and out that my friends had homes there.
Speaker 3: They were like, little girl, I've had my family has
Speaker 3: had our home since you know, nineteen twenty five. And
Speaker 3: I just I didn't know. Growing up poor, that wasn't
Speaker 3: my world. But what was so incredible was people would say, well,
Speaker 3: welcome home.
Speaker 1: There are times I'd go to the Hamptons, you know,
Speaker 1: in the summer, like you we had spots up in here.
Speaker 3: You we do, and we What was interesting was what
Speaker 3: I love about sack Harbor in particular, because I too,
Speaker 3: used to go to the Hampton's. You know, I live
Speaker 3: in New York and I would go to East Hampton
Speaker 3: and Bridge Hampton and we were the only ones there
Speaker 3: and I felt fine, but I was like, why are
Speaker 3: there more black people here? It's so beautiful. And then
Speaker 3: Barbara Smith of the b Smith restaurant fame, she had
Speaker 3: a house on Haven's Beach in sag Harbor, which is
Speaker 3: this historically black beach community, and she was like, oh,
Speaker 3: you should, you should walk down to Haven's Beach. And
Speaker 3: I was sort of like, what is Haven's Beach? And
Speaker 3: as I walked down, I sa see this elderly gentleman
Speaker 3: just picking up seashells and picking up any kind of
Speaker 3: trash he saw. And he started speaking to me. And
Speaker 3: at the time I was a little bit well known,
Speaker 3: and he said, well, welcome home. I know you'll stay right.
Speaker 3: And it was so incredible that everybody on the beach
Speaker 3: twenty years ago was African American, the whole beach. And now,
Speaker 3: if I'm being honest, it's about seventy thirty sixty four
Speaker 3: black ownership because gentrification is happening now. Before it was
Speaker 3: undesirable to live on the bay. But then I think
Speaker 3: people realized, well, when you live on the ocean, you
Speaker 3: got to be a little more careful with your children.
Speaker 3: You always have to be careful with your children on water,
Speaker 3: but the bay you can walk out two hundred yards
Speaker 3: and still at your waist. And so people started realizing, oh,
Speaker 3: this is actually kind of nice and in a predatory
Speaker 3: manner buying black homes. So I started writing to it,
Speaker 3: and you know, I was nervous because they like to
Speaker 3: keep it private for a reason. But I did get
Speaker 3: the permission of the elders because I thought that was
Speaker 3: very important. And just this year it was designated by
Speaker 3: the Federal Registry as a historically black beach community, and
Speaker 3: I'm very proud of that. I'm proud of the fact
Speaker 3: that I'm part of the Sag Harbor Homeowners Association and
Speaker 3: everyone's worked really hard at maintaining the culture, the color,
Speaker 3: the feel of the community and it's still there for
Speaker 3: people to people to go visit.
Speaker 1: So I want to tell everybody she has some are
Speaker 1: on the Bluffs part of her trilogy, and now some
Speaker 1: are on Sech Harbor.
Speaker 2: Listen, I don't live on the East Coast in the
Speaker 2: New York area.
Speaker 1: No one of people who are listening to my podcasts
Speaker 1: who live in on the East Coast, y'all have to
Speaker 1: go visit. I'm going visit me that she telling you about.
Speaker 1: I just got a couple more questions than I let
Speaker 1: you go. But your main character, Olivia Jones, yes, blazing
Speaker 1: the paths in finance. Was that an intentional move or
Speaker 1: something like? Is there's somebody you know?
Speaker 2: Is it about you? It's about your girlfriend like it.
Speaker 3: Well, Olivia Jones really was based on my dear friend Kathy.
Speaker 3: She's originally from Haiti. She's probably one of the most
Speaker 3: beautiful women I had ever seen when when we met
Speaker 3: in college, very dark skinned, kind of looks like Naomi Campbell.
Speaker 3: I mean, she was just so stunning and we became
Speaker 3: fast friends. And she said to me one day, do
Speaker 3: you know whenever we go out, all the men look
Speaker 3: at you. And I was sort of like, that's not true,
Speaker 3: and she said, yeah, they look at you because you're
Speaker 3: the light skinned one. And it struck a chord with
Speaker 3: me because, if I'm being honest, it wasn't something that
Speaker 3: I thought about because I had friends of all different
Speaker 3: complexions and I just I found them all beautiful and
Speaker 3: fun and interesting. It just wasn't something that I thought about.
Speaker 3: And I asked her to talk to me about that,
Speaker 3: and she was saying that, you know, throughout her life,
Speaker 3: it was a struggle that she was always, you know,
Speaker 3: the dark skinned black girl, and she was no matter
Speaker 3: how hard she tried, you know, she was put in
Speaker 3: this little box and that there is a thing called
Speaker 3: light skin privilege. And I just I just took it
Speaker 3: in and I thought, well, I'm going to write to
Speaker 3: that because it's a shame that the vestiges of slavery
Speaker 3: have seeped into our community to the point that people
Speaker 3: that are lighter skin get treated better, you know, like
Speaker 3: that should not be happening. And so I wrote Olivia's character.
Speaker 3: My friend Kathy helped me write some of it. She's like, Nope,
Speaker 3: that's not how Olivia would feel. She would feel this way,
Speaker 3: and so I took her lived experience. I did the
Speaker 3: best that I could with it. And then all my readers,
Speaker 3: because I did a lot of virtual book clubs during
Speaker 3: the pandemic, I couldn't do a traditional book tour, they
Speaker 3: start telling me why did Olivia get something? I said, well,
Speaker 3: Olivia dick it a lot. Did you not see how
Speaker 3: much she got? Well, she got less than the other sisters,
Speaker 3: and that's not fair and blah blah blah. And people
Speaker 3: were really in their feelings about it, and I was
Speaker 3: just like, oh no, that's not what I meant. And
Speaker 3: a lot of women were saying like, thank you for
Speaker 3: tackling the colorism issue. But Olivia seems to be the
Speaker 3: most unhappy. She seems to be the angriest and I
Speaker 3: was like, you know, I'm going to write to Olivia,
Speaker 3: and that's where somewhere on Sag came up. I was
Speaker 3: only going to write about Sag Harbor and maybe have
Speaker 3: some of the same characters, not all of them, but
Speaker 3: the ones that people really responded to. But and I realized, wow,
Speaker 3: I've got a lot more work to do with Olivia's journey.
Speaker 3: So now this book is really about Olivia finding what
Speaker 3: she wants, what she needs, what she deserves. More importantly,
Speaker 3: acknowledging her power, acknowledging her value because she's whip smart
Speaker 3: and she's gorgeous and doesn't know it. And she's got
Speaker 3: her Beyonce Anderson, who is not who you think he
Speaker 3: is actually oh, he loves her. She finds a sexy
Speaker 3: new neighbor named Garrett, who she's like, whoo, he looks
Speaker 3: like me and he is hot. And then ultimately, you know,
Speaker 3: the notion of mental health and therapy and how do
Speaker 3: you discover who you really are and what you really
Speaker 3: desire and what you really want and what you deserve.
Speaker 3: That was very important to me, and so I have
Speaker 3: her seeing a therapist because it's so stigmatized in our community.
Speaker 1: I love it well, so I heard that you are
Speaker 1: turning some Are on the Bluffs into a scripted project.
Speaker 2: So I'm putting my hat in the box to play
Speaker 2: a little bit.
Speaker 3: I like that. I hope everybody's listening to this because
Speaker 3: now I have it on tape.
Speaker 1: I'm putting my hat in the box, so in case
Speaker 1: I didn't know. There are so many things that Sonny
Speaker 1: is doing also behind the scenes. You're a founder of
Speaker 1: your own production company, and like I said, you're developing
Speaker 1: your first book into a scripted project.
Speaker 2: And I love that.
Speaker 1: One of the producers of my podcast, they work in films,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that she mentioned, she says,
Speaker 1: are you finding that there is more awareness of the
Speaker 1: terms poverty, porn and trauma, porn and entertainment when it
Speaker 1: comes to.
Speaker 3: And I hate that, you know. I mean, I love
Speaker 3: watching black centered series and films, but then I watch
Speaker 3: it and I'm like, it leaves me feeling so heavy.
Speaker 3: And because I know our rich history. My son actually
Speaker 3: has a podcast called Untextbook, which teaches you what wasn't
Speaker 3: in your textbook, and so he's taught me things about
Speaker 3: what wasn't in my textbook, and I'm like, I know,
Speaker 3: there's all this black excellent and black boy joy and
Speaker 3: all of these things, and so I basically wrote to
Speaker 3: that kind of joyfulness. I thought that was important. And
Speaker 3: I have a first look deal with Disney. So Disney
Speaker 3: backed my corporation, which I was in my production company.
Speaker 3: I'm kind of still shocked when I say that that
Speaker 3: I would have such a wonderful partner in Disney. And
Speaker 3: I gave the book to Octavia Spencer. Really, I just
Speaker 3: figured she would put some on Instagram for me.
Speaker 2: I don't know what I wanted.
Speaker 3: And Octavia called me and she said, this is going
Speaker 3: to be made into a sea or a film because
Speaker 3: we need it because people are tired of black trauma,
Speaker 3: and I should be your production partner. And I was like, Octavia,
Speaker 3: are you serious right now? Like I'm a first time author,
Speaker 3: you know, I wrote a memoir and now this and your.
Speaker 2: Tried ability track record.
Speaker 3: I was like, I don't have a track record. And
Speaker 3: she said, not only will I partner with you, I
Speaker 3: will be I will star in it. I was like, well,
Speaker 3: we're done. Now, let's take it out to the market.
Speaker 3: And so we took it out to market. It got bought.
Speaker 3: I can't tell you where it's streaming because of the
Speaker 3: writer's strike and pens are down right now, and so
Speaker 3: I can't tell you where it's going to be. But
Speaker 3: we have a buyer, and we have a showrunner. Her
Speaker 3: name is Elizabeth Hunters. If you saw Jumping the Broom,
Speaker 3: you've seen her work, you've seen The Five Temptations, you've
Speaker 3: seen her work. And I assembled that and Octavier is
Speaker 3: going to play Olivia's mom, Sydney Cindy, and I'm in
Speaker 3: this incredible space. It this kid from the South Bronx
Speaker 3: would have never imagined. It's it's like a I didn't
Speaker 3: dream this big. You know. I don't know if you've
Speaker 3: ever felt like that, Michelle, because you're so talented and
Speaker 3: you're such a great singer and you were with like,
Speaker 3: you know, stopping the biggest, the biggest group of all time.
Speaker 2: But I did not dream like that. I was just like, let.
Speaker 3: Me just like write my book.
Speaker 2: Even then, people might think that that's all you are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're more than the attorney. You're more than this amazing, beautiful,
Speaker 1: smart woman on our TVs every single morning. Right, And
Speaker 1: so speaking of when I was watching y'all this morning,
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm about to interview her in a
Speaker 1: couple hours. Pool is this now before we wrap up
Speaker 1: this amazing conversation, Sonny, well for again, back to summer
Speaker 1: on the bluffs, back to someone on South Barbar.
Speaker 2: I'm looking for my agent to send me my script
Speaker 2: in sides for the es. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love when I I love when I at least
Speaker 1: get the audition, because it's good to be thought of
Speaker 1: by a casting director.
Speaker 2: That's like, well you you're now, You're now on tape,
Speaker 2: so I'm gonna hold you to that. I'm excited. I'm excited.
Speaker 2: You mentioned something earlier about all the.
Speaker 1: Dogs, your farm, your your chickens, and your honey you have.
Speaker 1: I like, what is of course you and Beyonce both
Speaker 1: have like your farms, your honey farms.
Speaker 2: Oh she has a honey farm. I didn't know that. Yes,
Speaker 2: so I love it.
Speaker 1: I get honey from the farm, and I'm like, honey,
Speaker 1: that's the name of your honey, Sonny, honey.
Speaker 3: That is the name of my honey. It's called Sonny's honey.
Speaker 3: I'm glad to tell you something. I actually, you know,
Speaker 3: I read a book. I'm a nerd. I read about
Speaker 3: five books at the same time, and I read a
Speaker 3: book by this guy, Noah Wilson Rich and he's the
Speaker 3: only man in the country, maybe the world, but I
Speaker 3: know in this in the United States. Was a PhD
Speaker 3: in b immunology. And I started reading and he works
Speaker 3: with NASA, he works with Harvard. He's got beehives on
Speaker 3: the on the rooftops at Harvard. And I was reading
Speaker 3: this book and it was basically about the fact that
Speaker 3: if the bees die, we die, like we need our food,
Speaker 3: you know, pollinated and all do. And yeah, and these
Speaker 3: bees were like dying from these mites and they were
Speaker 3: trying to figure out how to do it. And he
Speaker 3: came up with something where he put the bees on
Speaker 3: space space shuttles and send them up into space and
Speaker 3: then the mites would die. And so they're trying to
Speaker 3: figure all of that out. And I basically just reached
Speaker 3: out to him. I was like, I'm so fascinated by this.
Speaker 3: You know, what can I do to help? And he said,
Speaker 3: you could have beehives. Now, I was a little afraid
Speaker 3: of bees, if I'm being honest, I was like, I've
Speaker 3: never been stung by a bee. I'm not really feeling
Speaker 3: the whole have the beehive situation and he was like,
Speaker 3: if you want to start with, I'll give you a beekeeper.
Speaker 3: And so when I started, I had a beekeeper. But
Speaker 3: I got so involved in it. I started smoking the
Speaker 3: bees and getting my honey, and my kids got involved,
Speaker 3: and my daughter Paloma, who's an artist, she makes candles
Speaker 3: out of the bees wax. And it just been stung.
Speaker 3: Though I've never been stung.
Speaker 1: I know you said you were never stung, but I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: after smoking the bees and doing it ever whatever, accidentally like.
Speaker 3: Never, they've never stung me. Because really, what a lot
Speaker 3: of people don't know is if they sting you once
Speaker 3: they die, it's so it's self preservation. They really will
Speaker 3: not sting you unless they feel like you're attacking the
Speaker 3: hive where you're attacking their queen, so they don't sting.
Speaker 3: But then the other day my husband was very far
Speaker 3: from the hive. He was on the driveway and a
Speaker 3: bee went right up his nose and stung him.
Speaker 2: I ain't even want the hives.
Speaker 3: I felt so bad.
Speaker 2: Oh, it just flew. I'm itching. It was so terrible.
Speaker 2: Probably thought his nose was the high I think he was.
Speaker 3: He's the only person and we've had him for years
Speaker 3: that has been stung by I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: We gotta go. How'd you get the bee and the
Speaker 2: fall out of his nose?
Speaker 3: Yes, he was like, oh, and he was kind of
Speaker 3: running around a little little bit and he's gonna be
Speaker 3: so mad.
Speaker 2: I told this story.
Speaker 3: He was running around and we were wondering what happened
Speaker 3: to and he hit hit his nose and he killed
Speaker 3: the bee.
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry for him. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3: And he came inside. He had a big piece of ice. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the ice bag on his nose. I was like, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: He was like, I told you about those bees. It's
Speaker 3: been years. I have never been stung by a bee,
Speaker 3: nor have my children.
Speaker 2: And guess what it's We're gonna keep it that way, because.
Speaker 1: You know, because then I'll be looking at my Instagram
Speaker 1: and I'll be looking on TV like Sonny Howsin's is
Speaker 1: out this morning. Guys, we don't even want to speak that.
Speaker 1: We don't want that to happen. What we do want
Speaker 1: to happen is the continued success of your amazing.
Speaker 2: Books, y'all. Summer on Sack Harbor it is out now.
Speaker 1: We're excited to see the scripted projects and We're just
Speaker 1: so excited about more that you have coming.
Speaker 3: Thank you for Jue, thank you, thank you for having
Speaker 3: me my friend.
Speaker 1: Checking In with Michelle Williams is a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and The Black Effect. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
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