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 plane. She is a three
Speaker 1: time Emmy Award winning co host of ABC's The View,
Speaker 1: New York Times bestselling author.
Speaker 2: I fell in love with her first of all because
Speaker 2: she is.
Speaker 1: An attorney, a legal analyst, as well as a sought
Speaker 1: after speaker.
Speaker 2: Y'all already know. Y'all know who it is. Please welcome
Speaker 2: Sonny Austin.
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 have watched you for of course, but I
Speaker 3: remember the first time we met. We were you were
Speaker 3: walking out of a Japanese restaurant. I was walking into
Speaker 3: a Japanese restaurant and you were like Sonny Housen and
Speaker 3: I was like, I know, Michelle Williams does not know
Speaker 3: who I am. So it was great and it's been
Speaker 3: great to keep in touch since then.
Speaker 2: Yes, ma'am, it has been great. It has just been awesome.
Speaker 1: Over the years, because you know, I am a bootleg attorney.
Speaker 1: My college was criminal justice, so I would stay tuned
Speaker 1: and peeled into cases that made like mainstream television. And
Speaker 1: what inspired me so much was to see women of
Speaker 1: color bringing it as it related to the legal parts
Speaker 1: of all these cases that were going on. I mean,
Speaker 1: killing it sure confident. There are times where you had
Speaker 1: to set people in their place, or there are times
Speaker 1: you had to.
Speaker 2: Be like, no, the person did it. How do y'all
Speaker 2: not see it? How do they not see it? So
Speaker 2: I'm just appreciative of you. I'm appreciative you've been what
Speaker 2: ten seasons or more on the View?
Speaker 3: You know. I was just reminded of that my someone
Speaker 3: on the View I had said during an interview six
Speaker 3: years and she was like, no, you started guest hosting
Speaker 3: with us in twenty twelve, and I was like what.
Speaker 3: She was like, yep, Barbara got you into the rotation
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve, and so I was a guest co
Speaker 3: host for a lot, like half the shows in a year,
Speaker 3: and then I've been on the show formally as a
Speaker 3: full time co host since for seven years. It went by.
Speaker 2: Really 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 had
Speaker 3: contract and CNN at the time was like, no, you
Speaker 3: can't get out of your contract, which in a way
Speaker 3: was a good thing for me because I was reporting
Speaker 3: out in the field. I was doing the things that
Speaker 3: you you were just talking about. You know, I was
Speaker 3: 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. Got it.
Speaker 2: 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 gonna have to take a mental health day
Speaker 3: off today because I need to know. I live on
Speaker 3: kind of a modified farm, so I'm like, I need
Speaker 3: to go out with my chickens, I need to tend
Speaker 3: to my beehives. I need to be with my two
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty pound New Finland dogs. I need to
Speaker 3: just spend some time for me. And that's been extremely helpful.
Speaker 3: But it took me a minute to understand what self
Speaker 3: care meant and how if I am not good and
Speaker 3: centered mentally, that I am not good and centered for
Speaker 3: anybody else. And it's helped me on the show as well.
Speaker 3: For sure, it's helped me a lot well.
Speaker 2: I think also people feel like you should.
Speaker 1: Have yourself already emotionally put together before you get out
Speaker 1: on that stage. Everyone, and just so you know, respectfully,
Speaker 1: I don't want to just have this whole interview be
Speaker 1: about your first morning job right on the view. But
Speaker 1: I can imagine, like I because I follow the View
Speaker 1: on social media, I follow you, I follow you on
Speaker 1: social media. Right, people ATK cruel to me, huh no,
Speaker 1: that's why they have her on the show for her
Speaker 1: expert and being able to handleize things. But as a human,
Speaker 1: as a woman, we want to know how are people
Speaker 1: really truly feeling? And my hat goes off to you
Speaker 1: and every every woman on that platform who has to
Speaker 1: take a chance in sharing their personal views on stuff,
Speaker 1: and like, I know they mean this, Well, this is real.
Speaker 1: 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 terrorism,
Speaker 3: and that the black community is under attack. And then
Speaker 3: I get someone like Megan Kelly who gets on her
Speaker 3: podcast that's watched by hundreds of thousands of people, I think,
Speaker 3: and puts pictures of my home on her podcast and
Speaker 3: and starts talking about my children and really puts me
Speaker 3: in danger for what I'm saying. Factually, you know, I
Speaker 3: am not saying that I haven't made it. I'm not
Speaker 3: saying that my kid doesn't go to Harvard. I'm not
Speaker 3: saying that my children aren't in private schools. But but
Speaker 3: I'm the exception and not the rule. Why should I
Speaker 3: be the anomaly? And until my community is the rule
Speaker 3: and my success is my community's success and not the exception,
Speaker 3: then I'm going to keep on speaking up and speaking out.
Speaker 3: And it is hurtful when people come on, you know,
Speaker 3: go on social media and think they can call me
Speaker 3: a race bader or a racist or and that those
Speaker 3: are the nice things.
Speaker 2: What does everything have to be about race?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: How COO does everything?
Speaker 3: I'm giving you the statistic like, Unfortunately in this country,
Speaker 3: the cruel legacy of slavery and racism has bled into everything,
Speaker 3: every institution that we have, And when I talk about
Speaker 3: it based in fact, I get attacked. And I now, though,
Speaker 3: if I'm being honest, I have a social media team.
Speaker 3: I do not read the comments. Woopy Goldberg told me
Speaker 3: to do that for my health. She said, if you
Speaker 3: read the comments, you may start filtering yourself, and they're
Speaker 3: painful and they're hurtful because I happen to be much
Speaker 3: more of an introverted person than people think I am.
Speaker 3: So I was taking things seriously and Joy Behart was like,
Speaker 3: don't worry about it. You open up your mouth. Fifty
Speaker 3: percent of the country hates you, fifty percent of the
Speaker 3: country loves you. It doesn't matter as long as your
Speaker 3: family and your friends love you. And so through the years,
Speaker 3: through the past ten years, I wouldn't say that I've
Speaker 3: gotten a thicker skin, but I understand human nature more,
Speaker 3: and I understand that these people are people that are
Speaker 3: probably very unhappy. Some of them don't have the education
Speaker 3: in these topics that they need. Some people are watching
Speaker 3: things like Fox News on a loop and they're fearful
Speaker 3: of their neighbors. They're going out and shooting their neighbors
Speaker 3: instead of talking to their neighbors and asking for a
Speaker 3: cup of sugar and some milk. You know. And I
Speaker 3: say that because I live in a great community. My
Speaker 3: neighbors will come over and ask me for things. My
Speaker 3: neighbors will say, you know your dog has been born,
Speaker 3: and you know it's nine o'clock at night, can you
Speaker 3: put the dog in and I'm not going to pull
Speaker 3: out a gun and shoot my neighbor because my dog
Speaker 3: has woken up their baby. So I have learned now
Speaker 3: that you know, part of human nature can be very dark,
Speaker 3: but doesn't mean that I have to be a part
Speaker 3: of that. I can give voice, I can spread love,
Speaker 3: and I I can 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 a friend of mine who hadn't been
Speaker 3: to my home for about a year. I won't even
Speaker 3: give him the breath, but he also decided to kind
Speaker 3: of put my address out there to his viewers and
Speaker 3: within maybe an hour. I had people at my front door,
Speaker 3: you know, with signs. I mean they people have a
Speaker 3: lot of time on their hands. I mean I feel
Speaker 3: like they should be working and being with their families.
Speaker 3: But they had signs, and I never had gates. I
Speaker 3: live on a very big property with my dogs and
Speaker 3: my chickens and my beehives.
Speaker 2: We don't get to that because I'm like, we'll get
Speaker 2: to that.
Speaker 3: I have all of that, and I never 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 have reached out to me. Believe it or not,
Speaker 3: I've had women in Afghanistan that are in hiding reach
Speaker 3: out to me. They're such good that can happen. But
Speaker 3: there is a lot of garbage out there and people
Speaker 3: are taking advantage of it, and I refuse to be
Speaker 3: a part of that. So now my team does screen
Speaker 3: a lot and they'll say, listen, you've got an Afghan
Speaker 3: judge that's reached out to you, which you like that message,
Speaker 3: And I'm like, yeah, send that message along because that's
Speaker 3: someone that I will make sure knows that I care.
Speaker 3: That's where I am now in my life, and I'm
Speaker 3: hoping that social media will get better. I'm hoping people
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Me her book. I just want to know, how have
Speaker 2: you found time to write all these books? What is
Speaker 2: 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 palomas 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 travel
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 3: we're there. My friend Erica has a house in Highland Beach.
Speaker 3: Her family, you know, has had generational wealth for a
Speaker 3: long time. I go visit her. We're there. This is real,
Speaker 3: Like it's real.
Speaker 2: I've seen you post about it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And those of y'all that are listening.
Speaker 1: I love when the conversations flow to where like I
Speaker 1: had this question about lack of diversity for Beach reads,
Speaker 1: and here we are talking about how and what made
Speaker 1: you write Summer on the Bluffs 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: regard university and even you spotlight the deep history of
Speaker 1: 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 3: I did? I did. I read Our Kind of People
Speaker 3: by Larry Graham Lawrence Graham, No one's if you haven't
Speaker 3: read it, you got to read this book. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: not saying it just because he was my friend. He
Speaker 3: passed away just a few years ago, way too young,
Speaker 3: but he was this brilliant man who he wrote another
Speaker 3: book called The Senator and the Socialite about the first
Speaker 3: black Senator. He wrote an expos about the Greenwich country Club.
Speaker 3: He went to Princeton and I believe Yale no Harvard
Speaker 3: Law School and basically pretended to be a busboy at
Speaker 3: the Greenwich Greenwich Country Club and sort of got the
Speaker 3: inside scoop of race relations. So he did all this
Speaker 3: investigative journalism and then finally wrote Our Kind of People,
Speaker 3: which discussed black excellence from the late eighteen hundreds, not
Speaker 3: like black trauma and not about reconstruction, where I'm not
Speaker 3: saying there's not a place for that, because our history
Speaker 3: is 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 that my friends had homes there. They
Speaker 3: were like, little girl, I've had my family has had
Speaker 3: our home since you know, nineteen twenty five, and I
Speaker 3: just I didn't know. Growing up poor, that wasn't my world.
Speaker 3: 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 Sack 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 said this elderly gentleman just
Speaker 3: picking up seashells and picking up any kind of trash
Speaker 3: he saw. And he started speaking to me. And at
Speaker 3: the time I was a little bit well known, and
Speaker 3: 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 in on the East.
Speaker 2: Coast, y'all have to go visit. I'm going visit me
Speaker 2: that she'd telling you about. I just got a couple
Speaker 2: more questions than I let you go.
Speaker 1: But your main character, Olivia Jones, yes, blazing the paths
Speaker 1: in finance? Was that an intentional move or something like?
Speaker 1: Is there's somebody you know?
Speaker 2: Is it about you? It's about your girlfriend?
Speaker 3: Like it? Well, Olivia Jones really was based on my
Speaker 3: dear friend Kathy. She's originally from Haiti. She's probably one
Speaker 3: of the most beautiful women I had ever seen when
Speaker 3: when we met in college, very dark skinned, kind of
Speaker 3: looks like Naomi Campbell. I mean, she was just so
Speaker 3: stunning and we became fast friends. And she said to
Speaker 3: me one day, do you know whenever we go out,
Speaker 3: all the men look at you. And I was sort
Speaker 3: of like, that's not true, and she said, yeah, they
Speaker 3: look at you because you're the light skinned one. And
Speaker 3: it really struck a chord with me, because, if I'm
Speaker 3: being honest, it wasn't something that I thought about. Because
Speaker 3: I had friends of all different complexions and I just
Speaker 3: I found them all beautiful and fun and interesting. It
Speaker 3: just wasn't something that I thought about. And I asked
Speaker 3: her to talk to me about that, and she was
Speaker 3: saying that, you know, throughout her life, it was a
Speaker 3: struggle that she was always, you know, the dark skinned
Speaker 3: black girl, and she was no matter how hard she tried,
Speaker 3: you know, she was put in this little box and
Speaker 3: that there is a thing called light skin privilege. And
Speaker 3: I just I just took it in and I thought, well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to write to that because it's a shame
Speaker 3: that the vestiges of slavery have seeped into our community
Speaker 3: to the point that people that are lighter skin get
Speaker 3: treated better, you know, like that should not be happening.
Speaker 3: And so I wrote Olivia's character. My friend Kathy helped
Speaker 3: me write some of it. She's like, Nope, that's not
Speaker 3: how Olivia would feel. She would feel this way, and
Speaker 3: so I took her lived experience. I did the best
Speaker 3: 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 then 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. I
Speaker 3: don't know what I wanted. And Octavia called me and
Speaker 3: she said, this is going to be made into a
Speaker 3: series or a film because we need it because people
Speaker 3: are tired of black trauma, and I should be your
Speaker 3: production partner. And I was like, Octavia, are you serious
Speaker 3: right now? Like I'm a first time author, you know,
Speaker 3: I wrote a memoir and now this, and.
Speaker 2: You're 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. This kid from the South Bronx would
Speaker 3: have never imagined. It's it's like a I didn't dream
Speaker 3: this big, you know. I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 3: felt like that, Michelle, because you're so talented and you're
Speaker 3: such a great singer and you were with like, you know,
Speaker 3: stopping the biggest, the biggest group of all time. But
Speaker 3: I did not dream like that. I was just like,
Speaker 3: let me just like write my book.
Speaker 1: Even then, people might think that that's all you are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: 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, sunny well for again. Back to summer
Speaker 1: on the bluffs, back to someone on Sauth Barbar. I'm
Speaker 1: looking for my agent to send me my script.
Speaker 2: In sides for the es.
Speaker 3: 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 that's like, well you you're now.
Speaker 3: You're now on tape, so I'm gonna hold you to that.
Speaker 2: I'm excited. I'm excited.
Speaker 1: You mentioned something earlier about all the dogs, your farm,
Speaker 1: your your.
Speaker 2: Chicken, 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 3: Oh she has a honey farm. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I love it.
Speaker 1: Get honey from the farm, and I'm like, honey, that's
Speaker 1: 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 if you want to start with, I'll give you
Speaker 3: a beekeeper. And so when I started, I had a beekeeper,
Speaker 3: but I got so involved in it. I started smoking
Speaker 3: the 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
Speaker 1: like never.
Speaker 3: They've never stung me. Because really, what a lot of
Speaker 3: people don't know is if they sting you once they die,
Speaker 3: it's so it's self preservation. They really will not sting
Speaker 3: you unless they feel like you're attacking the hive where
Speaker 3: you're attacking their queen, so they don't sting. But then
Speaker 3: the other day my husband was very far from the hive.
Speaker 3: He was on the driveway and a bee went right
Speaker 3: up his nose and stung him. I ain't even want
Speaker 3: the hives. I felt so bad.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, it just flew. I'm itching.
Speaker 3: It was so terrible.
Speaker 2: Probably thought his nose was the.
Speaker 3: High I think he was. He's the only person and
Speaker 3: we've had him for years that has been stung by.
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry. We gonna go how'd you get the
Speaker 2: bee and the 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. I told this story. He was running around
Speaker 3: and we were wondering what happened to and he hit
Speaker 3: hit his nose and he killed 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 1: 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 instagramer,
Speaker 1: I'll be looking on TV like Sonny Howsin's is out
Speaker 1: 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 books, y'all.
Speaker 2: 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 thank you, thank you for having me
Speaker 3: 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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