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Speaker 1: you glad? Yeah? Ronald timmis here. Yeah, he's gonna get mad.
Speaker 1: Upremo Road Call, Prima Supremo Road. My name is Spante, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's who I am. Yeah, letting you know. I too
Speaker 1: have a cousin named Pama.
Speaker 4: Supremo Road Come Supremo Supremo roll Call.
Speaker 1: My name is Sugar.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And this is my phone.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And if you're still living single, yeah, I live alone.
Speaker 4: Supremo Rod Suprema Sou Soun Supremo Road.
Speaker 1: I'm on paid bill. Yeah, now take it easy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Might have drank, Yeah, a few martinis.
Speaker 1: Suprema So you turn Erica Sprea Road.
Speaker 8: Yeah. And let's talk style Yeah. TV couples. Yeah, it's
Speaker 8: Max and Kyle.
Speaker 4: Supremo Roll Suprema your Supremo role.
Speaker 2: My name is Erica. Yeah, I'm the coolest. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: don't know what I'm doing. Yeah, I don't hope, I
Speaker 2: don't hope.
Speaker 4: To Supremo Rome Suprema So Supremo Road Up, Preema Shu
Speaker 4: sun Sel Primo Road call Prima sut sun self free road.
Speaker 1: So much I had to do that. We gotta have
Speaker 1: to dance in silhouette like.
Speaker 2: Funky Fresh. I feel very welcome.
Speaker 1: Thank you up from fact in doing the LL tour.
Speaker 9: Whenever Latifa went on the road with us, the biggest
Speaker 9: like bigger than any LL song, bigger than any song
Speaker 9: than when we did live in single.
Speaker 1: It was like doing smells like teen Spirit mind.
Speaker 9: I believe it like Dana thought I was lying to
Speaker 9: her when I said, Yo, we need to do that twice,
Speaker 9: like literally as soon as it came on, yeah, check
Speaker 9: and check check, whole crowd started all the way time.
Speaker 8: I'm glad I got my girls.
Speaker 2: I love it well that.
Speaker 9: This is a new version of Quest Love Supreme, which
Speaker 9: we are still in the room together, but we're doing
Speaker 9: uh a virtual episode.
Speaker 1: We're live in sort of live short of yeah in person. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're here together.
Speaker 8: Better than us being all on zoom.
Speaker 1: This is still cool, yes exactly, but sure here the
Speaker 1: team Supreme.
Speaker 9: How are we good man? So we're just we're not
Speaker 9: going to act like we're not going to act like
Speaker 9: we weren't doing this like three hours ago.
Speaker 7: No, I'm just yeah for you, Bill, fantastic. I had
Speaker 7: a good afternoon, Thank you for asking. And then I
Speaker 7: took myself out to dinner and I feel fantastic.
Speaker 1: What did you have for dinner?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 7: Martinis and Sea Best.
Speaker 1: It was great? Wait did y'all eat together? I wish?
Speaker 9: Well, let me ask, how's it going? Did you have
Speaker 9: to buy yourself date as well? You just not actually
Speaker 9: meet cargo?
Speaker 1: And uh we went and had some Mexican food for
Speaker 1: lunch in New York. Yeah? Yo, how that turned out?
Speaker 1: Shit was banging. I was surprised.
Speaker 3: Won't you go the spot in the hotel, the those cominos,
Speaker 3: those caminos.
Speaker 9: To hear episodes in which we do not remote but
Speaker 9: like in person, all of your hotel, culinary inventions adventure
Speaker 9: sound awesome.
Speaker 1: Like I've yet to hear a bad review.
Speaker 8: And you have to have the Fante experience in a restaurant.
Speaker 8: We were just talking about this earlier. There is an
Speaker 8: experience with Fante. He likes to recommend things, he suggests.
Speaker 8: You know, he's really good.
Speaker 3: At I'm a man of husk I've been decided a
Speaker 3: long time, so I don't get food wrong.
Speaker 1: I know that I know snacks, speaking of which I
Speaker 1: actually you know infamously.
Speaker 9: Well, yeah, as a foodie, people will think that my
Speaker 9: culinary choices are very hoity toity and whatever up there
Speaker 9: the way that I am you right now, however, Captain Crunch,
Speaker 9: no dog, you know what. I gave a chance for
Speaker 9: the first time and wasn't mad. I'm not mad at Chipotle, No, no, no,
Speaker 9: I mean Steve's taking.
Speaker 6: I very much preferred those Toros. If you're going to
Speaker 6: go that fast food, well well across the nation. I
Speaker 6: can't do anything about that. But wait, those totals is
Speaker 6: I like those tauruses, uh steak much more than Chipotle,
Speaker 6: And that's what I normally get.
Speaker 1: Let's intro our gust today.
Speaker 9: So you know, it's hard to say whether or not
Speaker 9: the category that you fall into is just actress or
Speaker 9: character actress.
Speaker 1: However, I will the way the ways you look like.
Speaker 9: In my opinion, I think you are an ace character
Speaker 9: actress because you often come when I don't expect you
Speaker 9: to show up in any film no matter what you're in,
Speaker 9: and you really have the ability, like I get excited
Speaker 9: when oh damn, it's gonna be good, like I've I've
Speaker 9: yet to have a actual response to like if she
Speaker 9: if I'm unaware that she's part of it, Like I
Speaker 9: didn't realize that she was going to be versus mother
Speaker 9: in WU.
Speaker 1: Tanks at that part right right that party get out
Speaker 1: or whatever, like where you just don't expect to see
Speaker 1: her then my ears prick up like a puppy, like,
Speaker 1: oh you know that sort of thing makes the movie
Speaker 1: more interesting?
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you well.
Speaker 9: First of all, Caroline in the in the Oscar nominated
Speaker 9: American Fiction American Fiction.
Speaker 1: What was your last name in that?
Speaker 2: I was Coraline?
Speaker 1: Yes, But did you have a last name in that?
Speaker 1: Not that I know of?
Speaker 2: I was just coreline.
Speaker 9: Okay, side question before I say your name. If given
Speaker 9: a character, are you allowed to give yourself a last name?
Speaker 9: If it's not they're in your bios? Are you allowed
Speaker 9: to make your character.
Speaker 2: Up if you're yes, I mean I am.
Speaker 5: I'm able to do what I want as long as
Speaker 5: I don't put it in the lines the story.
Speaker 1: I get it, okay, all right? Also, uh, barb ballot
Speaker 1: and run the world, which I don't know. I enjoyed
Speaker 1: it right.
Speaker 9: In in the brand new Apple series of Swimming with Sharks,
Speaker 9: She's a mayor to Lockhart and no, no, no, you're
Speaker 9: in Shining Girls right, You're at Girls Apple right exactly.
Speaker 9: I'm sorry, I'm getting my networks mixed up. But of course,
Speaker 9: uh we we would be remiss, of course, uh mentioning
Speaker 9: the world in which at last she entered my life,
Speaker 9: even though I know you you've had a life of
Speaker 9: acting before then. But of course, as cousin Pam on
Speaker 9: The Cosby Show, but probably I will say that Maxine
Speaker 9: Shaw is one of the most loved characters period, and
Speaker 9: to this day I still wonder if her and Overton
Speaker 9: not Overton k.
Speaker 1: Yes, are are making it like? Yes exactly, Erica Alexander, Yes, thank.
Speaker 2: You, happy, I'm proud to be with you all. Thank you. Chris.
Speaker 1: So where are you right now as we speak?
Speaker 5: Well, I'm zooming in on a zoom from Vancouver because
Speaker 5: I'm filming for the Apple Plus series Invasion.
Speaker 8: I'll watch that. Where are the second season? Second, third season,
Speaker 8: third season?
Speaker 1: Girl.
Speaker 8: That's a good one, yea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good one. A lot of secrets on
Speaker 2: his set.
Speaker 5: Simon kim Berg is the showrunner, and he famously did
Speaker 5: a lot of well all of the X Men movies
Speaker 5: and Deadpool I think or Dared Devil one of them. Yeah,
Speaker 5: he's pretty awesome.
Speaker 8: So you're going to be a recurring I am going.
Speaker 2: To be a regular character, but only on season three.
Speaker 1: So you're in Vancouver right now.
Speaker 5: I am in Vancouver and we are filming, and it's
Speaker 5: a big production. It's an international global production. They did
Speaker 5: a lot of their filming the two previous years in
Speaker 5: South Africa, Morocco, Japan, England, and now they've kind of
Speaker 5: rested here in Vancouver.
Speaker 1: I see how many how many weeks have you been
Speaker 1: there so far?
Speaker 5: I think I'm going on my fourth week. I just
Speaker 5: got here just after the NDAACP Awards.
Speaker 9: You know I often here, like right now. I mean Vancouver,
Speaker 9: of course is an acting hub. Like how often as
Speaker 9: an actress are you in Vancouver? Like how regular are so?
Speaker 9: And why besides the tax reasons or whatever? Like visually,
Speaker 9: like why is Vancouver the designated You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I filmed here before in onent He sixteen. It
Speaker 2: was another Side five series. I forget the name of it.
Speaker 5: But I don't think there's any other reason beside the
Speaker 5: tax incent here. It's actually quite beautiful and it can
Speaker 5: double for New York City or maybe a European street.
Speaker 5: It really matters that it's got a lot of non
Speaker 5: descript places, a lot of outdoor spaces, so they can
Speaker 5: do a lot of action here. They've got a really
Speaker 5: great amount of crew and talent up here. So I
Speaker 5: think the idea is is that the American dollar compared
Speaker 5: to the Canadian dollar also helps.
Speaker 2: So there's all these.
Speaker 5: Factors and it's very close to La You fly here
Speaker 5: two and a half hours you are here.
Speaker 9: Oh, I forgot the proximity that helps. Hey, by the way,
Speaker 9: are you familiar at all with Lacasa Gelato?
Speaker 1: Have you heard of?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 2: It sounds delicious though.
Speaker 9: Lacasa Gelato is a place in Vancouver. They have five
Speaker 9: hundred different types of ice cream flavors. Like when you
Speaker 9: first walk in, literally it's the biggest ice cream quality
Speaker 9: you've ever seen in your life. However, like once you
Speaker 9: get in the middle, when you get past the regularly
Speaker 9: strawberry vanilla, then you get into intricate things like cheddar
Speaker 9: cheese ice cream, but saw mc vinegar ice cream, ghost
Speaker 9: pepper ice cream.
Speaker 8: Alway supposed to be ice cream, chicken and ice cream.
Speaker 1: It sounds awful. No, no, no, no, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's worth it's worth it. Why y'all shaking your hand.
Speaker 1: I take your word for it.
Speaker 8: I believe you, right, Gravey ice cream, There.
Speaker 9: Is Pickle flavor ice cream though, No, no, I highly
Speaker 9: recommend it for people to you know.
Speaker 2: Just.
Speaker 8: Vancouver.
Speaker 5: Yeah it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it's one of their like a
Speaker 1: landmark spot in there.
Speaker 5: But for sure, Well, if I ever want to have
Speaker 5: diarrhea and the dribble ships, I.
Speaker 1: Will, so I am not the only one that's not
Speaker 1: lactose intolerant.
Speaker 8: Good for you a mirror, Yeah that's great, but.
Speaker 1: I feel like I can't be the only black person.
Speaker 8: But y'all, I'm suggesting invasion because I gotta imagine this
Speaker 8: show is like a super sci fi show, but it's
Speaker 8: also like super emotional, like like it's an amazing show.
Speaker 8: So I can't only imagine that it's pulling, taking all
Speaker 8: your energies and whatnot, because man.
Speaker 2: Well you know, it's a very big cast, so a
Speaker 2: lot of that.
Speaker 5: Are shifted to different people's shoulders at different times. But
Speaker 5: what I imagine is that because Simon kimberb is such
Speaker 5: a heavy dude. They gave him the type of money
Speaker 5: that you need for to command that kind of time,
Speaker 5: so he takes a lot of time to film, and
Speaker 5: it's a very thoughtful sci fi exploration of what it
Speaker 5: is to be invaded, you know. So that's what you feel.
Speaker 2: I think you hear that sort of slow crew. And
Speaker 2: by the way, whenever you feel that in a film,
Speaker 2: it's because usually.
Speaker 5: The production has more money, don't have to rush through
Speaker 5: plots and all the types of things that other people do.
Speaker 5: They can really just sort of linger on people's faces
Speaker 5: and allow people to perform and or emote.
Speaker 2: And that's what's happening.
Speaker 1: See the way she said emote.
Speaker 9: And see clearly tells me that acting like she's a serious,
Speaker 9: a serious Apian.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. Yes.
Speaker 9: So one thing I do know about you, and I
Speaker 9: never got to talk to you about You're a Philadelphian.
Speaker 1: Come yes, and yeah she graduated. Well, I do know that.
Speaker 9: When I first heard about you, like it was a
Speaker 9: big deal in the newspapers, like girls high alumni, I did.
Speaker 5: Yes, And I went to George White in high school
Speaker 5: for a year. And that's where Kevin Hart went. But
Speaker 5: I'm actually a transplant from Arizona and I came when
Speaker 5: I was in seventh grade, eighth grades usually, so I
Speaker 5: went to Roosevelt in Leeds too. Roosevelt was like going
Speaker 5: to a prison.
Speaker 2: Leeds was month.
Speaker 1: Step up from prison.
Speaker 5: Yeah, half, yeah, it wasnt one was more closer to
Speaker 5: Germantown and that was I think they closed that down.
Speaker 2: And then, of course the other one was more mount
Speaker 2: Airy and that was a lot more I don't know better.
Speaker 1: A right, what part of Philadelphia? Where are you from?
Speaker 2: Mount Airy? Oh?
Speaker 8: Nice, nice part of town.
Speaker 9: See when you're from West Philly, I just think anything
Speaker 9: that's north of City Hall is just n O R
Speaker 9: F North Philly, even if it's Mount Airy. So what
Speaker 9: was your beginnings in the world of acting? Like, were
Speaker 9: you a freedom theater kid or was this stuff in
Speaker 9: your school? Did you do you not want to go
Speaker 9: to creative and performing arts or well, you know.
Speaker 5: I think we had a conversation in Mire, and I
Speaker 5: know you've had plenty of them. But you went to
Speaker 5: school with my little sister Charlanda. Yes, he's the one
Speaker 5: who went to the School of the Arts that you did.
Speaker 5: But I was discovered when I was fourteen in the
Speaker 5: basement theater called new Freedom Theater. Theater.
Speaker 2: Freedom Theater closed. I talked to the council and the
Speaker 2: other day we got to.
Speaker 8: Get that back. That theater is beautiful.
Speaker 5: It's beautiful, but it's stuffed in the middle of Temple
Speaker 5: University and surrounded by I don't think people who understand
Speaker 5: what it's.
Speaker 8: Significantrification, what's going on with Howard University. I can roger
Speaker 8: that so discovered in.
Speaker 5: The basement theater by a movie company, merch and Ivory
Speaker 5: Film Independent Film came to Philadelphia. They were looking for
Speaker 5: Little Girls Back and Brown to audition for this movie.
Speaker 5: And after nearly twelve to thirteen audition and for screen
Speaker 5: screen tests, screen tests, Yeah, I was the one they chose.
Speaker 1: When this is both cleared, Wow, Okay, what happened at
Speaker 1: Freedom Theater?
Speaker 9: Like, because that was one of the places where I
Speaker 9: wanted to go, but instead my parents put me in
Speaker 9: Settlement Music School. Oh and my sister went to Freedom Theater.
Speaker 9: Like it was like, Okay, we're going to have her
Speaker 9: act and he's going to do music. But we would
Speaker 9: only pick her up afterwards. But I never knew, like
Speaker 9: what happened in there, Like what was what would they
Speaker 9: teach you there?
Speaker 5: Well, Johnny Allen Junior and his partner they started it,
Speaker 5: and they started in the sixties.
Speaker 2: Sixties famously were starting.
Speaker 5: To try to train black children the way the Black
Speaker 5: Panthers did if they knew the schools that were primarily
Speaker 5: white were giving them any sense of themselves. And you
Speaker 5: had people like the great Nina Simone talking of about young,
Speaker 5: gifted and black, so that that's really what was going on.
Speaker 5: There was some sort of idea that if you infused
Speaker 5: a child with the strong sense of themselves and you
Speaker 5: also gave them creative outlets, got them in touch with
Speaker 5: their body, discipline, voice, sound, body, all of those things performance, speech, communication,
Speaker 5: that you could influence.
Speaker 2: The rest of their life.
Speaker 5: And they proved their point, like a lot of the
Speaker 5: schools that were going around the country at the time
Speaker 5: and new Freedom Theaters of that kind of tradition.
Speaker 1: How old were you when you started Freedom Theater? Like,
Speaker 1: at what age did you start?
Speaker 2: Fourteen?
Speaker 5: I only went there for the sixth week program, and
Speaker 5: then I also did like two summers of a play
Speaker 5: called under Pressure, which was their resident production that they
Speaker 5: put on every year every summer.
Speaker 9: Is the Hoope where I guess the goal of the
Speaker 9: school to draw people, notable people to see the kids
Speaker 9: and have them work with someone notable. Or is it
Speaker 9: just like we teach you the craft of acting and
Speaker 9: then you're out there in the world, Like, are they
Speaker 9: like this how you get an agent?
Speaker 1: Or this is how you you know this?
Speaker 9: Commercial casting directors come into our thing tonight, Like is
Speaker 9: it any of those things involved?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 2: Not. When I was going it might have changed.
Speaker 5: It really was about self love, self reverence, power, black power,
Speaker 5: young gifted and black, A sense of yourself inside of
Speaker 5: a white world.
Speaker 2: How can you move through it?
Speaker 5: How do you stand lifting your head, your skins, making
Speaker 5: the children go home and get undressed and look at
Speaker 5: themselves in a mirror, all parts of themselves, the lower
Speaker 5: parts of themselves, having some kind of regard and respect
Speaker 5: for hygiene, The way you spoke, the way you stepped
Speaker 5: up grammar, all of those things. It was really more
Speaker 5: like a boot camp for life for black kids.
Speaker 9: Did you realize that immediately or is this like in hindsight,
Speaker 9: like I hated going to Okay, I'm sorry, I did
Speaker 9: not hate going to Settlement Music School, but I hated
Speaker 9: the homework assignments, However, I now realized, thank god I
Speaker 9: went to sell them in music school.
Speaker 1: That saved my life.
Speaker 9: But you realize that stuff like when you're way older.
Speaker 9: Did you realize that at the time, or because even
Speaker 9: when we were doing those types of exercises at performing
Speaker 9: art school whatever, like we'd be in the back laughing,
Speaker 9: like you know, they want us to learn Elizabethan and
Speaker 9: project with your voice.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're just like that.
Speaker 8: Settlement wasn't as black as freedom in that way though.
Speaker 8: That's like a different experience, right.
Speaker 2: Right, that's true. I think my sister went to Settlement
Speaker 2: to my baby's sister.
Speaker 1: How many siblings do you have, I'm one of six.
Speaker 5: And fourth there's too younger than me. There's Charbanda who
Speaker 5: you know, and then there's my y sh and I
Speaker 5: think she went to Southerner.
Speaker 1: And all of you have dabbled in the arts.
Speaker 5: Yes, in some way, although my sister, it was a
Speaker 5: social worker there in Philadelphia and my brother's a Philly cop.
Speaker 8: Oh, so your family really stayed in Philadelphia, Yes, they did.
Speaker 5: Both my parents were orphans, so we didn't necessarily have
Speaker 5: a place to be. Wherever we were was where we
Speaker 5: were at. But I think you were talking about, did
Speaker 5: I recognize what it was doing.
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 5: Yes, they were very over. They kept it was like
Speaker 5: a boot camp. It was like an officer and a gentleman.
Speaker 5: They were going to make you understand the power of
Speaker 5: being black and blackness, and more importantly, the power of
Speaker 5: self love. And we needed that because at the time
Speaker 5: I was going in there, the streets were a battleground.
Speaker 5: It was crack incarceration, Young women were getting pregnant. It
Speaker 5: was really like some kind of weird pathology movie. And
Speaker 5: I think they couldn't be soft about it.
Speaker 2: They had to be over.
Speaker 5: They didn't have the privilege to set back and not
Speaker 5: act like they were trying to do. They were trying
Speaker 5: to radicalize you, and I think that it worked well.
Speaker 9: When you said offers and a gentleman, I'm like, wait
Speaker 9: a minute. I remember Lewis Gossigjr. Making cry in the
Speaker 9: right in the rain. I'm like, wait a minute.
Speaker 2: So they are a lot of.
Speaker 5: People cried, but they were crying because it was like church.
Speaker 5: You got in there and you had real awakenings and
Speaker 5: you reckoned with Even though you might have thought a
Speaker 5: lot of people had a confidence and didn't have I
Speaker 5: guess the fears that some children have, they all had
Speaker 5: that we weren't allowed to be children. And there I
Speaker 5: think that they knew they were different type of child
Speaker 5: and that they needed to break us down so we
Speaker 5: could be wrong. Alright, not me though, by the way,
Speaker 5: I'm a preacher's daughter. I came in already vulnerable. I
Speaker 5: was scared of Philadelphia and the students. And I will wait,
Speaker 5: your dad was a pretty different student. Yeah, Church of
Speaker 5: God in Christ, baby, what's all?
Speaker 1: Why is a kojak? Is kojak? For sure? Where where
Speaker 1: was the church?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 5: My parents are coming out of New Mexico, my carlosbad
Speaker 5: Las Cruses. They were Bible students. They traveled around in
Speaker 5: the car, and that's why I spent the first eleven
Speaker 5: years of my life.
Speaker 2: In a hotel called Starlight off a room sixty six.
Speaker 1: Wow that was where you lived?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Wow?
Speaker 9: What was Wait let's go back even further. I mean
Speaker 9: starting a freedom theater. Now I want to hear you
Speaker 9: as a no man?
Speaker 1: What was that like?
Speaker 5: I was born in Arizona off Highway sixty six, but
Speaker 5: don't want to be Oh those cowboys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got my It was like got her Texas
Speaker 2: hold them.
Speaker 5: That's right, But you know that's what made me different
Speaker 5: and a little bit a lot of trepidation in Philadelphia
Speaker 5: because it was so bombastic and forward. And I'm coming
Speaker 5: from Hope, Navajo, Estizio, Mexican German Lutherans. And then there
Speaker 5: was my parents who were Kojik Baptists, and then my
Speaker 5: brother my sorry, my father got discovered by the German
Speaker 5: Lutherans and they sent him to the luther Theological Seminary
Speaker 5: in Philadelphia, and that was in Chestnut Hill.
Speaker 1: So he was going to be or is currently a preacher.
Speaker 5: He died at fifty two. Shortly after he finished at seminary.
Speaker 5: They sent him to Brooklyn in East New York to
Speaker 5: start his church, mostly Puerto Rican neighborhood. Most of those
Speaker 5: people had their churches for years. He maybe had or
Speaker 5: or five members, but by that time he was too
Speaker 5: sick to recover. He was born with a bad heart.
Speaker 5: They didn't think that he would live past seventeen.
Speaker 2: He did.
Speaker 5: He was a miracle, and I think he lived long
Speaker 5: enough to deliver us to Philadelphia, and that gave us
Speaker 5: a lot more choices.
Speaker 1: Were you expected to join the ministry?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Wait, no, you said that no varia as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, like what was.
Speaker 9: The home environment like, because most people of the cloth
Speaker 9: that I know, like it's a very strict environment. And
Speaker 9: hearing that you're a preacher's kid, but also like you
Speaker 9: dabbled in the arts, like it's almost like oil and
Speaker 9: water to me, because most people that I know like
Speaker 9: try to keep their kids out of any joyous expression
Speaker 9: like singing, dancing, anything that's deemed secular.
Speaker 2: So well that wasn't the case for us.
Speaker 5: My father was a boy preacher, so he didn't have
Speaker 5: a choice. Well, let me just put it to you
Speaker 5: like this, my story and my background are their origin
Speaker 5: story is very Southern Gothic, and so you don't get
Speaker 5: the feeling that these people are making these choices. They're
Speaker 5: making choices because that's what's in front of them. And
Speaker 5: if you look at the Black tradition, a lot of
Speaker 5: those people were preachers. Around the end of reconstruction, the
Speaker 5: people that they called in to ask about forty eight
Speaker 5: of mule were pastors and were clergy union. Other than that,
Speaker 5: you were either going to be a farmer, perhaps maybe
Speaker 5: a teacher. But in Showpiz and so that tradition of
Speaker 5: preachers kids becoming show biz kids like Denzel and a
Speaker 5: lot of these people because we saw performance our entire life.
Speaker 5: My mother sings, he plays a piano. She was trained
Speaker 5: as an opera singer and pianist. My father played the
Speaker 5: piano by ear. And we got along and got over
Speaker 5: with the kindness of strangers because a lot of times
Speaker 5: they were performing for their food.
Speaker 2: They didn't just preach.
Speaker 5: They got in there and said, oh and they selling
Speaker 5: that could get you chicken and maybe some lint.
Speaker 8: It sounds like, I mean, just based on what you
Speaker 8: just told us in the last ten fifteen minutes, like
Speaker 8: your family sounds pretty miraculous, Like you kind of slid
Speaker 8: in there that both your parents were orphans, which is
Speaker 8: a miraculous I mean, not even knowing their story, wow wow,
Speaker 8: and them me coming together and meeting each other. So
Speaker 8: my question also was were did they also have this
Speaker 8: underlayer of foundation for you to even know about Freedom theater?
Speaker 8: Did they also give you this other layer of self
Speaker 8: awareness of blackness? Like that's a but on top of
Speaker 8: going to this church that determines brought him so many layers,
Speaker 8: like did you get that from them as well? Your
Speaker 8: activism and community and knowing about blackness and who you are.
Speaker 2: I would say the activism.
Speaker 5: Yes, I think most black people that came from that
Speaker 5: era thought they were being hunted and they were haunted
Speaker 5: by whiteness. They were hunted literally by white people, and
Speaker 5: so you always had to do that. You had to
Speaker 5: find a place to be. It wasn't just like the
Speaker 5: Green Book. You had to choose where you were going
Speaker 5: to live. You had to choose the type of career
Speaker 5: that didn't make you a threat. And so that's why
Speaker 5: people being athletes, they're performing for white people. They're coming
Speaker 5: in front of them and they're offering their voice and
Speaker 5: their talents, and suddenly they may be a threat when
Speaker 5: to go outside of that door, but inside that door
Speaker 5: they have a certain type of privilege. And so I
Speaker 5: think that my mother, who was twice or offended and
Speaker 5: she had an extraordinary background.
Speaker 2: She was raised by the richest couple.
Speaker 5: In her town, Carlsbad, and that's why she had she
Speaker 5: knew how to I'm here talk about enunciation. Pronunciation is
Speaker 5: very from That's where it comes from. But then, of course,
Speaker 5: being a child of the preacher, you.
Speaker 2: Know that everything they do, you see, it's all.
Speaker 5: Part and parcel. But you're also coming from respectability politics.
Speaker 5: They were the people who did not want to look dusty.
Speaker 5: You were coming out for plantations, you're talking about after reconstruction.
Speaker 5: You're talking about all the things that black people were
Speaker 5: seen as dirty and.
Speaker 2: Unsophisticated and unlearned.
Speaker 5: They had to immediately establish their bona fide, and so
Speaker 5: begins the black bourgeois there you go. And then once
Speaker 5: they found out we had money, so begins the black
Speaker 5: middle class. Oh and the race for labels.
Speaker 9: You saying that has already brought me back to twelve,
Speaker 9: because there's a time where even if I wanted to
Speaker 9: go to the movies, I would have to put a
Speaker 9: suit on. And it's like, why do I have to
Speaker 9: put a suit on to see Jim Kelly and black
Speaker 9: Belt Genlemans in silent scream at the Capitol on fifty
Speaker 9: second and they're you know, their whole thing was like, well, yeah,
Speaker 9: it's respective of these politics, but it's also like if
Speaker 9: you have a suit on, you won't get shot, right.
Speaker 9: But then I thought it made me your target to bullies,
Speaker 9: like why is he walking in with a suit on?
Speaker 9: Like everyone else is casually dressed, but I'm the one
Speaker 9: guy is sitting there like, well.
Speaker 5: Maybe you remember the boy choir of Harlem. That was
Speaker 5: the whole bithing there to put on suits suits, and
Speaker 5: that's how they went to school. And it made them targets,
Speaker 5: but it also made them responsible for their behavior.
Speaker 2: They needed them to look at different.
Speaker 9: I see after the six weeks that at Freedom Theater, Like,
Speaker 9: what was your next move into what brought you a
Speaker 9: step closer to your profession? Like at what point were
Speaker 9: you like, Okay, I want to be an actress and
Speaker 9: pursue it seriously.
Speaker 5: I never accepted that I was an actress until maybe
Speaker 5: my late thirties or early forties.
Speaker 9: So even with cosbian living single, you didn't feel like
Speaker 9: you were a full time actress.
Speaker 5: No, nope, I would always go back to my trader
Speaker 5: talking about I was going to write my comeback piece.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm skipping. Look, since you brought it up,
Speaker 1: let me skip it.
Speaker 9: So the last day of living single or Betty at
Speaker 9: a week after living single, are you feeling like do
Speaker 9: I go back to being a civilian or do I
Speaker 9: are you basically saying that was your mind state, like
Speaker 9: not a full time actress until I have the next
Speaker 9: stable job or your life is.
Speaker 5: An actor, just as a musician is very porous. Nothing
Speaker 5: ever ends, nothing ever really begins. You can feel a
Speaker 5: little bit because people have rap parties and that helps
Speaker 5: you sort of put your.
Speaker 2: Mind around like it's done.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but you've probably been auditioning the whole time for
Speaker 5: other things, and I had been, and at the time,
Speaker 5: I was dealing with a lot of heartbreak because there
Speaker 5: was a lot of I guess, hierarchy as to who
Speaker 5: they would allow to work other jobs, and I wasn't
Speaker 5: that person. So yeah, and so I missed out on
Speaker 5: a lot of things, roles that they would offer me
Speaker 5: but I couldn't take because fox let did take it,
Speaker 5: and they would have pushed my career forward. So once
Speaker 5: I got out of there, and I wasn't it's like
Speaker 5: being five years in the same timehigh school. You want
Speaker 5: to go, you're ready to go, and unless there's something
Speaker 5: keeping me there, some kind of overall goal you might have.
Speaker 5: Maybe you're really bonded with the cast that's really going well,
Speaker 5: everybody sort of signs up to do it again. But
Speaker 5: it was breaking down on its own, so I didn't
Speaker 5: think about it at all, like, oh, like I'm a
Speaker 5: civilian I've always been a civilian, just one that people known,
Speaker 5: and so I've been famous longer than I was not famous.
Speaker 5: In Philadelphia, when Mayor Good calls you to the Mayor's
Speaker 5: office and gives the key to the city and a proclamation,
Speaker 5: and kids start acting weird around you that never really
Speaker 5: paid attention to you. You see how celebrity warps things.
Speaker 5: So all I ever wanted to do was sort of
Speaker 5: return to a stable version of myself, but that was impossible.
Speaker 5: So I kind of accepted that that came with the territory.
Speaker 5: But I got to say, once I got out of there,
Speaker 5: I thought, I'm going to be a producer and write
Speaker 5: because I'd been trying to do that since A Cosby show.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, And the acting thing. I'm not just being
Speaker 5: kind of glib about it. I hadn't accepted that I
Speaker 5: was this actress. It's just something that I can always do.
Speaker 5: So I think as a musician or you understood that
Speaker 5: maybe in your core competency you could always do it.
Speaker 2: You were good at it.
Speaker 5: It sat down and play the piano, and people said, oh,
Speaker 5: you're good at it, But it didn't mean that you
Speaker 5: wanted to be a pianist.
Speaker 2: So with acting.
Speaker 5: I had to accept later on that I just didn't
Speaker 5: get chosen, like, hey, you can act, and here's a
Speaker 5: career that I did enjoy it, and that I was
Speaker 5: an actress. And when I had that sort of come
Speaker 5: to Jesus moment, it was because a hypnotist.
Speaker 2: A hypnotist put me under.
Speaker 5: And when I left the office, I started to sob
Speaker 5: because she said, Erica an actress, and I go, I
Speaker 5: am an actress and I had not really.
Speaker 2: Said that to myself.
Speaker 1: How do you feel now?
Speaker 5: I feel like I'm an artist and a creator, And
Speaker 5: I think that best sort of says about the activism,
Speaker 5: the fact that I have bigger ambitions than any one
Speaker 5: production can fulfill.
Speaker 2: But I just love the idea of people who are creators,
Speaker 2: and I like to.
Speaker 8: Learn what's your dream project, the one that you needed
Speaker 8: that if you had one hundred million dollars. This is
Speaker 8: what I'm making, you know.
Speaker 5: I think there's a room for a new King Panther,
Speaker 5: and I would love to do a character like that
Speaker 5: because I'm good at physical comedy, and I'm good at comedy,
Speaker 5: but I'm also dramatic. And I think if you look
Speaker 5: what Peter Sellers did, he was allowed to be a
Speaker 5: lot of different states of weirdness. I like the British
Speaker 5: sense of comedy, and I would like to do something
Speaker 5: like that.
Speaker 1: All right, it manifested coming, let's do it. Okay. So
Speaker 1: now back back to your teens.
Speaker 9: What was the stage that you're like, okay, let's take
Speaker 9: this serious, like your first audition.
Speaker 2: What was that like at fourteen or just later on
Speaker 2: after that?
Speaker 1: How were you when Pam came into full disclosure?
Speaker 9: Also, I kind of thought I was like maybe a
Speaker 9: decade and a half older than you, Like what ye
Speaker 9: you look fucking awesome by the way, But like in
Speaker 9: my mind, I thought like, okay, well, you know eight
Speaker 9: these kids like.
Speaker 1: Started cousin Pam.
Speaker 8: Wasn't a teenager that cousin Pam? What's the post?
Speaker 9: In my mind, I'm like, wait, I was like twenty
Speaker 9: something when the coss Okay, she was definitely like fourteen
Speaker 9: fifteen because something on the special led episode and all
Speaker 9: that stuff. So in my mind, you're way younger than me.
Speaker 9: So I'm like trying to school you use words like
Speaker 9: manifest hilarious.
Speaker 5: No, I was older, playing younger than myself because of
Speaker 5: the hours. You know that those things take they try
Speaker 5: to get kids that are older, teenagers that are older
Speaker 5: play younger. I was younger than Malcolm Jamal, but I
Speaker 5: actually think I'm older than Malcolm Jamal in real life.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So actually I did an audition for cousin Pam.
Speaker 1: That was your that was your first audition, but she
Speaker 1: did an audition or you didn't.
Speaker 5: When I was twenty years old, Okay, I had been
Speaker 5: acting for since I was fourteen. I'd gone around the
Speaker 5: world with Royal Shakespeare Company. I did a nine hour
Speaker 5: play called The Mahabaratta. I did mini series and a
Speaker 5: movie with Whoope called The Long Walk Call Wait Wait
Speaker 5: Wait Wait.
Speaker 8: Wait, Long Walk Wait Wait wait wait.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so that's where that experience comes from. Okay, I
Speaker 9: see now, Yes.
Speaker 2: And I had done two or three plays at the
Speaker 2: Public one.
Speaker 5: With Joseph Papp his last play called The Forbidden City,
Speaker 5: Big Gun's Last Play.
Speaker 2: So I've done a lot of theater, which a lot
Speaker 2: of black people did.
Speaker 5: If you look at Sam Jackson and all these cats,
Speaker 5: there were no TV and films to absorb that type
Speaker 5: of talent.
Speaker 1: Thing.
Speaker 5: You had one or two things, and if you were
Speaker 5: lucky to be those one or two people, you maybe
Speaker 5: catch lightning in the bottle. No one expected to have
Speaker 5: a career in film and television, certainly not a black woman.
Speaker 5: So I was doing a play at the Public and
Speaker 5: the story goes it was actually a play called Forbidden City,
Speaker 5: Josephap's last play that he directed, and the great Gloria Foster.
Speaker 2: He's the light skinned woman in the matrix.
Speaker 5: Yeah, have a cook, that's the great glory of And
Speaker 5: her best friend is Comille Cosby. And when I was
Speaker 5: told that, Camille Cosby came to see the play and
Speaker 5: then went back to her husband, Bill Cosby, and said,
Speaker 5: you've got to see Gloria in this play. In this
Speaker 5: little girl, little girl she was talking about with me.
Speaker 5: He never saw the play, but I also hear that
Speaker 5: he liked to give his wife gifts, and I was
Speaker 5: a gift. I got a call one day, could you
Speaker 5: be at mister Cosby's house in about an hour. And
Speaker 5: I showed up just off of Park Avenue in the
Speaker 5: Central Park and he made a roll up for me right.
Speaker 2: In front of my face.
Speaker 5: He said, so, there's this girl and her name is Pam,
Speaker 5: and she's the cousin of Claire.
Speaker 2: And that's how it went. And I said thank you
Speaker 2: very much, and I was cousin Pam.
Speaker 8: He must have loved that you were from Philly too. Together.
Speaker 5: He called me hometown and he really put a definition in,
Speaker 5: I don't know, kind of a premium around people who
Speaker 5: were self made. And I think that's what he liked,
Speaker 5: that he saw me being self made and that I
Speaker 5: didn't need him. That's where those were his words.
Speaker 9: How intimidating was it to enter not only like an
Speaker 9: established institution, but I mean by that point it was
Speaker 9: such a well oiled machine.
Speaker 1: And oftentimes, in.
Speaker 9: Kind of the folkal or TV shows, like adding a
Speaker 9: new character that late in the game is often seen
Speaker 9: as a jump in the shark moment.
Speaker 8: Oscar, the Brady Bunch or whatever, or Oliver Oliver.
Speaker 1: I watched right now. You mentioned Oliver from The Brady Bunch.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So, but how did it feel just coming into
Speaker 9: an already established, well oiled machine.
Speaker 1: By that point?
Speaker 5: I guess the difference is is I'm not the star.
Speaker 5: I'm a featured character. I get to day trip, I
Speaker 5: get to drop in at a little Salt and pepper,
Speaker 5: but the flavor's there, and it's a new dish. It's
Speaker 5: got a lot of juicy dark meat, you know, and
Speaker 5: so they're adding a different flavor. But they've had the
Speaker 5: criticism that the Cosby show was too inaccessible. The family
Speaker 5: was inaccessible because they were too upper class. So cousin
Speaker 5: Pam came in from the other side of the tracks.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're supposed to be the street element.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine?
Speaker 1: Did they want you to be more thugged out than
Speaker 1: you were?
Speaker 2: Like? How did you I think that his if he
Speaker 2: had told that to his the writer's room, they might
Speaker 2: have thought it.
Speaker 5: But you have to understand the king of respectability politics
Speaker 5: back in the day was Bill Cosby. So he set
Speaker 5: us down me caramony in the white owl pain and
Speaker 5: gave us the speech, do not make me ashamed, just
Speaker 5: like you get at church. Don't you go out there
Speaker 5: and act the food, don't do all your head, don't
Speaker 5: do you know any extra on it. And so we
Speaker 5: were told that we were we weren't going to do it,
Speaker 5: but it was sort of just saying, this is not
Speaker 5: that place. I have Mary mckeeba on this show, I
Speaker 5: have this person on that that show. We are the
Speaker 5: talented ten.
Speaker 8: But Karen was charmain, so oh she must have had.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So she must have had to constantly weigh that
Speaker 8: that line because that's like, that's your Maine.
Speaker 2: No, she didn't because they got her because she talked
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 5: I mean, they wanted that flavor. They didn't know what
Speaker 5: to do to cousin Panmther. So it's like they gave
Speaker 5: me my own posse and that helped the strain off
Speaker 5: the show. So I got it. I was I probably
Speaker 5: wasn't people's cup of TV, and I didn't really necessarily
Speaker 5: know what I was doing. I didn't think I was fundy,
Speaker 5: but I also didn't think they wrote me funny, and
Speaker 5: I was confused a lot. By the time I got
Speaker 5: to living single, I understood the idea of acting to
Speaker 5: camera and having an audience. I had done them separately,
Speaker 5: but to put them together was confusing. And then I
Speaker 5: got it. I'd asked mister I said who do I
Speaker 5: act to? And he said the audience, because he's stand up.
Speaker 5: I asked the director, Ellen Gidtleson, I said who who
Speaker 5: I act? And she said the camera. They were both right,
Speaker 5: So I had to get that type of timing in
Speaker 5: my head. Listen for the audience, because they were my
Speaker 5: best they were the fourth character in the show. And
Speaker 5: then also if they couldn't see what I was doing
Speaker 5: because the light wasn't on the camera, because the camera
Speaker 5: wasn't ready, it had to hold. And so there's this
Speaker 5: dance you're doing and it's like timing, it's like music,
Speaker 5: and if you get it, you can be funny.
Speaker 8: Did you say dance? Because that makes me think of
Speaker 8: the cousin Bam dance.
Speaker 2: Do you know that's a thing? Right?
Speaker 8: No, cousin Pam dance from the special ad episode.
Speaker 1: Episode when you start when you do that, what that's
Speaker 1: a thing, Like, yeah, you did not know that.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what. Thank you for letting me know
Speaker 2: this was a dance.
Speaker 9: It's funny you said that because there was an episode
Speaker 9: of Our Sineo in which de Niro, who rarely gives interviews,
Speaker 9: was basically explaining to Our Sineo. I think it's right
Speaker 9: around the time when Goodfellas was coming out, so this
Speaker 9: was like eighty nine to ninety whatever, and DeNiro was
Speaker 9: explaining to him.
Speaker 1: Like, basically, I'm not acting.
Speaker 9: He gave this whole thing about like if you most actors,
Speaker 9: will you know the mistake they make is they show
Speaker 9: emotion and all that stuff, and he's like, real life
Speaker 9: people don't show their emotions, they hold back. So he
Speaker 9: was basically saying that because he holds back and is
Speaker 9: very dry in his delivery, that's what makes him the
Speaker 9: everyday person, right, And that stuck with me a lot,
Speaker 9: even though, like acting wasn't mine my focus back then,
Speaker 9: but when he said that, I was like, Oh, so
Speaker 9: it's what you hold back.
Speaker 1: And I actually.
Speaker 9: Liked your role because I've never seen someone of your character,
Speaker 9: of your ilk not be a caricature, because I think
Speaker 9: sometimes it's almost like the acting version of being a
Speaker 9: gospel chops musician, you know, like every musician nowadays got
Speaker 9: to show off everything they do.
Speaker 1: Melisma.
Speaker 9: Yes, you held back, And then I saw an interview
Speaker 9: that you did, and because you had Felicia Rashad's you know,
Speaker 9: like when she talks like Felicia Rashad has that that
Speaker 9: camera meal is crazy sort of Yeah, when you spoke
Speaker 9: like that, us like, oh, she's like a real actor's action.
Speaker 9: And I was going to ask if you dabbled in Shakespeare,
Speaker 9: but you already told that to us. I actually like
Speaker 9: the fact that you were kind of nondescript in the
Speaker 9: Cosby Show, and that you weren't.
Speaker 1: All the way you know, you could have been JJ.
Speaker 9: You could have been JJ or Hillary from the Fresh
Speaker 9: Prince of bel Air, like a character I don't know
Speaker 9: that was mine.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that.
Speaker 5: I think what you're seeing is that I think somehow,
Speaker 5: even in a character, you have to express a level
Speaker 5: of authenticity. And I'm from Arizona, so I don't have
Speaker 5: the idea of blackness as being a set of tropes
Speaker 5: that are like very big and laws, because that's not
Speaker 5: what I saw. I saw black people be black, like
Speaker 5: American fiction black. That's the idea is that we're presented
Speaker 5: with a set of stereotypes that we don't even know
Speaker 5: that we're pushing, and black people were probably only people
Speaker 5: to have.
Speaker 2: To have burden.
Speaker 5: We're always trying to balance a version of ourselves and
Speaker 5: we don't even know where we end or begin anymore.
Speaker 5: But I do say this about comedy. It is a
Speaker 5: full contact sport and you have to give to receive.
Speaker 5: You have to embrace it, you have to channel, you
Speaker 5: have to love it. You have to go out on
Speaker 5: a limb. You have to be bold. You can't be scared,
Speaker 5: you can you have to be curious, and that allows
Speaker 5: you to be free in the moment and make improvisational
Speaker 5: choices because I'm not necessarily changing the line, but I
Speaker 5: am changing the inflection in the line, the delivery of it,
Speaker 5: the delivery.
Speaker 9: So that said, could you tell me if we're going
Speaker 9: to the social media term, how it's going and how
Speaker 9: it ended or whatever. When you're given Maxine Shaw, which
Speaker 9: you know, as I said at the top of the show,
Speaker 9: I believe that Maxine's character is the anchor of that show,
Speaker 9: you know, like for me, Latifa is the the the.
Speaker 1: I guess the straight man of the click and Dorothy
Speaker 1: not mom.
Speaker 9: Right, and both chems have to sort of be the colorful,
Speaker 9: which really allowed you, I think a lane to really
Speaker 9: like all your punchlines were funnier, and your physical comedy
Speaker 9: and then your chemistry, which at the time, I don't
Speaker 9: think you're going into this thing thinking like, Okay, by
Speaker 9: season one, I'll be this carry and then we'll have
Speaker 9: our sort of apart with each other, like because both
Speaker 9: of you two basically wrote each other to glory in
Speaker 9: my opinion, But how did you prepare for your role
Speaker 9: as Maxine Shaw on Living Single?
Speaker 5: I prepared for it my entire life before I got there,
Speaker 5: and I took every little piece that I understood and
Speaker 5: put it in a role that nobody was paying attention
Speaker 5: to because I wasn't the star that Latifa or Kim
Speaker 5: Cole's or Kim Fields was.
Speaker 2: I was actually fourth.
Speaker 5: I was the dark skinned person in there with TC Carson,
Speaker 5: and they weren't looking at me. And I learned from
Speaker 5: the Cosby Show, or at least I understood now the
Speaker 5: dance of the camera, comedy and the audience. So I
Speaker 5: knew and you can see in the first year we
Speaker 5: kind of push those stereotypes that got us the roles
Speaker 5: the audition, like girl, I got this this, So it's
Speaker 5: a little amped up, but that's what you do to
Speaker 5: get the role. Otherwise, these people who are executive executive
Speaker 5: positions don't think you're doing anything if you come in
Speaker 5: and do something.
Speaker 2: That's a little bit more laid back.
Speaker 5: We're not allowed that type of soft presence that a
Speaker 5: lot of luance thank you that other performers get. Black
Speaker 5: people have to come with it right way. So I
Speaker 5: like to think that I'm in there discovering and experimenting
Speaker 5: and it's not harming anybody as long as I deliver
Speaker 5: the show they want. But each time I got more
Speaker 5: information about what the audience slighted about Max, and each
Speaker 5: time I wanted to deliver a version of her that
Speaker 5: was authentic to me Erica, and that balanced the show
Speaker 5: because you have to be generous with comedy. The people aren't.
Speaker 5: That's why they don't do so well. They're trying to
Speaker 5: get the line funny all the time, and sometime you're
Speaker 5: there to take the hit and sort of just look
Speaker 5: and it's not about you. It's about you just tossing
Speaker 5: around and you got to know. But I think nobody
Speaker 5: was looking, So that's what I want.
Speaker 9: I think people oftentimes when they see greatness, whatever you
Speaker 9: take it for granted, always refer to watching Steph Curry
Speaker 9: play like he's gonna throw it in and you automatically
Speaker 9: know it's going and no matter what. So at one
Speaker 9: point you just take for granted that all right, yes,
Speaker 9: he knows he's pulled enough some incredible shit, as he
Speaker 9: does it all the time.
Speaker 1: Right, But then then it's like, okay, they always do that.
Speaker 9: But I don't think people really appreciate the fact that,
Speaker 9: first of all, it's six of you, and so I
Speaker 9: almost feel like, all right, So in jam session situations,
Speaker 9: especially when I'm paying with musicians that aren't my guys
Speaker 9: and the roots, I automatically have to go into, Okay,
Speaker 9: this guy's overplayed, So let me dial it down a
Speaker 9: little bit so that it's not too overwhelming. Because my
Speaker 9: fear is that I always make the All Star Game
Speaker 9: analogy that All Star games are very boring because everyone's
Speaker 9: on a hundred, so there's really no sense of drama whatever,
Speaker 9: like when everyone's at one hundred. To me, that's just
Speaker 9: as boring as everyone being amateurs. So how do you
Speaker 9: but there's such a push and pool chemistry with the
Speaker 9: six of you when you're in scenes together, Like what
Speaker 9: do you credit that to the writing of the show
Speaker 9: or do you know to hold back sometimes and let
Speaker 9: Kim get her shine or whatever? And is it like
Speaker 9: a game of basketball in which you guys like instantly
Speaker 9: know like what the other character is going to do,
Speaker 9: Because there's even some moments on that show in which
Speaker 9: I'm like, I wonder if they rehearse that ahead of
Speaker 9: time to get that timing right or that sort of
Speaker 9: thing like it to me, it was effortless.
Speaker 1: So when did it gel for you.
Speaker 5: It jeiled immediately, everybody saw real And I think the
Speaker 5: right analogy is music. I think that if there was
Speaker 5: genius or maybe lightning in a bottle was because they
Speaker 5: recruited performers and other collaborators that have a pinch it
Speaker 5: for individualism and they play well with others. They're soloists
Speaker 5: that play well with others. If you look at Latifa
Speaker 5: Kim Cole's Kim Fields, you could all be soloists. But
Speaker 5: we understand the whole and you got to have your
Speaker 5: self esteem has to be in check.
Speaker 2: You have to know who you are.
Speaker 5: And I think that we were at an age I
Speaker 5: was twenty three coming in, but we had done enough
Speaker 5: in life that we didn't have to win. We knew
Speaker 5: we would win if we all win, if we all won.
Speaker 5: So I think that you want soloists who play well together,
Speaker 5: especially if they respect the ensemble.
Speaker 2: And we did.
Speaker 8: Hey, you talked about being a brown skinned woman and
Speaker 8: woman on the screen. I'm so curious for Maxine Shaw
Speaker 8: in this look. You know, I was just talking to
Speaker 8: somebody earlier. We were talking about your braids, and somebody
Speaker 8: was like, did you know that Erica's braids were made
Speaker 8: out of yard. I was like, yeah, that's we used
Speaker 8: to do that back in the day, especially because hair
Speaker 8: cars more.
Speaker 1: Than the yard.
Speaker 8: But regardless, I'm so curious how you were able to
Speaker 8: pull this off at twenty three and you and fourth
Speaker 8: on the call sheet. This look.
Speaker 2: I came in with that.
Speaker 5: Okay, the white person would have ever allowed me to
Speaker 5: come in with that, And it wasn't because that the
Speaker 5: white thing has nothing to do with It's just that
Speaker 5: she was the lawyer and they would have probably wanted
Speaker 5: her hair pressed. And I came in like that because
Speaker 5: I had worked with Wooby Goldberg. She played my mother,
Speaker 5: I remember now, and we carry with us, all of
Speaker 5: us in the world. Everybody somebody imprints on you. So
Speaker 5: if you look at that hairdo mm hmm, it's jumping jack.
Speaker 2: Flash stop that. And I had just come from that
Speaker 2: uh tour.
Speaker 5: I mean actually, I've just come from a series for ABC,
Speaker 5: and the producers asked me that I shaved my hair
Speaker 5: and I did was nothing. It was natural because my
Speaker 5: hair kept frizzing up and I didn't have a perm
Speaker 5: and so they asked me to shave it off. I
Speaker 5: said I would, and I was growing it out and
Speaker 5: I had a hairdresser in Brooklyn, ebrah Hair Bay, does
Speaker 5: the Nray locks and she said, I know what, I
Speaker 5: can grow your hair out, and so you see the whole.
Speaker 2: Back is shaved and shaved to catch on the top.
Speaker 5: She said, I'll do a cool bob and you can
Speaker 5: do anything with his hair. And I just happen to
Speaker 5: walk in and audition it with that hair and that's Maxine.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 8: And by the time you finished the show, it was
Speaker 8: gorgeously long and layered and h and yeah.
Speaker 2: And it was a wig. Get the fuck that's right?
Speaker 5: Because I kept getting recognized and I couldn't go anywhere,
Speaker 5: so I said, you got.
Speaker 2: To make a wig.
Speaker 3: So yeah, So that was a question earlier were talking about.
Speaker 3: You could see the response from people.
Speaker 1: How did you know? I mean, how did my social media?
Speaker 1: How did you know? Like, Okay, this is really is hitting,
Speaker 1: Like it was instant.
Speaker 5: We were on Sundays and our leading was Martin and
Speaker 5: we beat our leading From then on, M beat the
Speaker 5: number one show.
Speaker 2: And I don't like to say black show, but you
Speaker 2: have a cast of black people and you beat the show.
Speaker 5: They say the Black Show the number one black show
Speaker 5: in America for Latin Latins and Blacks.
Speaker 2: You win. So that's what happened.
Speaker 8: Wow, I can't remember they went because it didn't that
Speaker 8: helped Martin. I can't remember.
Speaker 2: It was kind of messed up.
Speaker 5: They made a Thursday Night, they put under cover New
Speaker 5: York undercover.
Speaker 2: They made like a Black Night, and we were all
Speaker 2: insulted by it.
Speaker 9: Wait a minute, so okay, because I was about to say,
Speaker 9: I always remember Living Single as a Thursday show.
Speaker 1: It started as a Sunday show.
Speaker 2: It was a Sunday show.
Speaker 1: After a Living Color. That's right, No, no, it was.
Speaker 5: Our leading was Martin then was Living Single and Living Color.
Speaker 5: Living Color was on. I don't know if they were
Speaker 5: on another.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah it was.
Speaker 5: They were all Fox No no, no, yeah were But
Speaker 5: then they decided let's put them all on the same night.
Speaker 5: That was Black Night Thursday. Then they flipped Living Single
Speaker 5: to first. We became Martin's leading, gotcha.
Speaker 8: That's what Damon Walliams was fighting. Remember that he tried
Speaker 8: to do that to him and said.
Speaker 1: I think I did not know that.
Speaker 6: Okay, Hi everyone, this is Sugar Steve from Questlov Supreme.
Speaker 6: We are so sorry to do this, but we're ending
Speaker 6: part one right there. Please come back. This Friday, or
Speaker 6: check your podcast feed for Part two with the incredible
Speaker 6: Erica Alexander. In that interview, Erica speaks about working on
Speaker 6: Get Out American Fiction and her role as Riza and
Speaker 6: Devine's mother on Wu Tang in American Saga.
Speaker 1: See You Soon. Thank you for listening to Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 7: This podcast is hosted by a Mere Quest Love Thompson,
Speaker 7: Lias Saint, Clair Fonte, Coleman Sugar, Steve Van Dell, and
Speaker 7: myself Unfave fil Scherm.
Speaker 1: The executive producers.
Speaker 7: Are Meir just Walked into the Goddamn Room, Thompson, Sean
Speaker 7: g and Brian Calhoun. Produced by Britney Benjamin, Jake Pain
Speaker 7: and Liah Sinclair. Edited by Alex Conroy I Know Alice Conroy.
Speaker 7: Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown.
Speaker 1: West Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.