Speaker 1: Quests Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Suprema Son Supremo role called Suprema Son Supremo. Roll call
Speaker 3: Suprema So some supremo role called Suprema Son Sun Supremo roll.
Speaker 1: Call MS Love Supreme. Yeah. The podcast Champ Yeah here
Speaker 1: with Don Lewis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not asking about Cramps.
Speaker 4: Supremo role called Supreme So Supreme.
Speaker 5: Role call.
Speaker 6: My name is Sugar, Yeah, sweet as a muffin. Yeah,
Speaker 6: but I ain't puffing around. Grandma is stuffing.
Speaker 3: Suprema Supremo, roll Supreme Supremo.
Speaker 7: Roll call, My name is Boss Bill, Yeah, keep keeping on. Yeah,
Speaker 7: in the words such word is keeping there is in
Speaker 7: this song.
Speaker 1: Supreme So Supreme, So Supreme.
Speaker 4: Roll call.
Speaker 5: My name is Don. Yeah. You can call me Jalisa, Yeah,
Speaker 5: you can call me Zelma. Yeah, just call me health there.
Speaker 4: Right now, Supremo, Supreme, Supreme, Subpreme.
Speaker 1: Supreme.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 7: And I'm flying your background vocals into every role called
Speaker 7: we can you you out did Charlie Wilson Q TIP
Speaker 7: trying to go rogue on the ladies and gentlemen. Welcome
Speaker 7: to another soon to be classic episode of q LS.
Speaker 7: I'm your host quest Love with Me today is the
Speaker 7: legendary Sugar Steve.
Speaker 1: Wow, Sugar, Hey, I upgraded you to legend appreciate that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I Figu're gonna update my resume right now my
Speaker 6: bio and yeah, put legendary at the time.
Speaker 1: You're the legendary Sugar Steve.
Speaker 5: You know the songs for everything Sugar.
Speaker 1: Already? Wait, do we have to pay for the archies?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I don't know. Okay, anyway, they're all gone.
Speaker 1: We got the boss the bosses, Boss Bill, that's me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a song for that too, William Marry Big.
Speaker 5: I'm only kidding, don't you know?
Speaker 2: All right, So, do we have a theme for two
Speaker 2: negligend fathers who walk out on their kids going out
Speaker 2: for cigarettes for a Yeah, unpaid and fante out in
Speaker 2: the world smoking cigarettes. They promised they'd be back, but
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know. If it's quiet again. Uh,
Speaker 2: if it's rather quiet around here, it's because Layah has
Speaker 2: also taken up smoking cigarettes, and she went out and
Speaker 2: said she'll be back momentarily, so we'll trust that she'll
Speaker 2: be back next episode. Ladies and Gentlemen, Today, as I
Speaker 2: said earlier, should be a rather amazing episode.
Speaker 1: Our guest is a renaissance woman.
Speaker 2: You know, some we always hear the term like a
Speaker 2: renaissance man or whatever, but I'd rarely hear women described
Speaker 2: in the same sort of superlatives. If you will, I
Speaker 2: will say she's multifaceted, multi talented, pretty much as a singer, songwriter,
Speaker 2: as an actress, be it whatever medium of stage, television, movies.
Speaker 2: With a gazillion impressive credit to boot, I will personally
Speaker 2: say that she's probably part of the most life changing
Speaker 2: ensemble for me personally. I'm speaking of her work on
Speaker 2: a different world as Jalisa Vincent, which I could say
Speaker 2: single handedly inspired me not even to go to college,
Speaker 2: but to be more intelligent, Like that's how I can
Speaker 2: you know That's and I'm saying in the most non
Speaker 2: eloquent way possible because Steve is looking at me, like,
Speaker 2: who are you right now? Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
Speaker 2: to Questlo Supreme Don Lewis, Hey, everybody.
Speaker 5: Wow, I'm truly humbled. What a beautiful thing to say.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much.
Speaker 8: I wasn't looking at your funny I'm I'm taking it
Speaker 8: in usually, no, you give me this.
Speaker 6: I'm wondering how you know the last name of the
Speaker 6: character on the show, like usually you remember the first.
Speaker 1: Game Lisa Vincent Taylor.
Speaker 5: Oh say there you go.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's okay. How many names did you have?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: What you have to understand is, I know it's it's
Speaker 2: weird that having binged it in probably a ten day
Speaker 2: period the entire series.
Speaker 1: Wow, I can't. Yeah, I have time on my hands.
Speaker 2: When I'll know, you know, I want to get my
Speaker 2: hair braided, traveling whatnot in the jacuzzi.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, it's conscious image.
Speaker 2: At the local wire, not in my house because I
Speaker 2: can't afford one yet. I will say that, Yeah, the
Speaker 2: show was definitely way ahead of its time as far
Speaker 2: as like subject matter and things that are still relevant
Speaker 2: today and whatnot. But most importantly, I think that when
Speaker 2: it first came on, I mean I don't think I
Speaker 2: had aspirations or even new I was college material or
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. So seeing that on television for
Speaker 2: me probably more life changing than seeing The Cosby Show.
Speaker 2: So and now I know that you guys don't get
Speaker 2: enough praise for that.
Speaker 5: Appreciate that.
Speaker 1: That's my fan worship for the hour, So thank you
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 6: I did watch Different World, but in reading up on it,
Speaker 6: it seems like that shows created almost specifically to talk
Speaker 6: about issues that weren't being talked about on The Cosby Show.
Speaker 6: More so than just like a vehicle for Lisa Bonet
Speaker 6: or spin off.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 5: It was not so much comparatively to The Cosby Show,
Speaker 5: but just what wasn't being talked about today and what
Speaker 5: particularly young people were dealing with and faced with. You know,
Speaker 5: when you go from the shelter of your parents' home
Speaker 5: out into the real world, all of a sudden, so
Speaker 5: many things start smacking you in the face that nobody
Speaker 5: necessarily taught you how to deal with. Yet it's there
Speaker 5: and in your life, in your relationships, all of it.
Speaker 5: And they wanted to keep it authentic to what we
Speaker 5: were dealing with at the time. And like you, I
Speaker 5: went to college and had just graduated just a couple
Speaker 5: of years before. But it wasn't until I started doing
Speaker 5: a Different World World that it clicked for me what
Speaker 5: an HBCU was Because we had those commercials of mind
Speaker 5: is a terrible thing to waste with a person of color,
Speaker 5: and you think, well, that makes sense, everybody should get
Speaker 5: into ed education. I didn't put two and two together
Speaker 5: that that was talking about a specific grouping of schools
Speaker 5: of higher learning for people of color, for af African Americans,
Speaker 5: So even those of us who were in the show
Speaker 5: were learning lessons while we were doing the show. And
Speaker 5: my name, I had never heard the name Jalisa before,
Speaker 5: but I was actually named after the wife of one
Speaker 5: of mister Cosby's best friends, Jalisa Hazard. And my last name, Vincent,
Speaker 5: was the last name of one of our stage managers,
Speaker 5: Chuck Vincent.
Speaker 1: I always wondered about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Chuck, Chuck Vincent's. He was naming people after every everybody.
Speaker 5: Sindbad was named after Walt Hazzard coach Walter Oaks. Yeah,
Speaker 5: oh okay, we were all named after somebody after.
Speaker 7: And there there's an episode where Ron mentions that month
Speaker 7: for by name and he was like a producer on
Speaker 7: the sho or something.
Speaker 5: That was one of our executive producers first season, and
Speaker 5: that was one of the first the pioneers of writing
Speaker 5: for traditionally white shows when he wrote on Mash. He
Speaker 5: wrote for several different shows and was executive producer. So
Speaker 5: we missed him, miss him Dealer. Yeah, Dad was a trailblazer.
Speaker 1: So where were you? Where were you?
Speaker 9: Born.
Speaker 1: Are you Let's Dyet.
Speaker 5: Corner raised Bedstye. We moved six times, but always in Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: So I went from Bedstide to Park Slope, back to
Speaker 5: Bedstide to Crown Heights and ultimately Flat Push, about five
Speaker 5: blocks from Brooklyn College.
Speaker 2: What was your Brooklyn experience? I always ask whenever Brooklyn
Speaker 2: mights come on the show, and I ask, are they
Speaker 2: you know, surprised at how it's transformed since then?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, when I was coming up in Brooklyn, the
Speaker 5: neighbors I had now are not the neighbors I had then.
Speaker 5: Let's still that way. No. Right now, while I'm here working,
Speaker 5: I'm up in Harlem and Harlem and what it used
Speaker 5: to be either I went to high school and home
Speaker 5: I went. That was when music and art was up
Speaker 5: on one hundred and thirty fifth Street in Convent, So
Speaker 5: that was where I went went to high school, from
Speaker 5: the last stop the junction in Brooklyn, right all the
Speaker 5: way to one hundred and thirty fifth Street in Harlem.
Speaker 1: How many hours was that?
Speaker 5: That's about an hour and twenty minutes for me to
Speaker 5: get to school every day.
Speaker 1: What time did you wake up?
Speaker 5: I don't even remember. I don't know if I was
Speaker 5: awake when I woke up, I just knew. I got
Speaker 5: on the train.
Speaker 1: No school busing, No.
Speaker 5: No, I got on the number. Okay, they switched the
Speaker 5: numbers cause the three and the four used to go
Speaker 5: to Flatbush and the two and the five used to
Speaker 5: go to New Lots and Utica. So it took me
Speaker 5: like fourteen fifteen years to even be willing to ride
Speaker 5: the subway again. Once I moved to California and I knew,
Speaker 5: I knew where I was going, Childo's trains took me
Speaker 5: in all kind of wrong directions. I was like, what
Speaker 5: is happening right now? When did the two start going
Speaker 5: to Flatbush? When did that happen? But no, so yeah,
Speaker 5: by an hour twenty minutes every day to get up
Speaker 5: to high school. So that was when music and art
Speaker 5: and performing arts were in two separate, separate buildings. Music
Speaker 5: and art was where you did vocal music, progressive instrumentals
Speaker 5: like the jazz band. Photographic and portrait arts, you know,
Speaker 5: visual arts and performing arts was down in Times Square,
Speaker 5: and that was where you had traditional dance training. It
Speaker 5: was on a thing around forty sixth Street or some
Speaker 5: something like that. So is this the fable LaGuardia School
Speaker 5: or LaGuardia School, a fame fame. So about two years
Speaker 5: after my graduation, class was when they put everybody in
Speaker 5: one building. And now that's the building that's in Lincoln Center. Okay,
Speaker 5: so Brooklyn was very different, humble, honest, grounded, you know, challenging.
Speaker 5: I was bullied a lot when I was a kid,
Speaker 5: but I was also popular. Was I was bullied because
Speaker 5: I was popular, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: So you never had the I'm gonna get my brother
Speaker 1: to fuck you.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah I did, and I have I'm the only girl,
Speaker 5: and I have three brothers, and yeah, they they could
Speaker 5: torment me all they wanted, but no one could mess
Speaker 5: with their little little sis sister. So everybody, no, I'm third,
Speaker 5: I'm third, two older and one younger who thinks he's older.
Speaker 8: I'm sorry. I called your grandma mixed.
Speaker 5: I'm not sorry, You're not sorry, You're not sorry.
Speaker 1: So was it a creative household a musical house?
Speaker 5: I'm the only one. I'm the only one. One of
Speaker 5: my older brothers ultimately got into music, and then he
Speaker 5: started a family. So he got a regular nine to
Speaker 5: five job. He was a paralegal. Now he's in it
Speaker 5: and now he recently retired, so now he plays bass
Speaker 5: in a in a trio whenever they feel like it
Speaker 5: on week weekends and clubs and stuff. But my oldest
Speaker 5: brother grew to be a fireman, so he was a firefighter.
Speaker 5: Now he works as a fire marshal and head security
Speaker 5: for a building on Park Avenue. And my younger brother
Speaker 5: went into loss. He has his own law firm. And
Speaker 5: then there's me singing and dancing and stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, was it was it encouraged or.
Speaker 5: Was it just it was encouraged because again, like I
Speaker 5: like I said, I had three brothers and my family
Speaker 5: is from South America, so very different traditional values of
Speaker 5: what is appropriate for a young girl to do and
Speaker 5: for a young boy to do. But at the same time,
Speaker 5: I wasn't allowed to do anything unless my brothers took me.
Speaker 1: Were you first generation born.
Speaker 5: First generation American citizen? Yes, and your parents are Guyany
Speaker 5: South South America, Guyana. So they came up and my
Speaker 5: mom one day, I was seven, very tall, athletic because
Speaker 5: I was playing handball. That's what you did in Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: You played handball, stickball, skellies in the in the skelly Yes,
Speaker 5: in the street. Kelly's is a street it's street pool,
Speaker 5: but you play it with with bottle tops and you
Speaker 5: pluck it.
Speaker 2: And the amount of times I got in trouble for
Speaker 2: stealing milk capsm's milk.
Speaker 8: Throw a ball at or something, try and flip it.
Speaker 1: Well, no, you would take the milk caps.
Speaker 5: And then or a quarter to give us some more weight.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I would go on the street first. I
Speaker 2: would take her spoons, which is a no no. Go
Speaker 2: out in the street, find a grease spot and then
Speaker 2: dig for tar of the street and put it inside
Speaker 2: the caps. And then we scrubbed the cap on sidewalks
Speaker 2: and go smooth. Freeze it at night and you just dream.
Speaker 2: You put in a freezer and then you dream. So
Speaker 2: think of a milk cap with tar.
Speaker 5: It's like a hockey puck.
Speaker 8: This is why there's no black hockey players. They're all playing.
Speaker 5: So what you do is you draw this big board
Speaker 5: and there are numbers strategically placed around the board, and
Speaker 5: you shoot your cap from number to number and sequential order. Okay,
Speaker 5: you wait, this is a very cultural different. Marbles go
Speaker 5: Marbles and Brooklyn. They kill small children, they swallow them
Speaker 5: and die.
Speaker 10: Okay, shot fire shots fire. Yes, you're right, I couldn't
Speaker 10: afford mom, So you shoot.
Speaker 5: Them around the board. And the thing was when it rained,
Speaker 5: that's when parents got really pissed because we had parque
Speaker 5: floors in our house. So we took that same chalk
Speaker 5: and would draw Skelly's boards indoors, indoors and on my
Speaker 5: mom's parquet floors. We would draw Skelly boards and well,
Speaker 5: I'm here, Wow, I ran, I'm faster than my mama.
Speaker 5: She caught.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you it is my dream.
Speaker 2: Man, just between nineteen seventy eight and like nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: Like I mean, me and my cousin would dream at night,
Speaker 2: like your ways to.
Speaker 1: Get the Sean Riley family like to knock there.
Speaker 2: They had the best caps ever, it like, and you
Speaker 2: couldn't get the milk tops with the stickers on them
Speaker 2: because then that would not give you tracks.
Speaker 1: Yes, yo, man, it was an art to play.
Speaker 5: It was fantastic, dude, it was fantastic.
Speaker 2: Between were speaking of South America. There's there's a you
Speaker 2: know there's a tag tournament in South America. Yes, like
Speaker 2: for real, like think of those like what are those shows?
Speaker 2: Were like Ultimate Warrior like that sort of thing Warrior. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but they have it for tag.
Speaker 5: For tag, they're pretty.
Speaker 2: So imagine like a playground where literally like a guy's
Speaker 2: chasing you and you gotta like jump over a monkey
Speaker 2: bar and you know there's like obstacles there, like you
Speaker 2: might get your head knocked off.
Speaker 7: But so coming home from fifth grade, Okay, I want
Speaker 7: that right running home in fifth grade.
Speaker 2: I want that for Skelly, like you just played. All right,
Speaker 2: So we played stickball. That's where you shave half.
Speaker 4: The ball.
Speaker 5: Is where you take your room and you use it
Speaker 5: as a bat. And remember the pink spalding balls the balls.
Speaker 5: That was the ball that you would use and you
Speaker 5: would pop it or punch ball, because if you couldn't
Speaker 5: afford a stick, you would take the ball it. You
Speaker 5: would take the ball and punch it and you would
Speaker 5: run run the bases. All right, So we were very
Speaker 5: creative children, thank you.
Speaker 1: We would take that.
Speaker 5: We didn't need expensive things like marble.
Speaker 2: So you would play with the pink pol See. We
Speaker 2: would take a razor and then yeah, gets.
Speaker 5: See little children in my neighborhood weren't allowed to play
Speaker 5: with razors.
Speaker 1: Well, we would have make it. We would cut it
Speaker 1: in half. Uh, huh.
Speaker 2: In Philadelphia, you played stickball with half I guess so
Speaker 2: you wouldn't ring a window.
Speaker 5: Oh we didn't care.
Speaker 1: Wow, so you would have to you would throw half
Speaker 1: of a tennis ball or half of a one of
Speaker 1: those pink bouncy.
Speaker 5: Yeah huh, and then play stickball that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah damn, we just make it a street. We ain't
Speaker 2: even getting the nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Talk about the street. You ever play kingball?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 5: What's king kingball?
Speaker 2: Kingball is like all right, if you have a sidewalk,
Speaker 2: it's it's sort of like, uh, you need four people
Speaker 2: to play it, and each person gets a designated square
Speaker 2: of a sidewalk. Think of like tennis with a basketball,
Speaker 2: So the goal is not to hit the boundary of
Speaker 2: the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: It's a long exploit.
Speaker 5: It sounds like it.
Speaker 1: I feel like I need to be eight years old
Speaker 1: to understand what it is. It's a Philly thing.
Speaker 5: Okay, wait, okay. Two more favorite games as a kid
Speaker 5: high Water low Water? Did you play high water low Water?
Speaker 1: I remember this.
Speaker 5: You use a rope and you lay it on the
Speaker 5: ground and you take your turn stepping over. Then still,
Speaker 5: after everybody goes, you raise it a little high and
Speaker 5: then and then you start then it becomes like the
Speaker 5: high jump, and then one concrete not safe, and then the.
Speaker 1: Other version of this.
Speaker 8: Well, I was just that just sounds like the reverse
Speaker 8: of limbo.
Speaker 5: Limbo limbo exactly exactly because your caribbean hr catch a.
Speaker 1: Girl, freaking girl. Anyone know.
Speaker 5: Something else that's a child molestation? Now, all right, one
Speaker 5: more game. How about hot peas and butter.
Speaker 1: I've heard this referred to in every rap song, but
Speaker 1: never knew what butter is.
Speaker 5: You would take a belt and you would hide it somewhere, okay,
Speaker 5: and you were the person who was it in control
Speaker 5: of hiding it. Then everyone else had to go and
Speaker 5: try to find the belt. And so if people were
Speaker 5: anywhere near where you hit, you go hot, hot hot,
Speaker 5: if they went away cold cold, cold, So you would
Speaker 5: yell after the belt was hit, Hot Peas and butter,
Speaker 5: come and get yourself, and the people would go looking
Speaker 5: for it, and here yesterday, come and get yourself. And
Speaker 5: then people would go and looking for the belt. And
Speaker 5: whoever found the belt, you tried to keep it hidden
Speaker 5: and you would run and hit everybody with Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wasn't playing that. I was not playing that game.
Speaker 5: And then you had to run and not get hit
Speaker 5: with them.
Speaker 1: That don't sound fun. It sounds like my child is
Speaker 1: the worst way possible. It was hilarious, like me trying
Speaker 1: to hide a belt from somebody.
Speaker 5: I do that.
Speaker 1: Three weeks before every report. So what do you all right?
Speaker 5: So what do you do play anymore?
Speaker 2: You're so multi faceted with your talent. What do you
Speaker 2: consider yourself is at least at fourteen fifteen when you're
Speaker 2: developing your talent?
Speaker 1: Are you a singer? Are you a poet? Are you
Speaker 1: an actress? Are you dancer?
Speaker 5: Like? I was all of it? Quite frankly, I was.
Speaker 5: I was singing. I started singing at four, I was
Speaker 5: lead singer in a band at fourteen. I had my
Speaker 5: about four or five poems published in a compilation book
Speaker 5: of young writers. By the time I was fifteen, I
Speaker 5: was dancing on the stage at Carnegie Hall and Brooklyn
Speaker 5: Academy and music by the time I was nine.
Speaker 8: So I was.
Speaker 5: I was all of that. So I never considered that
Speaker 5: I had to choose. What I believed in, what the
Speaker 5: environment I was raised in was that you had to
Speaker 5: maximize everything. It was called being a trip triple threat.
Speaker 5: You had to sing, dance, and act in order to
Speaker 5: be viable in the business. And you asked me, was
Speaker 5: it encouraged? You know, going back to how we got
Speaker 5: into childhood game was my mother looked at me. I
Speaker 5: was seven years old, really tall, really fit, playing all
Speaker 5: these games with all these boys and everybody in the street.
Speaker 5: She realized, you know what, I have to get my
Speaker 5: child out of the middle of all of these boys
Speaker 5: and give her something that she can do on her own.
Speaker 5: And my mom had a really great friend, missus Green,
Speaker 5: who had a daughter who was about five six years
Speaker 5: older than I was, who was dancing. So she took
Speaker 5: me to a dance recital at the Academy of Music.
Speaker 5: I said, ma, I want to do that. She said,
Speaker 5: are you sure? I said yes. So she enrolled me
Speaker 5: in dance class. And I was riding the bus from
Speaker 5: my house which was in on mid Where were we
Speaker 5: at that time. We were on Midwood Street in Crown
Speaker 5: Heights at that time, and I had to walk three
Speaker 5: blocks over to the bus on New York Avenue get
Speaker 5: on the bus at a certain time so I could
Speaker 5: ride to the next stop where this young lady would
Speaker 5: get on the bus with me and we would ride
Speaker 5: down to Pacific Street and Saratoga to Miss Elaine Christian's
Speaker 5: dance studio, And I did that once a week until
Speaker 5: I was fifteen years old.
Speaker 1: Where's e Lane Christian's dance studio.
Speaker 5: It was on Pacific right near Saratoga, So at that
Speaker 5: young age, I was on the city bus going to
Speaker 5: and from dance classes. So that was kind of how
Speaker 5: that started for me was my mom wanted to encourage
Speaker 5: me to have my own thing. That took me out
Speaker 5: of the middle of being around all those boys all
Speaker 5: of the time.
Speaker 6: Do you find, sorry, Marin, do you find that that
Speaker 6: whole way of thought is sort of gone? Where the
Speaker 6: triple threat thing? Because it seems like so many of
Speaker 6: our of the people in the past who have who
Speaker 6: were in entertainment were triple threats.
Speaker 8: Yes, and it's that. Is that still a prevalent way
Speaker 8: of looking at things?
Speaker 5: You know? I don't know that it's a prevalent way
Speaker 5: of looking at things. What I have learned is that
Speaker 5: the way the business continues to evolve, the powers that be,
Speaker 5: the them or the they are more comfortable putting you
Speaker 5: into a box. So I know a lot of people
Speaker 5: who you see starring on television as actors are really
Speaker 5: incredible singers or dancers, and you you you learned when
Speaker 5: they get the opportunity that they have all these other gifts.
Speaker 5: But because of the way the industry is now, they
Speaker 5: kind of say, well, if we want a dramatic lead,
Speaker 5: we need to hire this person. If we want to comedically,
Speaker 5: we need to hire this person. So you don't necessarily
Speaker 5: get to know what other pe people do. But no,
Speaker 5: I don't think it's a requirement like it used to be.
Speaker 5: I don't think so. Oh you googling stuff.
Speaker 2: No, only because your story is very similar to prodigy
Speaker 2: mom deeps. I was trying to figure out if whether
Speaker 2: or not that was his grandmother's dance studio.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, but it wasn't. Ok it wasn't. Well wait,
Speaker 1: I still don't know, because now I almost feel like
Speaker 1: it is the stories to.
Speaker 5: Who used to be a big dancer at the Cotton Club.
Speaker 5: She danced with Bill rob Robinson, bo Jangles and you
Speaker 5: know all of that. So that was her legacy and
Speaker 5: she passed it on us. And we were there all
Speaker 5: day on Saturday doing jazz, tap, ballet, African dance, and
Speaker 5: on Saturday mornings you could always count on at least
Speaker 5: two thirds of the students running into the kitchen where
Speaker 5: the TV was to watch Soul Train.
Speaker 8: So that's the dance part. So how'd you start with
Speaker 8: the singing and the actor the singing?
Speaker 5: I started at four. I just sang what I used
Speaker 5: to love, musical movies. I still do music. And there
Speaker 5: were music There were movies that would come on every year,
Speaker 5: like The Wizard of Oz, March of the Wooden Soldiers,
Speaker 5: there was a you know, Stormy Weather. There were different
Speaker 5: movies that would come on. You could count on it
Speaker 5: at certain times of the year. So I would sing along.
Speaker 5: I knew all the songs, I knew all the dances.
Speaker 5: I knew all of it. There in my living room,
Speaker 5: and my mom used to teach. She was a subsubstitute
Speaker 5: teacher at an elementary school not far from from the house.
Speaker 5: So after kindergarten, I would go and sit at the
Speaker 5: school in a way for my mom to be done
Speaker 5: before I could go home. And they were doing their
Speaker 5: their spring concert pageant, and I asked if I could
Speaker 5: be in it, and all the teachers knew I could sing.
Speaker 5: I was young, I was cute. It was four going
Speaker 5: on five, and they said, yes, you can be in
Speaker 5: the concert, and I worked on the song getting to
Speaker 5: Know You from the King, and I with hand gesture exactly,
Speaker 5: you sang it better than I did. But then we
Speaker 5: got to the concert and I was amazing. I have
Speaker 5: to admit. I was phenomenal in the rehearsals. And I
Speaker 5: got on stage and saw other people instill on stage
Speaker 5: air froze. It's like there are people here watching me.
Speaker 5: And I got the first few words out and I
Speaker 5: stood there and the teacher was below me trying to
Speaker 5: remind me to move my I painfully got through it,
Speaker 5: and then they said okay, all right, great, and then
Speaker 5: I sat down and then I started crying and said
Speaker 5: I can do it better. Please look, just sit down,
Speaker 5: little girl, Just sit sit down. And so I taught
Speaker 5: myself to never be that frightened again. That was the
Speaker 5: first and last time I'd ever scared myself so much
Speaker 5: that I couldn't do what I was really desiring to do.
Speaker 5: And their photos.
Speaker 2: This is highly unusual because normally there's I guess the
Speaker 2: good word is uh light encouragement. The bad word is
Speaker 2: sort of like Joe Jackson esque, like there's always a
Speaker 2: drill sergeant no, but this is this is a highly
Speaker 2: unusual to hear that confidence coming from someone under the
Speaker 2: age of ten.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that it isn't enforced from.
Speaker 5: No my mom. That was not my mom. My mom
Speaker 5: was like, just stay out of trouble. Okay, I gotta
Speaker 5: go to work. Stay out of trouble. I gotta go
Speaker 5: to work. And uh my brothers were like, yeah, you're
Speaker 5: real cute, but we need to need her now to
Speaker 5: play handball doing We need you to run the fourth
Speaker 5: leg in the relafe. So I was like, don okay,
Speaker 5: that's great, get off your toeto shoes and come on
Speaker 5: over here and run this race because this boy don't
Speaker 5: believe you. You can beat him. And I got five
Speaker 5: dollars on you. That's pretty fast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I ran track to So you graduated high school?
Speaker 1: What what age? What year?
Speaker 5: I was sixteen when I graduated from high school.
Speaker 1: You got skipped.
Speaker 5: I got skipped twice. I was in the first grade
Speaker 5: for about six months and went right to second grade,
Speaker 5: and then I never went to eighth grade. I went
Speaker 5: from seventh grade to ninth grade.
Speaker 1: She's like the best of every artist we ever had, Lewis.
Speaker 5: So. Yeah, So I graduated high school at sixteen, like
Speaker 5: I said, going to school up in Harlem, and had
Speaker 5: already been singing in bands and clubs and such, and
Speaker 5: you know, young and cute. But I knew I wanted
Speaker 5: to do this as a career, and I also knew
Speaker 5: I wanted to get out of New York. My mom
Speaker 5: and I had a really contententious relationship at the time.
Speaker 5: You know, she's from a different country with different values
Speaker 5: and understanding of how things are supposed to be done.
Speaker 5: And again, like I said, there were beliefs of what
Speaker 5: was appropriate for a girl and what was appropriate for
Speaker 5: a boy, and boys rule in those South American cultures,
Speaker 5: and so.
Speaker 1: In her eyes, you should have been getting ready for
Speaker 1: her husband and a housewife.
Speaker 5: You know, I never got that speech. I never got religious. Yeah,
Speaker 5: very very My family is said seven day adventist.
Speaker 1: Yikes. Yeah, wait a minute's not adding up.
Speaker 5: Well, there you go. So there's more to the story.
Speaker 5: There's more to this, I am.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 5: No, Well, we had devotions at home every day. My
Speaker 5: mom had us read the Bible, read scripture, Yeah, seeing
Speaker 5: hymns when when we could. Because okay, see you get
Speaker 5: into a whole other part of the story. The reality
Speaker 5: is my going to dance class every Saturday was a
Speaker 5: real issue for the family. It caused real problems. My mom,
Speaker 5: like I said, saw it as a way to help
Speaker 5: save and encourage and empower me. My family would tell
Speaker 5: my mom and tell me even when I was small,
Speaker 5: they're going to the extended family, not not my brother's not.
Speaker 5: You know, the truth is is that you are sending
Speaker 5: this child straight to hell by not having her in church, etcetera, etcetera,
Speaker 5: and sending her into the demon's pit. This entertainment stuff
Speaker 5: is where the devil lives, etcetera, et cetera. How do
Speaker 5: you tell that to a seven year old child? But
Speaker 5: they managed along the way. Like I said, my mom
Speaker 5: really reinforced in us that we have what we have
Speaker 5: by the grace of God, and that it is a blessing,
Speaker 5: it is not a curse. I wouldn't be able to
Speaker 5: do what I do if it wasn't a gift from God.
Speaker 5: So look at it that way and please shut out
Speaker 5: the other noise. And ultimately, as we grew, the family
Speaker 5: stopped saying certain things. But you know, you couldn't ignore
Speaker 5: or forget really the rift that was the cause and
Speaker 5: the pain that that was caused. But you know, everybody grows,
Speaker 5: you learn, you love, you forgive, and you realize that
Speaker 5: there were good things that come out of whatever, as
Speaker 5: long as that's what your intent is.
Speaker 2: I was going to say not even the harp on it,
Speaker 2: but I was just like, that's why I was so amazed.
Speaker 2: I was like, wait a minute, I've never heard of
Speaker 2: a situation in which, especially with a black household, in
Speaker 2: which like religion or some sort of obstacle is sort
Speaker 2: of thrown in your path of you finding your talent.
Speaker 5: There were a few, okay, okay, so the guys in
Speaker 5: Take six, who we ultimately became really great friends, we
Speaker 5: used to be able to share those kinds of stories
Speaker 5: because they're adventist. Also, what you didn't know that, Yes,
Speaker 5: the guys in Take six were.
Speaker 1: Advant discipline with their.
Speaker 5: You know, so we were able to talk about that
Speaker 5: because our upbringing stories were very, very similar. But you know,
Speaker 5: but now that we are where we are, we use
Speaker 5: our platform to inspire, empower to be a blessing at
Speaker 5: least you hope so to others. You know, in a
Speaker 5: way that I may not have been received had I
Speaker 5: not taken this journey. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2: To be so young as a graduate of high school,
Speaker 2: how hard was it to adjust to adult life?
Speaker 5: Do you know what? I got thrown into the deep
Speaker 5: end because I left New York and went to school
Speaker 5: down at the University of Miami in Miami at sixteen,
Speaker 5: and the university almost did not accept me because I
Speaker 5: was so young. Yeah, but I had a grandmother who
Speaker 5: helped raise us. Actually we lived with my grandmother for
Speaker 5: almost two years when we were younger. That's a whole
Speaker 5: other story how we ended up there. But to go
Speaker 5: to college, my mom couldn't afford to send me. My
Speaker 5: dad would have been able to help, but he chose
Speaker 5: not to. He's like, you're too young, You're going to
Speaker 5: go get pregnant and do all of that. And I
Speaker 5: was like, but you know, you haven't lived in our
Speaker 5: house since I was seven.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 5: Whatever. So I got another aunt to co sign for
Speaker 5: a student loan for me, and I packed my stuff
Speaker 5: and I left and they turned around and go, wait,
Speaker 5: she really left. I said, yeah, I told you I
Speaker 5: was leaving. I'm going. So I went to college. So
Speaker 5: between student loans, college work study was how I paid
Speaker 5: for school. And so I got there and now I'm
Speaker 5: responsible to pay back a loan. I'm responsible to pay
Speaker 5: for my tuition, my room and board, as well as
Speaker 5: you know, get through my classes. And as a performance major.
Speaker 5: I went as a voicemade major, so in music and art,
Speaker 5: I was singing opera, so I was classically trained for
Speaker 5: many years. I played cello for almost seven years. You
Speaker 5: didn't have that on.
Speaker 1: Good Yeah, what did you miss?
Speaker 5: I played cello for about seven years and sang opera.
Speaker 5: So when I went to u of M. When they
Speaker 5: advised you for your major, that was back in the
Speaker 5: day when you had cards, and they would write and
Speaker 5: you have to take this classes, and you get a
Speaker 5: signature from your departpartment head to authorize you to go
Speaker 5: and register for these classes. They wrote a bunch of
Speaker 5: classes I had already taken in high school, like music
Speaker 5: theory and sight singing and all those kinds of things.
Speaker 5: So I refused to take them again. So when I
Speaker 5: left her, don't judge me. Why no, man, Look, this
Speaker 5: is money. College is expensive colleges. But this is this
Speaker 5: is what I did. When I left her office, I
Speaker 5: said thank you very much. And it wasn't my fault.
Speaker 5: She wrote it in pencil. I just happened to have
Speaker 5: an racer in my bag. So because I'm a good student,
Speaker 5: I came to school prepared. So I took my ras.
Speaker 5: She prepared, no, So I rased half of what she
Speaker 5: gave me, like music theory one oh one in sight ransom,
Speaker 5: not taking that. I'm not taking that. And I wrote
Speaker 5: in dance classes, I wrote in acting classes. And I
Speaker 5: made my own curriculum.
Speaker 1: I brought my pencil.
Speaker 5: Wow, and I made my own curriculum. And I was like,
Speaker 5: that's more like it, because that was what I was
Speaker 5: already accustomed to doing, going to dance class regular well,
Speaker 5: well not entirely. About two and a half months into school,
Speaker 5: I got called into the dean's office. Yeah, it was
Speaker 5: like Clint Clinton like. I called into the dean's office
Speaker 5: and she said, okay, we were concerned about admitting you
Speaker 5: in the first place, and this is going to be
Speaker 5: your one and only warning. I said, what said we're
Speaker 5: about to say and send you home? I said, well why,
Speaker 5: They said, because you're not going to classes. We can't
Speaker 5: have that, young lady, Da da da da da. I said, well,
Speaker 5: what of course, I'm going to my class, and I'm
Speaker 5: going to my classes. I'm pulling a four point o gpa.
Speaker 5: I don't understand the problem. Well, you haven't been to
Speaker 5: this class, this class discussing this sid I'm not in
Speaker 5: that class. I'm in this class, this classic class, and
Speaker 5: this class. And say, well, who told you to do that?
Speaker 5: So well, nobody told me to do it. It's my money.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna take the class.
Speaker 1: I want my friend.
Speaker 5: You know, I've built empowered at sixteen years old. So
Speaker 5: she made me.
Speaker 1: Sitting this hall.
Speaker 5: She is sure, so she may be sitting the hallway
Speaker 5: for a minute, and then call me back in the
Speaker 5: office and said, okay, young lady, you had no way
Speaker 5: of knowing this, but the School of Music and the
Speaker 5: School of Fine Arts had been in conversations for like
Speaker 5: a couple of years about starting a new degree program
Speaker 5: for people like you. So would you be interested in
Speaker 5: being the guinea pig for this new degree program? And
Speaker 5: I said, well, what would I have to do? She
Speaker 5: said basically what you already doing?
Speaker 1: Like oh, they had to respect it.
Speaker 5: And I said, well, okay, then all right, so what
Speaker 5: happens now? Can I go? She goes, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 5: You need to prepare. You have four days to prepare
Speaker 5: for an audition, I said, audition for what she said,
Speaker 5: so we can officially start this degree program. So I
Speaker 5: had to do a forty five minute jury for the
Speaker 5: entire faculty of the School of Music and the School
Speaker 5: of Fine Arts. I had to choreograph a dance. I
Speaker 5: had to do a comedic and a dramatic monologue. I
Speaker 5: had to do arias in French and Italian. I had
Speaker 5: to do a Broadway show tune. I had to do
Speaker 5: a jazz tune. There was one other thing. I can't
Speaker 5: remember what I had to do. Yeah, took forty five minutes.
Speaker 5: How many days one day? All of that I had
Speaker 5: four days to prepare.
Speaker 1: Were they stacking just to be like, well, I don't know.
Speaker 5: But what ended up resulting out of that was after
Speaker 5: the jury, they were now officially a to start this
Speaker 5: degree program. So I'm the founder and first graduate of
Speaker 5: the musical theater degree program at the university. They no, no,
Speaker 5: even and after a few years they conveniently forget to
Speaker 5: mention that I had anything to do with it. Man,
Speaker 5: you something every now and then it comes up or
Speaker 5: you know whatever. But uh, yeah, so that year that's
Speaker 5: been going thirty plus years strong, through the School of Music.
Speaker 5: They've graduated Tony Winners, Grammy Winners, Oscar winners, and in
Speaker 5: the last four or five years they've transferred it from
Speaker 5: the School of Music to the School of finn out
Speaker 5: Fine Arts now has the degree pro program.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask in Brooklyn growing up?
Speaker 2: Yes, were there any other notable Brooklyn nights that we
Speaker 2: would know now that you went to school with?
Speaker 5: Or like our next door neighbor Dwayne Well, we call
Speaker 5: him Dwayne because his first name was Ralph ended up
Speaker 5: being young Michael on Good Times Ralph Carter Carter.
Speaker 1: Wow, wow, l Carter. That's amazing. Yep. I saw him
Speaker 1: three months ago. Yeah, yeah, three months ago.
Speaker 5: He was our next next tour neighbor. Other than that, no,
Speaker 5: not not in my neighborhood, not not while I was there.
Speaker 1: So the neighborhood kids weren't even like, like mine died in't.
Speaker 5: We're playing stickball and skellyesdan't care. They didn't care. Oh,
Speaker 5: but you know what I recently found out. A year
Speaker 5: or two ago, I was doing This is Us, like
Speaker 5: one of my favorite shows on television, And when I
Speaker 5: got there, I was so excited to be I was
Speaker 5: happy to be there, and the cast was like, oh
Speaker 5: my god, Luk's on our show. Can you take preatures
Speaker 5: with us? And I'm thinking, like, because I was going
Speaker 5: to ask to take pictures with you guys. So we're
Speaker 5: taking pictures and Susan Kleecki Watson, who plays the sister
Speaker 5: the wife on the show Ramblers White, isn't she fantastic?
Speaker 5: She hangs around because she was actually finished before I
Speaker 5: was called in to work, so she hung around to
Speaker 5: meet me. So we're taking selfies and we're exchanging numbers
Speaker 5: so we can send each other the pictures that we
Speaker 5: take and we're sitting on my trailer like talking for
Speaker 5: half an hour. So she finally leaves. I get called
Speaker 5: to the set and I call a couple of friends
Speaker 5: of mine. They say, and I told them what the
Speaker 5: day was like, and they said, Susan's my great friend,
Speaker 5: and Da da da, and Doulay Hill was like, that's
Speaker 5: my great friend, etcetera, etcetera. And so I called her
Speaker 5: back and said, I didn't know you knew Dulay and
Speaker 5: she says, yes, he's a great friend. And I said, okay, great.
Speaker 5: She calls me back two minutes later she said, okay,
Speaker 5: look I'm not trying to be weird or anything. But
Speaker 5: I sent the picture that we took to my family,
Speaker 5: and my brother text me back and said, you know
Speaker 5: that's our cousin, right, What I said, I'm sorry what
Speaker 5: she said? Yes, she said, do you have an aunt
Speaker 5: so and so? I said, I don't know, I've never
Speaker 5: heard that name before. She said, well, your aunt's so
Speaker 5: and so married my uncle so and so and they
Speaker 5: live Trinidad and this and that's what what that in
Speaker 5: the world. So I called my mom, mad, we have
Speaker 5: a lot of Yes, that's my first cousin. Shamarried a
Speaker 5: mon from trinidashall, never call him back again. But this
Speaker 5: is not this and not this and that. So I
Speaker 5: call her back and said, oh my gosh, we're like
Speaker 5: second cousins. First. It's hilarious, and we keep talking. Come
Speaker 5: to find out that she's from Brooklyn, grew up within
Speaker 5: a mile of where I grew up in Brooklyn, and
Speaker 5: still has family in a place there.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: And also, you just answered another question from me always
Speaker 2: you know, you had a very convincing island accent that
Speaker 2: you tried on a different world once.
Speaker 1: And now I was like, yo, she's really good. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that, okay, because that's where my family see
Speaker 1: and I time.
Speaker 5: Yes. So, as I mentioned, I was first generation in America.
Speaker 5: My mom was the oldest of eight, so one at
Speaker 5: a time, she sponsored her siblings and her parents to
Speaker 5: come up to this date. So now when all of
Speaker 5: our cousins, when all of the cousins get to get together,
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, all of us have accents.
Speaker 1: Your accents.
Speaker 5: Oh man, all of a sudden, all of us have accents,
Speaker 5: and we're talking like our parents and such. It's really
Speaker 5: very very funny.
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 2: So by at least by twenty did you have like focus? Okay,
Speaker 2: I want to be a singer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was already doing it.
Speaker 1: But I mean it's like you did everything at once.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure out what has the edge? What
Speaker 2: has the fifty one to forty nine percent edge?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 5: Probably music, singing more than a singing and writing more
Speaker 5: than anything, because that's what I was booking jobs. As.
Speaker 2: So, what was your first well you usually on the show,
Speaker 2: I asked about your first Well, first of all, who
Speaker 2: do you who's your hero, your idol, your your.
Speaker 1: When as far as your craft is concerned. Who do
Speaker 1: you look up to?
Speaker 5: Wow? I actually had a few, Okay, actually had a few.
Speaker 5: Judy Garland was one early on. It was amazing to
Speaker 5: me the power and passion in her voice, and when
Speaker 5: I would watch her movies. Again, Remember I used to
Speaker 5: watch a lot of old movies like Take Me to
Speaker 5: Saint Louis and The Wizard of Oz and all that
Speaker 5: kind of stuff, and we weren't in a lot of
Speaker 5: those movies. We often had little, small segments. So Lena
Speaker 5: Horne was a big influence to me. The Nicholas brothers
Speaker 5: were a huge influence to me as I got older.
Speaker 5: It was people like Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder, Elton John.
Speaker 1: You remember the first record you ever purchased?
Speaker 5: No, I don't. I remember the first ones. One of
Speaker 5: the first ones that my brothers purchased that I used
Speaker 5: to like to play all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: they bought them. I just played them. It was The
Speaker 5: Rolling Stones, and I remember it. Time is on my side,
Speaker 5: Yes it is. I had no idea what they were saying,
Speaker 5: but it was just a funky.
Speaker 1: Line to me that brothers were into the stones.
Speaker 5: They were into the stones and Smokey Robinson. I remember
Speaker 5: those two being the first record that I would pla
Speaker 5: a lot, and Smokey's record that they had was if
Speaker 5: there's a smile on my face, it's only that trying
Speaker 5: to fool the public. But when it comes down, the tears.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So yeah, those those songs and songs like Raising in
Speaker 5: the Grass is a blass baby. Can you did all
Speaker 5: those kinds of things you never knew what they really could.
Speaker 2: Be?
Speaker 5: Your first concert, uh, the one that I watched, Yeah,
Speaker 5: and uh no, no, no, thank you for reminding me that,
Speaker 5: like a moment of I want to do that, like
Speaker 5: your first content, very first concert. No. I remember my
Speaker 5: very first Broadway show. It was The Whiz and it
Speaker 5: was Stephanie Mills, and by the time she got to
Speaker 5: be a lion, I was a puddle. She was absolutely phenomenal.
Speaker 5: I couldn't believe all of this sound and all of
Speaker 5: this talent as a dancer, as an actress was coming
Speaker 5: out of this little, tiny person. And I look at
Speaker 5: my grandmother and I was like, that's what I want
Speaker 5: to do that. I want to do that. And to
Speaker 5: quite frankly, you know, over the years, some of your
Speaker 5: idols become your friends and your colleagues, which to me
Speaker 5: just kind of really blows my mind. The fact that
Speaker 5: when I met Gladys Knight and Lina Horne, they knew
Speaker 5: my name, right, you know, Lena. I just stood there crying,
Speaker 5: and people there's pictures.
Speaker 1: Like she was she on the show, when you were
Speaker 1: on the show. I remember when she was on the show.
Speaker 5: She did a guest spot, but I met her a
Speaker 5: few years before she got to do it. It was
Speaker 5: at the opening night of Fences, and everybody was crowding
Speaker 5: her wanting to take her picture, wanting an autograph, and
Speaker 5: I stood there like waiting my turn, like frozen. And
Speaker 5: she looked and to everybody, wait, stop, excuse me, excuse me,
Speaker 5: you come here. And I walked over to her and
Speaker 5: she grabbed me by the face and said, baby, you
Speaker 5: on that show, aren't you? I said, still show? And
Speaker 5: she says that show. She says, y'all are doing such
Speaker 5: a beautiful thing. Your name is Dawn, right, And tears
Speaker 5: just started coming down my face and she said, you
Speaker 5: keep doing what you were doing. I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 5: And I could I really couldn't even speak, and uh,
Speaker 5: fortunately somebody got a photo of us standing there with
Speaker 5: this like huge grin on my face.
Speaker 2: And Yeah, that's crazy because you never think that they
Speaker 2: know you're alive or anything.
Speaker 5: Why would she? Yeah, but it's like you people her,
Speaker 5: People like her just inspired me to do what it
Speaker 5: is I do now. And when you get to know
Speaker 5: them and learn what they survived through and what they
Speaker 5: over over overcame, and what mattered to them and how
Speaker 5: they used their voice and they did it with grace
Speaker 5: and with power and with determination. It really I could
Speaker 5: not have asked for better examples like her and Gladys
Speaker 5: who's like my auntie now, and Natalie Cole and Nancy
Speaker 5: William Wilson and Stevie as well, and to teach you
Speaker 5: how to do this thing with grace and with appreciation right,
Speaker 5: because it could really take you in a whole other space.
Speaker 5: If you're not careful, you start to think it's all
Speaker 5: about you.
Speaker 8: Welcome back to the Sugar Steve Show.
Speaker 1: So, Steve, when you first met me, did you go
Speaker 1: back to New York after you graduated? Yeah?
Speaker 5: You know, it was my habit that going back and going.
Speaker 5: Like I said, I was bullied a lot in elementary
Speaker 5: school and my teachers were just such blessings and encouragement
Speaker 5: to me that when I graduated from elementary school and
Speaker 5: I got to give a shout out to Barbara Ames
Speaker 5: and Karen Fogler, to the most amazing teachers anyone could
Speaker 5: ever have. They still come to everything I do today
Speaker 5: to this day, since elementary school, since first grade, and
Speaker 5: Barbara Ames was actually one of the teachers. Barbara and
Speaker 5: Karen were teachers of Lynn Manuel Miranda as well, and
Speaker 5: he credits both of them as well as depositing into
Speaker 5: his life to inspire him to do what he does.
Speaker 5: So all of you teachers out there, mad love, mad love,
Speaker 5: mad love. I know you know situations are tense or
Speaker 5: can be to some schools these days, but I so
Speaker 5: appreciate you much love for all that you do for
Speaker 5: inspiring and educating us and caring for us beyond beyond.
Speaker 5: So anyway, so when I graduated and went to junior High,
Speaker 5: I would come back to elementary school just to visit
Speaker 5: them and say hi. I would do Christmas concerts in
Speaker 5: the faculty lounge and then I would talk to the
Speaker 5: kids and say I used to sit right there in
Speaker 5: this class, and don't be a bully, and if anything
Speaker 5: happens to you tell your tea teacher because they really
Speaker 5: want to help, and they go, okay, okay, what's junior
Speaker 5: high school? Like okay, great. Then I went to high
Speaker 5: school and go back to my junior high in elementary school,
Speaker 5: and this became my habit. When I went to college,
Speaker 5: I came back. That was my habit. Then after college,
Speaker 5: now I'm releasing records, I'm doing shows off and on Broadway.
Speaker 5: Then I book a TV show. Now I'm in California.
Speaker 5: So when I get an opportunity, I come back home,
Speaker 5: and so is my habit. I went back to my school.
Speaker 5: I went back to music and art. The difference was
Speaker 5: I used to do it because it made me feel
Speaker 5: good and stay connected and grounded. This time, I in
Speaker 5: the lobby of the school. It's like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: it's Julisa and kids came from everywhere and they swarmed
Speaker 5: me in the lobby. They had to get security and
Speaker 5: the police to escort me to the principal's office. Then
Speaker 5: they made an announcement, we need you to please get
Speaker 5: out of the hallways, go back to your class. Miss
Speaker 5: Lewis will come and see you, but you need to
Speaker 5: go back to your classes. So they had an extended
Speaker 5: day of school that day, and I literally live to
Speaker 5: every class and answer questions because in a place like
Speaker 5: music and art, I'm living the dream that everybody in
Speaker 5: that school has. So that's what made a mental shift
Speaker 5: for me that I actually had something to offer, that
Speaker 5: it wasn't just about me, but that I could hopefully
Speaker 5: answer some questions and be a support or an encouragement
Speaker 5: to somebody else.
Speaker 2: See, you've achieved something that I just recently got to
Speaker 2: get a taste of. Because early in my career, like
Speaker 2: they would have me come and speak to schools or whatever,
Speaker 2: but I would get like questions, like.
Speaker 1: You over there, Yeah, so do you know like real
Speaker 1: famous people. Do you know Andre three thousand? Yeah? Do
Speaker 1: you know Eric Abat? Yeah? I produced her first record?
Speaker 4: You did what?
Speaker 1: And literally so it's like kids are so cool. I
Speaker 1: hate it.
Speaker 2: I hate it until until my school. Well, first of all,
Speaker 2: I had to raise money for them, Like I gave
Speaker 2: him a whole grip. I raised money for them, and
Speaker 2: then like they threw like me and Tarika, you know,
Speaker 2: a roots day or whatever, and then I felt like
Speaker 2: semi validated, like oh, welcome back.
Speaker 1: But it came at a price. But I always that
Speaker 1: whole like go back to school and.
Speaker 2: Speech to this student, Yes they love you, and like
Speaker 2: kids like nah, they just want to know if I
Speaker 2: know Lil Wayne.
Speaker 1: All the questions are hilarious.
Speaker 5: Well, I just got re connected with a group of
Speaker 5: U of M students recently, literally recent as yesterday on Monday,
Speaker 5: the U of M. There's the seniors from the drama
Speaker 5: department were up here doing a performance, a showcase you know,
Speaker 5: for I guess casting directors and et cetera, cause they
Speaker 5: were about to go into the world and want to
Speaker 5: do this profession fessionally. So I got invited to go
Speaker 5: to the showcase. So I went. And I've gone back
Speaker 5: to the U a couple of times over the years
Speaker 5: and done master classes and things like like that. So
Speaker 5: I went and saw it. So I was asking while
Speaker 5: they were in New York if they were gonna go
Speaker 5: see any shows, and they said, well, you know, we're
Speaker 5: gonna try. But I learned ultimately that the kids had
Speaker 5: to buy their own tickets for whatever Broadway show they
Speaker 5: wanted to see. And we all know these tickets are
Speaker 5: not inexpensive. They are not. So I got together with
Speaker 5: our company manager and since I got into this motivational
Speaker 5: empowerment thing. I've been doing it now for what forty years.
Speaker 5: When I learned it was called motivational speaking. But about
Speaker 5: four years ago I started my own nonprofit organization, the
Speaker 5: A New Day Foundation. Son, see toda, I see what
Speaker 5: you did. I actually brought materials for you.
Speaker 1: Thank you. So that's motiva speaking.
Speaker 5: There you go. So that's what our found foundation does.
Speaker 5: We do programs all year round for teen boys teen girls.
Speaker 5: Sometimes we do events with them together.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: Annually we have a financial literacy and technology conference that's
Speaker 5: about a whole day, seven hours long. We give out
Speaker 5: scholarships and new computers. Well, what we did on behalf
Speaker 5: of the foundation this time was we bought tickets for
Speaker 5: all of the seniors to come and see Tina yesterday.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 5: So they came and saw Tina, and then after the
Speaker 5: show I met with them and we had kind of
Speaker 5: a talkback for about an hour and a half where
Speaker 5: I was telling them about the journey and answering questions,
Speaker 5: et cetera.
Speaker 2: That's so cool incident, by the way, that was probably
Speaker 2: one of the best surprises I had. I mean, I
Speaker 2: was taking my mother to see teena just for like Chris, Yes,
Speaker 2: but I didn't bother to even like look at the
Speaker 2: playblevel to see if there's anybody I knew what. And
Speaker 2: you came out and it was such a slow like
Speaker 2: wait a minute, like it was a great thing to
Speaker 2: see you once day's doing that. Wow, man, I want
Speaker 2: I want to get to your professional career. But I
Speaker 2: know that you know, you've made music in New York
Speaker 2: before you started acting, and I know that you've had
Speaker 2: to interact it with.
Speaker 1: I want to know what eighties? What pounding the pavement already?
Speaker 8: She was there?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, I'm not asking about.
Speaker 2: This past her time, okay, but I'm saying that what
Speaker 2: was pursuing a music career in the first half of
Speaker 2: the eighties in New York?
Speaker 1: Like you know what it was?
Speaker 5: It was tricky. It was real tricky. You know we
Speaker 5: have the me Too movement and all that stuffing on
Speaker 5: now and you hear all kinds of things. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 5: I'm so a fuwie. You found that, you bastard? Where
Speaker 5: did you find it?
Speaker 1: I have I have my resources the government.
Speaker 5: What we are referring to is Bill has in his
Speaker 5: hot little hands a copy of my very first single
Speaker 5: and it's in LP and it was on Dalmatian Records,
Speaker 5: an independent Right Record Late label, and the song was
Speaker 5: called Funky Thing t n h n G.
Speaker 1: Did you name it or yeah?
Speaker 5: I wrote it?
Speaker 1: And no, no, no, I mean thing. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: Dalmatian Records.
Speaker 5: No, that was the name of the Right Record Late label.
Speaker 5: I was actually okay, oh gosh, So you gotta get
Speaker 5: down on me to come on now.
Speaker 9: Y'all know nothing about this and first name basis just
Speaker 9: just come on. D A w n N record w
Speaker 9: w w n N two end.
Speaker 1: Come on. So who produced this?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 5: Two guys Kenny and Charlie, Charlie Ernst. Kenny Pollock and
Speaker 5: Charlie Ernst Kenny I went to college with. And the
Speaker 5: story behind this is that we were called in to
Speaker 5: play for a jazz violinist. It was his session and
Speaker 5: he was having trouble setting up his violin, equing it,
Speaker 5: et cetera. So Kenny and Charlie just went into this
Speaker 5: groove and they just started playing and I just started
Speaker 5: singing all of that. Every single word was freestyle. It
Speaker 5: was just me singing. We were just singing. I was
Speaker 5: just singing, making up lyrics as I was flowing, and
Speaker 5: there we went and when the when the violinist was
Speaker 5: finally ready, the engineer said, before we start, I want
Speaker 5: you all to come in here in the booth and
Speaker 5: we're like, okay, so I want you to listen to something,
Speaker 5: and he pushed play and that was what you heard
Speaker 5: and we were like what we were in stud Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's fly, that's funky. That's funky. And he signed me
Speaker 5: right there. So we went back and then actually recorded.
Speaker 1: Never happened.
Speaker 2: You're like the walking uhshonification of stepping out on face.
Speaker 5: It was well, Praisett, it was. It was great and
Speaker 5: it was so much fun. It was I mean, I
Speaker 5: was just saying I didn't know what I was saying.
Speaker 5: We were just going the music that point. This was
Speaker 5: eighty four, so I was what twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so were you pursuing a recording?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah yeah. So I would do the rounds
Speaker 5: with with my demo tapes and performing at different showcases
Speaker 5: like for Capitol Records and CBS, et cetera. And charted
Speaker 5: This song charted on Billboard at mister Nelson Nelson George
Speaker 5: Billboard Magazine. We came in at twenty there was another
Speaker 5: song that I did called from the Bottom Up, and
Speaker 5: I was a little I was a little feisty young lady,
Speaker 5: and you were not gonna find it because I tried
Speaker 5: to find it my brother. My brother. My brother played
Speaker 5: bass on it, and I was like, dude, do you
Speaker 5: have a copy of that song? And he hasn't responded,
Speaker 5: so I know I do it, but it's back on
Speaker 5: my computer and in my dat collection, back in trust.
Speaker 5: But from the Bottom Up I sang at the Apollo
Speaker 5: for Amateur Night and one Amateur Night that weekend had
Speaker 5: to come back the next week as a special special
Speaker 5: guest for Amateur Night. And from the Bottom Up was
Speaker 5: another song I sang when Shallamar was looking for someone
Speaker 5: to replace Jody Wattley and they had a competition at Leviticus.
Speaker 5: And I was an office temp in the World Trades
Speaker 5: at the time, and I heard it on w b
Speaker 5: LS that they were having a competition at Leviticus. So
Speaker 5: I called my job. I said, you're gonna have to
Speaker 5: get a temp for the temp because I ain't coming
Speaker 5: to day. And they knew what I wanted to aspire to,
Speaker 5: and they said, don go and go on and get
Speaker 5: them go and do you do your best? So I
Speaker 5: went and we were at Leviticus. I had my cassette,
Speaker 5: my little track in my hand, played it from the
Speaker 5: bottom up and I sang that and ultimately, long story short,
Speaker 5: that was when I met Howard Hewett and Mickey Free
Speaker 5: and we have been friends ever since. I won for
Speaker 5: New York. It was like an early version of Star Search.
Speaker 5: So women from all around the country, from La Chicago, Atlanta,
Speaker 5: we all met in La at Circus Circus and we
Speaker 5: had the competition there and we performed in Delisa Davies
Speaker 5: was noted as the winner, and the audience went wild,
Speaker 5: like no New York, New York, New York. So Dick Griffy,
Speaker 5: Dick Griffy says, okay, no, no, calm down, come down,
Speaker 5: We're going.
Speaker 1: To start again.
Speaker 5: Dick Grify, I'm sorry, why why wait?
Speaker 1: Where's my stories? I'm sorry. Anyway, the stories we've heard,
Speaker 1: we could do a whole.
Speaker 5: And that was sold our records. So they said, no,
Speaker 5: we're going to start a new girl group with the
Speaker 5: girl from New York, the girl from Texas and the
Speaker 5: girlfriend I want to say Chicago. And later we learned
Speaker 5: so we's like that's all right, I got my own deal.
Speaker 5: I don't have to be part of someone else's deal.
Speaker 5: And we so we started calling the label crickets Crickets.
Speaker 5: That's when you learned that it was just a publicity stuff.
Speaker 1: They were never going to do it.
Speaker 5: So yeah, no, that was what I wanted to do,
Speaker 5: was be a recording artist or star on Broadway, all
Speaker 5: of that. So TV was the one thing I was
Speaker 5: not pursuing.
Speaker 2: During that time period. I know, this is the time
Speaker 2: for like Leroy Burgess or Kashif or a friend.
Speaker 5: Yes, Kashiff is a friend. Luther I got, I got
Speaker 5: to know. I knew everybody in his band. I wanted
Speaker 5: to be a Luther girl so bad. Brenda White, who
Speaker 5: would always sing the bottom, was taking a leave for
Speaker 5: I forget what the reason was, but she's like, ding,
Speaker 5: Luther loves you. They're having auditions. You should come an audition.
Speaker 5: So it's me. Brenda was there, lethally so ficial, Paullette
Speaker 5: was there, and Luther was there, and so we're singing
Speaker 5: and I knew all the choreography. Stop, stop to Love,
Speaker 5: don't go on the road. I was crushing it. And
Speaker 5: then it was done. Luther came put his arm around me.
Speaker 5: It's baby. You know I love you, right, I said, yeah,
Speaker 5: he said, but I need a little more finesse and
Speaker 5: a little less soul trained. I was like mortified, mortified,
Speaker 5: And a month later I booked a different world. So
Speaker 5: I was like, bye bye Luther Girl bye.
Speaker 1: And but no.
Speaker 5: But then once I booked the show, he says, you
Speaker 5: know you're owe me money, right, I said what he said,
Speaker 5: because if I had hired you wouldn't have been able
Speaker 5: to do that show. So thank you very much, You're welcome.
Speaker 5: So he's cool people.
Speaker 1: So a different world. How does this wind up in
Speaker 1: your lap?
Speaker 5: I don't know that it wound up in my lap
Speaker 5: or I chased it down.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I was doing the national tour of a Broadway show
Speaker 5: called The Tap Dance Kid with one of my idols,
Speaker 5: Harold Nicholas of the Nicholas and Doulay Hill, who was
Speaker 5: ten at the time, who has now grown to be
Speaker 5: this incredible man and talented. Yes, he was our our kid. Well,
Speaker 5: Alfonso was on Broadway. Sebon stayed in New York on Broadway.
Speaker 5: Deulay came with us out on the road, so there
Speaker 5: was a whole Doulas was an amazing amazing, amazing tap dancer.
Speaker 9: He really is.
Speaker 5: He's phenomenal tap cancer. So we were all tap and
Speaker 5: sing and dancing. So I had a principal role in
Speaker 5: that show. Well, the people who cast that show, it
Speaker 5: was called Hughes Moss Casting also carry There You Go,
Speaker 5: There You Go. They also cast The Cosby Show. So
Speaker 5: while we were on the road, I heard they were
Speaker 5: going to be doing a spin off of The Cosby Show.
Speaker 5: So I started calling the office to ask if I
Speaker 5: could audition, and they were like, no, we want everyone
Speaker 5: to be Lisa's age. I said, well, everybody can't be
Speaker 5: a freshman. Somebody's gotta be a sophomore or a junior.
Speaker 5: And we're only just at like two three years apart
Speaker 5: in age. So begging, begging, begging, Okay, the tour ends,
Speaker 5: AM still begging and they say no, Dawn, No. So
Speaker 5: I beg for like three months like okay, fine, And
Speaker 5: now that we're off the road, I'm sending out my
Speaker 5: headshot and resumes. I've been doing a Broadway show, this
Speaker 5: show that I should be able to get an agent. Crickets.
Speaker 5: No one returned a call, no nothing, nothing, nothing. Out
Speaker 5: of the blue. One day Hughes Moss calls me back
Speaker 5: and says, Okay, are you still interested in auditioning? Can
Speaker 5: you come in tomorrow? It's like, yeah, absolutely. An hour
Speaker 5: after they call me, the musical director for the Cosby Show,
Speaker 5: Steve Gardner, he calls me and says, I got your
Speaker 5: number off of this cassette. It was one of my
Speaker 5: demo tapes of my singing and songwriting that a friend
Speaker 5: of mine, Robin Downs, had given him like a year before.
Speaker 5: So he says, would you be interested in working with
Speaker 5: me on the theme song for this new show? And
Speaker 5: I said, okay, yeah, sure, what is it? So he
Speaker 5: told me this is what the content is, totally unconnected.
Speaker 5: He said, this is this is the concept of the
Speaker 5: show Lee, Lisa Bone is going off to college. We
Speaker 5: want the song to say something along the lines of,
Speaker 5: you know, experiencing life. The show was called Stepping Up
Speaker 5: to Step Out. That was the original That was the
Speaker 5: original title. Okay, and we're gonna this was on a
Speaker 5: Wednesday and we're going to be in the studio on
Speaker 5: Friday recording it. I said, okay, so do you want
Speaker 5: to meet tomorrow, you know, to hear what I come
Speaker 5: up and says no, if you're the person that wrote
Speaker 5: these things. And if you you're singing, you can do
Speaker 5: what I need done. So I'll see you Friday. Okay.
Speaker 5: So now I thought people were messing with me.
Speaker 4: No I did.
Speaker 5: I thought my friends were messing with me at this point.
Speaker 5: So I called Hughes Moss back and say did you
Speaker 5: just call me? They said yes, is there a problem?
Speaker 5: Can you? I say no, no, no, no, I'll be there,
Speaker 5: And sure enough, a couple of hours later, a messenger
Speaker 5: came to my door with a cassette of this is
Speaker 5: the music that we're thinking of using. Go right. So
Speaker 5: I was tripping, to say the least. So I'm thinking, okay,
Speaker 5: this this is big. This is really big. And one
Speaker 5: of the classes I had to take as a musical
Speaker 5: theater degree major was this Business of Music. It was
Speaker 5: that big, thick textbook. It was written by Bill Fimon
Speaker 5: and Andy Kraslosophy. There you go, There you go. So
Speaker 5: I'm like, okay, I need I need somebody to help
Speaker 5: me with this. So again just out of college. So
Speaker 5: I opened the book and noticed that they had an
Speaker 5: office here in New York. So I got the Yellow Pages.
Speaker 2: Yellow?
Speaker 5: What is that? I got the Yellow Pages?
Speaker 1: Look them up.
Speaker 5: Yes, and they get delivered to the house, and you go,
Speaker 5: why are you sending me this? So I look them up,
Speaker 5: I call them and I say, Hi, you don't know me,
Speaker 5: but I just got this amazing opportunity placed in my lap,
Speaker 5: and I'm sure I'm supposed to be doing something that
Speaker 5: I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Do you
Speaker 5: have parallel legals? Do you have free legal service? Because
Speaker 5: I don't have any money? And they said, well, please
Speaker 5: come into our office tomorrow and we'll talk about it.
Speaker 5: It's okay. So I went to my audition. They said,
Speaker 5: thank you for coming, goodbye. Okay. So I leave and
Speaker 5: I go to the lawyer's office and I explained to
Speaker 5: them what happened. They said, okay, we would be happy
Speaker 5: to help you. I said, okay, no, stop, you missed
Speaker 5: the part right. I said, I don't have any money
Speaker 5: I need. I can't afford you guys. They said, no,
Speaker 5: we're very impressed that you want to do this and
Speaker 5: do it the right way, so we are offering to
Speaker 5: help you free of charge. All we want to see
Speaker 5: is you be protected and when the opportunity comes, you
Speaker 5: be willing to help somebody else. I sat in their
Speaker 5: office and I cried, wow, I'm trying enough. So they
Speaker 5: negotiated my whole contract. They negotiated that I get fifty
Speaker 5: percent writers royalties, which was unheard of for me as
Speaker 5: basically an unknown writer at the time. Fifty percent royalties
Speaker 5: and screen credit. So when we were negotiating, when they
Speaker 5: were negotiating with Carcy Warner, that's when we learned that, well,
Speaker 5: mister Gardner has a deal with mister Cosby, that mister
Speaker 5: Cosby gets fifty percent of whatever he does. And my
Speaker 5: lawyers said that, well, that's fine, mister Kasay can have
Speaker 5: fifty percent of mister Gardener's fifty percent. Dunts fifty percent
Speaker 5: and this never happens, and they signed off for a
Speaker 5: new thing, I can imagine. So I went in the
Speaker 5: studio the next day. I record the song. The song
Speaker 5: had a rap in the middle of it. I was flowing,
Speaker 5: I was singing, I was doing all the background vocals,
Speaker 5: et cetera.
Speaker 1: Oh it wasn't the back porch bluesy.
Speaker 5: No, that arrangement came later, But the song, the lyrics,
Speaker 5: the melody, everything stayed.
Speaker 1: And the show was still called No Stepping Up.
Speaker 5: Up, Stepping Up to Step out was the original title, right.
Speaker 5: So then I get a call on Monday. No, I
Speaker 5: get a call on Friday while I'm in the studio
Speaker 5: that they want me to have a callback for this
Speaker 5: role on Monday. So I'm like, okay. I mean, they
Speaker 5: were so dismissive in the audition. I wasn't expecting to
Speaker 5: ever hear from them again. So I go in Monday,
Speaker 5: and I kid you not, I'm the only person in
Speaker 5: the room. I did not recognize Joi Lee was in
Speaker 5: the room. People I've seen in magazines and people's size
Speaker 5: two with light skin and green eyes and long hair,
Speaker 5: and me and I'm looking around the room. Okay, I
Speaker 5: know her her.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 5: So I was like, you know, and you count yourself
Speaker 5: out mentally, but I say, well, I'm here and they
Speaker 5: called me to come back. So I'm just going to
Speaker 5: go and do my thing and wherever it falls, that's
Speaker 5: where it falls. I went in, I did my thing again,
Speaker 5: and they said, okay, thank you very much for coming back.
Speaker 5: I said, no problem. So I left and went to
Speaker 5: dance class and I danced out for like another five hours.
Speaker 5: I came out of the dance studio. Someone screens my
Speaker 5: name from across the street. We have been looking for
Speaker 5: you all afternoon. Where's your agent? And I'm thinking, no
Speaker 5: one ever called me back? I never, I don't have
Speaker 5: an agent. You have to fly to La on Wednesday
Speaker 5: to meet with the studio, etc. So okay, So I
Speaker 5: called a friend who called a friend who has an
Speaker 5: agent that said she would negotiate my contract. And all
Speaker 5: I have to do is pay her salary. I just
Speaker 5: pay her a salary. She doesn't get commissioned, she doesn't
Speaker 5: get any of that because she didn't do my deal.
Speaker 5: So I paid her. She negotiated my contract. It was
Speaker 5: a suck sucky contract, but at least I had one
Speaker 5: right And I got on a plane. Never flown first
Speaker 5: class before. It was pan am flew first But I
Speaker 5: had a menu and a tablecloth and food and advertisers.
Speaker 5: It's like, this is the ball food to La. They
Speaker 5: put me up in like one of those top suites
Speaker 5: at the Sheridan Universal that had like almost a panoramic.
Speaker 1: View of the valley.
Speaker 5: And I'm like, what is this life that I am?
Speaker 5: What is happening right now? So I went to the audition.
Speaker 5: The car came and got me, took me to the
Speaker 5: studio and there were these young ladies there waiting to
Speaker 5: be seen, and so it was three of us and
Speaker 5: they're sitting there to well, this is my seventh callback,
Speaker 5: and my agent told me that by this time they
Speaker 5: have to offer it to me. And I know they
Speaker 5: calling in some girl friend from New York and dead
Speaker 5: and no I know she thinks she all of that.
Speaker 5: And I'm the only one sitting there. I'm saying, wow,
Speaker 5: are you trying? They were like trying to get in
Speaker 5: my head. They were not nice.
Speaker 1: So that's real.
Speaker 5: This is real.
Speaker 1: I see it portrayed on television.
Speaker 5: Yes, it was not nice. Try to get in my head.
Speaker 5: And it's like, wow, wow, you're not. I'm sitting right here,
Speaker 5: you know. Okay, fine, whatever whatever. So I go into
Speaker 5: the room and the producer's like, how is the flight?
Speaker 5: Are you okay? Did you see your contracts?
Speaker 1: And so?
Speaker 5: Fine? Fine. So I'm walking out after reading the sides,
Speaker 5: and I'm leaving and the girls are sitting there and
Speaker 5: the young lady that walks me and says, Okay, the
Speaker 5: car is downstairs waiting for you. Your contracts are there,
Speaker 5: everything should be in order. Just sign the paperwork and
Speaker 5: the car. I'll be back to pick you up this afternoon, okays,
Speaker 5: miss miss Lewis all right, you're good. You need anything else? No, no, no,
Speaker 5: I'm fine. I'm fine. And the girls were sitting there
Speaker 5: like so I looked over to them and said good
Speaker 5: luck and left and left. And then that afternoon this
Speaker 5: car comes and gets me. I now go to the studio.
Speaker 5: So now the room is full of people who decide
Speaker 5: whether or not you get hired. And if do you
Speaker 5: remember the actress Vernee Watson Johnsons okay, Renee was also
Speaker 5: auditioning to play the dorm mother. So Renee saw me
Speaker 5: sitting there like rolling my sides up in my hand,
Speaker 5: and I'm nervous. I'm like the lines. I'm like, doesn't
Speaker 5: know my lines. And then one of the exect producers
Speaker 5: comes out and says, take your hair out of your face.
Speaker 5: I say okay, So I pulled it back out of
Speaker 5: my face, and Renee says, are you okay? I said,
Speaker 5: I'm just you know, yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine.
Speaker 5: She says, come with me. She took me in the hallway.
Speaker 5: She had me breathe and relax, and she said, if
Speaker 5: you want, I'll run lines with you. Come on, just
Speaker 5: let's let's go on. And she sat there and ran
Speaker 5: lines with me until I cooled out and chilled out,
Speaker 5: and then I went in the room, I did my thing,
Speaker 5: and I came out and I hugged her, and she
Speaker 5: and I have been friends ever since. When both of
Speaker 5: us booked a pilot, she let me stay at her
Speaker 5: house until I found an apartment. She's one of the
Speaker 5: most beautiful I will never I'm telling you, Lessons like
Speaker 5: that and opportunities teach you to be a decent human being.
Speaker 5: So Verne, God bless you. I love you forever. So
Speaker 5: they flew back to New York and they hues Man's
Speaker 5: coused me and said, mister Cosby, is the last interview
Speaker 5: that you have, and so we want you to book
Speaker 5: this job. So come into our office tomorrow morning and
Speaker 5: we're gonna put you in the right outfit and then
Speaker 5: we're gonna go. And that was when the Cosby Show
Speaker 5: was shooting in Brooklyn, like not even fifteen minutes from
Speaker 5: my house. So I stayed up all night trying to
Speaker 5: put outfits together, and got on the subway from last
Speaker 5: stopping flap Us to Midtown on forty six, wherever their
Speaker 5: office was, with this huge bundle of clothes that I
Speaker 5: carried on the subway. Okay, so I walk into their
Speaker 5: office and they go, perfect, what you're wearing is perfect.
Speaker 5: I say, for really, really really right now really, So
Speaker 5: then I had to take my big bundle of clothes
Speaker 5: that we got in to a car and drove back
Speaker 5: near my crib to go and meet with mister Cosby.
Speaker 5: So we're sitting in his dressing room. He's on the
Speaker 5: phone at his table over there, and myself and Tom Warner,
Speaker 5: Marcy Carcy and the Hughes, Moss, Julie Hughes and Barry
Speaker 5: are sitting there. And so he roddles over. He had
Speaker 5: a chair that had wheels. He waddles over, and so
Speaker 5: I'm ready. I got my side. I was nervous, wrong,
Speaker 5: So I'm gonna read from mister Cox. Okay, all right,
Speaker 5: all right, I'm gonna do this audition. And they said, well, Bill,
Speaker 5: before we get started, what did you think of the song? Now,
Speaker 5: mind this is all within the same week and a half, Bill,
Speaker 5: what did you think of the song? Oh?
Speaker 1: I love the song.
Speaker 5: The song is perfect in the girl's voice is the
Speaker 5: Oh that's perfect. She's gonna be amazing. The words are perfect.
Speaker 5: Everything is perfect. And I sat there like and I
Speaker 5: raised I literally raised my hand. I kid you not,
Speaker 5: and they said, yes, what I said, I just want
Speaker 5: to say thank you for the song. I'm glad you
Speaker 5: liked the song. What are you talking about? I said,
Speaker 5: I'm I'm the girl, I'm the one who wrote it.
Speaker 5: I'm the one you're listening to singing. And they look
Speaker 5: at me like what and Bill just started up. He
Speaker 5: just started laughing and they were like, he says, wait, stop,
Speaker 5: that's you singing. I said, yeah, that's that's Stu. And
Speaker 5: I did that last Friday and this was like Wednesday
Speaker 5: or Thursday of the next the next and he's like,
Speaker 5: all right, okay, And then they started talking about what
Speaker 5: they're gonna do to my hair. You see the way
Speaker 5: she's dressed right now. That's perfect. I love that we're
Speaker 5: gonna do this to her hair and this and that.
Speaker 5: So I'm sitting it like ten minutes goes by and
Speaker 5: I raised my hand again. They said yes. What I said,
Speaker 5: does this mean I have a job? Finally, does this
Speaker 5: mean I have a job? And they said yes. So
Speaker 5: they said just wait in the hallway for a minute.
Speaker 5: I'm like, what is happening right now? What is happening?
Speaker 5: So mister Werner comes out and I'm in the hallway
Speaker 5: like leaned up against the wall. My eyes are big,
Speaker 5: and how you scream and nothing comes out your mouth?
Speaker 5: And he says, do you need anything? I said, well,
Speaker 5: can I use your phone?
Speaker 1: Please?
Speaker 5: I have to call I got so he took me
Speaker 5: into his office and sat me down. That was when
Speaker 5: you had to push nine to get an outside line. Yes,
Speaker 5: so he let me.
Speaker 1: Call on long distance.
Speaker 5: Oh remember what was it? The WATS lines when you
Speaker 5: get a little cold to dialogue distance for free whatever. Yes,
Speaker 5: So I said, well, before you go this, I don't
Speaker 5: want to be crazy sound or anything, but would you
Speaker 5: pray with me? And he said I'd be happy to.
Speaker 5: So we prayed together in his office, gave God thanks,
Speaker 5: and he left. He said, just whatever you need to
Speaker 5: take as long as you want. So I called my mom.
Speaker 5: My mom was an OAR technician, which means she assisted
Speaker 5: surge surgeons in the operating room. So I called and said, well,
Speaker 5: your mom is in search surger. I said, you have
Speaker 5: to get her out now, you have to. I have
Speaker 5: to speak to her right now. So my mom comes
Speaker 5: to the phone, thinking I'm like bleeding or dying somewhere.
Speaker 5: He says, what is it? What I said, my got
Speaker 5: the job. She says what she's like, girl, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: kill you. What I was like? I said, I got
Speaker 5: the job. I went to She says, wit with with
Speaker 5: with missed mister Crosby. She could never say cosby with
Speaker 5: mister Crosby. I said, yeah, she's on talk ya Jesus,
Speaker 5: Jesus or lot of mercy, thank you, d D. She
Speaker 5: called me d D did yeah, tank your fada, And
Speaker 5: neither one of us were any good after that. We
Speaker 5: were just crying on the phone and it was it was,
Speaker 5: It was great. And two days later I was back
Speaker 5: on a plane in La shooting a pilot.
Speaker 1: Wait, so you had to move in forty eight hours?
Speaker 5: No, we shot to shoot the pilot.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I was there.
Speaker 5: We're still it's gonna get pickne or whatever. And at
Speaker 5: that point, after shooting the pilot and seeing the female
Speaker 5: influence and them deciding that since it wasn't my show,
Speaker 5: it was too much to have me sing the theme song, right,
Speaker 5: you know you can't write it, sing it, and this
Speaker 5: is somebody else's show. Okay, Fine, They had Al Green
Speaker 5: come in and sing it, and that was when they
Speaker 5: we flipped the name to a Different World. So I
Speaker 5: rewrote just that line instead of stepping up to step out.
Speaker 5: It was it's you, It's different world.
Speaker 1: You had the coach.
Speaker 5: What was that like?
Speaker 1: Because it was it was No, it was amazing.
Speaker 5: I couldn't believe it. I absolutely could not believe that.
Speaker 5: I was like, no, no, it goes like this. He
Speaker 5: was receptive. Not so much, he was reception. And that
Speaker 5: was where I met Rachelle Farrell and then fidmont So
Speaker 5: singing backgrounds on that version. It was me, Rochelle and
Speaker 5: Lynn music. Well, yes, it had more of that like
Speaker 5: honky Tonk feel to the so it's closer to what
Speaker 5: Phoebe ended up releasing. So once it became clear this
Speaker 5: was really female driven, they took out Al's vocal and
Speaker 5: Phoebe came in and recorded. I wasn't in that. I
Speaker 5: wasn't in that because I was I was filming by.
Speaker 1: Then Double Dutch.
Speaker 5: I was doing there you go, because we did that
Speaker 5: in Brooklyn too.
Speaker 1: Was shot in Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, no, no, that was Al. They didn't
Speaker 5: believe I knew how to jump double the just if
Speaker 5: you find somebody who can really turn, I can I
Speaker 5: can throw throw down. So I said, not only will
Speaker 5: I throw out, I'm gonna do it in pumps. Y'all
Speaker 5: ain't ready, y'all ain't ready. Y'all ain't ready, y'all ain't ready,
Speaker 5: y'all ain't ready.
Speaker 8: Is there a version? Is there a version of the
Speaker 8: Algreen version around?
Speaker 4: I have it.
Speaker 5: I have to stepping up to step out. Yes, I
Speaker 5: have stepping up to step out. I have the al
Speaker 5: Green version. And I wasn't there when I reap the
Speaker 5: did it? So? Their their concept was like The Cosby
Speaker 5: Show kind of revamped their music entry. They were going
Speaker 5: to revamp it every season, but once Aretha saying it,
Speaker 5: they were good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's such a frozen moment where I was waiting
Speaker 2: for the honky tong thing and yes, wait, what the
Speaker 2: hell is this?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: And man, and this is without a VCR back then.
Speaker 2: So yes, I had to wait seven days to record
Speaker 2: it next week.
Speaker 5: And then the final season boys to mend it right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, shooting that show, of course, with the level where
Speaker 2: The Cosby Show was, I mean, did you feel that
Speaker 2: you were doing something important or historical that was going
Speaker 2: to touch a bunch of kids lives that.
Speaker 5: You know, when I can only speak from myself when
Speaker 5: we started the show, like any actor, young actor, you're
Speaker 5: happy to have a job, and do you know the
Speaker 5: quality of the show that you're coming off of? Because
Speaker 5: The Cosby Show was just such a high quality show
Speaker 5: and so many people, regardless of what nationality you were
Speaker 5: or age group you were, you had and you had
Speaker 5: a special place in your heart for that show. So
Speaker 5: we knew some of that was going to be coming
Speaker 5: over as far as legacy building and changing lives and
Speaker 5: influencing generations. No, I didn't know. I knew that our
Speaker 5: first season was typical sitcom and that was because of
Speaker 5: the person that was the show.
Speaker 1: Who was the yeah who directed it, and well we had.
Speaker 5: Different directors first c season, but our ex executive producer
Speaker 5: was and and Beats, who had come off of Square
Speaker 5: Pegs and et cetera.
Speaker 1: So we were.
Speaker 5: There was no difference because we basically did square peg scripts.
Speaker 1: But did you feel like, I don't know this will
Speaker 1: fly away?
Speaker 4: We were.
Speaker 5: We thought it was ridiculous. Really, we thought the scripts
Speaker 5: were ridiculous and literally, I'm very serious. We did revamped
Speaker 5: square Pegs scripts, Like when we first started working the
Speaker 5: show was myself, Jasmine, myself, Lisa and Marissa to May.
Speaker 5: When the new management came in. That was when the
Speaker 5: Whitley Gilbert character was added, the Dwayne Wayne character.
Speaker 1: Pilot.
Speaker 5: Well, they we reshot the pilot, right, they weren't in
Speaker 5: the pilot, but we reshot stuff so that they would
Speaker 5: be included from beginning.
Speaker 1: Because he's the first person you see right on the Well,
Speaker 1: the pilot was like this was.
Speaker 5: It was eighty six. No, we shot shot the pilot
Speaker 5: in eighty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was eventually sorry, eight eighty six. It
Speaker 1: was eventually aired as a finale of the first season,
Speaker 1: right because no.
Speaker 5: It was eventually aired as the first episode was. It
Speaker 5: was eventually aired as the first.
Speaker 2: Episode where Dwayne talks to the camera fourth wall like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but there was another episode that came before that because
Speaker 2: like Verne is in it as the door correct and Witley.
Speaker 5: And they weren't so you remember butter than I do. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so that's what we were doing, and miss miss Beats
Speaker 5: brought in those other characters, so we reshot stuff to
Speaker 5: include them once for when the show actually began airing, was.
Speaker 2: There panic in the air once you realize that Lisa
Speaker 2: wasn't going to come back for season two.
Speaker 1: But how comfortable do you have to be before you're like,
Speaker 1: this job is real?
Speaker 5: Let me be you know, I never got that. No,
Speaker 5: I'm because I had already been working for so long.
Speaker 5: Shows start, shows end, Nothing is forever. So you know
Speaker 5: different people. You buy cars, you buy houses, like I
Speaker 5: ain't buying nothing because they could tell us tomorrow. And
Speaker 5: the way they fire folk around here. If Lisa can
Speaker 5: go guess what they can let you go to you
Speaker 5: know what I mean? You we would come to work
Speaker 5: some days and not know who was going to be
Speaker 5: at work. It was like that.
Speaker 8: But by this point you could probably afford your own marbles.
Speaker 5: Right, yes, but but but I was so far past
Speaker 5: I was so past marvels. But then yes, yes, but
Speaker 5: that was hilarious.
Speaker 2: You didn't You didn't have what is there a moment
Speaker 2: where it's sort of like, okay, uh I made it,
Speaker 2: or you're still.
Speaker 1: Like is the guilt?
Speaker 5: But yes, I'm telling you. I wouldn't say not comfort.
Speaker 5: You knew you had a job, and you were if
Speaker 5: you were wise, you would be aware that this could
Speaker 5: change at any moment, So you go to work and
Speaker 5: you do your gig. And I watched the show go
Speaker 5: from featuring three people to featuring fourteen people in just
Speaker 5: four years. You know, all these other characters got added,
Speaker 5: you know, from you know, to from Creed's character to
Speaker 5: Sean Chanelle's character, you know, everybody. All these people kept
Speaker 5: getting added, and they were Every storyline was pretty much
Speaker 5: focused on Dwayne, Wayne and Whitley. So you add more people,
Speaker 5: that means there's less and less for everyone else to do.
Speaker 5: So that was when I started digging deeper into Okay,
Speaker 5: what else am I going to do? And that was
Speaker 5: how I ended up working with Quincy Jones and the
Speaker 5: Handles Messiah Social Celebration. That was how I won the Grammy.
Speaker 5: And writing and producing for other people and doing my
Speaker 5: own stuff, I got into animation, you know, I know
Speaker 5: Korea is known a lot for animation, but I've been
Speaker 5: doing any Yeah, so right now I think I do
Speaker 5: like six seven different series.
Speaker 1: Now, how hard is it to navigate in that world because.
Speaker 5: Voiceover, Yeah, it really depends you. The directors and studios
Speaker 5: like to work with who they know can deliver. So
Speaker 5: once you're in the circle, you work a bit more
Speaker 5: and people just request you directly. It's a little harder
Speaker 5: to break into, but it's not impossible, especially because there
Speaker 5: were so many projects available now. When I first started,
Speaker 5: my first animated series was produced by Susanna Pass Wow
Speaker 5: Suzanna Pass project.
Speaker 1: It was Kidd and Play their cartoon.
Speaker 5: Kidding played card cartoon. I played the younger sister. I
Speaker 5: was the younger sister on the show. And I remember
Speaker 5: that there you go, Oh God. I was the younger
Speaker 5: sister on that show. And then Suzanne got the opportunity
Speaker 5: to produce a Christmas special with boys to men doing
Speaker 5: guest spot voices called cool like That. So I did
Speaker 5: voices for that and I played a seven year old
Speaker 5: boy in that that show. And again this was all freelance.
Speaker 5: Didn't have an agent, so I would get called to
Speaker 5: do things here and there because I was the new
Speaker 5: voice in town. I was on a TV show. People
Speaker 5: knew who I was. I was able to create different
Speaker 5: characters with my voice of different ages and male or female.
Speaker 5: And so I finally decided to get an agent. And
Speaker 5: that was when I got an agent, and they allowed
Speaker 5: me to freelance as well.
Speaker 1: I assume the term that can deliver means that you
Speaker 1: can knock it out with the well, you.
Speaker 5: Knock it out and you understand what what they're asking
Speaker 5: you to do. And because you're not on camera, you
Speaker 5: have to be able to sell and convince something just
Speaker 5: with your with your voice.
Speaker 1: So you have to turn into a seven year old
Speaker 1: turn into a seven.
Speaker 5: Year old boy and yeah, and it has to be
Speaker 5: believable when you listen back to it.
Speaker 2: So since then, you know, So what is your arrange
Speaker 2: like as far as your I know Cree has a
Speaker 2: range of Yeah, she could sound like a freakazoid or.
Speaker 1: You know whatever.
Speaker 5: Right, I do all of that. I do video games
Speaker 5: Mortal Kombat and I've done Yes Storm and the x
Speaker 5: X Men. I do lots of different video games. I
Speaker 5: do Simpsons, Simpsons calls me and to do all kinds
Speaker 5: of extraneous voices like the last three years I record
Speaker 5: to Simpsons last week. I have another one next week.
Speaker 5: I do the series Apple and Onion, where I played
Speaker 5: Patty the Meat, the Meat Patty Boss.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 5: Star CBS is coming out with a new animated series,
Speaker 5: Star Trek Lower Decks the Captain on Star Trek Lower.
Speaker 1: Decks, Don Lewis, I'm really not going to ask you
Speaker 1: about cramps now, No.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 5: I also do Where in the world is Carbon San Diego?
Speaker 5: For Netflix, I'm the voice of the Cheap And when
Speaker 5: we just released our interactive series games, I do the
Speaker 5: voice of the chief in that don't forget Futurama Now Futurama.
Speaker 5: I'm La Barbara In Futurama, I'm Granny mcstuffans and Doc
Speaker 5: mixed mic mcstuffans and who is.
Speaker 1: The voice of actual uh of Doc mcstuffans.
Speaker 5: To be honest with you, I don't know. I honestly
Speaker 5: don't know the young lad lady's name because usually when
Speaker 5: I get called in the studio, it's just me and
Speaker 5: you meet people, you don't meet people. So I apologize.
Speaker 2: I was stuck in an elevator with her once and
Speaker 2: when I told I had never heard of Doc mc
Speaker 2: stuffins in my life. Okay, So when I got out
Speaker 2: the elevator go to the airport, one of my managers
Speaker 2: she's like, I mean, even though she's of age, she's
Speaker 2: eternally thirteen years old. So I Cavli said that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was in the elevator with the whoever plays doc
Speaker 2: x stuffans, and she, like Zarah like lost their mind.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they do a lot of people do. Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: it's a trip shows like Spirit shows like Sophie of
Speaker 5: the First. Another one I did way back in the
Speaker 5: day was c Bear and Jamal with Tone Tone Lok.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think I did like three or four voices in
Speaker 5: that show. I played the grandmother who kind of almost
Speaker 5: didn't have any teeth in her in her mouth and
Speaker 5: it was just so much fun and the and the
Speaker 5: kids teacher Miss Fine. Another one where the little bear
Speaker 5: wanted to get a job. I was an old, old
Speaker 5: Jewish man in the factory where he worked.
Speaker 8: So no, we had a lot of maybe I know
Speaker 8: wants his name.
Speaker 5: His name was Fingo. You're basing too much time? Time
Speaker 5: is money? Fuck fuck fasta.
Speaker 1: To hear it. Doors have never closed on you or
Speaker 1: always I wouldn't say. I gotta ask. Has one role
Speaker 1: ever gotten away?
Speaker 2: That like either to a to another commitment or something
Speaker 2: that you had a chance to go for that you
Speaker 2: weren't able to.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I wanted to do Tina Turner and What's Love
Speaker 5: God to Do with it? And they got some unknown
Speaker 5: chick named Angela Bassett to do it. She was she
Speaker 5: was phenomenal.
Speaker 1: The name like Angela Bassett.
Speaker 5: She'll never go anywhere, She'll never I mean, she's just
Speaker 5: the coolest people, one of my dear friends in a.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I got it well.
Speaker 2: Speaking of which, let me let me lead it to
Speaker 2: this where you are now at the Tina Turner play, the.
Speaker 1: Sort of the the why is I? A violatile relationship
Speaker 1: between her mother and her in that play? Was that
Speaker 1: that was intense? Is she executive producer of the play?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: Is she a part of the production?
Speaker 5: Miss Turner?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 5: Yes, from the from the beginning, she handpicked all of
Speaker 5: the songs that are in the show. All of the
Speaker 5: songs are songs that she record at one time or another.
Speaker 5: The way that they're placed in the show is not
Speaker 5: necessarily chronolological or when they were released, but there they're
Speaker 5: placed strategically to help tell the story.
Speaker 2: Well only ask because this was way more intense than
Speaker 2: the what's love got to do with it?
Speaker 1: At least the relationship, yes, between the two and I wanted.
Speaker 5: To know, Well, it goes into a bit more detail
Speaker 5: of the life. You know, some people, you know, think
Speaker 5: that if you've seen that movie, then then you've seen
Speaker 5: the whole right, But that's that's not the case. At
Speaker 5: all and in playing Zelma. My mother's name is Zelma Bullock.
Speaker 5: Her name was originally Anime Bullock before it got changed
Speaker 5: to Tina Tina Turner. It was important to me to
Speaker 5: come and do this particular role just because it was
Speaker 5: so real for me in my life, because that was
Speaker 5: the life that I lived, I watched. I was raised
Speaker 5: in the house with domestic violence. My mom had to
Speaker 5: get out in order to save herself and put herself
Speaker 5: in a better position to save us. My dad was
Speaker 5: a policeman. He was head of the Department of Homicide
Speaker 5: in Brooklyn when I was small, and so when my
Speaker 5: mom would go to report the violence, the cops would
Speaker 5: basically tell her that novel, if you would just do
Speaker 5: what he told you, he wouldn't have to hit you.
Speaker 5: Kind of a thing.
Speaker 1: That's domestic situation, get involved.
Speaker 5: In, yeah, exactly, Jesus. So my mom left us and
Speaker 5: we ended up being taken by my grandmother that I
Speaker 5: mentioned for a cup couple of years until my mom
Speaker 5: was able to come back and get us. So that
Speaker 5: was how we went from Bedstide to Park Slope back
Speaker 5: to Bedstye when my mom came back and got us. Fortunately,
Speaker 5: my dad learned to make better choices in his life
Speaker 5: and grateful for that, especially you know, before he passed,
Speaker 5: passed us the way, so we were able to heal
Speaker 5: certain things. But again, my relationship with my mom, her mom,
Speaker 5: like Zelma tells Tina at one point, you need to
Speaker 5: go back to him, because who do you think he
Speaker 5: helped make you? And what my mom was told was,
Speaker 5: who do you think is going to take you? With
Speaker 5: four kids? What person's going to want you? Even though
Speaker 5: understanding what that violence says, situate mashit was. So it
Speaker 5: was a very different time. People didn't get divorced. You
Speaker 5: knew that there were other kids somewhere across the town,
Speaker 5: or other girlfriends or whatever, but you dealt with it.
Speaker 5: So people like Zelma, like my mother, like my grandmother,
Speaker 5: who were strong enough to love themselves enough to make
Speaker 5: a different choice, especially during that time. I just have
Speaker 5: nothing but love for it's not a popular choice and
Speaker 5: looking at it by today's standards, you can judge and
Speaker 5: point fingers, well, I would never leave my kids. And
Speaker 5: yet it was a very different time. And until you're
Speaker 5: in that position, I know some people who really should
Speaker 5: believe right, you know, domestic violence shouldn't be tolerated, whether
Speaker 5: it's male to female or female to male, because there's
Speaker 5: some violent women out there with you know, men being
Speaker 5: really physically and emotionally damaged in these relationships. So you know,
Speaker 5: you can't help up your kids unless you save yourself,
Speaker 5: and that was what happened in our family. So in
Speaker 5: my portrayal of Zelma, it was important to me that
Speaker 5: you see her as a human being who had to
Speaker 5: make different choices. You may or may not agree with them.
Speaker 5: Their relationship was always very cocomplicated and damaged, but hopefully
Speaker 5: you can see a human being there and both of them. Unfortunately,
Speaker 5: you sometimes repeat generational realities because in order to become
Speaker 5: the teen attorney that we knew, she ended up having
Speaker 5: to leave her kids to basically be raised by you know,
Speaker 5: her sis sister and her mother and you know, in
Speaker 5: order for her to be who she is. But it
Speaker 5: ultimately is a story of not just surviving, but thriving,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, in spite of so I'm
Speaker 5: really honored to be part of that.
Speaker 1: Thank you, I enjoyed it.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. I brought you a gift, Actually.
Speaker 1: Thank you, you brought me a g scroll.
Speaker 5: I'm unrolling a scroll. This was something that I made
Speaker 5: for the entire company for Opening Gift. So it is
Speaker 5: a playbill version of your cast. I made this for
Speaker 5: the professional man, and this is the entire company, each
Speaker 5: one of us. And so yeah, so that's that's the
Speaker 5: creative team. That's the Bullock family. Tina, that's our director.
Speaker 5: That's me, that's young the little girl that plays Anime Bullock.
Speaker 5: That's the young woman that was playing uh, the older
Speaker 5: version of our daughter alive. She's she's not there anymore.
Speaker 5: This is the woman my Luke lue Creekisha Taylor who
Speaker 5: plays Gg the grandmother. That's David Jennings who plays Richard Bullock.
Speaker 5: And then those are the guys in the ensemble. And
Speaker 5: that's everybody.
Speaker 1: Well, we thank you for this. I will cherish this,
Speaker 1: he says.
Speaker 5: Did you notice that I will cherish this?
Speaker 4: This is.
Speaker 1: This is really on good paper. This paper is like leather.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: So I would like to think that.
Speaker 2: At least hearing the narrative and sort of the linear
Speaker 2: emotion that your life has taken you stepping out in
Speaker 2: confidence and not saying that everything was done without you
Speaker 2: being nervous or I can't do this, but I kind
Speaker 2: of feel like the common denominator is like everything.
Speaker 1: That you've attempted to attempted to do.
Speaker 2: You did without a second thought or a voice in
Speaker 2: your head that says you can't do this and you know,
Speaker 2: so what But from you doing that at an early
Speaker 2: age till even now still working where no one has
Speaker 2: this narrative that I've heard and I've been doing the
Speaker 2: show for three years now practically, like what is that?
Speaker 2: Because I feel like that's what's it. I feel like
Speaker 2: you have a confidence or stepping out on faith in
Speaker 2: terms of just.
Speaker 5: Doors open for you, you know, yes and no, yes,
Speaker 5: doors open. When I saw you at mister bebela Fonte's
Speaker 5: birthday celebration and you told me that you wanted me
Speaker 5: to be on your show, that just really blessed my spirit.
Speaker 5: Because you don't know who sees you, you don't know
Speaker 5: who cares. You know who you pursue in life and
Speaker 5: they either respond or you don't. Like me trying to
Speaker 5: chase down an agent for months and nobody being willing
Speaker 5: to call back. There are still people that I try
Speaker 5: to approach now that you would hope would be supportive
Speaker 5: or encouraging who are not necessarily because they have other
Speaker 5: people to answer to the politics, the you know whatever,
Speaker 5: Like yeah, and I'm gonna say it. I want to
Speaker 5: come and do Jimmy Fallon, I want to do the show,
Speaker 5: I want to do the view, I want to do
Speaker 5: all these things, and for whatever reason it will, it
Speaker 5: won't happen, you know. But those are shows that I
Speaker 5: did back in the day when I was on Hang
Speaker 5: with Mister Cooper or some other TV show. But now
Speaker 5: that I'm here in New York, you know, my own
Speaker 5: home hometown. You know, I'm on Broadway big stage, doing
Speaker 5: good work with great peat people. You want to do things,
Speaker 5: and as you know, in our in our business, the
Speaker 5: next gig is almost predicated on the previous gig, like
Speaker 5: what did what did you do, how did you maximize it,
Speaker 5: did anybody care? Et cetera, et cetera, And then that's
Speaker 5: how the next gig happens. And things like staying relevant,
Speaker 5: staying present, staying marketable are what makes those kinds of
Speaker 5: things happen. So you do the best to do your
Speaker 5: best to do that. So I just want to tell
Speaker 5: you how much I appreciate being here, and you know,
Speaker 5: I had no idea that my journey meant, even what
Speaker 5: it means to you, but for us to be able
Speaker 5: to sit here and talk about it and exchange some
Speaker 5: of the things that we even have in common. Skellies,
Speaker 5: I mean you who knew, who knew.
Speaker 1: Tournament, Yes, you.
Speaker 5: Know what I'm saying. All those kinds of things matter,
Speaker 5: and it it sometimes gets frustrating when the journey feels stifled.
Speaker 5: But like you said, I'm walking on faith because I
Speaker 5: was told at seven that where I was pursuing was
Speaker 5: going to take me on a downward spiral, that was
Speaker 5: going to be my spiritual demise, my physical demise, all
Speaker 5: of that. And God has proven me that that is
Speaker 5: just not true, that that's just not his journey for me.
Speaker 5: So any step I want to take, if I feel
Speaker 5: empowered and if I feel like, Okay, He's given me
Speaker 5: everything I need to succeed here, that I'm going to
Speaker 5: give it a shot and let it be someone else's
Speaker 5: choice to say no, she's too tall, Because I'm as
Speaker 5: tall as I'm as I am, I'm as brown as
Speaker 5: I am, I'm as whatever as I am. But if
Speaker 5: I believe I have something to offer, then that's what
Speaker 5: I'm going to do.
Speaker 1: I wish you was here.
Speaker 8: She we should tell was very upset that she couldn't
Speaker 8: be here today. She really really wanted to.
Speaker 5: I was looking forward to meeting her. She's been very kind.
Speaker 1: Well, we thank you very much for doing this.
Speaker 7: You've got to come back and tell us some Latin
Speaker 7: record stories.
Speaker 5: You guess, there's always stories. There's plenty, plenty stories and
Speaker 5: tales to tell, so.
Speaker 2: On behalf of Boss Bill and Sugar Steve lay Fan, Tikolo,
Speaker 2: and Babe Bill.
Speaker 1: Thank you Don.
Speaker 2: Lewis for being here today and we will see you
Speaker 2: on the next go round of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 3: I love It, Love It.
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme. It's the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.