June 15, 2021 • 40 mins
Andra Day tells Alec that she almost turned down the opportunity to play Billie Holiday in Lee Daniel’s The United States Vs. Billie Holiday. Day considered herself a singer, not an actress. She went on to win a Golden Globe for Best Actress for the part and brought her incredible voice to all the Billie Holiday’s songs in the movie. The iconic song Strange Fruit is at the heart of the film’s conflict between the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the jazz singer, and Andra Day is no stranger to activism. Her song, Rise Up, has become an anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement, and she performed it at the Biden/Harris inauguration.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from My Heart Radio. Earlier this year, Andred Day won
a Golden Globe for Best Actress in the Daniels The
United States Versus Billie Holiday. It's a magnificent acting and
musical performance. Andre sang all of Billy Holiday's songs in
(00:24):
the film, including Strange Fruit. Holidays celebrated an unflinching song
about lynching. The film focuses on the battle waged by
the Federal Bureau of Narcotics against the jazz singer in
the nineteen forties and fifties, ostensibly about her heroin addiction,
but also in an attempt to keep her from performing
(00:46):
Strange Fruit. Prior to the film, Andred Day was known
as a singer and performer. The United States Versus Billie
Holiday is her first feature film. Amazingly, it's a role
she nearly turned down. I actually had this idea in
my head that if I did this role, I didn't
want to be that person like they'd go. Man, Billy
(01:07):
Holliday is so amazing. Oh wow, Diana Ross and Lady
Sings The Buzz was amazing. Alja McDonald on Broadway and
then they'd be like, oh you remember Andrew Day when
she tried to be I was like, I didn't want
to be that girl. So well, what do you realize?
I think, and this is my opinion, is when you're
Will Smith and you're playing Muhammad Ali, what's tough is
that Ali is one of the great beloved figures in history,
(01:29):
and so when you play Ali, it's tough because everybody's
got Ali in the head. Same thing with Billie Holliday
because she's there and people know the music, but they
don't really know her. Yeah. Absolutely, you are a young
actress who's bringing Billy Holliday to people today. So when
you came and did it, you are stunning in this movie,
(01:51):
and I mean acting was yes, you can seeing everybody
knew that you had that card in your hand there,
But you're so wonderful in this Do you feel like
you're an actress now? You know what it is like?
I think I deal like most people obviously to varying degrees.
I deal with that like imposter syndrome thing, right, Yeah,
I feel more like in this world now. But do
I feel like I fit yet? What if it was
(02:12):
a flu? So what's so you're thinking, is this real?
Is this a fluke? I'm like, go, well, let's see
you when the Golden Globe for Best Actress, you're nominee
for an Academy Award for Best Actress. That's one hell
of a fluke. Boy, are you really fooling everybody? April
Fools is my favorite holiday so now. But but I'm
also told that you're dramatically different from Billy Holiday. How
(02:36):
are you most different from Billie Holiday? I think just
the way that we manifest pain and trauma, you know
what I'm saying, Like, I think the way that shows
up in our lives, obviously, And though I think everybody
is sort of an addict in different ways, my list
does not show up in in addiction, you know, in
that way, that type of addiction, I guess. But there's
a lot just even in our behaviors that's completely different.
(02:58):
You know. The similarities are the fact that we are
both black women living in America. There will be a
sisterhood and a kinship in that, you know, naturally, But
I am very different. I didn't cuss or smoke, or
drink or do any type of drugs. I was forty
pounds heavier, so I did have to lose a lot
of weight. I was also abstinent for like almost seven years.
That was like spiritual reasons for me. So I you know,
(03:19):
you've never been married. No, No, never been married. Kids? No,
no kids. Yeah, I'll never forget when I was doing
like a test shoot during the casting process with Lee
and I had to say something like ship or whatever,
you know, and I was like, oh, what is this ship?
And He's like, you don't cuss? Do I was like no,
He's like, yeah, you gotta work on that. So I just, yeah,
smoke cigarettes, started drinking way too much gin. Probably that
(03:44):
you were abstinent right up to the film. Yeah, it's
not that I never drink in my life before. I
had just stopped drinking like ten years ago, you know,
because I just I was never really a heavy drinker.
So it was never really for me even in my
younger life. But I did start picking it up for
the film because at least what that did to my
rain and how it slowed me down because I'm fast
and billy holidays like molasses slow, real easy, you know,
(04:06):
So smoking the cigarettes and drinking the alcohol real cigarettes
on set that they had the herbal cigarettes, but I
actually started in my life smoking actual cigarettes, but like
light ones. I tried to find really light cigarettes just
because my brain is so not used to it. So
it would really actually slow me down and almost cause
me to nod in a way that allowed me to
just focus on the emotion of the scene and being
(04:28):
present with the person I'm in the scene with, and
just trying to listen to the director as opposed to like, now,
be slow. You know, it helped. Honestly, I think if
it were another character, I might not have had to
do that. But you are hard pressed to find a
candid photo of Billy Holiday without a cigarette in her
hand and a drink either in her hand or nearby,
Like that woman would wake up and drink a pint
of gym the way you would wake up and drink coffee.
(04:51):
I just felt like there's really no way to fully
do her character justice without somehow immersing myself in that world,
and so I was like, I'm not going to do
the heroine, so I'm mine as well make a pop.
So when you're there and you've never acted before in
the film, what do you think they chose you for?
You know, it's funny. I think what got Lee was
that I didn't want the part that I didn't. I
(05:11):
was really like, did not believe. How did he beat you? Through?
My manager? It was funny because he was like, oh,
they want you to do Billy Holliday. Hey. I was like,
first time on an actor beat this is terrible idea
through and through, you know. And then he didn't want
to work with me either, and his managers they just
lied to us. Basically, it was like, Lee really wants
to meet you, Angel really wants to meet I was like,
y'all was so full of ship. Everybody does that exactly exactly.
(05:35):
But we met and I was like, you know, he
describes it and I describe it. It's kind of love
at first sight. Like he could see in me. I
didn't really have a desire to have the part, but
I did love her, and I was excited about the
story and the script and I just wanted to do
her justice. She deserves that. And I could see in
him he had a chip on his shoulder about the
(05:55):
government successfully being able to keep this piece about the
early war on drugs, her singing strange fruit, her being
really the great godmother of the reinvigorated civil rights movement.
He hated that they were able to keep that from him.
So it was like a vendetta that he had to
like kind of fulfill to to actually tell her stories.
So I was intrigued by that. I would imagined that
(06:15):
popular stars who crossed over from white and black audiences
like Diana Ross. Diana Ross is an icon of entertainment,
and when she makes the film, I would imagine, there's
only so far they want to go about how harsh
they make that racial reality for her. Did you feel
that you wanted to do it more? Honestly? Absolutely, I
actually would venture to say it wasn't so far they
(06:37):
wanted to go. It was as far as they could go.
You know. That was two and they were making that film.
So Harry janns Linger still alive. He had just been
awarded a Medal of honor, you know what I mean.
We actually we still use Harry janns Lingers blueprint in
the War on drugs today, you know. So these people
were still alive, they were still in power. And also
I think the thing that most people don't know is
(06:58):
that Billy's husband and when she died, he was awful,
was played by Billy d Williams, and it was. I
think it was just a necessary, beautiful black love story.
But the real Lewis Mackay was the actual technical director
on the film, so of course he portrays himself as
this hero and I'm trying to save her from Judge.
I'm smooth and I'm light skinned, you know what I
(07:19):
mean all of that, Like only one man could play me. Yeah, exactly,
the handsomest after in Hollywood right now that's available. Get
Billy d in here these so interestingly enough, it's like,
I think, to me, it's an incredible feat that they
even made that film at all. You know that Berry
Gordy got involved and made sure to push that forward.
(07:40):
So but now it was necessary for the world, especially
as we're having all of well, I would say all
of them, but some of the conversations we need to
be having, you know, it's necessary. To me, it's a
tragedy that when we talk about civil rights and great
civil rights leaders, we do not mention her name. You
know what I mean that that they were able to
successfully spin her narrative into one of just wasted life,
(08:00):
troubled drug addict, and you wanted to bring that to
the four that she was a civil rights leader, absolutely.
We're familiar with protest songs now, but that was not
a thing when she was singing Strange Fruit, and that
was probably one of the most just visceral protest songs
you know about lynching black people in America, they would
actually we didn't see it in the film, but Billy
(08:21):
would sing the song and then her band would hustle
her out of the club because they would actually chase
her and shoot into her car with the intent to
kill her multiple times. So, like, we're familiar with protest songs,
but I don't know what it's like to get on
stage and sing, rise up and say, if I do
this song tonight, it will probably be my last night
on Earth. And that's what she faced every time she
got up and did that. So she reinvigorated Thurgod Marshall
(08:43):
along with the death of Himmett too, and the movement.
I don't think it would look the way it did
without her emboldening the civil rights leaders that we know of.
So she definitely deserves her do when it comes to that,
I think when you think about someone like her, was
it that awareness, was it that passion for civil rights
that made her want to numb herself and check out. Yeah,
I think it was all of that. I think it
(09:05):
was her upbringing. You know, when you think about the
life that this woman lived. You know, she was raped
when she was ten, and she was actually sent to
basically like Prison for Young Girls, which is a reform
school for girls. You know, she was punished for being
raped by a forty year old man. She was sent
into a brothel at a very young age because at
the time, as she says, in her own worlds, black
women could only be maids or whores. You know. The
(09:26):
first time Billy Holliday went to prison, actually she was
like fourteen or something like that, and it was because
she wouldn't sleep with one of the clients that came in,
of course, you know, an older man looking for a
very young girl, and she wouldn't sleep with him because
that wasn't usually her clientele. And he was so bitter
by it that he actually sent the police and sent
her and her mother to jail. She had a super
(09:47):
rough upbringing. She lost her father to Jim Crow. Like
he would have survived, there's no reason he should have died.
It's just that there was no hospital that would take
him because he was black. So she saw people taken down.
She had no family, she had no one, you know.
And then add to that the fact that she is
a black queer woman trying to live freely in the thirties,
forties and fifties, that the entire government's coming after her
for singing this song, and she knows the truth. I
(10:09):
think it's also understanding with addicts, and she's not just
getting high anymore. She's actually trying to get well stave
off dope sickness on top of all the other cultural
and personal traumas. So it's actually a pretty incredible feat
that she was able to do it given all of that.
You wrote a song Tigress and Tweed I did, yeah,
which is an updated version of Strange Fruit. Is that
(10:30):
fair to say? Yeah? Yeah, it's in evolved in involve
the Strange Fruit and a conversation between you and her. Yeah,
it's absolutely a conversation between me and her. So that
song was really birthed. Actually, so I I Raphael Satig
actually sent the track. I reached out to him, so
he sent over this beautiful track. But I struggled to
write the lyrics and melle for a long time, and
it wasn't until I really prayed about it, and that
(10:53):
it all kind of came pouring out in the first
thing that was like flip strange fruit, you know what
I mean, like flip it. You know. If Billy Holiday
were alive today, how was she wanted to see strange
fruit evolved? You know? And I think one of the
first things that I believe was spoken to me about
it was take them off the tree, like I don't
want a tragic story anymore of them. That song is
(11:13):
safe for people now because we're still hanging on a tree.
But what about when we're educated, and we have ownership
and sort of dominion and influence and authority, and are
armed and are unified and are mobilized. You know, well,
we're not ready for that fruit. So I I thought
about the blood of our ancestors not being wasted but
used as like a fertilizer, right what Billy Holliday gave up.
(11:34):
And then I thought about the scent of victory. You know,
you hear that phrase all the time, you know, And
I thought, well, what does that smell like to us?
And I thought it would be the scent of our ancestors,
And so her favorite perfumes later in her life were
a tweet and tigress, and that's where the title came from.
So I just wanted it updated. I wanted it for us.
I wanted it culturally to understand it, and I wanted
(11:55):
us to see her kind of as like, actually a
little bit gangster, you know what I mean, because that's
who she was to me, you know. Actor and singer
Andrew Day, another musician I spoke with who's known for
his respect for the musical ancestors, is a mere quest
Love Thompson, the drummer and frontman for The Roots, now
(12:17):
Jimmy Fallon's house band. The Roots had a winding path
to fame. Something tells me, and I'm not saying this
to be kind, you could write a number one single
in the car on the way to the office right
now when you leave here, and you didn't do that
because fear. This is what happens. Okay. So when we
started in the idea of The Roots, we would be
(12:41):
pegged into alternative hip hop. Now, when we first came out,
they were like or they asked jazz. It was like basically,
if you weren't holding your middle finger out to the camera,
you know, saying singing straight out of Compton. If you
weren't in way, you weren't the status quo of what
people perceived to be as hip hop. Here the rest
(13:02):
of my conversation with quest love that Here's the Thing
dot org. After the break, andrew Day talks about why
she found it impossible to relax during the making of
the United States versus Billy Holiday. I'm Alec Baldwin and
(13:29):
you were listening to Here's the Thing. When andrew Day
won her Golden Globe for Best Actress, she burst into
tears and was consoled by her parents, who were sitting
on either side of her for the virtual ceremony. I
was born Seattle, Washington, but like, we moved down to
California when I was like six months old. So San Diego, Yes,
(13:51):
Southeast San Diego is where I was raised. Was your
dad in the military, Yeah he was. He was to
twenty six years. He was in the Navy. Yeah, so
that's why we were stationed in San Diego. And and siblings. Yeah,
I have two younger brothers, one older sister. We have
a full house. And what was music in your life
when you were a child. Oh, I mean everything is
the soundtrack to everything that we did when I think
(14:12):
about music, I always think about like my mom's dance moves.
She has like this sort of shake bounce dance moves,
she always says. And then my dad washing the cars
or cleaning the cars or working on the engines, are
working on something out in the yard, and we'd sing together,
you know, he loved jazz, and then singing Stevie together,
singing Luther together. But Billie Holiday, my introduction to her
(14:33):
was actually, I know I heard her when I was young,
but my real memory of her is when my musical
theater instructor at the school I was going to introduced
me to her when I was like eleven years old,
and he gave me two singers. He said, you need
to listen to Billy Holiday. You need to listen to
Janis Joplin. I was like, okay, le fut out perfect?
And when did you first get up in front of people?
And most of the guests we've had on this show
(14:56):
who are musicians and singers, especially vocalists, have talked about
the choir or some choruses were some of the beginnings.
Is that true for you as well? Yeah? I think
it was, Well, I guess because I was inquired when
I was in high school, but before that, I was
like at the church we went to, it was more
like a praise band. But yeah, so I think probably
the first time I got up and sang in front
of people was maybe like twelve twelve or thirteen because
(15:17):
musical theater, and then I was singing in church as
well too, and then choire at school. So I think
that's I knew I could sing when I was about six,
but really in front of people and other than my family,
seeing if it was not a fluke. That was like
around that age when people were starting to say, oh,
you can actually do this. Were you confident in music,
like like right away up in front of people singing,
(15:37):
and then later on recording music where you confident in
a way that you weren't about acting. This sounds so
weird to say, and I and I think I need
to excavate this more and like actually understand it. But
I knew that I could sing, but I did not
like the tone of my own voice. I think in
the very beginning I wasn't fully confident in it because
I wanted it to sound like Whitney and I wanted
it to sound like I. Still I still would like that,
(16:01):
so I still love that shower trying to hit that
Wetney Man exactly hasn't gone away at all. Then the
singers of the time too, you know, like they was
listening to Destiny's Child at that time, and then like
Lauren Hill. So I was like, god, I want to
sound like them. But it was actually Billie Holiday, which
is why I think I have such a special connection
with her. Bill Doyle was my musical theater instructor, and
(16:23):
he said, listen to her. So I heard a song
called Sugar, and then the next one was Strange Fruit.
But Sugar like shook me, you know, because she sounded
so different. I'm like, this is the greatest jazz singer,
Like this is the mother of jazz. Her tone is
so different, like she's not It didn't sound like a rething,
it didn't sound like Whitney. But I was so transfixed.
(16:44):
I was enamored. Like her voice, you know what it
feels like like almost like a rickety roller coaster that
never falls off the tracks. You know what I'm saying,
Like you're almost waiting exactly exactly it was her, But
you grew up singing and you felt confidencing and it
just was natural, that all kind of evolved in a
very very natural way. Yeah, yeah, that definitely. And so
the very first day, now you've obviously had prepped and
(17:06):
there's wardrobe fittings, and you're around people on talk talk talk,
I mean, when you're doing a really serious role and
you're working with a serious group of people. I mean,
Daniels is a really heavy duty director. And then the
first day of shooting, how do you feel the first shooting?
Oh my god, the first day of shooting. I literally
(17:28):
thought my heart was going to Like I thought, it
doesn't have a heart attack, Like I couldn't stop it.
And I was also like email, what though I had
made up in my mind, I said, it's fine, They're
going to discover today that I'm terrible, and they'll have
plenty of time to like find an actress that can
come into it. So I was nervous. I was almost
like I had resigned, you know what I'm saying, Like
(17:51):
it was just like complete resignation, Like that's fine, They're
totally going to realize this is I'm here to take
the crew pretty much exactly. And I think it was
it was like bizarre because I mean, he was nervous
to Lee was terrified. He didn't know if I could
do it, but he just he was in and he
was he believed it. But you know, it's different when
you're on the first day. And so my first day
of shooting, I was so grateful that it was actually
(18:11):
with Natasha Leone, who was just like it was amazing
to be able to watch her work. And so we
do the first scene and so Lee comes up to
us and I guess to give us notes, but in
my mind, I was like, great. I looking at Miriam,
who is my assistant on said I was like, let's
just make sure we're ready to go, like when they
kick us out. And so he comes up and he
starts giving notes, you know, and he's telling Natasha something,
(18:33):
and then he's telling me something in Bobla and he's
like believe that was great, and then he like takes
off and I was like, so I do it was
so like, wait a minute, am I still in the game.
Like it was a really really crazy feeling, like and
so you know, because I'm kind of looking at him
for more, like do you need more and more notes? More? No,
that was perfect. One of the worst places you can
(18:54):
be in a film. It seems it's not true, but
it just seems to echo. This way is when you
think the director is happy with what you're doing and
he just he just floats on yeah exactly, gives all
these notes all these people and he's like, okay, you
you're great now, Roger, Yeah, I want to do this
and come in here. Then you sit there and you
pick up the drinking Wendy hold that line, and everyone's
getting over your notes and they give you nothing, and
(19:16):
you feel like a minute act. And I was like, well,
do you want me? Don't change anything, don't change anything.
And I was like, so in my mind it was like, oh,
maybe he's happy. And then I was like, nah, he's
probably just like let's just get through the scene so
we can get the like literally, and I will tell
you people like when did you get comfortable? I'm like,
I know this sounds insane. Never never ever ever, I
think every day I got to set was like this
(19:37):
anxiety of like today's the day that I'm out, you
know what I mean. So you know, it's like just
operating off of pure adrenaline for like three and a
half month straight. That's basically what it was. There's a click.
That's the old Tennessee Williams line. That's what Brick says.
He says, I'm not going to stop drinking, Maggie, because
I haven't felt that click yet. And there was there
a click for you when you went I got it,
(19:59):
got it, I'm Billie Holiday. Now. This is really interesting
because I realized, because it's my first film, I don't
know what that feels like yet. So that was the
thing where I was like, I don't have like a
frame of reference of when I got it, So I
literally truly had to rely on Lead, which is first
of all, it is great because he is an incredible directory.
But I think the only moment was like maybe the
(20:20):
first time we were in wardrobe. It wasn't like I
looked in the mirror. I was like, oh my god,
I look just like her now and it's great. It
just felt like the clothes and the environment caught up
to my mind. If that does that make sense, you
know what I mean? Like, well, I think that there
are externals that can help you. Yeah, you know, if
you put the wrong jacket on me, I can still
probably give the performance, hopefully, But if you put the
(20:40):
right jacket on me, We're going to get there quicker, right,
exactly exactly. I'm usually somebody who I'm like a day
three person. Yeah, day one, Day one, I literally stand
there in front of a camera. No matter how many
movies I've done, I literally go on my trailer, I
look at myself in the mirror, and I go, I
forgot what to do. I hate that feeling because that's
the thing that I'm like, I don't think I've like
(21:00):
reconciled that yet. But it's funny because that's my acting coaches,
Like she taught me this like twelve Stepdean, you know,
and she's like, you have to just trust that it's there.
Just trust that it's there. So that was like the
hardest thing for me. I was like, oh, I don't
like that feeling of like you just did all this work,
and like then as soon as you get in front
of camera, you get nervous. You're like, where did it go?
Day one, I go, I forgot what to do? Do?
(21:22):
I go, I remember what to do? And then by
day three I'm like, I got it. I think I'm
gonna say ice skating. I'm like, I don't think I
got it again now, so I'm assuming because I'm not
a musician. Did you lay down all the music tracks first,
and then your lip sync on stage? We actually did both.
We laid down the music in August before we flew
out there with salam REMI how many songs did you record?
I think like fifteen or sixteen songs. But the thing is,
(21:45):
I guess Lee had seen so we did it and
he was super happy with the pre recorded music. But
the music in the movie, some of it is the
pre record and some of the songs are actual live takes.
So like obviously Strange Fruit was live, you know, I
think it was maybe God Bless the Child. I think
that was live because Lee said he realized that, Okay,
(22:05):
we I think we're going to get something more magical
in the performance if we actually record live. So some
it's it's actually a balance of like live songs and
then some prerecorded And as a singer, there was an
exchange that happens with you and your audience that's live
that with prerecorded music, it will never be the same.
You can kind of get close, but it will never
be the same. There's something that happens when the audience
experiences you and you experience their reaction to it. That is,
(22:29):
it's a spiritual thing, you know, And so he he
actually did a couple of them live for for that
reason in the headspace, so I was really happy with that.
I guess it's also hard, maybe I would guess because
I don't really know, but to lip sync becomes something
that's not acting, because there's a self consciousness that you're
staying with as opposed to all of a sudden, something
comes up inside you when you go I want to
go that way, and if you're lip syncing, there's no
(22:50):
room for your change. Yeah, yeah, exactly, because even the
songs that we would lip sync, I'd still actually sing
just because I needed to actually feel it because my
face will not make the same face. But it's still
is difficult because I'm locked into what I did before,
whereas someone like myself and Billie Holiday musically, her freeform phrasing,
the fact that she would never return to the same
(23:10):
way that she sung something is a part of the performance.
So it's it's difficult too because now I'm in lockstep
with what we prerecorded, and it's like I don't have
the freedom to look at an audience member and let
them sway how it is I deliver that next line,
so it's it's um. It was a little more challenging
and away. So I'm glad we did some of them
live because I think we got some more interesting things,
you know, for those parts. Obviously, we're in this surge
(23:33):
of change in this country in a lot of ways
in terms of diversity, racism, and I'm wondering what was
your civil rights consciousness before you made this and where
you always involved in causes related to this when I
became sort of of age right, and actually, interestingly enough,
Billie Holiday was it was a big sort of lighthouse
(23:53):
kind of into that world. And then just like studying,
just like Harlem Renaissance, you know, the poetry of Linkston
use and through art and which is why it's such
a powerful vessel, is sort of how I became aware
of everything I was not aware of or meant to
be aware of, if that makes sense. You know. Actually
the first time I sang strange fruit was for the
Equal Justice Initiative. Brian Stephenson, he was a guest on
(24:15):
our show. Yeah, oh god, he is so so brilliant,
like a real, actual modern day hero, and so I
learned so much just from him and being able to
speak with him, especially when he talks about the narrative
war with regard to race, you know, because I think
people often go, well, you know, we won the Civil War,
but the truth of the matter is, first of all,
(24:35):
we didn't even know we were free until like two
years later, you know, and just says, if you lose
the narrative war, that's what we lost. And that's why
things like racial terror were allowed to persist. That's why
most people don't know that these monuments to Confederate leaders
right too. And these streets in these schools, in these cities,
they were all named actually you know, during like segregation,
(24:56):
during Jim Crow. They were erected later, right, for intimidation.
For this is so I've definitely known since I was
a young adult. Is when I started to study and realize, like, hey,
you know, my textbooks didn't actually teach me the truth
about slavery. They didn't teach me the truth about reconstruction,
about segregation, about Jim Crow, about mass incarceration, about the
(25:17):
war on drugs. When I was young growing up, it
was that Abraham Lincoln, solely by himself, freed the slaves.
So I didn't learn how Abraham Lincoln actually felt about
black people or slavery. I didn't learn about I'd be wells,
you know until later, or the hand that black people
had in their own liberation and their own freedom, you know,
and so or learning about incredible freedom fighters that were criminalized,
(25:39):
like Angela Davis and like Asada Shakur when we talk
about great civil rights leaders and that's your next movie, listen.
I received that, Actually, I received that whisper. I was like,
if somebody asked me the other day, They're like, really,
think about who you would want to play, and I
was like, yeah, yeah, it's definitely Angela. But I want
to know what were some of your experiences in terms
(25:59):
of prejudice racism, because down there behind the Orange Curtain there,
which I know, I mean maybe on a military base,
it's a little more racially integrated, but but that area
is not known as a racially mixed community. No. No,
first of all, I'm glad you know that, because I
think most people don't. I think most people think that
San Diego is more like Los Angeles, and I'm like,
(26:21):
it's more like the outskirts of Los Angeles, those sort
of flips. It's very interesting and So I grew up
in Southeast San Diego, which we always say we grew
up mainly around like black Mexican, Filipino people, Samoan people.
So I think most people when they go down to
San Diego, they're like, wow, we don't really see color
like that. You know. I love my city. I love
people that raised me, particularly Southeast where I grew up,
But it is a city that I think is not
(26:43):
as progressive as people think. And there's certain areas in
particular that are really rough. There's like one area that
we joke about that we call clant What is that
it's actually Sante in San Diego, and it is a
place that you still see Confederate flags and it is
still you know. Actually I went to a school called
Valencia Park, but all of my other siblings went to
(27:04):
Robert Elie Elementary School, and this is smack in the
middle of like the black community of San Diego, and
so most of those students were black or were Latino
and spoke Spanish. And they just recently changed it a
few years ago because of the amazing councilwoman Letting and Gonzalez.
But I think in general, just dealing with the idea
that I was other, you know what I mean, or
(27:24):
maybe friends parents that didn't live in my neighborhood. That
I didn't find out un till later that they said
my mom would always tell me that she would lock
her things up when you came over to the house.
And I was like wow, like you know, like why
is that? And it was like did she do that
with all your friends? And she was like no, just you,
you know, I guess because she thought I was poor
or whatever. I was like, all right, cool. And then
(27:45):
I also felt always from my father a pride in
being who we are, you know what I'm saying, a
pride and being black. My mother had her own experience, right,
She was mixed, you know, her mother's white, her her father,
my grandfather, was black, and so she had a rough
experience as well too, where they were really poor and
they couldn't get food assistants, right because our kids were mixed.
So they both my parents have different experiences with racism.
(28:06):
But my father also had his experiences with his mother
and father about being proud about being black and his
culture and who he is, and he instilled that in
us as well too. So it's it's both of those things.
I always like to say, I said, you know, I
know that we hear about how we've been born with
PTSD in our DNA now, but I like to also
think that we have the triumph right and the strength
(28:26):
and the resilience of our ancestors in our DNA as
well too. But you know, it's it's having conversations like these,
and it's actually telling stories like you know, Billie Holidays
or Angela Davis, or like Fred Hampton's or Asta Shakur,
or I go back to say, you know, I wonder
what would happen if America knew that a slave was
hugely responsible for netting us are very independents as a nation,
(28:48):
you know. Or during the Depression, you know that Carver
didn't just make peanut butter, but he actually saved the
American economy, you know, Or as Hidden Figures showed us
that three black women their math was largely responsive for
forgetting us to space or programming the first computer. So
it's like, we need to know the truth about the struggle,
the truth about the contribution, and the truth about the
triumph so that we can actually have a real conversation
(29:11):
about not just how black people struggle, but how they contributed.
Do you think that African American people, black people in
this country, do you think that the idea of integration
is quaint to them? I think it's just like, you know,
what integration should be is just a natural offshoot of
(29:31):
actual equality, like actual you know, seeing not mothering people
all the time. You know what I'm saying, the way
we always have to do the things that we don't
understand people of other cultures or the l g B
t Q plus community, it's the not other ring all
the time. I think it's just generally saying like, Okay,
I want to know the truth. I want to walk
in the truth about my history, about other people's history,
(29:55):
I want to know the truth about this nation. And
I think that integration just become is a normal byproduct
of that. How they wanted integrated audiences and absolutely absolutely
why do you think there was Again, it goes back
to like seeing that we are not different, our difference
should be celebrated. I think our differences are what make
(30:16):
us one or what makes us the same. For her,
she just she had a very mentality in in the
nineties and fifties of just why does different have to
be bad? Actor? And singer Andrew Day. When We Come Back,
Andrew talks about her song rise Up. It's become an
(30:37):
anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement. Follow Here's the
Thing on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, leave us
a review. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's
(31:00):
the Thing. You're broken down, that entire living life on
the Merry go Round. You can't find out, fight out,
but I see it in you. So we're gonna log
it out, Mountay, We're gonna log it out and move on.
(31:31):
Day all eyes like the day, our eyes, our eyes afraid.
Andrew Day wrote this song rise Up, for her first album,
Cheers from the Fall, in two thousand and fifteen. Both
the album and this song received Grammy nominations for Andrew.
(31:57):
Rise Up helped to start new conversations out her art
and her sense of herself as an activist. I sang
rise Up, which is a song I wrote a few
years ago, and it was adopted by the Black Lives
Matter movement, which was probably my greatest honor With the song,
the Obama's had become singing it at the White house.
I've had people literally looking me in the face and
(32:17):
said I was going to kill myself until I listened
to rise up. Like stuff like that makes you go like,
WHOA I love. I was speaking to somebody the other
day that was said they were doing this thing where
they're asking the question instead of what's wrong with you,
the question is what happened to you? Like what are
you going through? And so we did this song for
the inauguration. It was just amazing. See the young figure
(32:37):
skater Caitlin Saunders just I don't even know she realized
is how impactful her just being a young black girl
and being free and loving figure skating in a realm
that we're not always represented in. How much that just
makes me go like this is why we do what
we do, you know. And to see Kamala Harris, you know, elected,
to to hear about Joe Biden talk about supporting people
(33:00):
who didn't support him, I just feel like, regardless of
how people feel, those are the conversations we need to
be having right now. You know, Like it sounds so simple,
but I was like taking my cousin's shopping the other
day and I bought all of these dude's sweaters, so
it just moved from Jersey and me his brother, I think,
and we're trying to get their business off the ground.
But the message was so simple. It said, God bless
anybody who's ever hated on me, And I was like,
(33:22):
I love that. Like to me, I think we just
need more of those conversations of a lot letting offense
necessarily rule our world, but actually being constructive and intentional
about kindness. And I think that that's what we're hopefully
beginning to see. And that's why I think that the
inauguration was really impacted me like that because it just
felt like we could finally breathe, and it was I
(33:44):
won't mention unmentionables, but it just felt like finally after
it just felt like finally after four years of just
like pain. Yeah, no one felt that pain as richly
as I did. Trust me, thank you for every Saturday
night I went to hell he came back again. Also,
(34:05):
can I just thank you on behalf of everybody for
biting the bullet for us and doing that for us,
because it was actually magical, So thank you for that sacrifice.
I also like to be clear about this sort of misconception.
One of the things that people would say to me,
and it's naively, you know, just so, isn't this so crazy?
With Trump in office? I mean, America literally has an
(34:27):
openly racist president, and I'm like, well, America's had mostly
openly racist presidents, So it's I think this just brought
it into the awareness of other people who had a
matter of a Yeah. Also, it just made people who
hadn't had to pay attention before, maybe didn't care, really
had to pay attention. Tell me quickly, Stevie Wonders ex
(34:49):
wife had a role in your career. How did that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
her and Stevie kay Miller Morris is her name. I
love her so much. She was like my godmother in
the business. But there was somebody I was working with
years ago. He was like this producer manager, and I
don't I don't like talking negatively about people, so I'm
gonna just say God bless him. But but the one
good thing that came out of that situation was I
(35:09):
was just singing in a strip mall in Malibu, right
right where where are you singing in the parking lot where? Yeah,
it was just like this little common area where you
just sitting there some chairs and stuff. It was like
just this little strip mall and Malibu and the shoes started.
So I was just saying and uh, and so he
(35:29):
I guess he filmed it, and then he found himself,
I don't know, maybe a week a couple of weeks later,
in a pastry shop with this woman kaymer Lett Morris,
and he played it for her and she was like, oh,
I really like her voice. And that's when she revealed
that she was Stevie's wife at the time, and so
she played it for Stevie, who liked the way I sounded,
and so they orchestrated a call and I would say,
like it was honestly, that's what it felt like, and
(35:51):
it felt like the weirdest because I was like, dang,
it's so crazy. I don't wonder where Stevie's talking to
me from, because he has no idea that I'm in
a tiny studio apartment behind a seven eleven, next to
a dumpster, sing in front of the shoestore anymore. I
beg of you now. I want to just say this.
I know people don't really in their careers. We go
day by day and then all of a sudden, this
(36:12):
miracle happens. Where your talent intersects with an opportunity, and
you've got so many opportunities ahead of you work wise,
I mean, to do have this be your first film
that's really really really rare to hit the ball out
of the park like that. I mean, do you feel
excited about the future? Oh? Absolutely, yeah, I still scared.
(36:34):
I mean, okay, listen, Okay, I'm excited about the future.
But God yes, And you know, it's so funny. I
do like a round table with all these just amazing
actresses that I'm like, whoa, I grew up watching them.
It's so crazy, you know. And so I was like
just wondering about like when that kind of fear goes away,
and Michelle fIF was like never. I was like, oh damn, Okay,
it's like the whole time you just feel that way. Yeah.
(36:56):
I was like, okay, but it does feel you. I
was saying, Okay, you know, maybe I don't wanted to
like I'm excited about the future, and I think it's
a blessing. That's my my spiritual compare life, just how
God has expanded the platform with Billy Holliday, this new
family I have in Lee in in my cast, Like
I talked to these people every day. We are family
and we're going to stay that way. And then I'm
(37:17):
happy for the extended family in your guys community that
has embraced me in such a way. So it makes
me excited because I have really a really specific desire
to tell Black stories that haven't been told before, stories
of Black celebrations and stories of black struggle and trump
the ones though that have been intentionally hid and like
Fred Hamptons like, yeah, there's so much and this idea
(37:41):
that I hear that well, there's not really needy roles
for black people, especially black women. I go, well, then
we just haven't tapped it correctly, because the stories are there,
you know what I mean, Sarah Bartman, You know I've
of course read Oh toa Bango, right, you know I
I I keep hearing now about a lot of people.
I don't want to hear about black paint. I don't
want to hear about black stroke. And I totally under
and I think we need that world. But I think
(38:02):
we need both because if there was such a concerted
effort to keep these stories from coming to the surface,
then we absolutely, I think need to make more of
an effort to make sure that these stories are actually told,
you know, so that we can actually get a full picture.
So I'm excited that the platform seems to have opened
up in a way that will hopefully allow me to
dive in and start to tell more of these stories.
(38:24):
I must say in all honestly, I've rarely been as
excited to see what someone does next as I am
to see what you do next. I know a lot
of people feel that way. This has been a great Yeah,
stay stay fearful, stay scared. I'm dropped in the fear.
Thank you for doing this. Thank God, bless you for
all this work you're doing, and all how thoughtful you've
(38:45):
been about all of this. Your instincts got you where
you are now. Don't betray those instincts. Cool, Then we're
going to work together next. Give me one day. Do
whatever you want to do. You do you name it.
I'll be either well, my best to you, my love
to you. If I don't see you playing, Angela Davis,
I'm calling the Hollywood police. Thank you as a blessing.
(39:08):
Talk to you, singer and Golden Globe winner and a day.
I'm like Baldwin and this is here's the thing from
my heart radio, rise like the riser, in spite of
(39:31):
the A. I will ride a thousand times again and
will rise, I like the ways will rise. It's right
on the A and we'll do it a thousand times again.
(40:00):
He call O. Heel heel t mm hmmm.
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from My Heart Radio. Earlier this year, Andred Day won
a Golden Globe for Best Actress in the Daniels The
United States Versus Billie Holiday. It's a magnificent acting and
musical performance. Andre sang all of Billy Holiday's songs in
(00:24):
the film, including Strange Fruit. Holidays celebrated an unflinching song
about lynching. The film focuses on the battle waged by
the Federal Bureau of Narcotics against the jazz singer in
the nineteen forties and fifties, ostensibly about her heroin addiction,
but also in an attempt to keep her from performing
(00:46):
Strange Fruit. Prior to the film, Andred Day was known
as a singer and performer. The United States Versus Billie
Holiday is her first feature film. Amazingly, it's a role
she nearly turned down. I actually had this idea in
my head that if I did this role, I didn't
want to be that person like they'd go. Man, Billy
(01:07):
Holliday is so amazing. Oh wow, Diana Ross and Lady
Sings The Buzz was amazing. Alja McDonald on Broadway and
then they'd be like, oh you remember Andrew Day when
she tried to be I was like, I didn't want
to be that girl. So well, what do you realize?
I think, and this is my opinion, is when you're
Will Smith and you're playing Muhammad Ali, what's tough is
that Ali is one of the great beloved figures in history,
(01:29):
and so when you play Ali, it's tough because everybody's
got Ali in the head. Same thing with Billie Holliday
because she's there and people know the music, but they
don't really know her. Yeah. Absolutely, you are a young
actress who's bringing Billy Holliday to people today. So when
you came and did it, you are stunning in this movie,
(01:51):
and I mean acting was yes, you can seeing everybody
knew that you had that card in your hand there,
But you're so wonderful in this Do you feel like
you're an actress now? You know what it is like?
I think I deal like most people obviously to varying degrees.
I deal with that like imposter syndrome thing, right, Yeah,
I feel more like in this world now. But do
I feel like I fit yet? What if it was
(02:12):
a flu? So what's so you're thinking, is this real?
Is this a fluke? I'm like, go, well, let's see
you when the Golden Globe for Best Actress, you're nominee
for an Academy Award for Best Actress. That's one hell
of a fluke. Boy, are you really fooling everybody? April
Fools is my favorite holiday so now. But but I'm
also told that you're dramatically different from Billy Holiday. How
(02:36):
are you most different from Billie Holiday? I think just
the way that we manifest pain and trauma, you know
what I'm saying, Like, I think the way that shows
up in our lives, obviously, And though I think everybody
is sort of an addict in different ways, my list
does not show up in in addiction, you know, in
that way, that type of addiction, I guess. But there's
a lot just even in our behaviors that's completely different.
(02:58):
You know. The similarities are the fact that we are
both black women living in America. There will be a
sisterhood and a kinship in that, you know, naturally, But
I am very different. I didn't cuss or smoke, or
drink or do any type of drugs. I was forty
pounds heavier, so I did have to lose a lot
of weight. I was also abstinent for like almost seven years.
That was like spiritual reasons for me. So I you know,
(03:19):
you've never been married. No, No, never been married. Kids? No,
no kids. Yeah, I'll never forget when I was doing
like a test shoot during the casting process with Lee
and I had to say something like ship or whatever,
you know, and I was like, oh, what is this ship?
And He's like, you don't cuss? Do I was like no,
He's like, yeah, you gotta work on that. So I just, yeah,
smoke cigarettes, started drinking way too much gin. Probably that
(03:44):
you were abstinent right up to the film. Yeah, it's
not that I never drink in my life before. I
had just stopped drinking like ten years ago, you know,
because I just I was never really a heavy drinker.
So it was never really for me even in my
younger life. But I did start picking it up for
the film because at least what that did to my
rain and how it slowed me down because I'm fast
and billy holidays like molasses slow, real easy, you know,
(04:06):
So smoking the cigarettes and drinking the alcohol real cigarettes
on set that they had the herbal cigarettes, but I
actually started in my life smoking actual cigarettes, but like
light ones. I tried to find really light cigarettes just
because my brain is so not used to it. So
it would really actually slow me down and almost cause
me to nod in a way that allowed me to
just focus on the emotion of the scene and being
(04:28):
present with the person I'm in the scene with, and
just trying to listen to the director as opposed to like, now,
be slow. You know, it helped. Honestly, I think if
it were another character, I might not have had to
do that. But you are hard pressed to find a
candid photo of Billy Holiday without a cigarette in her
hand and a drink either in her hand or nearby,
Like that woman would wake up and drink a pint
of gym the way you would wake up and drink coffee.
(04:51):
I just felt like there's really no way to fully
do her character justice without somehow immersing myself in that world,
and so I was like, I'm not going to do
the heroine, so I'm mine as well make a pop.
So when you're there and you've never acted before in
the film, what do you think they chose you for?
You know, it's funny. I think what got Lee was
that I didn't want the part that I didn't. I
(05:11):
was really like, did not believe. How did he beat you? Through?
My manager? It was funny because he was like, oh,
they want you to do Billy Holliday. Hey. I was like,
first time on an actor beat this is terrible idea
through and through, you know. And then he didn't want
to work with me either, and his managers they just
lied to us. Basically, it was like, Lee really wants
to meet you, Angel really wants to meet I was like,
y'all was so full of ship. Everybody does that exactly exactly.
(05:35):
But we met and I was like, you know, he
describes it and I describe it. It's kind of love
at first sight. Like he could see in me. I
didn't really have a desire to have the part, but
I did love her, and I was excited about the
story and the script and I just wanted to do
her justice. She deserves that. And I could see in
him he had a chip on his shoulder about the
(05:55):
government successfully being able to keep this piece about the
early war on drugs, her singing strange fruit, her being
really the great godmother of the reinvigorated civil rights movement.
He hated that they were able to keep that from him.
So it was like a vendetta that he had to
like kind of fulfill to to actually tell her stories.
So I was intrigued by that. I would imagined that
(06:15):
popular stars who crossed over from white and black audiences
like Diana Ross. Diana Ross is an icon of entertainment,
and when she makes the film, I would imagine, there's
only so far they want to go about how harsh
they make that racial reality for her. Did you feel
that you wanted to do it more? Honestly? Absolutely, I
actually would venture to say it wasn't so far they
(06:37):
wanted to go. It was as far as they could go.
You know. That was two and they were making that film.
So Harry janns Linger still alive. He had just been
awarded a Medal of honor, you know what I mean.
We actually we still use Harry janns Lingers blueprint in
the War on drugs today, you know. So these people
were still alive, they were still in power. And also
I think the thing that most people don't know is
(06:58):
that Billy's husband and when she died, he was awful,
was played by Billy d Williams, and it was. I
think it was just a necessary, beautiful black love story.
But the real Lewis Mackay was the actual technical director
on the film, so of course he portrays himself as
this hero and I'm trying to save her from Judge.
I'm smooth and I'm light skinned, you know what I
(07:19):
mean all of that, Like only one man could play me. Yeah, exactly,
the handsomest after in Hollywood right now that's available. Get
Billy d in here these so interestingly enough, it's like,
I think, to me, it's an incredible feat that they
even made that film at all. You know that Berry
Gordy got involved and made sure to push that forward.
(07:40):
So but now it was necessary for the world, especially
as we're having all of well, I would say all
of them, but some of the conversations we need to
be having, you know, it's necessary. To me, it's a
tragedy that when we talk about civil rights and great
civil rights leaders, we do not mention her name. You
know what I mean that that they were able to
successfully spin her narrative into one of just wasted life,
(08:00):
troubled drug addict, and you wanted to bring that to
the four that she was a civil rights leader, absolutely.
We're familiar with protest songs now, but that was not
a thing when she was singing Strange Fruit, and that
was probably one of the most just visceral protest songs
you know about lynching black people in America, they would
actually we didn't see it in the film, but Billy
(08:21):
would sing the song and then her band would hustle
her out of the club because they would actually chase
her and shoot into her car with the intent to
kill her multiple times. So, like, we're familiar with protest songs,
but I don't know what it's like to get on
stage and sing, rise up and say, if I do
this song tonight, it will probably be my last night
on Earth. And that's what she faced every time she
got up and did that. So she reinvigorated Thurgod Marshall
(08:43):
along with the death of Himmett too, and the movement.
I don't think it would look the way it did
without her emboldening the civil rights leaders that we know of.
So she definitely deserves her do when it comes to that,
I think when you think about someone like her, was
it that awareness, was it that passion for civil rights
that made her want to numb herself and check out. Yeah,
I think it was all of that. I think it
(09:05):
was her upbringing. You know, when you think about the
life that this woman lived. You know, she was raped
when she was ten, and she was actually sent to
basically like Prison for Young Girls, which is a reform
school for girls. You know, she was punished for being
raped by a forty year old man. She was sent
into a brothel at a very young age because at
the time, as she says, in her own worlds, black
women could only be maids or whores. You know. The
(09:26):
first time Billy Holliday went to prison, actually she was
like fourteen or something like that, and it was because
she wouldn't sleep with one of the clients that came in,
of course, you know, an older man looking for a
very young girl, and she wouldn't sleep with him because
that wasn't usually her clientele. And he was so bitter
by it that he actually sent the police and sent
her and her mother to jail. She had a super
(09:47):
rough upbringing. She lost her father to Jim Crow. Like
he would have survived, there's no reason he should have died.
It's just that there was no hospital that would take
him because he was black. So she saw people taken down.
She had no family, she had no one, you know.
And then add to that the fact that she is
a black queer woman trying to live freely in the thirties,
forties and fifties, that the entire government's coming after her
for singing this song, and she knows the truth. I
(10:09):
think it's also understanding with addicts, and she's not just
getting high anymore. She's actually trying to get well stave
off dope sickness on top of all the other cultural
and personal traumas. So it's actually a pretty incredible feat
that she was able to do it given all of that.
You wrote a song Tigress and Tweed I did, yeah,
which is an updated version of Strange Fruit. Is that
(10:30):
fair to say? Yeah? Yeah, it's in evolved in involve
the Strange Fruit and a conversation between you and her. Yeah,
it's absolutely a conversation between me and her. So that
song was really birthed. Actually, so I I Raphael Satig
actually sent the track. I reached out to him, so
he sent over this beautiful track. But I struggled to
write the lyrics and melle for a long time, and
it wasn't until I really prayed about it, and that
(10:53):
it all kind of came pouring out in the first
thing that was like flip strange fruit, you know what
I mean, like flip it. You know. If Billy Holiday
were alive today, how was she wanted to see strange
fruit evolved? You know? And I think one of the
first things that I believe was spoken to me about
it was take them off the tree, like I don't
want a tragic story anymore of them. That song is
(11:13):
safe for people now because we're still hanging on a tree.
But what about when we're educated, and we have ownership
and sort of dominion and influence and authority, and are
armed and are unified and are mobilized. You know, well,
we're not ready for that fruit. So I I thought
about the blood of our ancestors not being wasted but
used as like a fertilizer, right what Billy Holliday gave up.
(11:34):
And then I thought about the scent of victory. You know,
you hear that phrase all the time, you know, And
I thought, well, what does that smell like to us?
And I thought it would be the scent of our ancestors,
And so her favorite perfumes later in her life were
a tweet and tigress, and that's where the title came from.
So I just wanted it updated. I wanted it for us.
I wanted it culturally to understand it, and I wanted
(11:55):
us to see her kind of as like, actually a
little bit gangster, you know what I mean, because that's
who she was to me, you know. Actor and singer
Andrew Day, another musician I spoke with who's known for
his respect for the musical ancestors, is a mere quest
Love Thompson, the drummer and frontman for The Roots, now
(12:17):
Jimmy Fallon's house band. The Roots had a winding path
to fame. Something tells me, and I'm not saying this
to be kind, you could write a number one single
in the car on the way to the office right
now when you leave here, and you didn't do that
because fear. This is what happens. Okay. So when we
started in the idea of The Roots, we would be
(12:41):
pegged into alternative hip hop. Now, when we first came out,
they were like or they asked jazz. It was like basically,
if you weren't holding your middle finger out to the camera,
you know, saying singing straight out of Compton. If you
weren't in way, you weren't the status quo of what
people perceived to be as hip hop. Here the rest
(13:02):
of my conversation with quest love that Here's the Thing
dot org. After the break, andrew Day talks about why
she found it impossible to relax during the making of
the United States versus Billy Holiday. I'm Alec Baldwin and
(13:29):
you were listening to Here's the Thing. When andrew Day
won her Golden Globe for Best Actress, she burst into
tears and was consoled by her parents, who were sitting
on either side of her for the virtual ceremony. I
was born Seattle, Washington, but like, we moved down to
California when I was like six months old. So San Diego, Yes,
(13:51):
Southeast San Diego is where I was raised. Was your
dad in the military, Yeah he was. He was to
twenty six years. He was in the Navy. Yeah, so
that's why we were stationed in San Diego. And and siblings. Yeah,
I have two younger brothers, one older sister. We have
a full house. And what was music in your life
when you were a child. Oh, I mean everything is
the soundtrack to everything that we did when I think
(14:12):
about music, I always think about like my mom's dance moves.
She has like this sort of shake bounce dance moves,
she always says. And then my dad washing the cars
or cleaning the cars or working on the engines, are
working on something out in the yard, and we'd sing together,
you know, he loved jazz, and then singing Stevie together,
singing Luther together. But Billie Holiday, my introduction to her
(14:33):
was actually, I know I heard her when I was young,
but my real memory of her is when my musical
theater instructor at the school I was going to introduced
me to her when I was like eleven years old,
and he gave me two singers. He said, you need
to listen to Billy Holiday. You need to listen to
Janis Joplin. I was like, okay, le fut out perfect?
And when did you first get up in front of people?
And most of the guests we've had on this show
(14:56):
who are musicians and singers, especially vocalists, have talked about
the choir or some choruses were some of the beginnings.
Is that true for you as well? Yeah? I think
it was, Well, I guess because I was inquired when
I was in high school, but before that, I was
like at the church we went to, it was more
like a praise band. But yeah, so I think probably
the first time I got up and sang in front
of people was maybe like twelve twelve or thirteen because
(15:17):
musical theater, and then I was singing in church as
well too, and then choire at school. So I think
that's I knew I could sing when I was about six,
but really in front of people and other than my family,
seeing if it was not a fluke. That was like
around that age when people were starting to say, oh,
you can actually do this. Were you confident in music,
like like right away up in front of people singing,
(15:37):
and then later on recording music where you confident in
a way that you weren't about acting. This sounds so
weird to say, and I and I think I need
to excavate this more and like actually understand it. But
I knew that I could sing, but I did not
like the tone of my own voice. I think in
the very beginning I wasn't fully confident in it because
I wanted it to sound like Whitney and I wanted
it to sound like I. Still I still would like that,
(16:01):
so I still love that shower trying to hit that
Wetney Man exactly hasn't gone away at all. Then the
singers of the time too, you know, like they was
listening to Destiny's Child at that time, and then like
Lauren Hill. So I was like, god, I want to
sound like them. But it was actually Billie Holiday, which
is why I think I have such a special connection
with her. Bill Doyle was my musical theater instructor, and
(16:23):
he said, listen to her. So I heard a song
called Sugar, and then the next one was Strange Fruit.
But Sugar like shook me, you know, because she sounded
so different. I'm like, this is the greatest jazz singer,
Like this is the mother of jazz. Her tone is
so different, like she's not It didn't sound like a rething,
it didn't sound like Whitney. But I was so transfixed.
(16:44):
I was enamored. Like her voice, you know what it
feels like like almost like a rickety roller coaster that
never falls off the tracks. You know what I'm saying,
Like you're almost waiting exactly exactly it was her, But
you grew up singing and you felt confidencing and it
just was natural, that all kind of evolved in a
very very natural way. Yeah, yeah, that definitely. And so
the very first day, now you've obviously had prepped and
(17:06):
there's wardrobe fittings, and you're around people on talk talk talk,
I mean, when you're doing a really serious role and
you're working with a serious group of people. I mean,
Daniels is a really heavy duty director. And then the
first day of shooting, how do you feel the first shooting?
Oh my god, the first day of shooting. I literally
(17:28):
thought my heart was going to Like I thought, it
doesn't have a heart attack, Like I couldn't stop it.
And I was also like email, what though I had
made up in my mind, I said, it's fine, They're
going to discover today that I'm terrible, and they'll have
plenty of time to like find an actress that can
come into it. So I was nervous. I was almost
like I had resigned, you know what I'm saying, Like
(17:51):
it was just like complete resignation, Like that's fine, They're
totally going to realize this is I'm here to take
the crew pretty much exactly. And I think it was
it was like bizarre because I mean, he was nervous
to Lee was terrified. He didn't know if I could
do it, but he just he was in and he
was he believed it. But you know, it's different when
you're on the first day. And so my first day
of shooting, I was so grateful that it was actually
(18:11):
with Natasha Leone, who was just like it was amazing
to be able to watch her work. And so we
do the first scene and so Lee comes up to
us and I guess to give us notes, but in
my mind, I was like, great. I looking at Miriam,
who is my assistant on said I was like, let's
just make sure we're ready to go, like when they
kick us out. And so he comes up and he
starts giving notes, you know, and he's telling Natasha something,
(18:33):
and then he's telling me something in Bobla and he's
like believe that was great, and then he like takes
off and I was like, so I do it was
so like, wait a minute, am I still in the game.
Like it was a really really crazy feeling, like and
so you know, because I'm kind of looking at him
for more, like do you need more and more notes? More? No,
that was perfect. One of the worst places you can
(18:54):
be in a film. It seems it's not true, but
it just seems to echo. This way is when you
think the director is happy with what you're doing and
he just he just floats on yeah exactly, gives all
these notes all these people and he's like, okay, you
you're great now, Roger, Yeah, I want to do this
and come in here. Then you sit there and you
pick up the drinking Wendy hold that line, and everyone's
getting over your notes and they give you nothing, and
(19:16):
you feel like a minute act. And I was like, well,
do you want me? Don't change anything, don't change anything.
And I was like, so in my mind it was like, oh,
maybe he's happy. And then I was like, nah, he's
probably just like let's just get through the scene so
we can get the like literally, and I will tell
you people like when did you get comfortable? I'm like,
I know this sounds insane. Never never ever ever, I
think every day I got to set was like this
(19:37):
anxiety of like today's the day that I'm out, you
know what I mean. So you know, it's like just
operating off of pure adrenaline for like three and a
half month straight. That's basically what it was. There's a click.
That's the old Tennessee Williams line. That's what Brick says.
He says, I'm not going to stop drinking, Maggie, because
I haven't felt that click yet. And there was there
a click for you when you went I got it,
(19:59):
got it, I'm Billie Holiday. Now. This is really interesting
because I realized, because it's my first film, I don't
know what that feels like yet. So that was the
thing where I was like, I don't have like a
frame of reference of when I got it, So I
literally truly had to rely on Lead, which is first
of all, it is great because he is an incredible directory.
But I think the only moment was like maybe the
(20:20):
first time we were in wardrobe. It wasn't like I
looked in the mirror. I was like, oh my god,
I look just like her now and it's great. It
just felt like the clothes and the environment caught up
to my mind. If that does that make sense, you
know what I mean? Like, well, I think that there
are externals that can help you. Yeah, you know, if
you put the wrong jacket on me, I can still
probably give the performance, hopefully, But if you put the
(20:40):
right jacket on me, We're going to get there quicker, right,
exactly exactly. I'm usually somebody who I'm like a day
three person. Yeah, day one, Day one, I literally stand
there in front of a camera. No matter how many
movies I've done, I literally go on my trailer, I
look at myself in the mirror, and I go, I
forgot what to do. I hate that feeling because that's
the thing that I'm like, I don't think I've like
(21:00):
reconciled that yet. But it's funny because that's my acting coaches,
Like she taught me this like twelve Stepdean, you know,
and she's like, you have to just trust that it's there.
Just trust that it's there. So that was like the
hardest thing for me. I was like, oh, I don't
like that feeling of like you just did all this work,
and like then as soon as you get in front
of camera, you get nervous. You're like, where did it go?
Day one, I go, I forgot what to do? Do?
(21:22):
I go, I remember what to do? And then by
day three I'm like, I got it. I think I'm
gonna say ice skating. I'm like, I don't think I
got it again now, so I'm assuming because I'm not
a musician. Did you lay down all the music tracks first,
and then your lip sync on stage? We actually did both.
We laid down the music in August before we flew
out there with salam REMI how many songs did you record?
I think like fifteen or sixteen songs. But the thing is,
(21:45):
I guess Lee had seen so we did it and
he was super happy with the pre recorded music. But
the music in the movie, some of it is the
pre record and some of the songs are actual live takes.
So like obviously Strange Fruit was live, you know, I
think it was maybe God Bless the Child. I think
that was live because Lee said he realized that, Okay,
(22:05):
we I think we're going to get something more magical
in the performance if we actually record live. So some
it's it's actually a balance of like live songs and
then some prerecorded And as a singer, there was an
exchange that happens with you and your audience that's live
that with prerecorded music, it will never be the same.
You can kind of get close, but it will never
be the same. There's something that happens when the audience
experiences you and you experience their reaction to it. That is,
(22:29):
it's a spiritual thing, you know, And so he he
actually did a couple of them live for for that
reason in the headspace, so I was really happy with that.
I guess it's also hard, maybe I would guess because
I don't really know, but to lip sync becomes something
that's not acting, because there's a self consciousness that you're
staying with as opposed to all of a sudden, something
comes up inside you when you go I want to
go that way, and if you're lip syncing, there's no
(22:50):
room for your change. Yeah, yeah, exactly, because even the
songs that we would lip sync, I'd still actually sing
just because I needed to actually feel it because my
face will not make the same face. But it's still
is difficult because I'm locked into what I did before,
whereas someone like myself and Billie Holiday musically, her freeform phrasing,
the fact that she would never return to the same
(23:10):
way that she sung something is a part of the performance.
So it's it's difficult too because now I'm in lockstep
with what we prerecorded, and it's like I don't have
the freedom to look at an audience member and let
them sway how it is I deliver that next line,
so it's it's um. It was a little more challenging
and away. So I'm glad we did some of them
live because I think we got some more interesting things,
you know, for those parts. Obviously, we're in this surge
(23:33):
of change in this country in a lot of ways
in terms of diversity, racism, and I'm wondering what was
your civil rights consciousness before you made this and where
you always involved in causes related to this when I
became sort of of age right, and actually, interestingly enough,
Billie Holiday was it was a big sort of lighthouse
(23:53):
kind of into that world. And then just like studying,
just like Harlem Renaissance, you know, the poetry of Linkston
use and through art and which is why it's such
a powerful vessel, is sort of how I became aware
of everything I was not aware of or meant to
be aware of, if that makes sense. You know. Actually
the first time I sang strange fruit was for the
Equal Justice Initiative. Brian Stephenson, he was a guest on
(24:15):
our show. Yeah, oh god, he is so so brilliant,
like a real, actual modern day hero, and so I
learned so much just from him and being able to
speak with him, especially when he talks about the narrative
war with regard to race, you know, because I think
people often go, well, you know, we won the Civil War,
but the truth of the matter is, first of all,
(24:35):
we didn't even know we were free until like two
years later, you know, and just says, if you lose
the narrative war, that's what we lost. And that's why
things like racial terror were allowed to persist. That's why
most people don't know that these monuments to Confederate leaders
right too. And these streets in these schools, in these cities,
they were all named actually you know, during like segregation,
(24:56):
during Jim Crow. They were erected later, right, for intimidation.
For this is so I've definitely known since I was
a young adult. Is when I started to study and realize, like, hey,
you know, my textbooks didn't actually teach me the truth
about slavery. They didn't teach me the truth about reconstruction,
about segregation, about Jim Crow, about mass incarceration, about the
(25:17):
war on drugs. When I was young growing up, it
was that Abraham Lincoln, solely by himself, freed the slaves.
So I didn't learn how Abraham Lincoln actually felt about
black people or slavery. I didn't learn about I'd be wells,
you know until later, or the hand that black people
had in their own liberation and their own freedom, you know,
and so or learning about incredible freedom fighters that were criminalized,
(25:39):
like Angela Davis and like Asada Shakur when we talk
about great civil rights leaders and that's your next movie, listen.
I received that, Actually, I received that whisper. I was like,
if somebody asked me the other day, They're like, really,
think about who you would want to play, and I
was like, yeah, yeah, it's definitely Angela. But I want
to know what were some of your experiences in terms
(25:59):
of prejudice racism, because down there behind the Orange Curtain there,
which I know, I mean maybe on a military base,
it's a little more racially integrated, but but that area
is not known as a racially mixed community. No. No,
first of all, I'm glad you know that, because I
think most people don't. I think most people think that
San Diego is more like Los Angeles, and I'm like,
(26:21):
it's more like the outskirts of Los Angeles, those sort
of flips. It's very interesting and So I grew up
in Southeast San Diego, which we always say we grew
up mainly around like black Mexican, Filipino people, Samoan people.
So I think most people when they go down to
San Diego, they're like, wow, we don't really see color
like that. You know. I love my city. I love
people that raised me, particularly Southeast where I grew up,
But it is a city that I think is not
(26:43):
as progressive as people think. And there's certain areas in
particular that are really rough. There's like one area that
we joke about that we call clant What is that
it's actually Sante in San Diego, and it is a
place that you still see Confederate flags and it is
still you know. Actually I went to a school called
Valencia Park, but all of my other siblings went to
(27:04):
Robert Elie Elementary School, and this is smack in the
middle of like the black community of San Diego, and
so most of those students were black or were Latino
and spoke Spanish. And they just recently changed it a
few years ago because of the amazing councilwoman Letting and Gonzalez.
But I think in general, just dealing with the idea
that I was other, you know what I mean, or
(27:24):
maybe friends parents that didn't live in my neighborhood. That
I didn't find out un till later that they said
my mom would always tell me that she would lock
her things up when you came over to the house.
And I was like wow, like you know, like why
is that? And it was like did she do that
with all your friends? And she was like no, just you,
you know, I guess because she thought I was poor
or whatever. I was like, all right, cool. And then
(27:45):
I also felt always from my father a pride in
being who we are, you know what I'm saying, a
pride and being black. My mother had her own experience, right,
She was mixed, you know, her mother's white, her her father,
my grandfather, was black, and so she had a rough
experience as well too, where they were really poor and
they couldn't get food assistants, right because our kids were mixed.
So they both my parents have different experiences with racism.
(28:06):
But my father also had his experiences with his mother
and father about being proud about being black and his
culture and who he is, and he instilled that in
us as well too. So it's it's both of those things.
I always like to say, I said, you know, I
know that we hear about how we've been born with
PTSD in our DNA now, but I like to also
think that we have the triumph right and the strength
(28:26):
and the resilience of our ancestors in our DNA as
well too. But you know, it's it's having conversations like these,
and it's actually telling stories like you know, Billie Holidays
or Angela Davis, or like Fred Hampton's or Asta Shakur,
or I go back to say, you know, I wonder
what would happen if America knew that a slave was
hugely responsible for netting us are very independents as a nation,
(28:48):
you know. Or during the Depression, you know that Carver
didn't just make peanut butter, but he actually saved the
American economy, you know, Or as Hidden Figures showed us
that three black women their math was largely responsive for
forgetting us to space or programming the first computer. So
it's like, we need to know the truth about the struggle,
the truth about the contribution, and the truth about the
triumph so that we can actually have a real conversation
(29:11):
about not just how black people struggle, but how they contributed.
Do you think that African American people, black people in
this country, do you think that the idea of integration
is quaint to them? I think it's just like, you know,
what integration should be is just a natural offshoot of
(29:31):
actual equality, like actual you know, seeing not mothering people
all the time. You know what I'm saying, the way
we always have to do the things that we don't
understand people of other cultures or the l g B
t Q plus community, it's the not other ring all
the time. I think it's just generally saying like, Okay,
I want to know the truth. I want to walk
in the truth about my history, about other people's history,
(29:55):
I want to know the truth about this nation. And
I think that integration just become is a normal byproduct
of that. How they wanted integrated audiences and absolutely absolutely
why do you think there was Again, it goes back
to like seeing that we are not different, our difference
should be celebrated. I think our differences are what make
(30:16):
us one or what makes us the same. For her,
she just she had a very mentality in in the
nineties and fifties of just why does different have to
be bad? Actor? And singer Andrew Day. When We Come Back,
Andrew talks about her song rise Up. It's become an
(30:37):
anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement. Follow Here's the
Thing on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, leave us
a review. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's
(31:00):
the Thing. You're broken down, that entire living life on
the Merry go Round. You can't find out, fight out,
but I see it in you. So we're gonna log
it out, Mountay, We're gonna log it out and move on.
(31:31):
Day all eyes like the day, our eyes, our eyes afraid.
Andrew Day wrote this song rise Up, for her first album,
Cheers from the Fall, in two thousand and fifteen. Both
the album and this song received Grammy nominations for Andrew.
(31:57):
Rise Up helped to start new conversations out her art
and her sense of herself as an activist. I sang
rise Up, which is a song I wrote a few
years ago, and it was adopted by the Black Lives
Matter movement, which was probably my greatest honor With the song,
the Obama's had become singing it at the White house.
I've had people literally looking me in the face and
(32:17):
said I was going to kill myself until I listened
to rise up. Like stuff like that makes you go like,
WHOA I love. I was speaking to somebody the other
day that was said they were doing this thing where
they're asking the question instead of what's wrong with you,
the question is what happened to you? Like what are
you going through? And so we did this song for
the inauguration. It was just amazing. See the young figure
(32:37):
skater Caitlin Saunders just I don't even know she realized
is how impactful her just being a young black girl
and being free and loving figure skating in a realm
that we're not always represented in. How much that just
makes me go like this is why we do what
we do, you know. And to see Kamala Harris, you know, elected,
to to hear about Joe Biden talk about supporting people
(33:00):
who didn't support him, I just feel like, regardless of
how people feel, those are the conversations we need to
be having right now. You know, Like it sounds so simple,
but I was like taking my cousin's shopping the other
day and I bought all of these dude's sweaters, so
it just moved from Jersey and me his brother, I think,
and we're trying to get their business off the ground.
But the message was so simple. It said, God bless
anybody who's ever hated on me, And I was like,
(33:22):
I love that. Like to me, I think we just
need more of those conversations of a lot letting offense
necessarily rule our world, but actually being constructive and intentional
about kindness. And I think that that's what we're hopefully
beginning to see. And that's why I think that the
inauguration was really impacted me like that because it just
felt like we could finally breathe, and it was I
(33:44):
won't mention unmentionables, but it just felt like finally after
it just felt like finally after four years of just
like pain. Yeah, no one felt that pain as richly
as I did. Trust me, thank you for every Saturday
night I went to hell he came back again. Also,
(34:05):
can I just thank you on behalf of everybody for
biting the bullet for us and doing that for us,
because it was actually magical, So thank you for that sacrifice.
I also like to be clear about this sort of misconception.
One of the things that people would say to me,
and it's naively, you know, just so, isn't this so crazy?
With Trump in office? I mean, America literally has an
(34:27):
openly racist president, and I'm like, well, America's had mostly
openly racist presidents, So it's I think this just brought
it into the awareness of other people who had a
matter of a Yeah. Also, it just made people who
hadn't had to pay attention before, maybe didn't care, really
had to pay attention. Tell me quickly, Stevie Wonders ex
(34:49):
wife had a role in your career. How did that? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
her and Stevie kay Miller Morris is her name. I
love her so much. She was like my godmother in
the business. But there was somebody I was working with
years ago. He was like this producer manager, and I
don't I don't like talking negatively about people, so I'm
gonna just say God bless him. But but the one
good thing that came out of that situation was I
(35:09):
was just singing in a strip mall in Malibu, right
right where where are you singing in the parking lot where? Yeah,
it was just like this little common area where you
just sitting there some chairs and stuff. It was like
just this little strip mall and Malibu and the shoes started.
So I was just saying and uh, and so he
(35:29):
I guess he filmed it, and then he found himself,
I don't know, maybe a week a couple of weeks later,
in a pastry shop with this woman kaymer Lett Morris,
and he played it for her and she was like, oh,
I really like her voice. And that's when she revealed
that she was Stevie's wife at the time, and so
she played it for Stevie, who liked the way I sounded,
and so they orchestrated a call and I would say,
like it was honestly, that's what it felt like, and
(35:51):
it felt like the weirdest because I was like, dang,
it's so crazy. I don't wonder where Stevie's talking to
me from, because he has no idea that I'm in
a tiny studio apartment behind a seven eleven, next to
a dumpster, sing in front of the shoestore anymore. I
beg of you now. I want to just say this.
I know people don't really in their careers. We go
day by day and then all of a sudden, this
(36:12):
miracle happens. Where your talent intersects with an opportunity, and
you've got so many opportunities ahead of you work wise,
I mean, to do have this be your first film
that's really really really rare to hit the ball out
of the park like that. I mean, do you feel
excited about the future? Oh? Absolutely, yeah, I still scared.
(36:34):
I mean, okay, listen, Okay, I'm excited about the future.
But God yes, And you know, it's so funny. I
do like a round table with all these just amazing
actresses that I'm like, whoa, I grew up watching them.
It's so crazy, you know. And so I was like
just wondering about like when that kind of fear goes away,
and Michelle fIF was like never. I was like, oh damn, Okay,
it's like the whole time you just feel that way. Yeah.
(36:56):
I was like, okay, but it does feel you. I
was saying, Okay, you know, maybe I don't wanted to
like I'm excited about the future, and I think it's
a blessing. That's my my spiritual compare life, just how
God has expanded the platform with Billy Holliday, this new
family I have in Lee in in my cast, Like
I talked to these people every day. We are family
and we're going to stay that way. And then I'm
(37:17):
happy for the extended family in your guys community that
has embraced me in such a way. So it makes
me excited because I have really a really specific desire
to tell Black stories that haven't been told before, stories
of Black celebrations and stories of black struggle and trump
the ones though that have been intentionally hid and like
Fred Hamptons like, yeah, there's so much and this idea
(37:41):
that I hear that well, there's not really needy roles
for black people, especially black women. I go, well, then
we just haven't tapped it correctly, because the stories are there,
you know what I mean, Sarah Bartman, You know I've
of course read Oh toa Bango, right, you know I
I I keep hearing now about a lot of people.
I don't want to hear about black paint. I don't
want to hear about black stroke. And I totally under
and I think we need that world. But I think
(38:02):
we need both because if there was such a concerted
effort to keep these stories from coming to the surface,
then we absolutely, I think need to make more of
an effort to make sure that these stories are actually told,
you know, so that we can actually get a full picture.
So I'm excited that the platform seems to have opened
up in a way that will hopefully allow me to
dive in and start to tell more of these stories.
(38:24):
I must say in all honestly, I've rarely been as
excited to see what someone does next as I am
to see what you do next. I know a lot
of people feel that way. This has been a great Yeah,
stay stay fearful, stay scared. I'm dropped in the fear.
Thank you for doing this. Thank God, bless you for
all this work you're doing, and all how thoughtful you've
(38:45):
been about all of this. Your instincts got you where
you are now. Don't betray those instincts. Cool, Then we're
going to work together next. Give me one day. Do
whatever you want to do. You do you name it.
I'll be either well, my best to you, my love
to you. If I don't see you playing, Angela Davis,
I'm calling the Hollywood police. Thank you as a blessing.
(39:08):
Talk to you, singer and Golden Globe winner and a day.
I'm like Baldwin and this is here's the thing from
my heart radio, rise like the riser, in spite of
(39:31):
the A. I will ride a thousand times again and
will rise, I like the ways will rise. It's right
on the A and we'll do it a thousand times again.
(40:00):
He call O. Heel heel t mm hmmm.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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