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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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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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? 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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. He call O. Heel heel t mm hmmm.