53512, (Part 16)
Posted by ZooTown74, Mon Sep-10-07 02:16 PM
>HR: Well, looking at our panel, I’m curious. Is this a good time for African-American actors?
MKW: I think so.
AF: Until next year…
* laughter *
(the actors laugh)
(WP and AR point in the audience)
WP: Right there, they got a couple over there…
* laughter *
HR: And if it is, is it easy to get pigeonholed?
ED: I think one of the things that’s been kept kinda quiet is that The Wire actually has the largest Black cast of any other show since Roots. Ever.
* applause *
HR: Oh. Yeah. Ooh.
RW: And that’s from 8 to 80. You know, I mean, it’s like every… I think it’s one of the… I think that’s one of the most unsung social commentaries that, uh… there’s always been this myth that there weren’t… there weren’t that many strong Black actors and actresses around…
DS: Yeah.
RW: … excuse me.
AF: Such bullshit.
RW: And um, and I remember coming into the show, uh, you know, my first full year there, and I was just stunned, day after day after day. And Andre and I sat down, and, uh, Sonja, one weekend we went to visit Sonja’s, uh, country house, and…
(SS laughs)
(RW laughs)
CC: See how she live?
* laughter *
CC: Kima got a country house.
* laughter *
RW: Kima got a country house…
* laughter *
RW: … and we, we just, we just stopped ourselves when we just, you know, looked at what we’re a part of. And, uh, I think that’s something that, you know, bears attention all the way around, the (Television) Academy included.
SG: Yeah, I… I mean, I can’t really speak to, like, if this is a good *time for African-American actors, but I think this is a good *show, definitely, for African-American actors.
CC: Right.
* applause *
CC: It opened some eyes, you know. Maybe where there’s more narrow-minded thinking it may broaden now…
SS: Mmm hmm.
CC: … you know, just as these guys are saying. But I’d caution to say that, you know, this is a Great Time, A New Season, for African-Americans. You know, that’s like one of those big sweeping statements that’s kinda dangerous…
MKW: I don’t know, I sorta think—
CC: … I don’t know… you know what I’m saying? I don’t know if there’s…
MKW: I think it’s a, well, I think, if you look just on the cover of Jet magazine, I mean, um, it’s the Oscars, you know. You have um, you know, you have Jennifer (Hudson), you have Eddie (Murphy), um, uh, Forrest (Whitaker), and, um, my brother from Africa, I can’t remember…
ED: Djimon Hounsou.
MKW: … yeah, on the cover of Jet, all nominees for the Oscars, and I’m noticing all the roles that… you know, look at the roles that they’re, you know… Idi Amin… these are, like, really good roles that, I think, you know, um, um, the Dreamgirls stuff, that’s like, black musicals, and I think, you know, it’s coming in slow but I think there’s a lot of… (there are things) in Hollywood that, um… just even the fact that we’re even here, you know, on this panel here today, I think it’s a sign that, um, it’s, there’s just more diversity in Hollywood for Black people just as there’s all different stories being told. I think that’s more, for me, what, um, what, uh, strikes me as good stuff in Hollywood. It’s not about whether it’s a good time for a particular race, it’s about… because at the end of the day, you want to remember the story, you want to be entertained, you just want to have a good story be told. So, I think that the stories that just happen to be coming in, (ones) that African-Americans or people of color can play, I think has been getting a lot better. So therefore, I think it’s getting… diversity is what it’s all about.
* applause *
CC: Our representation has broadened, yeah…
DS: I would add one thing, which is, I think there is a subtle racial thing that I… I experienced on The Corner first, which is, um, when… when you do stuff that’s, like, “street”, or that sort-of has an authentic African-American veneer, and actors come and they play those roles, and they… they’re on book, they’re reading lines, and they’ve been made-up by good craftpeople, and they’ve been shot, we… we’ve dressed the scenes… it’s as if somebody thinks that we just took a camera out to the streets of Baltimore…
RW: Mmm hmm…
DS: … and put it on people, and they’re not even reading from the script.
AF: Right…
DS: And I… I felt that experience with The Cor… you know… The Corner won Emmys, uh, for the writing and for the, um, direction and for the miniseries. But the cast was utterly ignored.
* applause *
DS: And, that, that… there were remarkable performances and, of course, you know, no actor from this show has… I mean, we’re here (at the Television Academy) for your Spring event, you know, we’re not going to be back in the Fall, make no mistake.
* laughter *
DS: But um, you know, the… and, you know, and the truth is, when… when you have… I mean, you guys had the… your… the glossy Emmy magazine, and you had your diversity issue, there wasn’t a mention of Homicide, The Corner, or The Wire. Um, and the year that… the year that, like, you were busy ignoring—I’m saying “to you” in the royal “you”—um…
* laughter *
DS: … but, when Khandi Alexander was ignored, uh, for her portrayal of Fran Boyd in The Corner, uh, the Emmy that year went, for that category, went— and I’m not disrespecting her work in any sense—but it went to, uh, Halle Berry for playing Dorothy Dandridge. And, okay, she… a beautiful, talented, uh, Hollywood actress, portrayed a beautiful, talented Hollywood actress. Whereas, we tore Khandi down for her to play somebody struggling with drug addiction. Khandi didn’t merit a nomination. Okay, I’ll take that one. But the makeup award went to (Introducing) Dorothy Dandridge. I mean, on some level…
(panel laughs)
* laughter *
DS: … on some level, what that’s saying to me is, you know, uh, there’s a little subtle, I don’t want to call it racism but it’s close, where it’s saying, you know, “They’re just doing what comes naturally,” you know, “Bubbles is just… that… that’s natural Bubbles, that’s not… Andre is just, you know…”
* laughter *
DS: “… Andre’s just tapping into his…”
(AR stands up and poses)
* laughter *
AR: I’m not really like that.
* laughter *
AR: That’s not right.
(AR sits back down)
DS: … “and so, all you gotta do is put a… put a shotgun in Michael K’s hands and he’s off to the races.” And…
* laughter *
DS: … and there’s something about that that really bugs me, because—
AF: Can I add something to that, because I think this is important, because it addresses the writing that these guys do, and that HBO has been willing, and has supported this show. But from where I sit? I’m very skeptical about whether or not it’s a good time for Black actors. I mean, these are wonderful scripts, these are great characters, and what happens next? All of these guys have auditioned for me, for roles that are nowhere close to this good. So, uh, I don’t know, I’m not as optimistic. I mean, you know, I want to be hopeful…
MKW: And there’s no… Alexa, and I look at other people’s careers, and I’m just so grateful to have at least one Wire in my career… if I get nothing else as great as Omar again, I can say I got Omar. So… I got more than a lot of other actors… the one, the little work that I’ve done in the five years with my family in Baltimore, I think is, you know, you know what I’ve mean, I’ve seen a lot less than striking (?). But um, like, even what you said, David about, uh, it’s a thin line between the races and how it looks when and how they don’t acknowledge, like, Khandi’s work and stuff like that. I think, really, it’s… it goes back to what you said is a class thing. I think that, you know, we as a country, we don’t really want to look at our sores. We don’t want to look at nothing that’s ugly, or nothing that unplugs us from our matrix. And The Wire deals with that, like what you said, Wendell. If you leave our episode of The Wire feeling, you know, hunky-dory, ready to go to the club, you got a problem…
* laughter *
MKW: … there’s a problem, we haven’t done our job. So, so, um, it… it’s, I think, like what you said, it’s a class thing. We don’t want to look at our dirty laundry, which is, you know, a lot of, you know… it’s an American story that’s not always pretty, and that’s what The Wire deals with, and I think that—
AR: A lot of people come up to me and say, that, you know, they don’t want to watch The Wire because they don’t want to go home and watch what they’re going through out in the streets. They turn on the TV to escape, to be entertained and escape the problems they have. Cats don’t wanna, you know, cats that get locked up don’t wanna see how they got locked up…
* laughter *
AR: … where they messed up at, you know? Somebody who’s eating bread and butter for dinner don’t wanna see another person eating bread and butter for dinner.
* laughter *
* applause *
AR: It’s… you know… so, yo… it’s a hard sell for a lot of people to really sit down and watch the problems that they have to live with every day, you know. So it puts… it puts The Wire in a weird position.
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