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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, my name is Tonya Pinkins, and I'm the host of the podcast You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:07] Tonya Pinkins: This fall, I have a special treat for you. In honor of my debut feature film RED PILL, Marissa Lynn Daniels Studios has been hosting weekly conversations with my fellow Broadway colleagues and co-host Sierra Renee about the red pilling of America.

[0:27] Tonya Pinkins: These conversations create a safe space for us to talk about the things that are on our mind with an election and a global pandemic.

[0:37] Tonya Pinkins: So join us for the red pilling of America, a spotlight series every Saturday at 5 p.m. or on the Broadway Podcast Network, You Can't SAY THAT, BPN.fm forward slash YCST.

[0:54] Tonya Pinkins: Join the conversation. We gotta speak live. We gotta say one truth for you.

[1:17] Tonya Pinkins: You was smart. You is important, you is dead.

[1:22] Tonya Pinkins: Tonya Pinkins' horror film RED PILL brings African American perspective to the progressive movement. We are a majority in this country. And we want to win the election.

[1:39] Tonya Pinkins: Do you know what the red pill is? A red pill is someone who infiltrates a group and then destroys them from the inside.

[1:50] Tonya Pinkins: This place is spooky. Some people like to live dangerously. Yes, why are you so jumpy tonight? You know what, guys? I'm gonna go back tomorrow. Did you hear about the creature woman that attacked a father and son hunting down here? I don't see the case. This place creeps me out. I think we should call the sheriff's office.

[2:28] Tonya Pinkins: The only people missing or dead are brown people. They're after all of us. What do we do, Amelia? We die. But we take some of them with us.

[2:47] Tonya Pinkins: Hey Maria, it is so lovely to get to have this online conversation with you. This is, I think, our 17th Red Pilling of America, which is inspired by my debut feature, RED PILL, that Marissa Lynn—well, she's Daniel, she's Marissa Keegan, she's got many names—has been hosting for I guess it's about three months. So this is number 17, and we have some other amazing people coming up. I'm excited to have you here. You're actually one of the few people who's ever seen multiple versions of my film.

[3:20] Tonya Pinkins: And you are a filmmaker yourself, so I want you to talk about your work. And you're very much about politics in film, and that's what for me being an artist is. Like to me, artists are the soul of a nation. So our work is political. And yeah, let's talk. Let's let you talk, Maria. Tell me what you're working on. What's this film you're working on right now?

[3:47] Maria Judice: Oh my goodness, there's so many things there. Um, it's so funny. Can I just have a side story here about politics? I, you know how all your best ideas happen in the shower? Um, I had a conversation with someone last week and they called me a progressive, and I was pissed off for like the rest of the day. And I was just like, what the fuck? Why would you say that? And they were like, you know, really because of the work that you do. I was like, have you ever seen me put progressive on anything? Have you ever seen me like stand in any political space with any one people?

[4:19] Maria Judice: And it's mostly because as a black woman, I really feel like you constantly have to keep an eye on everything, right? Like, and I personally am thinking like in the space I am, and especially in the place that I do art, it's a disservice to me to stand in any kind of liberal, democratic, progressive space to constantly be moving because so much like I work with homeless people every day. And to get that work done, I need to go take some money and put it in the mouths in the hands of the people that actually need it. And that money comes from a lot of different people, right? And they give it for many different reasons.

[4:55] Maria Judice: And I'm over the reason of giving it just because you care. I can give whether you care. Just give me your money and let me put it, apply it to the things that I think are really important. So that's the place of politics I am in. I don't know if that makes sense, but like the place of politics and art is also like this place of, uh, what does it exactly mean to be political in art, right? It can mean so many things, and it doesn't also mean that you're out in the street protesting with your art. It could be that you're in a cave, like I am, doing a feature film for the first time after like a 15-year career and doing it despite everyone, which I know you know the story, Tanya, told you you shouldn't do it, right?

[5:43] Maria Judice: So you're doing the thing that you finally are doing radically in a space that you think is supportive and healing, and you're inviting folks onto this journey that you think are supportive and healing, and that becomes like a space of politics and art, and what also is the content of that. So, like, um, Elephant is about, you know, a woman who witnesses a murder of a young kid on her apartment doorstep, and she's traumatically, you know, transformed after that experience to the extent that she can't leave her apartment because of this incident, and she like takes a rest, which is the radical space.

[6:24] Maria Judice: She takes a rest for a year to like deal with her mental illness and deal with her reckoning of where she's at, where America is at, where we all are at, who she has these conversations with. So it's a feature film. I star in it. I am the actor, I am also the producer. I sometimes was the camera person, sometimes the sound person. Um, we had a nice little crew of like five or six, but also I really demanded on this film that everybody understand the subject and not just be a work for hire, which is the usual space I have people on my film, if that makes sense.

[7:02] Tonya Pinkins: And that film is based on something you actually experienced as well, right?

[7:06] Maria Judice: Yeah, like part of it for me was like maybe like 2015, 2014. Um, we just had like a number of cases of murders of young black and brown people in the streets, um, in the nation, but particularly also in San Francisco. Um, and I was just becoming more and more um depressed, but also I had spent a lot of time doing so much different work in those political spaces that now I kind of have removed myself from, which you know, playing the democratic game, playing the liberal game, playing the um progressive game.

[7:43] Maria Judice: And I did a lot of work in lots of different spaces, and I just became fatigued. I just became fatigued also of not seeing your energy um have the same outcome that you really expected it to. And so we were, and I know this is like a typical activist thing, but you're just putting so much energy, right? And now we're in 2020, and I'm like, man, this is really really familiar. So I'm like literally editing a film in 2020, that I made a film in 2016 to about 2018 in the same spirit, and not much has changed, other than I'm changing myself and how I relate and how I think and how I work and how I see my energy, like and I, and this is like side note like I am totally rethinking black women and labor.

[8:34] Maria Judice: Like I'm really trying to understand my labor and the energy that's attached to my labor in so many ways, if that makes sense. And I know you know what I'm talking about.

[8:44] Tonya Pinkins: Explain it, break it down what your black woman labor is.

[8:48] Maria Judice: Oh, girl, like I think part of it is a lot of, you know, as I listen to the other pieces of your podcast, there's so many places that I see black women working in, right? We're working in the care space of caring for other people. So we're just like, you know, caregivers all around. We're nurturers, we're healers, we're in the mystic arts. We are also in this like, you know, labor of the skill and thing that we are doing.

[9:18] Maria Judice: So I've been in tech, I've been in film, I've been in the arts. And I always find myself holding multiple bags in a space and not having a lot of energy for my own work. And this is how I end up with a film after so many years, finally getting to my feature film, is because I worked for a lot of other people. I did a lot of labor in other spaces. Um, and the expectation of, you know, someone turning around and being like, all right, it's your turn. You know, let us work on your film, let us support you. That doesn't happen in the same way.

[9:50] Tonya Pinkins: I wanted to speak to that because I think I can relate to that in the sense that all of my career I've wanted to find a team, and I know the most talented people in the world, and it's very hard to get the most talented people in the world to be on your team because every one of them has their own things and their own communities, and so I often would be trying to get people to get on a team for us to do something together because I love collaboration.

[10:19] Tonya Pinkins: And I remember once one of my coaches said to me about my acting, about my work on Army Wives. He said to me, you know, you're more interesting than the stars on the show. You're probably not going to last very long. And then he sat me down and he said, you know, when you ask someone to be on a team with you, that is intimidating for them. They look at you and they're like, oh, if you lean on me, I'm gonna fall down.

[10:50] Tonya Pinkins: And so he said, better for you to build whatever you're gonna do, and then say, oh, look what I'm doing. Better jump on the ride. And when he said that, I thought, like, what does that mean? And how am I ever supposed to do that? And I think that with RED PILL, I inadvertently did that, but only because I tried so hard so long to get a team. I know a lot of people, I'd asked everybody to give me a shot. They said no. On this side, I'm actually grateful for all those people who said no because I finally just jumped off the cliff and did it.

[11:28] Tonya Pinkins: And then in the middle of doing it, all of these people showed up. You know, Marissa showed up, well showed up. This, you know, I found myself one time in the middle going, oh my God, I have a team. I wasn't looking for this team, but this is the team that I magnetized. This is the team that showed up. The one I was looking for, that didn't ever happen.

[11:52] Maria Judice: I have so much to say there, and like I don't even know where to begin, right? So a lot of this is like me coming to the conclusion to unlearn everything I've ever learned about filmmaking to build a team that makes the most sense for the work that I want to do. You know, so I think there's a lot about me reaching back to my grandmothers and the people that took care of me.

[12:22] Maria Judice: Just mamas in the neighborhood to see how they organized and how they built their team together. And a lot of their work begins by developing a space to care and nurture, meaning, like I had to rethink like, do I want to shoot for 12 hours a day? Hell the fuck no, I don't want to shoot for 12 hours today. Like I'm still working a full-time job, right? So I was like, all right, we're gonna shoot eight to nine hours, you know. We'll see how people feel.

[12:55] Maria Judice: And then I had to like supply food. I had to supply, not like food of like, oh, you're supplying catering. This was like supply food and a place to nurture and sit and when they come into the door to let them deal with their day before they transform into art, which is not something I had ever been on a set that did that, and was something that I realized, especially with the people in my film.

[13:22] Maria Judice: I used a lot of my community. Some of them were trained actors, some of them weren't, but every single person, mostly people of color. I think I only have one person that's maybe not a person of color, but every single person came in with a fucking story about how racism had impacted their day. You know what I'm saying? And so for me to be like, all right, cool, I get it, we all get it, flip on because we gonna act now and we're gonna do art, just stop making any sense. So, in a way, like we spent time in the beginning of each day that we shot just to like unload and to release and to be here, but also that informed the process so much because everyone was kind of like taking their own stories around, you know, our conversations, and they're just like a bunch of conversations that are kind of trying to help this character re-figure out her space of trauma.

[14:21] Maria Judice: You know, I hate to say like there's any resolution that comes from witnessing a person being murdered, or any resolution or healing that happens when you witness a young boy on a skateboard that gets murdered by a cop. Like you don't heal from that, but you do figure out some place for yourself in your mind to deal with it, to move on from it, but also to hold a space for it and to hopefully think in the future of how you can navigate, you know, and politically push against the ability for something like that to happen again. And that's what happens in the whole film. It's not a snapper easy thing. It takes her a year to figure out that space. But so often we are like, all right, you saw these people get murdered on Instagram, on Twitter, on Facebook.

All right, now get back into these streets, go back to work. Make sure you're making this Thanksgiving dinner for your family. Let's not pause and mourn collectively and as a people. So that's also a part of like the black women's labor, you know. It's interesting that you that's like a very radical thing that you are making space in your art for this.

[15:34] Maria Judice: Let's breathe, let's feel. And in a sort of contrasting way, in the plays that I write, and even in RED PILL, I feel like I want it acknowledged that many people, not just black women, they are walking around juggling 50 traumas at a time, and you don't know it because they are doing their job fantastically. You don't have a clue what is going on in their house. And so, you know, I have a play that we just had a reading of Jeffrey Manor, where it was about six women all juggling a million problems, and none of them get resolved at the end of the play, and they keep going. And they're the kind of things that in a typical story, one of them carries the whole story, and at the end, there's some if it isn't resolved, you're emotionally better at it. And it's like, no, actually, there's a lot of people where there is no resolution. They live in the lack of resolution their whole lives. And for me, I want to elevate that to a kind of heroism.

[16:40] Maria Judice: Someone gave me a note about the moment in the play when a character is murdered and their partner just goes cold. And they're like, I don't, I don't like that. I don't want that. And it's like, well, that character has seen a lot of people killed. And they can't break down because they know they could be next. This is not the time to have an emotional breakdown because now we got to figure out what we're gonna do because we just saw somebody get killed, they're ready to kill every one of us. And that we as women do that all the time. You know, so we're working the opposite side of what is the journey of dealing with trauma.

[17:16] Maria Judice: Yes, I totally agree. And in my film, like I say this as I started to like send it to folks to get like feedback on it. Like everyone's comment is I'm really mad at your character because she doesn't do anything. And I'm like, what do you mean she don't do nothing? She's basically healing. What does that look like? And maybe it looks like what Instagram and Twitter has told you it looks like, where you go order a bunch of shit online, or you go talk to your therapist and do your psychoanalysis or whatever, or it just looks like somebody fucking sitting in a corner staring at a wall, trying to figure out if she wants tea or she want breakfast, or should she call her therapist, right? Like what does trauma look like?

And I think the radical place for us as black people is to have this discussion with each other, right? That there's a scene with the mother where the mother says that exact same thing. She's like, you know, like my black mama, you think you the only person that had trauma? You the only person that ever seen anybody murdered, any seen anybody. We all seen it, and we get our ass up and we go back to work. We get shit done. You can't just sit here and cry and whine and be in your feelings. That's why people shit. And this is that millennial stuff. This is that stuff that you know, Twitter is telling you. And she's like, you know, I'm actually healing. Like, this is working for me. I have a therapist, I'm doing my yoga, you know, and I got my plants, you know. I'm trying to do some art and writing. And mom is like, girl, your hair looked terrible. You ain't got no lipstick on, and you ain't been outside in six months.

[18:59] Maria Judice: So that for me is so much about our next conversation that we should have as black people is how do we heal? And what does that look like? And also, does it look different for all of us, right? And is our trauma also the same because we just lump our trauma over white supremacy and racism, and we don't allow for all those intersections of our trauma to say that women have a whole other layer of trauma for us, we have a whole other layer that we're dealing with about our bodies as women being abused and in the hostile aggression against our bodies on a daily basis, not to mention the racism and the colonialism and the white supremacy.

[19:47] Maria Judice: Yeah, I think you know, I'm an elder, I'm an elder, and what I can say is that the traumas that would take me down for a year, because I now have moved into a space where, and I'm not saying this is an easy space to move into, but I think about that passage in the Bible that says this too shall pass. And I've lived long enough to know that everything passes, and so I have a discipline practice of when something happens, I try to be with it as it is. Now, the more difficult it is, the more I watch myself going into avoiding everything. Let me go do this, let me call this one, let me do that one, let me do that one. And so I will watch myself doing that, and then I'll go. And are you ready to just lay down and feel that feeling? You know, are you ready to lay down and feel that feeling? And eventually I get to just making the space. And usually when I make the space, it doesn't take as long as I thought, but that's a discipline I've worked at.

[20:57] Maria Judice: I mean, this week I had the spirit experience was I was full of rage, and I just asked a girlfriend, I said, can I have the imaginary conversation with you where I just tell this person off? And you know, Jeff, I can't tell you the burden that was lifted. I was like, everybody needs this. This is better than therapy. All that talking about it is just sticking it in some other places in your body. Just full on release it. You know, they say that when you think it is the same as doing it, like find the space and a person where you can just cry or scream and let that go and let it pass and move on to something else.

[21:35] Maria Judice: Yeah, it's so funny you said that quote because that quote is in my film. Because, you know, it's definitely a film that's a conversation with black folks, and you know, black folks love our Christianity and we love our Jesus. And so a lot of the elders bring to her, you know, this path of Christianity and Jesus as a way to heal this trauma. And so she's talking to her therapist, and she's like, you know, everybody keeps saying this line, this too shall pass, but it isn't like this one trauma is not compounded by all the other traumas and also the traumas that come from the maternal line and come from the paternal line. So it's true, this too shall pass, but it also is this too will leave something with you that will never pass and that you will always hold.

And so that sense of her in the film is which I I'm very interested, like Kathleen Collins is like very interested in exploring this Christianity within the black culture and questioning it, right? And all out saying, like her character says all out, like I don't believe in that shit. Like that shit does not work for me. If it works for me, you would have said that shit and I would have got up and walked out this door. Instead, I'm laying out on this floor, not really shoring, not really understanding what I'm doing and trying to do the math. Like, and that's very much me. That's my character, like me and my own personal life. It's like I need to do the math on shit. You can tell me all the religious stuff all day. I will take pieces of it, but what's the math? Like, I need to I need the probability of survival right now. I want to understand what the math is too.

[23:13] Maria Judice: Because you, when you were talking about the Christian thing, you know, this is the red pilling of America. And I was thinking about SCOTUS making it okay for religious ceremonies to happen. And to me, that's red pilling of America. Let's just let them all go in there and get killed. Let them go and die, and then they if we have to call some revotes, they won't be alive to re-vote, or they'll be in the ICU and they can't revote. But that's part of the math, right? You got a probability there of survival that's very low for them going to church, right? It's not about whether they believe in Jesus or not. There's a scientific element that is proven that they're ignoring and denying.

[24:38] Maria Judice: I need to understand probability. The probability is that you're gonna die eventually, and it could be any moment from now. Like that is the probability that I live with every day. And I find it empowering. Like a lot of people don't want to contemplate their death. I contemplate. Oh no, I contemplate my death, girl. I investigate it. I scrutinize it. Yeah, I contemplate that the next moment is not promised. So I need to do everything I want to do because I might not have the next moment. I feel like living with this place where I don't get to procrastinate has made my life far more, I don't know, just more alive. Like I gotta get it done because you know, the next moment is not promised. And there's a way in which expecting to have time allows you to be lazy, allows you to procrastinate because you expect, oh well, I can do that next week.

I don't know that I'm gonna have a next week. You know, people say, when is the movie coming out? I'm like, you know what? I don't know when the movie's gonna come out. It's gonna come out when it's supposed to come out. I might be dead by the time the movie comes out, but the movie can come out anyway, because all the parts are there and then lots of people working on it. I might not even be here for it, but it can come out. It does not need me.

[25:52] Maria Judice: Yes, yes, yes. Um, yeah, so much of that I was just thinking is a part of me and my own journey trying to relinquish fear in my life and fear of death. Um, and I feel like so much of the world is about building fear and throwing like little fear pebbles in our path to obstruct us living the fullest life. And so when you said that, I was like, yes, like that's really how I how how I live every day in my personal life is that um is that not necessarily my film, but that is definitely how I live in my personal life.