This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, I'm Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:11] Tonya Pinkins: You gotta say what's good for you.

[0:28] Tonya Pinkins: If you're wondering why I haven't been podcasting for a while, it's because I was making a movie and getting it distributed and writing the book, Red Pill Unmasked, which is available on Amazon, and you can listen to me narrate it on Audible.

[0:43] Tonya Pinkins: And also we've just released the Red Pill Game.

[0:46] Tonya Pinkins: It takes place in the future when the red pills have taken over.

[0:49] Tonya Pinkins: And you can try it and see if you can survive a world of red pills.

[0:55] Tonya Pinkins: So I've come back to podcasting, and it's rather fortuitous, ironic, I don't know what the word for it is. Um, that the person I am speaking with today is someone who, you know, in a certain way has something to do with my being a filmmaker now.

[1:15] Tonya Pinkins: Um, he is a playwright, he is a television writer, a television producer. He um produced on the Golden Globe nominated um, oh god, I'm not gonna remember the name of it, Jane. To help me.

[1:30] Tonya Pinkins: No, he's not gonna help me. Okay, but he's currently producing on The Promised Land, which I had an opportunity to watch the pilot of today. And I met him a few years back in the New York theater, and I directed a play of his, a one act play of his called Artistic New Directions, and I adapted it to a short film and directed it and it won some festivals, and you know, he's gotten very famous now, so I haven't really talked to him much. So let me welcome Christopher Oscar Peña so I can just get in his ass.

[2:03] Tonya Pinkins: And he's just gotten too famous, too big for his britches. Hey, Chris.

[2:08] Christopher Oscar Peña: I can never get too big for you, kidding. You are the like iconic legend. So I'm just trying to like keep up with you to enter this space.

[2:16] Tonya Pinkins: So where are you living now, Chris?

[2:19] Christopher Oscar Peña: Well, I am currently in the moment right now talking to you from Harlem. Um, but I have been in LA mostly for the last, not only just work-wise for the last couple of years, but the pandemic, uh, which we don't need to talk about. Um, but I've been there mostly because as I'm sure will be part of our conversation, something you know is um it is difficult for or challenging for people of color to get opportunities in work.

[2:45] Christopher Oscar Peña: Uh, and right now there is much more opportunity for people like me in Hollywood than there is in New York.

[2:51] Tonya Pinkins: Why is there more opportunity right now?

[2:54] Christopher Oscar Peña: Uh I I I, you know, I am like many people, and I think like you, I think that the entertainment business has been really racist for for a long time. Uh, it continues to be. And I think that we have all people this last two years have been acting all woke, like they just discovered that our business is racism.

[3:14] Christopher Oscar Peña: Uh, but we know this for a long time, and we've been talking about it for a long time. You can Google interviews from 10 years ago where the same 20 people have been in the same room talking about the same shit. Um, but I think the difference is New York has less money and less opportunity and uh is less smarts about business.

[3:34] Christopher Oscar Peña: And uh Hollywood, I think actually cares less about about uh the racism about the um about people of color, but they do care about money. And so if they think that people of color will bring them money they will chase that money and so because of that they have been created more opportunities for us.

[3:52] Tonya Pinkins: Now you also wrote on a show that I don't know if it's even coming back. I loved it was it like Mother or something Salem I love that show. Is that show coming back?

[4:01] Christopher Oscar Peña: Yeah Motherland of Fort Salem they did three seasons um they're currently I think they just finished or they're shooting their final season which is season three so you will get but it but they knew that going in so you'll get a full circle.

[4:16] Christopher Oscar Peña: And that you know I gotta tell you that show I worked on the first season I loved it. I loved the writers I loved the cast uh but most of the room did not come back for that room for that um TV show.

[4:29] Christopher Oscar Peña: Um there was a lot of drama on that show. So I will just say that the most of the women and people of color or anybody with a little bit of power chose not to come back to that room um because it was a complicated place to work.

[4:45] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah I find that being of color being a woman being anything that's not you know white male hetero Christian is complicated because not being that means you have to be better more knowledgeable about everything.

[5:05] Tonya Pinkins: And so you're always going into rooms where people who aren't as knowledgeable or experienced are your bosses and you're having to you know gauge how much can I say and you're having to always sort of pretend you don't know and yet you like know you need to say what needs to be said, and it's just it's it's a it's something I can't navigate anymore.

[5:24] Christopher Oscar Peña: I know we're constantly policing ourselves and constantly having to code switch and constantly, and you never know who's on your side, you know, you never know who really you know believes what they're saying, who's gonna betray you. It's very Shakespearean in that way.

[5:40] Christopher Oscar Peña: Um so I've taken to just being what I do now is I'm very upfront, at least on Facebook. People read it, so I'm not like you know, lying. Um, and I talk about the institution, that is a problem, you know, that's a bigger thing, and I'm very honest about those problems.

[5:57] Christopher Oscar Peña: I don't tend to ever talk about a specific writer or artist. I mean, there are a lot of people in our business who I find problematic, but I tend to very rarely single them out because then it feels more personal and it's easier for people to sort of smoke screen the real issue.

[6:13] Christopher Oscar Peña: Um, so I tend to talk about the organizational issues first and foremost. But the reality is those organizations are led by people, and there's people in those rooms, and so it's very easy to figure out who the problem is, you know.

[6:28] Christopher Oscar Peña: Um I will tell you one of the things, and you've been you've been doing this for a long time. One of the things that really is broken my heart is being part of a generation of young artists, being in the room with them, talking about our challenges, talking about the the racism, talking about the accessibility and the resources, and watching them all shake their heads and be like, yes, I'm with you, and then now being at that age where a lot of them are taking over theaters or had founded their own sort of um producer organizations, and then watching actually that when it comes to their actual um what they do, right?

[7:06] Christopher Oscar Peña: What they produce, so they put their money into, it looks exactly like it did 10 years ago. Uh and I and part of me is like, but you know, so now like now it's not uh an accident. Now it's not a blind spot, you know, now it's a choice.

[7:22] Christopher Oscar Peña: Um I think a lot of those people would say it's not a choice or they're they're not aware of it, but it's like what are you talking about? We've been talking about it for years. Well, you've been in the room with me.

[7:31] Christopher Oscar Peña: So either you're being willfully ignorant or stupid.

[7:35] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, I think there's a lot of willful ignorance in in our business.

[7:40] Christopher Oscar Peña: Well, nobody wants to be, nobody wants to say that they're the problem. It's it's easy for them to point at everyone else.

[7:46] Christopher Oscar Peña: But uh that's you know, we talk about this a lot, especially with with the latest, I wonder if I say the movement, the latest movement happened a couple years ago um with BLM.

[7:55] Christopher Oscar Peña: It was just such um, you know, there were so many Karen's, you know, everybody, everybody that you try to sort of point at them or not point at them, but involve them to the conversation and say, you've been doing the same thing, suddenly we're bullies and they're victims and we're the bad guy.

[8:12] Christopher Oscar Peña: I've just decided that anything that a human being is capable of being, I am capable of being is so call me any name you want to call me. Yes, I'm that. I'm all of it.

[8:20] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[8:21] Christopher Oscar Peña: I mean, true, I mean, truly the and it's also listen, when I write plays, a lot of the times what I write about isn't why are Latinos or people of color or queers or immigrants victims.

[8:32] Christopher Oscar Peña: Um, I like to talk about what we struggle with, but I also like to talk about how we are complicit in our own struggle and how we are our own more senator, right?

[8:40] Christopher Oscar Peña: Because we also, you know, Latinos um one side are being well liked to be white, like you're designated as white on the census.

[8:50] Tonya Pinkins: Right.

[8:51] Christopher Oscar Peña: No, it is, it is, which I find really problematic. But it's like Latinos can be oppressed by white um white Americans, but the minute that they feel that they're white and power, they'll turn and oppress other people of color, right?

[9:02] Christopher Oscar Peña: So, like that's what we're all sort of complicit in different ways. Um, and and I'm interested in that.

[9:07] Tonya Pinkins: It's I I will say, and I I wonder if you you've talked about this at all. I've been really, and I have not said this, I've said this in private, I've never said it in public because I it feels like one of the other issues about um the conversations we're having right now is that people are not being nuanced, and that everybody wants to be right.

[9:26] Tonya Pinkins: And so instead of like if I say something on Facebook, seven people will tell me why I'm wrong as opposed to like actually, you know, and now I'm the enemy as opposed to like here's what I'm actually talking about.

[9:36] Christopher Oscar Peña: So one of the things I've been really interested in is the conversation the last year in the last two years uh about black sort of victimization in this country and black lives versus equity and diversity in the theater.

[9:54] Christopher Oscar Peña: And I think somehow those conversations became one, but there was never sort of an acknowledgement.

[10:03] Christopher Oscar Peña: Like if everybody said to me, hey, I really want to talk about the opportunities that black artists have received in the theater scene, I'm like, that's great. But what I have found is that people talk about um people of color and what they really mean as black people.

[10:20] Tonya Pinkins: So and and and what I and and as an example, in the last two years, have you seen 12 new Latino plays get added to the seasons? Have you seen 12 new Latino directors? Can you name five new Latino playwrights or Middle Eastern writers or Asian writers? And it seems No, but let me just say this. Yeah, you know, I wrote this essay uh on Medium two years ago, why I'm fed up with performative activism from black and white theater makers. And I'm told that it is required reading at many universities. Yale Drama School made it required reading. And I thought, wow, that's really fascinating. And many, many white directors called me to tell me how much they understood it. And I had to point out to them how they had done the things.

And they're like, what? You know, because I'm just at a point in my life where I can be really honest. So for me, when I looked at what this season looks like with all those black people, quite frankly, my attitude was this was like, just shut them niggas up and give them a show and let them go in. Let's see if they live. And if they die, then we won't start our shows. But if they go and they survive, then we'll bring our Hugh Jackmans and our Sutton Fosters in. And what do we give them? Two minutes? They got eight weeks, and they can say they had a Broadway show, but we didn't take the time building up the audience for them, really supporting them. But we could say it was the most black theater in 40 years, but not really.

[11:49] Christopher Oscar Peña: Yeah, I agree with that. I know I can I 100% agree with all of that. And I do also feel like the argument that I'm that I am making is also that I just felt like everybody was like, look, we solved it. We solved equity and diversity in the theater. And it's like, you didn't do anything. You didn't do anything. And it truly, uh, if you had thought, if you had even tried to work at it, then you would have realized that equity and diversity theater is not just one group of people, right? And but you but I think I hear I hear your version of it, which is they just wanted to shut black people up, and I and I and I believe that a lot of that was that as well. Like, are you all happy now? Are you happy now?

And I think many people were happy because I don't think they were really looking at a vision for a world that looks better. They just wanted access and they had an opportunity to complain and they got their access. And now people are like, are we done with that? Okay, let's move on to doing what we do.

[12:38] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear that. I completely I agree with that. So yeah, it's I don't know. Uh I feel I feel sad, I feel angry, I feel frustrated. I'm s you know. Yeah, but come on, like the Latinos, you all got so many people, so many countries. You got like a market, like this the South Asians, you've got markets, you got people. You can make stuff happen. I mean, Lynn Manuel uh in the heights, that was community supported made that happen. I don't feel like my community does that for one another. But I'm not gonna blame my community. I'm gonna say that the systematic anti-blackness means that even if we did, there are systems in place to just shut down whatever we do.

[13:23] Christopher Oscar Peña: Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's it's it's remarkable how ingrained it to how we've been built, right? Like we don't even know sometimes that it's there, you know, that it's right in front of us. It's that's so tricky. Um I you know, the Latino thing, I I mean, listen, I don't know the real answer, but I think part of the problem that we're talking about is that uh everybody thinks that we're one thing, right? And the fact is no, we're different cultures. We're different cultures, we're different countries, we're different languages. Some of us want to be here, some of us don't want to be here, some of us were forced here, you know, and I think that uh a lot of times Latinos are so focused on their own or interested in their own story that they're not supporting the other Latinos, right?

It's like I think that a lot of the Mexican stories don't r don't resonate with Cuban stories. They have such different baggage about what it means to be American, right? And so I think that's the problem is that we can we we can with so much so much uh disparity and and breakup that there's it's hard to unify people.

[14:24] Tonya Pinkins: And I have a question about this, and then it's something I'm trying to keep in my mind to remember to say. I feel like in America, because we're just some of the dumbest people on the planet, we assume that the people who cross the Mexican border are Mexicans, and they're not. They're coming from other countries that our drug wars and and American policy has forced these people out of their home, and they have had to walk across continents and through Mexico to enter the country. What do you think about that?

[14:54] Christopher Oscar Peña: Well, I I think at the end of the day, the very first thing that I will just say is like, you know, I've and I'm not Mexican or Cuban, so and this is about pointing because I think Hondurans do this too. But it's interesting to me, you know, that Cubans so want to distance themselves from Mexicans because they're like they they look at Mexicans as less than because they're desperately trying to cross the border and they're not wanted here. But Mexicans aren't trying to cross the border. More US people move to Mexico than Mexicans come to America. Statistically, that is not true. I mean, sure, those narratives aren't being shared, right?

[15:35] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, but that's a fact. And so I don't even deal with what stupid people think. I'm like, the fact is there are more Americans moving to Mexico than Mexicans trying to move here. Are there people from Central and South America trying to get here? Yes, but that's not Mexicans. I agree with you, but it's hard to unpack the reality, because you're right, I don't believe I know the truth, but like that's not what the country is living with, right? The country, and also do you think do you think most people, even in California, know the difference between like a Mexican and a Honduran and you know all the different countries? They think they think everyone is a Mexican.

[16:09] Christopher Oscar Peña: I know, that's the terrible thing. I grew up in California and I was asked when I was younger if I spoke Mexican, and that was earnest, you know, and I was like, Mexican's not a language, bro. But so it's like for us, we're having intellectual conversations at this level that are real and basic facts, but like, how do we how do we get everyone else on board when they're they're in a different, you know?

[16:30] Tonya Pinkins: I'm not trying to get them on board. I've I've decided I I can't I can't speak down to people. I just can't. I won't speak down to them. I'm like, catch up, catch up, catch up. There's something really good here, catch up, and if you miss it, oh well, it's not for you. Go go beat a lemming.

[16:43] Christopher Oscar Peña: Yeah, that's why I've always love Christianer, because you know he always said he's not gonna write down to people, you know, he's gonna write up for people, and I always respect that.

[16:50] Tonya Pinkins: Who said that?

[16:52] Christopher Oscar Peña: Kirchner.

[16:53] Tonya Pinkins: Tony, Tony Kushner.

[16:55] Christopher Oscar Peña: Yeah, he doesn't write down. No, his language is dead so it's farther. He's like, he expects people to show up and do the work.

[17:01] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, and I think people are capable of doing the work. Yeah, like by human design. I think that we are fantastic by human design, but this the life of convenience and the stress of life and picking all the places where we don't have to think and be convenient makes us prey to that.

[17:22] Christopher Oscar Peña: Yeah, I mean, as a TV writer, I mean, half the time that we're writing, we're trying to write really complicated, complex uh uh ask tough questions, and we get the network back, and they're like, Middle America's not gonna understand this, change this, make it and you're like, I I just what? And they want you to constantly explain over and over and over. And I'm like, this is the dumbing down of America. We are part of the problem and there's only so much I can do because I'm you know they're paying me I'm not the one in charge at least not now but it is it is interesting to watch it happen to continually dumb down and so of course people don't know anything they're not their brains are not being challenged.

[18:00] Tonya Pinkins: Well I think you know when we're talking about what are the networks doing what is Hollywood doing you know that's they're all the propaganda machines and they're selling something and they're selling dumb. I don't think we really are that dumb but that is what they're selling and they're selling that worldwide because it makes the money.

[18:17] Christopher Oscar Peña: Yeah yeah yeah and I mean nobody most people don't want to be challenged right that's the reality. I think that poor people are challenged every day and they're probably the smartest people because their life and survival depends on knowing you know what they can do, what they can't get away with and how to survive like that's what I think.

[18:39] Tonya Pinkins: I've always been interested in how education is so scary to so many people of color and so many poor people that like so many people have been trained that education is bad. Uh and that is like it I you know I find that really tell me more about that because I've really been thinking a lot about education.

[18:57] Christopher Oscar Peña: What who's been trained that education's bad where are you getting that I think that communities as a whole I mean listen if you if you all these Trumpers for instance like they don't know their own history right they don't really know like you can you ask them about amendment or the constitution they don't know what anything is you know they just know what like Fox News is telling them and you can stay there in front of them and explain to them basic science and they will disagree with you. And it's like you barely graduated high school and you think you know more science than a fucking scientist, you know? And so why are they why are they so afraid to say I don't like that's bad?

[19:31] Christopher Oscar Peña: I think they've been bred to believe that people who are educated, people have money, people who um are from that access world are destroying their lives or the reason that they're poor. So I think instead of interrogating that, they're like, we don't trust those people, those people are bad, and therefore everything that comes out of our mouths is bad too. Um, but I think that's and also religion, you know.

[19:55] Tonya Pinkins: So here's where I am about that education piece. In the last year and a half, two years, I have realized how much I was lied to throughout most of my education, and that most of the books I read were written by people who were lied to, so that now every time I read anything, I'm suspicious, I don't trust it, I'm reading with a Google and a checking and multiple checks and going down millions of rabbit holes as I read everything because I'm like, I don't know. And a really great example of how all of us have not been educated is that I was on Karen Hunter's show a couple of weeks ago, and David Pepper, who was the former head of the Democratic National Convention in Ohio, National Committee in Ohio was on.

[20:48] Tonya Pinkins: Uh, David Pepper is a Yale undergrad and a Yale law school, and his major at Yale was history, and what David Pepper was on fire about is the fact that he had never learned in his entire undergraduate degree history education that there had been representative democracy with black people in every aspect of government during Reconstruction.

[21:15] Christopher Oscar Peña: He never learned that in Yale.

[21:17] Tonya Pinkins: And I'm like, oh, so it's not just I got a bad education. There is some conspiracy somewhere that there are just certain stories they don't even want the elite to know.

[21:28] Christopher Oscar Peña: Yeah, I mean, sort of pushback I'll say to you is that I don't may agree with everything you just said. The difference is that you are smart enough because even if some, even if a lot or much or most or whatever the amount you want to say of your education is wrong or slightly off-shift or whatever, you are still an educated enough person to come now and do the work and realize that and go take it apart and figure it out.

[21:54] Tonya Pinkins: And I think that a lot of people don't even get to, oh, my education is wrong, you know. And I think to some degree you have to be educated enough to figure that out. But you have to have the leisure and the luxury to be able to do that. Like if you're struggling to survive, you don't have time to be figuring like, oh my God, I'm so dumb. And it's like once you know that you don't know, what are you gonna do about it when you still gotta show up at that job and knock those goals in every day?

[22:20] Christopher Oscar Peña: Or also you just, I mean, the reality is at any level, you just know as much as you need to know to survive, right? Or to keep going. So then what do you do? I mean, it's like, of course, people are gonna be trapped in their spots if they don't have the opportunity to figure out that they're being locked in, that they, you know, been imprisoned. Um, and I think this is true for a lot of us, you know.

[22:44] Tonya Pinkins: So I read your Facebook post about how excited you are about your new show. So, besides what you said on Facebook, like because you, you know what I mean. I'm, I'm, you know, you can't say that, and I say anything and everything on the show. I will tell you that the Latin Latino people, Latinx, I don't know what the right word is. I can't keep up with the words that are changing. Girl saying I get told by not a lot of people what I should be saying, please. But the people that I know who were raised in what is often called Hispanic or Latino culture who were upper class, I have found that many of them were raised with a better skill set of saying what needs to be said and code switching than sometimes I feel I got as a black person.

[23:30] Christopher Oscar Peña: And I think you are very good at that. Like one of my friends, a Latino woman, Olivia, she was saying school was like she don't even know what school was because her parents taught her this is what you say, this is what you do, but and you just know how to take people. Like, I feel like I learned that at a certain point, take a teacher, which made me question whether I was even smart because all I was doing was telling the teachers what they needed to do, and then it was like I couldn't keep doing that because I had to find out who I was.

[23:59] Tonya Pinkins: So my question is this show what you've been wanting. I mean, I'm sure you have your own shows that you want to do, but you are both a writer and a producer on this show. What does it mean to you to get to be there?

[24:13] Christopher Oscar Peña: So the, I'll share two things. The first, which is, um, you know, I've written for cable most of my life, uh, because I think you can get away with and say more complex things on cable. So I will say, and I mean this wholeheartedly, I love this show, I love it so much. Um, it represents everything that I want to happen on broadcast TV, right? So, like it is the best of what I want broadcast to be. Um, one of the things that has, there are many reasons why I love the show. One, it was created by a Latino writer. It is, our room was, uh, one, two, three, four, six Latino writers and one white writer. That has never happened to me. I've never been in the room with that many Latinos.

[24:58] Tonya Pinkins: Um, I really believe that we want to tell as many narratives. There's no one narrative, right? I don't think it's my responsibility to tell the story of Latino people. It is too much. I can only tell you my story, and that story is authentic Latino because I am Latino and I've lived a Latino life, whatever that means. But one thing that I have really fought for in the entertainment business is all the stories, most of the stories of Latino, uh, on Latino TV are about poor Latinos, uneducated Latinos, Latinos who are struggling, um, Latinos who are undocumented, you know, on Jane the Virgin, Jane took the bus everywhere. She didn't afford her own car. Uh, at one day at a time, the grandma lives in the living room. Uh, you know, all these people are struggling.

[25:49] Christopher Oscar Peña: And why can't we have struggle without poverty? Why can't we have, uh, struggle and be legally here and educated? I'm not saying those stories do not have value. I'm not saying they're not necessary. I'm saying that cannot be the only story, right? And if we say that we look to TV as something aspirational, something that can give us hope, well then why aren't we giving Latino people that? You know, and so for me, this show was really exciting to me. I'll tell you, so, I, my Ada said it to me. I initially said no, because, uh, the, because of the title of the title. They're like, read it. The first five pages, it's like Mexicans crossing the border, litter at the border, talking about their dreams.

I and I told my boss this. I was like, fuck this. This is like literally what I refuse to do. I'm not gonna do this anymore. And my kids were like, just read the whole thing. And then I read the whole thing, and as you know now, there's a big reveal, which is that there are two timelines, and that actually these Latinos become this empire.

[26:54] Tonya Pinkins: That really spoke to me because as much as people, you know, I do look white, I, you know, and do have a lot of um access and resources. The fact is, my mom and dad were Latino immigrants. My, we were very poor when I was a kid, you know. I was in ESL classes. People think my mom is my maid, she's so dark, and she has an accent, and my dad has an accent. My dad was a janitor. He is not the empire.

[27:21] Christopher Oscar Peña: Yes, no, but that's the point. But it's like, but it's not he didn't show up to, but the point is, I think he just showed up to America and they gave him the empire, right? He built it, like there was years of us doing that, and he was a janitor, he still works, he's still he owns the company he worked for. But so when I saw that show, I was like, this is my story. This is a story about these people who left their families, left their grandmothers and their children, and they came here, and now here it is, right? And they're still drama, they're still fucking and cheating and betrayals and you know, money and all that shit. But I love that I was like, this is the first time I've seen my family, you know. Here's this gay New Yorker who went to New York because his father sent him away when she came out, you know. Like, like now he's here to fucking take over the business. Like, all these things are things that I really resonate with.

[28:11] Tonya Pinkins: And what have you ever seen on TV a Latino family have Kardashian money who aren't drug dealers?

[28:20] Christopher Oscar Peña: I don't think I've ever seen it. So that is the whole reason I want to be on the show. Then, as we're writing it, my boss was really great about allowing us to pitch. My boss is, his name is Matthew Lopez, not to be confused with Matthew Lopez of Playwright. Matt is Cuban and he has written like seven highly successful movies. He just, uh, adapted Father of the Bride with Ending Garcia and Glorious Stephon that's about to come out. He did, he did movies with Adam Sandler and Carrie Russell. Like he's made big-time clear million art kids movies. And then he, he wrote this show, which he calls his Latino Take or his take on, um, uh, East of Eden. Um, uh, you know, the Steinbeck. He went to do Steinbeck. Um, and I, we always laugh in the room that his Bible is Steinbeck or the Godfather, and my Bible is Cruel Intentions.

[29:23] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, this is Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network. That was part one of my conversation with writer, producer, Christopher Oscar Peña. Come back for part two and make sure you don't say no?

[29:49] Christopher Oscar Peña: How come you don't say no when you mean no?

[29:49] Tonya Pinkins: When you mean no. How come you say you will?

[30:00] Christopher Oscar Peña: How come you say you will when you will know?

[30:13] Tonya Pinkins: Thanks for listening to You Can't SAY THAT, the show where you can. I'm Tonya Pinkins, and You Can't SAY THAT is part of the Broadway Podcast Network, produced by Dori Berinstein and Alan Seales, with music by Cat Dail. If you like what you hear, don't forget to subscribe and rate this podcast highly wherever you stream. Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at Tonya Pinkins. And to learn more, visit BPN dot F M forward slash Y C S T. Stay safe.