This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Welcome back to part two of You Can't SAY THAT.

[0:02] Tonya Pinkins: I'm your host, Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to my conversation with Alice Spivak.

[0:13] Tonya Pinkins: We've got to say one truth for you.

[0:25] Tonya Pinkins: Alice, I heard a rumor.

[0:28] Alice Spivak: Uh oh.

[0:29] Tonya Pinkins: That you dated a big rapper.

[0:32] Alice Spivak: A big rapper?

[0:33] Tonya Pinkins: I think so.

[0:34] Tonya Pinkins: A big hip hop artist. Did you ever?

[0:36] Alice Spivak: No. None. No, I can't think of one. I mean, there were a number of them in my home, but no, he didn't even have a hot love affair with an African American.

[0:47] Alice Spivak: Well, I've had love affairs with African Americans, but I don't remember.

[0:54] Tonya Pinkins: You mean this was a rumor that just was just a rumor.

[0:57] Alice Spivak: Oh, I love it. I didn't know there was a rumor about.

[1:01] Tonya Pinkins: There's usually rumors about it. Was someone you were coaching?

[1:03] Alice Spivak: Was it Harry?

[1:04] Tonya Pinkins: Well, Harry, there was always rumors about Harry because we were very close.

[1:08] Tonya Pinkins: But were they true?

[1:09] Alice Spivak: Uh well, I would say technically.

[1:16] Alice Spivak: It's hard to be around Harry. I mean, it's a good thing. He's so handsome.

[1:19] Alice Spivak: At 98, he's still handsome.

[1:21] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I have he's 90. What is he?

[1:23] Alice Spivak: I thought it was like 98.

[1:25] Tonya Pinkins: No, not yet. He and Sydney are both 90.

[1:29] Alice Spivak: They're gonna be, they're gonna be 94.

[1:33] Tonya Pinkins: 94.

[1:34] Alice Spivak: In February, March.

[1:35] Alice Spivak: They're gonna be in the next few weeks, they're gonna be uh 95.

[1:39] Tonya Pinkins: 94.

[1:39] Alice Spivak: They're six days apart.

[1:40] Tonya Pinkins: Wow.

[1:41] Alice Spivak: Sydney Poitier and Harry.

[1:43] Alice Spivak: Uh no, I was with Harry. I would say that we were, you know, working again, similar to with Diane.

[1:49] Alice Spivak: Uh, I had a very uh strong, maybe it's the type of coach I am, I don't know.

[1:54] Alice Spivak: But I mean, uh he was my student. We were colleagues, we were writing things together, and uh we were close, close, close friends.

[2:03] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[2:04] Alice Spivak: And uh I was definitely in love with Harry. I will say that.

[2:07] Alice Spivak: And he looked appeared to be in love with me a few times.

[2:12] Alice Spivak: But that's but I that we can't uh understand.

[2:16] Tonya Pinkins: But he's not a rapper.

[2:18] Alice Spivak: Okay. A rapper, he could he's not, but he's a wonderful I guess I could say the name of who it was.

[2:24] Alice Spivak: But I gosh, now I you're afraid to, because I know a lot of people.

[2:28] Alice Spivak: I can write it down.

[2:29] Tonya Pinkins: No, I could say it.

[2:30] Alice Spivak: Okay.

[2:31] Alice Spivak: And then you can uh It wasn't you and L L Cool J.

[2:34] Tonya Pinkins: Oh no, I never even met L O Cool J.

[2:36] Alice Spivak: Okay, so I think that was just I wasn't so thrilled.

[2:40] Alice Spivak: I heard I heard you and L L Cool J have I love it.

[2:47] Alice Spivak: I've never met the man.

[2:48] Alice Spivak: Okay.

[2:49] Alice Spivak: I think he's fantastic.

[2:53] Alice Spivak: I still can meet him.

[2:54] Tonya Pinkins: No, I don't think so.

[2:56] Alice Spivak: Uh but I I I have had lots of uh uh from that uh what is that group?

[3:04] Alice Spivak: Um uh Dirty Rotten Bastard.

[3:06] Alice Spivak: What was his name?

[3:07] Alice Spivak: But he was in my Oh uh is that um the Wu Tang?

[3:10] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, the Wu Tang Clan.

[3:11] Alice Spivak: Did you take one of the Wu Tang?

[3:12] Alice Spivak: I had two of the Wu Tang clans as students.

[3:15] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[3:16] Alice Spivak: I had uh Dirty Rotten old Dirty Bastard.

[3:18] Tonya Pinkins: Old Dirty Bastard.

[3:19] Alice Spivak: Old Dirty Bastard.

[3:20] Alice Spivak: I was I was thinking of Frank's Frank's uh movie Dirty Right.

[3:25] Alice Spivak: Old Dirty Bastard.

[3:26] Alice Spivak: Who was the other one?

[3:27] Tonya Pinkins: Uh uh oh, the very smart one.

[3:29] Alice Spivak: Um Q something.

[3:31] Alice Spivak: I had a terrible time with the name.

[3:33] Alice Spivak: The other one, I know.

[3:34] Alice Spivak: And he's got a TV series on Netflix where he does science stuff.

[3:38] Tonya Pinkins: Well, he's so smart.

[3:39] Alice Spivak: And he he was a ph you know, he was somebody.

[3:42] Alice Spivak: The other guy uh who died, by the way, sadly, I think this old dirty bastard, what his name was.

[3:48] Alice Spivak: And I had um what's his name? Combs when he was Sean Combs.

[3:53] Alice Spivak: Sean.

[3:53] Alice Spivak: Sean Combs.

[3:59] Tonya Pinkins: I don't know.

[3:59] Alice Spivak: This is what something happened to me.

[4:01] Alice Spivak: I do teach at the New Federal Theater, which is Woody King's.

[4:04] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, okay.

[4:05] Alice Spivak: So I've been teaching there since like the year 2000.

[4:08] Alice Spivak: And I used to get, and I don't anymore, which I think is a good sign, from uh Tanya, from other beautiful uh uh black women.

[4:18] Alice Spivak: So, how come you were with all these black people?

[4:21] Alice Spivak: And and I do have that black thing, and I'd say, so I didn't know how to respond, but I will respond.

[4:28] Alice Spivak: And I would say, uh, well, one, I'm lucky, I'm just lucky that I have been in that community since early on, since the late 60s, to be sure.

[4:39] Alice Spivak: But earlier than that, I had uh students that I was also involved, like Arthur Mitchell, who started Harlem School of the Dance.

[4:46] Alice Spivak: And I I helped Arthur really a little bit during that time to get out of the uh international world of ballet, because he was the only black dancer internationally famous, and he felt very odd in Ballantina's company.

[5:01] Alice Spivak: And he eventually wanted to leave and he wanted to start this magnificent incredible thing, Dance Theater of Harlem.

[5:07] Alice Spivak: And I happened to at the time also been working with Leon Bibb, who was doing um kind of a revival of Carnival that I was called to coach him, uh Leon, who I really admired tremendously.

[5:24] Alice Spivak: Uh and Leon was one of the very first uh to have as a black person to have a talk show on one of the networks.

[5:32] Alice Spivak: I can't remember which network, it was a Sunday.

[5:35] Alice Spivak: And I called Leon and I said, you know, Arthur Mitchell is in my class, and he's talking about wanting to start a dance theater and everything.

[5:43] Alice Spivak: I think you should interview him.

[5:44] Alice Spivak: And that was the beginning of his publicizing it.

[5:48] Alice Spivak: So I was very excited about that.

[5:49] Alice Spivak: And I was a young teacher.

[5:51] Alice Spivak: I mean, I just had this wonderful guy in my class, and then I knew he was a dancer.

[5:57] Alice Spivak: I didn't know I hadn't really been uh aficionado or ballet, so I didn't know he invited me to the ballet when he did his last performance.

[6:05] Alice Spivak: Me and George Balanchine.

[6:07] Alice Spivak: I was very excited.

[6:08] Alice Spivak: But anyway, so I've been lucky in that sense.

[6:11] Alice Spivak: And I think it does come from my background too, because what part of your background?

[6:16] Alice Spivak: Uh well, where I was born.

[6:17] Alice Spivak: I was born in a part of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which was an all-black neighborhood.

[6:23] Alice Spivak: My parents were the janitors in a building, which was all black, and they were immigrants from eastern Europe.

[6:32] Alice Spivak: And to me, to be very honest, and I moved uh to another neighborhood, which was uh not as it was more of an Italian Catholic neighborhood, and then eventually went to a high school and moved back into a black neighborhood, which was Bedford Stuyvesant.

[6:50] Alice Spivak: So my whole young background was that I believed that everybody's parents came from somewhere else who were white.

[6:59] Alice Spivak: Everybody had accents. They all came from either Italy or Russia, Poland or Lithuania.

[7:07] Alice Spivak: Like my father was my mother was from Russia and he was from Lithuania, and they never had schooling or anything like that.

[7:13] Alice Spivak: And to me, uh the black kids I knew had parents who were born here.

[7:20] Alice Spivak: So I said, Oh, they're the Americans.

[7:23] Alice Spivak: Because we never felt like we were American.

[7:26] Alice Spivak: I really never felt like an American until the 70s, to be honest.

[7:29] Tonya Pinkins: Wow.

[7:30] Alice Spivak: When and when people would ask me, and when I was in Europe, you know, are you an American?

[7:35] Alice Spivak: I'd say, no, I'm from New York.

[7:37] Alice Spivak: I I had just never felt any connection to it because of my whole background and the what loomed over it, the the Holocaust.

[7:46] Alice Spivak: And prior to the Holocaust was my mother's and father's Holocaust in Russia.

[7:52] Alice Spivak: So I it it was the world I lived in.

[7:56] Alice Spivak: And to me, my first boyfriend, I think, was uh the the janitor, this in another building we moved in, the janitor was next door to us, and Junior had a bike and a yeah, and he would be I'd be on his bike.

[8:09] Alice Spivak: So my point is I simply was until I came out of that very unschooled, uneducated background, immigrant neighborhoods, I didn't know anybody white whose parents were born here, uh, really, and I was surprised.

[8:28] Alice Spivak: So I had to be around 16 or 17.

[8:31] Alice Spivak: And then I discovered also when I came into Manhattan, which we used to call New York.

[8:37] Alice Spivak: We lived in Brooklyn, that was New York.

[8:39] Alice Spivak: So I'm talking about way back.

[8:41] Alice Spivak: And so when I moved into New York, because I got engaged, got married, I uh was discovering that black people were considered second class citizens, you know, that they were considered I said, Are you kidding?

[8:57] Alice Spivak: I didn't know about racism.

[8:59] Alice Spivak: This classic racism growing up.

[9:03] Alice Spivak: So maybe that's a lot to do with it.

[9:05] Alice Spivak: Aside from my total love of everything in art that connects to the black community.

[9:11] Alice Spivak: To me, the only truly American art form comes from the freed slaves, which is the gospel and the jazz and rock and roll and the blues.

[9:25] Alice Spivak: That's truly American art form.

[9:27] Alice Spivak: Everything else was kind of brought from Europe.

[9:31] Alice Spivak: Um the only other true American art form were done by Jewish immigrants, which was called Hollywood.

[9:38] Alice Spivak: And that was developed the star system and created movies, because they're the ones, the mayors, the warners, the Ziegfeld, well not necessarily Ziegfeld, the truly American.

[9:49] Alice Spivak: But Ziegfeld, you see, and all the people doing theater were borrowing it also from Europe.

[9:55] Alice Spivak: So the only thing that really developed on this soil, I think, is the uh is music, black music that came from the freed slaves, and that was and the rhetoric.

[10:09] Alice Spivak: So, and of course the poetry.

[10:12] Alice Spivak: I mean, there's really it it there's no comparison.

[10:12] Alice Spivak: There's no comparison.

[10:17] Alice Spivak: So I was always enjoying very much when I got to be lucky enough to be involved with a black show or a black movie, because there was always much more you can dig into, much more in that pie that you could relish and see and all the sad things and and all the joyous things and everything.

[10:36] Alice Spivak: So all the movies that I was involved with because of Harry primarily, but because of Diane as well.

[10:45] Alice Spivak: And uh I also worked with Diana, who's gonna be on Broadway now.

[10:49] Tonya Pinkins: Diana Ross, yes.

[10:51] Alice Spivak: What did you work with Diane Ross on?

[10:52] Alice Spivak: Diana, well, I met her earlier, and then I didn't, and then I was working with uh Kiss, Jean Simmons, and she was with uh Gene at the time, and we met again, but I didn't work with her.

[11:04] Alice Spivak: And then after that, she became producer with ABC of three movies.

[11:11] Alice Spivak: It ended up she only really did one of them, and it was an excellent movie that she called me, and I we worked very hard on it.

[11:19] Alice Spivak: It was about schizophrenia, and she was playing the mother of a young girl who was having schizophrenia, and her mother, the grandma was also schizophrenic, and that's what happens.

[11:31] Alice Spivak: Schizophrenia runs through it, doesn't even skip it when she was also, it just it goes through the the women.

[11:39] Alice Spivak: It's true of Marilyn Monroe and her mother and herself and her sister.

[11:44] Tonya Pinkins: Well, doesn't have degrees then because my mother was schizophrenic.

[11:47] Alice Spivak: She was schizophrenic, yeah.

[11:49] Alice Spivak: Yeah, the degrees.

[11:50] Alice Spivak: And so we were working on that together for uh quite a while up in her place, it was fun.

[11:57] Alice Spivak: Uh, but uh you know, I and that was fascinating.

[12:02] Alice Spivak: So when material comes to me from my white clients, it's hard put to find something really interesting other than some sort of and it's television, of course, it's really, very, very unless it's Sopranos.

[12:18] Alice Spivak: I loved working coaching on the Sopranos because that was like coaching on plays.

[12:24] Alice Spivak: Because you could take any Sopranos episode and put it right on the stage, it was so funny, so well conceived and written.

[12:32] Alice Spivak: The characters were so terrific.

[12:34] Alice Spivak: So that I would I like doing.

[12:36] Alice Spivak: But if it's some kind of movie, it's usually not very good.

[12:46] Alice Spivak: Or God help us, you know.

[12:49] Alice Spivak: White on we uh, you know, uh what do they call Hallmark or Lifetime or something?

[12:54] Alice Spivak: And there's nothing terribly interesting in it.

[12:57] Alice Spivak: I mean, I'm happy that as an acting teacher, I'm always involved with plays because plays are something that keep giving.

[13:05] Alice Spivak: You you don't you don't ever get enough out of plays.

[13:10] Alice Spivak: Uh of course you're gonna do Chekhov and Shakespeare.

[13:13] Alice Spivak: You can you can be that forever.

[13:15] Alice Spivak: You could just stay in a room and forever and forever read them, and you never get enough.

[13:20] Alice Spivak: It always more is coming.

[13:23] Alice Spivak: Uh, and uh in uh in black film and black um uh theater, uh there was always something to dig into, and you found it, and you found, and it was always very funny and very sad and very everything.

[13:39] Alice Spivak: So you I just loved it so much more.

[13:42] Alice Spivak: I could just uh, you know, you were swimming in it.

[13:45] Alice Spivak: So even ones that didn't quite do well was interesting working on, uh like Buck and the Preacher, for instance, which which you gotta give us some of your resume because it's not online.

[13:57] Tonya Pinkins: Nobody could go online and find it.

[13:59] Tonya Pinkins: So you gotta give it a I went online, I tried to find, you know, that you have this very just not much of a digital footprint.

[14:05] Alice Spivak: And coaching that wouldn't be a lot on IMDB.

[14:08] Alice Spivak: That's not a lot on IMDb.

[14:09] Tonya Pinkins: So tell us about it.

[14:10] Alice Spivak: Some of the coaching, I see. But uh I thought, yeah, IMDb. I am listed with credit, so occasional coaching, I did get a credit. So tell us some credits. Gotta tell us something. Because I couldn't find it online. Bucking the Preacher. Fucking the Preacher. Before that, I did uh it was called The Angel of Bean, which was also with Belafonte. But I had worked on a couple of films before that. There was uh uh, you know, that I would work with the quote star of the film. Occasionally I was uh hired by the director. There was a uh a couple of mini-series. Um one was called, and these were awful, Lace 2, and it was uh Harem, which happened to have been Ava Gardner's last uh work, and Omar Sharif may have been his last too, because I don't know where he was.

[15:05] Tonya Pinkins: And you got to work with Ava and Omar.

[15:07] Alice Spivak: Ava and Omar, and uh uh what's her name? Julia uh, who I really love, Julia um Miles. And um uh God, and and of course uh Yafit Koto was in that. So I did get to work with Yafit uh earlier when he was doing um Great White Hope when he replaced uh James Earl Jones.

[15:31] Tonya Pinkins: Have you worked with James before?

[15:32] Alice Spivak: Uh with James. I never actually worked with James, I just adored him so much. What about Cecily? I'm gonna name names.

[15:39] Tonya Pinkins: Cecily, I did once I was called upon. She had a different um coach who happened to be away, and so I was called, and I must say that wasn't a really very uh nice time because Cecily had a couple of problems as a younger, younger person. She used to get uh some kind of situation where she would stiffen up and and and and couldn't move. So I thought she was so brilliant. And as a young person when she was doing those days of live television, even in the early days of TV. Uh but on she was this was on stage. This was when she was doing to be young, gifted, and black in uh the village. And so she was not happy because her own coach was away.

[16:26] Alice Spivak: Paul Man. I worked with Ruby and Ossie Davis a lot. I really, really miss them too. They were like, you know, they were like this to me, they were the pair. They were the first man and first lady of the theater. And because they were real and they were honest and they were fabulous, and they were so talented. And I loved them too, and I worked a lot with them, not necessarily uh film, although Ruby was in Bucking the Preacher, but theater and they had a television, they also had a little television show that they were given in the afternoons, I think on Sunday. Um so I worked with them. Um but there it's I don't know where it would be listed, and uh, you know, and as an actor, I was I I was planning like the early 80s to maybe move to LA and didn't want to, and then I didn't have to because I got very lucky.

And I got to work with Robert Stigwood, three films all overlapping. So I said, Oh, I don't have to go to LA to make money, I can make money in New York, and uh, so that was uh three things I was involved with. One was called Times Square, and the uh one never got on, which was the sequel to Saturday Night Fever. It got on much later. Uh, and one was um Garbo, uh not Garbo Talks, that was with City Limit. Um what was the third one? Times Square. It's the big one. Oh, The Fan.

[18:10] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, which is a kind of a cult film with Lauren Bacall, and and and that I worked on from beginning to end.

[18:16] Alice Spivak: Oh, yes, that was another big chapter. Talk about a diva, but here was a diva that wasn't, she was a child too. But it was really hard to get past her being mean to get to so I just stayed clear, and I better stay clear because she was she looked like she was gonna kill me if I got anywhere near her. But then, strangely enough, at the very end of the shoot, uh, we all had to be together, because I was working with a young man who and the director uh of that movie, and we all had to be together in this one scene, and in the one scene, she uh I went near her and became a little bit of her entourage because I wanted to hear about her stories, you know. Although they were great stories she had, and she loved telling them, and I said, Well, let me get nearby so I can hear it.

And James Garner was on it, he was very nice, and I'd known him before. So, but uh so I'd sit with him, but she had her eye on Garner, so he said, You better not sit too close. Not that we were doing anything, but she was after him, and uh she's she was a bit of a vulture, to tell you the truth. So she, uh, Miss Miss Bacall, I still felt real sorry for because anybody who'd been through the system, and she was very young when she was went to Hollywood. And anybody who's been through all that, I want to heal them, I want to admire them. I mean, Judy Garland, I makes me cry, what happened to them. I worked, I'm currently in a lot in this book about Carrie Fisher, because I love Carrie, and to me that was tragic. So all the people that, particularly females that suffered from that system.

[20:03] Tonya Pinkins: So let's go with Carrie. What what was the suffering? I mean, early days they owned you, you couldn't, you know, do other movies.

[20:09] Alice Spivak: But Carrie's I I think of her as a contemporary. What would she suffer going through this through the studio system? Uh because LA doesn't change. She suffered being a child of people who went through the system. Got it. Debbie Reynolds and Nettie Fisher. The children of those stars, too. I wanted to once write a book about how many committed suicide, which includes Paul Newman, Edward G. Robinson, James Arnest, how many became drug addicts? How many, how many committed uh or attempted suicide? The Fonda children. So the Bing Crosby had two sons, both committed suicide. So I wanted to write a book because it would be a study of American greed, really, and American royalty, which is movie stars.

And um, so to me, uh, Carrie was a terrible victim of all of that, but she herself was, as in the book continually says over and over, bipolar. So she had a lot of problems and she was a drug addict. And but yeah, Carrie, um, yeah, so I just I wanna be sad about Carrie. I knew that she wasn't gonna make it. And then I knew her mother was gonna die 24 hours later. Because I knew Debbie could never live without her.

[21:31] Tonya Pinkins: It's interesting that you say this, because I sometimes look at myself when I look at, you know, what I see feel like I observe, but I'm like, oh, are you just being bitter? Are you just being jealous? But it it often seems to me like the the star system feels like there's some pimps at the top. We don't even really know who they are or their names, but you don't get to be a certain level of star unless you're in their stable. They could prevent it. They can prevent you, but in order, if you're not in their stable, it ain't gonna happen. And that there's just these prices that people pay, and we don't even know what they are, you know, but that when you get to a certain level, it's because somebody owns you and they're making a lot more money off of you than you are ever making.

And there's certain things you can't say and certain things you can't do, and that's the compromise you have to make in order. And I, you know, I I don't have that. So, but it's kind of my observation is that it's true, and it will be ever more in the news now that Harvey Weinstein trial is starting. Uh, because even people who had big careers, like Ashley Judd are gonna be speaking up. But they certainly can prevent it from happening.

[22:53] Alice Spivak: They certainly can quote blacklist you. That even happened again with a movie I was talking about, the fan, um, the young fellow in it, who is no longer a young fellow. Uh Michael Bean, that was going to put him over the top. Um he was selected by Robert Stigwood because he saw him as some magazine. I don't know why. But anyway, Stigwood then uh kind of blacklisted him because he gave away the ending in some interview with some uh reporter on the West Coast, and he didn't mean to. And he said to the reporter, You're not gonna print this. And the reporter said, No, I'm not gonna print this. And so he didn't work for like six years. So they they can do a lot. There's a lot of power up there. And uh these people who get into power, I of course despise them because anybody who wants power is somebody I immediately despise.

I don't know why. I despise, well, this is not gonna help me, but so I better not say, you know, uh, people who want to have power over other people. I don't understand what that is, but obviously it exists in in certain human beings.

[24:09] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[24:10] Alice Spivak: And there's definitely that in the entertainment industry. The entertainment industry was also very infiltrated by the mafia, the mob in the early days, because it was in another place that they could make a profit. That meant you had to and you could launder a lot of money, yeah, and you launder a lot of money, and this you had to be part of uh firm, as now they're talking about the royalty in England that way. But I guess in a lot of industries, you have that. In uh somehow in the arts industry, it's really the saddest because the people that are being uh uh you know you exploited and used and told what to do and stopped from working and all of that are very vulnerable. These are artists, actors, musicians, composers, writers, people who don't want to have power over other people, but need to express themselves, and that need to express themselves makes them easily exploitable, exploitable and victimized by these other people.

[25:15] Alice Spivak: So it is sad, and I have always seen that, even from as very young. When I first went out there to Hollywood, I smelled it. And I said, Oh my goodness, this is a really bad place. It's a bad thing. And I couldn't understand why a black performer, I remember saying to Ross Cash, how could you move out here? It it to me, out there was there was even uh you could almost see the barbed wire. It was like in the South, you know, you could say, Well, that you can't, this is the railroad tracks, this is where you live. I mean, why would you want to be there? And then the few that would pop out and be in Bel Air or something, like Sydney, but Harry never wanted to go out there rightfully so. He and I had both strong feelings against against that atmosphere. But um, yeah.

[26:12] Tonya Pinkins: So, in terms of the business, yeah, I I am very outspoken about it. It hasn't helped me, maybe in my own little job hunts.

[26:25] Alice Spivak: But um You're doing okay, aren't you?

[26:28] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah.

[26:29] Alice Spivak: Well, okay, meaning, you know, as long as I'm in control of it, I can say starting a class and they want to come into the class.

[26:37] Tonya Pinkins: What class? Tell us about the class.

[26:38] Alice Spivak: Well, the classes, I just started one again. I've never stopped teaching. Absolutely. So if a big coaching job comes up or an acting job, which occasionally comes up or a tour, then I will hold off the classes. But uh uh, and then it will have to take second place for that period of time. But I'll never stop teaching. I'll never stop teaching. People Utah, who is my mentor, who who made me a teacher, she said, the day I don't want to go into classes, the day I will stop teaching. I don't know if she followed that through, but I I understand it. I mean, I could be tired sometimes and think, oh no, I have to go over to the class. But I'll never stop teaching. Because what does it give you?

[27:24] Tonya Pinkins: I don't I I think it's just something that's in you teaching.

[27:29] Alice Spivak: Uh I I don't know. I know that when I was uh eight years old, uh I would babysit and be the monitor of younger kids and and uh you know that I just always felt I had to take care of people. And uh I love teaching, yeah, I love it.

[27:49] Tonya Pinkins: And you teach at On the Road Repertory Company?

[27:51] Alice Spivak: No, well that's something separate. On the Road Repertory Company started in 2012.

[27:56] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[27:57] Alice Spivak: And I started teaching in 1962.

[28:01] Tonya Pinkins: So that was okay. So what is the name of the school you have?

[28:05] Alice Spivak: Uh the school I don't have. I'm I'm just uh independent. For 15 years, I taught it at HB Studio, which was called Herbert Burgoff Studio at that time, and then after that, I went on my own. And so that was in late 70s.

[28:19] Alice Spivak: I've been on my own ever since.

[28:21] Tonya Pinkins: So how do people find you?

[28:22] Alice Spivak: Well, it's always been word of mouth, but maybe now.

[28:27] Tonya Pinkins: Well, here's some word of mouth. This is word of mouth. How do we find Alice Spivak?

[28:32] Alice Spivak: If you want to, you can go to AliceSpivakClasses@gmail.com.

[28:38] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[28:39] Alice Spivak: All right. AliceSpivakClasses@gmail.com. I've never advertised, Tonya. This is kind of weird. One, of course, I started out at HB Studio, so they did all the. I was just in the faculty and I developed my own group of people and I became popular within the school. But when I went out on my own, then of course, if you wanted to make some dough, you had to like advertise. I never did. It was all based on people who remembered me who told somebody else, or casting people, or producers and directors who knew me and would send people to me. And that would be for either coaching or the classes. So both of those things I've never really had an ad. It's always been someone told someone who told someone.

So it means that I can have very low times, and that's all right too. And um, and but I'm always enough to have a class, so I just started one. And my classes these days are only advanced scene study because I would love to teach technique and beginners. I do that anyway. I would on one-on-one, I teach any level of actor. But for classes, they have to have had experience and/or training, and then I can get into really good material. So I really love teaching about plays and theatre, and I tell everybody unless you know about plays and theater, you'll never get a television job because all the British actors who take all your roles, any color actor, how about this Miss Arivo now? You're gonna they're gonna she's doing Harriet Tubman, all the iconic American heroes and heroines are played by British people.

Get that. You will find out in the awards when they start speaking in their own dialect. However, I said that 25 years ago. I saw that happening. And uh beyond that, uh, more than 25 years ago, in the 50s of the last century, uh the Brits started to take over New York Theatre, and Actors Equity, the Union, uh stepped in and said, you cannot have uh an English actor playing in New York unless an American actor can play in the West E or off the West End. And so they had a deal, and that deal remains. But Screen Actors Guild, which is now SAG AFTRA, never made any deal. So all the British actors come in and Australia. Well, Australian is part of the UK, so you have Australia, even I used to put Canada in it, but I don't as so much anymore. But it was Canada, uh, Ireland, Wales, England, Australia are all the actors.

[31:45] Tonya Pinkins: And so as our wrap-up advice, how are we American actors going to compete with the Brits?

[31:51] Alice Spivak: Which is why I still teach and probably will be teaching even after I die and I'll be in my grave. Because my story, what I tell everybody is, unless you know as much as they know, you're not going to be able to win the role. And it takes a lot of doing. They cut their teeth in the theater, they know the classics. So when they get something for a TV pilot, which is a doctor, a lawyer, or whatever, they know what else to do with it to make it something. Because anything written for TV, other than maybe some of the streaming shows these days, but anything written for TV has no subtext, has no originality, has nothing, it's just copycat formula writing. And it's very hard to add, you have to add some subtext to it.

Whereas you look at a play and you have to dig to find the subtext, and it will be there if you know how to dig in. But with a television play and a lot of movie scripts, if you dig in, you'll just fall down on the floor. There's nothing there. It's only what it says on the surface. You know, Shakespeare also, there's no subtext, but look what it says on the surface. But in movies and TV, what it says on the surface is something you've heard before a million times, and then it doesn't really matter, and actors will say it the way they want to say it anyway. But the British actor comes in and says, oh dear, look at this. So he's a lawyer, it's in an office. Well, this reminds me of Richard II.

When the uh and he start and they start to look into what else is going on that they can invent and put in. And then you get these incredibly interesting characters that were never written down. Because the people who are writing for TV haven't got a clue about character. They only know this is a prostitute, this is a shopkeeper, this is a housewife. They only have categories, they don't have character, like plays do. So the Brit brings in the character, and they get the role, whether it's Kate Winslet or Nicole Kidman, or uh, you know, uh Russell Crowe and Christian Bale and every single one of them, and now Cynthia Erivo and that wonderful gal, I always forget her name who did "Luce." Yes, she's marvelous. Also the gal who played Ruth in uh "A Raisin in the Sun."

[34:25] Tonya Pinkins: Negga?

[34:26] Alice Spivak: Uh Ruth Negga? Oh no, she's wonderful too. You're talking about uh Sophie.

[34:30] Tonya Pinkins: Yes.

[34:31] Alice Spivak: They're wonderful.

[34:41] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, they are. Now there are wonderful uh American actors too, but they can't win that role if they can't bring it something in that wasn't there to begin with. Because it's not there in television and film scripts. Oh, it's just an outline, it's nothing there. You know, I said a movie script is written three times. You have a movie script, hopefully it's perfect, you've got it all together, you've got all the scenes numbered. Then you shoot it and you rewrite it all based on the actor, based on the weather, based on time. Then you finish the shooting, you get rid of everybody, and you rewrite it all in the editing room. So now you're rewriting it all again. So there is nothing there. But so in that beginning, when an American actor comes in to see someone for a job, what are they gonna bring with them into that?

What background can they bring with them into that part because it's highly competitive. And since nobody wants to pay anything anymore, everybody is working for less than they would normally work for if there weren't such a thing as salary suppression. They just uh the casting or the producer or whatever just says next, if that person puts up a fight next, we have somebody else who can come in and who can read for it. So auditioning is very, very difficult here. I had a British actor who was in my class who said, it's so strange. He said, when I go uh to audition in England and they call me for a part, it can be 12 other men that they call. And here, when I'm called, they cast this wide net, they may be seeing hundreds of people.

And if it's black, they could be 16 to 80. It's just somebody black in the 16 to 80 range. Just a black person. Doesn't matter. And then what's really sad these days, and it's I'm fighting it, because we see so many more, thank God, so many more black faces, a lot of them British, in film and in on television, that the young white actor coming up is this sort of reverse kind of racism, saying, well, if you're not black, you can't get anything. And when they write all ethnicities, it means I can't get a job. And uh, yeah, and I can't. I said, shut up. How dare you? How dare you say that the blacks are keeping you from working? Let's look at history here. Don't worry about it. You'll get your job.

Just get better. Get better. How are you gonna compete? You didn't compete with that person. And so there it's an interesting, a lot of stuff going on. You were saying one of the differences between then and now. Now there seems to be a great many more opportunities. We have, I don't know how many channels and five million streaming things and Hulu and Disney and Netflix and all of this stuff, and no work for people. So how does that make sense?

[37:54] Tonya Pinkins: So uh there are so many opportunities, and for some reason, harder to get a job.

[38:01] Alice Spivak: That is true. My experience as well.

[38:02] Tonya Pinkins: Exactly. And uh anybody who's had backgrounds such as you are finding it harder to get a job in a time when all this opportunity supposedly is there.

[38:13] Alice Spivak: Well, I think it's because the net has been cast wider, and because of self-tapes and the dearth of material, there are more casting directors, so they're casting directors who have maybe just cast for the first time. They don't know the actors who work all the time, but then that's opening it up for a whole bunch of actors who haven't worked all the time. And so now you're competing with a thousand people rather than the 10 because they're getting tapes from all over the world, and maybe they get bored after the first 20 tapes, and you weren't in the first 20 tapes, so you didn't get the job. Or I've even had things where I've gone in for something, you know, episodic, not too deep, and they've been like, we want her to come back to make an adjustment.

Uh-huh. And I'm like, did they look in my resume? Like, kind of look at my reel to know that I can make an adjustment? Then I'll come back in and do the adjustment, and I still won't get the job. So I'm like, you know what? Y'all not looking for me. That's it.

[39:06] Tonya Pinkins: You would just come workers. We used to have at least, even in terms of money, TVQ, you know, where you'd all, if you made uh did a certain number of jobs at scale, you were certainly going up from scale. Now, no, I still go in there for scale. You know, everybody scale, that's it. So this salary suppression actually started in the 90s, I think, really seriously of the last century, where it really clamped down on no more TVQ, you know, you don't more even getting paid what you your rate was. You have no rate. That's what the TV rate. Yeah, so they've done that, and then as you say, they cast the wider net around the globe because of self-taping, and uh and nobody knows anything. But there's a little bit of that was true way back when, in the early days of Hollywood.

I remember hearing the story, you know, anybody could become a casting director in Hollywood. I remember one who became uh the casting director for all of NBC, and I think that her credentials were that she babysat some actress who was in some nighttime soap, I forgot her name, her child. So she became the casting director. So the casting directors were just, and there would they would be new ones, and the story goes that um it was Shelley Winters, I think, who who came up, yeah, probably Shelly, came uh to a casting director's office in LA, and and the young woman behind the desk says, so tell me what you've done. And Shelley reached into her bag and she took out two Oscars and she hit put it on the desk, and she says, now tell me what you've done.

[41:06] Tonya Pinkins: And that's a great note.

[41:08] Alice Spivak: And for my dog with Alice Spivak. Thank you so much.

[41:11] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, you're welcome. Always a pleasure talking to you. I know, and I and you are one of my favorites. So there you are. This is a brilliant challenge. Thank you.

[41:19] Alice Spivak: Well, you are listening to You Can't SAY THAT, The Show Where You Can on the Broadway Podcast Network. And I am Tonya Pinkins, and thank you to my guest, Alice Spivak.

[41:30] Tonya Pinkins: How come you don't say no when you mean no? 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, edited by Derek Gunther 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.FM/YCST. Stay safe.