Interview w Tonya Pinkins
How did you get involved with A Simple Herstory?
I was down in Mississippi for about 3 months working on a TV series, and I got an email from Jocelyn - and then Florencia [Lozano] said she was also doing the project and I love Florencia. I was stuck in a hotel room for quarantine, it was a lot of good people, sounded fun.
Who do you play?
I play her mother.
What were you working on when this project found you?
I was shooting a new AMC anthology called “Women of the Movement,” and it is about women of the civil rights movement. This first season is telling the first story of Emmett and Mamie Till, and I’m playing his grandmother. It was quite intense.
Being in Mississippi for three months, it was an eye opener. Clearly I was meant to be there, I needed to learn about what a large part of America lives like, what it’s like for people in the South. The South is still about two steps out of slavery, it really hasn’t changed. You know, you have predominantly Black communities, they don’t have any representation in the legislature, because they have no money and no power. They are kept impoverished; they can’t get loans. You can own land, but then they figure out how to take your land by raising the taxes; and you can only get a loan for a trailer, but they won’t give you a loan so you could build a house, which is something you could pass on. So it’s pretty bad.
And for some of the richest, most fertile land in the country, it is a food desert, and that is also by design.
My family comes from Mississippi, and I found a cousin down there who is working in Legal Aid. They have so many ways to keep people indebted and in jail – he goes around sometimes 300 miles a day, just going to court to tell people they have rights. He told me judges in Mississippi only have to graduate high school. They don’t have to go to college, they don’t have to go to law school.
That’s insane. I watched the trailer for Red Pill. How did that project come to be?
I wrote it, I directed it, I produced it, I acted in it, I cast it, I did everything - all the jobs.
When the 2016 election was coming on, it was very clear to me how that was going to go, there was an absolute knowing. I’ve always been what people might call clairvoyant. I’ve always been a little afraid about it. Really tried to ignore it, associated it with a kind of mental illness - which is funny when I think about Victoria and Herstory. My homeopathic osteopath gave me the word clairvoyant, and I thought Oh, that’s the word for what I have. I’m an empath, so I just feel things, I see things, I’m interested in everything, so I always know more than most people know, because I’m actually paying attention and I’m curious. And I don’t have any preconceived ideas about what anything’s supposed to be.
And so - in 2016, watching people be foolishly delusional about what they hoped or thought was going to happen, was kind of terrifying to me. It was so absolutely clear to me how it had to go, and it scared me how people could be so blind. And when I spoke to people about it, they looked at me with contempt, like I had two heads, like how could I ever think what I was thinking. So it was a rough year. I was so worried that people were so foolish that they weren’t going to be in any way prepared, which they weren’t.
So when 2020 happened, and I saw how that was going to go too, I thought, there’s no point in wasting my time talking to people about it, because they’re delusional. But I feel this, and I wanna do something, say something about it, so I decided to make a movie, write a story. And I love horror, I watch a bunch of horror films a day because I love it so much. And when I shared my script with people they were like, “It’s so farfetched!” But now, when they watch it, they’re like, “Did you write this after the election?” and I’m like..."No." [laughs].
Everything that happens in the news keeps making it more relevant. Red Pill was supposed to come out in March 2019, but it’s good that it didn’t, because if it had, people would sill have been dismissive, and I knew Americans live in a bubble, they do not want to see their country. But now the film has traveled the world and it’s won about 20 international awards, bunch of Best Picture and Best Director, it’s been translated into Russian, into Spanish, festivals are asking me to come and bring the film to them - because the rest of the world sees us in a way we do not see ourselves.
It’s a traumatizing film. Here’s the thing, I love horror. The first 50 seconds is super violent. I mean I didn’t have the money to do the kind of very explicit violence, but the ideas are there - so you don’t see it, but you know what is happening so it is a mentally violent 50 seconds, to set you up for the violence that’s to come, and having you already be tense, because the next 40 minutes is all ideas. And then it just is... violence all the way out [laughs]. To the final moments, which is psychological violence. But it is reality. We live in a violent world. To imagine that the violence is going to go away now that Biden is President, that is another delusion.
Well, since we’re telling ghost stories with this podcast, this is apropos for someone who likes horror – What dead historical figure would you like to haunt you?
Haunt is not a good word... haunt means something is bothering you when you don’t want to be bothered.
Channel?
It’s too narrow a question. The way I live, my existence, the thing that people think of as their “I”, their self, when I am at my best, I am just an expression of the divine, and it could be coming from a bunch of people. For me to know all the things I know, I am channeling information from thousands of people at a time...but to be limited to one person? Too small!
OK, last question: This could be macro or micro. What would you like to see change about our business, as an actor?
Well, there’s no vision right now. It’s not my vision to have because my time is passed. It has to be young people’s vision, moving towards what excites them, not just moving away from the past or from discomfort. There has to be creativity, an act of love, and when you are engaged in doing something that you love, you have this unlimited supply of energy to move towards it. Once the discomfort has ebbed you stop if you don’t know what you love. No one has visioned the new stuff – not yet.
The vision I have....is the democratization of the ability to tell your story. In theater and film I want to see more stories – more people showing me their unique story and experience of the world. I don’ t want to see the same people over and over again and again. I want to see a world where we are trying to experience as much that is different from ourselves as possible. That is the only way we can actually get closer to the experience of what living in this world is. Because we are all having such different experiences of the world.
I was down in Mississippi for about 3 months working on a TV series, and I got an email from Jocelyn - and then Florencia [Lozano] said she was also doing the project and I love Florencia. I was stuck in a hotel room for quarantine, it was a lot of good people, sounded fun.
Who do you play?
I play her mother.
What were you working on when this project found you?
I was shooting a new AMC anthology called “Women of the Movement,” and it is about women of the civil rights movement. This first season is telling the first story of Emmett and Mamie Till, and I’m playing his grandmother. It was quite intense.
Being in Mississippi for three months, it was an eye opener. Clearly I was meant to be there, I needed to learn about what a large part of America lives like, what it’s like for people in the South. The South is still about two steps out of slavery, it really hasn’t changed. You know, you have predominantly Black communities, they don’t have any representation in the legislature, because they have no money and no power. They are kept impoverished; they can’t get loans. You can own land, but then they figure out how to take your land by raising the taxes; and you can only get a loan for a trailer, but they won’t give you a loan so you could build a house, which is something you could pass on. So it’s pretty bad.
And for some of the richest, most fertile land in the country, it is a food desert, and that is also by design.
My family comes from Mississippi, and I found a cousin down there who is working in Legal Aid. They have so many ways to keep people indebted and in jail – he goes around sometimes 300 miles a day, just going to court to tell people they have rights. He told me judges in Mississippi only have to graduate high school. They don’t have to go to college, they don’t have to go to law school.
That’s insane. I watched the trailer for Red Pill. How did that project come to be?
I wrote it, I directed it, I produced it, I acted in it, I cast it, I did everything - all the jobs.
When the 2016 election was coming on, it was very clear to me how that was going to go, there was an absolute knowing. I’ve always been what people might call clairvoyant. I’ve always been a little afraid about it. Really tried to ignore it, associated it with a kind of mental illness - which is funny when I think about Victoria and Herstory. My homeopathic osteopath gave me the word clairvoyant, and I thought Oh, that’s the word for what I have. I’m an empath, so I just feel things, I see things, I’m interested in everything, so I always know more than most people know, because I’m actually paying attention and I’m curious. And I don’t have any preconceived ideas about what anything’s supposed to be.
And so - in 2016, watching people be foolishly delusional about what they hoped or thought was going to happen, was kind of terrifying to me. It was so absolutely clear to me how it had to go, and it scared me how people could be so blind. And when I spoke to people about it, they looked at me with contempt, like I had two heads, like how could I ever think what I was thinking. So it was a rough year. I was so worried that people were so foolish that they weren’t going to be in any way prepared, which they weren’t.
So when 2020 happened, and I saw how that was going to go too, I thought, there’s no point in wasting my time talking to people about it, because they’re delusional. But I feel this, and I wanna do something, say something about it, so I decided to make a movie, write a story. And I love horror, I watch a bunch of horror films a day because I love it so much. And when I shared my script with people they were like, “It’s so farfetched!” But now, when they watch it, they’re like, “Did you write this after the election?” and I’m like..."No." [laughs].
Everything that happens in the news keeps making it more relevant. Red Pill was supposed to come out in March 2019, but it’s good that it didn’t, because if it had, people would sill have been dismissive, and I knew Americans live in a bubble, they do not want to see their country. But now the film has traveled the world and it’s won about 20 international awards, bunch of Best Picture and Best Director, it’s been translated into Russian, into Spanish, festivals are asking me to come and bring the film to them - because the rest of the world sees us in a way we do not see ourselves.
It’s a traumatizing film. Here’s the thing, I love horror. The first 50 seconds is super violent. I mean I didn’t have the money to do the kind of very explicit violence, but the ideas are there - so you don’t see it, but you know what is happening so it is a mentally violent 50 seconds, to set you up for the violence that’s to come, and having you already be tense, because the next 40 minutes is all ideas. And then it just is... violence all the way out [laughs]. To the final moments, which is psychological violence. But it is reality. We live in a violent world. To imagine that the violence is going to go away now that Biden is President, that is another delusion.
Well, since we’re telling ghost stories with this podcast, this is apropos for someone who likes horror – What dead historical figure would you like to haunt you?
Haunt is not a good word... haunt means something is bothering you when you don’t want to be bothered.
Channel?
It’s too narrow a question. The way I live, my existence, the thing that people think of as their “I”, their self, when I am at my best, I am just an expression of the divine, and it could be coming from a bunch of people. For me to know all the things I know, I am channeling information from thousands of people at a time...but to be limited to one person? Too small!
OK, last question: This could be macro or micro. What would you like to see change about our business, as an actor?
Well, there’s no vision right now. It’s not my vision to have because my time is passed. It has to be young people’s vision, moving towards what excites them, not just moving away from the past or from discomfort. There has to be creativity, an act of love, and when you are engaged in doing something that you love, you have this unlimited supply of energy to move towards it. Once the discomfort has ebbed you stop if you don’t know what you love. No one has visioned the new stuff – not yet.
The vision I have....is the democratization of the ability to tell your story. In theater and film I want to see more stories – more people showing me their unique story and experience of the world. I don’ t want to see the same people over and over again and again. I want to see a world where we are trying to experience as much that is different from ourselves as possible. That is the only way we can actually get closer to the experience of what living in this world is. Because we are all having such different experiences of the world.
This interview was conducted by Kyra Miller, 2021.
* This interview has been edited for clarity and cohesion.
* This interview has been edited for clarity and cohesion.
