Fresh Air - Best Of: Colman Domingo / Writer Leïla Slimani

Episode Date: August 22, 2026

Colman Domingo is nominated for two Emmy Awards this year, for two very different roles: in the Netflix comedy The Four Seasons and in the final season of HBO's Euphoria. He spoke with Tonya Mosley about the transition from dramatic roles to comedy, and guest hosting Jimmy Kimmel Live! for a week. Award-winning writer Leïla Slimani grew up in Morocco, where women were second-class citizens, but inside her home and with her family, she was free to speak her mind. Her mother, a doctor, pushed her to go to France to study. Slimani spoke with Terry Gross about her trilogy of novels inspired by her own French-Moroccan roots.Rock critic Ken Tucker looks back on the soundtrack of the 1976 film Sparkle, sung by Aretha Franklin. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter Follow us on Instagram Subscribe to our YouTube channel Check out the Fresh Air ArchivesSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

From W. H.Y.Y.W.Y. in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today, Coleman Domingo. He's nominated for two Emmy Awards this year for two very different roles. In the Netflix comedy, The Four Seasons, and in the final season of HBO's Euphoria. Also, we hear from French Moroccan writer Leila Sleimony. She writes from her dual perspective as biracial, with members of her family, representing the countries of the country of the country. the colonized and the colonizer. Plus rock critic Kentucker looks back at the soundtrack of the 1976 film Sparkle, sung by Aretha Franklin. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

This is Fresh Year Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. My guest today, Coleman Domingo, is nominated for two Emmy Awards this year for two very different performances. In the Netflix comedy The Four Seasons, he plays in. Danny, one half of a long-married couple who vacation each year with their oldest friends. Danny is funny, vain, impeccably dressed, and now in his 50s confronting a question he thought he'd settled long ago, whether he wants to become a father. And in the final season of HBO's euphoria, Domingo returns as Ali, a man in long-term recovery who has spent the series trying to help Rue, played by Zendaya,

Stay Alive. Domingo won an Emmy for that role in 2022, and this year he's nominated again for his performance in the series finale. It's the latest chapter and a remarkable stretch for Domingo, whose rise in Hollywood came after decades in the theater. He started in regional productions in San Francisco, then moved to New York, where he performed on Broadway, won an Obie, was nominated for a Tony and an Olivier, and wrote and directed his own plays. In his 40s, Hollywood caught up with him, and since then he's had a steady run of roles, an Emmy, and back-to-back Oscar nominations for the film Rustin and Sing Sing. Just this year, he played Joe Jackson in the biopic Michael and had a role in Stephen Spielberg's Disclosure Day and hosted Saturday Night Live. And just last month, Jimmy Kimmel.

Welcome to Jimmy Kimmel Live. I'm your guest host, Coleman Domingo. I'm so happy to be here with all of you. We're going to have some fun this week. Just think of me as Jimmy if he had better clothes and Zendaya's phone number. Coleman Domingo, welcome back to fresh air. Oh, thank you so much, Tanya. I appreciate it. That was such a delight to see you on Jimmy Kimmel.

Every summer he has guest hosts who come in, and you were in the rotation. And you were in the rotation for just about a whole week. Yeah, for a whole week. And it was great. It was like the week of a lifetime. It was so much fun. And, you know, I love that. things are coming to me right now, like opportunities to do things I've never done before.

Like, I've never hosted a late-night show. But I love the idea of looking at myself the way someone else sees me. And if Jimmy thought that I could do it, I thought, well, let me try. But the first thing I do is I go into deep research. I went back and looked at old Jack Parr shows. Oh, you did? You went in. Oh, yeah. Johnny Carson. I looked at the greats. And I wanted to figure out how did they do it and what was their style and what would my style be.

Yeah. Well, congratulations on your Emmy nominations and on being able to host Jimmy Kimmel Live. Thank you. The Four Seasons is such a fun watch. And it's about three couples, old friends who vacationed together for decades and what happens to the group when those marriages start to shift, which happens with everyone's relationship. This season, your character, Danny, he's dealing with several issues within his own marriage. And he and his husband, Claude, had been talking about having. a child, and Claude is, he's basically having second thoughts. And so I actually want to play a

scene. In this scene, Danny has just come from one of those conversations with his partner, and he's confiding in his best friend, Kate, played by Tina Faye, while they look at a beach home that is for sale. Let's listen. Okay, 655 O'Shalane. I mean, the wallpaper is Midwest funeral home, But the house! If we were smart, we would buy it and turn it into a bed and breakfast. Oh, I'm in. I will retire early and run it, and then when our husbands die...

Claude, botched facelift, jack perforated erectum from too many unnecessary colonoscopies. Yeah, we'll live here together. Can we do it now? Claude's pissing me off. Oh, is it because of his bonnet? The surrogate asks we're still interested. But now all of a sudden, Claude thinks that we're too old.

Oof, I mean... I get it. No, you're supposed to say you're not too old, and how dare he? I'm sorry, you are very young. You told me who Cizzle was. Do I know for sure, for sure if we should do it? No, but I do know we can't keep talking about it. We're either never going to do it,

or we're going to become two Tony Randalls who feed our baby applesauce that we also eat. Okay, if you're really having trouble making a decision, my therapist has a book. No. Call the three magic questions. I'll kill you in your sleep. It really is.

helped me decide whether I should do Envisaline for a third time. I decided, possibly at a later date. There's nothing to decide. At this point, we just need to push through. Yes, you could push through, or you could seriously consider Claude's concerns. Is this right for both of you? Hi, Brenda, we are definitely still interested. What are you doing? I'm pushing through. That was my guest, Coleman Domingo in the Netflix series The Four Seasons. Throughout that entire clip, You kept laughing at all the different points. Oh, my God. Danny is so acerbic.

My gosh, he's like an altered universe, me. In what way? I don't know. He's just really pointed and funny. He's really a creation that I really, really love. I love the way to writers write for him. Did you have a hand in it, though? The funny thing is, no.

I would say the thing that I have a hand in, I will, when I first met with Tina Faye to talk about this character. Because she's the creator. Yeah, she's the creator of the she and Langfisher and Tracy Wakefield. They wanted to bring together a group of people that they understood, you know, based on the 1981 Alan Alda film. But to really make it modern and fun and warm and make sure that this couple in particular, it's one of the, you know, central couples as well, this couple should feel like a couple

that I understand. And I knew the thing that I told Tina was here's a same-sex-loving couple that are really in very heteronormative environments. Like these couples are having issues like everyone else, but they're also very spirited and very much who they are. This is an ensemble of comedy veterans. Tina Faye and Will Forte, they came up through SNL, as we know, Steve Correll through Second City, Carrie Kinney Silver through Reno 911, and that is largely improvised. And you have done some comedy, but you have come from some serious places. You come from the theater, you know?

Very much. Did that make for any interesting dynamics on the set? Well, the thing is, when I first got the invitation to be a part of it, I thought, for a second, I thought, well, why me in particular? Like, I'm not really known for comedy. But I think that what Tina and the rest of the gang could tell is that I'm willing and I'm game. But I hadn't relied on those comedic chops in a long time. So to lean into that was something it felt new and freshing him for me, especially this late in my career, where the idea of doing a half-hour comedy was a challenge. I wanted to see if I could do it more than anything.

I can just imagine, though, being with all of those funny men and women, did it feel good when they laughed at the stuff you said, you know? You know, it does, but the funny thing is about funny people, and I tell you this. And I wonder if they would say this about themselves. They don't naturally laugh when something's funny because they're like mad scientists. They almost look at the math of it. Oh, they're dissecting it. That's good. I wonder how that happened.

You did this. You turned on this line. You blah, blah, blah. You gave a pause. You got a beat. Most comedians I know are very serious people. And also, they're also a bit shy. I think my, I would say this.

Tina's very shy. I would say Steve Carell's very shy. But they know how to get the thing done like mathematicians. They look at it in that framework, which I think is fascinating. You actually directed an episode. Yeah, the season and last season too. Yeah. Lang Fisher, one of the three co-creators of the show, said that when you directed the episode, Ultimate Frisbee, she watched you cry in a scene you were in while directing another actor through his own tears,

going back into that character you were in to keep crying all while still watching whether the background performer meets its steps. And that seems like an extraordinary amount of work to hold all I want. It is. And I don't know if everyone's brain is meant for that, but I feel like I have one of those brains. I can manage a lot, which is why I've always been a director since I started in the theater. because I can handle a lot of frisbys up in the air at the same time. Where does that come from?

I know you're hyper-organized. Yeah, I'm hyper-organized, but also maybe that's it. I'm well-prepared and planned so I can be loose and free, but my mind has always been on everything. I think it starts with the way I came into this industry, which was learning by going to rehearsals I wasn't even in. I would go and sit into rehearsals, like when I was 21 years old, in San Francisco.

Play rehearsals. Yeah, I'd play rehearsals. And I would watch. And I would watch all departments and what was going on. So I had a handle of everything. So I'm never just focused, I don't know, solely as an actor or as a writer or a director. I'm looking at the whole picture at all times. So I know I can manage that.

So I think that that's what my brain naturally does. What made you want to do that? I'm thinking about a young Coleman. You could have just been focused on, I want to act. I want to be on the stage. Or I want to write. I want to be a screenplay writer. But for you to say, I'm going to, on my free time, step into someone else's rehearsal and dissect it.

I'm just very curious about all of it. It's always been that way for me. And I think that's just been a very curious. I was a very curious kid. And I knew that, listen, I come from a very humble place. I come from inner city, West Philadelphia, where, you know, a lot of blue-collar folks. I was the first of my family to go to college. And I knew that my power was in learning.

and education and learn as much as you can and get as much as you can from every situation. So you name it, whatever show I'm on, I can't just go in there just as an actor. I will always end up as a director and a producer. You name it, because I have that interest. Not everyone has that. There's some people very singular, and that's also fine.

But I know that when I did the show Fear the Walking Dead, I started as number nine on the call sheet, ended in number two and a director and a producer. You know, so for me, even with four seasons, I love the fact that I'm a director in that show because I feel like I understand it and I can give something to it, you know. I understand the actors that I'm working with, mostly comedians, who I sort of help usher them to go to the, you know, more dramatic places and it surprises them where they're able to go. And I love that. I love that, you know, because I know I have that facility to do that and help bring the best out of my cast. Let's take a short break.

If you're just joining us, my guest is award-winning actor Coleman Domingo. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Let's get back to my conversation with Coleman Domingo. He's up for two Emmys this year, for the Netflix comedy The Four Seasons, and for the final season of HBO's Euphoria. He's also been nominated for Back-to-Back Academy Awards for Rustin and for Sing-Sing. In 2024, you play Divine G in the film Sing Sing,

for which you were nominated for an Academy Award, and it is about a group of men incarcerated at Sing Sing Prison who put together a play, and it's based on a real program there called Rehabilitation Through the Arts. And your company, Edith Productions, which is named after your mother, helped finance and produce this film.

What was it that made you say, I've got to go all in. I've got to put my whole self in it, my money, my time, and act in it. I got this really incredible opportunity from Greg Kweedar and Clint Bentley, the director and producer of Sing Sing.

They were putting together something that really there was no script. And it was just an article, an old article they had about this program. They sent me that, and they said, we've been trying to make a film about this program.

in some way. But not about the program, but it should just be about people. And then the idea of inviting former incarcerated men to be a part of it, who went through this program called Rehabilitation Through the Arts

that started in Sing Sing, where you have theater professionals that come in and they teach the incarcerated men theater games and put on plays. And they found that doing that, and it was all, you know, organized by the inmates, they find by doing it,

it helped these guys get more in touch with their feelings, exhibit a bit more empathy. It became a tool to help them and process while they were on the inside. And then the recidivism rate was less than 6% of those who had gone through the program. Which I thought was extraordinary. So based on all of that, I thought I would love to be a part of this. Divine G, your character, who's a real person, in running this theater program, it's his entire world. And I want to play a scene where he's at his clemency hearing because he's at a moment where he's up for potentially being released from prison. And he's trying to explain what the program

has meant to him. And one of the commissioners isn't buying it. She wants to know whether she's watching a performance. Let's listen. You've been involved in numerous programs. It's too long a list for me to go through. But I do have a question about the theater program. You've been involved. You've involved in that many years, have you not? Yes, uh, yes ma'am. I am a founding member of this program. It's something I'm very proud of. And what part do you play in this program? Actor, director? Well, we all do a few things. I'm on what is called the steering committee. We make a lot of decisions for how it operates and from time to time I do act like we all do. And it's, uh, it's been a program that was established to help, uh, the population,

with management scales. And it's turned into something a bit more, I don't know, wonderful because it helps people get more in touch with their feelings, and able to process and actually move through and truly get some rehabilitation. So are you acting at all during this interview? Absolutely not. I truly hope that you can understand that I've been very sincere.

I know how meaningful this is. I would never... Actually, that's not the intention of acting. Acting is just a process. I read about the program. It's a good program. That is my guest, Coleman Domingo, as Divine G in the film Sing, Sing.

Yeah, the clemency officers played by the great Sharon Washington. Thank you, yes. Who was one of my dearest friends. And so I was able to populate the film with just a couple actors who are actually professional actors who can help angry. anchor these moments.

And so when this scene comes up, I thought we need that voice of someone who is the system. In a particular, I think it was written as sort of a white male. And I brought the idea of Grey Quedar up. I'm like, I think it should be a black woman. Because no one knows that a black woman, when she's in a position of authority in that way, she's got to be more system because there are more eyes on her. So she almost had to be a bit more removed and be the system. And I thought that's also a complicated story.

That's a story within a story of the demands put in black women. You know, one of the things also about that performance that came up for me is like, okay, it's you in front of you're having to display yourself in the same way. It's not the same thing, but similar to the audition process where you have to stand up before people and they have to judge you. And my goodness, early in your career, you did this so much. All the time. I think I read here that you were auditioning in your 40s as many as eight times a week, still bartending and you weren't working.

And there is one day when you received a phone call where you decided that, like, I'm done. I was exhausted from the output that I've been putting in for years in this industry. And the gains that I've had many, many gains. By the time I went to the West End in London, I was performing the Scottsboro Boys, and I had an Olivier nomination. and I was doing work that I thought was impactful and important. And then I would go back to New York. And then I would just, like, pounding the pavement again, almost like getting roles that I felt like didn't match what I can give.

I didn't have a lot of access or real agency. So, and then I had, like, countless auditions that were sort of meaningless or I felt like were just going into the void. No one was seeing my tapes. And I was just really exhausted to the point where I just sort of broke down. I was at the gym, and I never forget this. I just started sobbing after this one other huge no. You received a phone call, yeah.

Yeah, I received a phone call from my agent about, you know, everybody needs a yes. And I was like, well, this is my yes. I had like eight auditions this week. I need a yes. My finances need a yes. My husband needs a yes. My soul needs a yes. And literally she called me up and she said, everyone loved you.

Producers loved you. Directors loved you. It was an audition for Boardwalk Empire. Ford Walk Empire. And it was to play a matri-D or something, a host, a show host or something at Chalky's Bar, played by Michael K. Williams, but it was his bar. And I thought, well, this has to be the one. I can see myself in this world. This is great.

You need a song and dance, man. I sang, I danced. I wore the tuxedo in the audition. They all loved me. And then she said, but a researcher raised his hand and said, well, you know, all matriety's and host. at the time were light-skinned. And it wasn't even about the light-skinned part of it. That's not what I was angry about.

I literally yelled into the phone. I said, they knew what I looked like before I got there. I feel like everyone's effing with me. And people didn't respect the time or energy that an artist put into something. I thought like, well, this business is going to kill me. It's going to break my heart. And my heart was getting very broken.

So I was making steps to leave. And then my angel, one of my best friends, Daniel Breaker, he says, who's an extraordinary actor in his own right? We started passing strange together on Broadway. He said, you know, my manager has been wanting to meet with you for years. I'm like, oh, no, I don't want that anymore. I'm good. I'm good. He said, just think of it.

Just meet with them. I was like, fine. And I went into this meeting, and I was as begrudging as possible. I had my arms folded. I know it. I was not the effervescent me. I was like, this is what I do, this is what I've done, I could do this, I don't know, you tell me. They said, oh, we'd love to work with you.

I said, well, okay, well, how about this? Why don't we give us six months and we'll see where we'll go? Within six months, I booked Fear the Walking Dead and another series, and then I chose Fear the Walking Dead. And that show gave me a new footing in my career. I had a steady job on television that gave me some more effective. financial stability. It gave me a character that was pouring myself into. I became a director on that show and a producer on that show. And I had more footing. And I had more, I had that yes to keep going. Well, you're definitely in your harvest stage right now. And you're so busy. You have so many projects and you have so many projects ahead. Do you feel like you're in a rush to get as much done as possible? You brought up your age many times during our conversation. You know, I bring up my age sort of as a lovely marker because I really love being in my 50s.

I never knew that that would be the case. But you would love it because we were told not to. I love it. Yeah, you know, people are told like, oh, you get older or whatever. I'm like, no, I feel like it's so cool and it's so good. You know, so I think that I'm not rushing. The funny thing is I feel like, listen, I've told people this and they don't believe it. I said, I'm going to do a lot more between now and about.

I'm saying to 1, 61, 62. And then I'm going to live a bit softer in a way because I feel like I've been building so much. I think that maybe I'm curious about evolving. So I don't feel like that I'm rushing anything. I feel like if anything right now, I'm taking more time and being very conscious about time with people. Sometimes you have to rethink because I will say yes first.

And then I'll have to reset and say, do I really want to do that? And that's what you can do when you're in your 50s. When you're 50s, you're like, I can do that because I'm fine with myself. And I'm not responsible about the way a person feels about it either. Someone told me that, which is very cool. But she was 60, and she told me that she said, she was taking me around this plantation actually in Georgia. And we were talking about life.

And she says, you know, how old are you? I said, oh, I'm 50, whatever it was. And she says, oh, she said, you're in your storytelling season. I said, oh, yeah. She said, yeah, well, you're 10 about 60 like me, you're moving to your truth telling season. I thought, what's that? She says, well, if you don't want to do something, you just say no. I said, just no.

She said, you don't have a qualifier? No, but she says, no, because it's not my responsibility. But when I make another person feel, if I say it with love, but I'm honoring myself with love and grace, I say no. And that's it. So I think I decided to move into that chapter a little earlier. Right. It's now the new 60 is the new 54. It's a new 50.

54. And to be in the truth-telling season. Well, Coleman, Domingo, this has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much. You so very welcome, time. This has really been wonderful. Thank you. Coleman Domingo is nominated for two Emmys for his performance in Euphoria and the Four Seasons. Sparkle is a movie from 1976 about a girl group based loosely on the Supremes.

The film wasn't a huge hit, but it had a devoted cult following. And rock critic Ken Tucker says its soundtrack is a neglected classic. Aretha Franklin sings all of the songs on the album, which was written and produced by Curtis Mayfield. Ken thinks it includes some of Franklin's finest performances, and now, on its 50th anniversary, he offers a fresh appreciation of Sparkle. The movie Sparkle follows the troubles and triumphs

of a trio of singers trying to make it in the soul music world of the 1960s. Released in 1976, Sparkle was the film debut of Irene Kara, who'd become a big star four years later in the movie Fame. The movie was only a modest success, and what now seems most impressive about Sparkle are Curtis Mayfield's songs, as sung by Aretha Franklin. That's Look Into Your Heart, a dreamy ballad powered by Aretha's passionate singing. As is true of every song here, Franklin is holding nothing back. She's pouring as much of herself into these Curtis Mayfield compositions as she did in the staggeringly great series of hit singles she,

made for Atlantic Records in the late 60s. For me, Sparkle's high point is Mayfield's five-minute production of, Hooked on Your Love. It begins as a smooth, medium-tempo tune with Aretha's vocal gliding atop a glittering string section and backup vocals by the Kitty Haywood singers. Then, deeper into it, Franklin gives a demonstration of the song's title, how being hooked, addicted to love, becomes an... intense craving. Aritha's gospel-rooted, passionate shouting turns out to be the perfect way to convey this ecstatic obsession. Arita gives another fantastic performance on the album's first single, a moody, sexy number called Something He Can Feel. The song went to number one on the R&B chart,

but stalled at 28 on the Billboard Pop Chart. The album itself barely cracked the top 20, and only briefly at that. This is what I mean about Sparkle being such an underrated achievement for both Franklin and Mayfield. As I said earlier, Sparkle wasn't a smash in 1976, but it developed an intense cult following that has reverberations. I don't think it's a coincidence, for instance, that Dreamgirls, a far bigger success in 1981, bears a striking resemblance to Sparkle. Sparkle was remade in 2012 starring Jordan Sparks and Whitney Houston and was a modest hit. But the collaboration between Aretha Franklin and Curtis Mayfield transcends the movie. It stands on its own as a rich, risk-taking collection that deserves a re-evaluation in 20th century pop music history.

Ken Tucker looked back at the 50th anniversary of the Sparkle soundtrack sung by Aretha Franklin. Coming up, we hear from French Moroccan novelist Leila Slemeny. She writes from her dual perspective as biracial, with members of her family representing the countries of the colonized and the colonizer. This is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Terry has our next interview. Here she is. You probably won't recognize the name of my guest, novelist Leila Slimani. So I'll start by telling you about her place in the literary world.

She won France's highest literary award, the Goncourt Prize. She was the chair of the judges for the International Booker Prize. That's Britain's highest literary award for fiction written in the English language. The international version is for fiction translated into English. When Emmanuel Macron was the French president, he wanted to appoint Slimani Minister of Culture. She declined, but accepted the position as his representative to French-speaking countries. Slimani is Moroccan, but completed her education in France where she continues to live.

She's written a trilogy of novels inspired by three generations of her family. Her father served as Morocco's Minister of Economics in the late 70s and became a bank president. Her mother was one of the first women doctors in Morocco. Her family is a doorway into larger issues of colonial and post-colonial Morocco, like government oppression, women's rights, the tension of. between Muslims and Christians, and sexual criminalization. You risk imprisonment if you have sex and you're single, gay or lesbian, or engage in adultery. Slimani wrote a non-fiction book exploring the impact of that law on women's lives,

and it figures into her new novel, too. The Complete Trilogy is now published in English and the U.S. The final volume, her latest book, is titled I'll Take the Fire. Leila Slimany, welcome to Fresh Air. I'm guessing that you wrote a trilogy based in part on your family because the generations of your family reveals so much about colonialism, race, gender, religion, sexuality, parenthood, siblings. Is that right? Yes, it is, of course. And I think I decided to write this trilogy also because I've always had the feeling that literature was maybe the only way of doing justice to people.

like people from my family, people with a mixed-race heritage and with a very complex identity, because I found it very difficult for me to explain to others who I was. When I was in France and I was explaining that I was Moroccan but also French, that I was raised in a very complex and multilingual family, people would not really understand my identity. And it was the same in Morocco where people would look at me. me as very francophone or very westerned. And I was always frustrated about that. I wanted to do justice to them.

And I thought that the only way was to write a novel and to write a trilogy because I really needed also to understand where all this comes from. And for me, all this comes from the relationship between my grandmother, who was French, and my grandfather who was Moroccan. in the third novel of the trilogy, the parents believe in free speech and the rights of women, but they warn their daughters, that's not true here in Morocco.

You have to be careful about what you say. Don't reveal who's had sex outside of marriage. Don't say who's had an abortion or who's gay or who isn't a good Muslim. Did you grow up with that contradiction in your family? Did your parents believe in free speech in the rights of women, but also warn you to be on your best behavior outside. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I was raised like this.

In my house, in the bubble of my family, we would say whatever we wanted to say. And my parents, they would even encourage us to be free and to read whatever we wanted to read, to watch any kind of movies. They would talk about equality between men and women. They were not believers, and they would not follow the rules of Islam.

They would not do Ramadan or things like this. They would drink alcohol. So in the bubble of the house, we were very liberal, very free. But at the same time, as you said, they would always tell us, but outside you have to shut up. Outside, you have to be afraid of the Islamis because maybe if you talk about drinking alcohol, they can become violent.

So you have to hide everything you are. You have to hide everything you are. think. And to be really honest, when I was a teenager, I hated my parents for that. I judged them very harshly because I thought that they were hypocrites and I thought that they were cowards. And you know, when I was writing the book, my own son is now 15 years old. And I put myself in the shoes of my parents. And I thought, yeah, of course, if I was in the same situation, I think I would act the same. My mother was not a coward. She was a mother. So she was in a very difficult situation where claiming and defending what she thought and what she believed in could have very, very

dangerous consequences. So now I can understand. And now, of course, I can forgive her and forgive them for that. In the novel, the mother is a gynecologist. In real life, your mother was a the first women doctors, but she was an otolaryngologist, basically like a high-level ear, nose and throat doctor. Exactly. What was she up against as one of the first women doctors? My mother was an excellent doctor. You know, when I go, it's very funny because when I go to Morocco and I walk in Rabat with her,

she is the most famous of the couple, and she's always making fun of me, saying, oh, you know, No, in France people recognize you and you're famous there, but here it's me. She's an old woman now, but you can see how much respect people have for her. Because my mother, she would take everyone, every patient, the one who could pay and the one who could not pay. My mother had a very high vision of medicine. For her, it was really like a moral duty. I remember as a child, she could stay very, very late to take care of people. and every night she would come back and tell us,

tell us about people, tell us about poverty, about injustice, and tell us also about the body, physicality. And I think that's why a body is so important in my work, because at a very young age I understood that, of course, we are made of our mind, our voice, our values and all this, and our social class. But first and at the end, we are just a body. is going to suffer and that is going to die.

What does she teach you about women's equality? My mother, first of all, she told us at a very young age because I have two sisters. The first thing that she said and that she repeated years after years after years was that you have to be independent financially, never depend on a man. So you have to study, study, and you have to find a job and make your own money and never have as a dream to marry someone who is rich and who is going to take care of you. And the second thing is knowledge. My mother always said the first weapon of a woman is knowledge.

The more book you read, the freer you are. What did you see relating to women's rights in the world outside your home? Oh, horrible things. But even in my home, the first inequality that was absolutely, horrible and I suppose it has a link with my job is the the inequality of reading and writing. You know, a lot of women around me when I was young, they couldn't read or write. And they, in a way, I had the feeling when I was six, seven years old and I was beginning to write my name and to read books and I would see my grandmother and I would see my nanny

and women around me who were in the dark, and it was difficult for them to understand their rights. It was difficult for them to travel. So the first inequality was this. Yeah. And the second thing was when I was a little bit older, when I was a teenager, I began to understand first that I didn't have exactly the same right as men, because when I wanted to do something, very often people would answer to me,

No, it's not for women. It's for men. You want to go in a cafe and sit on the terrace. No, it's not for women. If you wear a certain skirt, if you smoke outside, if you dress in a certain way or put makeup, people will immediately judge you and say, oh, no, that behavior is the behavior of a whore.

So just having a body of a woman was giving at that time, the, I don't know, the opportunity for other people to judge you. And I was very frustrated about that. And then also I witnessed a lot of injustice, friends of my mother who would be repudiated by their husband, who would lost the custody of their children. The situation was very violent. I remember that my mother telling me, okay, if you go in front of a judge and you need someone for testimony, A woman would only value the half of a man.

If you need two people to testify, you need two men or four women. So I was really outraged by that. That's me. I was only half of a man. So did you follow your parents' advice and not speak out in public against the second-class status or the no status of women? No, I always spoke out. And my parents were always very, very afraid. that something would happen to me. But, you know, it's something that I always found very

mysterious and something I like to write about the mystery of freedom. Why, in a family, you have one person sometimes who is a rebel, someone who doesn't accept the norms, who doesn't accept the rules. And I was this kind of young girl. And when I was maybe seven or eight years old, I had a fight with my father. I did something and he yelled at me. And I answered him. And he said, you don't answer your father. And I said, it's my mouth and I say whatever I want. In French, I said, it's my nickname for a very long time.

My father used to call me, it's my mouth. Because I was always speaking out. And it was impossible for me to shut up or to silent when I was feeling something or when I was really, I had a very strong feeling of injustice. And it was something that really destroyed me. And that's how I think I began to write, because I was always telling my grandmother, it's so unfair, it's so unfair. And one day she said, you know, yeah, it's unfair.

And life is unfair. And you will see and you will understand. So maybe write about this. And maybe you can resolve or you can try to correct this injustice through writing. One of the things you've written about through your fiction and through a nonfiction book is the issue of being sexually active in Morocco, where sex outside of marriage is illegal and comes along with a prison sentence. I mean, there's really serious consequences. So that means if you're single, if you're having sex outside of your marriage, if you're gay or lesbian, if the police discover you and you're not successful, and paying them off, or if somebody kind of rats you out, you can go to jail.

How long has that law been on the books? Since colonization, actually, it's a law that was written by the French when they arrived in Morocco. Their idea was also to prevent any kind of sexuality between Arabs and French and Europeans. So there was really the desire to separate, to segregate, the two people. And that's why people would look down at my grandparents, because it was very scandalous at that time for a white woman to have sexual intercourse with an Arab. So that's why they decided to apply those laws. But then when they left, Moroccans kept the law. But I think that now they use it more to dominate people.

and when I see the people, it's the poor people. I spoke with a lot of students 17, 18 years old, who tell you life is difficult. We don't have a lot of money. We don't have a lot of place to go to, to have fun. And we don't have a lot of perspectives in terms of job. But maybe the worst is that we can't even have a girlfriend. We can't go in the street with a girlfriend and taking her hand

and kissing her in the street because we know that a cop is going to harass us and ask us for money and things like that. But when you are rich in Morocco, you can do whatever you want. You have the same kind of sexuality that you have in the West. You can find your way to have abortion because you can pay. You can be homosexual and you can have relationship and big parties in your house because no one will come into your house to look at what you're doing.

So for me, the matter is really a social class matter. You don't have the same sexuality depending on being poor or being rich. Are men frequently punished or is it mostly women? No, it's mostly women, mostly women. Sometimes men are punished for homosexuality, sometimes for adultery, but it's mostly women. Okay. I'm not shocked. Yeah.

So growing up where sex was tied to fear and danger, what impact did that have on your sense of sexuality? For me, I think I had a very dark vision of sexuality. I was always worried. I was incapable of abandoning myself to sexuality because from the moment I became a woman, my mother always told me about sex in a way that she was telling me about danger, the danger of getting pregnant, the danger of going to jail, the danger of being raped, all the dangers. So for me, being a woman, was dangerous.

And I was always afraid. I was always thinking that someone was judging me, that I was not a good woman, I was not doing the right thing. And I was thinking that for us, women, it was impossible to be innocent. That from the beginning we were guilty, guilty of something. But I couldn't understand and I couldn't know exactly what I was guilty of. Did those fears ever fade away? Yeah, they did.

But the souvenir of all I faced and all I experienced because of the. those fears is still here. And, you know, I think that even in the West, being a woman is difficult. When I arrived in France at the age of 18, I had a lot of fantasies about Paris. I thought that it was the city of glamour and city of love and city of freedom where I could do whatever I wanted. But it was not as glamorous and easy as that because there was men following you in the subway and in the street at night. So I think also I was very disappointed of discovering that, that my fantasy about the West and my fantasy about this world

where women were totally free was a fantasy and was not totally true. Well, Leila Slimani, I want to thank you so much for talking with us. It's been really interesting and I really appreciate your conversation and your writing. So thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Layla Slemeny's new novel is called I'll Take the Fire. She spoke with Terry Gross. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer this week is Adam Stanishefsky. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorock, Anne-Marie Baldinado, Lauren Crenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaliner, Susan Yacundi, Anna Bauman, and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nestper. With Cherry Gross, I'm Tanya Musley.