Fresh Air - Best Of: Kathleen Hanna / Tyler James Williams

Episode Date: May 18, 2024

Musician, activist, and punk pioneer Kathleen Hanna talks about being at the epicenter of the '90s riot grrrl movement. She talks about the early days of Bikini Kill and writing the anthem "Rebel Girl." Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews Claire Messud's new novel.Also, actor Tyler James Williams shares the motivation behind his role as a no-nonsense teacher on the hit series Abbott Elementary.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Here you take the bomb. From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Tanya Mosley with Fresh Air Weekend. Today, musician, artist, activist, and punk pioneer Kathleen Hanna. With her band Bikini Kill, she helped form a movement challenging the misogyny and punk in the 1990s. She describes how she wrote the iconic song Rebel Girl while playing in a small, sweaty basement. At the time the Riot Girl movement was just beginning. It felt like the scene of punk women that I was hanging out with and that I was becoming friends with really wrote that song and I just like grabbed it from the air. Also actor

Tyler James Williams shares the motivation behind his role as a no-nonsense teacher on the hit series Abbott Elementary. And book critic Maureen Corrigan will review Claire Massoud's new novel. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Our first guest today is the co-founder of the so-called Riot Grrrl movement, musician, writer, and artist Kathleen Hanna. Her new memoir is called Rebel Grrrl, which is also the name of one of the best-known songs by her band Bikini Kill. Kathleen Hanna recently spoke about her life and work with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado. We're Bikini Kill and we want revolution. Girls don't know. Hey, girlfriend.

I got a proposition, girl, something like this. Tell you to do what you want. Tell you to be who you will. Tell you to cry, cry out loud, you got some emotion on, baby. Kathleen Hanna has always been a force. She burst onto the music scene in the 90s as the frontwoman of Bikini Kill, a band that fearlessly confronted issues of sexism and sexual assault while encouraging female empowerment through

their music. Her raw vocals and unapologetic lyrics helped challenge punk rock norms and inspired others to do so as well. Bikini Kill, along with other feminist punk bands, encouraged their fans to come to shows, write zines, and form girl bands of their own as a way to fight the sexism that existed in punk and in wider society in general. Hannah created a space for young women to express themselves, fight against misogyny, and build community. Bikini Kill made an enormous impact in music and in the lives of their fans, but as Hannah writes about in her new memoir, Rebel Girl, it took a toll. Helping fans deal with their experiences of sexual violence meant that she had to think about her own. In the book, she writes about all that, as well as her childhood, the building of her feminist art

in college, starting and leaving bands, and becoming the face of a movement. She also writes about finding out that an undiagnosed case of Lyme disease was the reason she couldn't physically perform anymore. She's performing again with her band Bikini Kill and her other bands La Tigra and The Julie Ruin. Kathleen Hanna, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thanks for having me. I'd like for you to start by reading a passage from the beginning of your book, Rebel Girl.

Sure, this is from the prologue. I want to tell you how I write songs and produce music. How singing makes me feel connected to a million miracles at once. How being on stage is the one place I feel the most me. But I can't untangle all of that from the background that is male violence. I wish I could forget the guy who stalked me while I was making my solo record.

How he sat on the roof of the building across from mine and looked into my windows with binoculars as I worked. How he told my neighbors he thought I was a prostitute who needed to be stopped. I wish I could slice him out of my story as a musician, but I can't. I also don't want this book to be a list of traumas, so I'm leaving a lot of that on the cutting room floor. It's more important to remember that I've seen ugly basement rooms transform into warm campfires. Dank rock bro clubs become bright parties where girls and gay kids and misfits dance together

in a sea of freedom and joy. Art galleries that had only ever showcased white male mediocrity become sites of thrilling feminist collaborations. I also ate gelato on a street in Milan with my bandmates and cried because it tasted that good. But yeah, there were also rapes and run-ins with jerks who threw water on my shine. I keep trying to make my rapes funny,

but I have to stop doing that because they aren't. I want them to be stories because stories are made up of words and words can't hurt me. But the things I'm writing about aren't stories, they're my blood. They're the things that shaped me. The things that keep me up at night rechecking the locks on the doors. The things that make me afraid and ashamed. The things that inspire me to keep going. So speaking of your memoir and the title of your memoir, Rebel Girl, I wanted to ask you about that song. It was released in 1993. It ended up being produced by Joan Jett, who heard about Bikini Kill and wanted to work with you all.

And this song kind of became an anthem for the feminist punk movement of that time. Can you talk about writing that song? Yeah, we wrote that one in the basement of this house called the Embassy. It was a punk house and punk houses a lot of times have names. And this one was called the Embassy because it was pretty close to Embassy Row in DC. And I'll always remember writing The Embassy because it was pretty close to Embassy Row in D.C. And I'll always remember writing that song because it was one of those times where I was writing it as we were playing it. So they started coming up with the music. And as it became more full formed, I started hearing the first couple lines in my head.

And I just stepped to the mic and then they just kind of fell out and I I stepped back and started thinking okay what's the chorus gonna be or you know I was like looking through poems and stuff I had in my notebook and then I was just like no what are you feeling in this moment? I'm going to feel this moment. Because in that moment, Riot Grrrl meetings had just. And, you know, Rebel Girl, Rebel Girl, You Are the Queen of My World came out. And it just kind of happened. And it felt like, it felt like the scene of punk women that I was hanging out with and that I was becoming friends with really wrote that song. And I just grabbed it from there. Well, let's hear my guest Kathleen Hanna on the song Rebel Girl by Bikini Kill. That girl thinks she's the queen of the neighborhood She got the hottest track in town That girl, she holds her head up so high I think I wanna be your best friend, yeah Rebel girl, rebel girl

Rebel girl, you are the queen of my world. Rebel Girl, Rebel Girl, I think I want to take you home. I want to try on your clothes. That's the song Rebel Girl from 1993 by the band Bikini Kill. I think for a lot of people, that song is about you. You know, like a lot of girls, that song is about you. You know, like you, a lot of girls, a lot of your fans wanted to be. But so you were thinking, who else were you thinking about when you wrote that song? I mean, I was thinking about my friend Juliana Looking, who's a

spoken word artist who really kind of mentored me. I was thinking about Toby. I was thinking about Kathy. I was thinking about... Your Bikini Kill... My Bikini Kill bandmates, you know? I was thinking about the girls in the Riot Grrrl meetings who were saying stuff like, you know, just crying because it was the first time they'd been in an all-female atmosphere.

And they were just like, whoa, this feels really weird. I'm confused. And then like, wait, why have I never made this a priority before? And just that feeling of, you know, a room changing. Like, you know, just sitting at a crappy plastic Office Max table with a bunch of young women who have been relegated to the back of the room at punk shows for so long, finally saying, I've always wanted to start a band. Or, hey, does anybody know how to play guitar? I'd like to learn. That's an amazing feeling that really kind of changes the room into this beautiful place of possibilities. We're listening to the interview Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado recorded with Kathleen Hanna, co-founder of the bands Bikini Kill and La Tigra. Her new memoir is called Rebel Girl. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. Now, you were born in Portland, Oregon, but you spent a lot of your childhood in Maryland.

Can you describe where you grew up and your family at that point? We moved a lot all around Maryland. Like, we moved every three years. So I changed schools every three years. You know, we lived in kind of suburbs where not much was going on, typically. And then we moved back to the Pacific Northwest. And I changed schools even then in high school. I went to two different high schools. So I really started seeing the game. You know what I mean? Like what a game school was and how at every school there was like kind of the same group breakdown. You know, like the popular rich kid clique, the stoners, the people who were into this kind of music, the people who were into that kind of music, the people who were into sports,

like these kind of different groups and how a lot of the ways the interactions were so similar at every place that it just started to feel ridiculous to me. And I didn't have very many friends. I just sort of experimented with like, what would it be like if I was in this group of people? What would it be like? And I think it gave me a chameleon like quality that definitely served me later when I had to grin and bear it through a lot of nonsense in the punk scene. But yeah, I think the moving a lot made me really turn to singing as my home. Well, one of the first times you performed as a kid was in a musical. It was Annie. Can you talk about what you liked about performing at that point? I didn't think of myself as a good singer, but I sang all the time by myself because it was a place that I felt safe and I knew no matter where we lived, I could walk in the woods and sing. I could like find somewhere to be by myself

where I could sing or I could sing along to records in my room. And that was always kind of like my favorite place to be, was like singing along to a record or, you know, humming as I walked to school, anything to do with singing. But it was very private. Like, I didn't want anybody to know, and I didn't think I was good or, you know, whatever. I just, it was something that was fun. And then a friend of mine in, I guess it was fourth grade, Maureen Gaines convinced me to go with her to an audition for Annie for the school play. And I got the part. And so in that moment, I was like, wait, other people think I can sing? Like, it was this real shock.

Like, I was like, I didn't realize that I actually had any kind of talent at it or that it sounded good to anybody beyond myself. So there was that kind of eureka moment. So I was like practicing, practicing, practicing, practicing. And then once it came time to be on stage, I just felt like it was the first time where I really expressed mainly sadness in front of a bunch of people. You know, even though I didn't write the lyrics myself, they definitely spoke to my situation. And just the quality of my voice and what I could do with my voice, I felt like I was saying, I'm having a really hard time at home to, you know, a whole auditorium full of kids and grownups. And that felt really like a relief. Well, you tell this story about what happened after the real performance,

and that story is heartbreaking. Do you mind sharing it? Yeah, I mean, I was feeling really proud of myself. And as we're getting to the car, my dad was saying, let's go get ice cream. And in my family, that really meant like you did a great job. You know what I mean? Like, nobody said like, I love you or, you know, like, oh, I'm so proud of you kind of thing. It was more like, we'll get ice cream. And that is code for, we're proud of you. So I was like, they're proud of me. My parents

thought I did great. Like, you know, I read all this stuff into it. Like, they thought my singing was great. They thought, you know, blah, blah, blah in my head. And then as I sit down in the car, my dad says, anyone who can make such a fool of themselves in front of that many people deserves an ice cream. And I was just like, oh my God. Like, I just remember feeling like going from the top of the world to just like crashing on like concrete.

And that was something that on my dad's side of the family, I have to say, I got to give them credit. They were so good at giving a compliment and then ripping it away. Like it was almost a skill that they passed down from generation to generation. So while I think it's a hideous thing to say to a child, that moment also inspired me to keep going because the fact that that didn't stop me meant I really wanted it. And also, I didn't like my dad. I thought he was a jerk. So like, I learned really early, like, whose opinion matters to you? You know, I came out the other end kind of being like more determined

to get more involved in music at my school because I was like, this is what I want, despite you. When did you decide that you wanted to be a punk performer? You said that when you were a kid, you were always searching for a way to be heard. Was this that way? I moved to Olympia, Washington to go to college and had a really thriving music scene. And they really defined punk in that town in a different way than I'd ever seen. I'd gone to punk shows in high school and it was like, you know, kind of B versions of the Sex Pistols, you know, straight white guys who are like, I'm going to spit on you. And it just was like a lot

of toxic masculinity disguised as, you know, radicalness. So it's kind of like the beginning of the edgelord. But yeah, when I moved to Olympia, there were all these kids who were making music and putting out records on small indie labels. And know they sort of define punk not as a genre or a sound a loud angry aggressive sound but as an idea as the idea that you know we don't have to wait for corporations to tell us what is good music or art or writing we can make it ourselves so it's like hey let's put on a spoken word event. Let's put on a punk show at the laundromat. Let's, you know, it really was the town

that gave me permission to do stuff. And I'd always, you know, wanted to be in a band, but sort of thought it was off limits. And this was the place that I saw people in bands just like walking around on the street. And I was like, well, if they can do it, I can do it. And at the same time, I was being really inspired by feminist performance artists like Karen Finley, who I saw live in Seattle and was just what this woman is doing on stage, going into from different voices, you know, getting naked and dumping chocolate and sprinkles on herself,

you know, making fun of herself while also being incredibly powerful. And so a lot of times when I first started being in Bikini Kill, I thought of myself as a feminist performance artist who was in a punk band. Now, Bikini Kill tried to make your shows a safe place for women, a safe space. Can you describe how and why you did that? Like, it's of a particular time. You know, we did stuff like handed out lyric sheets so that other girls and women would know these are the lyrics and what the subject matter was because a lot of times you couldn't understand what I was saying through the crappy PAs I was singing through and sometimes

even talking in between songs you couldn't understand what I was saying and so that was one way that give them a souvenir to take home to read through and and think about and maybe disagree this message comes from wise the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com.

T's and C's apply. So that they start their own bands or it encourages them to write their own poetry or write their own zines. We also had zines that talked about a lot of different political issues of the day that we sold at our shows. And I also, you know, we prioritized having girls and women come up to the front because a lot of the shows we were playing back then, it was, you know, straight cisgender white guys predominating and taking up all the space of the room. And we really selfishly wanted to build

community so we had more girl bands to play with. And how is that going to happen if they're all stuck in the back? And they can't see us play and they can't see, oh, you know, that's how you do a drum fill or, you know, that's how you play, you know, three notes on the bass and make them sound really interesting. And so I started saying, you know, inviting the girls to the front, hey, do you guys want to come to the front? And then it kind of became a thing. It's like something that's actually meant to be an experiment, you know, in punk. It was like, what if we just rearrange this room a little bit? What's going to happen? And what happened were, you know, a lot of men were really mad and hated us. But it was also an interesting experiment.

Now, recently, you've been playing out again the last couple years. You've had reunion tours with Bikini Kill and La Tigra, and you're touring with Bikini Kill again this year. Your shows when you were young were so visceral. Do they still feel that way to you? Oh, yeah. But I feel like there's so much more joy. The anger is still there, but it's like a joyous anger because it's like you know a lot of us are sitting at home yelling at the tv and to get outside and like yell into

a microphone and to have that release it feels joyous to explore our anger in public it feels joyous to be like look it's normal that we're all really upset and sad and all these different emotions and they can all coexist together and the songs really go from joy to sadness to rage very quickly and I'm finding nuances in them that I didn't know were there in the lyrics yeah and so I'm really enjoying the songs and they feel very fresh like it doesn't feel like, oh, God. I felt more that way about like playing Rebel Girl for the 800th time back in the 90s. And now I feel like so excited when it comes on. Because I mean, the song really has legs because I can sing it about anybody in my head.

We played a show in like 2019 and I got up on stage and I sang it and I thought about myself and I sang it to myself. I mean, and I felt proud that I kept going and that I didn't give up and that I was still making music and that I really love what I do and that I have such great friends. I felt grateful. I felt proud. And I sang that song directed at me. And I know that's probably really gross and embarrassing, but it felt amazing. Well, Kathleen, Hannah, it's been great talking with you. Thank you so much. Thank you. I'm the queen of my world. Rebel girl, rebel girl. I know I want to take you home.

I want to try on your close arm. Kathleen Hanna spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado. Her new memoir is called Rebel Girl, My Life as a Feminist Punk. Writer Claire Massoud is known for contemporary novels rich in psychological insight, like The Emperor's Children and The Woman Upstairs. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says that the title of Massoud's latest novel signals something different. It's called The Strange Eventful History. Here's Maureen's review. Claire Massoud's new novel, called The Strange Eventful History, is a cosmopolitan, multi-generational story that paradoxically

sticks close to home. Massoud drew her novel from a handwritten memoir of over 1,000 pages written by her paternal grandfather. That side of Massoud's family were Pinoir, French Algerians expelled from their home in 1962 when Algeria won its independence from France. Displacement, both political and personal, is Massoud's timely subject here. After being forced from their home, the fictional Kassar family moves from Algeria to Europe to South and North America, never quite feeling settled in these different locales or in themselves. The opening section

of the novel focuses on June 14, 1940, the day the Germans conquered Paris. Gaston Cassar is a French naval attaché serving at the consulate in Greece. His wife Lucienne and their two children, along with a dependent aunt, have fled Greece, hoping to reach the safety of their home in Algeria. The perspective toggles back and forth between their experiences and Gaston's, particularly his career-damaging decision not to heed General de Gaulle's call to his fellow Frenchmen to join him in exile in London. Gaston felt he needed to hear from Lucienne before he made a decision. She's his life, his anchor, and his rock. Throughout the story, we readers will frequently be told that Gaston's marriage to Lucienne seemed to be the masterpiece of both their lives.

As she does throughout the novel, Massoud tucks in delayed reveals about the characters. So it is that deep into the story, we learn that Lucienne is 13 years older than Gaston. In the novel's final pages, this unusual age disparity becomes devastatingly meaningful. I'm a Herman Wook fan, so I don't mean this as an insult when I say there's a bit of a winds-of-war feel to this panoramic opening section. The chaos of train stations crammed with terrified pushing bodies, the international cast of characters temporarily marooned, the overall sense of a world in free fall. Massoud could have carried on in this fashion, tracing how the larger forces of history shaped the family's destiny. But something much more interesting begins to happen after we leave World War II behind.

The narrative skips forward in time at jagged intervals, and the perspective shifts to different members of the Kassar clan. As years speed by, characters change, sometimes drastically, from the people we readers originally thought they were. Not only human events then, but human personality is unstable in Massoud's family saga. For instance, in 1940, Gaston and Lucienne's son, Francois, is a responsible kid, solicitous of his frail younger sister Denise. Leap ahead roughly a decade and François is now a self-absorbed college student in America, the kind of dreamer who drives to Key West to find the end of the road and his existential self. Fair enough, after all the beat movement is in the air. But when we next see Francois in part three of this thick novel, it's through the disappointed eyes of his waspy wife, Barbara. Perhaps, she reflects, she made a mistake marrying a man whose relationship to the known world would always be askew, at an uneasy angle.

Still later, in middle age, Francois is given to eruptions of fury that drive Barbara and his daughters away. Who is this person? The more radical changes within character's selves, of course, are wrought by time. Francois, once so alive in his anger, fades in old age into a version of his courtly father, Gaston. In what could well be the verdict of the novel, Barbara looks at the diminished Francois and declares to herself, all life and the generations suddenly collapsing like an accordion. Massoud says in her acknowledgements that this strange, eventful history is one of those books that take a lifetime to write. The novel certainly has the stately sweep and weight of a magnum opus, but I don't think Massoud is simply praising her own accomplishment. As I've said, this is a novel about displacement, both political and personal, and you have to have lived a while to write, as Massoud does here, with such intimate melancholy about how time messes with us all,

displacing us from earlier versions of ourselves. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed This Strange Eventful History by Claire Massoud. Coming up, actor Tyler James Williams talks about why the success of playing the role of a no-nonsense teacher on the hit series Abbott Elementary feels so sweet after enduring a traumatic experience as a child actor. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. On the popular ABC sitcom Abbott Elementary, actor Tyler James Williams portrays a stoic, no-nonsense first grade teacher who has a crush on a fellow teacher played by Quinta Brunson, the creator and star of the series. The show follows their characters and a team of quirky teachers as they, through trial

and error, try to give these kids a quality education at Abbott Elementary. Playing a teacher is Tyler's latest role in a long career that spans more than 25 years. He began as a child actor, most notably as a young Chris Rock in the TV show Everybody Hates Chris. He's also starred in several other movies and shows, including Dear White People, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, and season five of the AMC horror drama The Walking Dead. Last year, Williams won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Gregory on Abbott Elementary, which is now in its third season. And Tyler James Williams, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you for having me. Okay, I'm so excited for this conversation. I want to ask you about this character first off,

because when you won the Golden Globe Award last year, which congratulations, by the way, you said something like, this win is for all the Gregory Eddies of the world to understand that his story is just as important as all of the other stories. What do you love most about this character? I love the simplicity of Gregory. I love that his story isn't rooted in some sense of trauma or some massive conflict that is very specific to his race. That's really what I meant when I said that was that he's a guy with a job who's just trying to do a good job who happens to be black at a black school with black kids. I know that I've longed for stories that were rooted in an everyday conflict. I think for a long time I was reading a lot of things that had to be so grandiose in the things that they tackled.

I read that Quinta Brunson DM'd you. You all lived down the street from each other and told you about this character. When she first told you about it, was it the person that it now is? How much of it did you bring to the table once you were able to see the bones of this person? I think from the minute we got on the phone about it, Gregory became a collaborative effort. It's as if she had laid down a stencil of what Gregory could be. And then we started painting in the colors of him. We very quickly had a conversation about the importance of showing an active black male struggling with and attempting to do a really good job in raising the next generation. Because those are the men I grew up with and those are the men that she grew up with.

It's really interesting, though, you say, but you had never had a black male teacher like Gregory. That was the first time you had ever thought about it. That was the first time it even crossed my mind. And I think she read off some statistic about like, I think it's less than 2% of teachers are black and male in the US. And that's where I always look for like the purpose of a thing, right? Where's the purpose I can hook into? And that was one of them. But then there was something about like a kind of quieter, introverted take on him that I really loved. I can't remember how we got there,

but that slowly began to like evolve into who he was. I think the beginning was just he was very anti wanting to be at Abbott because he was looking for a bigger position. Right. Because he started off there as a substitute teacher. We learned later on that he had actually applied for the job of principal and didn't get it. So yes, it starts off where you feel like, oh yeah, he just feels a little some kind of way about being in the school. But we learn, especially this season, the depths of who he is. And that's what I wanted to slowly unravel.

I wanted to show a version of not just a black man showing up in his workspace differently, but showing up authentically himself, not necessarily being, I guess, flamboyantly entertaining in his space. Quiet in his space. What was your school experience like? Because you were a child actor. I mean, since you were four, right? Yeah. So what was school like for you?

So I went to a traditional brick-and-mortar school up until about sixth grade. Around that time, I was beginning to work a bit more. And, you know, when you're in a traditional school, you only get over so many absences. And when you're actively working, at some point, that becomes an issue. They knew I was an actor. They knew I would have to leave for auditions and all of that. But as work was beginning to ramp up, they were like, hey, we have this answer for this at the school district. So my mother at that point moved me into like this kind of homeschooling program where I could

have tutors on set that could pretty much pick up on the program and like teach me what I needed to know. So it could be a bit more seamless. Yeah. Do you remember that time frame when it was like, oh, yeah, I'm working more than I'm in school or I'm out of school a lot? Oh, yeah, I remember it. I was never one who really liked school. I liked learning. I didn't like the environment of learning with other people. That was my issue.

Like what specifically? I didn't like getting up in the morning and going to sit in a room full of like 15 to 20 other kids who like I wasn't crazy about. Did you have close friends in school? Not really. No, not. There was like nobody from that age,

like I guess what would be zero to sixth grade that I really felt connected to because I was really passionate about my job. That was the thing that I really loved. Most of my friends were in that space. We were all deep feeling, creative. We looked closely into things that other kids just wouldn't really care about. So were your other friends actors? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So that was the thing. It was like, there's a bunch of them now who like, we all grew up together and are now very successful. Like Leon Thomas III, we grew up together in New York and I was reading for stuff against Michael B. Jordan at the time when he was on the East Coast. And it's great to see everybody around now, but that's where I felt more at home.

Everybody Hates Chris ran for four seasons. How old, you were from what age range to what? 12 to 16. Okay. 12 to 16 years old. And you were playing a young Chris Rock, semi-autobiographical, set in a different timeframe, the 80s. But a lot of your acting is through physical, through your face, because a lot of the show is narration, so you don't have many lines. One of the things you are known for is your face acting. Even to this day on Abbott Elementary, it's like, oh, you can give the side eye like no other. I'm just wondering how much was that perfected during Everybody Hates Chris?

Because so much of your face is a part of emoting what is happening in the scene. I think it laid the groundwork for sure. I think the crux of that show, a lot of people don't fundamentally understand it. I've noticed over time. The show. The show itself. It's not that Chris was hated on specifically it's that he felt like the world around him was insane um and that that's that's how he

internalized it um so for me that was one of the only ways to really convey all of the little things that were happening in that show because I could feel them. Like there's a lot of micro kind of aggressions that we explore with like the teacher at one time. And in 27 pages, as you do with a half hour comedy, there's just not enough lines to respond. You can't say what or oh, my God, but for so many times. And that's when I learned that I should have, my character should have an opinion, not just on his own lines, but on everybody else's. And it's my job as a performer to show what his opinion is on those things. So it definitely laid the groundwork for how I was going to work for the rest of my life. Yeah. It also was such a – how would you describe that time period for yourself? It was a time of learning, but you also said you walked away with some trauma from that time period. One of the things that is very unique to me about that show is so many people have such great, overwhelmingly warm feelings about it from their childhood. And I'm like one of a few people who don't.

Right. It was a very difficult time for me. I'm one of those people who believes that fame is inherently traumatic. Um, you are one thing one day and the next day you're something completely different. Uh, one day I was just a kid in New York who was like walking down the streets of Manhattan auditioning and all of that. And the next day I was on, my face was on every bus in the city. So I think I really struggled with that attention. I think attention that most people seek. I wasn't necessarily doing this for that. I was doing this because I love to do it. Even to this day, I still find it very bizarre when people hyper obsess on you. And I think I was going through

puberty and was awkward and wasn't really sure who I was or who I wanted to be yet. And I think that's an awkward time for anybody. But it's really difficult when it's put on the screen and then immortalized. You know what I mean? A lot of the people I grew up with who were also child actors may not have had a show that was as big of a hit as Everybody Hates Chris became. So that period of time for them wasn't necessarily immortalized. And there's a certain aspect of, I guess, infantilizing that happens where people try to keep you in that place at the same time. There was also something, was it a producer or someone said to you when you guys were wrapping that show? Yeah. That I'd probably never work again. This producer said to you, no one will ever be able

to probably see you outside of this character as a young Chris Rock. Yeah. So I'm doing a good job. Why am I being punished for doing a good job? It was very difficult for me to grapple with. And it kind of contextualized my 20s, essentially. What propelled you to keep going in this industry? So you're 16 when it wraps. Yeah, I'm wrapped, yeah. You continue to act. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And I mean, what I'm about to say, I mean this not to be dramatic, but very seriously. There was no other option. Having been able to live very early parts of my life doing what I loved on set consistently day by day. I had tasted that. There was no going back. It was either this or bust. So I was quite literally fighting for not just my career, but my life over the course of my 20s. That's what drove me because I couldn't see myself doing really anything else. This was it. So if it wasn't this, it wasn't going to be anything.

So something you've been very vocal about is your Crohn's disease, which is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease. When did you understand that you were sick? I had been living sick since I was about 19. I became aware how sick I was when I was hospitalized at 23. And I had a surgeon look at me in my eyes and tell me, you need emergency surgery. And I was like, okay, cool. Yeah. And he was like, no, no, no, no. Like, we need to do this right now or your insides may explode and you may die. Let's stop right there. Because, you know, it's always surprising when a doctor,

when a medical professional is like, this is so bad, we got to go right in. Did you, how would you describe the level of agony and pain that you were in? Did you even, you didn't even realize it. Oh, it was nonstop. It was nonstop. It was like, it became my normal. And this is when, you know, when we talk about everybody hates Chris, this is the part that most people don't know. That show almost killed me. We had

to figure out what the direct connection was because the doctors, I was diagnosed by a wonderful black GI named Sophie Balzora in New York. And we've developed a relationship after the fact, where we keep in touch with each other. We check in with each other. I do speaking events and things for her. And I asked her not that long ago, I was like, how bad was I? And she was like, now that we're outside of it,

you're one of the worst cases I've ever seen. It didn't make sense why it was so bad. And we realized that one of the triggers was the stress. So the stress that I was experiencing from fighting for my career, from carrying a show at 12, was slowly scarring the insides of my intestines as it would inflame because my body didn't know what to do with the stress. I was so young. It just saw this stress as like the flu, and it would try to attack a certain part of my body to remove it. Were you just living day to day just like doing your own remedies to do? Like this works for me.

This doesn't work for me. I don't eat this. I don't eat this. Like how were you managing from day to day? I was throwing up like three times a day. Trying not to eat when I knew I had to work because I knew eating could possibly mess something up, and I didn't know what it was. At some point after I was diagnosed, they were like, hey, you need to have surgery. And then I remember my response was, I'm in the middle of production.

I can't. And they were like, okay, that's not really an option. So there was a period of like almost a year, a year and a half. I was living on painkillers. Like I was living off of Percocets and hydrocodone. Because the doctors didn't hadn't diagnosed you yet. So you were just getting these. It was just pain.

And I would go to the hospital. They'd be like, I don't know what's wrong with you because it doesn't really show up on an x-ray. But even after I was diagnosed, I was, I was, it was the middle of shooting. I was shooting Detroit for Catherine Bigelow. Oh, the movie Detroit. Yeah. While also shooting Criminal Minds. Oh, too very heavy. And so I was working seven days a week. I was shooting Criminal Minds in LA and then flying to Boston and Detroit to shoot Detroit back and forth. And I was like, there's no way I can stop right now. So I just kind of lived off of these very strong, very strong painkillers.

At a certain point, your doctor then said to you, emergency surgery. Yeah. They remove six inches of your lower intestine. And that's not all. You went into septic shock. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that happened. So when they remove six inches of my intestines, typically what they will do is they will give somebody who had that kind of a surgery an ostomy bag for it to heal and then reconnect everything later. Right. Again, I'm an actor.

I'm like, I don't have that kind of time. And two, I can't be walking around with this. So my surgeon, he said, I'm going to try. I'm going to try not to, and we'll see what happens. He reconnected everything. I lasted maybe four or five days before it perforated and opened back up. And they took me back into emergency surgery. And I came out with an ostomy that I had for about six weeks.

And that's when everything broke. That's when like I broke completely. I needed that. I needed it to sit me down. It sat you down. It sat me down. I think that was the first time I sit me down. It sat you down. It sat me down. I think that was the first time I had. And it was only six weeks.

It felt like years. But it was only six weeks and I needed to sit down and I needed to stop. Because you can't work or live in a place of hyper stress like that where you feel like you're fighting for your life. For me, it was either I have a long career or my life ends shortly. And that was the stakes for me. But you can't exist like that. How are you now? How is your health now? That's the thing that's so beautiful. I haven't had an incident where I had to go to the hospital in years at this point. I'm on medication, but I think also I changed the way I lived. Tyler James Williams, this has been such a pleasure talking to you.

You as well. Thank you. Tyler James Williams stars in the ABC sitcom Abbott Elementary, which is now in its third season. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by its third season.