Fresh Air - Film Icons: Meryl Streep / Sidney Poitier

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

Our special series of archival interviews continues with two of the GOATs: Meryl Streep, the actor with the most Oscar nominations in history, spoke with Terry Gross in 2012 about playing Margaret Thatcher. And Sidney Poitier, the first Black man to win best actor, in 2000 talked about how the radio helped him learn an accent for auditions.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Today we continue our series, Classic Films and Movie Icons, and hear interviews from our archive with Meryl Streep and Sidney Poitier. I spoke with Streep in 2012 when she was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the film The Iron Lady. She won. She'd previously won for her performances in Kramer vs. Kramer and Sophie's Choice. She holds the record for the most Oscar nominations, a total of 21.

One of the things she's known for is her uncanny ability to do accents. Let's start by hearing how she sounds as Margaret Thatcher. The film begins after Thatcher has lost her husband and is suffering from dementia. She's imagining that her husband is still with her and talking to her. In this scene, Streep portrays Thatcher after she's become the first woman to lead the conservative party. She's speaking before the House of Commons. The right honorable gentleman knows very well that we had no choice but to close the school because because his union paymasters have called a strike deliberately

to cripple our economy teachers cannot teach when there is no heating no lighting in their classrooms and I ask the right honourable gentleman whose fault is that? Yours! Yours!

Your hypothesis Methinks the right honourable lady doth screech too much and if she wants us to take her seriously she must learn to calm down. If the right honorable gentleman could perhaps attend more closely to what I am saying, rather than how I am saying it, he may receive a valuable education in spite of himself. Margaret Thatcher later took voice lessons from a drama

coach to help her sound more authoritative. Here's Streep as Thatcher after those lessons, addressing Parliament about the war in the Falklands. We were faced with an act of unprovoked aggression and we responded as we have responded in times past with unity, strength, and courage. Sure in the knowledge that though much is sacrificed, in the end, right will prevail over wrong. Meryl Streep, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you so much for being here. And congratulations on your Golden Globe and your Oscar nomination. Thank you very much for having me, Terri. I'm a huge fan. Oh, wow. Thank you. So we just heard you before and after Margaret Thatcher has voice lessons, voice lessons to teach her authority and power

so that she can speak more powerfully to the parliament. Did she really have that kind of vocal training? She did. My memory is a little cloudy, but I remember reading that Laurence Olivier had something to do with arranging for her to have. He demurred. He said he wouldn't care to do it himself, but he steered her in the direction of a good vocal coach. And she did go, and it did help her.

And it was part of the Big Malian process that Gordon Reese put her through. So can you talk a little bit about what you think she learned with those vocal lessons and how you transformed your voice as her after she really learned her way around as a public figure and had the advantage of those voice lessons? Well, I think that voice lessons really just bring out a voice that you already possess. So she already had whatever the sort of high school, in Grantham. She had changed her way of speaking. Her accent from Grantham had disappeared by the time she went to Oxford to study chemistry. And she had decided on a sort of a plummy kind of aspirant, upper middle class, what we would call upper middle class voice. And so what the voice coach did was enabled her to expand her breath, deepen her voice,

bring it to a place where men could listen to it in its most emphatic tones. So how did you change your voice for the before and after, for the more confident and experienced Margaret Thatcher versus the early Margaret Thatcher? Well, I had evidence of both voices, you know, from the public record so I could listen to them. And it's sort of my fun to sing along with records and imitate people that are on the telephone that have different ways of speaking. I mean, I pick things up like that. So it's not a thing that's a struggle. It's work, but it's not a struggle. it's fun. And she had a very particular way of emphasizing points and making her point. And that had to do with bringing out a word that you didn't normally think was the most important

word in the sentence. Do you know what I mean? Yes. And she also had a sort of a way, like a railroad train of going, taking a breath and starting quite quietly and making a point in a way that you don't really know that this point is going to be made through several examples and there will not be a break in the speaking voice at any point. And if you think you're going to interrupt, you're really not going to have the opportunity because she's just got capacity. It's just really stunning as I looked at interviews. So you need a lot of breath to keep talking like that. Did you have it? I've just been talking like that. Yeah, I did need a lot of breath. I needed much more breath than I have after all my expensive drama school training. I couldn't keep up with her. I think it's interesting that when you're doing the voice of a real person,

or I suppose if you're learning an accent too, you think of it as singing along with a record. So is that what you do? Like you play Margaret Thatcher giving a speech and you do the equivalent of singing along with it. You give the speech as you're listening to it. I say that because that's my way in, in the very beginning, how to enter it. Very quickly in the process, I don't think about voice being separate from the way you hold your head or the way you sit or the way you dress or the way you put on lipstick. It's all a piece of a person and it's all driven by conviction. In other characters, it's driven by insecurity, or it's driven by fear, or there's always a driver. And all the physical manifestations, you need your way in. So, yeah. When I was a kid, when I was 16, 17, I'd come home from high school, and my dad collected all of Barbra Streisand's records.

And she was very young then. I think she probably had three records out, and she was 21. And we had them all. And I knew every single song, every breath, every elision, every swell, and I sang along to it. But for me, it was a way to get out the feeling of the song and also to get out the feelings that, you know, royal in high school, to express something that I had no other way of expressing. And, of course, now I'm rich and famous,

and I met Barbra Streisand, and I told her that. She was nonplussed. She was just... We can't know what we mean to each other, you know. Artists, you can't know that. But she was really important. I have another Margaret Thatcher question for you. Because you aged several decades through the course of the film.

Four. Yeah, so you had to wear, you know, like a prosthetic older person's neck. And your face has a lot of makeup or something. Because, you know, you age for decades. So is it harder to be expressive when you're underneath something? You know, are there a lot of makeup or prosthetic or whatever? Well, I mean, you manage to be very expressive, but I'm wondering if it's, you know, more difficult.

It can be, but I didn't want it to be. So I've worked for 35 years with a master artist, makeup artist and hairdresser. That's Roy Helland. And he's done everything, bleached my eyebrows for, and hair for Sophie's Choice. And he gave me a brown mullet in silkwood and, you know, he got me ready for the Golden Globes. And he understands the job and changing the outside to get it something inside. So in conjunction with this British prosthetics designer, Mark Coulier, he and Roy and I, we did tests and it was all about taking away, taking away, taking away. You know, we start with what Mark would carve the sculpture of me. They took a life mask and then he'd add on with clay or whatever the material is, age. And then they'd cast it in sort of this silicone thing, and then I would wear it, and

we'd test it, and then I would say, inevitably, less, less, less, less. So it's kind of remarkable how little I really am wearing. And when you're saying less, less, I want less, is that partly so that you can move your face and be expressive? It's all about being free and having, so I can look in the mirror and see me, not stuff. And it all has to do with, you know, it's not about the audience. It's all about fooling the other actors into believing that you are who you say you are. Because that's hard when you walk on set and it's a big makeup job and it makes it hard for them and I take my entire performance from them so if they don't look at me and hate me appropriately and love me the way they're supposed to or find you know an old face but

but see the young one underneath which is Jim Broadbent's task as Dennis Thatcher, then I'm lost. I don't have anything to go on, because I can read that immediately in their eyes, you know? Yeah, I never thought of it that way, that you have to convince the other actors that you're Margaret Thatcher. That's the whole deal. The whole deal.

You know, I hear a certain similarity between your voice in The Iron Lady as Margaret Thatcher and started being like surprised and delighted about how her like food concoction was behaving that she might sound like Julia Child. What do you think? Well, they had a similar flutiness especially in the younger. Julia Child had a flutiness. Yeah.

Which is, and it's also part of her class, Yeah. A class of women who were wealthy, privately educated, went to Smith, moved in that sort of circle. She was conscripted into the OSS, which is the early CIA, which was all filled with Yalies and Princeton and Harvard people. And a few women who were typing mostly but also had something to do. And they had a way of speaking. I mean, the last person you would know who also recognizes having that way of speaking is Katharine Hepburn, probably. When I was at Vassar and I came from a public high school in New Jersey, there was a way of talking that the private school girls had that was different than the way I talked from New Jersey. your TV career and you're making some kind of like mashed potato pancake concoction that you're you're about to flip and it's not it kind of doesn't go well doesn't go well it kind of

splatters in the air and half of it lands on the stove instead of in the pan so let's hear a little bit of that and this scene alternates with you on TV and with Julie watching you on TV Amy Adams yeah yeah Amy Adams, Amy Adams as Julie. I'm going to try to flip this thing over now, which is a rather daring thing to do. She changed everything. Before her, it was frozen food and can openers and marshmallows. Don't knock marshmallows. Give it a try.

When you flip anything, you've just got to have the courage of your convictions, especially if it's a loose sort of mass, like, oh, that didn't go very well. But you see, when I flipped it, I didn't have the courage. She's so adorable. I needed it the way I should have. But you can always put it together. And you're alone in the kitchen.

Who's to see? Pearls. The woman is wearing pearls in the kitchen. I just got to practice the piano. I'm Julia Child. Bon appétit. I know, I love that, because you talk about studying someone's voice as if it's music, and she has such a musical voice.

She does, and she has no breath. Yeah, I was going to say that, exactly. It sounds like she's been running up a hill. She always sounds like that. I feel like that when I'm in the kitchen, don't you? Well, I'm not a very good cook. Me neither, honestly. I just, I believe that's why delis exist, so that I don't have to cook. Well, I got better after this, and my entire family really did appreciate it. Usually they're resentful of movies that I go off and make, but this one had a bonus attached. But, yeah.

You know, I compared her voice and Thatcher's voice before, but Breathwise are the opposite because she's almost like gasping for air and Thatcher has this like endlessly long breath. Well, she's so alive, Julia Child, and Margaret is so designed. She's so intent upon making her point. That's the most important thing is that she win the argument. And there is nothing that stands in the way of that train. But Julia is just alive in front of you. That's part of why people loved her. They lived it with her. They breathed it with her. And the mistakes were in front of you. That's part of why people loved her. They lived it with her.

They breathed it with her. And the mistakes were all part of it. But she was adept, too, at what she was doing, incredibly adept. Okay, so here's a story I read, which I assume is true, but you can tell me if it actually happened. For the 1976 Dino De Laurentiis remake of King Kong, you auditioned for Dino Di Laurentiis and his son, who were Italian, and Dino Di Laurentiis said in Italian,

what did he say? Che brutta. Perché mi... I don't know. I can't speak Italian anymore because I'm so old and forgetful. But he said something like, but this is so ugly. Why do you bring me this? This being you.

Yes. I'm sitting in front of him, opposite the desk. He's smiling. He looks impeccable. He has everything beautiful. And his son is very kind. His son said, because his son had seen me in something. And he said, no, you know, dad, she's a wonderful actress. And because I'd just, I'd studied a year of Italian at Vassar, I could understand what they

were saying. And I said, you know, mi dispiacimento. I'm very sorry that I'm not as beautiful as I should be. But, you know, this is it. This is what you get, sort of. And I left. I mean, I was very upset, but I didn't show it. Yes, it's a true story. So a very interesting story because you're being told early in your career basically that you're not beautiful. You're not qualified.

Your face is not qualified for this role. And you're also – Face and body, I believe. And body. But then you're also making the decision to let them know that you understand what they said. They were intentionally speaking in Italian so that you wouldn't understand them. Right, right, right. But you did understand them. You let them know that you understand what they said. They were intentionally speaking in Italian so that you wouldn't understand them. Right, right, right. But you did understand them.

You let them know you understood them. Because they think actresses are stupid. That was the other thing. I mean, not they, because I don't think his son was that way. His son was my champion. I mean, he was the reason I was in the office. But the dad, he wasn't being mean to me. He was just speaking to his son in Italian. But he had no idea that I would understand,

because they think Americans are stupid, too. So... Did you worry that you were basically... I mean, you hadn't been in any movies yet. So did you worry that word would spread about you that you were... That you spoke back to directors? Yeah, that you were real pain and that you were... Yeah, that you were – that you spoke back to directors? Yeah, that you were a real pain and that you were – yeah, that you were a problem. So, like, avoid her. I am a pain in the ass. How can I hide it?

I mean – yeah, that is the package, you know. But I was not – I was not probably suited to that role either. I mean, that was the truth. How much did you want it? Not much. I mean, I did want a break, but I didn't, I didn't think I would be good in it, honestly. I didn't. It represented something that, I don't know, I wasn't drawn to. So I suppose it was easier to be obstreperous in the meeting because of that. If it was an audition for Sophie's Choice and Alan Bacool had said something like that, I maybe would have swallowed it because I wanted it so badly. We're listening to the interview I recorded with Meryl Streep in 2012.

We'll hear more of that interview and hear my 2000 interview with Sidney Poitier after a break as we continue our series, Classic Films and Movie Icons. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. 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.

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Download it in your app store today. Heritage with the artists that create it. Listen now to the Alt Latino Podcast from NPR. You were engaged to the actor Don Cazale, whom most people know as Fredo in Godfather 1 and 2, and in Dog Day Afternoon. Why am I blanking on the title? And he had a small part in The Deer Hunter. You were nominated for an Oscar for your part in The Deer Hunter. It was like one of your first films.

And so you were engaged, and he died of bone cancer shortly after in 1978. Yes, we were not engaged. But we were a couple. We lived together like three years. So he probably died not knowing how famous his roles were going to be, how famous those movies were going to be. I know. I know. Well, the Godfather movies were unbelievably popular. You know, they were just – popular isn't the word. They've entered into iconic. Yeah,

absolutely. And they did early. I mean, early, early on, they had that importance, certainly in New York, where we lived. You know, we would walk along the street, people roll down the window and go, hey, Fredo! You know, and we could never pay for a dinner if we went to Little Italy. Never. Which was great. We went all the time. But he, yeah, he made five movies and all five of them were nominated for Best Picture. You gave a terrific commencement address at Barnard in 2010.

One of the things you talked about was how you think of your first character as being you in high school when you wanted to be the pretty popular girl. So what you did was you studied Vogue and Mademoiselle. And what were some of the things you taught yourself to do? Bleach my hair and curl it. And there was an elaborate thing because there weren't hot curlers in those days. So you had to go to bed on sleeping on rollers, which is just a torture, like maybe sleeping on one of those Maasai wooden plugs that they put under your neck in the boma, you know, to go to sleep. Did you ever use the tin can thing, putting a tin can on top of your head? That was for the people with curly hair. I was interested in curling my bone straight hair, which won't bend, you know, under any circumstance. Yeah, but the girls with curly hair put it on cans so that it would

straighten it out during the night. Everybody was miserable. See, you said that you adjusted your temperament to in trying to be popular and appealing to boys. Yeah. Oh, sure. What did you change? I remember that, well, opinions took a back seat. Opinions were not, you know, attractive. I mean, this is stuff I remember thinking when I was quite young. You know, at my house, in order to be heard, you had to get your opinion. No, you had to get your opinion out. No, no, no. Don't interrupt me.

You know, Dad, he did that again. And you just you got it out. You learn to rise above the contending voices. But I recognized early on that that wasn't attractive on a date. Like if he said something stupid, you go, no, I don't agree with that at all. How can you say that? It's idiotic. And that would not get a second date. So I would learn to go, wow, yeah, cool. And that would be okay. So it's a form of acting for a purpose, which girls learn to do, and girls are good at it if they care to be. Now, I don't think they, what do I know, I have three daughters, and they're all doing it in their own way. I mean, getting along in life on their own terms. And I don't feel they make those accommodations quite in the way we did. But this was something people did. Yeah.

One of the things actresses, I think, worry about, you can be the leading lady in your 20s and 30s. Once you're in your 40s, it's really harder to get roles. There's character roles and the parent roles. I think things are starting to change. But have you been satisfied with the roles for women of your age as you've changed ages over the years? Or have you been frustrated with what's out there? Both. I remember when I turned 40, I was offered within one year three different witch roles. Literally which? Witches, to play three different witches

in three different contexts. But it was almost like the world was saying or the studios were saying, we don't know what to do with you. And I remember, I mean, I've repeated this before many times, but I remember being shocked to find out that Bette Davis was 40 or 41 when she did All About Eve and was playing an over-the-hill, done, out-of-you-finished actress. And that she was only 50 when she did Baby Jane and Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte and those grotesques of witches.

You could call them witches. So, yeah, I think there was, for a long time in the movie business a period of when a woman was attractive and marriageable or something. Not marriageable, but f***able I guess is the word. You can't really say that on the radio. Oh, okay. Well, you know what I'm saying. You substitute something better, but we could bleep it. It will have been bleeped by the time listeners hear that. Okay. Well, you know what I'm saying. You substitute something better, but we could bleep it. Okay.

It will have been bleeped by the time listeners hear that. Okay. So that was it. And then after that, they really didn't know what to do with you until you were the lioness in winter, right? Until you were 70. And then it was okay to, you know, driving Miss Daisy or trip to Bountiful or things like that. But that middle period, what we call the middle, the most vibrant years of a woman's life, arguably from 40 to 60, were completely nobody knew what to do with them. And that really has changed, completely changed, not for everybody, but for me, it has changed. And part of it, I think, has to do with the fact that I wasn't. That word that I just said that you bleeped before, when I was a younger actress, that wasn't the first thing about

me. Sexuality was not the first thing, is what you're saying. It was not the first thing. Sexiness. Yeah. Because when that goes away, cute, I was never cute. So when cute goes away, because that goes away with age.

Well, Meryl Streep, I really regret that we're out of time. It's been great to talk with you. Thank you so much for being on our show. Thanks, Terry. I enjoyed it. My interview with Meryl Streep was recorded in 2012. After we take a short break, we'll hear the interview I recorded with Sidney Poitier in 2000.

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no nonsense. Download the NPR app in your app store today, or you transparency, respect, excellence. This is NPR. Let's get back to our series Classic Films and Movie Icons with the interview I recorded with Sidney Poitier in 2000 after the publication of his memoir. Poitier said he always believed that his work should convey his personal values. When he started making movies in 1949, it was hard for black actors to get significant film roles, much harder than today. It was even difficult to get small parts that weren't stereotyped. But in the 50s and 60s,

Poitier starred in a string of films that addressed the racial tensions of the time, films like The Defiant Ones, In the Heat of the Night, Lilies of the Field, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. In 1963, he became the first black actor to win an Oscar for Best Actor. He remained the only black actor to win in that category until 2001 when Denzel Washington won for Training Day. In the 70s, Poirier directed such films as Buck and the Preacher, Uptown Saturday Night, Let's Do It Again, and Stir Crazy. Poirier grew up in the Bahamas on Cat Island and Nassau. His family was poor. He was born in 1924 and arrived prematurely, weighing only three pounds.

His father prepared for his baby's imminent death by buying a little casket. His mother went to a fortune teller. Poirier died two years ago at the age of 94. Your first audition was as a result of a classified ad that you'd read for the American Negro Theater, which was looking for performers. You say when you got to your audition,

you had trouble just reading the script. You certainly hadn't been in an audition before. You had no training. You didn't have much schooling either. No, I didn't. So when I went into this place, I could read, for instance, the want ad pages and I could recognize

words like janitor and dishwasher and stuff like that. Just across the page from the want ad page was the theatrical page and there was this sign that said actors want it. And I went to this address.

I said, maybe I can, I tried dishwashing and janitors and all that stuff. Maybe I'll try this. And I went there, and there was a gentleman there. And he asked me, he said, are you an actor? And I said, yes, I am. And he said, okay. He gave me a script and sent me up on this little stage. And he said, turn to page 28. And I did. And on 28, I saw that

there was a name, John. And underneath the name John was an awful lot of writing. And I suppose these were the words that John would be saying. And then was another part named something else, and he was going to read those parts, he said. So he told me to look it over, take a second, look it over, and when I was ready, let him know. So I read the page and then the following page, and then I said, okay, I'm ready. And he said, okay, you start.

I said, all right I'm ready. And he said, okay, you start. I said, all right. And I started reading. Well, of course, I had never read for anyone in my life except maybe in the elementary area in my first year in school in Nassau. So I started out, I said, so where are you going tomorrow? So the chap, I guess his eyes flew open, and he looked up on the stage, and it all came to him, you know, that I was a fake. So he came running up onto the stage and he snatched the script out of my hand and he grabbed me. I was a kid, you know, and he spun me around and he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and my belt in the back and he marched me to the door. On the way, he said, these were his words as I remember, he said,

get out of here and stop wasting people's time. He said, why don't you go out and get yourself a job you can handle? And as he opened the door and as he chucked me out, his last line to me was, get yourself a job as a dishwasher or something. What did you do to try to improve your auditioning skills before going back to prove that this guy was wrong and that you could do it? Well, my first job was to, because I had this Caribbean accent, as I'm sure you're acquainted with. Well, let me just stop you there and say I can hear the accent much more in this interview than I hear it in movies. Oh, yeah. Well, I had it very intensely. And so much so that he made a remark about it.

And I knew that from what he had said that I had to do something about that first and foremost. So I saved up enough money to buy a radio. And I thought that the best way to correct it was to listen to a radio here in America and try to learn the sounds, the pronunciations, and stuff from people I heard on the radio. And I did that, and I listened to the radio between dishwashing, in terms of, in other words, when I'd get home,

wherever I was sleeping, I would plug in this little radio, and I would listen until I fell asleep, and whatever was said on the radio, I would repeat it. So you went back to the American Negro Theater Company and auditioned a second time? Yeah, I certainly did. That was my aim. I went back six months later to audition.

But I was really not really prepared because I didn't have a scene or a monologue from a play. I didn't know that one could buy such things in certain bookstores, so I bought what I thought would be appropriate for an audition. I bought a true confessions magazine, and I memorized two or three paragraphs

of one of the stories in this thing that I didn't know any better. So I got up on the stage and I'm reading this thing and I was hardly through the first paragraph when they stopped me. Oh my God, just thinking about it. So it's amazing really that you were able to actually get a part after all of this. Just tell me, what was the thing that you did that you think convinced the right people at the theater company to give you a shot?

They didn't give me a shot. They rejected me after they saw my audition. And I made some observations myself while I was there. I noticed that they did not have a janitor there. And I proposed that I would do the cleaning up stuff if they would let me come and study. And the people to whom I was speaking, they were the administrators of the American Negro Theater at that time. And they were somehow impressed with my determination. And they said, if you want to study that badly, okay, you can come in.

And so they took me in, and I was the janitor. Let me advance the story a little further and take you to the early part of your movie career, specifically to Blackboard Jungle, which was released in 1954. This was an important film for you. You had one of the leads in it. This is like the most famous high school film, I think. It opens with Rock Around the Clock. Glenn Ford plays the new teacher at a school just filled with juvenile delinquents. And in your first scene, he catches you and some of the other guys smoking in the bathroom. You're washing your hands with your back turned toward the teacher for most of this scene. Let's hear this scene. What's your name, wise guy? Me? Miller. Gregory Miller. You want me to spell it out for you so

you won't forget it? No, no, you don't have to do that. I'll remember, Miller. Sure, chief, you do that. Or maybe you'd like to take a walk down to the principal's office right now with me. Is that what you want? You're holding all the cards, Chief. You want to take me to see Miss Suwannee? You'd do just that. Who's your home period teacher? You are, Chief. Well, why aren't you with the rest of the class?

I already told you. Came in to wash up, Chief. All right, then wash up. Just cut out that Chief routine, you understand? Sure, Chief. That's what I've been doing all the time. Sidney Poitier, how did you like your role in Blackboard Jungle? I liked it. I liked it. This young guy that I played,

he was really on the cusp of finding himself in useful ways or losing himself to forces he couldn't quite understand by then. And so he had some complications. He had some complexities. He had some depth to him, and I liked playing him. We're listening to the interview I recorded with Sidney Poitier in 2000. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. This is Fresh Air.

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Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Sidney Poitier in 2000. You became the African-American leading man in the 60s. What were some of the things that you felt you weren't allowed to play or express as an African-American leading man in the 60s in Hollywood? That is a very good question. And the true answer is I have no such imagery of what I was not able to express because taking the times as they were, the fact of my career was in itself remarkable. Right. Just the fact of it, you see. It would have been a luxury

I would not have spent much time on trying to determine what was missing. What was missing was not so much for me, but what was missing for the overwhelming majority of other minority actors at the time. Well, I'm glad you brought that up. What were some of the things you heard from your fellow actors at the time about stereotype roles that they had to play in Hollywood

when you came to Hollywood? Yeah, well, you know, most of us, I think, were obliged to play what was available. I did not. I did not take advantage of that. I couldn't. It was not what I needed to do for my life. I had elected to be the kind of actor whose work would stand as a representation of my values. Let me talk with you about a scene that I think represents

the kind of values that you're talking about. This is a scene from In the Heat of the Night. In that film, Rod Steiger plays a local police chief in a southern town. You're a homicide cop from Philadelphia passing through this southern town, but you're arrested for being suspicious because you're a black man from out of town carrying money in your wallet. The police chief doesn't really believe that you're a cop, so he calls your boss in Philly. And your boss suggests that you stay in this small southern town to help them solve this big murder case that they're working on because they don't have cops who are nearly as experienced as you are. So in this scene, you and Rod Steiger, who's still very skeptical of you, go to question one of the leading white businessmen in town.

And I'll just explain in case it's confusing as our listeners hear it, that as you're questioning him, the businessman slaps you and then without missing a beat, you slap him right back. Here's the scene. Let me understand this. You two came here to question me? Well, your... your attitudes, Mr. Endicott, your points of view are a matter of record. Some people, well, let us say the people who work for Mr. Colbert,

might reasonably regard you as the person least likely to mourn his passing. We were just trying to clarify some of the evidence. Was Mr. Colbert ever in this greenhouse, say, last night about midnight? Good, Espy? Yeah. You saw it. I saw it. Well, what are you going to do about it?

I don't know. I'll remember that. There was a time when I could have had you shot. Sidney Poitier, in your new memoir, you say that's not the way the scene was originally written. Originally, you didn't slap this businessman right after he slapped you. What did you do in the original scene, and why did you want to change it? The original scene called for the businessman to slap that period would not have written it differently. And I felt that the natural emotional response to being slapped, and I'm speaking not as Sidney Poitier, but I'm speaking as a Philadelphia detective,

that the natural response to a man slapping him, he's going to slap him right back. And I thought that that would be, since those kinds of moments were never found in American films from the inception of films in this country, that kind of a scene, which would be electrifying on the screen, was always either avoided, not thought of,

and I insisted that if they wished my participation in the film, that they would have to rewrite it to exemplify that. They were, meaning the director, Norman Jewison, who was and is an exquisite artist, and the producer, Walter Marish, who is, I mean, his record is fabulous and we've been very good friends all these years. Both of them said, hey, that's great. Let's do it that way. So we did it.

And it indeed did turn out to be a highlight moment in that film. But it also spoke not just of the two characters, it spoke of our time. It spoke of the time in America when, in films at least, we could step up to certain realities. In that film, you use something that you've used in a lot of your films, a very indignant stare, a stare that carries a lot of weight. Can you talk a little about how you perfected that look? First of all, I don't acknowledge that I have such a look.

Right, right. Because I see myself differently than other people see me, obviously. But is that, do you think, a look that came from real life or one that you just developed for your acting roles? No, my acting roles are, at the core of themselves, a part of me. So whatever that look is, I mean, I cannot manufacture such a look. It comes out of those forces that are churning internally in the individual, you know? And so I just have that look, I suppose, even when I'm thinking of things that are quite contrary to what the look might suggest. Well, I thank you so much for talking with us.

Thank you for inviting me. Sidney Poitier recorded in 2000. He died in 2022 at the age of 94. Our series Classic Films and Movie Icons continues tomorrow, featuring interviews from our archive with Dennis Hopper, who made his movie comeback with the film Blue Velvet, and Isabella Rossellini, who starred in that film, too. She's the daughter of two other movie icons, actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini. I hope you'll join us. In the heat of the night Seems like a cold sweat creeping across my brow Yeah

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Bodonato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Teresa Madigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producers are Molly C.V. Nesper and Sabrina Seaworth. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. you you Thank you. All this month, the ThruLine podcast is asking big questions about our democracy and going back in time to answer them.

Listen now to the Thru pocket. Download the NPR app today.