TED Radio Hour - Unapologetically loud women who push boundaries — but not without pushback

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Sometimes, the only way to make an impact is to be loud. This hour, three female performers talk about the rewards — and consequences — that come from speaking out and making people feel uncomfortable. Guests include comedian Lilly Singh, Pussy Riot co-founder Nadya Tolokonnikova and actor, playwright and director Sarah Jones. Original Broadcast Date: October 20, 2023.TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at plus.npr.org/ted. See 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

This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.

You just don't know what you're going to find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading.

From TED and NPR, I'm Manusse Zamorodi. So Lily telling me that you three want to go out, huh? Yes, sir. Who's going? On the show today, Loudmouthed. Write their name and number on this paper. And what time you are coming home, huh? Um, nine.

Make it seven. Okay, seven's fine. Lily Singh was in her early 20s, still living with her parents in Toronto. when she hit it big on YouTube. Aunties have no filter. Oh, okay, you want everything to be sugar-coated, huh? Maybe that's why you get rid. With videos that poked fun at her culture.

No one on YouTube really looked like me. To my knowledge was not another South Asian woman talking about relationships or issues they were having with their family or, like, their period, or like all these things that were considered taboo. Girls get a period. Because when they're talking to someone and that person finished their sentence, They say, period, here you go. Thank you.

To some, this might not sound taboo. But to her Indian community, Lily's videos were shocking. I'm an adult, full-fledged adult, and I have a hard time being intimate with people. What the reddy head you mean, intimate with the people? It was clear she'd struck a nerve, especially for young people with immigrant parents. Millions of people from all over the world began following her online, and she started making a good living. a really good living. In 2017, Lily was listed in the top 10 of YouTube's highest paid stars.

A lot of my following was because people were like, oh my God, she is speaking about my experience in a way no one else has ever spoken about my experience on screen. And that's how I built a community. All these accolades were great. But for Lily, success was also about proving herself to her family, especially her grandfather. My first impression of him was, oh, this person really. was not overjoyed at my birth.

So when I was born on September 26, 1988, my grandparents and great-grandparents back in India didn't find out for two weeks. Here's Lily Singh on the TED stage. And it's not because the phone lines were down or because they weren't available. It's because there was a complication with my birth. And that complication was being assigned female at birth.

You see, because my mom had been told that if she gave birth to a daughter, it wasn't worth phoning home about. And so there were no congratulations or Indian sweets sent our way. Just the reality that from the moment I came into this world, I was already a disappointment to so many people. So when Lily went on a world comedy tour,

she made sure to visit the grandfather she had never met in India. So I went into that meeting as an adult, feeling really emotional and feeling really bitter. And then when I arrived at his house, he put a flower garland over me and was celebrating me. And he even went on to show me like all these news clippings he had saved of me. And he said the words, a son could have never done what you did for us. That was a monumental day in my life.

Did it not annoy you in some ways that your grandfather sort of accepted you precisely because you were in the newspaper, because you were famous, because you got what could be considered, you know, superficial accolades? Totally. You know you're absolutely right. And I will admit, it's not perfect. It's not the perfect scenario. It's super late and it's super superficial, but I still needed to count for something. I in my ideal world would have my grandfather be like, oh my God, the patriarchy's garbage. I get how it's affecting you and me both. I understand how it's held me back. But I know that's not happening. Like it's not going to happen. In so many different cultures, women have been told to stay quiet, do as they're told. And so they find that the only way to make waves is by being loud. So today on the show, loudmouths, reaping the rewards and consequences of speaking out and making people uncomfortable. Stories from three female performers. Pussy Riot founder Nadia Tolokonikva.

We don't hear about heroes who fight against Putin and Russia, but they exist. Playwright Sarah Jones. It does force you to. to speak up and be squeaky and be loud. And of course, comedian Lily Singh. You know, I grew up feeling the disappointment from a lot of people in my culture, from a lot of men in my family,

of what it means to be a girl. Simple, simple things. Girls shouldn't dress like that. Girls shouldn't whistle. Girls are not supposed to do these careers. And every step of the way, there was always this limitation because you were a girl. I'm telling you this, because although this is my lived experience,

it's also the reality that millions of girls face every day across every culture and in every country. Being born into this reality set me on a lifetime mission of trying to prove myself and just feel like I was enough. What did I want to be when I grow up? I wanted to be treated equally.

In fact, us girls, what we desperately want is a seat at the table. It's what every motivational poster, Instagram account you follow, business model tells us success is a seat at the table. And if they want to be excellent, for spicy, they say, if there is no seat, drag your own seat. I'm sure you've heard this. Right? And so my marching orders were clear. Get a seat at this coveted table by any means necessary.

And that's been the driving force behind my entire career. In 2019, I'm going to say what everybody said at the time. Do it, baby. Do it. Hit it. You debuted as the first bisexual woman of color to host a network late night TV show. Bam, bam, bam. There I was, Lily, the baby born a brown girl, rubbing elbows or at least time slots, with comedy royalty. And I got to give a huge shout out to NBC

for boldly trying to break late-night tradition. I remember when this show came out. I remember all the articles because it looks practically identical. Bisexual woman of color gets late-night show. I almost legally changed my name to bisexual woman of color. Because that's what people called me

often. And you know, as strange as that sentiment was, I thought, okay, the silver lining is that we'll finally get a different perspective in late night. A little bit of melanin, a dash of queer, a different take on things. Let's do this. And I remember thinking now, ho-ho, now, I've been invited to the big table. Things will be different. And so when that happened, you pulled up that proverbial chair and found what? Trash. I can't. found trash. I mean, here's the thing. I think there's a really unfair expectation that someone could step into a world like that and suddenly have their groove, have their voice, have everything figured out. Like for the first meeting I had about the show when I was expressing some of my

reservations being like, okay, guys, we're shooting a lot of episodes here. I need to know what kind of support I would have. Like, I wanted to be my voice. I want to be good. I want to be making commentary. So for me to try to do that and be that involved in 96 episodes over three months, honestly was truly the death of me. I would be up for like 14 hours. I would write to do the writer's sessions and I would do two or three shows a day. Then after that I would do a writer's meeting again at like 10 p.m. And then I would go home and read all the things for the next day. It was just not set up for success. Still, I thought, if the budget doesn't celebrate the historicness of the show, then the creative can. Now, I can bring some much needed spot.

to late night. And sometimes I was successful. I came out to my friends as a vegetarian. But other times, I would receive notes like, don't be so big. Don't be so angry. Smile more, Rubby. Visha was arrested, had her home raided, and was thrown in jail for her. Are you ready? Wait for it. She clearly must have ruffled a lot of feathers.

What did she do? She edited a Google Doc. And my all-time favorite, don't over-index on the South Asian stuff. You know, I couldn't even invite. She's mother-in-law's cousins, nephew's wife's cousin. I love that guy, man. I know. She already called him.

I kept trying to pull up my seat. I kept trying to ask for a more supportive seat. But every time I would be told that I should be grateful to have a seat in the first place. You mentioned in your talk some of the notes that you got from executives when you were making the show. What did they like about what you were doing and what did they feel needed to change? You know, the South Asian thing particularly bothered me because sometimes I think, felt that what they are considering over-indexing on the South Asian stuff is me just talking about my parents in life. I did really feel like the punching bag for all identity politics. I vividly

remember one day after I did my episode, I went to my green room and I took out a piece of paper and a pen and I literally wrote down, okay, how many times did I mention being a woman? How many times did I mentioned being South Asian? How many times did I mention being queer? Is this enough? Is it not enough? Are people going to be mad? It was just an impossible situation to be in. There is a conversation going on about whether the era of late night TV is dying. Do you think that the executives were like, okay, yeah, sure, sure, Lily's great. But also she ticks all these demographic boxes for us and those are the young people we need to start watching TV around midnight to save ourselves. So I've thought about this a lot.

You know, it seemed like NBC was trying to get in a new audience by tapping into my audience. which is young and diverse and super open-minded. But at the same time, they were very scared to alienate their current audience, which is used to seeing a straight white man back to back to back to back. So your late night show did end up getting canceled. You know, if someone read that sentence, they would immediately think, oh, she failed. Totally.

But did you see it that way? Truthfully, it's hard for me to not partially feel that way. But I don't think I failed. I think we failed, honestly. I think it's a failure from NBC's end. I think it's a cultural failure a little bit. Because I was really excited when I got my late night show to hit on some topics that only I could uniquely hit on.

The Farmers' Protest in Punjab was one of the biggest protests in human history, and I covered it in my second season. And the amount of headlines I saw that had Trevor Noah's perspective on it and whoever else covered it, not mine. There's things I would definitely do differently as well. I would never get into that situation again if I didn't think it could be a success. Because do I think it moved the envelope forward?

Yes, but do I think it was too short-lived? Absolutely. When investing in women, don't invest in the 130 a.m. time slot. Give them the support they actually need. Cultural change takes time and money. Heck, it took my grandfather 25 years. So a true investment is one that values potential over-feworthy. proof because so often that proof doesn't exist for women. Not because we aren't qualified, but because we haven't been given the opportunity. Inviting everyone in isn't just a nice gesture.

It makes for better, more productive, smarter conversation with more than one point of view. This is about creating a world where half of the population can thrive. You see, because the work we do today can create a world where future generations of girls can have equitable access and opportunity. A future where everyone is seated at the table equally and a future where being assigned female at birth is not a disappointment or a disadvantage because girls are encouraged, empowered, and expected to do great things. Thank you so much. Lily Singh is a comedian, writer, and actor. You can see her full talk at ted.com and her latest TV show Muppets Mayhem on Disney Plus.

On the show today, Loudmouths. You're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anoush Zamoroti, and we'll be right back. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anoush Zamoroti. And on today's show, Loud Mouths. Stories of women taking a stand, pushing boundaries, and the moment when the systems they're fighting against start to push back hard.

I would need to feel like I felt when I was getting sentenced. This is Nadia Tolokonikva on the TED stage. It's August 17th, 2012. I'm handcuffed and standing for four long hours while the judge is reading my sentence. Nadia stood, along with two co-defendants, in a metal and glass cage, at the back of a Moscow courtroom. You're in a small cage and you're surrounded

by 10 prison guards in Balaclavas. There is also a guard dog who is barking at you angrily because the dog is trained to be suspicious towards people who smell like prison. The prosecutor asked for three years in jail for me. my crime is considered to be severe, and it means that the judge can give me up to seven years in jail. And as I'm standing here handcuffed behind the bars, I'm thinking to myself,

can one person change the world? Is it even worth trying, or am I just setting myself up for a failure? Will I be able to achieve my dreams? Or I'm going to be inevitably smashed by the system? So what was Nadia's crime? In 2011, she co-founded a performance art group. And if their music isn't familiar, or you don't remember their colorful dresses paired with mismatched ski masks,

maybe their name will ring a bell. Pussy riots, ladies. Pussy Riot. Pussy Riot. Pussy Riot. Young political artists. These feminist punk protesters would storm city buses, metro stations, even Red Square, and belt out lyrics against sexism, the patriarchy, and of course, Vladimir Putin.

The punk feminists don't just challenge President Putin's, but mock his manhole. But ironically, the thing that landed them in that courtroom was, according to Nadia, their worst performance of all. So the performance lasted only for 48 seconds. In February 2012, Nadia and four others covered in long coats, entered a prominent Russian Orthodox church. When they got close enough to the pulpit, the coats came off, the masks went on, and they stormed the stage.

The music was confiscated in the first 10 seconds. So for the most part, they were just dancing. I mean, honestly, the protest. itself was pretty underwhelming. And the guards brought us to the door and let us go. It wasn't a huge deal because it was so lousy. We were interrupted so early. We've decided that we're just going to swipe the section under the carpet and forget about it.

But then you released the music video version and the message was pretty clear, basically saying the church worshipped at the feet. of Putin. And that was the final straw for law enforcement. The police were after you. Yeah, we were running from the police for seven days. It was just like in spy movies.

We threw away our axle phones. We bought new ones. We were running from place to place every single day. It was a scary time. So getting arrested was almost the curvil. the weeks. Okay, so let's wind back a bit. You describe yourself as a pretty shy and lonely

kid from Siberia. So I'm wondering, how did you go from that to a central figure in the resistance movement against Putin? My dad was politically active. Not in the outside world, but in our family setting. He would always encourage me to read political magazines and listen to political radio stations. When I was dead, And he told me that I'm too old and too smart to read Cosmopolitan and Glamour. And we did have good political media at the time because it was not destroyed yet by Vladimir Putin. So I learned a couple of things from there. And then I moved to Moscow and in six months I joined my first ever demonstration.

and it felt like I'm combining my forces with other people who want to see Russia, better, less corrupted, just beautiful Russia of the future, as Alexei Navalny says. And I realized that I've found my chosen family. And I never left the streets and continued to protest. Tell me what that first protest was like. Do you remember where it was and what specifically you were protest? Putin? It must be fun to live in a freer country because you can protest against the whole variety of issues in Russia. It all comes down to just one individual.

For some context, when Nadia started protesting in 2007, Vladimir Putin had already been president for seven years. The former KGB officer romanticized the country's one-party communist past. His government had seized the assets of political rivals, silence journalists, and dissolved international treaties. In response, progressive students like Nadia would go out and protest and get arrested. It was actually pretty common. Then later it became just a matter of everyday life. You get out of the house, you get arrested preventively

because just that what happens in Putin's Russia. Okay, so tell me, fast forward to 20. I want you to sort of help me tell the story of the founding of Pussy Riot. I gave birth when I was 18 and I think it's the first time in my life when I really realized that feminism is not just a beautiful political ideology and an amazing theoretical construct that I read off about in books. But it's actually a matter of survival for me because people started to treat me differently. after I became a mother, just all sorts of sexist comments that people would throw at me. Like what? I was just discarding me as an individual.

People suddenly would not invite me to organizing meetings. So even my colleagues kind of pushed me aside and were completely comfortable with me taking care of the kid and not participating in the work. even the father of my kid didn't really participate in caring about her and it made me slowly realize that we still have a long way to go when it comes to rights of women it led me to start in Pussy Riot as a response to the sexism that I saw so what was Pussy Riot to you was it a band was it a movement like what was the thinking It started initially a little bit as a joke. We had an intent to form something like this, but I think we were pushed by fate.

So we were asked to go to deliver a speech about Russian feminism. And a part of our lecture was about to be about punk feminism. Then at night before the lecture we realized that there is no punk feminism in Russia, we just completely made it up and what are we going to talk about and so we had to create this punk feminism and none of us need

overnight I didn't know how to play instruments so we took a sample from an old oi punk band from the end of 60s it sounded disgusting but we presented the next day

and We thought that's it. Our job was done. The lecture was somehow successful. We were happy with ourselves. But Russia's democracy was increasingly in freefall. Political corruption was rampant. Voter fraud was on the rise.

And then in the winter of 2011, Vladimir Putin announced he'd run for an unprecedented third term as president. It basically meant that Putin is. going to be with us for another 12 years. And it was also obvious that after those 12 years, he'll find another way to flip the table and stay forever. So from a corrupt but still democracy, we went into totalitarian regime in just, like, in just really just one day. Tens of thousands of people protested. And the members of Pussy Riot decided to join them in their ski masks, performing and making noise everywhere.

We toured around public transport in Moscow, mostly subway. We were arrested almost every single day and bring us to the station. We spent the from two hours to 10 hours. Never told press about our arrests because our goal was to make ourselves look like. superheroes and superheroes and never getting arrested. How would you describe the sound of Pussy Riot? Because I remember when I first heard you guys, I was like, those are a bunch of loud, badass women.

And you would be wearing dresses and balaclavas and just like punk beyond punk. Was that the goal? Exactly. I'm really proud of us. And I remember coming to my friends, actual musicians, being, I want instrumental of a punk song. And they would deliver something much more sophisticated and interesting in a contemporary. And I was like, we don't need this, we need just straight up, like, scratching, terrible, in your face, old school punk. So this gets us to the spring of 2012 when you put.

protested inside the cathedral. You hadn't done anything like that before. What made you choose the cathedral? So I'll give you a little summary. We came to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior because the patriarch of Russian Orthodox Church said recently that everyone who is an actual believer who is an actual Christian has to go and vote for Putin, which was absolutely disgusting to me because he was using religion and all those people actually believing in God with open hearts to him he was using them for his own little political agenda and he's known for being filthy rich so he's first-hand benefits from the corrupted regime of lezimer putin which is absolutely disgusting to me so i mean and the girls decided to go to the cathedral of christi

the savior and talk about it. So you, you were sentenced and you went to jail for two years. And what I find extraordinary is you emerged even more committed and resolved. How? Well, you have two options when you are in jail. You can let your spirit be broken or you can let this dramatic experience to make you stronger. And it's easier said than done. It's an everyday struggle for finding this energy to keep living, keep fighting and recently reread Victor Frankel's men's search for meaning. And obviously, it would be absolutely crazy to compare any experience the experience he had to go through. He went through concentration camps and got out alive and wrote this book. But I think the brilliance of this book is that it teaches every single one

of us how to approach difficult situations in our lives. So if you don't let them break you, you can find meaning even in suffering. I started as hunger strike protesting, labor conditions and living conditions. We were working for 16 hours a day and the conditions were really slave-like conditions. And that moment when I realized that there is a bigger goal than myself, everything became so much easier. Well, maybe we should explain to the listener that we can't say where you're recording from right now.

No, we cannot. I don't know where you're recording from. So you are at an undisclosed location, right, where you feel safe? And it's better, much better than Russian geo. I mean, it's one of my artistic choices also to not disclose my location. Because I think that Russian intelligence services, they know where I'm at. It's not difficult for them to find out. But, you know, when we started Posturette, we wanted to be anonymous.

and we didn't want people to know our faces, our identities, and there was freedom in it. And today people know how I look like, they know my name, but at least something is left to me from this initial concept that I still hold on to my geographical anonymity. Two years later, I will get out of jail and I will meet thousands of young Russians who will tell me,

that they got inspired by our fight. Over the next 10 years, we surround build infrastructure, tools, and network for effective resistance. In 2014, we started MediaZona. It's unique in Russia, free of censorship, independent media outlet. In 2022, we raised $7 million in two days for Ukraine.

When reproductive rights became under attack in United States, we raised close to $1 million for Planned Parenthood. In March, 2003, I was put on Russia's most wanted list. I'm facing new criminal charges for the art I made. The reason why I became a threat to the system, not because of any actual physical power that I have, but because courage is contagious. And any act of speaking the truth

can cause incalculable transformations in social consciousness. And we all have this power. It's a moral act to use this power. You may or may not achieve the results that you wanted, but there is eternal beauty in trying to find truth in risking everything you got for what's right.

And I'll finish my speech with words of 22 years old version of myself. I said in my closing statement, passion, openness and naivety are superior to hypocrisy, cunning and contrived decency that conceals crimes. Open all doors. Take all doors. Thank you. That's Nadia Tolokonikva.

She's an artist and co-founder of Pussy Riot. You can see her full talk at TED.com. On the show today, loudmouths. I'm Manus Zamorodi, and it's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. See in a minute. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Manouche Zamorodi and on the show today, loudmouths. Ideas about people who have a lot to say.

Thank you, everybody. Sorry, this is such a wonderful opportunity and everything to be here right now. This is Sarah Jones. Oh, my, there's so many of you. Hi, sweetheart. Okay. That's actually also Sarah Jones. Of, like, you guys, like, recording me, like a meta recording.

And that's Sarah Jones. You know what I'm saying? I'm the only dude up here right now. Sarah Jones, maybe she didn't want me to put it. You guessed it, Sarah Jones. Sarah is a Tony Award-winning actor, writer, and director. But she's most famous for performing a wide variety of different characters in her one-woman shows, characters like Nareda, a Dominican-American woman from New York City.

I don't know if there's any other Dominican people here, but I know that Juan Nizuquez, he was here yesterday, and I think he's Mexican, So that's, honestly, that's close enough for me right now. Or Bella, a white liberal art student at a Bay Area University. Well, of course, like, I consider myself to be, like, obviously, like, a feminist. Like, I was named. Sarah has made her career embodying dozens of characters of all different backgrounds, ethnicities, and social classes.

Oh, Sarah, I have spent so much time with your voice in my head for the last few days. It's so great to finally connect with you. Oh, thank you for saying that. I started to apologize, but it sounds like it has not been an unpleasant experience for you, so that's good. It's been a delight. I want to get into the specifics of your worst, but I first want to ask you, do you remember when you realized? I don't know if it was as a child or when you were older that you wanted to and that you could use your voice to embody other people. When I was a little girl, I started experimenting.

with not sounding the way I looked or the obvious ways that people would think I must sound because of the way I looked. And so, yeah, it did start really early mimicking, you know, folks from my real life, including my very real mixed race family. In fact, one of the characters who has now been with me forever is named Lorraine Levine. I just put my glasses on here so I can see eye there. But Sarah bases all of the people, the characters on people from her real life, and she has been doing it since she was a little tiny thing. And I think that she started doing it because she didn't know where she belonged in her family. There were black and white and Christians and Jews and Latinos.

I don't know what the correct word is for anybody anymore. So just edit it so I don't get canceled. But anyway, she had all the different people surrounding her. Yes, Lorraine is right. I had a lot of people around me, and I think that was there from very early days. What is your process for writing for these characters? When you decide to take on a topic, do you sit down and think, you know, what would they say? Or do you, maybe they all have a conversation with each other at your kitchen table? I don't know. Oh, Manushe, have you been spying on me? I do have. Oh, do they?

We have the occasional summit. But I think there are some folks whose ideas are very central to kind of, you know, the larger mainstream culture. And then there are the stories that have historically not been so central to our ideas of whose voices are important and who, you know, whose narratives do we pay attention to. And so I started performing in New York with characters like, Well, my name is Miss Lady, and you can't see me, so you don't know that I have not been to the dentist for a while, unfortunately, because I live on the street, and Sarah Jones was in college, and she would see me on the subway. And she started to ask, she asked me some questions, you know, how obnoxious those young kids could be. And she started to think, what if this lady who nobody pays no attention to and don't think anything she had to say, possibly be important. What if people on Broadway came and paid their money to listen to an

unhoused lady talk about her reality and her history and her past? So that was interesting for me was the idea of kind of shifting our focus as audience members to, you know, the stories that don't usually make their way into the starring position. Sarah's most recent play is called sell-by date. To be clear, that sell-slash-by-slash-date. And a warning to our listeners, we will be talking about some adult themes, because this play, which debuted in 2016, featured Sarah's characters sharing a wide range of perspectives on sex work. Sarah wrote the play after years of research, traveling the world, and gathering stories about this complicated subject. You know, even as you're saying it now. When you get to the part about sex work, I kind of cringe a little bit and go,

oh, no. But I guess that's why I did it. It's a topic, you know, my little way of framing it was that we sort of call it the oldest profession. But it's really the oldest conversation that no one is having in a thoughtful way. And so I wondered, is there a way to ask, why do we stigmatize and slut shame and have all the, you know, kind of notions, preconceived notions that we do. And who should feel ashamed and why? And before I knew it, he was the one that turned me on to the prostitution, my own husband. He had me supporting the both of us. I was 18. You know, when I first came to this country, I worked every job I can find.

I was a nanny. I was a home care attendant for all these different old people. And then I said, child, if I have to touch another white man backside, I might as well get paid a lot more money for it than this. You understand? Like, I support other women's right to choose it voluntarily, like, if they enjoy it. My opinion of the legalization, I'd say I'm against it. I don't care what these young girls say. You know, living like that, you're just lost.

I'm not going to tell you that what I do, it's easy. I'm not going to tell you that I feel, what's that you said, liberated? But I'm going to tell you that I feel paid. I really didn't want to say to people, this is what you have to think. I wanted to say, here's an array of stories that I hope represents lots of different viewpoints. But the core underpinning is these are human beings who deserve access to all the choices in the world and all the self-determination in the world. So I think that was the goal was to just sort of unpack as much as I could while admitting that I don't have, you know, kind of a perfect solution. I'm certainly not the judge or jury, and I definitely don't want to be the executioner. And I think as a society, we have been. Your play was a total hit with audiences and critics. And then five years later, there were plans to turn it into a movie.

And you had support from stars like Meryl Streep. But what happened? Judges, juries, and executioners abound. The film was backed by a team of A-List Hollywood producers. and so suddenly this was a much bigger platform. Here's Sarah Jones on the TED stage. And people who did not know me assumed I was a cultural appropriator

with bad intentions. And suddenly I was under brutal attack. I mean, strangers from all over the internet were coming for me personally, threatening my funders, promising to cancel anyone associated with my film. Why? Well, these cancelers were actually concerned sex workers.

They were afraid my film would be disrespectful to the already very marginalized people in the sex industry. And I get that. But before I could even make the film and include the voices of sex workers, as I had always planned, they said I had no right to tell my story since I'm not in the industry myself. and they were more than willing to destroy me and my career.

What were they saying? What was their problem with you? Or what did they say their problem was with you? Yeah, I think the very understandable problem is that they were afraid that it was just going to be another dismissive, you know, disrespectful kind of ignoring of the main people in the main conversation. But I guess my thought was, couldn't you have waited to cancel me? until you actually saw the movie? Couldn't you have waited for me to express my ideas before deciding you should shut me down?

The backlash was swift and severe. People called Sarah a danger to women, said she was making the stigma against sex workers even worse. Some of Sarah's collaborators walked away from the project. She says it was one of the most painful moments of her life. It was just this excruciating mix of, wait a minute, You're getting it wrong. You don't know what you're...

Why are you attacking? But it's all happening too fast to be able to even defend yourself. I've never experienced anything like it. But in the end, she decided to make the movie about the controversy itself. Sarah, you know, sex work? It's just another way of saying exploitation. O.M. Goddess, Sarah will totally be taking a stand that sex work is real work. And this movie will tell the world.

You're both wrong. The real problem is, she's... Sarah doesn't know what she really believes. She also interviewed her critics who explained why they were so angry, why they felt it was wrong for her to depict them on camera. I get why all those girls kind of got on you, and the real thing is, is you are an outsider. You're what we call a civilian. You do not understand what it is we go through to be telling our stories. So are you open to actually learning?

I can show you where people have mess. stuff. Okay. So you did make the movie, but boy, is it different than the play. You basically turned the camera around on yourself. Yeah. Yeah. I decided that some people said, just let it blow over, hide it. And, you know, like I had publicists say, this will, you know, die off if you just let it die off. And I thought, but it harmed me. It harmed my collaborators. It harmed, you know, know, the people who I was hoping to actually involve in the conversation. So why not actually tell the truth about that? You know, I think so many people are afraid of getting it wrong, of, you know, doing their best and still having it fall short and then being, you know,

kind of publicly shamed and, you know, in this case, I thought, this is going to hurt, probably a lot, but I can at least try to bring the people who are criticizing me and judging me into this process with me, turn the cameras on and see what happens. And we basically, you know, I call it an unorthodox because it's a documentary, but it's very much also a hybrid narrative, unorthodox way of approaching, you know, how to tell this real story that was unfolding in real time. One of the chief criticisms of you was that since you were not in the sex industry yourself, you were an outsider and therefore not qualified to speak on behalf of people who are in that industry.

Yeah. But throughout the film, we start to learn that it was more complicated than that, that you spend the film carrying your sister's diary. And we learned that she died at age 18 from an overdose. and you also mentioned that she was in a bad relationship with an older man. And you did have a personal perspective. Yeah. Yeah.

I think my own personal relationship to, you know, the idea of what is sexual exploitation? What constitutes, you know, a woman just making choices for herself? This dynamic has always been there. And I've seen it in my own life, including in my family's life and in my, kind of community. And I'm grateful that I did get the full participation of, you know, key family members to make sure that I wasn't harming anyone when I made my film. I realized if I can tell my own personal story, maybe that will lift a little bit of the sense of shame or these aren't things that happen to people. These are emphatically things that are happening to people. And they're intertwined

with all the other values that we claim to care about. But I was like so, I was like, Sarah Jones, why didn't you tell your critics earlier that you did have a connection to sex work? Would that not have legitimized you in their eyes if they knew you were speaking as someone with, you know, lived experience, so to speak, as well? I think once we go down that kind of path of here are all my credentials, here are my receipts, here's my 23 and me, I promise you, I am, you know, I deal with it even in the context of my work, right? I want to tell everybody what percentage Jewish am I so that I don't get in trouble for portraying Lorraine? What percentage, you know, Latinx, what's my proximity to all of these backgrounds that I portray so that I quote unquote can't get into trouble?

I think we're in dangerous territory when we ignore the reality that there can't be these, you know, kind of tests for who has the right to tell whose stories unless we're first looking at. the stark reality that there are these power dynamics that do make a difference. And I do portray white men. And it's different for me to portray a white guy than it is for a white guy to portray a black woman. And if people don't understand that, then that's a great conversation for us to get to have, which I am having now with audiences more and more. So there's a lot of kind of complexity here that I don't think is as much about saying who's allowed to do what, but more what is the intention? What is the real context for people wanting to do the work that they're doing? And how can we make sure that we're addressing simultaneously all the very, very real social justice issues, just like with the folks in the sex industry?

I don't disagree with them that they deserve justice and a voice that has been denied them. And it's appalling. So our conversation right now is part of an episode that we're calling loudmouths. And I've talked to Lily Singh and one of the members of Pussy Riot. And the idea is talking to women who've made a name for themselves by being outspoken but then run into trouble because of it. I wonder what you think of that term loudmouth. Have you been called it in the past? Oh, I'm sure. Maybe not to my face, but, you know, I think maintaining the status quo going along to get along, that hasn't served women very well.

And we have to be noisy, especially for some of us and for women of color often, even though I know there are people out there who think we're running the universe right now. I promise you we're not. You know, you're just seeing our faces a lot, but it doesn't actually translate into power. And so the fact that we have to work three times as hard to get one third as far, it does force you to speak up and be squeaky and be loud and to, you know, accept that, at least for me, the audience that finds me that loves my work, I don't want to do them a disservice by dumbing down or watering it down or being quiet. That's Sarah Jones, actor, writer, and director. all of her talks at ted.com. Thank you so much for listening to our episode about loudmouths. It was produced by James Delahousie, Rachel Faulkner-White, Herschin-Ahada, and Chloe Weiner.

It was edited by Sanaz-Meshkampur and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes Fiona Girin, Andrea Gutierrez, Katie Montalione, and Matthew Cloutier. Our audio engineers were Co. Takasugi, Chernovin, Patrick Murray, and Gilly Moon. Our theme music was written by Romteen Arablewey. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Michelle Quint, Alejandra Salazar, and Danielle Ballarezzo. I'm Anoush Zamorodi, and you've been listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR.