The New Yorker Radio Hour - Liesl Tommy, Director of “Respect”

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

Aretha Franklin was the Queen of Soul, the greatest voice of her generation, an eighteen-time Grammy Award winner whose career spanned five decades. She was also a famously private person, which makes the project of directing a film about her life challenging. The job of telling Aretha’s story went to a South African-born director named Liesl Tommy, known for her work in theatre and nominated for a Tony, in 2016. Tommy had also directed episodes of TV shows like “The Walking Dead” and “Jessica Jones,” but the movie about Franklin—called, almost inevitably, “Respect”—is her first feature film. Tommy’s long-standing passion for the singer, she says, made the job relatively easy, even though she first fell in love with Franklin’s voice as a child living on a different continent.  “I don’t think I ever thought of her as American,” she told Vinson Cunningham. “I thought of her as a woman that I wanted to grow up to be.” As a small child, she recalls, “Even if I don’t understand the feelings specifically, I understand how the way she sang them made me feel. And that was, excited to be alive.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. This week, a new film about Aretha Franklin hits the theaters, and it's called, what it should be called, respect. Aretha Franklin was the queen of soul, the greatest voice of her generation, bar none. She was an 18-time Grammy winner, whose career spanned five decades. She was also famously private, which made producing a biopic a little more challenging. The job of telling Aretha's story went to director, Leasel Tommy, who comes from the theater. Tommy has directed musicals and plays, and she was nominated for a Tony in 2016.

She's also directed episodes of TV shows, including The Walking Dead and Jessica Jones. But respect is her first feature film. I have to ask, I mean, so your first film, you choose, you know, just sort of as a warm-up, kind of, you just decide to take on this very small, obscure subject, Aretha Franklin. Liesel Tommy spoke the other day with the staff writer Vincent Cunningham. So I just wanted, like, I would just love to know how this film becomes your debut. Like, I mean, what was the process? How did you become the director of this film? Yeah, no, it does seem crazy.

I spent a lot of time during COVID talking to students. And I just kept on saying, I don't, I don't, what I did was not normal. Don't think that this is a way to live your life. But the truth is that I, someone gave the studio my name as a person that they should be in touch with. And I, it was just supposed to be a chat, kind of getting to know you chat, but I was so excited at the thought of talking about Aretha Franklin because I love her so much and I have loved her since I was a small child that I just mapped out

the entire movie in my head. And then when I got on the phone, I didn't really do any chit-chatting. I just went right for my idea of what the film should be. And I told them the songs that I thought it should be. I told her the tagline. They were definitely surprised that I had the entire movie mapped out in the first call. But then they came back to me and they said, we really love this pitch and we want to start with you and this vision and make that movie. And so, you know, I brought a writer on, Tracy Scott Wilson, who I've worked with, you know, in theater for many, many years. That's the movie she wrote. That's the movie I shot. And that's the movie that is going to. to be out in theaters shortly.

You grew up in South Africa, and you said you've loved her music since you were a child. What was your view of this singer that was kind of reaching across the oceans to you? You know, that's such a good question, because I don't think I ever thought of her as American. I thought of her as a woman that I wanted to, that I wanted to grow up to be. So, you know, I was a very dramatic and sensitive child, and so I love to sing her. music at the top of my voice, you know, the ones where she's just saturated and heartbreak, to the power ballads to like the saucy Dr. Feel Good, even though I didn't really know what that meant, you know, the sexual innuendo, Dr. Feel Good.

Yeah. You don't have to. Yeah. I know. I know. I just, I love the way it sounded and I love the way I felt when I sang her stuff, you know. Yeah. I'm talking like five, six, seven-year-old, me.

And what I got out of it as a girl child is that one. day, I can grow up to be a lady who would have deep feelings the way Aretha Franklin had deep feelings. I would feel that in love. I would feel that heartbroken. I would feel that powerful. I would feel that vulnerable. And I was just like, I can't wait to be a grown-up and be able to feel all of the things that are in these songs. Because even if I don't understand the feelings specifically, I understand how the way she sang that made me feel. And that was just excited. to be alive. Leasel Tommy,

director of the new film, Respect, talking with Vincent Cunningham. More in a moment. Speaking of your sensitive childhood, you wanted to be on Broadway from when you were a child. That this, you know,

and that's what I think of Broadway, especially when you think about musicals, is that, like, there's this music that is attached intrinsically with emotion and with drama and with stories. I mean, was that always kind of your aspirations of wanting to be an actor as a child, then, you know, becoming a director? Was that always kind of part of the deal?

And I will say, like, you know, as a child, I never had, I'd never been to a play in South Africa. That was not like the vibe of my family. We were, you know, we lived in a colored township in, you know, there was no theater going. But my, because I grew up in a very musical household, an activist household and a musical household. And a song that was played a lot, an album that was played a lot was that George Benson album. And he has this song on Broadway. And I used to choreograph very complex numbers that I would teach my cousins and force them to present to, you know, aunties and uncles. There was just this kind of a dream of a way of living that embedded early.

Right. Really, I mean, I didn't know that your, you're, you're, you're, you're, family were activists as you just laid out. I mean, what was it like to be someone interested in the arts in the middle of a family that was so interested in politics? Was that something aside from or an escape from that milieu? Or was it always obvious to you that they could somehow work together? This is a very good question. You know, my family immigrated to the States when I was 15 and we moved to Newton, Massachusetts. And, you know, that's when I started doing plays. That's when I discovered theater.

However, you know, my parents are immigrants. You do not immigrate and make enormous sacrifices so that your kid can tell you that they're going to be an actor. Like that doesn't even process. Not how it tends to go, no. No, definitely not. And certainly not an African, you know, immigrant. No, that's not, that is just not in the cards. And my dad was a Marxist.

And so he very much believed that one must not be a social parasite. You know, one must be giving every single second of the day to build a civil society. And there was just a huge disconnect. He did not understand how I could be an artist, a theater artist, because of course he also thought that that was the pursuit of the white bourgeois. He's not wrong, come to find out. that is something that we can discuss too. So it was a struggle, but of course, like all struggles that it made me stronger.

It made me very determined. And, you know, I had to really go deep and say, am I willing to fight this fight and potentially, you know, alienate my family? And in the end, the answer was yes. Yes, I was. Yeah. One thing I was thinking about when I was watching the movie is how private. a person Aretha was, and how pretty famously she didn't really like talking about her life. And your movie, obviously, the job of it is to put that life on screen, but some good things and

some pretty tough things. There are some moments here that I think will be pretty unexpected for the audience. And I just wonder how you think about making a movie about the life of such a guarded person and how you decide what should make it on screen. Anytime you do, you deal with people's real lives. And in theater, I've done a lot of work that is based on people's real lives. And you always are struggling to figure out which bits make the cut, which bits are serving the story and which bits are not. And so some of these more difficult things that, you know, she certainly was not interested in sharing in interviews with people. I felt like there was a way to understand her better.

And you had to understand her youth to understand her adult self, you know. How is Aretha doing? Orith is doing all right. Just all right. Because in, you know, the normal, the normal biopic, it's like, you know, a blip. And then we're into the quote-unquote real stuff. child actor just has to exit stage, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I felt like her childhood was so important for her relationships.

But also, I felt like it was important that we spend time with a black girl child, that we understand her value, that we understand she deserves screen time, that we understand that she is worth our care and our attention. You still singing at the Saturday night party? Yeah. I'll say yeah. Yeah is common. Say yes.

Yes. You enjoy it? Yeah. Yes. Look at me, Re. If you ever don't want to sing, don't. I love singing. No, I know, I know.

Your daddy doesn't own your voice, Ray. Nobody does, but God. Now, um, Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are coming back to the theater next year. You're directing the outsiders at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. I wonder, after some time away, whether you are thinking about the theater in a different way now. Has it changed your relationship or your thoughts about the theater? I'm definitely looking forward to, there's a certain vibe that only happens in the theater.

And I think it comes, it's to do with intimacy. It's to do with the fact that you and the writers and the composers in this case, because The Outsiders is a musical, it's based on the S.E. Hinton novel. You're in the same room day in and day out with this group of people and the cast. And it just becomes this, it's a little like a cult. You know, like it's like this forced intimacy. And then also nothing compares to the immediacy of the previews when you're just watching people watch it live for the first time. And, you know, in previews, you're not done with it.

You're still working on it. And so it takes like really nerves of steel to sit in an audience full of paying customers and look at a thing that is incomplete, night after night after night. You know, so that is just like a great challenge. And I think it's important. I think I'll always go back to it. it'll keep me humble. Yeah. Speaking of, I mean, watching the people,

we could return to your father's, you know, more or less accurate comment about the sort of composition, so we say, class, racial, otherwise, of theater audiences, especially in America. I mean, I guess we've been talking about that for a long time, but over the past couple of years, it's become a bigger topic of conversation. How do we bring more people welcome

more people into the theater. I mean, from your advantage, do you think that there's have been any kind of, I'm trying not to say progress, but I guess it's the only word I have available to me right now. And has there been any motion on that? Do you think? You know, theater can be very elitist and very classist. And it's honestly one of the things that pushed me into film and television was that I just knew that there was just much more democracy in the eyeballs on the, the work that I was doing that I was pouring my heart and soul into and that I was asking usually black actors to like really go deep into like really intense emotional places.

For a primarily white audience, I was like, you know, if I go into film and television, I can do that. And A, there will be millions more viewers and B, the viewership will be more diverse. But that doesn't mean that I get to turn my back on, you know, a field that I care deeply about and then I know that I can, you know, be a part of just challenging the status quo.

Well, I'm wishing you those millions and millions of viewers for respect. And again, congratulations. Oh, thank you so much, Vincent. I'm so glad that you got to see it and you enjoyed it. Oh, yeah. It's wonderful. You know, I was trying not to sing. Vincent Cunningham spoke with Lise Lottami, the director of Respect,

a film about the life of Aretha Franklin that's just out. I'm David Remnick. That's our program for this week, and thanks for joining us. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutini, Ave Carrillo, Riannon-Corpi, Calailla, David Krasnow, Gauphin and Putuguele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. And we had additional help. from Harrison Keithline.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.