The New Yorker Radio Hour - Sheryl Lee Ralph on Confronting Hollywood

Episode Date: March 1, 2022

Sheryl Lee Ralph has been a staple of Black entertainment for decades. She played Deena Jones in the original Broadway production of “Dreamgirls,” and was in “Sister Act 2” alongside Lauryn Hill and Whoopi Goldberg. She’s currently starring in the new ABC sitcom “Abbott Elementary.” Her decades-long career gives her a unique perspective on how the industry has changed since she started—and how it hasn’t. “I think that, sometimes in order for institutions like Broadway to truly make room for others, you’ve got to break it down,” she tells The New Yorker’s Vinson Cunningham. “Because you’ve got to help people see things differently, outside of their own vision. And, even if it’s 20/20, it’s not perfect.” 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. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We're looking today at black film and television, at some of the shows and movies that are defining the cultural conversation at the moment. And it seems that in recent years, like a real floodgate has opened to some tremendous successes, commercial as well as critical, and they're centered on black experience. This certainly doesn't come out of nowhere. To get some perspective, staff writer Vincent Cunningham recently sat down with the actor

Cheryl Lee Ralph. Here's Vincent. So even if you think that you don't know Cheryl Lee Ralph, I would bet that you do. She has been a staple of black television and movies for decades, and she's been president at some amazing moments of

American entertainment. She played Dina Jones in the original cast of Dream Girls 40 years ago. She was insistent. Mr. Act 2 with Lauren Hill and Whoopi Goldberg, which was just a huge movie for black audiences and one of my all-time favorites to this day. And she's now in Abbott Elementary, a new sitcom on ABC. I wanted to get your expert, classy eye on my rug request email to Ava.

Janine, we are not getting new rugs. We are not getting anything. Barbara, have some faith. Ava literally said she'll get us whatever we need. Janine, I have been working in the Philadelphia School District for 20 years, and Ava is just the latest in a long line of people who do absolutely nothing. Cheryl Lee Ralph's career started in the 1970s, so she's seen a lot of entertainment history, but she's also made a lot of history of her own along the way. I came into the industry as a teenager. I was 19 years old.

I had just graduated from Rutgers, and my first movie was with Sidney Poitier called Peace of the Eust. action. Mr. Poitier was one of the most kind, most wonderful human beings towards me as a young artist. He wanted my success and true to being a real girl dad. He said, you are so deeply talented. I wish this industry had more to offer you. But in the time that I was on the set with him, He gave me every great thing he had in reference to being on the set and what it took to be a great artist, you know, in control of your art, of yourself. And he was very, he was very funny. He said, it's interesting. He said, you'll probably grow up to be a beautiful woman because I was a teenager then, you know.

And he said, a beautiful female actress has a difficult. time. I didn't quite understand what that meant, but I kind of, I kind of understood it that, you know, back then when you're still breaking these, you know, these walls down and perception of what talent looks like, you know, and can you, can you be easy on the eye and smart too, you know, and still be a dramatic actress, you know, and, you know, he was very upfront that, you know, films were so far and few between then, but television turned out to be television and theater, you know, they were welcoming. But anyway, it was hard.

It was hard. But I wouldn't not do it again. One thing I do want to ask you is just how it has been to continue to make those switches between movies, TV, theater. It's something that seems to only recently have been open. really to most actors and actresses, but certainly to black actors and actresses, this sort of triple threat career that you've had. How has that been just in terms of managing those different parts of your creativity

and also the different parts of a career as you're building it? Yeah, it's very interesting. Going from stage to TV to film, they're very different approaches to your acting. On stage, you eat the furniture. You just eat the furniture. Because the people all the way in the back have to see what you're doing. And the further you get back, the smaller those images get.

When you're on film, you polish the furniture. You polish it so that it shines and it's beautiful and it's lovely to look at. when you're doing TV, you put the furniture on display. So they're very different approaches. So I think that's how I do it. That's how I'm able to go from one thing to one thing. So when people say you do it all, I'm like, yeah, I actually do. So what we're going to do, we're going to walk through some highlights from your career so far.

I want to play a piece of audio for you. And when you hear it, I just want to hear your immediate reaction, just how it makes you feel and what is it you remember about this moment. Okay. And so our tribute to the musical legacy of the Imperial Theater has brought us up to the present evening. The incumbent musical is, of course, Dream Girls. A splashy tour to force with the most up-to-date razzle-dazzle the Broadway theater

has to offer. And it's a nominee for Best Musical. On this scene, the girl's been fired from a risingly successful singing group. She's been fired by the group's manager, her former lover. Curtis was supposed to love me. Curtis was supposed to love me. Happy, please. Stop excusing yourself. You've been late, you've been mean, and getting tired all the time.

You're lying, you lie, you're lying. You're lying, you line, because you're sleeping with that girl who thinks she's better than everything but common. Wow. So this is the Tony Awards Night in 1982, and it's a role that introduces you to not only the American theater, but a lot of Americans and people across the, world. Wow. You know, that was very weird what you just did because you said, tell me, I just want your reaction. And I followed you in that thought process. Then when I realized where it was, I literally put myself in the position of that night. I knew that if I was standing on stage, getting ready to be a part of this moment, and we had been nominated,

best musical young black folks on Broadway doing highbrow theater, not just a review, but a script that we all had a part in writing as artists. We were about ready to do something major. People may not know how deep of a connection we each had to that script to that show. but we as young black people under 30 were about to do something major and we did. Wow. I entered that moment and I was just like, remember this right here because very few artists will ever get what you're about to receive. Yeah, and I was right.

What do you remember about that night? Just was it a buildup all day? How are you just... Living into that night. First of all, there was so much that went into having the perfect gown for after the show, the guests, you know, getting my parents there. I'm an immigrant's child. And my Jamaican mother was just appalled that I was going to be a singer, a dancer,

an actress after they worked their good, hard-earned money to send me to college, to make history at Rutgers University and you're going to be an actress? It was such a journey to get her in the seat, whereas my father, my American father was like, you are born alone with the assistance of your mother. You will die alone with the assistance of yourself. If this is what you want to do, do it, love it, enjoy it, and I will be right there besides you. So he and I were sitting together. My mother was sitting behind us and she was the first, she was of course the one to say, yes, the one, Dina Jones, that's my daughter. Yes, that's my daughter.

She's been nominated for this Tony Award. It was just like in a movie. It was crazy. And then, you know, they pull you out to go on stage to get dressed. And it was just, it was just, it was just, crazy because we're also caught in between a time where you've got Tony Randall, you've got Dick Cavett, and you've got all of these other groups of artsy people who are part of a different time, the newscaster, what was his name? I forget his name, but when my parents were coming backstage, he looked at my parents and he said, oh my, the black black black bourgeois has arrived. And I thought,

oh my God, they were stuck in the fact that did theater have to change this much with us taking our bow on Broadway? Do you understand what I mean? We tore up... It does. It does. Yeah, we tore up the theater.

We literally help tear up the theater so much so that when Miss Saigon came around and they came from the back of the theater, with the helicopter, the helicopter descending on stage, that hearken to, well, they broke the theater with Broadway, and now they're just opening up the theater wide. And for me, you know, as, and trust me, I think,

and don't ask me why I think like this, I think that sometimes in order for institutions, which it's not really places, which it's not really, communities, which it is like Broadway, in order for them to make room, truly make room for others. You've got to break it down. Yeah. You've got to break it down because you've got to help people see things differently outside of their own vision.

And even if it's 2020, it's not perfect. Mm-hmm. Right. And so, as you say, this production is so personal to all of you in it. Yeah. And then it's hitting the whole world. And meanwhile, there's you in the, you're in the middle of this. And like, what were you in your career going into that production?

And what kind of, what did you, did this give you a new sense of what you wanted to do as you moved forward in your career? It didn't give me a new sense of what I had to do. It just showed me what I had to do. In some ways, I struggled because as an artist, it wasn't so much about being an artist. as much as it was about being a good human. Entertainment, show business, TV, no matter what, can be very, very hard on people. It's an industry built upon rejection.

I mean, for me alone, and I've set it off, and I've been too tall, too short, too black, and not black enough, all in one day. All in one day. I had someone, they didn't like me, because I reminded them of their ex-wife. I had one person say, her legs are too full. They should be thinner.

I was like, oh, my God, they are talking about this. And then once they start talking about your features, you know, that you're too black. And sometimes that means so many things. They don't like your shade. They don't like your features. Oh, they don't like your hair texture. and it's all the things that can really break down a human. And for me to be chosen as one of the most beautiful,

it was just like, wow, it was like absolute total revenge. Because we were dreams just the way we are. We were. And Tom Ion did something that most people never, ever get about the show. It's about the triumph of the dark girl. It's about the triumph of the dark black girl. It's about the triumph of the black girl who you're not going to look at her and think

she's something other than what she is, a melanated young black queen. And it is not until the second act of the show when commercialism, where the industry gets their hands on the group that they want to put in the milkier, light-skinned girl. Right. They miss what that means.

They miss it every time. He was making a statement that these three black girls had to make it, no matter what the country America thought about them, that black girls in that time, the 60s, were beautiful and acceptable. And they could sing too. Right. Yeah. The actress Cheryl Lee Ralph talking with the New Yorker's Vincent Cunningham.

More in a moment. Speaking of singing, I'm going to play another piece of audio for you. And I want to do the same thing. Just tell me how it makes you feel. Okay. Joyful, joyful, Lord. Oh, gosh. I am looking at another incredible talent.

The amazing Lauren Hill in sister actor. A beautiful young girl who was full of confidence. who literally took me from what I had gone through in the development of Dreamgirls and everything before it to this moment to look back and see baby me. Not completely me, but it was a trajectory that I could see that was important from artists to artist, human to human, young black queen to young black queen. She sat there one day in between breaks and Lauren looked at me and Lauren said, Miss Ralph, because now, now what is it?

11 years have passed and this girl says, Miss Ralph, I am going to have a group and we're going to be called the Fugees. Oh, wow. And we're going to be big Miss Ralph. And I was like, you are going to be big. You're going to be big as soon as this movie happened. I have to tell you, when I was in, when I was, you know, my youth choir at church sang that song and did the dance and, you know, it was so important to me growing up just thinking, you know, it was a wonderful, it's funny that you didn't know that it was such, um, had such an impact because I definitely felt it. Oh my God. It's amazing. Amazing. Like you said, I mean, it's 11 years after Dreamgirls. I wonder just in that,

span. You talked about how much of a breakthrough Dreamgirls was and that kind of representation. And now you're in a movie that's pushing forward a similar kind of just representation. As you said, you would be Goldberg, Lauren Hill. Was there a difference? Did it feel like there was more space for this kind of thing once you get to that Sister Act 2 moment? Just in terms of people being more open to those kinds of representation, how was the cultural feeling? You could feel it. You could feel it. But I have to tell you, that when I left Dreamgirls to pursue TV and film, you know, it wasn't the same welcome

that folks might have gotten from, say, the cast of Hamilton, you know, where arms were open. For us, I'll never forget my first big Hollywood casting director meeting. And he looked at me and he said, you're a beautiful black girl. Everybody knows it. But what do I do with a talented, beautiful black girl.

Do I put you in a movie with Tom Cruise? Do you kiss? Who goes to see that movie? What do I do with you? Now, I'm telling you, that alone could defeat an artist. But when I left that room, I said to myself, everybody knows that I'm a talented, beautiful, black girl and i deserve to be in movies with the likes of a tom cruise but these people are afraid of the

magic that i've got so i've got to carry on and make it work for me oh yeah that's what i had to take out of that because i was like you are not going to break my spirit just because you don't know what to do with me. So by the time you've got Sister Act 2 coming along and you've got this 16 year old young woman. You've got whoopee.

You know, that was, and black women? And you're showing people braiding their hair on TV and all of that. Those were little wonderful moments of representation once again. I just, you say that you got out of that interview,

that audition and you just kind of spoke to yourself. You spoke some courage back into yourself. What are the, as you mentioned, there are people who have been crushed by those things and haven't been able to give themselves that, that speech. What were the resources in you that made you do that? Was it your upbringing? What, what helped you

soldier on in that moment? I really do think it's being an immigrant's child, you know, you've got, uh, my mother was like, look, this,

is where you are, this is America, let's get out there. There are things to be done, like thriving. She, you know, that whole thing about just surviving, that was not what she wanted for her children. You know, you can't not survive. You must survive and better than that, you must thrive. So I think I got the message from them quite clearly, you know, I'll never forget my mother telling me fixing my dress for school when little girls used to wear cotton. And she would fix, she fixed my dress and she said to me, I can see her saying to me, we are in America. And here they will smile in your face and stab you in your back. So you must have eyes back afront.

So what that basically meant was this is treacherous. This is treacherous territory right here. And you little four-year-old going to kindergarten, you must have eyes in the front and back of your head because they're coming for you. Your mom was a fashion designer, correct? That's correct. And she created the famous Cariba suit. It's like made famous by the great Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley.

Oh my God, you really did your research, didn't you? Yes. Well, I have to tell you, my wife is Jamaican and therefore Michael Manley is a saint in my household. You tell her, tell us, I love her, I love her, I love her. She loves you too. Thank you. But I do wonder, thinking about that, your mom using art to make a kind of, in some ways, making real political change, it seems to me like that, that's what I've always thought about with that suit. And I wonder if you have thought of your art in a similar way. There's all these great films and TV shows. You can think about Abbott Elementary. You can think about

films of the last couple years like Moonlight and Get Out and Black Panther, all these things. Yeah. I wonder if you think that there's a connection between the sort of still growing and certainly imperfect but still growing presence of black people in popular art. I think it goes back to what you said earlier. What we were talking about. family. You can't really get rid of your family. You are who you are. You are your people's people. And I had never thought of that. But my mother said that as a child, she would look at black men going into court, going into church, you know, the judges sitting up there and they were always sweating with this shirt, with this tie, with this wool jacket.

And she said the sun is hot. We come from a hot country. Where is our pride? We can't go to these places, sweating. Our men need a different look. And she created what is, you know, very much now known, as you'll see a lot of it, the bush jacket. Or you'll see it in lighter fabrics in the, they call it like the Cuban shirt. Yeah.

Quite literally, my mother was putting the world of black people in. all of its shades and powers and languages right in front of me, trying to get black men to understand, you don't have to sweat like that. You can go into court and the UN and present yourself like a man to be respected and not sweating in their shirt and tie. This is for you, you know. but I really do think that things like that come from your parents.

It's like my dad, you know, with music. It was always, remember when all we had was one note. Remember when all we had was just the drum. Remember when all we had, we were our own telephone, internet, iPhone, Android. We were it for ourselves in how we bought our art with us to communicate for the change that is still happening now. with us using the bare minimum. Can you, I mean, the things that we have achieved with what we've had to be up against

and are still against as those things try to rear their ugly heads once again. We cannot forget our art because at one point, that was all we could bring with us. Thank you so much. I mean, it seems to me that that's exactly what, you and others like you have done. You have to show what's possible through your art. And I just want to thank you for talking with us.

You can't imagine how much I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. And tell your wife, I said, big up yourself. I will. Okay. That's the New Yorker's Vincent Cunningham speaking to Cheryl Lee Ralph. And you can see her on ABC's Abbott Elementary.

I hope you enjoy the show. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a conference. co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Brita Green, Calaliyah, David Krasnow,

Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Harrison Keithline and Meng Faye Chen, and guidance from Emily Boutin. And we had additional help this week from Rihanna Corby. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Trurina Endowment Fund.