The New Yorker Radio Hour - Tracee Ellis Ross on Being a “Black-ish” Woman and Jon Hamm Gets His Life Back from Don Draper

Episode Date: January 9, 2018

Tracee Ellis Ross, who plays Dr. Rainbow Johnson on ABC’s “Black-ish,” joins Doreen St. Félix for a conversation about television, race, and self-acceptance. “Black-ish” has a reputation for breaking boundaries and tackling political and racial questions rarely discussed in prime time. But Ellis has found room to push back on the show’s treatment of her character as the wife on a family sitcom. And  Jon Hamm won audiences over in “Mad Men” as Don Draper, the quintessential man’s man. “Navigating what the show became and navigating the success is the trickiest part of it,” he tells Susan Morrison. So he flexed his comedic muscles as often as possible, with roles in “Bridesmaids” as one of Kristen Wiig’s love interests (for which she wrote them a very long sex scene) and on “30 Rock” as Tina Fey’s too-handsome-for-real-life boyfriend. And his sensitive side is no put-on: as a young man, Hamm worked at a day-care center called Kids Depot, remembering that as a young child he had lacked male role models. “It felt nice to be that person I didn’t have in my life.” 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 World Trade Observatory. Straight of the block for West Boulevard and makes that right. I basically just think it would be interesting to look at the emergence of a criminal economy. And also, I'm always amazed that there aren't more profiles

that are out there. This really subversive, strange thing, in rap especially, and see what their lives are like on both sides of the border. From one World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNMIC Studios,

and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Today we've got for you two great interviews recorded live at the New Yorker Festival. John Hamm talks about trying to get his life back from Don Draper. And we're going to start now with Tracy Ellis Ross, one of the stars of ABC's Blackish. It's a show that's been breaking boundaries since it went on the air in 2014. In form, it's a family sitcom, pretty typical.

Mom, Dad, a bunch of kids, friends, wacky neighbors. but in content, it's something else. It tackles the real issues that any black family in America might talk about and deal with. And even today, that's a pretty big deal for a network show in prime time. For Tracy Ellis Ross, though, the show needed to do something else, and that was to confront some of the gender stereotypes that are more or less built into that form of show. Ross was previously a co-star of the comedy Girlfriends. She sat down with the New Yorker's staff writer Doreen St. Felix,

at the New Yorker Festival in October. So I pulled a clip, and it's from Blackish. It's from this episode called Being Bo Racial Season 3. You know it well. I don't want to give too much of it away before we start playing it, but basically your character, Dr. Rainbow Johnson, finds out that her son has a girlfriend. And Junior's a little bit of a nerd, so...

It could be good news, but it turns out that Rainbow has been made very upset. by it for a pretty conspicuous reason. A conspicuous reason and also I thought a quite unexpected reason for the kind of woman that Bo Johnson is. Very liberal, a diehard mom, very supportive of her nerdy son, like kind of loves everything about him. So it was, I thought, a really interesting and fun reaction that gave birth to an episode and some subject matter that is not normally talked about on television. Absolutely. Hey, everything okay?

Yeah, everything's great. Okay, then why are you chopping onions like a crazy person to mask your tears? I don't do that. Ooh, onions. Why are you masking your tears? Does this have anything to do with Junior's new girlfriend? What, Junior has a girlfriend? Wow, what a twist. Hold on, wait a minute. Is it because she's white?

Dre, you're delusional. So you do see color. Dre, that's not who I am. Or is it who you are? who you are. Please let it be who you are. Look, this is something that we could do together as we grow old.

You know, some couples, they have golf. We can mistrust white people together. This could save our marriage. I'm getting so emotional. So this is a very special episode of Blackish, and I mean that in the way that term is usually applied. The first reason being that most episodes are usually told from Dre's perspective.

Drey is played by Anthony Anderson, and he's rainbowed. Johnson's husband. But this is the rare episode that has Rainbow narrated. I like where you phrase that, by the way. He's Rainbow's husband. It's usually said that I'm the wife. This is a feminist talk.

Thank you. So in that way, I was a little bit shocked. I was like, okay, we're going to be listening to Rainbow's voice as narration. That's good. And anybody who watches Blackish knows that the show, yes, I know we all do,

it often deals with issues of identity politics. You know, there's been episodes on police brutality, the use of the N-word, class issues. But this episode feels more daring. And one of the things I find really interesting about the show that we don't often talk about because the show is called Blackish. And it's known that we are talking about race and identity. But the womanist, feminist storyline that is going on for my character

is really interesting to me. And one of the things that is interesting for me to play is that this is not a character or a woman who is just a wife, who is just a doctor, who is just a mom, she is all of those things. And so I think this story was really interesting to me because we got to take on some of that in a very front-facing way.

So the episode itself is called Being Beaurecial and we explore Bo's heritage and sort of what she comes from and her relationship to that. And I found it really interesting for many reasons, some of which were that her point of view is not my point of view, and nor has it been my experience.

I would not have issue if my child or my brother or my sister or anyone brought home a white girlfriend. But I thought it was a really interesting doorway into this subject matter. It was unexpected, and I think it's one of the things our show, the writers do incredibly well, is we usually enter these very big, heavy, sticky subjects from a direction that you wouldn't expect, that you're already kind of toppled on your

heels and like, wait, what's happening? You know, the fact that the N-word episode, we entered through the youngest saying it in a rap song in a talent show. Gold Digger. Yeah, you know, because it takes the things that have been normalized and kind of throws them on their head. And in this case, you know, That's usually Drey's point of view. That's like something that he would take on. So it was so unexpected that this mother, the liberal feminist woman that Beau is, would have issue with such a thing.

And then we get to kind of unpack that. And what we unpack, I think, is something that we don't usually unpack in our cultures, sort of what it is to apparently be caught between the cultures. You know, I'm a mixed woman, and it's always been the most extraordinary thing to me. to be a part of both cultures. There's a willingness to learn how to articulate things

that otherwise I wouldn't need to articulate, how to understand, you know, like the blind spots are clearer. But do you get frustrated portraying a character who can sometimes out of nowhere have a political stance that you might not have? I also read in some other interviews that the police brutality episode...

That was tough for me. Yeah, so can you tell us about it? Well, you know, I'm playing a character on the show, that is actually the fun of it. So the police brutality episode, my character was sort of playing the audience's point of view of like, but what if, like devil's advocate, but what if they're great cops or, I don't know,

I mean, there are obviously. But like, what if, I can't even remember actually, but it was a point of view that was not mine. I had to keep my mouth shut, and I'm not somebody who keeps my mouth shut. But that was a really interesting opportunity for me to try something different. And the truth is that in hindsight, looking at the episode, it was a very important thing that my kid, that everything wasn't getting said.

And I think that's a lot of what happens that is so well done on our show is that we don't say everything. So we actually leave the audience and allow them the opportunity to experience, to think, to have dialogue, to question. And not everything is answered. We're not saying this is the way you should be thinking. But to answer your question, I play a character, and that is okay with me. There are challenges at times, and what it does is it makes me, as Tracy, have to go back into my world and really figure out and explore how I feel about something, so I can figure out what my point of view is so that I can bring something to camera.

I work very hard to make sure that my character is bringing a full life to that show, to that story and to that family, that even though the stories are told through Drey's eyes, that every time I am in the story, I know what I'm. But you can tell what I've been doing when I'm not in the story. Because it's really important to me that I am not wife wallpaper on that show. I don't believe that that's real. And, you know, people are like, it's so modern. Like, your character's like a doctor and a mother and a wife.

It's incredible. About it. Like, we've been doing it forever, kids. Like, you know. So I try to bring that. Or, like, I speak up when it's things like, really? Am I chopping vegetables again? I'm like, look at me doing lady chores.

It's really fast. I mean, I say it all the time. I'm like, can't Anthony do the lady chore? You know, and Anthony's always like, yeah, why can't I do? You know, I mean, and I call it lady chores, obviously, I'm joking. But, because they're not lady chores. They're just things that happen around the house. So I'm very conscious about those things.

Which is a weird segue, but if I may, one of the things it was very interesting to me for how long it had been since a black woman had been nominated in lead actress in a comedy, both for Emmys and Golden Globes, is if you look back, it's like, what are the roles that we're playing? And I believe, and I have seen black women and women being the leads in our lives all over the place. But that being represented on television, not so much. especially in comedy too I've always felt there's such a wide gap between the black women I know in my life who are just so funny like my mom is the funniest

person I've ever met in my life maybe second now that I've met you oh no no she can take it she can have it you keep your mom right there but there's a way in which when we're slotted into stories on both television and film the stereotypical space is so tight

it doesn't give you the leeway to be able to do physical comedy maybe, or to do expressive comedy like you with your face, you're so expressive on the show. And obviously there have been many black women in sitcoms. There's a history that we can point to, but Rainbow does feel different. Well, I'm glad that she feels different. I would like there'd be tons more of that. And not just black women, of all colors, of all shapes, of all sizes. We women are many things. We people are many things. None of us are alike. And I think it is the responsibility of artists to really be sharing humanity and that texture and what that looks

like. It's the most interesting part of my life. You know, I look at all the different kinds of people that I'm around. And I think, though, that I'm conscious of bringing a fullness to Bo and I'm conscious of bringing a joy to Bo. You know, even this week, Anthony and I shooting, for some reason, again, there was sort of an argumentative scene. And the director was like, if you could just try it, really sort of just like get in there. And I was like, nah. I don't always want to see that. I don't want to be the arguing wife. And although in the context of our show, that might not be the case,

I'm very aware of the larger context of the images that are being portrayed and the way we're being portrayed in general on television. I was watching a video interview of you where you're at the dinner table. Oh, where I'm at the dinner table? Okay. So when I was young, I was like this, but I didn't quite know how to wield it. It was just annoying. It was just really annoying.

And right, Rhonda? And I also really liked to mess with her with Rhonda, my older sister. There's five of us, Rhonda, Tracy, Chudney, and then Ross and Evan. So at the dinner table, I would like, sometimes you really hyper, like really happy. So sometimes, because it was annoying, my mom would say, why don't you just go outside and get the wiggles out and we had glass doors to the dining table and so I would be like outside the door

like bouncing around and trying to make Rhonda laugh and like trying to make Chuddy spit her food out or whatever it was like bouncing around and then I would come back in and I would sit down and my mom would be like did you get them all out and I'd be like I don't think so

and I'd have to go back out and get more out and then come back yeah my grandma called it like the eight year old giggles the 10-year-old, like, it just kept going, and then it's clearly my career now. But what I love about that story is it shows a real effort on your mother's part to, but to encourage who you were and to not, you know, force you to be someone that you just weren't naturally. I think you can see my mom's parenting style in all of her children, because you can tell we were all raised by the same lady,

but we're all so different. And yeah, and I think from the way she parented and also who she is as a person, you know, the courage to be who you are is a part of the messaging that I got. And I have to be honest, I can't help it. I've tried to be so many other people. It just doesn't work.

Like, it just makes me feel bad and, like, ashamed and, like, I am not everybody's cup of tea. I'm just not. And that's really, I've had to learn that that's okay because, you know, as women and culturally we are taught, like, you want people to like you, and you want to try and fit in, and you want to try and be the should, like who you think you should be.

I've tried to make my lips smaller, my hair smaller, my personality smaller. I think all that is, you know, I feel like I push up against all of those sort of cultural norms and all that with a sense of curiosity and like, but why? But why? Really? And with that comes a lot of grief and a lot of shame and stuff that you got to wade through when you look at the reality of what that leaves you as a human when you're on a path that is not the one that's advertised.

I don't know. It can't be an accident that I'm here. I feel like I wake up every day as do most people trying to do my best. You know, I don't wake up and think, I'm going to up today. That's what I'm going to do. See what happens. No, you wake up and you try and do your best in the time and the hours that you're given, which never seems to be enough.

And then you say sorry where you can. This was just wonderful. And we, of course, at the New Yorker, really, really, really appreciate you coming to the festival, Tracy. This is amazing. Very excited. Thank you. Tracy Ellis Ross, co-star of Blackish on ABC. We're listening to conversations from the recent New Yorker Festival, and when we come back, John Hand.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Next week on the show, we're going to be looking long and hard at deportation in America. The government has been ramping up efforts to round up undocumented immigrants, and it's a situation that reaches into every corner of the country. We'll see what it looks like on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and at a church in Manhattan, where a family has taken.

in refuge from enforcement agents who are waiting outside. That's next week. This week, we've been listening to some of the highlights from the New Yorker Festival, where my colleague Susan Morrison recently sat down with John Hamm. Now, Mad Men has been over for more than two years, but it's going to take a lot longer than that for John Ham to shake the character of Don Draper, the quintessential, old-school man's man, if we can say that anymore. Draper was the strong silent type. He's tall, dark, handsome, he keeps his secrets close, and he drinks alone. And one thing Don Draper was not, not too often, was funny. And for John Hamm, getting out from under all that manly baggage has meant taking parts that make fun of his Draper mystique and play up his own comic side. And here he is

with the New Yorker Susan Morrison. Let's talk for a minute about the origin story of your comedy geekness. You lost her mother when you were 10. And, and, and, you lost her mother when you were 10. Which is hilarious. No, it's not funny. But... See? Yeah. And had a kind of a difficult, unconventional childhood, which led you to watch a lot of comedies.

Yes. Why don't you talk about... I was a kind of a weird only child hybrid. Uh, my dad was married once before my mom and he had two daughters with his first wife, who were my half sisters. And, uh, and then he married my mom. and they got divorced when I was two. And so my mom kind of raised me till I was 10.

So I was the only child-ish. And then when my mom passed away, I moved in with my dad. And one of my sisters was living with him at the time, the other one that'd gotten married and moved out. And again, this is before the internet existed. So you had to read books and listen to albums and cassette tapes and go to the library to figure out, to really get anything.

We happen to live next to, a university. They had an awesome library. So I would go to the library a lot and check out comedy records and, you know, just devour anything I could. That's where I first started reading Spy Magazine. You know, that was how you consumed culture, sort of. And I was a big, I was just like, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to, I loved laughing. I loved when my dad would let me stay up late enough to watch Saturday Night Live in the 70s when I was way too young to be watching things like that. And I sought it out and kind of went and tried to find it where I could.

So what were the records? Were you listening to like Albert Brooks and Fire Sign Theater? Yeah. And Monty Python, which again, that was the only way you could really see it. And Bob Newhart, I mean, George Carlin, Richard Pryor. But yeah, anything I could get my hands on. There's something about, like, yeah, I was a latchkey kid. I would come home, I had babysitters all the time, and the one cool babysitter that I had if my mom went out on on Saturday night would be like, hey, can we stay up and watch Saturday night?

And I look back and I was like, my babysitter was like a 13-year-old boy. It's like, what? Like, wait a minute, this guy's in charge? Different times, the 80s, 70s? After college, you went back and you taught at your high school, which you mentioned, and you also worked in daycare, which is very sweet. I worked at a daycare in college, and the reason I did was twofold. One, being the son of a single mom, I was in daycare basically from when I was like five on all the time.

And I loved it. It was really fun because you got to be around a bunch of other kids. So it was like I had siblings or whatever. It was like super fun. And very structured, very cool. But there were no guys. There were no like male teachers. It was all, it was a very female kind of situation.

And I was like, that's lame. Like there should be, there should be dude teachers too. And secondly, I, it was also the kind of the only job I could do in college because I had classes during the day and I had play rehearsals at night. So I couldn't. be like a waiter or a bartender or anything because that was all at night. I couldn't do anything like nine to five job because I had class. So I had literally had this like three to six window. And I was like, that sounds like an after school program kind of thing. And I pitched

this idea to this little old lady who ran named Pat, who ran a daycare place called Kids Depot, not kidding. It had like a little red train sign. Kids Depot. weird if you don't think too hard on it it's not great but I had I worked there for like two years and it was fantastic and it was it felt nice to be able to kind of be that person that I didn't have in my life and that's why I went back and taught at Burroughs John Burroughs where I went to schools because I felt like the school had given so much to me I wasn't in the position to write a big check and endow some scholarship which I've done since Is there John Ham Hall?

There isn't, but there is a scholarship endowed in my mom's name. And the first recipient of that just graduated last year, and he wants to be an actor. Aw. And there is a black box theater named after my first acting teacher who recently retired. Oh, that's great. Yeah, those are the two big things that I've done. So when you moved to L.A. after that, it took you a while to really break through, right? I mean, you were 36 when you were cast in Mad Men, and you were working before then, but it was spotty, right?

What to characterize that period of time for you? 35 when I was casting. 35. I'll take care of I can get at this point. I moved out to L.A. when I was 25. So my kind of guiding principle was, look, I don't want to be that guy who's waiting tables, losing hair, 40 years old, three credits on his resume, still calls himself an actor, and is just trying to hold it together. Yeah. I can do that anywhere.

So I gave myself five years. I was like, a lot can happen in five years. And positive and negative. And that's a pretty fair amount of time. to really kind of give yourself a chance to figure out the city, figure out how it all works, what's it gonna be, and really kind of give yourself a fair shot. So I was like, if I turn 30 and I don't,

and I'm still kind of waiting tables or whatever, then I'll just pack it up and I'll go do something else. You know, the market has spoken, so to speak. And let's not kid ourselves, like acting is, especially now, less so, a little bit less so then, but especially now is a young person's game basically. And fortunately enough, I happened to turn 30 on the set of my first film that I ever did. It was called We Were Soldiers.

And then literally after that, the fall after that, I got my first regular part on a series, a show called The Division, which I'm sure you all watched in purple. There's going to be a quiz that was on the Lifetime Television Network. five lady cops and me. Well, when Mad Men hit, when you were 35, it created a frenzy. I mean, I remember that year being in a subway car on Halloween, being surrounded by 50 drunk Jones and Dons. I mean, it was just a frenzy. And there are all kinds of explanations aside from just the goodness and quality of the show about what that.

you know, why it created that kind of store? What's your, what's your theory? First of all, there was really nothing like our show. I mean, it had its elements of things that I think people could recognize, but it stood out in a way that was very helpful in separating it from what at that point was sort of an explosion of TV. And I mean, since then, we've had an even more, a double explosion of TV. But that was kind of the first one where it was always HBO and Showtime. They were doing their prestige television, but then in 2005 or whatever, the other network started to do cool shows and promote them as cool shows.

And they were cool shows, and they got important movie stars to be in them. And ours was different. It was a show that had buzz and a show that was intelligent and it didn't talk down to its audience and it was cryptic and it was weird and it was slow. And it was all these different things that people kind of didn't really know what to do with it. but they knew it was different. And people talked about it. And I think not for nothing coincided with the advent of the iPhone. And with blog culture and recap culture.

So viral. So what started to happen, our show certainly wasn't the first, but people started just writing blogs and pieces and think pieces about the show. And it had this outsized kind of cultural footprint that nobody watched it, but people loved to talk about it. And I mean, that's what it was. And it was a very interesting experience to go through that

because the show sort of won awards and things out of the gate. So we knew we were a hit. But there was always the but no one watches it. The first season our advertisers were like Boner Pill, and that headache medicine that you put directly on your forehead. And season two, it was Mercedes-Benz and Heineken. So we were like, somebody's watching. And they're really rich.

So that's kind of when we realize, like, oh, wow, like, this is happening. We have a little madman clip. We'll take a look at it. He hate dating. Terrible at it. You'll find someone who know your cues half. Men don't exactly stop and stare on the streets. Do you want that?

It's not what you were supposed to say. What do you care what I think? Everybody thinks I slept with you to get the job. They joke about it. Like it's so funny because the possibility was so remote. It's not because you aren't attractive. I have to keep rules about work. I have to have to.

you're an attractive girl, Peggy. Not as attractive as some of your other secretaries, I guess. You don't want to start giving me morality lessons, do you? People do things, right? What's Lizzie Moss been up to? Do you feel like playing a character like Don Draper costs you anything emotionally? I mean, is it corrosive to play a terrible person? You know, yes and no.

I think it is hard to be in that headspace 24-7, I'm not the kind of person that takes stuff home with them. You know, part of it was just taking off, taking off the suit and taking all that shit out of my hair, felt, you know, sort of redemptive in some way or cleansing in some way. And then you go home, you know, and you live your life. But it's hard, part of it, navigating what the show became and navigating the success and all that stuff,

is the trickiest part of it. The work is great. The work is what you want to do. It's navigating the rest of it, especially now. I don't know. I mean, maybe it wasn't as hard before there was TMZ and social media and all this other garbage. But, like, that's the challenge.

Mad Men was just such a career-defining role. I wonder if your whole acting life post-Mapes, Mad Men is sort of a reaction against Mad Men? No, I think, not necessarily. The fun thing for an actor is to be able to do different stuff. And so it wasn't necessarily that I wanted to react against and play the opposite, but I definitely wanted to just do different things. And so when, for example, Tina Fey decides, okay, hey, you want to be on 30 Rock, that's different.

Yeah, I'd like to be that. That's kind of fun. For me, the fun part of doing what I do is doing things that are a little bit risky, make you feel a little bit uncomfortable. And I've certainly been guilty of doing a lot of those things. Well, one of the great things about the combination of an indelible character like Don Draper and your comic skills is that you've done a lot of wonderful, what you could call comic send-ups in a way, of the Don Draper type.

I'm thinking of your role in bridesmaids. Why don't we look at that clip? Oh, God. Which I love. You slept over. I did. I thought we had a rule against that. Oh.

I'm kidding. Oh. That was funny. You're funny in the morning. But I like hanging out with you. Oh, yeah. I love hanging out with you. I think we get along really well, and you're so sexy.

I know. I just, you know, I just want to have a lot coming up at work, and I just, I don't want to make promises I can't keep. You know what I mean? Yeah. We're on the same page. I mean, I don't, I'm not looking for a relationship right now either. Let's just say that.

I just, whatever you want to, I can do, you know, I'd rather just, like, simple, not like other girls. I'm like, me, my boyfriend, unless you were like, yeah. Then I'd be like, maybe. I don't want that either. It's so awkward. I really want you to leave, but I don't know how to say that. you guys have such a great chemistry together it's really funny that is a very weird thing to say about that scene I mean comic chemistry now was was this before or after you and Kristen Wigg did a lot of

great stuff together on Saturday Night Live it was after Kristen and I knew each other fairly well by this point and and she had come to me and said I really oh Annie and I wrote this great movie and we're really excited. We really wanted to be in it. I was like, cool. I was like, well, you know, I'm kind of doing this show. I don't have a ton of time. And she's like, oh, we wrote a part for you.

We wrote a part for you. I was like, I read it. And I was like, I read it. And I was like, it's a big sex scene. I was like, Kristen. Now, Tina Fey is famous for saying once that John Hamm was so handsome that she wanted to poke a hole through a paper plate and look at him through it like she was looking at.

in eclipse. She actually said that in front of me too. And I was, what is wrong with you? I'm right here. So, thank you all. Thank you all for coming and thank you. Thank you. Thank you all for coming. It's so late. It's so late. Everything else. John Hamm at the New Yorker Festival in October 2017 with the New Yorker Susan Morrison. Thanks for listening today. And if you haven't been to our website lately, please visit us at New YorkerRadio.org. We've just got to redesign for the new year. And if we do say so ourselves, it looks pretty good.

Every episode, every segment we've ever broadcast is there. And you can subscribe to our podcast so you never miss a thing. I'm David Remnick. 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 Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrato. This episode was produced with special help from the staff of the New Yorker Festival, Rhonda Sherman, Alexis Goldberg, David O'Hanna, Bradley G. and Hillary Leicter Griffin.

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