Transcript
Into America
W. Kamau Bell to White People: “Do the Work!”
Chevy Chase: All right, Mr. Wilson, you’ve done just fine on the Rorschach. Your papers are in good order, the file is fine. No difficulty with your motor skills.
Trymaine Lee: Comedy is an art form that consistently provides some of the most insightful social commentary. Take this famous sketch from the first season of Saturday Night Live in 1975. It features Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor.
Chase: And I think you’re probably pretty ready for this job. We got one more kind of psychological test we always do here. It’s just a word association.
I’ll throw you out a few words. Anything that comes to your mind just throw back at me, okay? It’s just kind of an arbitrary thing. Like if I said dog you’d say —
Richard Pryor: Tree.
Chase: Tree.
Lee: Chase is interviewing Pryor for a job as a janitor.
Chase: Fast.
Pryor: Slow.
Chase: Rain.
Pryor: Snow.
Chase: White.
Pryor: Black.
Chase: Negro.
Pryor: White.
Lee: And as their word association exercise progresses, Pryor’s body language transitions from affable to increasingly tense.
Chase: Tar baby.
Pryor: What did you say?
Lee: By the time they get to the realm of obvious racial slurs, Pryor is visibly livid.
Chase: Spear chucker.
Pryor: White trash.
Chase: Jungle bunny.
Pryor: Honky.
Chase: Spade.
Pryor: Honky, honky.
Lee: Eventually, Chase utters a word that is no longer acceptable to broadcast. And Pryor, reflecting the militancy of the black community of the 1970s comes back with a clear message.
Pryor: Dead honky.
Lee: Chase is so scared that he ultimately offers to make Pryor the highest paid janitor in America.
Chase: Just don’t hurt me, please.
Pryor: Okay.
Chase: Okay.
Pryor: You want me to start now?
Chase: Oh, no, no, no, it’s all right. I’ll clean all this up. But take a couple of weeks off, you look tired.
Lee: The sketch was written by Richard Pryor’s longtime writing partner, Paul Mooney, who is an absolute legend in comedy. And Mooney said that it was a comedic reflection of the types of conversations that he had to endure when he and Pryor were in negotiations to appear on and write for SNL.
When the best comedians get on stage, they use their wit to shine light on the often uncomfortable parts of our collective psyche. And in the process, they open a door for conversation. And in our American context, a context that from the outset has been delineated along artificial color lines, black comics have some of the most nuanced perspectives.
From Richard Pryor to Paul Mooney, to Dave Chappelle, it’s often fallen to black comedians to point out the absurdity of America’s conceptions of race and the hypocrisy of our country’s ideals, which contradict to how Black Americans have always been treated. And they’ve been doing it for years, all the while contending with the white gaze.
Like those black comics before him, W. Kamau Bell has used his comedy as a springboard into a realm of social criticism that’s more often reserved for talking heads.
W. Kamau Bell: So, a lot of people think racism is not funny, but I resent that remark. My whole career has been built on making fun of racism and making fun out of racism.
And I’m not mad at you, and we will be clear, I’m not mad at you that you’re not — the ones who are here, you’re some of the good ones. You’re not like the rest. You speak so well.
All I’m trying to say is —
Lee: After years of making a name for himself as a standup comedian with a decidedly political message, Kamau hosted the satirical new show, “Totally Biased,” on FX for two seasons starting in 2012.
Bell: There’s clearly more to discuss here, I’m just glad we got the conversation started.
Lee: His four-part Showtime docu series from 2018, “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” explored the competing images of Bill Cosby through earnest conversations with black public figures.
Archival Recording: Do not edit this. A lot of people know, because you can’t do what he did unless you have other people supporting what you’re doing.
Archival Recording: Spanish Fly, the girl would drink it and Hello America.
Lee: And on his current show, “United Shades of America” on CNN, Kamau visits communities across the country to explore the unique challenges they face.
Bell: Despite how some people in the more paranoid corners of cable news make it sound, you know what I’m talking about. Many Latino immigrants are working hard every day to improve their English skills.
And to get a better idea of this, Bertha has invited me to the Puente Learning Center, where she takes English classes five days a week.
Archival Recording: Good morning.
Archival Recording: Hi.
Lee: Through his work and career, W. Kamau Bell has developed a fan base that is eager to hear what he has to say about race in America. And many of those fans are white folks. And Kamau’s most recent book is directed squarely at these fans.
It’s co-authored with Kate Schatz who is white. The title is Do the Work! and it’s set up like an antiracism workbook for grown folks.
Bell: There’s like literally a pullout page in the book of like here’s the big list of actions you can take to create an antiracist society. It’s like reading a book about working out doesn’t mean you worked out. But maybe if you read the book about working out, you’ll do a better job of working out.
Lee: I’m Trymaine Lee, and this is Into America. Today, W. Kamau Bell discusses his writing, his comedy, and how he uses both to talk about race. And we get into his enduring love for Denzel Washington.
W. Kamau Bell, thank you for joining us.
Bell: Thanks for having me.
Lee: I appreciate you, man. Well, the first thing first, I first came to know you and your name from what I think is one of the dopest podcasts ever, Denzel Washington, the greatest actor of all time, period.
Bell: I knew you were going to say that. Whenever people get that glint in their eye, I know that they’re going to say that podcast.
Lee: Yo, I would see Kevin Avery at “30 Rock,” I’m like, “Yo, it’s Kevin Avery right there.”
Bell: That’s funny.
Lee: I kid not. And he followed me on Twitter and I was like, “Yeah, that’s what’s up, Kevin Avery.”
Archival Recording: Welcome to Denzel Washington is the Greatest Actor Of All Time Period with W. Kamau Bell and Kevin Avery.
Lee: So thank you. But what did that podcast do, which is clearly a fan favorite, what did that do for your career?
Bell: I mean, it was really like the first project that I had after my TV show was canceled. That was like sort of me sort of like, all right, what do I do next? But also, it was specifically started as a way to sort of go, “I want to do something that is fun.” And now, no matter what I do that is fun, it always gets into real issues because I don’t know how to do it any other way.
But it was really just like my first TV show, “Totally Biased,” was sort of like a beautiful car wreck in that it turned my life upside down. But things worked out better at the end I guess. But at that time, I didn’t know what the next move was and was confused. And so that podcast was like a labor of love.
And it also felt like there was a hole in the marketplace. Nobody had done a Denzel Washington praise podcast and clearly the market needed that.
Archival Recording: The first thing we do on the show, we have a special guest as we want to know what your top five Denzel Washington movies are. And you may have never thought about it before, it’s fine to sort of work your way through.
Archival Recording: I have never thought about it before, so I’m quickly bringing up my IMDB.
Lee: There are few cultural markers bigger than Denzel.
Bell: Yeah.
Lee: Like having a Denzel conversation is inherently a very black conversation if you have it the right way.
Bell: Yeah. Yeah. And we sort of thought maybe only three people would listen to it, but we had a very dedicated community of people. And then also inside the industry, like when we asked Ava DuVernay to do it and she was like, after Selma, and she’s like, “Yeah.” And I’m like, “Why?”
And then we had Ryan Coogler on after he did “Creed.” Like, the day that he was on was the day the news broke he was going to direct the “Black Panther.” Spike Lee came and sat with us and then Essence called it one of the black podcasts she’s listened to. I’m like Essence has never even talked about me before.
So it felt like that we had made something that was very relevant to black folks that really just started out of our love for Denzel Washington.
Lee: Clearly, for a lot of us, that was our introduction to you. There were the TV show, but then I think this is what kind of expanded it. But how did you go from comedian and TV show host to now, what I would consider in the sedition of race men, right, and I say that with all due praise, a race man —
Bell: Of course.
Lee: — who engages what race means in America, how did you, that journey, from there to here?
Bell: I sort of grew into this place that was already sitting here for me. Like my mom was definitely a race woman. I used to have a joke in my act that I was 11 years old before I realized that a cracker was also a delicious snack. So like, I was always, and I was an only child, so she took me to places.
There wasn’t always a babysitter. So I would just sort of hang out with her. So I was always around adult conversations with black folks talking about where the movement was at and let’s go to this thing with this Alice Walker speaking. I don’t want to go to Alice Walker.
I just wanted to do standup comedy. And I just wanted to do it because of like I wanted to be funny. But I kept being pulled into this conversation, I think, it had been around my whole life. And then the older you get, you have kids or you think America is starting to succeed and then it starts to crumble. And I don’t know how I could avoid this conversation.
Lee: And you’ve always approached your work with humor and levity. But there have been times, obviously, in the last 10 years where when nothing funny about what was happening in America. But you managed to find this kind of nuanced space to have this conversation in a way that didn’t necessarily throw fuel in the fire. Was that tough at times?
Bell: Yeah. I mean, you’re always trying to figure out what the right percentage is. Can I tell a joke here, is this inappropriate? Or I know some people will get it, but not everybody is going to get it. So there is a sense of like, am I okay burning this side of the audience to address this side of the audience?
And so, yeah, I think if you look at the “United Shades of America,” clearly the guy who’s hosting the show is learning how to do it and I think getting better at it. Like this last season, we just ended and a lot of people are saying they feel like it’s the best one. And I’m like, “Yeah, because I’m better at it.” Like I finally think I’ve figured something out.
So I think it’s a learning process. And then it’s also about, thanks to Twitter, you’ll hear from people if they think you got it wrong and then you have to figure out who am I listening to on Twitter when they tell me I got it wrong. And sometimes I’d be like, “Man, that hurts, but they’re making a good point, so let me stop doing that or let me figure out a different way to say that.”
Lee: What have you learned, because sometimes these conversations, I don’t think it’s us who need to do the learning as black folks, right? We engage with whiteness and white supremacy in these systems in a very intimate way, navigating these. But from your vantage point, what have you learned?
Bell: I mean, I’d say that like there was an early episode, specifically from black folks, so there’s one black person on Twitter who I don’t know their name, but I remember how to sort of be on TV and talk from my individual perspective versus talking from the black perspective and making sure I don’t mix those up.
And sometimes you can say, like, maybe you’re being too touchy about it, but I really want to be clear about like I, W. Kamau Bell, a black man, am making this statement or I believe this versus like this is something generally that I think black people believe. And so for me, it’s about like the whole phrase that Michael Herrick declared dead, “Stop Saying Black is Not a Monolith,” which I understand because we heard it too much. But really understanding like I can be an individual, but also sometimes I’m representing the group.
And then the other thing I learned as far as like, it’s okay to hurt feelings if you’re hurting the right feelings. And it’s okay to step on even the toes of your fans if you’re doing it for a reason and sort of going, “Look, this is going to hurt, but this is what I’m trying to get you to.” So I think those are the things I’ve really learned over the course of the show.
Lee: How have you handled fan and consumer expectations of you, right, because you occupy a certain kind of space in these conversations? And then you are a black father with a white wife, black children. There’s all kinds of things, especially from the black community, like what’s good bruh, how have you handled all that?
Bell: I mean, first of all, don’t be surprised when people challenge you on things that are obviously the things that they would challenge you on.
Lee: Yeah.
Bell: So if somebody steps up to me, which happens occasionally, and goes, “Hey, why did you blah, blah, blah?” I’ve probably already had this conversation in my head. So I think that, like I understand that being a black man talking about racism in America and about dismantling white supremacy, there are some people who think that’s hypocritical if I’m married to a white woman and I don’t believe it is, but I understand where that comes from.
So I think the last thing I want to do is be like, I don’t know why you would say that to me. Like I come off like Thurston Howell III on it or whatever. And I think people often are surprised if you engage me in a way that I feel like is actually productive and not just come in to like start a fight, I will have an engagement back and forth with you.
And many times, people will come forward and will go, “Well, I don’t agree with everything you say, but I do appreciate it,” you know what I mean? There is that sort of learning about like people don’t always have to come to you with the best of intentions. But if they do come to you in a productive way, there’s things you can actually build on from there.
Lee: How have you talked to your children about race in America, especially they’re occupying a very particular kind of vantage point?
Bell: I mean, I think with all of our kids, like we have three daughters and they’re mixed race kids, so they’re three different shades of the kind of mixed. And so I think the idea, first of all, letting them understand that you are black and you are mixed. And that means that the world is going to see you different ways. And for my one kid who, I would say, he’s the lightest-skinned kid, you might be in a position where somebody thinks you’re white. For my other two kids, that’s not going to happen.
So letting them be individuals again, sort of saying like, you are black. But these are the parts of you that are because of who your mom is and who your dad is that people are going to see you in a different way. And then also being eager to engage with the big conversations.
So like the day that like Roe versus Wade was overturned, I turned on the news like I was just like, we’re going to turn it on during breakfast time. And it’s going to be on and you’re going to see it. And we’re going to have to start engaging with this topic in a way that, like I’m not even necessarily prepared to engage with, but we’re going to figure this out together.
So, I think our four-year-old doesn’t really care much about the news. But the seven-year-old and the 11-year-old actually understand generally what’s going on. And we can have conversations, even if they’re difficult. Within a few days of George Floyd being murdered by the police, they were like, what is this?
Who is he? What happened? And we were on a tire swing in our neighborhood talking about George Floyd and police violence while they swung on the tire swing. So, I think the thing that I do is like, don’t shy away from it, even if you get to a point with them where you don’t even know what to say or how to explain it. And there are times when I go to my wife and I’m like, how deep should I go in this? Or should go like, where we ended up here.
So, it’s also about having a partner that you can believe and trust in to have those conversations. But I would way prefer to have the conversation and get to places like I don’t know how to get you past this point versus not having it at all.
Lee: You know, you talked about when you were a kid and your mother being the certain kind of example being super hella black, right, and infusing that into you at a young age. But I’ve had conversations with friends about the talk. And I kind of don’t like the idea of a talk. We need to prepare our kids, our young men.
But I also think it puts an unfair burden on it, like the kid moving through the world. You know, you walk through with your head up and now you have this burden. Did your mother have that kind of talk with you or what was that talk like when you were a kid?
Bell: I do remember very specifically, like we were living in Boston. I was at the age where I might as a little kid walk down the street to like the drug store and buy like a Mad Magazine or a Cracked magazine.
She was just sort of saying, look, if you’re here by yourself, that guy is the store detective. That guy who’s looking at us right now is the guy who’s going to be following you around. Here’s what you should be aware of. Here is what you should be careful of. It doesn’t mean you can’t come here and shop, but you just need to be aware.
And I think sometimes you will get, you know, the idea of like, oh, why do you have to tell a little kid that? To me, it’s no different than telling the kid that’s fire, don’t touch it. And if you do, it’s going to be hot.
Like we wouldn’t think to not have that discussion with our kids. We wouldn’t go, I don’t want to put that responsibility on them, which is cool like, and so for me, it’s about like, do I wish we lived in a world where that specific race-focused talk didn’t happen? Yes. But I feel like it would be negligence not to make kids aware of the differences.
Lee: You know, it’s one thing teaching lessons to children who don’t know any better. This is fire.
Bell: Yeah.
Lee: This is a snake. This is the guy that might shoot you in the back while you’re running. Like, this is the landscape. It’s another thing to be educating and teaching grown-ass adults. And there is a big conversation around, like, how much of us as black people in this country, who’ve experienced this with a platform or with some degree of education or context around this stuff, how much should we be teaching these white folks about their white selves and the system that they created? And I want to ask you that.
Bell: Yeah.
Lee: And is there a responsibility for us? Is it too much a labor? You’re writing a book about this that I want to get into. But what are your general thoughts about that?
Bell: Well, that’s funny. I was going to bring up the book not because I want to sell books, but because this is what the book was written for. And this is a book that’s basically like a one-on-one approach to learning about racism or white supremacy with the hopes of turning you into an anti-racist, an active anti-racist.
And therefore, that means the bulk of the audience is white folks. Doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t learn something from this book. But if you’re talking about a one-on-one approach, you’re really talking about white folks, and I had a black woman, after we did an event say, I’m tired of having to teach white folks about racism.
I was like, that’s why we wrote the book. You shouldn’t have to do it. I am professionally this person. I just want to put on my taxes, teaches white folks about racism. So for me, it is about like leaving those black people in your life alone because the resources already exist in the world. And obviously, the book is not the only one.
You can go the Ibram X. Kendi direction. You can go the Michelle Alexander direction. You can go the Trymaine Lee direction. There’s all these ways to go. But we just felt like nobody’s done an anti-racist activity book for adults that is really like coming for you.
It’s not, as we say, it’s, I don’t know if we can swear on this podcast, but the idea being that it’s funny, but it’s not screwing around.
Lee: So “Do the Work,” your new book. Talk about like the seeds, like the early impulses to write this thing.
Bell: COVID was happening. And we were all watching the news. And COVID cases climbed. And that felt like it was the only news story. And then May 25th of 2020, the news breaks that George Floyd was murdered by cops in Minneapolis.
America had this, quote, unquote, “racial reckoning.” And one of the results of that was like I got booked on more talk shows in that two-week period after George Floyd than I’d ever been booked on, and faster than I ever been booked on in my life.
And I found myself having like, ultimately, you’re sort of having the same conversation on Monday that you had on the previous Tuesday. And you’re, sort of, like, and I found myself frustrated.
And I really with the fact that, like, I’m not talking to regular white folks. I’m talking to highly privileged, highly like, high-level moneyed white people. And so, they can do more than your regular white person in Appalachia can. And I don’t want them to think they’re the same. So I reached out to Kate — Kate Schatz, who’s a Bay Area writer and activist, because she’s also engaged in this work on Instagram and talking to white folks.
And I was like, what do I tell these fancy white folk? And when we started talking about writing a book together, we both sort of independently landed on an activity book because we were both also in that period of COVID where the kids weren’t back in school and remote learning and all these things.
And so, we were buying those Brain Quest books for our kids just to keep their brains from going soft. And we were like, this is what a lot of adults need, because they’re afraid of, like maybe they’re afraid of reading the big, thick tomes about racism, or maybe they read them, but they don’t know what to do next.
And so, this is either a bridge into those books or a bridge out of those books. And as Kate says, if you just want to know what you can do, there’s like a literally a pullout page in the book of like, here’s the big list of actions you can take to create an anti-racist society.
It’s like reading a book about working out doesn’t mean you worked out. But maybe if you read the book about working out, you’ll do a better job of working out.
Lee: Are there limits to this? I mean, you talk about that audience who are privileged, moneyed white folks who consider themselves not to be racist and are liberals and are our friends, right?
Bell: Yeah.
Lee: But are there limits to like this kind of approach of who wants to read, who wants to engage?
Bell: Well, I feel I feel like this, there are no bad ideas in a brainstorm, no bad ideas in trying to dismantle white supremacy. So let’s put all the ideas on the table. So I think that like, until we dismantle it, you’ve got a cookbook to create an anti-racist world, let’s do that. I feel like whatever we can do from our perspectives, let’s do those things.
Reading the book is not the work. The work is in understanding that the book is trying to say, unless you’re engaged in a regular anti-racism, like a process of creating anti-racism, then you’re not really doing the work. That’s the main message. So I would imagine every day if I did it, and I was like, can you tell me something you did today that created less racism in the world?
And you’d probably be, all right, so this morning, even if it was just, even if it was your day off, there was probably some conversation you had, some tweet you sent out because you’re engaged in this work every day. So I understand with a lot of people, they’re not going to start every day. Can we get you once a week?
Lee: Sometimes I either witness these conversations or have some of these conversations, and it’s almost funny how awkwardly, there are some white people, well-meaning, who just are afraid of messing up and saying the wrong thing.
Bell: Yeah.
Lee: Have you seen those moments of, like, just stumbling through them wanting to, but they’re just too white to get out of their own way?
Bell: Well, that’s what — that’s one of the great things about writing with Kate, because Kate is a white lady, but she lives in the Bay Area and she’s definitely engaged in activism throughout her life, throughout her entire adult life. And she came with this idea. It’s not about what happens if you mess up. It’s what do you do when you mess up.
Let’s get you out of it if I mess up. Let’s get you to the how do you recover from messing up? Because we’ve all messed up. I’m sure you’ve — I’ve certainly have messed up and I write about a thing in the book where I’ve messed up and just not getting caught in the, like, the paralysis of analysis. Why don’t — I shouldn’t do anything, because if I mess up, people are going to be mad at me.
So for me, it’s about like getting to the when you mess up, how do you recover? And that’s what we focused on in the book. Stop getting so caught up in your ego that you think that messing up is the — is the worst thing in the world. Get to the place where you go, well, oh, no, I’m going to mess up. And then how do I then make sure that people understand that I won’t mess up again or that I’m going to really try hard not to mess up again and I’m going to hold myself accountable?
Lee: Coming up, more of my conversation with W. Kamau Bell. We explore the complexities of black fatherhood, how Bell avoids mistakes with race work, and, of course, more Denzel. Stick with us.
Throughout his career, W. Kamau Bell has put blackness and racism in America at the heart of his projects. But even after several years of speaking engagements, hosting TV shows and writing books, Bell refuses to believe he’s an expert.
It’s easy to see how white friends can mess up and white people can mess up. How have you, as a black man, engaged with this work, how have you messed up?
Bell: I think one of the biggest things you can do, especially put in a seat like I am, is suddenly because people call you the expert, thinking you’re the expert. If I go too long without quoting somebody else, I’m probably messing up. If somebody thinks that I’m actually the source of the knowledge, I’m probably messing up, like I’m not Ibram X. Kendi, I’m not Cornel West.
I am doing this from a different perch. And if I start to talk like I am those dudes, so I think being too sensitive to criticism was the way that I used to mess up. Like if somebody was, if it hurt my feelings then I thought it must be wrong, which I’ve learned that’s not true. So sometimes black folks will come for you pretty hard on the Internet and you just feel like, well, if I’m upset, I must be wrong. But that’s not the case. Sometimes there’s real nuggets in there.
Lee: I was — I’m partial to black fathers. You are a black father with a white wife with three daughters. How has your personal relationship as a husband and a father evolved with all these overlapping issues of you’ve got Roe happening and reproductive autonomy? You got this race stuff happening. How is your personal relationship in the house, in the crib? How has that evolved and changed?
Bell: I mean, I think that, you know, my oldest kid is just going to middle school this year, which any parent knows that’s like, that’s a big deal.
Lee: That’s crazy. It sounds crazy.
Bell: It’s a big deal. It’s like when they turn 10, suddenly the parties start at 6 p.m. instead of ending at 6 p.m. There’s just this sense of like —
Lee: Right. I have a 10- year-old who just turned 10 like a week ago, so I’m right here with you.
Bell: Yeah. So it’s like you’ll just notice it. Like, what do you mean, the party starts at six?
Lee: Ain’t that a time for a nap and a snack and a nap or something?
Bell: Yes. Yes. What do mean pick her up at 9:00 at night? So, I’m seeing her go through like that first blush of like, oh, my friend doesn’t hang out with my other friends anymore because she’s got a new friend. And I don’t know what that means. And I asked her about it and she didn’t seem to understand. So, seeing in the midst of everything going on in this country, I’m also very clear that the most important thing is that my oldest daughter understands like what’s happening in middle school relationships.
And so, don’t getting so distracted by when Trump’s going to get arrested that I can’t connect with my daughter about what’s going on in middle school. I think that’s the thing I’m sort of very aware of right now. That so like this morning when she was like, my friend doesn’t sit with us anymore, I was like, hold on, what’s going on here? Like, without getting caught up in like, look, honey, Trump might be arrested and I got a lot going on.
Lee: Where are you in terms of your stand- up career? You have so many other things going on. How far away, how closely do you — what you doing, what’s the state of things?
Bell: It’s funny. This question has come to me a lot recently because I sort of felt like my stand-up career had been sort of forgotten with…
Lee: Like if I’m with you, like what’s up, bro, what you doing?
Bell: I know. I really, it really heartens me that people are still, remember me as a stand-up. I mean, my last special was 2018, which now feels like 40 years ago. And I got one of those Netflix specials during the time when it was like the thing to get. And I feel really happy and lucky that I got one of those at that time when it was like, that you felt like it validated you as a comedian.
And then I thought I would come back in 2020 when the election year happened, and then we all know what happened in 2020 and I wasn’t doing Zoom stand up. And so, I sort of kept telling my wife, I think I’ve been retired. I think my, you know, I think I’m going to hang my jersey up in my office.
And so, I really do see myself as a stand-up comic because people like you keep asking about it, I’m like, I sort of feel like Clint Eastwood in “Unforgiven,” “Do I need to get back out there,” because I really do miss it, I just sort of thought it had left me behind or that whatever things had shifted. But I really do miss it.
I would love to get back to it. I think the biggest challenge is like I travel a lot for just the regular work I do. And so, there’s a part of me that really also doesn’t want to be on the road all the time, because my kids already think I’m on the road all the time. So, I think the biggest challenge is like finding a way to do it where I’m not just like in Poughkeepsie, New York, on a random Wednesday when I would like to be home with my kids.
Lee: Just to circle back on perhaps the most important part of this conversation, Denzel Washington.
Bell: Yes.
Lee: So have you heard from Denzel Washington? Have you all been engaging?
Bell: Well, you know, it’s funny. Because of the podcast and because I think my career started to do after “United Shades,” I got invited to the AFI celebration of Denzel Washington in the pre-pandemic time, so me and my wife went. And my wife were determined that I meet Denzel Washington there, and I was like, “It’s enough that I’m here, you all.” I don’t need to be trying to like, “Hey, Mr. Denzel Washington.”
And I knew that his people knew about the podcast. So I felt like he probably knew who, but I didn’t want to like, you know, and that room was also like it was like Jamie Foxx. It was Michael B. Jordan. I was very low-hanging, like I was not in the position, Morgan Freeman was there.
And so, they were like, during one of the breaks, we’re like, “We’re going to walk over and you’re going to meet Denzel Washington.” I was like, “Oh my God,” I felt sick. He’s sitting next to Spike Lee, and I was like, “Don’t make me do this.” There was this journalist, this black woman journalist, who was like, “Oh, I actually, he,” she’s like one of many people who got, he paid for her education. Like he did that for like Chadwick Boseman. So, all this, she’s like, “I’m going to go broker the introduction.” And so, I see her kneeling over and talking to him. And then I see him look up over at me.
Lee: Wow.
Bell: And she waves me over and I walk over. And he looks at Spike Lee. And again, I don’t know if I can say this, but I’m going to say it anyway, he looks at Spike Lee and goes, “My nigga.” And he stands up and goes, “I love you.” And then I sort of blacked out, I don’t remember what happened next.
Clearly, him and Pauletta must watch “United Shades.” He talked a lot about United Shades, asked me what I was up to. And I stood there, to compare it to a Denzel Washington scene, it’s that scene from Malcolm X where young Malcolm X is sort of like meeting Elijah Muhammad and then one tear goes down his face. I felt that was what was happening. I just was like, just stand here quietly while he finishes talking.
Lee: Career done.
Bell: Yeah.
Lee: That is dope. My brother. My brother. Thank you, man, for all your work. Blessing us with your enlightenment and your words of wisdom and your experiences. Man, we really do appreciate it.
Lee: As our conversation wrapped up, we turned back to Kamau’s podcast, the one that introduced me to his work. Denzel Washington is the greatest actor of all time, period. On that show, Kamau always has his guest rank their top five Denzel movies. And now that he’s on my podcast, my man turned the tables on me.
Lee: So we can’t go without saying, what are your top five Denzel Washington movies? And the key part is you have to rank them in order or else you’re not really about this life. So, either 1 to 5 or 5 to 1.
Bell: I think number one has to be has to be Malcolm X.
Lee: Yes
Bell: I think it has to be Malcolm X.
Lee: That’s a good start. Anybody who tries to leave Malcolm X off their list is just trying to sound smart or cute.
Bell: Come on now. Malcolm X is there. I would say the second would be Devil in a Blue Dress.
Lee: Ooh, okay. All right.
Bell: Walter Mosley is one of my favorite writers. That smooth post-war, he got the suspenders and the (inaudible) tee shirt.
Lee: Yes.
Bell: I would say I’m a big Spike Lee fan. I love all of his work. There’s not a bad Spike Lee movie ever done.
Lee: Yes.
Bell: Mo’ Better Blues.
Lee: Ooh. See, this is like a fingerprint. I’m starting to understand who you are based on this list. I’m starting to…
Bell: That’s what it is.
Lee: Yes. That’s good. That’s a great one. And then Unheralded. That’s a good…
Bell: Oh, come on. Come on now.
Lee: Yes
Bell: I think number four, I think got to be Glory.
Lee: What? Oh, yes. Okay. All right.
Bell: Got to be Glory.
Lee: Did you go to an HBCU? Because this is a super black list.
Bell: I did not. I did not, but I should have. I should have.
Lee: You got HBCU envy in you, I can tell.
Bell: Listen, that cheer, that rebelliousness.
Lee: Yes. Yes.
Bell: I’m saying that’s who we are. That’s us.
Lee: Yes. Yes.
Bell: This fifth, ala Malcolm X. It means something. It’s Devil in a Blue Dress, the swagger. I’m going to say…
Lee: This is personal, so you don’t have to apologize.
Bell: This is the first time I think this did something to me in my thinking. Mississippi Masala.
Lee: Oh, yeah. Oh.
Bell: I think it’s the first time I considered Asians and the South and the thing, and I was like, and all of that was like a, you know, Romeo and Juliet. This whole thing. So, I was just like, I had never seen that before. And so, that’s my five.
Lee: That’s great. You got a good list. That’s a good list. It’s funny because he’s done so many versions, they’ve done so many different versions of Denzel that it does become like a fingerprint as far as like what people’s five is. Malcolm X is pretty consistent and I think, like I said, just pick it or else you’re trying to sound cute, but yes, everything else, Mississippi Masala, that’s a great one.
Bell: And Training Day could obviously be there, but that didn’t do the same…
Lee: Yes, yes.
Bell: Also that didn’t do the same thing it did to me. These other things moved me in a certain way, and connects, I mean Training Day was dope. Now that’s…
Lee: Yes.
Bell: All that.
Lee: But it’s hard. I mean, it’s hard to pick that one for some people because it’s like, I don’t want to pick the dirty cop movie in my top five.
Bell: This is Denzel Washington.
Lee: Yes, yes. No, that’s a good list.
Bell: That’s my five.
Lee: Right. I’m glad we did this. You just basically were a guest on the Denzel Washington podcast, so thanks for being on my podcast. I appreciate it.
Lee: Stay in touch. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook using the handle @IntoAmericaPod or you can tweet me @TrymaineLee. Into America is produced by Sojourner Ahebee, Isabel Angell, Allison Bailey, Mike Brown, Aaron Dalton, and Max Jacobs. Original Music is by Hannis Brown.
Our executive producer is Aisha Turner. And I want to give a special shout out this week to producer and Renaissance man Joshua Sirotiak, who recently wrapped up his contract with the show. We’re excited to see what he creates next. Thanks for all the hard work, man. I’m Trymaine Lee, catch you next Thursday.
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