Lee Daniels Reveals How Storytelling is 'Healing' As He Receives Visionary Award

Transcript

00:00Congratulations. What an awesome night. The Visionary Award. Talk to me about that. How do you feel about that?

00:07I don't know. You know, I don't do really well with getting awards. I get, I don't. I know. It's like, it's like really like,

00:13but I am, I'm humble is what I am. I'm humble, especially because it's about, it's about what

00:24my interpretation of heaven is, which is so esoteric. And so like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

00:30whoa. And so, uh, hopefully they got it right. I love it. And you know, it's a visionary award.

00:35How do you define your division, your vision at this stage of your career? How has it changed?

00:42It hasn't, it hasn't really. I still am nervous about the next thing that I do. I don't know

00:49whether or not it will, um, whether it will resonate, uh, whether it'll be reviewed well,

00:57how it will be. But I know that it's in my heart. I know it comes from my soul and I think that's

01:03all that matters. The art of Elysium, you know, they focus on healing and using storytelling for

01:08healing. I'm curious how you have used storytelling to heal anything in your life.

01:13From everything that I do is about healing myself. Everything I do, um, from, I mean,

01:21everything from the very first thing that I did, Monsters Ball to Precious to Empire,

01:28everything is about putting closure to bad stuff that's happening. That makes any sense at all.

01:36It's not for you. It's for me. If you happen to come along for the journey and the ride,

01:40okay. But really it's about healing myself, everything I do.

01:45And I heard you're going to have a reunion with Halle Berry tonight. How does it feel?

01:49Yeah. How does it feel to be back with her?

01:52I'm excited. I'm excited. It's been a long time. It's been many, many years.

01:57Looking back at that chapter, any fun memories come to mind? Anything you can think of?

02:02Yes, but I'm not allowed to talk about it.

02:04It was like, it was, it was wild. Cause I didn't know what I was doing.

02:10And it was like, what? Like, what is that? That's the camera. Okay. Action. No,

02:15you can't call action. Well, what, what? Yeah.