Lena Waithe On Why She Wanted To Make Documentary ‘Being Mary Tyler Moore’ | SXSW 2023 - video Dailymotion

Lena Waithe, Debra Martin Chase, Dr. Robert Levine, James Adolphus discussed their film  ‘Being Mary Tyler Moore’  at SXSW 2023.

Transcript

00:00Nobody expected three black people, black artists, to come together and she was

00:06iconic for all of us in similar and in different ways. I mean, I grew up

00:12watching, you know, Dick Van Dyke and the Mary Tyler Moore Show inspired me in

00:18terms of how I was crafting my life. So it's been a labor of love for all of us.

00:24Absolutely.

00:30I think in my mind, I wanted to write a biopic. I think that's just sort of where

00:35my head went. Maybe my head always goes to me writing first. But that was it. I just

00:41said it and it made the print and the lovely Dr. Robert here saw it and it was kind enough

00:48to open up the doors to their amazing home in Connecticut. And so I went up there and

00:52we spent a lot of time just talking and like being around the house and having a conversation.

00:58And after that visit is what made me realize it was not a biopic. It was a documentary.

01:03Even though I like to write and I like to produce things, I'm not a director. It's not what I

01:07do. But I wanted to get somebody good, somebody that would capture what we were going for.

01:12And James and I were working on something already at the same time about sneakers called You

01:15Ain't Got These. And we were working really well together. And he had to interview me for

01:19the docu-series. And I was so impressed with the questions you were asking and how present

01:24you were in that interview. And I just thought, this is the guy who I want to talk to people

01:28that were in Mary's life. And I was like, are you interested in Mary Tyler Moore at all?

01:31He's like, I'm not even that familiar, but I'll do some reading. And I think in the back

01:35of my mind, I'm like, if I'm correct, the Mary spell will work. I was like, he'll fall.

01:40He'll watch something. He'll read something. He'll fall under that magical spell that the world

01:44did. And he did. He came back and he was like, okay, yeah, I get it. Who is this woman?

01:47You know, the first meeting, it was like, oh, this is our guy, right? Because, and I think

01:52this team and Robert, you know, had the vision for this, speaks to the universality of Mary

01:59Tyler Moore and what she stands for in her legacy.

02:02People had come to me after Mary had passed and said, we want to do another bio, you know,

02:07of Mary. And I really wasn't interested. It was only after I understood that Lena was,

02:12you know, influenced by Mary. Then I said, this is the person that I want to tell Mary's

02:18story because it's so current. It's so important. Who would think that Mary Tyler Moore would

02:23have influence, if you don't mind my saying, on a black queer girl from South Carolina?

02:29She was optimistic. She was vulnerable. She was, she had spunk. You know, she had, she

02:34had grit. She had determination and she was very gracious and she was a door opener. And for

02:39me, Lena is a door opener. So when I, when I suggested that we call it being Mary, it

02:45was all about what does it mean to be a Mary? And for me, Lena was being a Mary.

02:52The persona was very different from the person. And that was really fascinating to me. And

02:56I think that's what we were able to explore in the documentary that I don't even know

02:59we were going to get at in a biopic because we needed to hear from other people in her life

03:04to talk about who she was to the world versus who she was to them.

03:07We all understand what it means to be predefined by the patriarchy of this country. And that

03:15was expressed within the pages of Mary's book. And I was able to hold onto that and use that

03:19as a guiding light for how I chose to steer the ship.