00:00Who's going to stay in there, T?
00:02This is family business.
00:04Can families stay together?
00:13One of the beautiful things about your character is,
00:16you know, when you're introduced, you know,
00:18you're almost discarded.
00:20Like, Ruby doesn't want to have anything to do with you.
00:22Everyone was like, where you been? Where'd you go?
00:25But you are literally the savior.
00:28You know, when you all are in the,
00:31the shack in the woods towards the end of the first episodes,
00:34you know, you're talking to Atticus.
00:37You're like, he's telling you got to run.
00:39And you're like, how are you not scared?
00:40And he says, I'm not scared because fear ain't going to save us right now.
00:43And you are.
00:45And I love rewatching the first episode because this happens time and time
00:49again. And I've seen up to five episodes.
00:51So all that to say,
00:53what's it like being the savior of Lovecraft country?
00:57And why was, and why was, was that important for you to take on this role?
01:02Oh, that's interesting. I've never,
01:06you're the first person referred to Leti as the savior.
01:09You know, I guess what it is for me is as black women,
01:12we've always held shit down. Okay.
01:16Like we are the backbone, the spine of not just our community,
01:21not just the family, but this nation.
01:23Like we've always been on the front lines of change.
01:25We've always been willing to throw our bodies in the streets.
01:29Okay.
01:30And so for me in approaching Leti, it's just like,
01:33will you just tell the truth?
01:35I know this woman, this is, this is my mother.
01:38This is my grandmother.
01:39In fact, my grandmother was a big influence for me in building Leti.
01:45I never met my grandmother,
01:47but I grew up hearing stories about this,
01:49this beautiful woman.
01:51And we had this big picture of her in my mom's house above the
01:54fireplace with this big smile.
01:56And she was nicknamed Showtime.
01:58She was the first black Miss Galveston from Galveston, Texas,
02:01a single mom who raised four kids on her own clean and white folks home.
02:07And she would go to work every single day with her dress press and
02:13her hair and makeup done.
02:15And regardless of how mistreated she was or how neglected or abused
02:20or underpaid she was, she wouldn't let society rob her of her dignity.
02:27And it was her rebellion was not allowing them to erase her.
02:34Right.
02:35And that spirit of resistance, that spirit of disruption,
02:40that defiant spirit is in me.
02:44It's, it's the blood memory that I talk about.
02:46My teacher always refers to, you know, this visceral connection to the,
02:50the connection, this visceral ancestral connection to the oppression of my people.
02:56But also to the joy of my people, to the dignity of my people.
03:00Right.
03:01In an era when the erasure of black folks was so prevalent, you know,
03:06in the vein of a Gordon Parks, Leti picks up her camera.
03:09And she says, I want to see my people.
03:11I want to document us.
03:13Right.
03:14And so for me, yeah, it's just tell the truth of who we, of who we were.
03:20It was also important to inspect her contradictions.
03:23Nobody's all strong all the time.
03:26Um, you know, that's, that's false.
03:29Right.
03:30And when we portray that in narratives, when we as black women are forced to just be the strong black female all the time,
03:38that's false.
03:39That's a lie.
03:40And then it puts this unrealistic expectation on us that we are to be that all the time.
03:45And that's not true.
03:46We have, we have our own vulnerabilities.
03:48We're flawed.
03:49We do very questionable things.
03:51We can be selfish.
03:52We can do batshit crazy.
03:54We can be wretched.
03:55We can be savage.
03:56Absolutely.
03:58We can be, we can do the thing where you're just like, did you, this woman, you know, like, um, and, and so I think for those reasons and so many more, it was, it was incredibly exciting and thrilling to play such a, a nuanced and well-rounded character.
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