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Storytellers from across Disney share how they stay rooted and relevant to tell stories that impact, inspire and drive the culture.
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00:00We have a panel from Disney, The Power of Us.
00:04Welcome to the stage, the beautiful Deja Vu of the Deja Vu show on ABC Audio and our host.
00:13Hello.
00:14How are you?
00:15How are you?
00:17What's going on Essence?
00:20Come on in, just come on in.
00:22I know y'all are out here enjoying it.
00:24Is it hot enough for you?
00:25Oh my gosh.
00:26All right, so are y'all ready for something great to hit the stage?
00:30Yes, I can't hear you.
00:31Are you ready for something great to hit the stage?
00:34All right, so listen, we are about to tell our stories the way that we can tell them.
00:39Only we can tell them.
00:40So I want you to make your hands go together to make them clap, clap as I bring out my great guests.
00:45Are y'all ready?
00:46First up, we're going to bring out the Oscar-nominated director of the Nat Geo docuseries,
00:51Hurricane Katrina, Race Against Time, Tracy A. Curry.
01:00Up next, we have Forbes Under 30 honoree, multimedia journalist, host, and women's sports and culture
01:05amplifier at Anscape, Ms. Ari Chambers.
01:14Next up, next up, we have the Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, and star of the hit drama
01:20of the shy, Mr. Luke James.
01:25Yes, yes.
01:27And last, but definitely not least, New Orleans, put your hands together for Emmy award-winning
01:33actress and star of the shy, the legendary Lynn Whitfield.
01:38Come on in.
01:45Yeah.
01:46What's going on, y'all?
01:47How's it going?
01:48How you feeling?
01:49What's up?
01:49How you doing?
01:50Good.
01:51Listen, you know, we're celebrating the story of us, and it's great because we have the magazine
01:55Essence celebrating 55 years that tells the story like we know how to tell it.
02:00And it's important in this day and age to really be able to tell our stories.
02:04Now, for everybody on the panel, tell us what does the power of us mean to you?
02:10Ms. Lynn Whitfield, start it off.
02:12The power of us is magic.
02:16The power of us is supernatural.
02:20Yeah.
02:20The supernatural power of us that's way beyond anybody's understanding.
02:27Yes.
02:28Luke?
02:29The power of us is all of those things.
02:35Loveful, vibrant.
02:39We are the original people.
02:41I mean, the power of us is everybody.
02:44The power of us is everybody.
02:46Ari?
02:47I love that vibrance.
02:48That just made me, that just ignited something in me.
02:51I would say balance.
02:52Balance and connectedness.
02:54At a time that can be really dark, we have each other.
02:56And so we balance each other out.
02:58It's the yin to the yang.
02:59We are the yin.
03:00We are the positivity.
03:02Tracy?
03:03When I think of the power of us, what comes to mind is something that Zora Neale Hurston said,
03:08which is, if you are silent about your pain, they will kill you and say you liked it.
03:14Wow.
03:15And so I think in this moment where there is active erasure taking place and compulsory forgetting taking place,
03:24I think the power of us, I think the power of us, I think the power of us and the stories that we tell is an act of resistance.
03:30And it is necessary and it is urgent.
03:33Absolutely.
03:34All right.
03:34So we're talking about the power of us, talking about using our artistry through stories.
03:39Ms. Lynn Whitfield, we've seen you from the Josephine Baker story to, you know, Thin Line, all the way to Albany Road and even the Chi.
03:46Yes, you better give it up.
03:52What do you take into factor when you look at these roles?
03:55What makes you decide, hey, this is what I want to tell.
03:58I want to tell the story of this particular character.
04:02Well, speaking about resistance, I look at the character and say, can I shed more light on this?
04:11Can I bring more understanding to this human being?
04:17Yes.
04:18And because I'm playing it, it must be a black woman, right?
04:22So when I see, like my Southern mother says, when she would add like a purse or a shoe, she said, does it add?
04:31Right.
04:32So when I know that I can add to a story, when I can bring dimension to a story.
04:37And right now in my life, women of a certain age are expected to be a certain way.
04:45So part of my resistance and my activism is to hold on to sensuality, to hold on to complexity,
04:52to hold on to a personal female power that I refuse to cover with an apron or some idea.
05:03Come on.
05:04That we no longer love sex.
05:07We no longer, because you know, it goes from the babies and then you're a baby and then you're a leading lady
05:13and then you're a mother, then you're a grandmother.
05:15Then they have you walking around all cushy and making everybody comfortable and I'm not doing that.
05:20That's part of my resistance.
05:22That's how Miss Lynn Whitfield tells her story, baby, once.
05:28All right.
05:28So Luke, Luke, talk to us.
05:30You're doing your thing on The Chi, but we saw you originally within the music space, singing,
05:36even writing for people like Bieber, writing for people like Britney.
05:41What is it that you use when you're telling the story musically?
05:44What zone do you get into?
05:46Um, I need to tell the truth.
05:50I think, um, I love the idea of love, the concept of love and all of its complexities.
05:58And that's my space.
06:01That's where I go.
06:02I think that's who we are as human beings.
06:05Yeah.
06:05We're all in this search for identity and ultimately love.
06:11What does love mean to us?
06:12When you're writing those songs for other people, you're thinking about love.
06:16Do you have conversations with them to kind of dig in deeper to say, okay, I think I
06:20could tell that about you.
06:21It's a, yeah, it's a, it's a communal kind of thing.
06:23You know, I, I'm, I can, I have my outlook on, on life and they may have their own, their
06:29own perspective.
06:29And, um, it's about finding that middle ground.
06:32Um, especially if it's for somebody, I would love to lend to their voice, uh, what, what
06:37matters to them.
06:38And then, uh, ultimately that's, that's, that's the purity of it all.
06:42You know, you know what?
06:43I need you to write me a song right now.
06:44Come on, sing, sing a song.
06:45Can I just say one thing though?
06:47That's about the lyrics, right?
06:50But the truth and the authenticity that is in what you sing, the tones, the everything
06:59that comes from your soul, that it's, it's, it surpasses lyrics.
07:05It does.
07:05It's ancestral.
07:06You know, these, these are, it comes from, for me as an artist, when I sing, I know, I
07:14know that there were a lot of lives that had to come before me to even be here.
07:18So for me, I sing, I don't waste, I don't waste the time, the, the opportunity to honor those
07:25voices that may have not been heard that allowed my voice to be heard.
07:29So I love it.
07:30Yeah.
07:31Did you want to belt out a couple of notes for her quick?
07:32I mean, I was just asking for a friend.
07:34Whoa, whoa, whoa.
07:35Now she's really on the spot.
07:36Now she's really on the spot.
07:37Now she's really on the spot.
07:38Ain't nothing like love.
07:39Whoo!
07:40When it's good to ya.
07:41You love love.
07:42Anybody need love?
07:43Yeah.
07:44Come on now.
07:45Luke taking us in charge up in this Essence Festival.
07:46That's right.
07:47All right, so Ari.
07:48Oh, I follow that.
07:49I mean, I can't sing.
07:50Come on, Ari.
07:51Ari, you're going to bring it.
07:52You're going to bring it because you're telling the perspective of the story through sports.
08:09And even now with women's sports expanding, I heard about the WNBA getting more expansion
08:13team.
08:14Whoo!
08:15Come on.
08:16They're going to do like a women's softball or baseball league or something like that.
08:20Tell us about how you tell that story so that it makes sense for us and breaks it down
08:25for women in this moment.
08:27Yeah.
08:28So for so long, like when Lynn said, people have tried to shape our narratives.
08:33I don't necessarily subscribe to telling the stories.
08:36I'm a facilitator and amplifier of stories.
08:38Got it.
08:39So I open up space for people to tell their true authentic stories.
08:44Working at a company like ESPN, we are traditional media.
08:48And we have been in a place where we are the machine that can control how athletes navigate
08:55the space.
08:56So mine is to open up the door for them to be authentically themselves, wholly themselves,
09:01and feel comfortable enough to have their stories put out there.
09:04We've been filtering their stories for so long.
09:05It's time to step back, lay back, and let them talk.
09:08And there is expansion.
09:10That means the demand is there.
09:12So we're all enthused about women being in the sports landscape.
09:16We've come into a time where it's fathomable for us to be there.
09:19It's celebrated for us to be there.
09:21We don't have to be the exception.
09:22We are the norm.
09:23And that's what I want to portray when I do my sports coverage.
09:26Come on now.
09:27Not the exception.
09:28We are the norm.
09:29Because when we touch these sports, wherever it is, we come in and we really do amplify.
09:35Let me tell you something.
09:36It's so great.
09:37Go to a WNBA game.
09:38Go to an AWSL game.
09:39Go to any of your NWSL.
09:41All of them.
09:42They're so rich with excellence.
09:44Yes.
09:45You can be in a presence of excellence.
09:46You get inspired, right?
09:47I love it.
09:48I love it.
09:49All right, Ari.
09:51Now next, as we're telling the story, leaning towards something that's really serious
09:55that impacted right here in New Orleans.
09:57Tracy, you're telling us the story about Hurricane Katrina 20 years later.
10:04And that it's premiering here at Essence Festival.
10:07Give us the insight behind you wanting to share that story and its impact.
10:11Yeah, well, so interestingly enough, part of the story starts right here.
10:16Because two years ago, I was here at Essence Festival on a stage like this for another show that I was doing.
10:23But while I was here, I just kind of started talking to people who are from this place.
10:28Yeah.
10:29So the Uber driver, the person who is doing my makeup, the server at the restaurant, the people that work here at the convention center.
10:35Right.
10:36And I was just kind of saying, so hey, I'm going to do this thing.
10:39And like 20 years later, what do you guys think is important to know?
10:43And one of the things that every single person said was how the city has changed.
10:50And I think, you know, when we come here, I'm not from here.
10:52A lot of us come here from other places.
10:54And New Orleans feels like New Orleans to us.
10:56Right.
10:57The French Quarter feels like the French Quarter.
10:59But for the people who are from here, there is something that changed irrevocably about this city because of Katrina.
11:06One of the interesting things about New Orleans is that there was a very low rate of transience.
11:11So if you were from here, you tended to either stay or if you left, you came back.
11:16And so as a result of that, where people grew up, like your auntie lives over there, your uncle there, your cousins there, all the families were very close.
11:24And Katrina rents apart those ties of kinship and community in ways that did not come back the same.
11:32So what that taught me was that the people of New Orleans have something to say that we all need to learn about what happened in Katrina.
11:39And I think there's a way that we remembered it as something that happened to America, but it's not.
11:44It's something that happened to these people in this place, in this city.
11:47And so that informed the approach and the storytelling to center the people of New Orleans as the experts of their own experience of what happened during Katrina.
11:56I love it.
11:57Thank you for that.
11:58And Luke, you're from here.
11:59Yes.
12:00Lynn, you're from Baton Rouge.
12:01So this really impacted you too.
12:03100%.
12:04The city, I mean, it is different.
12:08Yeah.
12:09It's different.
12:10It just, I can't explain it.
12:11It just, it's just different.
12:14Do you think that it's healing or has it healed?
12:18Will it ever heal?
12:20You know, it was interesting because people in Holy Cross, you know, in the, in the ninth world, those families own those homes for like generations for like a century.
12:39And when this happened, I mean, sometimes they didn't have the signed papers and all of that because the family had owned the houses for so long.
12:49So when Katrina happened, people had to leave these blighted spaces.
12:56So gentrification, I believe, is part of what has changed the space because, you know, how are you going to be on, you know, near Ferretts and be talking about sound ordinances?
13:11Right, right.
13:12There's always been music here.
13:13Always been music here.
13:14And now people come from Connecticut and are saying, well, it's too noisy in our neighborhood.
13:20So I think that's a big.
13:21Hell the truth and shame the devil, Miss Lynn.
13:23Come on now.
13:24I don't want to get in trouble.
13:27Who are our sponsors?
13:29Wait, but I'm just saying, it's a cultural shift of this being a cool place for people to live from other places and those kinds of changes.
13:45And I don't know if we can ever retrieve some of it.
13:53I think what you're experiencing now is the new New Orleans.
13:57And the new New Orleans.
13:59And I mean, you know, like black people, we make we make do with what we have, you know?
14:05Well, that's what we always do.
14:06Yeah.
14:07As a culture, we make do with what we have.
14:09And we're telling the stories of how we have made through and continue to rise even in the midst of.
14:15So as we are wrapping the panel, I would like to ask each of you, what does the power of us mean for you when we are telling our stories?
14:23What does that mean for you?
14:25What is the power of us?
14:29Go ahead.
14:30You look like you're about to speak.
14:32You know, I think it's the power of us.
14:38I mean, we have to tell our truth.
14:40We have to make it very normal to always tell our truth, always to put our, I mean, be center everybody and just allow ourselves to have our space to say how we feel and what we mean and where it comes from.
14:54I think in that is the history of all things, you know, and I think we're the beginning of it all.
15:03So there's power in that to know where you came from, to know where all people came from.
15:09Absolutely.
15:10Absolutely.
15:11So the original DNA of all mankind, when they did and broke it down to the original DNA of all mankind was an African woman.
15:21Come on.
15:22Y'all didn't know you were going to get school today.
15:24And you know, that was on the cover of Newsweek about 30 years ago.
15:31It was not dinner conversation.
15:33None of my white friends wanted to talk about it, but it's the truth.
15:36So we encompass all the truth.
15:39Yes.
15:40For me, the power of us is sometimes not talking about the outer forces that we are up against, but to talk about our wonder, to talk about us as a people without excluding and ignoring everybody else.
16:02Yeah.
16:03Because if we are reminded of our magic, I believe that it helps us get up the next day and feel better and go out there and do it again.
16:16When we are reminded of the fact that we rose up out of such strife and have changed the face of Western culture as we know it, it would never be the same.
16:29Then sometimes I just think we need to talk about us and I don't need to talk about nobody else because we're so entertaining all on our own.
16:36You better tell it.
16:37So that's my take on it.
16:39That's what we're talking about.
16:40Power of us.
16:41That's what I wanted to hear past what you're saying, what is coming out of you.
16:47And you said it is the power of the ancestors.
16:50Yes, it's our ancestors.
16:51Because that's what comes out of your tone.
16:53Yeah.
16:54You could be singing in Chinese and I would still feel our ancestors.
16:58That came from our ancestors.
16:59That's it.
17:00I love you, Lou.
17:01I love you.
17:02Aw.
17:03It's a big love fest at Essence Fest, y'all.
17:05Give it up.
17:06Tracy, where can we watch the film?
17:08Well, we'll be premiering one of the episodes tomorrow here at Essence Festival.
17:13Yes.
17:14So please show up.
17:15The film will be airing, there's five episodes.
17:19The first two episodes on National Geographic Channel, July 27th.
17:24And then the remainder streaming the next day on, ooh, publicists, don't get mad at me.
17:30Disney+, Hulu, and Nat Geo streaming the next day.
17:35Yes.
17:36Congratulations.
17:37Ari, where can we find you?
17:39All of the Anscape things are Anscape.com and Hulu.
17:43There's a lot of, we're a black content studio of ESPN, so you can find a lot of our bits
17:48on Hulu.
17:49Personally, Monica McNutt and I, and Elle Duncan, Chanae Agumake, and Andrea Carter,
17:54have a new show called Vibe Check, streaming on Disney+, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
17:59Disney+, and ESPN2.
18:01And then tune in to any of your women's sports things that you love.
18:04We're on broadcast for that.
18:05Let's do it.
18:06That's what we're talking about.
18:07Yeah.
18:08And lastly, Luke and Lynn, we got a new episode dropping.
18:10Come on, The Shy.
18:11Yeah.
18:12What's going on?
18:13We got a new episode that's dropping this weekend, right?
18:16It's dropped.
18:17It dropped?
18:18It is dropped.
18:19It's dropped.
18:20You know, buckle up.
18:22Today?
18:23You know, we taking y'all on a ride.
18:25You know, it's for us, by us, and yeah.
18:31And it's about to be on.
18:32Tune in.
18:33All right.
18:34Don't be mad.
18:35And Whitfield, we'll see you on the big screen near you soon?
18:38In what now?
18:39We'll be seeing you on a big screen near you in a new movie?
18:42Oh, yes, yes, yes.
18:44I did a movie with Malcolm D. Lee, who did Girls Trip.
18:47We did a thriller in South Africa.
18:50Right now it's called Help.
18:51It's gonna be called Something Else.
18:53Be looking for it in the spring.
18:55Yes.
18:56All right, y'all.
18:57Give them a round of applause.
18:58The power of us through storytelling here at Essence Music Festival.
19:05Thank you so much.
19:06And thank you, audience, for coming out early this morning to hear what we have to say.
19:10We appreciate you.
19:11Happy Fest Weekend.
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