An attempted compliment results in complaints, which turns into controversy, and it involves to the most visible and accomplished women in the United States today. Hey, folks, welcome to this latest episode of Amy and TJ Robes. We're recording this one not from the studio per usual, but we're sitting around the kitchen table right now. Which one do you prefer where you most comfortable in the studio or sitting here?
Well, I'm comfortable right now here. But typically when we do podcasts, I do like to go to the studio because that's just broadcast home for me. I don't know. I like to have I like to go somewhere, sit down, have people listening, have reaction all of that, because I think we're used to being in the studio.
Are there some topics that you think you're more comfortable discussing in our private because we've set around this actual kitchen table before. It has some pretty tough discussions. Do you ever feel like the type of discussion or the tone is more appropriate when we're able to be this intimate. There's nobody else in the house with us right now, just us.
Except for Brodie the dog, but he even left I think we bored him. Wow, he left the room and we didn't even know. Yes, I hear what you're saying. So when we have some more intimate conversations, and we've had a couple of podcasts where we've done from home and they've felt good here just because it's been about something that was either personal, deeply personal, or just I don't know, heavy, Yeah, heavi.
Are we making the right call today? Folks? Are we have deciding? We'll tell you the story here in a second of exactly how we ended up at the kitchen table instead of in the studio. But the topic, I think most folks robes are maybe up on it because it's been in the headlines for almost the past certainly
the past several days as we're recording. But can you get folks caught up if they're not on what was a daytime interview that the headlines that came out of it were not necessarily what either person involved in the interview wanted.
That's right, Drew Barrymore interviewing Vice President Kamala Harris. It took place last Monday, or at least it aired last Monday and Monday, April twenty ninth. I believe is when the interview actually took place. And you know, Drew Barrymore, if you've ever watched the show, has a very unique style to her interviewing. She gets she likes to be up close and personal. She doesn't sit. I mean, she's
not a broadcaster, she's not a journalist. She's an actress and she's a talk show host and she has her own unique style and that's how she rolls, and it's it's been very much who she is. And I've interviewed her a couple of times and she wasn't any different in that sense when she was interviewing Kamala Harris. She's almost immediately intimate with the person she's interviewing, which is off putting a lot to some I think maybe when they watch it, but that is who Drew Barrymore is.
But she said, for folks that don't know, I don't watch the show, immediately intimate. I didn't understand what that meant because I'm just I'm very obviously familiar with through Barra Moore's and that she has a show, but I still and seeing clips over the years, didn't get that she essentially almost will sit close enough to certainly hold hands, but you could almost your face to face in a way. And how she goes about it, it's her things.
Yeah, and she does hold hands a lot of times. She's touchy feely and she leans in. And if you're watching it at home, and okay, someone like me, I like personal space. And if anyone out there is the same, if you were to have a conversation with her or she she likes to be up in your personal space.
It's just who she is. And so she didn't make any distinction when she was interviewing the Vice President of the United States, which for any of us who have interviewed people in certain positions, you're even more respectful in a way. Just you're almost respecting the position in a way and the person. And so there's a distance and there's a formality that you usually see in those types of interviews that Drew Barrymore just kept doing her thing her way, and.
So to a certain degree, I wouldn't want to knock her for that. No, it might not have been my call, my choice how I went about it, but my style. Even the fact that she's sitting with her on a couch. Most people don't interview world leaders on a couch first of all. But there's some part of me gives Drew Berhmer a credit for sticking to who she is and not deviating from that. Even if it's the vice president. Some argue she should have deviated.
Correct And so it was just I don't think I've ever seen an interview even if you had the volume down and you weren't listening to what was being said. Just by watching it, it would seem odd when you're talking about interviewing a world leader. But to your point, and what I'm saying, that is the way Drew barry Moore is. She was sitting cross legged on the couch, leaning into talking to the vice president. But yes, it
wasn't just the body language. More importantly, what made headlines was what came out of the interview and the focus of the interview, and specifically something that Drew Barrymore said, And I actually have a quote because as they were talking about her role as vice president and the state of the world, Drew Barrymore said, and I'll quote her here, I keep thinking in my head that we all need
a mom. I've been thinking that we all need a tremendous hug right in the world, right now, but in our country, we need you to be Mamla of the country. And this all comes after Kamala Harris told Drew Barrymore and she said this plenty of times that her step children or her bonus children as she calls them, call her Mama La. Of course she's taking her name Kamala and mixing it with mom, but that's a personal name.
So when she says this and tells the Vice President of the United States that we need her to be Mamla of the country, you can immediately see Kamala's reaction.
Okay, So if you haven't seen the interview yet and you heard what Ropes just said, this is where we're gonna pick it up. And this is why we are sitting around a kitchen table right now and not in the studio, because we will give you some insight into what took place with us. We were recording another episode several days ago and talking about various topics, and our producer in the room at the time Emma turned her while we were in the middle. We were in the
middle of recording. She had her laptop up and she turned it to us and showed us an op ed from Charles Blow Charles Mblow from The New York Times, and we only saw the title of the article, which was Kamala Harris is not America's Mamla, She's the vice president. So that's all we saw. And they were trying to signal to us, hey, is this something you all want to talk about. We weren't up on it enough at the time because we didn't read through the article. We
just saw the headline. We weren't up on it and decided we just kind a gesture to her, No, we're not gonna touch it right now. Thank god we didn't.
There was so much more to as they say, unpack.
Yes, So we didn't touch it at the time. So Robes and I then we go home. We decide to do a little experiment. We didn't read the opbed, we didn't google, we didn't read articles. Instead, what we decided to do was watch the interview ourselves, Robes watching it on her own. I watched it on my own. Then we came together and decided and we're gonna talk about it. So your react this interview that's people are calling cringe worthy and controversial and people taking issue with Before we
read a single article, what was your reaction. Remind people here. We've talked about it since, but initially your reaction to the interview was.
What she stayed true to who she was. But so I wanted that to be clear that I wasn't faulting her in any way for her interview style, because she's a TV host with her own personality and brings her own way of doing things to the show, and that's her business and it's her show, it's the Drew Barrymore Show.
But I just said it was really hard to watch, incredibly uncomfortable to watch, not just because of how close she was talking to her, but the fact that she never once talked about any of the accolades and any of the hard work and any of the really impressive things that Kamala Harris has done throughout her career to become vice President of the United States, what she's done in office, and what she hopes to do if she
and Joe Biden are reelected. I mean, that is what you would kind of expect for her to be able to talk about what she's done, what she wants to do, and you can talk about it in an uplifting female way where you're talking about this is the first female vice president of the United States, so many places you could go, so to immediately talk about step children, bonus children, being a mom, how she laughs, It just it just felt really uncomfortable to me, just because there were so
many other more important things she could be talking to her about as a powerful, intelligent, accomplished woman. So that was my cringe. That was the cringiness for me. I felt uncomfortable with the whole just mom centered vibe. It just felt forced and it felt like a an uncomfortable narrative that could have been a part of the interview, but shouldn't have been the focus of the interview.
So that's where I will well, I will ask you before we get into my reaction to the interview, I will ask Kamla Harris has press, press conference. She's around a press core, right. They follow her around to which she's often asked questions or shouted questions. Maybe she answers them or not, but she's always in some environment around press, if you will, that allows her to answer or to be asked at least some of those questions you speak of.
Why not go to a talk show where the audience's women, to where it's daytime to where you got Drew Barrymore and not a journalist but an entertainer across Why is it still in that environment? Is it or should it be okay to stay in that particular lane that she's not allowed usually in her day to day to speak on. Yeah, it's that much.
Yeah, you know, and I say, I totally think that that can be a part of the questions, a part of the conversation. It just was odd to me that it was the sole focus. And clearly to your point, the White House knows what it's doing. They had Kamala Harris go to Drew Barrymore's show, where they know, of
course they've watched her show, her interviewing style. They knew she was only going to be answering softer questions where she was able to show her warmth, and that's something of course they wanted to do in an election year. It makes a lot of sense. We understand how these things work, and there's nothing accidental about her ending up on that show. It was very deliberate on the part of the White House and the Vice President's folks and staff. They knew what they were doing and they knew the
kind of interview they wanted to that point. They had pictures of her with her husband and her step children cued up, so they knew what the conversation was going to be. It just seemed incredibly odd and cringey that she was just asking her to be a mom of the country. It all felt inappropriate, to be honest, it felt it went too far in a direction that I think most people weren't prepared to hear.
Okay, So I watched the interview separate from you, and my reaction or the first thing out of my mouth about it had nothing to do with anything speak of, because all of that was it was. It was a sidebar to what jumped out in me as the most glaring issue that many people ultimately did have with it, and that is, of course her calling her Mama La. Of course her stepkids call her Mamla. Shouldn't that be
a fun moment, acute moment. But in going farther further and saying that we need you to be our protector, we need you to give us a hug, we need you to be the mom for the whole country, that I got incredible, Like I had a visceral reaction to hearing that immediately, because I recognize something as a black person, as a black man that you didn't immediately recognize, which is that she was putting Kamala Harris, a black woman into a category of service, putting it through a category
of being in service to others and a category of being a servant, and in a way that so many black women historically in this country have been stereotyped and put into a hole in an expectation that now we have the most powerful Black woman in the world being reduced to mammy. And it was amazing, and I wish
more conversations we talk about this. It's impossible almost for these to happen publicly, but in private to where you and I got to have this full and wonderful discussion about something that just stands out or is different between us because of our different experiences. And that's okay. And Drew Barrymore didn't get it. I believe in the moment what she was saying, Obviously she didn't mean any harm, and I think she was trying to pay a compliment.
But for so many in the country, and so many black folks obviously imediately see that even the best and brightest of us, and the woman sitting as the vice president has now been reduced. It didn't help the optics that it was a white woman sitting on that couch with her has been reduced to nothing more than a servant, a maid, a mammy, or what we have stereotypically seen black women being portrayed as. And that stings to high heaven for a lot of black folks.
And the moment you said that to me, we had this discussion a few days ago, and just hearing you say it again, because we've been talking about this for several days now, I genuinely got chills once again from head to toe because my mind when I first watched it never went there, My reaction never went there. But the moment you said it, a light bulb went off and I thought, oh my god, I never e even thought about it that way. But now that you say that,
it makes perfect sense. And this is something this example, I feel like is something us white folks can look at and think, this is exactly a moment where frame of reference, my frame of reference was even as a woman like that's I'm more than that. I'm not just a mom, I'm not just a caregiver. I'm not just somebody who needs to help other people feel better about their pain. That's what we do as moms oftentimes. But I wasn't thinking about it obviously from a black person's
or specifically a black woman's perspective. But the moment you said it rang true. That is what we have portrayed and treat so many Black women as in movies, in television shows. You know, everywhere you look, you start seeing the examples and then you can understand that reaction. But it also is fascinating to me that I didn't have that initially, nor did. We watched a lot of the commentary. We've seen a lot of the reaction to the initial interview,
and you can kind of break it down. I mean, everyone I think called it cringe worthy for the most part, but you could break down why people thought it was cringeworthy along racial lines, and that is fascinating to me. It opens up a conversation, but hopefully it also can open up a bridge so that we can understand, oh, oh, I'm seeing it from a different perspective now, and damn wow.
We all need to check why we're thinking things how we think, even if we intend them as compliments, which I actually agree with you I think Drew Barrymore thought she was giving her a compliment, and it was It was quite the opposite, and.
It was coming from a and we get. But in a moment like that, you have to ask, why is it you might applaud that moment? Why isn't Why is it that you might have said the same thing? And that's why it's difficult to have these conversations in public. You and I have one. Oh my god, I wish people could see how we have our conversations in private. But what is it about anyone who sees that moment
and would applaud it. What is it about that moment with Drew Barrymore who thinks she's saying it never registered to her what she was saying because and you know this, I listened to you describe what your issues were with the interview, and I was just waiting, like, she's going to get to it. She's going to get to it. And that part of it, which was the only thing I actually reacted to, Wow, didn't even cross your mind. It was just fascinating and I and I would encourage
anybody to have the conversation. If you have it with yourself, fine,
but have it with somebody in safety. But we try to have these conversations publicly, they don't work because it doesn't work in one hundred and forty or two hundred and eighty characters, or we just we will all this clap back we discussed before we even came on here, like what word can I use to describe what's happening because we're like, well, I don't want to use backlash, don't because all these little catch words are being used
now to describe what this is. And what this is is just a moment that we can all learn from. It's infuriating for black folks. For one, I have to endure the moment, and then two I have to explain to you how to do better at that. That second part is very difficult.
No, and I and I get it, and we we You and I can talk about it, and it's a safe space. There's there's obvious trust and love there between us. So it's amazing to have these conversations and I totally get the you know, it's like a double whammy to
then have to explain why that's offensive. But the truth is this is really about, you know, the lens through which we all see things, and we all immediately see things through the lens of our own personal experiences, and obviously I have no idea what it's like to be black in America, and you're I am getting a much
clearer view of it. And I'll never know, obviously, but seeing you and walking beside you and hearing you and loving you and knowing things in a way that I wouldn't have known even a few years ago when we were just friends and open about lots of things. But this is so much different now, and I just it's a moment where we can all just take a step back, because the reaction is to be defensive and to say, well, you know, I don't think. I don't think about black
women that way. That's not how I view black women. That's not what I think. But the truth is it's in our heads. If it didn't register to me that that was offensive, then I'm not being honest about how black women are often portrayed, almost singularly portrayed, and how
we're all comfortable with that and it's not fair. And so I'm so comfortable with that notion that it didn't seem offensive to me, which is something I need to examine and something we all need to examine as white people because we don't understand what it's like to be relegated to that in so many ways, and then to think that that's just an okay thing to be. And I learned a lot watching this clip, and I loved how you did that. You didn't say anything to me,
You just said what did you think? And I restated it all here at the beginning of the podcast, and then to hear your reaction was it was mind blowing.
And again, Kamala Harry, this is bad. I mean, I think in a lot of ways there's some effort out there to humanize her, but a part of that, a problem with that is that you also need to make sure this woman is seen as capable and strong and a potential president. And so this woman was the attorney general the most populous state in the country, she was a senator from the most populous state in the country. She's the vice president and you and it just just hug us and be our mammy. It's how it comes.
I'm not pleased. We have to be clear here. We are not beating down on Drew barrymore for the moment and how could you. But the moment is one that is worth making note of and taking note of. And we didn't want rov you and I didn't want to just hop on and do a quick podcast. We wanted to be deliberate and want the things to calm down a little bit, and we wouldn't want to add to the fire. But it is a teachable moment. It is a moment to take note to see why. And my
first thought was Hattie McDaniel. One of my first was Hattie McDaniel, first black person to win an oscar. She won for Gone with Wind, She won for playing a slave. Her name literally was Mammy in the movie. Her name was Mammy, and it was her job to be in service to this white family, to do it loyally with
no recognition. That is exactly the position that now so many black women are being put in in this country all the time of we gotta go solve the problem, we have to go come in and be the saviors,
and we never get any recognition. It's another burden. And to think that the vice president, the black woman, has been reduced to that in that moment, No matter what do you think about, Drew Barrymore was just tough and even if you mean no harm, you can still do some harm, and so the only way we reduce that harm a little bit is by having just a loving conversation about what we all just saw and how we felt about it. And that's something you and I can
do privately. I don't know if it's happening publicly.
Yeah. And I saw someone wrote recently about just the only maybe other strong female leader in this country that we could point to maybe would be Hillary Clinton. I mean, you could name some other names, but the most notable one perhaps, And someone suggested, would anyone have asked Hillary Clinton to be the mom of this country?
Yeah? No, I'm had to say that to me. I don't know, because of her style and how she goes about I don't know, but I doubt it. To you, you're making the point.
Right, I mean, just just in case you're thinking, well, come on, it's just something you might say to any woman.
I don't know that that's true. And I think just to actually really think about it and sit with it and think about what our ideas and thoughts are about the role black women play in this country, in our lives, in this world, and just it's worth being honest with yourself about what our feelings are and what we've seen and how black women have been portrayed and so it all, you know, it all comes into play here when you
see what happened in that studio on Monday. And again I agree, I don't think there was any ill intent, but it is something to examine and to ask yourself.
And I go to the Oscars and it's such an obvious case. But Hattie McDaniels, of course famously played the slave. But you go through and look at I mean, Monique won an Oscar for playing a welfare mother. Harry Barry Barry be right, even with Pie Goldberg played some con artists a charlatan by Ola Davis. Ela Davis and Octavia Spencer both got nominations Oaktavia won it both as maids. There's a history of this that why is it that we are so comfortable needing black women to be in
certain roles to make us comfortable? If you're this, you're the vice president, but I need you to be this other thing that makes me more comfortable, and you in service of me is how it is immediately interpreted by us. And that's that's that's a tough one. Again, no matter what Drew Barrymore might have thought in the moment you made this is a very good example of how you've watched things, or you have insight into the black community and black folks and black men, and just being by
my side the way you have. But you know, this drives me crazy. Is one of the most frustrated moments I probably ever had at ABC News. But you were there by my side during the Oscars twenty twenty two. Right, Yes, Yeah, the slap herd around the world. We were in a I can't remember the name of the hotel. It was a watch party for the Oscar. We're out there the cover of the Oscars.
Yes, we had just gotten off the red carpet.
Yes, And we go to this Oscar's watch party in the lobby of the hotel where we all were big screens up. The slap happens, right, Will Smith, Max, Chris Rock. We couldn't try everybody's and shot it? Did that just happen?
Was that real?
Once we figured I was real, I was on the phone within thirty seconds. You were right next to me. I was, And who I called was one of my boys, Rodney, who has been worked with Chris Rock for decades and has been a part of some of his biggest specials and helping him write them. But he's been a friend for a long time. Trust his brother more than anything. I call him immediately and he doesn't even say hello, He just says, yeah, it was real. First thing is yeah,
it was real. But you saw a conversation take place between two black men, like I'm literally within sixty seconds
of that slap happening. That showed that we as black people were viewing that moment differently from you and how you saw it and didn't even think about it in the moment, because we saw it and immediately thought this is bad for us, for black folks, because we got a black producer, we got black folks nominated, we got d Nice as the DJ at the This was the Black Oscars and we know that to see two black men who are on our mount rushmore essentially of entertainers
in my generation, Will Smith and Chris Rock. Can you imagine seeing them roll around on the Oscar stage fighting two black men. Chris Rock saved that Oscars by not retaliating because we know this was the Black Oscars, and white folks can now look and go see told you see what happened when you put them in charge, see what happens. See that was my immediate reaction that you saw, And it never would have dawned on you that that was happening.
You weren't just watching entertainment. You were personally devastated watching it happen. And I would say just I think moments earlier, we had an amazing red carpet interview with Will Packer. Oh yeah, and you could see the excitement, the opportunity, the opportunity to show the world what black people can do. I saw the unbelievable disappointment and almost embarrassment, like you were almost personally taking it on. And I saw that and it was different.
Yeah, so we then have to go the next morning you saw something else. So we're getting ready to go on. It was four am on the West coast, right the show's live GMA at seven am on the East coast, So we're up at four in front of a camera up at four.
We didn't even go to bed. That I mean, we were watching the whole thing and then the talk afterwards. I mean, we never went to bed. We just went straight onto the set of Good Morning America.
But starting the show before the show. There was another another ABC talent there and we're talking. It's thirty folks staying around between camera guys and harror and makeup and tech folks and everybody's around, and we're standing in front of the camera ready to go, several of us, and we started talking about that moment, and this white counterpart of mine said that they didn't see it that way as we started talking about it and said, well, no, I watched it too, and I was you know, I
was hurt, I was offend. I was just couldn't believe and I said, no, no, but what I'm saying is as black folks, we were watching and this means something different to us, and da da DA shut me down. This person did and said, no, TJ, you're making it something it's not and you're looking at it the wrong way. You were standing right next to yes.
This person said, we all felt it the same. You didn't feel it any differently than me, and was actually offended that you had or were claiming to have a
different reaction than this person. And I can tell you watching it, and by the way, I want to actually say, you were tasked with starting this conversation because of what you just mentioned you were asked to talk about what it was like for you to watch, what it was like for you to experience, and so you were because you don't script anything out, you were talking it through before we went on the air, and that's when this person told you that you couldn't have shouldn't have seen
things any differently than everyone else in the room. And I knew what was about to happen. Ha.
Look, I had to and I had to keep it cool at the time, But that was such a stark illustration of it's okay for us to see things differently, but we as black folks get really offended when we're told by our white counterparts that we are not justified in our unique experience in this country. And so if anyone is looking at the Drew Barrymore Kamala Harris interview and said, nah, you're making something that is not We're
having different experiences, and that's okay, that's actually okay. But anytime we're denied the right, and in that moment at GMA, on this out in the field, being told that you are not justified, you do not have a unique experience, you do not have the right to your own black experience, giving you a perspective on the same thing we're watching. I was told flat out, no, you are wrong for how you're feeling by a white person.
You were completely invalidated, and that has to be an incredibly frustrating thing. And I think for me to watch it, I'm telling you my jaw dropped because to tell someone that their experience isn't valid or real, or their feelings don't count or the fact, or to even consider that you could have a different perspective based on how you have come up in the world. That is when it really turns ugly and sad to me, because can we
all acknowledge that we see things differently? And more importantly, we can learn from each other's perspectives and each other's experiences, but you can't invalidate them, because then there's no place to start from. You have to at least give someone the credit and the understanding that they have a different experience and it's not wrong and it's not fake. It's just not your experience. So, yeah, that was an amazing thing.
And I remember you looked around the room and I don't know how many people it was a big production. Would you say there were I don't know twenty thirty people.
Oh for sure, at least thirty.
There was only one other. There was a black man right camera, and you said hello, and you shout it out to him, You said, can you help me out here? Like you know, we saw things differently.
The point there is that so many times black folks, and certainly when you get into certain environments in corporate America where you're sitting and I'm in an environment to where there are thirty people in a room, they're twenty eight white. Two black guys have a particular perspective about something. So the twenty eight white folks agree on their perspective. So you two are the minority perspective, So you must
be wrong. There's no way twenty eight of us are seeing it the wrong way, So you two must be wrong. That happens so often. It happened. It was you know this my frustration oftentimes in this world to where I go in this world, in this media landscape, to where you go to your morning meetings, your afternoon meetings, and you're the only black person in the room and you're trying to convince a whole room of folks that you are correct when they don't get it. Because they don't
live your experience. It was the saying the GMA staff meetings, thirty people in the room. If I didn't go, there was really that might not be a black man in the room at all. And I had to for years hear people when they're pitching a story having to do with a potential black interviewee. They would add, he speaks so well, he's really well spoken. Yeah, this business owner out in San Francisco. Yeah, yeah, but it's okay. He's well spoken, but it's okay. He's a good talker. That
it happens so often. And then I finally spoke up one day about it, and you know, the first thing out of somebody's mouth after I stopped talking, Yeah, women deal with this kind of thing all the time. It immediately undercut, took away everything I said, and they went back to their own thing. And now I didn't expect this, and you didn't. We talked about this podcast on I didn't expect to be vending or talking about it this way.
But I find the Drew Barrymore Kamala Harris situation a valuable, valuable, valuable teaching moment if we will embrace it. And the only way you can embrace it is by acknowledging. What you Robock acknowledge is that you know what I looked at it and that moment didn't even register to me. So let me listen to somebody else who this did impact. That doesn't happen enough, and it doesn't happen publicly.
I would argue, Yeah, it's time to hear her side of the story.
I love the show so much. I was like, please throw my name in the mix.
I need to be in on this.
We were sure she was going to be the next bachelorette and then something changed.
I'm giving things very very hush hush.
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Oh, we have more Sami.
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To your point, the last story you just told about, you know, immediately referring or relating it back to what women go through. I do think in this case, and in so many of the cases, there is this absolute desire to connect to your pain or to connect to your story, but in doing so completely invalidates your point where you just bring it back to what you know or what you've gone through or what you've experienced. And I know that is a human tendency, but it's incredibly
offensive and you're not actually listening. You're not actually saying, wow, I didn't realize that. Tell me more. And I always feel like if you can just follow up with a question about what that person's asking, I've learned the hard way. Instead of just relating it back to yourself or what you could say, oh, well, I know what that feels like too. Actually, guess what, most of the time we
don't know what it feels like. So maybe how about follow up with a question, follow up with deeper understanding.
It's just an opportunity the next time your brain might go to relating it back to yourself or relating it back to something you have, maybe in the most genuine of ways, to try and connect to people and to be a part of something instead acknowledge that you probably don't know anything about what this person's been through or has gone through, and ask some questions to learn instead of trying to bring it back to yourself or trying
to say too. And so I just feel like that is something that we can learn from and something that we've talked about. And I've had to actually retrain my brain. I think it's a it's a human thing. Maybe it's a privileged thing. I don't know, but I know that I have had to reevaluate where my brain goes first, and to really try to ask a question next instead of just saying, well, here's what I think or here's
what I believe. And I think that could go a long way in these types of conversations and viewing things, and and also just readily acknowledging and admitting that my brain didn't go there. I didn't think about it that way, and that's okay. But I can learn why didn't it and then understand why it didn't, and that goes a long way into actually truly connecting to someone's experience.
Most of those have to possibly happen in private. I encourage folks to have those private conversations, right, we were not having it on a grander scale or on a TV somewhere and these larger But you and I have gotten so far in our conversations because they're private, because we respect each other, because we love each other. We know where our hearts and heads are, and it's okay to make a mistake in private, and what you're saying,
you need to have that in safety. So my first thought when I saw and I told you that I wanted to When I heard it, I was so like I said, I had a visceral reaction when she said this to Kamala Harris, and I was so bothered. But then it took a matter of seconds and I wanted to take Drew Barrymore to lunch and just talk to her in a safe place, not to educate her, but
she needs a safe place. And the biggest issue. We're not sitting here criticizing Drew Barrymore at all, but if there's any place we get close to criticism, our minds are blown that no one flag this because this show was not live, it was taped, and it was taped. You told me this, I think yesterday. Wait, they had how many days with this.
Well, I read that they taped this on the Wednesday before. I know for a fact they gave clips and excerpts to People Magazine on the Friday before, and then it aired on Mondays. So at the very least they had the weekend, the producers, the editors, you know, to make
sure that the best product went out. I know that I don't know all the details of how long the interview was, but from what I've read, Drew does long interviews and then they cut them down and put the best clips for the actual interview that airs, which makes a lot of sense. We all did that in broadcasting.
That makes sense. But to think that there were I don't know how many people in the room who had to say in the final cut, no one flagged this, and you pointed out in terms of I don't know what the what the diversity is on her staff, but it just begs the question, how did no one flag this? How did no one see this? If you have, you know, a bunch of me in the room, white folks, maybe yeah, you might say, well, that's just Drew's style and that's
just what she does. But to flag the potential potential problem that this would be for so many black folks watching this. That's that kind of that's puzzling.
Because we know that we've been in this business television for a long long time. There are so many especially when a big interview, there are so many eyes on it. But even if we don't know behind the scenes how many got to see it, we do know this. There's camera guys, there's stage hands, there's a stage manager, there's an audio guy. There's a director, there's a technical director.
These folks just have to see it no matter what. Right, So we're up to maybe six to ten people who are not even involved in the editor editorial process, who heard and saw this take place. Now you go to the producers, the host, the editors sitting in the room putting it together. It is a little baffling that nobody said, uh, guys, this part right here. That that part is fascinating to me. Like, no matter what you remember, I used to come around, I wouldn't put a show on GMA or story on
GMA had to do with the LGBTQ plus community. I would go ask DeAndre gay brother we had working there at the time. I would go ask somebody, Hey, if I say it this way, or can you look at this for me? Or can you read this? I would come to your dress.
You came into our dressing room, my dressing room all the time asking about you know, female issues, Like what would you say, is this okay? Would this be offensive? I mean, that's what you do beforehand, but even after the fact, especially when you have time and we've all had big interviews, big heavy weighted interviews that you know are going to get a lot of eyeballs, that you know is going to have a lot of scrutiny. I don't understand how no one flagged that.
I don't understand so to in that regard, I'm like, wow, she needs like there's someone who's got to be looking out better for her. You can argue she should have known better. Fine, fine, fine, fine, but there's just that's just not on her. And maybe some feel like she didn't make a mistake at all, that there's nothing wrong with what she said, that there it's okay, and that
people are making too much out of it. Then those those folks, I beg you really to take a beat, do a little reading, and try to understand a different perspective and not just dismiss it. We can all be looking at the exact same thing and have a different reaction to it, as was the case with me and you.
Yeah, and I think, what's promising about this? Or maybe just this naive hope I might have that because there was no mal intent, I don't, and because there was something ugly or mean spirited that was said at all, that actually this is a shining example of something that we could look at and say, ah, I can see how we can do better because no one did anything deliberately or intentionally wrong, and yet still the messaging needs to be addressed, needs to be acknowledged, and we need to do better.
My last, if folks don't don't believe, I want everybody to look up Michelle Nichols. I think I've been talking about her for I mean, probably twenty years, but she's somebody I thought about with this and that she played lieutenant of her. If folks don't know she was the original lieutenant of her was Zoe Saldana, Oh yeah, she played lieutenant of her in the New Star Trek. But this lady was the original old school black lady lieutenant her own Star Trek, and she had decided to quit
the show this is the nineteen sixties. I can't remember which year, but she decided I'm gonna quit because she went to go to Broadway did some other thing. Broadway was more profitable, the bigger deal, more prestigious than some little TV show about some stuff tracks star trek Ye. It seems crazy to think, but she just I'm gonna juggernaut, right. She quit so she could go do Broadway. She had a chance meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. In Detroit. I believe it was in which he was talking about
he was a tricky. He was so excited to meet her. Say, it's the only show that they let the King kids stay up and watch. And she told him I'm gonna miss it. And he said, wait, wait what she told him she was gonna quit. He told her how she recalls the story, you are the first black person to be on TV that is not a maid, a slave, a servant. It's showing us strong, intelligent, beautiful, capable black people. You are doing just as much for us by being on TV as we're doing out here in the streets.
You cannot quit. And she didn't quit, And the rest
is history. Doctor King understood even back then, how important it was for black people to be seen a certain way, and to think that this day and age, that the vice president, a black woman, is still being reduced in some way to nothing more than service is what I desperately want everybody please to try to take that, to take that in to where it's not just a matter of somebody sitting too close on the couch or It means so much more than just a cringey interview, and
it's a very important and valuable moment if we're willing to be honest. Maybe not in public, but please, I beg you to be honest private about how you really reacted to what you saw and how you reacted to some black people's reaction to it.
What I just don't think. I think you said it so well. I think that's the perfect way to end, and I think that's what.
Are you looking at me?
Well, No, I was looking at you. Actually, I was admiring what you said, because I do. I was looking at you with love actually, but no, and I yeah, that was love and admiration. Did what did it look like?
It looked like I had done something wrong and.
I need to work on my facial expressions.
Yeah, look like it doesn't wrong. Oh, this wasn't It wasn't supposed to be an emotional thing. It's just it's one thing. If you don't get it, we're okay. If you don't understand it, don't get it. But if you deny us the opportunity to have our own experience, that stings. Man.
Yeah, So that's something we can all work on. And I love your willingness to be open about that and to talk about it on an emotional level, because it is it's personal. It is personal. It is emotional, and it does matter, and little things matter and words that you choose matter, and we just all need to be honest with ourselves and be more intentional and more respectful.
We're scared to but I give you credit. I mean, behind the scenes is one thing, but it's only possible if you have a safe place to be honest about how you're feeling. And how you're feeling sometimes or how you view things might might get you a little scrutiny, but you have to be willing to be open and honest, and that's the only way we're going to solve a problem.
So thank you. I was a little worried that you I mean, I don't want anybody to look at you and your reaction to it as something that's that should also be criticized, scrutinized, or it's okay.
Yeah, it's okay. Yeah, it's okay to admit what you don't know, and it's okay too, And I think that's actually where you start to learn to admit what you don't know.
Well, well you've learned a lot, baby, I have so much you don't. I'm sorry, I'm kidding, obviously, I'm kidding, but yeah, we should do more around the kitchen table.
I like it, Yeah I do, and I hope you all did too. Thank you, Thank you for listening, and I hope that I hope that we all learned something and we can all do better.
Alright, So, folks, you know to can always follow Robes and I. We have our personal Instagram accounts, but the show also on Instagram at Amy and TJ Podcast. Thank you, as always for listening. We'll talk to y'all soon.