Kali Reis on Making History as an Afro-Indigenous Actor

Hey fam, Hello Sunshine.

Today on the bright Side, we're joined by women's boxing World champion, Emmy nominated actress and writer Kaylee Mcquinninogg Reese. Can the mindset of a champion carry from the ring to the screen?

We'll find out. It's Tuesday, August twentieth.

I'm Danielle Robe and I'm Simone Boyce and this is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to share women's stories, laugh, learn and brighten your day. Okay, y'all, Today's guest is a barrier breaker and a history maker. During her career as a professional boxer, Kaylee ko mcquinnanoggu Reese earned six world titles and was the first Indigenous woman fighter to become a

Now.

If you haven't watched the season of the show, Reese, who stars alongside Jodi Foster, plays the role of Evangeline Navarro. She's a state trooper investigating a cold case and the disappearance of a group of Arctic scientists. What I loved about this season is that it immersed us in a culture and a subculture that we don't often get to see, and the way that they brought it to life on the screen was just so rich and dynamic and layered.

Yeah, and we're used to the leads in that show being men. This season it was women, So it was cool to watch. And Kaylee's a woman of many talents. She's one of those people that just will not be stopped. She and her five siblings were raised by their mother in East Providence, Rhode Island. At just thirteen years old, she found refuge from a tumultuous adolescence in the boxing ring.

And even though Reese has already earned an Emmy nom, she's actually relatively new to Hollywood, which is so surprising. I mean, before True Detective Reese had only appeared in two films before she was cast for the show, and the HBO series marked her entry into TV.

Acting, and in.

Real life, she's an active supporter of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Movement, which combats the widespread issue of violence against Indigenous people. So her advocacy in the Native community led her to co write and act in the twenty twenty one film Catch the Fair One, which told the story of a boxer searching for her missing younger sister. That performance, which was her acting debut, earned her an Independent Spirit Award nomination.

So after the break, Kaylee Reese tells us how she went from boxing champion to Emmy nominated actor and how she's bringing her activism to the screen and beyond.

Stay with us, Kaylee become to the bright side.

Thank you very much, thanks for having me.

We're so happy to have you.

Yeah, we've been looking forward to this for a minute. Kayleie mquinnanogue Reese, correct, good job, Thank you. Will you tell us the meaning of your Native American name?

So, my Native American name it means many feathers and many talents, and I got it given to me by my mother.

Well, how do you just so naturally embody that like you are?

That My mom's very special, So she must have known I was just destined for this journey.

I had no idea what she would have gave me a heads up, right, But it's all good. It's it's all blessings.

Indigenous traditions and stories are so deep and there's so much resilience in them. A lot of times, is there a specific teaching or story that you grew up with that your mom told you that sticks out to you.

The stories of how strong and how our society and how our people are so matriarchal, and how our women are so sacred, and where the strength and the backbone of our people. That's something that she my grandmother, great grandmother, and all the women and all the aunties aunties and all the moms and mama bears I had around, they really instilled in me of how strong we are and where the strength of our people comes from. And even the men in the tribe and our people were always

And he had a war chief named Anaalon.

He used to say autash, which needs means stand strong to our people, and that's where we come from, a warrior of people.

I had to actually tattooed on my back autash.

So it's just kind of like a constant reminder of how we have to just always stand strong.

You know where you come from. I do know where I come from. I'm so proud of it.

To what my question is is where are you going?

Because that many feathers, many talents could take you a lot of places. Yes, you just got an Emmy nomination for True Detective Night Country.

Congratulations.

Yes it is huge, And it's just that's a good question where I'm going because I have no idea, but I know that I'll be prepared for it. So whatever I get put in front of me, whatever blessings I get with other opportunities I get.

I'm a workhorse.

I know I got I have the capability to do it, and if I think I don't.

I'll figure it out, man, I'll figure it out.

So I will say I have a question about the Emmy nomination because I think awards mean different things to different people. We've talked to some people on the show that were like it was validation some people said, I don't really care. It's just something to hang on my wall. What does it mean to you.

You know, just to be nominated, especially in this such a special time for Indigenous storytellers and creators and just Indigenous people and whole. I don't think about it as a me thing. It's more like a wee thing, and it's just, you know, to be nominated for an Emmy alongside Gladstone as well. She's also Indigenous, but I I just said this, like, we are both Indigenous, from two

I'm from New England and I'm from Island.

I'm from you know, seaconk Wapanoog from the first Contact people. So that's like a couple of boxes to be checked. Being mixed black Indigenous, you know, that's just so many things to talk about that I'm in a position to talk about with such confidence. I mean, that'd be go to win. But I'm not just to be here, to be able to you know, be in these conversations and then I'm just excited for what this could.

Lead to for the collective kind of thing.

This role though, playing a detective, an Afro Indigenous detective, this is this is a really personal role for you, not just because of your own heritage, but also because of some of the experiences that you've had with police.

Yes, it is. It was a very weird experience.

So back in twenty twelve, I got badly assaulted by a Providence police officer doing my job. So I had bad PTSD from it. I went through a really dark time in my life with it. It was right after a bad motorcycle accident, so I had a really bad experience. You know, use derogatory language towards me, racist, sexist, all the above. So I had to do a lot of

It's really interesting that just the act itself of putting on the uniform brings up conversations and complex emotions for people in your community.

It was very, very rad I even had a couple of conversations with some of the other Indigenous women on set, and they already they kind of gave me that look like, yeah, how.

Do you feel.

I'm like, I don't really know right now, like, but I know. It actually gave me a really good character work. I built a whole backstory for the Navarro and the reason why she even got into the military and then made the decision to be a police officer was a It was a kind of a two part answer necessity and because she is kind of good at that type of thing, So it gave me kind of a it was a real feeling for my character too, of like I gotta put this uniform on, man, like one of

You're a world champion boxer. I'm sort of struck by the fact that this encounter with this police officer put you into such a tail spin, like it's so upsetting to hear did you press charges?

I actually did.

We come to find out he was an older police officer and he had been assaulting just regular patron since the year I was born, oh since eighty six. Because there was quite a few people, a lot of women, who came forward and said he did some things that he wasn't supposed to put hands on people, was using excessive force, and every time they went forward with trying to press charges, they'd get threatened by his colleagues and they'd get scared into not pressing charges. That happened to me.

So I just followed through.

And then he had a book of all these different names of people that he assaulted, and we went forward, got fired and I actually got a whole thank you from the city of Providen.

It's like, thank you for following through. We got rid of them. Kind of a thing.

And I hope you watch True Detective. This is a big few to you. I look better in the uniform than you do.

Elly.

That takes real strength, mental and physical toughness.

Yeah it was.

It was a doozy, but it's just another story that no matter how far down you think you are, it's not You don't got to stay there.

There's something that you said about boxing that I want to ask you about. You described it as your ceremony and your prayer.

What do you mean by that?

So, as you know an indigenous person and just kind of how I grew up. Everybody has their medicine. I mean, your medicine could be you the best fry cooker at Burger King, and you just you get a certain type of energy. Energy doesn't have any prejudice, doesn't have a certain language.

It speaks.

It speaks to everybody in a certain way. So if you when you do something, whatever you love to do, whether it's put your hair up in the morment, it just gives you that really good high energy, high vibration, that's your medicine. Fighting again, is always been in my blood, and it wasn't the act of the violence. It was the art of it and the fact that okay, I can get better at this. There's a skill you have to have here. It's not just anger. You actually have

Yes I want to get the win, Yes I want to get the belts.

That's great, but the representation I have as this platform is. You know, people see me as an athlete. There's not a lot of native athletes out There's not a lot of capabrity athletes out there, a mixed person at such as myself. So that is my prayer to have representation, have those children and I have those people, even older people that like, wow, oh my god, she's on TV. She looks like me, she's from where we're from. That's

We have to take another quick break, but we'll be right back with Kaylee Reese.

And we're back with Kaylee Reese. So you're a world champion boxer. Tell me what happens next. How do you get into acting?

By the grace of the creator, I have no idea, Like, honestly, you know.

How I even got into it was the director writer of the first movie I did call Catch the Fair One, splitting my DM on Instagram. Honestly, I've always meant interested in acting. It's never been something that I'm.

Like I'm going to grow up and be in Hollywood and me an actor brock.

But you know, my mom and grandmother us to put me in a little plays and I had this little character. Used to do it for my mother when she came home from work.

But what was the character?

Her name is Mary and she smoked a peck and every day of Dylan and gather a little duncan down't's cool feet?

Now?

I used to like dress up in her hot clothes like and she used to. I still do it now. Her name is me How old were you?

And I had to be like I don't know, seven or eight.

I always love people watching and I would just like there's a come farms is like as a Rhode Island like a gas station, and like can you go to companies and get me ladge dunking in the Pakistani Like like I just used to watch these people around the neighborhood and just like you know, just imitate.

But it's it's my mom's do marry do marry? Yeah?

This this director reached out to me the point of my life where I was. Boxing has always been an outlet for me. It's it's taken a lot, but it's given me a lot. I've missed birthdays, holidays, my mom's wedding, but I was in New Zealand fighting for a world title, you.

Know what I mean.

It's given me a lot, but I've traveled the world and it's actually led me into acting. But he caught me a time where I was really vulnerable and I was in a weird spot because we had just lost one of my brothers to brain cancer, and it was a spot where boxing was our thing.

He was my biggest fan.

I brought him to the gym after he was in remission to get his motor skills back.

How was our thing? So it was just not doing it for me and I was just trying to find a way to grieve.

And he kind and I was like for whatever reason, I'm like, all right, boxing didn't have a longevity and I need to do something. I always have a plan a through z and you know, I'll figure it out kind of a thing. But acting just kept poking at me like I don't know where to start, Like what do you do? Like auditions had no idea, but this meant for me, it'll find me. A week later, he inboxed me on Instagram, like I'm like, who's this creep? But he's just like, you know, I'm so and so

I want to give everyone a little context that role you're talking about was a boxer in the film Catch the Fair One, and you play an Indigenous woman who's searching for her missing sister, which is fictional, but as you said, you brought some of your real life experiences to it.

Yeah, And as far as the acting goes, he we would like practice different scenes.

He had a friend of his that was an actor.

We just did some bouncing off back and forth and he would give me all his knowledge he knew about acting, and then I was like, okay, so, but he kept saying, you got it, k you got you got the you got the sauce. I'm like, way sauce sweets ausa. I'm like, what do you mean. He's like, you got something. I'm like okay. And I knew from him saying that sometimes you only need that one person see something.

You might not understand it. But he said.

I was like, well, if you believe it, and I see that look in your face and all right, So I don't want to let you down.

So I'm just gonna go hard.

I'll do my best, And that's really how I got into acting, and from there I got nominated for Best Actress Since at the Spirit Indie Spirit Awards for that is a huge deal, which is a huge on my first and it was the intention behind it was just let's tell this story the right way.

I mean, the most recent data I could find was from twenty sixteen and it said that in the US about six thousand Indigenous women and girls were reported missing or murdered, but only one hundred and sixteen of those cases were logged by the US Department of Justices federal database, only one hundred and sixteen. And those stats are probably much lower than the reality because so many cases go unreported.

Yeah, that's reported.

To talk about the reported part first, you know, I've heard, not experienced, but I heard because I've sat down with a lot of survivors, a lot of families of these victims, and sometimes they have to be strategic on do we even report that she's missing, because number one, the authorities will say, well, she's probably just drunk somewhere.

Well, she's probably just ran away victim blaming.

Yeah, or sometimes it may be that the true, but why are they running away or she we were just reporter as white, because a reporter as Native, they're not going to look for her. And then it becomes a thing of jurisdiction. If it's a sovereignation whose jurisdiction doesn't fall under is it federal, is its state?

Is it tribal?

Those types of really really complicated things, and then logged wise, whose job is it who handles these special missing cases of Native people, especially when it's a Native girl who's registered to a sovereign nation, a federally recognized tribe.

That gets really complicated.

And then you get to the kind of elephant in the room their native and no one cares, you know what I mean, no one really cares about them because first of all, the average person thinks that Native American people Indigenous people are like ex thinks like we're dinosaurs and that we all live in tepees, which is insanity, or we all live on reservations and everybody's a drunk

Yeah, it's really sad.

There's a label that that Native people are expendable and that we are in the past and that we don't matter kind of a thing. I think that has a lot to do with it. And then when we have that context, it trickles down to the people, to the kids. Oh, we don't matter, nobody's going to look for us, so we need to run away. And there's so many things that going to what I can think about why hence the reason why when we made this film, Well, I gave him the information I had. I said, this is real.

I wish we didn't have to have that happen.

Yeah, it's just an epidemic that is an unexplainable.

Sad, very frustrating problem that we have here.

And I think, you know, it has a lot to do with the invisibility of Native people as a whole. It's just really something that needs to change, and it is changing.

Do you feel empowered by the work that you're doing, though, because you really are at the intersection of art and activism through the stories that you're telling on screen.

I do.

And it's funny because I don't really I call myself an activist. A lot of people call me that, and I'm like, okay, I can see that, But I know activists, and I know the grassroots people that are boots on the ground, working tirelessly, working with families directly, you know, having these organizations.

I'm more of a mouthpiece.

I believe that it's very empowering that I do get to speak about things like this that people don't normally hear about that. News channels don't necessarily want to dive into that. Podcasts don't want that. Film doesn't really want to dive into. Now it's like a oh, okay, great, I want to tell stories that matter like Marvel's great, But you know when Marvel did echo something like that the highlight Indigenous stories.

I do feel really empowered.

I feel very, very blessed to be in the position I am because I represent so much and the fact that I'm in something that everybody watches movies, everybody loves to be entertain But if there's a I'll say, I call my Dave Chappelle way of kind of like learning them in with some comedy, learning men with music or entertainment, and then dropping some knowledge on some real and real heavy stuff that maybe we're not so fun to talk about,

Well, you mentioned comedy. I actually hear that you want to do comedy.

I do. What kind of comedy are we talking?

What do you got thinking on?

I mean, you know Native people of Funny's House stories. I would love to do something with with like a native comedy. There's so there's so much out there right now. It's but like plays, there's this there's a lot of we're funny people.

You're right, those are really untapped stories, Like we haven't heard those stories.

You know, it's funny in Indian country.

There's all kinds of movies and shows and comedians that are hilarious, but it's not mainstream. We have humor to get us through all the bullshit that we've been through. Like, we love to laugh, we love to tell stories. There's and there's so many stories like I can make a movie about one night out a cup, like I swear I could. Yeah, So those types of stories of life experience. I would love to do something like that. The things that we laugh about amongst ourselves, those types of stories

Have you had conversations with people about pursuing comedy, because I feel like one thing that happens in Hollywood is like people start to know you for doing one sort of thing, and then you've got to like really be intentional about pivoting and have you started having those conversations.

Every chance I get that, people ask me, like, because clearly I do darkness and death and really intense.

Dreams, so much more than that. I know you can do so much more than that.

So I know what I could do. And obviously the physicality of being like an action hero. It's great and I know I got that down. So I do have those conversations frequently. So I'm like, oh, no, I want to do comedy, like dude, I want to do like action of core like drama of course, but yeah, I do have every chance I get, like sitting down at take away tet. So, guys, I wanted to like a k action comedy.

You'd be so good in that. That would be awesome. Mix it all yes, mix it all up.

Okay, have a really serious final question.

Okay, what was tough for boxing Jessica Kamara or the arctic conditions you were in filming True Detective.

Boxing Jessica Kamara. Man, that's we are friends and congratulations therea. She just won the WBA in term defeating mey CHOI. But I will say I'm not taking anything away from Jessica, but I was in a really health pit in twenty twenty two, so fighting her not to mention.

She's a fierce.

Fighter anyway, and I knew that going in. I'm like, we friends, holdie, but we gotta put it on the line. So I knew it was gonna be a great fight. But the fact that my health was in the toilet. That was I had to dig down to the depths of hell and onother dimension to get through that fight. Like I'm sitting on the stool and I had literally nothing left, and I'm watching the roundcod girl go by and she's holding up round four.

I'm like, oh shit.

Oh god, how am I gonna do this? Like that was tough, but that's the one thing I was willing to die. And I'm not kidding, I was willing to die. I'm like, well, if this is how I go, I'm gonna go out swinging kind of a thing. But I was like, I'm not gonna stop until I can't swing anymore. And that's what that was.

That was hard. I can't believe you have to fight your friends. This is something I never thought about.

I never thought about the fact that you might be in the ring with the Psychologically that is such a head trip.

But it was cool because I know she's bringing and I'm like, I know she's she can, she can hit hard, she's skilled, she listened, she's in condition.

But I want that. I don't want to fight the person I can beat. I want to fight the person people think they're gonna beat me.

Yeah.

See, that's the opposite of most boxer's mentality though, because they just want to run up there.

No, I don't need Instagram files. I'm a stupid pad work again. Oh my god, I got this pretty thing on. It's funny because until I had my manager and promoted, I was fighting in the same short, same taped up shoes like I'm like, yo, just put the.

Gloves on, ring the bell. I don't care like just I just want to fight kind of a thing.

So that's how you can tell it difference between a fighter now it's fights. Fighting box sounds a little different now as you can tell it different. You can't teach heart. You know. I'm not the most skilled fighter, but I got heart, I got dog, I got warrior, and I'll figure it out. There's a lot of fighters out there now that if things aren't going their way in the ring and then that things aren't perfect, you can mentally

Hayley, thank you for bringing that fighting spirit to the bright side. Thank you.

Haylee Reese was the first Indigenous woman fighter to become a World champion and was the first Afro Indigenous actor to be nominated for an Emmy.

That's it for today's show.

Tomorrow, it's time for another Wellness Wednesday. We're joined by gastar entrologist doctor Robin Hutkan to talk gut health, antibiotics and probiotics. Listen and follow the bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Simone Boye.

You can find me at Simone Boice on Instagram and TikTok.

I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok. That's r O b A. Y.

See you tomorrow, folks. Keep looking on the bright side.