Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio, March Means Women's History, Monk, and we're gonna celebrate here at QLs as we travel back to twenty twenty one for this mic drop episode with none other than Tracy Ellis Ross. Whether you heard before or not, you're really gonna love this one. I know, I do.
All right, enjoy your lighting designer should be paid?
He looks, yeah, I'm the job.
See you, guys. That means you would be paying Mother Nature or God.
So I don't know, I tell Tracy, trying to tell us that she's someone using juices and berries. I don't know.
I don't know if like, I don't know how invoices come from Mother Nature. I don't know. I don't know how to do.
That write A month later, it's gonna be a patterned skin line.
I actually want to skip the want to skip the Injoe, are you ready to go?
I'm recording. I'm recording, is recording, is recording right now?
All right, we're all recording. I'm recording right now. Ladies and gentlemen. First of all, all all of the team Supremer say hello at the same time. Hello, guys. Hello, Okay, all right, today's a day. No, you're not a team supremer.
Sorry, sorry you guys responding to.
The hello as I You're not family yet. Hang on, let's let's let.
Us Dutch you I apologize, apologize.
Yeah, today's the day of miracles. It's so miraculous. I don't even I don't even I don't even want to waste a nano second giving you good people are guest impressive resident of the may we can reviewer life at the same time, you know, as a group. Uh and I'm not even being dramatic because I'm afraid she's going
to disappear. So blah blah blah blah blah, lyrics, lounges blah blah blah, girlfriends, iconic parents blah blah blah, siblings, everybody, Yes, I blah, please welcome Tracy Ellis Ross the Quest Love Supreme. How did this moment happen? Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I just want to say, Tracy, I've never stalked as Yeah, I've never stalked a like a person I consider a friend like be one thing when I creep in Rihanna's DMS like, we don't have a
relationship like that. I've been I've been slowly poaching you bit by bit, like I would do like tiny comments on all your social media to be like, oh man, let me follow him. Then I'm jumping in your dms and trying to get and that would never happen. So I don't know how this moment that that.
Is ridiculous because by the way, the moment I finally saw your DM three years later. Three years later, but I saw it and I was like, what do you mean You've been trying to get I'm like, what are you talking about? Of course I'll do that.
Look, I want to I want to let all all polite stalkers know and I say this.
You ain't going to get to me.
Really, I'd like that just a little bit, a little bit at a time. Persistence does work, but you know I had to stalk here. How are you today, Trace?
I really like today. I'm really really good today. I am back from Cabo and my first sort of foray away. It's been a long time since I've had a break. This pandemic, like for everybody, was just really challenging. And I also didn't stop through the whole thing. I had a movie that came out right at the beginning of the pandemic, at the beginning of Lockdown, a week after George Floyd's murder, and it just it just has not stopped.
So how was it being like business as usual?
There was no business as usual, and it was a weird you know, leading up to the launch of the movie. I mean, I was so excited. It was the first time I sang like it was such a big moment for me. I walked through one of my biggest fears of my life. Like just it was so exciting. And then they're like, we're not going to have a premiere.
I'm like, I'm so wanna, you know. So that was the first like disappointment and also like, you know, small disappointment considering the many disappointments everyone was having and the genuine grief and loss that was occurring, but a personal disappointment. Nonetheless, people had to you know, reschedule weddings and couldn't be there with holding people's hands. So that was the first thing. And then and then it was like who cares? It
just felt so it was like who cares? And then it flipped back around to yes, because our freedom and our joy and our reveling in who we are is an important form of resistance in response to the systemic oppression and the violence and the deaths. And so it's just you know, like for everybody, we've been whirling around with so much in our hearts and heads through this time, right, I mean, that was such a not it's a heavy how am I?
But bo wait, I will say probably the glass half full answers. Also, I probably think that more people saw the high new and the way that we saw it because you know, there was there was this a period where television and movies was just all of our escape, you know what I mean.
Yeah, and so it was one of the first movies to do the whole straight to.
It was it was the second.
Yeah, No, I definitely remember, like.
Like genuinely, they didn't even know how to price it, Like that's how knew it was like no one knew what to I didn't even know what VOD meant, do you know what I mean? Like it was just no one understood any of that at that point. Yeah.
Yeah. The weekend that you guys in Palm Springs came out, that was like a happy weekend in the household, where we just you didn't know if you were coming or going, if we would be here next week or not here, you know, just yeah, So that I definitely remember, like just those first two months where just any new cinema content was like relief.
It's so funny. I didn't watch any TV. Screens were not my thing. I was reading at the beginning, reading and cooking and listening to audio books like I couldn't. I could, I don't. I couldn't find the right content that made me feel okay, And so I was going back to old books I'd already read. How'd you read? Uh? The Bluest Eye is one of my favorite audio books because it's read by Ruby d Antony. It's why it's literally like going to the theater ordering that now. Incredible, incredible.
So I listened to that. I went back to all the old David Sedari's books because they just made me laugh and sort of took me completely out of what we were in. And so I would cook and listen to audio books, and and then I slowly crept myself back to television. And you know, I remember watching The Tiger King and thinking, I'm not sure that this is a very soothing bomb. I don't know that my soul is going, Ah, this is what I needed. I'm not sure what's happening here. This is very much to take in.
His outfits were intense.
Was Tiger King. The lowest, I'll say, probably for me, was Selling sun That Set was the lowest that I went as far as like, what do you wait?
Wait? Can I just tell you something? Selling Sunset was definitely lower and I actually watched it too, and then I caught myself at a certain point and I was like, oh this, I've got to stop this.
I can't great right, and then you're watching all three seasons and.
My whole I did not watch all three seasons.
Here, you can go down with that.
So let me preface A friend of like, I'm a thirty rock So a friend of mine at Saturday Night Live was doing a Selling Sunset spoof for the show, and I didn't know the other references. I was like, all right, let me watch one episode, and then that's how I got trapped, yeah, and then started just watching. I still have not.
Watched an episode of the Kardashians.
Ever in your whole life.
No, I why really, none of y'all, I really.
Have gentlemen, I'm giving you the biggest side I right now, come on, but no, I really haven't.
First of all, you do get enough of the snippets on cram Ma'll come through? I did, I will. I tried to watch this the was it the first episode of this fight? Is this the final This is the final season, right, Leslie.
I'm not supposed to know that, but yeah, that's what they say. You know, that's what I heard.
Okay. I saw that.
I saw a piece of it, and I was watching and I was like, this is just not for me, you know, It's just it's just not this is the same thing happens. When I opened TikTok, I go, oh, I don't, I don't know what's happening. Oh god, you're not wanting to Halloween did that on TikTok.
But when I I was about to say, you seem like the prime candidate for it.
Yeah, my content can go on there. But when I open that app, I feel like I'm being assaulted. I just like it's like as an app crazy and I feel like it's not meant for my generation.
I was like, that's okay, when do we start admitting these things? I'm so ready for that.
I'm so right now, right now, yeah, right now, proud, proud, proud of my age. I have earned every stripe, every wrinkle, every cellulite, every droop, all of it. I've earned it all. And I'm happy to say, No, that's not for me. I'm good.
I will say that as a person that lives in a hotel room, like I'm a lazy card desk, Like I don't actively look for like the new episode, but on Sundays the network will do that eight hour marathon, and I just feel and I just like, sometimes I like a good aquarium to be in my room for like before my girlfriend moved in, Like I lived alone for the longest, and you just have TV running on the background. I normally, normally my fish, my aquarium was
was my Soul Trade episodes. But now, please, I'm just saying that if it's on, I don't turn it off. I don't actively watch it, but I also don't turn it off.
So and by the way, I'm not I'm not hating, as I said, it's just not for me, you know what I mean. I'm not hating on that. I personally.
Other people have said.
Worse is the diplomatic way to It's totally quiet for me in my home and in my life, Like I don't I listen to music, but I don't have a soundtrack that's always going or a TV not at all.
Do you get do you get overwhelmed by the music like you do everything else? Because I don't know about you, but yeah, well I don't.
I mean I talk for a living and so like at a certain point, I'm just like move enough, like shut it down, and I do like when I'm packing or I need background information because I always get anxiety when I'm packing to go somewhere. It's such an ordeal. It's such an ordeal. And I'm such an overpacker, and it's like I have lost I've let go of all the shame about the overpack. It just is what it is. I am. My friends find it hilarious and so annoying.
But while I'm packing, I like to listen to stand up comedy.
We're the same person.
Who means, well, yes, what you are listening to?
Sure?
Well, let you talk you about myself like an aquarian.
And I like you. I just watched Raw again. I just watched Richard Pryor when he's in the Red satin shirt, and I'm like, do that shirt went from satin to velvet.
Sweat like sunset?
Right? Like it was, it went into like a sunset, and then all of a sudden it looked velvet.
Wait have I have I ever admitted on the show that he's Murphy Eddie's comedy never hit me?
Oh no, oh no, I don't think you said that mister supposed to be a black person.
But let's get into it just because wait, because.
I never heard one say what that. I never heard say that.
I wasn't allowed to watch it as a kid, and so when I got it years like I got that when I was on the tour bus and I only knew the stuff based on what my friends did in high school, like like I knew the ice cream joking on that stuff, but watching raw and uh delirious for the first time, like as a twenty year old on the tour bus, like I didn't. I wasn't on the floor like I was with Chris Rock or watching Chappelle.
I think it's one of those you had to be there moments and then like a millennial watching Public Enemy right.
Now, like but let me ask you a question, though, when you watch Richard Pryor, Does it hit.
You I snuck like I I snuck Richard Pryor, Like my dad had those records and I'd sneak and listen to those records. He didn't bring Eddie Murphy in the house, so we didn't have cable.
Like, oh, so you're saying you didn't hear it in its time because you heard it, right, Okay.
I don't know.
I think I think I don't know that it has I don't know. I'm not your therapist, but I don't know if it has to do with what you heard as a kid, because I didn't hear Eddie Murphy or Richard Pryor as a kid. And but that sensibility, particularly Richard Pryor and his storytelling ability, I can't, like, I can't get over it, like it I as I was.
I would be packing and I would stop and just be like the crafting and it's not even crafting, it's just the way his mind works, right, Like it just blew my mind the way he would come back around. You know, there's some comedians I watch and I think, uh, there was more to that joke, Like you quite get the rest out of that, Like you know, like the the backseat driver who can say, like what the commedian like he's on Netflix, Like clearly he's just fine. I
don't think he needs Tracy's commentary. But but that's the beauty of watching it in your home. You can do all that. But I will admit, no, I don't know if I'm gonna admit.
What I was.
Good ahead, let it fly safe.
Oh bull crap, No, it is a safe well.
I don't know.
That's true. That's true.
No, there there is someone who people are shocked that I do not have on in any of my music playlists. And it's just not someone I listened to. I did growing up, but it hasn't lasted for me.
I got it anyway.
No, it's it's Prince.
That's maybe this isn't a safe space.
I get it. Princess a niche artist, and so like I very specific.
You know, it's interesting because like I grew up. I remember when Darling Nikki came out, I would hide on the backside of my bed on the floor with the tape cassette thing opened up to look at the look at the lyrics and I and I learned that song. It was like this is fascinating. What is all this he speaks of?
Was that something that you would have you would have gotten in trouble and you would have got caught for if that?
Probably? I mean my mom is anti violence and pro sex, like she didn't have issue with love and sex and us seeing that, but violence, like the Flintstones she had issued with because of the violence and that like they're violence.
Bam bam, yeah seriously.
And the way he treated his wife was not great. Fred Yeah, yeah, so but I don't think I mean that's that song was really intense. No, it was.
I didn't know how old you were still.
Live and what year did that What year did that song come out?
Eighty four, eighty four.
I was born in seventy two.
I was twelve, I mean yeah, yeah, yeah.
There was a period where like a lot of black families became super Christian conservative, like between seventy nine and
eighty eight. So I caught hell like baby boomers. Yeah, I mean, well, the thing is they did all the sin and as as twenty year olds in the sixties and all the Heatonistics shit in the seventies, and then they had to atone for their sin when they returned forty so yeah, I'm just saying, like I missed, I got on punishment for prince, but for everything else, like they were on my ass as far as like making sure that I didn't see it even though like I had cousins and whatnot. So that's why let me ask.
You a question. Were my forties supposed to be atoning for my sinses.
Were different than their forties?
Okay?
But the thing is also I'll say that the the silver lining of what we just went through this year was that we have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the idea of the moral right majority is absolutely full of shit. Like we have proof. Now, yeah, that's the thing that that's the thing that everyone was hanging on, like they actually believed in, like you know, Christian values and family values and all these things and cleanliness and all that.
You know, drinking milk, Thank you cleanliness though, I really like that.
But I'm just saying that in terms of what the moral right has led us to think was, you know, American moral right values in which i've in the last four years of what we went through, has been absolutely proven that it's bullshit. Like there really isn't a moral right.
It's just hiding behind the shield of Christianity to and racism exactly.
I mean, morality is a tough one. I think values are very different, but morality has a fundamentalism to it that gets really complicated because somebody gets to decide what's right and wrong. Obviously there is a baseline you know, on those things, but it starts to get really complicated. And yeah, I think that the moral right, so to speak, is a different term and has been used to sort of cloak racism, sexism, et cetera.
But that's just I think it's going to be a long time before we get somebody that can pull what Reagan pulled in terms of like really getting people to turn around and at least we're black people, because you know, people younger people are shocked when I tell them, like everyone my parents' age were like Republicans because they thought, like, you know, Republicans are closer to Christianity and abortion, so you know, yeah, like people were really shocked that blacks
were as conservative as they were. I doubt that it'll happen again. So yes, to answer your question, yeah, I don't. I don't think forty and fifty year old people have anything to worry about as far as hell.
I'm not atoning. I'm trying to get as free as I can. Certed woman, listen into the world.
Hey man, talking shit. Okay, I have to ask you, obviously, and I was wondering to shout to even burden you about like the first ten years of your life, but only because of my personal curiosity. I'll say that, you know, I think I told you the story before that. Instead of like reading me books, my parents would just put records on and that would be my uh, what do you call it? My lullaby And so they would often play your mom's live records, her two live records at
Caesar's in Vegas as my that was. That was like my my lullabye, you know whatever. And so she they'd always put on side too, where she would tell the stories of Ronda, Tracy and Chutney, which I guess to like five year old me, you all were just like one three headed monster. So Or she would always talk about crazy.
You're not the only one. I can't remember who else, Toronto Burke. She's always like Ron to Tracy Chutney.
Right right. I just knew you guys, like I was like, oh, they're my friends. Because she and she always talked about you three, like when she went on Dinah Shore and when she went like the average, like the talks to circuits, she would just talk about her children. But it was like always one name. So I guess my question is like, at what point does it register to you that you're not in an average situation as far as your childhood's concerned.
Not to mention, your dad is like a supermanager of like Rufus and Shaka Khan and Billy Preston and Franklin Asi and all these other groups. Your father bob Ellis who I just that's It never occurred to me that the elis in your name was the bob Ellis.
And let me tell you why I put that in my name. I have like three things to say of what you said, so I want to answer your question, but I would also want to say whatever we were texting about. You mentioned the name of a group from my dad that which he managed. It was like an offshoot of some other group where they were back. I don't know. But when I mentioned it to him, because I read him the text right, he first time, my
dad is the best stories. But he went on this whole long tangent about this group, and we thought they were going to be the ones that I don't know. He had this whole story and I was like that, I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not going to remember know what you're talking about.
Okay, but by the way, we only got Tracy on the show, so we can get to Bob.
Okay, happy to hear.
Yes, I have a legendary picture of him myself that I'm saving for later. But please don't forget what your points Tracy about.
Okay. So to answer your question about when did it sort of dawnam did I realize who my mom was in the in the context of life, and that it was not I wasn't having the most ordinary experience of being a child. So a couple of things to set the stage. My mom is a mom before she's the Diana Ross lady, so who the sort of extraordinariness of Dinah Ross does not hold a candle to who she is as a mom, Like she's really great as Diana Ross, but like she's like exponentially great as a mom. So
we always came first. So she recorded at night while she would put us in bed, get us to sleep, then she would leave and go to the recording studio, get home, wake us up for school, and then go back to sleep. She never left for longer than a week when we were in school, so and when she was gone, she would call us at dinner time or bedtime and in the morning sore. The sense of home and normalcy that I grew up in was home and normal. I wasn't carted all over the world in some crazy way.
And then on the summers we would go. She would rent a home somewhere and have a home base. So she would rent a home in London. We would live there. She would charter out every night to go fly to her gigs. I call them gigs still, it's really funny. She would go fly to her shows and then come back. So the sense of normalcy that I had, it wasn't like I was, you know, I was going to school,
I was doing all the regular things. The other piece of it is that I went to Dalton growing up, and I went to school with Robert Redford's kids, the Ralph Lauren children. I'm trying to think za Bar's children, like all of these people who were part of the fabric of American culture. So it was normalized for all of us. We were just kids who our parents were. Was not like a thing, and it didn't come up like it wasn't a part of what was happening in
my dynamics as a kid. I started to realize it and have really felt the impact of it later in my life. But there were a couple of indicators that shit was weird, Like when you would go with your mom to work and leave and there would be throngs of people banging on the outside of the car, and like security would have to escort us with police to wherever we went, and you know, like things like that were you know clearly like I'm not a dummy, Like I was like this can't be normal, Like this is
not this is not a normal thing. But because of the groundedness of how we were raised, how I was, I say, we too, like I'm a Roda Tracy Chutney.
So because of how we were raised that the magnitude of that didn't quite dawn on me until I was an adult and realized that I wouldn't even be doing what I was doing were it not for what my mom did and the way that she paved You know that there there were places and spaces that I would not be able to inhabit and certainly wouldn't have the confidence in inhabiting had it not been not only for the career of my mom, but also how I was raised. And so you know, I don't know if that answers
your question. And then the third thing you asked, was.
I never had a meta rabbit hole before.
Yeah, it was so old points still like she stayed.
There was a third but anyway, so it's jogged another thought for you.
All right, well, okay, can you I always tried to imagine what it was like to grow up in Los Angeles or Hollywood, assuming that you grew up.
I grew up in New York. Really, yeah, New York, New York, and Europe. So I was born here in La I went to the Center, and then we moved to New York so my mom could do the WIZ in seventy nine, and we left and started school in New York in seventy nine and stayed there until seventh grade, and I'm we moved to Paris and then Switzerland, so I did eighth and ninth grade in Europe, which are pivotal years, and then moved back to the East Coast and then went to Brown.
You've got a couple of languages and maybe oh I just forgot all my friends.
I have lost most of my vocabulary, but I have a strong French accent that can, you know, get me by and I can speak English with a French accent like nobody's business. Then you have no idea because you don't know that I speak English of conscience. Isn't about to because the people they wander. I don't know how you stay in English because the people are the wonder all the time? You know how you say, how you say?
Uh?
You know, wait, I'm sorry, I'm mere almos, Tracy, Tracy?
Do you right? I do?
I write so me.
It's it's funny because I was just thinking you. I know you've done improv. I seen you sketch comedy with the lyricists lounge. Of course, you're a funny lady.
How come? And I know your ian a stand up? Have you ever thought of like just doing.
I've not done stand up, but I have to tell you I mean this. I'm forty eight years old. At my forty eight, I'm forty eight, and I'm going through the beginning of some changes, some perimenopause. And I've got to tell you that I get to stand up on this ship because I first of all, it's got Did you see the that two second pool video I posted?
Yes, thoughts there.
I heard about that fool video. It's funny. I don't think it's two seconds.
It's two seconds in that video, Tracy.
It don't matter. You was in a bathing suit. That's what I heard. That's all I had in a pool.
I mean, you know, I have a like it wasn't me in a bathing suit in the kitchen actually in the pool.
Yeah, I just like, why is this two seconds?
You should do that?
Because a female comedian told me that female shouldn't talk about female issues, so please do that.
Why I wish more people would talk about it. I don't know about you, but some of the sexiest and most admirable women that I look at are my age and older. I want to know what's happening and.
It's still happening, and how it happens and what it is, and like.
It should be demestified. And I don't think it should be scary to men either. I think it's it's certainly not the end of my life. I am not being pushed out on a canoe out into nowhere. I'll tell you that right now. I, as I said before, am a liberated woman. I am out here living my life in all of its fullness. And I think people we should talk about it in that way so that we let go of the stigma. It's the same thing like on Blackish when we did that episode on postpartum depression.
Why are we not talking about these things when you're siloed off by yourself, that's when you feel termally unique and you don't think that you can you know, it's just you that's in that situation. Nah, We're all doing it. And by the way, men have their own version of what's happening at this age as their home hormones are shifting and changing.
Yeah yeah, hey, well yeah, I was about to say, will set it off yesterday, even though this is coming on way later.
Oh my god, that was so charming and lovely.
That he did that, and that was my favorite post. Yes, it was so lovely.
But I also have to say, like a friend, so many friends and me if text I did a video on that on Instagram too, of people saying, you know, I've gained so much weight. Good, bravo, thank your body. You just made it through a pandemic. What else were you supposed to do? And I'm sorry, but that layer of softness welcome it because the shit was hard and scary and sharp out there.
Everybody make it?
No, you know, and so and and our joy and spontaneity was all funneled into very few spaces, most of which involved food and drink. So what y'all thought was gonna happen? Well, I've never done that, but you know that. But don't worry. It's okay. I'm okay.
No truth, truth that you never had, no truth at all.
No, and my friends know. I call it the devil's lettuce.
Why did they let you in? The lyrics is lounge?
I don't I don't know, I don't.
Know it can happen. I'm gonna leave bloom or two trades. Yeah, I will aide you through this.
Yeah, I've been I've been saying. I mean, I have so many stories about me thinking I'm gonna walk that way and.
Wait till fifty. Just go ahead of wait till fifty.
Okay, maybe it'll be my fiftieth birthday. You can send me a package.
I'll leave the light one for you. Trust me, I got you. I got okay. So I always wanted to know, as far as you're growing up as concerned and that you were paired with other kids that were sort of in the same position as you, at what point, at any point, did you ever had to adjust in a world in which people weren't of that sort of cut from that that same cloth, where you had to deal with everyday people, Like, at what point.
Were you every day in life? I mean I was, you know. I First of all, the way I was raised again is everybody is a person. I am one of people. I was not raised to think I was better than anybody. I had certain different opportunities and experiences than other people, but I was always taught to connect
on the places that we are the same. We've all got blood running through our veins, and we all have feelings, and we all most of us are getting up every day trying to do our best and work our hardest and and sort of make at least our lives work and function properly. So I also come I don't know if I was taught this, if I came up with this, if you know, but to sort of put my my humanness as the front runner of who I am not. And first of all, I didn't do that. My mom
did all those things. Did she keep.
You around like a couple of Detroit cousins just to make sure do y'all knew.
I went to Detroit every summer, and that's how you do it. Yeah, on a palette on the floor, and on Bobby's house up the street from Grandmammy, and Bobby sat me between her legs and did my hair with that goodie comb and tried to kill my scalp. And you know, Grandmammy, my Grandma lined us up outside the fancy bathroom downstairs and put all the cousins and put mayonnaise in our hair on the on the laid on the kitchen sink, put our head in the sink, and
then filled our hair with mayonnaise. You had to walk around smell on like a sandwich forever to get your hair. I mean, all all of our cousins and boys and girls. It wasn't just the girl, the girls like the boys and girl. We all got lined up step and Monica Kevin, Kevin, we all just line up.
We see that in rainbow that is so beautiful. That's dope, it's funny.
So so yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, we weren't sheltered to be up in some crystal palace somewhere, although we lived, you know, in a hotel and I got to work in a rolls at the school at a Rolls rods every day with a driver by the name of Bartha.
But that's.
As you do.
Wait a minute, okay, So yeah, I'm like, okay, so these things also did happen. I'm not saying they didn't, but.
Wow, that's amazing Christmas a Ritz.
But then we were in Detroit in summers, so.
They did you. I know that singing at least when when I first met you in the early arts, singing was always a big passion of yours. With a household like yours, in an environment like you grew up in, how easy was it for you to express the desire to want to do something in the arts or not be shy about.
It, Like Harry, My mother supported us in finding our version of expression in whatever that looked like.
But you know, are you the only singing Ross?
No, Ronda is a singer, Evan's a singer.
I'm the last I forgot your brother Evan Ross, that's okay, I'm.
The last to the party. And it's so funny because I remember, I can't remember how many years ago it was, but my mom was in Vegas and on stage and she was like, you know, my children sing blah blah blah whatever, and I want to bring someone up to sing with me. And I'm like standing there, like, go ahead, Evan, go ahead, you know whatever, and she said my name, and I was like, with what's happening right now? I was like, this is not my thing. I'm the funny one.
What are we doing? What's happening? And she made me sing on stage and it was so hilarious because if you watch the video, you see my mom turn into my mom and think, oh no, did I just put Tracy put my baby in a position that she didn't want to be in inadvertently, like did I make her put her, you know, too exposed on something that makes her shy? And she sort of she got this tone in her voice that was such my mom's tone of Okay, everybody be quiet because this is important, like quiet, we need,
we need to support this moment. Be quiet?
Are you speaking of the infamous? When she puts people on the spot to sing reach Out and touch No.
She put me on stage and had me sing this sing like Billie Holiday.
Oh, Like I.
Sing that around the house and she was like, go ahead, did you? Because every time I mean I sang in high school and whatever, every time I sang. When I was twenty two, my mom said to me, all right, Tracy, it's time. And I was like, it's time for what. She's like, it's time for you to record an album. And I was like hell, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no no, I'm gonna go the other way. It's like, nope, we're gonna make people laugh and we're just gonna keep them at arm's length and that'll be good.
But why, Okay, in hindsight, why do you think that was your decision?
Uh, for a lot of reasons. I think unconsciously, I the idea of being compared to my mom was just too much to think of. I had also seen children of be obliterated in the press, just shredded, and you think back to that time and being the child of or any of those things, that's not that was not cool then, that was not something. That was also the time when you didn't move from TV to movies, and you didn't move from being a host to an actor,
like everything was very pigeonholed. And there certainly wasn't this spirit of oh, you're Dona Ross's child. Maybe you want to say, no, not at all. And I look like my mom, And the truth is I sound kind of like her. So you know there was no you put you as soon as you put a sparkly dress on me. I mean, I've seen it now. I want a golden globe. I've been doing working in the I'm forty eight years old. I'm not a child anymore, and I still cannot do
anything without my mom's name. Like maybe my mom's just like it's she's larger, she's an.
Interesting let me but let me, let me interject. I definitely now feel as though, you know, to Dinah Ross, it's like, yo, Tracy Ellis is your daughter, Like, yeah, you've done You've definitely done something that is I don't know if any person, maybe Janet Overcoming who her her brothers were, to be in her own right, but yeah, like you've made your own name though. Yeah, yeah, you're when history books are written, like you know, you have your own and not even to compare like.
That, you know, like we can all well, that was part of what I came to I mean and understood it's like and an adult mind can look at it that way, but a kid cannot. And so now I know, like I'm not my mom right, Like I'm not trying to be here, I'm not like never, that's not what's happening. But as a kid, you think you know and you have.
Something that's really super special.
I was gonna ask you because your production company is named Joy Mills, but I'm assuming that you're aware that you have that superpower and that's why you named it that. Are you aware that, like Tracy Ellen's Ross is a joy bringer.
That like makes my heart very very full.
I'm just trying to tell you.
My I was born Tracy Joy Silverstein. That's my name, so right.
Now, so because I'm like, well what about mister Ellen.
Okay, okay, go ahead, Okay, So this is and that was the third point, okay about my dad. So when I joined so like many kids, uh so, then I was Tracy Joy Ross Silberstein all through growing up. T j R s were my initials all through growing up. But then, like so many people, you dropped this name.
That name is too long.
I was Tracy Joy Ross. You know what I mean, drop these names too many names. So I became Tracy Joy Ross. And then when I joined SAG there was another Tracy Ross in the Union. Remember Tracy Ross.
She was.
Yes.
I thought, yeah, very.
She grew up.
Wow, I didn't know you were my age.
I thought, like, you know, we don't all look alike. They with nothing alive.
I heard the name Tracy Ellis. I remember watching that Tracy Ross on Star Search.
He was a hero.
And then she thought like, oh, that's Dinah Ross's daughter. That's the one she talked about.
When I joined the Union, there was another Tracy Ross. So they were like, uh, do you want to be Tracy Joy Ross in the Union? And I was like yes, But everybody like I look like my mom, and people know I'm my mom's child and I'm so much a product of both of my parents, Like I am my dad's child and I'm my mom's child. And I wanted
him to have a steak. You know, it's so crazy because I talk so much about women and women of color, and particularly black and brown women, that we historically have not had a steak in what we make, and even with our children, we give up our name, and so there's often this you can't even follow our bloodline because of that. But we have been at the center of economic, cultural, political revolutions in this country, and we are often doing the work, but not centered in the prize from that work.
And strangely enough, I was worried about my dad having a piece of what he made, and so I put Ellis in my name and I became Tracy Ellis Ross at the beginning of my career, and my first you know, SAG card was Tracy Ellis Ross And now you know, my name goes up there and people go and Bob Elis's kid.
Okay, what was the first major creative thing that you at least for you, What was the first major creative thing that you did as far as doing television or commercials or well.
The first big thing I did was the gap ad with my mom. Yeah, and I remember it was on billboards and it was like a big wall and an airport. I walked through and I was just like, oh my god, I made fifteen hundred dollars and I thought I had made I was like, I'm rich. God, I don't meet my mother I'm rich. It's like, that was so amazing. I could pay my own doctor's fees. I can just I can make my own food. Was a crud. I was so much money. I was like, I was like,
I will never work again. I actually think it was it was seven hundred and fifty dollars and then I think I made fifteen hundred on the first show I did. But then the next thing was I did an Infinity commercial.
So I was modeling with Wilhelmine Agency and I went in for a modeling like commercial job and go see and at the place where they were doing it, they were like the people that are doing and it was a secret deodorant ad I went in for and there was a sign in sheet next to it for Infinity car commercial and whoever ran the commercial audition place was like you should go in and try for the Infinity commercial. And I was like, oh, yes, of course I'll drive.
So I went in and that was the job that Taft Heart lead me into SAG, which is the job that will pay the money to get you into SAG.
And yeah, I just love the idea that Tracy Els had to Taft Hartley. I mean, I've done that and it just just makes me laugh. That's okay, keep continuing, doesn't But also also, why are there not people with multiple names in SAG? Couldn't there be multiple Tracy?
Really?
But Nesa Williams remember William.
L.
Williams Vanessa Williams. Yeah, well ship okay? Cool? Yeah, I learned something again.
So I got taft Heart lead in. I did that commercial and then I don't know. I mean, it has not been a fast and easy road for me. I remember there was a movie called Mixing Nia that Karen Parsons from Fresh She ended up getting that movie, and I've never been more devastated in my life.
Really.
I was like, I mean, I was sure.
I mean that this was going to launch me into the stratosphere of the Boscar. I was going to the Academy Awards with my seven hundred and fifty dollars from my gap ad. I was going to march my way into Hollywood and be received with open arms for a career that would last a lifetime.
Didn't happen.
What is that process like, like your version of the Hollywood Shuffle As far as callbacks near missus, what did you audition for that you didn't get?
Oh?
My God, I don't even remember. I had a three ring binder, like one of the those Whopper three refinders of like every audition I had auditioned for.
I didn't care.
You keep all the receipts of everything.
I didn't get nothing, really, because according to us, it's like Daddy's Girls.
And I know, in right, like I'm trying to think no.
No, no, no there from from the time that I did I did Far Harbor, that first movie I did with Jennifer Connolly and Marshall Harden. Okay, so I did that, and then I did the show and before that, I did the show The Dish on Lifetime. That was because I'm a TV girl. I live in your TV and I'm a TV girl, like and it was like a magazine show about TV shows.
What nothing? He ain't say nothing, he said.
At first I.
Started watching Lifetime.
Yeah, okay, you know. And and then I got an agent and auditioned and auditioned and auditioned and auditioned and auditioned and auditioned and auditioned and auditioned, and I auditioned some more and I didn't get many callbacks, and then they dropped me. And this is what they said. It stuck with me for a really long time. Listen, Tracy, we're gonna let you go because you come with all these bells and whistles, but then you get in the room and you just don't pop.
Wow face bitch.
You know what. It was a turning point for that's crazy. I could not get out of there without those you know, those tears they sit there.
Because you're so ha.
You know those office chairs with the wheels, the wheels on the box of them. I felt like my heart had come out and it was like stuck underneath the wheel and she kept moving the chair and it was just getting all tangled in there with my heart and then there was blood and stuff and then the tears, and I couldn't get out fast enough. But I made a decision at that point. I remember calling my sister. I called her. I was like, you know, I don't pop, I don't wow, I know, no popper.
That stand up.
At any point, did you ever consider dropping the ross from your name?
It was too late.
The thought that like, okay, maybe they're holding that against me, like my lineage.
And well, you know, I used to say that. People were like, well, doesn't being done roses or open doors for you.
And I was like, no, what it does is and unlocks the door, and then people sit on the other side like this going, how you going to walk in?
Oh?
They're like, okay, show us what. But I don't think that had anything to do with it. I think I sucked. I think I didn't know how to bring the person that I was inside myself and in the privacy of my home out into the world. And I needed that hit in order to ask myself, did I have the courage to do what it took to bring that person out? Or did I just want to go back into my hole and and sort of live privately as I chose.
You know, do you think girlfriends is what you learned to kind of be that person?
No, I learned before girlfriends. It's the reason I got girlfriends.
Actually, am I assuming? Well, I'm assuming that for I first saw you as an adult in Lyris's lounge. So how did how did that come to be? Yeah?
I'm so good Lyris Lounge. Okay, So there was a coming out and turning point in my journey towards courageousness. I don't remember when because I'm bad at timelines, but I had been dropped by my agents. I moved to la and one of the things I did was I every person that I met that helped me or offered me some information, I would write them a thank you note. And if they said you should meet so and so,
I would say, can you call them for me? And I would constantly do that, and that's how my career started. So like Marcia gay Harden said you should meet my agents, and I was like please.
And I met her agents and they were like, we can't represent you, but you should meet so and so, and I was like, thank you so much.
I would write a handwritten thank you note and then they would call the person. Then I would go meet them. And that's just how my career started. And I booked a movie of the Week, an NBC Movie of the Week, and then Lyricist Lounge came up and I wanted that show so badly, and somewhere after the Movie of the Week, as you guys can hear, I do a lot of different voices and characters, and I love dressing up. I
love clothes. I love playing dress up. So my closet is my happy place and I go in there and sometimes I make a really good outfit and sometimes an outfit turns into a character, and my mom had I was. My mom had given a high eight video camera one Christmas, so I set it up in my kitchen and I stayed up until three o'clock in the morning and I played dress up and I made a video of all of these characters that I had been telling stories as for years, and I called it my holiday It was
my holiday gift. And I sent it out to anybody that wouldn't think I was trying to get a job. I sent it out with a note that said, I am sharing joy with you this holiday season. This is my version and it was me like I was like a crazy person, and then it said no judgment, Happy Holidays. I did like an improv to Broadway song Madame Vera was on there, Callipe Champignelle, like all of these characters
that still exist. And my agents ended up seeing it after the holidays and sent it to the producers of Lyrisis Lounge. I got an audition for Lyris Lounge, but they did not cast me. They cast Sarah Jones. Sarah Sarah Jones. Yeah. Sarah Jones had a values conflict with the subject matter of the show. She felt that some of the sketches. It didn't work for her, so she left and they brought me in.
Wow, man, that is crazy. Does Sarah know that story?
Yeah? And Sarah and I for years we had never met, and a whole thing. And then she and I came back together and met each other at the White House with the Obamas for Missus Obama's first mentoring weekend. We were walking to the White House together. We came down in the elevator, walked to the White House together, and we were like, can you believe this shit?
That's beautiful circle. That's a beautiful circle.
It was that amazing because I thought she hated me for all those years. I was like, she left because she couldn't do it. And then I took it, and you know, it was a joy for me. I had a ball doing it. And everybody has a different compass on how they feel connected to material and it didn't work for her, and I had no judgment of that, but it changed my career. And then the interesting story is that Lerisis Lounge left us hanging. We didn't know if we were picked up or not. It had been ages.
We had no idea what was happening. And I auditioned for girlfriends and we had a window. They wanted me for Joan, and we had a window of like three days that if we couldn't get the sign off and the approval by the head of MTV, they would have to move to their second choice for Joe and Clayton and tell me, do you know? And the head that head of MTV was on vacation in Italy and we
couldn't get a hold of him. And I remember just laying on my bed like frozen for hours, like for twelve hours, just waiting to hear if I was going to get this role that was going to change my life and it worked out in my favor, but I didn't know apparently.
So Wow, having entered what you did at MTV, at any point, were you interested in sort of sort of honing your skill at say like uh, Second City in Chicago or upright Citizens Brigade or any of those like.
Improv You know what's so funny? As you were talking, I thought you were going to say, did you ever cross your mind on your skills as a rapper?
Well too career now, that.
Did not cross my mind. I was so bad at that that I was in that sketch with most deaf and and master Fool, and they had to I mean, because you know sometimes I get the one three really fast and they were like no, and so they they had to coach me on when to come in. No, I didn't.
I had.
Bennetts. What is it called out here the improv u.
Not the comedy store.
So I was in an improv troop in college at Brown and strangely enough with Marty Blafsky, who was also on Lyrisis Lounge. And I loved improv. And then I went to Groundlings and they wouldn't move me from the you know, one level to level two because they said I was too sticky and I wasn't funny enough. So I told Groundlings, I said, you know what, Groundlings.
They kind of THEI and me. They like the uji of the mprov.
Well either way, I was like, I was told to go where the love is, and I do not feel the love here how facts And then I booked Larry's Lounge, So no, I didn't think of that at all, mostly because what I thought I was gonna I thought I was going to stick in sketch comedy after Lyricsi's Lounge. But because of Girlfriends, which I thought was gonna happen later in my life. I was living out the Lucy
fantasy for me. So Larius's Lounge was my Carol Burnette fantasy and dream, and then Girlfriends was my my Lucy foray.
So what do you think My wife, she loves she loves you. She watches Girlfriends on Netflix, like all the time. She was curious to know, do y'all leave what stories did y'all leave on the table for girlfriends?
And like when that ended, what was that like for you?
It was horrible, Yeah, devastating. It was really hard when Jill left and that also changed storylines because that uh just it was just such a hard adjustment. And then when the show ended, you know, the last episode we shot, I directed, and it was during the strike, so we didn't even we didn't even have our family together. The producers weren't there, Marra wasn't there, So it was it was such a strange odd end the courthouse.
It was like a location shot too, right, That's what feels like.
It was the end. That was not the end. That was the end of the season with Tony.
Oh, that's right and right, and then it came back with and we had had two more after that. So what did it feel like.
When you you got the call from ABC the job we're going to be bringing the girls to Blackish?
Oh? Oh no, that's not how that went.
Okay, What did it feel like.
When you told that?
We said we have so Courtney came to me and said, we have an idea. What do you think? And I said, this is the best idea ever. But before I said, tell tell me when it's an actual green light that you guys feel like it can actually happen, and then let me call the girls first and find out if they're interested and comfortable. I don't want to make this a thing until I know if they want to do this.
So I called each of them individually, even though we're on a group thread, but I wanted to call each of them individually so that no one felt pressured by somebody else or you know, so that everybody just felt comfortable to answer. And I said, you don't have to answer me now, like it was an immediate yes for everybody, but we I mean, by the way, everybody at Blackish was like, what is going on?
How much as love was it?
I just got launched into another world like and you know, some people on our crew have no idea what Girlfriends was. They were like, I don't understand what's happening, Like we've never seen Tracy like this. I don't know what's going on. But we would not We did not stop talking. It was as if we were right back on girl. It was so delicious. It was so good.
We had so much and the storyline that you made around that y'all created around it was really dope. It was really consistently yes, yeah.
So good.
My niece wants to know when they because I have Alice Ross, we get it.
You already know.
When they saw her name was on QLs calendar, they was just like, my text was blowing up.
Everybody want to so I'm trying to answer my family's questions sofully. So my niece wants to know. How do you navigate the LA dating scene?
Oh girl? Please thank you Ni Sepool, because I live in l A.
To what you mean, I don't, I don't, I don't know or do you even care? I mean, well, the beauty of it is it's not an l A dating scene. The world is so small now that you know there was no dating scene during the pandemic, yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know, if you heard.
I think NIE's asking from the perspective of it's hard for a black woman to day in LA But maybe I'm just stripping.
I don't know.
I think it's I think dating is hard no matter who you are, where you are, and if you're a man or a woman. I think there's good men out there.
Oh, I wasn't. Oh, that wasn't the argument. It was just that they are they around unavailable, That's.
Oh, I don't know if they are. I don't I don't know that they are. I don't know. I don't have major, major sort of theories and beliefs and and I don't I don't have any answers. What I know is that someone's gonna either make my life better or I'm gonna keep rolling with this wonderful life that I've built for myself, you know.
And I found my happiness at fifty, So I mean, oh my god, speaking of.
Which I Meir, you said at fifty you found your life. How old are you now?
Fifty fifty fifty?
I was with the way you said it. I was like, what are you sixty? Like what.
You just found last week? I'm just saying that a few other things. Flowers flowers around, no around like forty seven, forty eight. I was just like, maybe I'm just going to be a serial bachelor for life, and you know whatever. And then, you know, as with all of us with the pandemic, like this, pivot happens and you get a new either heed to the calling or you uh, succumb to the inside of your voice. And no, I mean it's it's possible to have a turnaround for you.
Most men get their sense at fifty.
So first of all because we done.
Made out money.
But well some of it's that.
That's no, it's also about just being open.
But wait, the thing that's so interesting, I mean you just said the sound inside my voice is that you said, that's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.
Well, just inside my heads. You know, oftentimes we hear the the I mean, the voice inside of our head says the most mean shit to us all the time. We say stuff. We say shit to ourselves. Yeah, we say ship to ourselves that you know, we wouldn't allow anyone to say to us. And oftentimes we listen to that voice more than anything. So introspective of mer my favorite.
But understand a year and a half, maybe.
This is Crystal, I'm not.
Friend, it's a beautiful woman named woman.
But this is a look at him rolling his eyes. Well, something's happened there.
So just this episode is not about me. We only got fifteen minutes whether I can't even get the.
Blackish Okay, So that's okay, Okay. So let me just say that I I think there's really good men out there, and I don't know how to navigate any dating scene. Dating is just awkward and weird. And it's even more awkward when you like being in your house. Yes, and you know, you get to a certain age where you're like, I don't't do that, Like you know what I'm saying. I don't want to go there. You know what I mean. I'm happier right here on my couch. So huh.
What one thing?
One thing I will say about about you, Tracy, Like I've always admired you, seen for your celebrity and the status of all things you've done. You are like one of the most regular celebrities like and I mean yeah, and the like and the sweetest way possible you were just you know, you just always just exude just kind of just a realness about you.
And I was just curious to know how do you maintain that in Hollywood? How do you keep your identity? She stays off the couch.
I think, I think it's that my identity is not wrapped up in what I do. It's it's who I am and how I show up for my friends and how they show up for me, and the kind of daughter and sister I am. Like that's where that's what has meaning to me, how I am of service in the world, particularly to those I love and even more importantly to those I don't know. And so I that's what right sizes is my life. And I really like being a people among people. It's my humanity is my
favorite part. It's also the most uncomfortable part of me, you know what I mean, Like sometimes I'm like, oh ah, can I stop being such a human being? You know what I mean? Like what better? And not do better? What? You know, Like I wake up every day, try to do my best. Why did this day suck so bad? Like you know what I mean, Like how did that happen? Like I didn't try to go left, but somehow I am left?
So so a human being?
Yeah, I also think I'm not. I'm not really invested in I don't know. I mean, look, I love sparkly things. I love pretty clothes, I love shoes, I love great restaurants. But I'm also not My compass is not money. My compass is not fame. It's having an opportunity to do the things that I love and to connect with people and to make people laugh and to make people feel
comfortable in their own skin. You know, I know what it feels like for me when I'm around people that I leave and I'm like, oh, I just feel so much like myself around them, Not like I want to be them, but like, I just feel so safe and like myself around them. And I hope that I can bring that to the world and to other people, and so maybe that keeps it right side.
But I don't know.
I don't know.
Are there okay? Now that you have the platform and the position that you do have, what's on your bucket list as far as things that you really want to do, cross off and sort of manifest and bring out there that maybe ten years ago you weren't able to develop.
I think a lot of those things are in process right now, and I'm not one of those people like, you're not going to see me post about the idea of doing something, You're going to still post when it's is having it. So I pattern was a just it was a ten year dream. It took me ten years to launch that company. And I love being a CEO. I love being a fan under of a company company.
I love using my mind in that way. The access that it has given me to be able to sit in boardrooms and talk to people who don't usually get somebody who's not afraid to say, yeah, that doesn't work, like, actually that's not effective. Actually that's actually detrimental to the people you say you're helping. Oh, I'm sorry, it's not called d and it's diversity, equity and inclusion. I'm sorry, gatekeeper, sir. If you don't make changes, there's never going to be
fundamental change. You know. I didn't know that so much of what so many things that I was experiencing that caused frustration and disappointment had to do with the systemic problems that were happening in the world. I took them personally, you know, And so when you realize it, then you're like, oh,
what can I do to help make this change? Pattern has given me access not only to a particular and different kind of platform, but also a courage inside me to not be a person that gets plugged in places, but actually can create more real estate, not just for me, but for others, to help other people find how to have their own equity in what they make. So I have a production deal with ABC Signature, which is across all their platforms, HULUFX, all of their platforms. I have
five different projects and development. There's expansion that I want to happen that is in process with Pattern. So those things and those parts of my dreams, Like I want to be a producer. I love being a producer, and that is happening. I really would like to do more movies. I would like to get I want to do and
I want to kick some ass in a movie. I really would like to like like tell you like you know those when they spin around and then they chop under the and the person falls and then they go oh like, I would really like to do that in a movie in some very strong and powerful way. I would like to be to do a love story. I would like to be a love interest in a movie as a sexy, grown ass woman and not have to be like the twenty two year old with the fifty year old man, Like maybe I'm the fifty year old
with the twenty two year old man. How you doing? Me?
And the Rustio fans are sitting here like how we ain't seen? This can not happen, you know what I mean?
I want to see a whole bunch of black women on screen being as incredible as we are and not have to constantly be talking about the fact that we're black, but just be in our experience. I want to see those stories. I want to. I want to be a part of making those happen, and I want to be involved in them. I want to. So there's lots of those things.
You gotta drop the word wanna and just manifest.
I'm gonna. I'm gone.
That's my last words of wisdom. With manifest such good.
Words of wisdom, and you know I have to say I manifest quickly. So it just got to be specific about that language.
Okay, all right, you got three minutes left, three minutes left, three minutes. Yeah, we got three minutes left, and I'm skipping, skipping, I'm skipping black is just y'all, watch back. I actually want to go to Mix This, Yes, how much of your life and shout out to us Angela, our friend, Angela Nissel family. Yes, yes, and how much of your life? I know that Mixed This is quote a show about your character's life, but how much input do you have in it? As far as the direction that I have a.
Lot of input, But it is not my life. It's Bo Johnson's life, you know. But but the mixed experience, I love that we're able to tell that story and such a and to tell it through the eighties, which is so strange to think about that, the divisiveness that the eighties held and how similar it is to what we're living in now. A couple of different overlays, but we can what time, come on? What is seventeen twenty? We've got three minutes? What if we have eight minutes?
Okay? Y, we got eight minutes?
Okay.
So that being said, because we didn't ask her the question when we had Mariah here, do you did you have anything to do with getting Mariah to sing that that thing that didn't seem easy?
The same song? Mister?
No, that was Kenya? Okay, okay, okay, that was Kenya And that was so she was so excited to do that.
She was so excited, perfect excited enough that big ass credit at the beginning. I still tea her days. She's like, I don't know if that happens. I'm like, I know your people.
She is hilarious. She also is a really big text for that one.
I've not stopped talking to Mariah since our interview that night.
Yeah. But by the way, Maria, Mariah is also really regular in some ways.
Yeah, yeah, as much as she can be.
Yeah, you know, I mean, no shout out me, I'm only playing.
Yes, she's one. Look. Anyway, that was a really wonderful experience and I got to know Mariah in a way that I did not before. And and it's not that I had any negative idea of Mariah, but I didn't know Mariah, do you know what I mean? And she's so lovely and her.
Mix experience is ill too. After reading a book and what I.
Have not read her book.
Trace, get the audiobook.
I will get the audio book and literally it's on my list.
It's so stupid that you're a long driver or whatever, like her storytelling.
Is is And my friend Mikela wrote that with her, Yeah, how was it a people because people got the power. Yeah she is. She is one of my faves. So but yeah, mixed ish my first producing experience and really love being in that position. To be able to craft a story before a script is written, you know, to actually uh let that, to be a part of that, to be a part of casting. All of that I find really exciting and sort of the execution of something, you know, mix this was a little mixed. What's mixed?
This was a little different because it was you know, it was the the full expression of something that had already existed and sort of been given life. But the other projects that I'm developing, you know, from optioning a book and that, like, it's just so exciting. That process is so exciting.
Uh Okay, now do you want to go back to Black? Yeah, there's so many things I want to ask about the show. But probably for me as such a fan of that show, whose idea was it for you guys to have sort of the dark period of your marriage? Where I didn't see that coming? And again, like when I when I watched these shows, I kind of do a binge style, So it wasn't like I even had a warning from ABC, like a special ABC you know, narrative Bexter Bernie episode of Blacket.
They used to do that, a very special, very.
Special different strokes one what Dudley got. So yeah, I didn't. I didn't see that coming. And I was like, wow, this is this is really bold because I mean, you know, without okay, I'm trying to say this is as diplomatic as I can. The Huxtables were always my first family. An now it's like the Johnson's are about to overshadow that and really be you know, because you guys cover so many subjects that were never ever on The Cosby Show.
But if not for the cos there wouldn't be the Johnson's.
And I'm not disparat but yeah, I didn't see that coming. Like whose idea was it to really just bring it down to that level?
Kenny embarrass and Anthony and I were not happy.
Wow was happy?
Well, it took a minute. I was like, why are we doing this? What is this? Why are we doing this? Like I was like, I don't understand this. It feels like the end of the show. It was so confusing. It was, you know, Kenya, there was a bold risk on his part, and this is why Kenya is Keny. You know what I mean, Like he really, I don't know where it came from. You can ask him all those questions. But once we dove in and you know, I directed the first of those two episodes.
Oh okay, that.
Was hard because I was playing a version of bo that I had never played before. Like usually the show is anchored in dre and bow liking and loving each other like and it's also anchored in me and Anthony, like we have a respect and a safety with each other. That is the core of the show. Like that's what we do, you know, he and I. There are places that I can fly to because of Anthony and that he can fly to because of me that I've never
experienced in my creative career. It's so much fun. It is so much fun dancing and playing ping pong with Anthony. I can't even tell you. And so that was hard. I didn't like fighting with him. I didn't like it.
Even the film stock that you guys used, like that kind of film stock where I was like in and out of that, yeah, someone's about to die here or.
Yeah, I know.
And then my dad did die. It was a mess. And that was and by the way, and then we went and shot a funny scene. After that, I was like, are you all crazy? I don't know. I'm so proud of what we do on the show. I think back to when Blackish launched and how freaked out everybody was about the name, And if you sink back to the landscape of.
One person, and we know that person was, it was.
A lot of you started, but a lot a lot of people were upset about it, but they didn't know what the show was yet. And I understood that. And the truth is, it's a It's a perfect name for what our show is and what we deconstruct and pull
apart and unpack. And but if you think of what the landscape of television was at that moment and what we opened up in terms of giving metrics to the ability for black stories about a black family that doesn't happen to be black, but is black being successful and identifiable for everybody, you know, we we changed the landscape of television.
I did an episode on June teenth that was not in the mainstream of conversation that.
An amount of people that have said to me, I didn't know what white people that have said I didn't know what Juneteenth was before Blackish aired that episode is a lot a lot of people who didn't know. And I always say to people like you, come by that honestly, like a lot of people didn't know because nobody.
Was telling anybody, well black a good little small education to some layers of Black people.
And if that's funny, if you watch and you don't know us, you get to know a little bit.
A little bit, A little piece doesn't do everything. It's not two minutes, and you get to see it through the lens of this family. But and I mean, you know, it's just it's been a treat, a real treat. We don't talk enough about the frame that needs to be present to hold the narrative of our cultural value, you know.
And I don't mean a Blackish I mean of the stories Black stories, you know, and and how so many people reap the cultural benefit, but we don't get the credit or for the work done and the story is told, and so I don't know, I'm so grateful this show has been such a blessing and so much fun. I mean, it's been seven years, knock on wood, but you know, Anthony and I haven't gotten into nothing.
And y'all created it.
They didn't bring you guys the cake yet saying goodbye and another.
But I mean, like Anthony and I had like to work that closely with someone as much as I mean we work fourteen hour days like it's just the longest ever, you know, and the way we work together, it's just been such a like such a joy.
It's a joy. It's a joy to watch.
It is everybody and y'all created the youngest executive producer.
Ever, she told She told us all back then when we asked. There was a panel we did first season and said what do you want to be to get older? And she said a legend.
Episodes is a pilot where guys and we were all like, well, okay, then.
For president I'll so we we our listeners will kill as we forget this. The Kanye video you have to tell.
Got it?
Which one touched this guy?
Which? What about stuff?
As?
Yeah, that was that. That was a guy.
I've done. I've done two Kanye videos. I was in Kanye in workout plan. That was crazy. We flew on helicopters into the Grand Canyon and we shot in the Grand Canyon, me Nia Long and Pam Anderson. I was like, what's going on right now? And I remember because he was my neighbor. And he was like, I have an idea, and I'm like okay. And he told me that the uh you know the story of the the video. And I was like, I don't understand. Why am I not the other character? He said, because there knee along.
Right right right.
I get it. I get it now, I got it.
I was like, I just I'm funny.
I'm I'm I'm my own best advocate. So like, I'm just wondering why, Like I wasn't like, but whatever. And then we had so much fun doing that. Though that was insane. It was freezing. I would have chose you no, but no, but I I think I uh that you know what about the hair? And that's that was me. That was just me improving like a crazy person. What are you gonna say? What are you gonna say? I said,
don't worry about it, Kanye, don't worry about it. Just turn the cameras on and tell me say the A word, say action, and it's gonna come.
Were you always were you? Always? Were you always the family comedian?
Yes? Oh oh my god, my mom used to cheat. My mom so our dining room table there were glass like glass doors outside, and my mom like, I would disrupt so much. I would have like the wiggles, that's my grandma called it, the twelve year old giggles wiggles, and I just had so much energy and so and I would really like to poke at my sister Randa to see if I could get her to laugh, but usually it made her really angry. And so my mom would excuse me from the table, why don't you go
outside and get the wiggles out? So I would stand outside my family is eating dinner. I would stand outside like I'd be like, and I would come back and sit down and she would say, have you gotten them all out? And I'd be like, I don't think. So my mom was very supportive of my large, large energy.
Thank you, thank you mom. We thank you. No, we're wrapping up.
But I'm gonna say this because my sister Rhonda, my mom was such a good mom, as I said, and my sister ron and my siblings are such great parents. And when her son Raif is doing what I do, because she gave birth to a little me, when he's gonna I'm like, what is going on back there? I can't even hear you? She says, he's being creative.
Yeah, saw him in an award show. He's hilarious.
I love him.
Yes, and he looked at Michael on the website.
Yeah, my son is being creative. Yes.
Yes, wait, this one quick question and this is totally just random. Speaking of you, you and your relationship with your mom. Was it you that influenced her to have Ello Cool Jay on her special back in eighty seven?
Nor I know my mom is way cooler than I could have made her.
Be, Okay, because I always wanted to know, like we were like, what the hell is Llo doing? This is like when Bigger and depfor First came out.
I don't believe you. We would have to see for ourselves.
Trust me, it's weird. No, like this is when her Red Hot Rhythm and Blues album came out.
Well you know everything though.
Yeah, you know, Tracey, I really thank you for giving making this.
Know.
I was really about to say thank you very.
Much, Ron and Tracy said you're welcome. I adore you, and I'm so glad I finally got on here.
To our viewers out there, yes, viewers, to our listeners out there, yes, I try to turn this into a five hour Jimmy Jam episode. It didn't happen, So don't get down at me because Tracey Ellis Ralse is booked and busy.
Can you tell your daddy that we still want to talk to him? No, I'm series, but he talked to us. You think he would talk to us.
I think he'll talk talk to anybody. He talks to you. If you're in the line of Starbucks, you're gonna get the whole ear.
Yes, I cannot this episode.
Thank you, no joke.
I appreciate it. Tracy, run to your appointment. Thank you very much. And this is Quest Love Supreme. Y'all, We will see you next week next time. Bye, yo, what's up? This is fante.
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