‘Boroughs’ actor Alfre Woodard reminds us to look to our elders

by asking three questions, who, how, why now, if the culture's asking it we're talking

about it.

“At MPR we stand for your right to be curious and indulge your cultural curiosity, follow”

it's been a minute wherever you get your podcasts and we'll break down the zeitgeist topics that are filling your feed. This is fresh air, I'm Tanya Mosley, and my guest today is a award-winning actor, Al-Fri Wooddard. We've been watching her on television, film, and the stage for decades. She has played wives, mothers, nurses, friends, lovers, and prison wardens, women carrying

their families through the ordinary and the unimaginable. Her work in a very real way has become a record of American life. Now she's in a new sci-fi Netflix series called The Burrows. And the creators of Stranger Things. The Duffer Brothers have said the show exists because they couldn't understand why no one

had made another cocoon since cocoon. The 1985 film about retirees who discover a fountain of youth. Well, 40 years later, they've set their version in an upscale retirement community in New Mexico where something supernatural is praying on the residents. Wooddard plays Judy, a retired journalist who was sightlined in her career, but hasn't

let go of her instincts. She lives in the community with her husband played by Clark Peters, and when a recent widower moves next door, Judy does what she's done her whole working life, she starts looking him up. "I found his wife so this way, I knew neighbor, Samuel Darwin Cooper, born Chicago and I,

in the 10th, 1950s flu." "You've got to stop stalking people." "I'm not stalking." "I'm investigating." "You're not a reporter anymore." "Turner list." "And that makes it stalking." "This wife died of a stroke five months ago. Oh gosh, she was young. Not even 70. He worked for Northrop Grumman 35 years as an aeronautical engineer. So we know he's smart."

"Education is not the learnings of the facts, but the training of the mind to think." "Who said that?" " Einstein. No, maybe Mr. Peabody. I wonder yet that I don't remember."

“"I think we should go for a walk today. Your doctor say you need exercise, real exercise,”

not to bend the bendy stuff."

"I can't have playing golf with maximum. Well, I always feel on for a film tonight.

The doctor, after noon, he's playing at Dallas. Oh, sorry. I forgot. Loser by his dinner and Max always loses. So, you know. So, hey, the Max and Walt. No kid, no kid. Hmm. See you later. The ensemble cast is mostly actors over 60. Alfred Molina, Gina Davis, Clark Peters, Dennis O'Hare, and Bill Pullman. Woodard earned an Oscar nomination in 1984 for Cross Creek. And over the decade since, she's been nominated for 18 Emmys, winning four and won a golden

globe with roles in classics like Passion Fish, Crookland, 12 years of slave, and clemency. Alfred, what are it? Welcome to Fresh Air. It is such an honor to have you. "I am happy to be present with you, Tony. Okay, so let's get into it. I have a story that I have to ask you about regarding the set of the boroughs. So, the story goes there was an HR meeting on the phone. And you and the other actors were behaving so badly like middle

“schoolers that's been kicked out of class. And that just made me think, what is this set? What was it like?”

It is, you know, just think about all the people that were in the back of the room and concept me, so it's packed down. Sit down. Sit down. That's not what we're not doing that now.

And, you know, maybe there was HR when we were in our first decade or two in the business,

but we didn't know about it or what they did. But now we have learned how to how to take care of environments, make them safe. Back in the day, you just had to like partner up and you know, clan up and go like, okay, don't mess with my friend again. Don't tell you hurt her feelings. Come over here. We need to talk. That kind of stuff. But, so we had this HR meeting. And, you know, I think it's more like over 65. And our show owners, Jeff Addison

will Matthews, they're like in their early-to-mid 40s. But, you know, most of us were people people. And he's like, can you hear or I can't hear? Somebody said, hello, none of us can hear you. We can't hear and just being that rally in the class back together. When we're hearing things like,

really like them and somebody said, can I say, you know, your butt looks really good in those chains?

No, definitely not. How am I know if a butt looks good? If nobody tells me. So it was that kind of very, you know, irreverent kind of stuff going on. But just, you know, giggling and laughing. But that's,

“you know, that's our generation. And that's one of the things that I think we bring to the boroughs”

and that that will and Jeff wrote in. But we expanded on it because, you know, they still haven't really shaved at themselves at only mid 40s. What were some of the things you had them change for sure that you said, this is not what a 65 plus year old woman or group of friends would be doing living in a retirement community? Well, I believe you haven't seen these seniors on camera before. Maybe you saw one, but they're sort of an outlier and a script and used as comic relief as something,

but, but how, how we live, how we relax together, what we say to each other. And the fact that

“your, your chemistry, your, your sexual chemistry only gets more particular and refined as it goes on.”

So, you know, there'll be some people like, oh, if my mom or my grandma, a grand dad was flirting, that would make me go, you know, it's like, no, how you do you got here? And flirting is love. It's a way of reaching out. It's what humans do. And when you have people that don't have to answer to anybody and they don't have to answer to society saying, was that lady think she's doing showing her thighs at this age? Well, yeah, there's nobody to tell you, no. And if they do,

you can tell them where to go because you can't tell somebody it was 16 often. Well, that's the truth. Your character, Judy, is also in an open marriage with one rule. Don't fall in love. And of course, she does with Jack, who is Bill Pullman played by Bill Pullman. But when Jack turns up dead, I'm not spoiling it here, but when he turns up dead, Judy is the one asking what really happened. And I want to play a clip where she's in the kitchen table with her neighbor Sam

played by Alfred Molina telling him about her relationship with Jack for the first time. Let's listen.

Only rules. Don't fall in love. Do you feel in love with Jack? I did. I'm not deluded. I see that the years etched across my face, not to fill the weight of my body with Jack. Jack saw a girl in me. He could see it. And he respected the woman. Jack and he could jack saw us. The way we wish we were. He was good.

Everybody loved Jack and Jack certainly did love everybody. That was just one in the line. That's not the way Jack described you. What did he say? He was seeing someone special. That's Alfred Molina, the new Netflix series The Burrows. That line, Jack saw the girl in me, but also the woman too. The way you land that line,

it's just it. And it days after I watched it, I was kind of thinking about what the significance

“of that. Because I think it's very rare to never wear women are seen at a certain point in their”

lives for the totality of who they are. That's one of the things that the guys heard me. When I talked about it, this affair that she was having. And the relationship that art in

Judy have. And at first it seemed kind of suburban and early '60s, not like '50s.

and within the strictures of a very strict, actually paternal, mystic kind of life that Americans

led then. But I said, you know, the thing is, again, we are that generation. We do backstory, any actor that's really going to work, that will bring a character to life as a human being. You do your backstory. So you know where the history, you don't just say your lines, but

“you have to create a history for yourself in the time you're born all the way up to be able to say”

even one line if you're going to have people believe it. And so I decided that we went to Berkeley, the two of us, you know, when your husband. Yeah. Art, who clocked Peter's place, we are

at, you know, we're educated, we're black, we're in California, is of that age. What would have

been happening? All of San Francisco was lit up. Really? Yeah. So, and also the band guard, the Panthers were in the Bay Area. So, just know, this is where we're coming from. But the thing is, what is it? And I said, yes, I might be 70, but Judy, the girl is still there. And some people, you're sitting on the train or the bus, or just in traffic, LA. And people look at white hair, and all they see is a two-dimensional, lady-stupid. It's like, if you talk to that woman and look at

the pictures from her and her 20s or 30s, would her heels all the way over her head and her doing,

you know, tango, bouncing, whatever. But you wouldn't know that if you look at her and just look at

her hair. And so that's the thing about accumulating years is people take away your humanity when they look at you when they just observe you. But whatever you were doing, are you are doing at 20, or 30, or 40? You think you discovered it? Oh, darling. And it's like, just like anybody playing music, anybody painting, the longer you do it, the more fine tune you are at it. We're constantly in the process of becoming more of our true selves. So look to the look to your elders. We're going to

come back to the burrows, but you know, I was so excited to talk with you because you're one of those rare actors that span generations. I can talk to my mother about your work in the 70s and 80s, I sit squarely in the 90s, 2000s. My kids are like, oh, series of unfortunate events. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. And we all asked the same question. Like, tell me about her life. So let's talk about that for a minute. And I want to go to the moment where you realized you want it to be an actor,

you're 14, Catholic school and Tulsa. Once a month, your film studies teacher as a brother Patrick. Oh, the Patrick of Brian. Yeah. He would bus the class to art cinema.

“And you saw this film, this French film about a middle-aged man. And you said, what?”

Okay. It was he didn't just film. Brother Pat taught me creative writing. And he, along with Cecilia, taught us marriage. Marriage and creative writing. Now, this is funny. Go away. But with the Christian brother and a nun taught us marriage. And of course, we had a film day with that. And they, they were good sports and loved it. But I was at Bishop Kelly High. And they would bus the whole school 750 kids. And it was to watch whatever Brother Pat was on about.

So that's where we saw citizen came, Sunday's in Sebel, long loneliness of the long distance runner. Incident at Al Creek Bridge. All of those sorts of films that then you've got. When you got to college in film studies, you know, you had already, you'd already spoken about that. And so

“I remember, we were exciting like, oh, going to the movies, going to the movies. And you're”

get there. And there are subtitles. We're like, there's not a movie. This is a lesson with the read. And you know, just sitting there sucking on it, twizzler. And before you know it, your heart is gripped, you're identifying with a middle-aged French man. He goes to Sebel. Sunday's in Sebel. Sunday's in Sebel. Your eyes are filling up with water and I'm reading the subtitles.

And I immediately saw film, how powerful the movie image was. And I wanted to be involved

“in it. You wanted to be involved in it. But did you see yourself as a showman? How did you”

how did you come to that moment to say, I want to be on the screen? And I want to be, I want to be these actors I'm watching. I didn't think of the most actors until I started watching De Nero. They done a way for Chino. Those actors on on screen. That's when I said, okay, that direction. But there's a non-sisterationally engram who should have been an actor. But she went into the combat. And what she knew, because I was in public schools in elementary school.

And what she knew was she fought me on all the time was, I always felt, I can remember stuff

out of the book. I remember stuff I read. So you can't mark this wrong. She'd mark my paper up. You were good at memorizing. And she said, I know what Mr. Hawthorne thought. I read the book. I asked what you thought. And so it was a different way of learning than. So she, somebody was dropping

“out, had to drop out was sick. A week to learn the script, other play. She says, you need to,”

I need you to, to do this. And I said, oh, no, sister. I couldn't possibly pretend to be stand up in front of other people pretending to be somebody else. And how old were you? About 14? 14 about 15 at that point. But it, I was, you know, a student leader. I was loud and bodacious. But there's something about, it's like, what? Pretending to be something about she says, it's not for you. Alfred, it's for God. And how did you interpret that at the time?

When someone tells you, you be in a bun stage. It's not for you. It's for God. Well, it made sense. And I thought, okay, you know, I, I had a lot of love and support and creature comfort in my life. I had a good life. And I just went, okay, I honestly said to God, we are even after this. And so I got in the plate. And so I got on stage at this moment. Yes. And it was as if I've been walking around on dry land, my whole life, doing the breaststroke.

And in the, yeah, what it does is she, she, she weird, but she got some good ideas about stuff. And then just somebody came by me and tip me in the water. And that same, that same oddity

“propelled me into just the most open freedom I've ever felt in my life is being”

in the middle of your purpose between action and cut. It's like, okay, that's it. That's what I'm going to do. Well, because she calls my parents that you have to see Alfred, you know, she, you know, Alfred, she's, she's, she's, she's after, she's just, she's noticed in my father who I'll tell you about him. They, they both went, oh, oh, everything's so like, thank God. Relief, we're not, they're a place for her

fightly. So yeah, I think that's such a powerful metaphor to say you felt like you were on land

doing the breaststroke and that feeling of hitting the water. I mean, that's more powerful than anything I've heard. You, you come from a family of storytellers, though, right? Like you tell the story of your mom making big pots of food and people coming from all over, including your family, you'd sit down and tell stories. But what I love about this story and I want to know where your place is and it is, you all were really like listening and discerning on the story. So if someone

story didn't add up, you'd be like, ah, y'all lying. You lied. Yes, yes. Oh, and black people loved to jump up and how? Oh, that's not that. That's not that. That's not that. Everybody jumps around and goes crazy and it's a good time. But also, a lot of the stories, it's family gathering and chosen family. So a lot of the stories are being retold, but you want to hear it again. And you could be four years old and somebody would give you the floor, but nobody would stand. Come on,

baby tell the story. It's like, okay. All right. Come on. Come on. Yeah. It better be good. Our guest today is award-winning actor, Elfrey Woodard. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tony Mosley and this is Fresh Air. This week on the NPR politics podcast,

to a challenger backed by president Trump. Now Democrats are more hopeful than ever that they can

flip the seat in November. We'll break down the stakes for Texas and the balance of power in Congress on the NPR politics podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. So you realize acting is your path. You got a Boston University,

“Boston University in the early 70s was kind of a strange but important place. It sounds like.”

Oh, yes it was. You were there with Paul Rubens and Gina Davis who was co-star in the boroughs. Yes. And I did, we did a sitcom together years ago called Sarah with Bill Mar and Bronson Pinsho, was Bill Pum and also in it. No, he was. I'll bill Mar. Okay. I'm just curious. Did you and these folks who would go on to be very successful actors? Did you ever talk about your dreams with each

other? Or what you want it to do? Or anything like that? I didn't. Maybe people did. But I've never

shared my goals allowed with anybody until I got to, I was backstage at the table. We were doing for colored girls. It was the LA, your ballot girls. After Boston University, right? You moved to LA. Where everybody else went to New York but you chose LA. Because my whole orientation and to what would be my purpose was film. So I came to LA and I was saying, oh, I'm going to LA being films and people were going. Would it sold out already? She's going to Hollywood to be in the

“movies. Because at the time was theater considered where actors would go. Is that kind of the thought?”

Well, if you're in a conservatory and the work that you're doing is classic plays in theaters, you know, but they didn't even give you the reality of it. We all thought we could go off to the open gate theater and do breakfast with the rest of our lives. But again, I'm sitting there going on LA. And so I did tell a couple of friends I said, I'm going to LA and then a guy, Gary Bass, who was from Tulsa as well. He said, I'm going with you. And then Brenda, who was from Lakeland,

Florida, and Norwegian. No reason was from Rochester that they continue on being actors. No, Gary had more skills. I had no marketable skills. I still don't, I can cook.

“But don't tell me what the cook. I know. So, you know, people learned that they could do other”

things. And everybody has a point where they say, okay, I get. And you just know that so many people who I trained with and others that I would do plays with, you know, on a local level, it's what it takes to stay in our industry. Doesn't have anything to do with talent. It's a plus if you have talent. And it's a super plus if you know that that talent doesn't originate in you. And you knew that very early on. Was there a moment though when you felt like,

I give to, did you ever have those moments? Oh, no. I love the way you said that too. You're almost sounded disgusting. I'm not disgusting, but like, girl, I'm a daughter, Greenwood. I'm a wooded. I'm a Robinson. You know, there's nothing in my history to know to do that. I don't know how to do that. My father would say, I'd say, oh, I'm you know, in, uh, all black marinades in junior high school, I'm going to run for

parliamentarian. Yeah. Why don't you run for president? Oh, they're just going to let a guy do it. And that was in my school when it was, they're only 10 black kids. Oh, you know, they're going

to let a guy do it. No, my father always said, I mean, he goes, well, then you got to figure out

a way to get it from him, don't you? And so that was, you never said, I can't because somebody won't let me. He's like, well, what do you want? Okay, so not figure out a way around him. One of your first critically acclaimed performances was as Doris and Hill Street Blues. And this was 1983. And you were part of this, uh, the first show, you were in a couple of the episodes, but the first one was Doris in Wonderland. And I actually have a clip from that episode. Doris is being interrogated by police,

and she's being interrogated because while she was out applying for a job, her son, who was five

shot him, and he dies. And now police are asking her what happened. Let's listen. I want you to tell me what happened. This is Robson. Nothing to tell. Why did you leave your son alone in the apartment? I had to go stand in line for a job.

There was only taking the first 20 people, so I had to get there early as a could. I see.

Watch out. Where did you stand in line? Excuse me. Let's make this clear as my client

“under arrest or not. She is not. Is she free to leave?”

Not at this time. Mrs. Robson, I'd advise you not to answer any further questions. What's the difference? They asked me out, answer her. The gas company had the jobs. And why didn't you have someone stay with your son? I couldn't afford a sitter.

As I read it, I wanted $2. My boy was hungry. And if I didn't get a job, he wasn't going to eat. Are you saying I killed my boy? Are you saying I killed him?

“That is my guest, Alfred Waters, and Hill Street Blues from 1983.”

Oh, my gosh. There's a line of critic wrote about your performance. He said, "When Doris tells the cop who killed her son, I don't hate you, because that happens later when she talks with that police officer." This critic says, "You summoned a moral authority that's impossible to fake." And I felt the same thing. There's so much innocence and restraint in your portrayal.

And this portrayal, in particular, first off, I have to say, I had never seen it before.

And I immediately thought about Tamir Rice in 2014, who had been shot by police while playing it with a toy gun, and I thought, "Wow, this was 40 years prior. The story is almost exact." So that was heartbreaking. But also, if this was portrayed today on television, first off, I feel like it would be much more sensational, possibly. But also, maybe the trope of the angry black mother would come out. The mother who is angry and mad

and upset at this, and you didn't play that card at all. Like, you played this role as a mother who is completely shell-shot, and also is really in a position where she had no other choice, and she's laying it there. She didn't have anybody to watch her child. So she obviously doesn't have people. So she's relying on things that we cannot touch. People we cannot see is her strain.

“So it doesn't surprise me. That doesn't surprise me, but I've got to find a way to say that, honestly,”

and not put Alfred's activists, because I've been an activist, so I walk practically. I walk precinct with my parents when I was 10 years old in Tulsa. Because they would have been

like completely reasonable for you to play that hand and be angry. But also, I have always understood

rising above. And so it was a choice. And also, her son has gone. She has to go deeper because he's already gone. So I got to follow him. I got to go with him. I don't have time to stand here and spin this moment that is the last time I'm going to be able to smell his clothes, deal with your ass. So I mean, I see that was Alfred. But that's it. That's who didn't need to be in that seat. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Alfred Woodard.

We'll be right back. This is fresh air. Brazil used to have one of the fastest growing economies in the world. People called it the country of the future. There are songs. O Brasil, bye. Because it seems like we have it all, man. But then the music stopped. On the planet money podcast, a lot of countries these days aren't rich. They aren't poor. They're just kind of stuck in the middle. Why is that? Listen on the NPR app or wherever we get your podcasts.

institution, but where you're rooted in community. And I think I told you right before we

“started Crookland holiday hard. Down in the Delta, directed by Maya Angelou. Yes. I read. So you”

could tell me if this is true or not. She made everyone call her doctor Angelou. But she told you, you could call her Maya. Okay. So I knew her. And so, you know, she's a poet. Poets used to working alone. And she might be a dancer. She did all kinds of stuff. But her heart, she was a poet. So she's coming to the most sort of communal creative effort you could make is a film set.

There's at least a hundred people and sometimes three times at a mount. And everybody is telling

that bringing their bit, their department, whatever their discipline is, to together, to the director, the filmmaker, to tell that story. To piece it into one whole thing. So she grid there and people running around doing things. There's like, Maya, what do you feel about this color? Maya, and she goes, everybody come, come around like this. Yeah, everybody's like, they're so excited to be Maya. She said, my name is Dr. Andrew. You will refer to me as Dr. Andrew. What legends, you know,

you're sitting with and working with, just to let folks know down in the Delta, you play a mother who's living in Chicago. What kind of has some problems? Maybe a little bit of substance abuse problems and things like that. And your mother sends you down home. Very Delta, baby. Yes. So you can, you can get yourself clean and together. And you do, it's like your, this film, and so many of those films of that time period, you're letting us into the interior lives

of people, of black people. You know, black people. Yes. And also the pacing of it is so slow, it's, it's so slow compared to today. It's like a slice of life. Um, those stories don't really get made like that today. No, they don't. We live at a different pace. We don't give ourselves the courtesy of time. Look at me. I sound like the person. I'm not getting in that big

“tan bird in the sky. What is I think about it, Alfred, is that I think before going back through”

and watching all these films, I might have been like, okay, yeah, that sounds kind of like an older person complaining. But there was something so beautiful and real and, and it offered a totality. It was like having a full, full course meal in front of me. Instead of like cheap fast food, you know, where it tastes good in the moment, what is lost with that? Because one of the things I just felt is like, wow, this is a true representation of black life at a certain period.

And you know, a lot of the country and certainly the world did it know we were as complex and comfortable, naturally, complex and smart and whole, because we'd never been presented that way on screen. The whole point is storytelling is for the help of the community.

And it always has been, since the grios, since people first stood up around a fire,

“we need stories like food and water. That's how we know who we are. The re-creating, the re-telling”

of the story lets the tribe look at itself, laugh, cry, get scared, but to reflect and to know how to walk forward. What we're called to do is to tell stories. And if the stories can't be healing, it's invalid. In 2019, you were in the film Climancy and you play Bernadine Williams, a prison warden and a maximum security facility who oversees executions. And I want to actually play a scene from it. Your character is singer-cross from an inmate. She has come to know a man

who is about to be put to death. And she's walking him through it every single step down to the drugs that will move through his body. Let's listen. Four hours from the execution, all communication without side parties will cease. That includes

through the procedure. You will have to take your clothes off. We're the shirt, the pants, the shoes issue to you. When it's time for the procedure, you will be walked to the chamber, or five officers will restrain you to the gurney. A medical professional will prepare you for your injection. Officer will insert the metasolin. That will render you unconscious.

The second drug is pancurronium bromide, which causes paralyzation. The last drug is potassium chloride,

which will cease heart function. At that point, medical personnel will confirm the execution

“complete. Now, if you want to talk to mislimateta about this, lady, can't but do you have any questions?”

Do you have any family that would like to claim your body? Oh, Alfred, you're crying. Yeah, tell me why you're emotional after listening to that. You know, when I work, I don't remember lines from things I do, but I have emotional memory of each moment and how I got there. I'll tell you it was easier to shoot clemency than it was to do the homework for it to know you took me on a two-week prison tour. That's the director.

Yeah, if you took me on a prison tour of Ohio prisons because she had worked for about eight years teaching screenwriting to women inmates. Anyway, that was the tough part.

“And probably everybody that was on the row when we were doing that at least half of Morgane.”

No, because you met with real inmates who were on death row, you also met with wardens. You met with female wardens who were doing the job. And I thought this was such an interesting part of it because you thought going into it, what kind of person would do this job? And then you met them and you said, okay, yeah, these are kind of women. I would be in a book club with. And these, this is who you want. If you're not going to change the law,

this is who you want to be in charge to be with the incarcerated first of all and to be with

people to walk them all the way through this. And so I'm always interested in, if it's something

“I know, there's no need to do it. You know, the great thing about being an actor is you have to”

learn something, not just the skill knowing about the skill of what your character is doing, but you got to come off your own opinions to do something. I would be a visual person. I was like a prison guard. But when I went there and met them. And again, you go with your heart open and you listen. You listen with your heart. And I learned talking to them. They are respected all the way through, all the way through. And for most of the time, the guys or the

ladies walk in the line, nobody's respected them when they were young, when they were little, when they were teenagers, whenever, when they did that thing, and when they did that awful thing. But especially on the road, you with them for at least 10 years, and longer, usually, before their, their appeals are exhausted. So that group of people and the majors that are there with them, those are call workers. Those are people you see every day. So I said, I've turned

and was somebody in your office got, um, Betty, we only have to kill you today. And we're going to have to do it. Let's take a short break. My guest is award-winning actor, Elfrey Woodard. This is fresh air. This week on all songs considered from NPR music, we asked what song defines the millennial generation. There was a general anxiety of how what was coming next. And to sort of assuage that, you're like, well, I might as well have a good time while I can. And I'm doing that

to this day. Here are new episodes of all songs considered every Tuesday, wherever you get podcasts.

The number of actresses like you, black actresses your age, working at your level, has never been

large. I'm thinking about CC, CC, age pounder, militia, Rashad, Sicily Tyson, that Angela Bassett, you all know each other. I can imagine you at one point or another have gone for the same roles. And how do you work through that? How do you well continue to stay and keep each other

you're kind of going to have to be pit against each other. Well, we don't pit ourselves going

“to see each other. I don't. I started to think all sisters sworey. Yes. And the reason I did,”

and let's talk about what the sister swore is, it's a pre-oscer party. Yes. Right, with black and Latina actresses. Yes. Okay. And the reason I started it was, people say things like, oh, just so great. It's too bad there's not any roles for black women. It was like, no, I have to answer you. If it's the queen of England, yeah, let all the kates be queen Elizabeth. But if there's 99 other roles, then shame on you, but not seeing all these women who are not only

prolific, but profound, they have a track record and they have made bank for people. And so I said, okay, this is what we're going to do. And I got tired of hearing, you know, fans and we live our fans going like, they want to put, you're going to share the, you know, who would have

“been better in this? You know what, you don't do that to the kates, don't do that to us. And”

the thing is, we have more in common with each other than we do with anybody else. The sisters. And so I said, we have, we have to get together. I started having this while

we're, the first people I honored was Terragia and Biola were nominated in the first two

henshin and I said, we're going to lift y'all up before y'all go on that red carpet because we don't care what happens there. We celebrate people. We don't, we don't put prizes on them. You also invite women who should have been nominated. Exactly. And so it's when that, when you say that handful, I like taking that picture because there's going to be at least 30 people or sometimes, you know, we would send out the 40 invitations and I would pray that more than 30

wouldn't come because I couldn't put the bill for it. Too many, right? You got to like it. But I said, you come by yourself. No partners, no reps anybody. And people, you get there and everybody just go, come in here. And everybody loved each other so hard. We get when we got there, everybody just wanted to talk, just talk. And we did that. And intimacies and secrets were shared and people said, I need to say this. This is what I'm

feeling like and everybody came to that person. Everybody talked. And when we were together and on the road, you can call, you know, who to call when you're feeling this way or if something comes up and people started to to mentor each other of the same age. You know, I didn't want to hear another, you know, reps say something like, well, can't, that be turns it down. And you got a good shot. It's like, they've said that to you before. No, not my people, but I've heard

other people say it. Yeah. I wouldn't be with somebody, but the thing is, it's, I put it back on the world. It's like, here are these people. Now you, you tell me, you can't find that. Alfred Wooder, this has been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you so much. You were so welcome. Tony, I, I love sitting here with you. I listen to you. You are, you're just as beautiful as you are smart. And I'm very proud of you, so it's an honor to sit with you.

“Alfred Wooder stars in the new Netflix sci-fi series The Burrows. Tomorrow on Fresh Share, we remember”

one of Jazz's greatest improvisers and tenor saxophoneists, Sunny Rollins. He died Monday at the age of 95. Bliss and back to our 1994 interview with him. I hope you can join us. Fresh Share's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Schorock, Ann Marie Boltonado, Lauren Crinsol, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Susan Nakundi,

Anna Balman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.B. Nesper. They are a challenger directed today's show. With Cherry Gross, I'm Tony Musley. NPR's newest podcast is where you can find NPR's biggest interviews. I'm Steve Inskeet.

The program is called Newsmakers. We talk with some of the most powerful and influential people at this

moment to put real questions to them and push for real answers. Follow Newsmakers on the NPR app