In The Hollywood Race, Shannon Houston examines the dynamics of race and culture as they play out in the film world—on and off the screen.
Director Steve McQueen once said in an interview that, before meeting him, people would often assume that he was white. I felt a bit guilty when I first read that, remembering my surprise when I looked up his name after watching Shame, gasping at the first photograph I saw. True, this was a gasp of excitement—elation, even. As in, “Yes! A black man directed a movie like Shame?! Yes!” But this reaction also points to an issue that comes up in my conversation with actress and singer/songwriter Tessa Thompson—there are certain expectations we have for our black filmmakers and actors. We are excited when some of them break the mold, but even those of us working against stereotypes and misconceptions participate in perpetuating them, at times. In the first installment of The Hollywood Race, we talk with Tessa Thompson, star of Sundance favorite Dear White People about working with Tyler Perry, Justin Simien, and her two favorite, “whitest” movies from last year.
Tessa Thompson has no qualms saying the unexpected thing, if that thing is her truth. In a conversation about her critically acclaimed co-stars from the set of For Colored Girls—Phylicia Rashad, Kerry Washington and Janet Jackson, first she tells me what I expect to hear. Obviously, these women were great and inspiring, and she learned so much. Thompson was—like any of us would have been—struck by Rashad’s poise, and floored at being in the presence of Ms. Jackson (one of her childhood icons), and Thandie Newton. They were all actresses she’d previously “admired from afar.” But when I ask her which of these women she connected with the most, her answer surprises me:
“Actually, on set, the person who really surprised me was Macy Gray. Although we worked so little together in the context of the movie, and we were even kind of at odds—she gives me the abortion in the film—it was her. Here’s a woman who’s been in a number of things. First, she’s a musician, but in her work as an actress, she just lets it all out. She’s not necessarily concerned with making the right choice and because of that she has this freedom. When that incredible lack of inhibition meets talent, and research and craft, that’s really special.”
For Colored Girls, a choreopoem by Ntozake Shange adapted for the screen by Tyler Perry, surely took Thompson back to her theater days. Like many actors, she fell in love at a young age (she remembers auditioning for A Midsummer Nights’ Dream her sophomore year in high school, her first positive experience with Shakespeare), but it took her some time to pursue—really pursue—a career.
“I had all these odd jobs, and I was just broke!” she recalls. “Eventually, when I realized that [commercials] were not for me, I finally started going out for television roles, and stuff just started happening.” Some of that “stuff” included her role as Jackie Cook on Veronica Mars. Though she was unable to make it into the recent movie remake, Thompson has fond memories of the period in her life building up to the big break.
The conversation soon turns to this notion of diversity in Hollywood. One of the reasons we’re talking is because I included Thompson on a list of “10 Black Actresses to Watch in 2014.” There are people who believe such lists are unnecessary in 2014. It’s much more pleasant to think of America as a post-racial society. And it even seems like we are sometimes, until someone slips up and gets caught saying something racist, at which point we all get together and rage collectively on Twitter for a few days. But part of the goal of this series is to keep that conversation going, even when there isn’t a race-related scandal afoot, and Thompson was willing to open up about her experiences as a person of color in the industry.