Best Of: Jodie Foster / Tessa Thompson

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From WHY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley.

Today, Jody Foster. She's been acting since she was three.

And when she was nine, she was working on a Disney film with a trained lion

who went off script and picked her up in his mouth.

He held me horizontally and then flipped me around and shook me.

So I watched the entire film crew run in the opposite direction, sideways.

Foster was 12 when she played a child prostitute in taxi driver,

a role that would define her early career and make her one of the most celebrated actors of her

generation. Also, we hear from Tessa Thompson. She stars in the new Netflix murder mystery

limited series, His and hers. She's built a career on characters and independent films

and blockbusters from Valkyrie in the Marvel Universe to Bianca in the Creed films

to the calculating Charlotte in Westworld. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

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This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tonya Mosley. Terry has today's first interview. Here she is.

My guest is Jody Foster and we're going to look back on her life and career starting with her

early days as a child actor and her Oscar nominated performance in taxi driver when she was 12.

Next month marks the film's 50th anniversary. She recently received an Oscar nomination for the film

NIAD and Emmy went for the latest season of the HBO series True Detective and is now stirring in

a new French language film a private life. Along the way Foster won many awards including

Oscars for the films The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs. In a private life she plays an

American Freudian psychoanalyst in Paris and with the exception of a few lines she speaks French

throughout the film. When the film begins everyone is angry with her including her patience.

One of them accuses her of having wasted his time. He's been in therapy with her for years hoping

it would help him quit smoking. It hasn't helped. So we tried a hypnotist and after only one session

he quits cigarettes. Foster's character is very skeptical of hypnosis but when one of her

patients a beautiful woman dies under mysterious circumstances Foster's character wants to get

to the bottom of what happened hoping she wasn't in any way responsible. Despite her skepticism

she sees a hypnotist goes under and that sets her on a path to uncover what happened to her patient.

Jody Foster, welcome back to Fresh Air. It's been years and my impression is your life has

changed a lot since then. I don't know it's it's moved on but you know it's the same old me so

right and I'm always so happy to be on NPR because I'm such an NPR fan and such an NPR head.

That is so great to hear. So your new film is in French and you want to French language school

right? Yeah my mom when I was about nine years old she had never traveled anywhere in her life and

she right before then she took a trip to France and fell in love with it and said okay you're

going to learn French you're going to go to an immersion school and someday maybe you'll be a

French actor. And so they dropped me in where it was a school at a DC small city Los Angeles that

does everything in French so it was science and math and history everything in French and I cried

for about six months and then I spoke fluently and got over it. So hypnosis plays a key role in

the movie. Did you ever go under even for research? Well actually I have I yeah I'd quit smoking

when I quit smoking I went to a hypnotist and I was a really really big smoker so I tried everything

and I tried to quit a million times and you know like everybody I'd get edgy or I'd gain weight or

I couldn't sleep so I went to this guy and you know wrote the check for $90 and I don't know

he said a few things I felt a little sleepy but other than that I didn't you know it didn't go

into any kind of trance and I left thinking well this is dumb I can't believe I gave that guy $90

and I could smoke tomorrow and then I just never smoked again. Wow that's that's great that's

kind of what happens in the movie. Yeah well not really. No and the movie sets her off on this like

mystery. Yeah would you be game to do a career retrospective? Sure. Okay I'm gonna go back to

the very beginning. Okay you did a copatone commercial a lot of people know that when you were

three and it wasn't like the billboard or picture version this was like a TV commercial. Right.

Yeah I wouldn't we didn't see your bear behind unlike the picture version you know the rights

photographs. Yeah there were a lot of things that were different it was you know it was the 60s

and the dog would not perform so the dog was you know they tried to get the dog to kind of pull

at my bikini bottom but the dog was like not having it. Okay I'm moving on this is from the Paul

Lynn show which was yeah I think from the early 70s and so the main character played by Paul

Lynn rings of the doorbell looking for his daughter and son-in-law who he either knows or thinks

is living there and when he walks in he realizes oh it's like a hippie Buddhist commune. Okay here we go.

Howie and Barbara Dickerson here. Are you the fuzz?

No I'm not the fuzz. I'm not supposed to let the fuzz in. I'm Barbara's father.

I'm not supposed to let them in either. Let me talk to your mother. Which one?

Huh? All the girls here are my mother. Just what a father wants to hear.

Right me young man but I'm looking for howie and Barbara Dickerson. He's meditating.

What can you hear me? Only if you're Buddha. Look I'm not gonna stand here and play straight man to you.

I really I do remember Paul Lynn because I really liked him. He's funny and he was funny.

He was funny. He was really nice to me and of course he's very memorable so I do remember being

on that show. Okay I actually got one more. Okay. This is a Crest TV commercial. Oh yeah.

So four guys are playing golf. One of them sings upon a putt. The other guys react and at the same

time you run up on the green excited to tell your father about the visit to the dentist that you

and your brother just had. Okay.

That is your iron. That's bad. Jodi? Oh check up. Jimmy only had two cavities and I didn't have any.

Hey we really did it. How'd you do it? We brushed with Crest now. Must be the Crest. It has

fluoride. The others we tried didn't. Hey great. A toothpick should fight cavities.

Crest can promise everybody results like this but we can promise most people good checkups.

Fighting cavities is the whole idea behind Crest. Hey George maybe your game is really tennis.

Oh boy. The acting is so terrible. Oh yeah. Well but that was that was what you were supposed to do.

You're supposed to be terrible. We didn't know. I mean just was a different style. You know it was

a different style. But by which I think you mean it sounds like somebody reading their lines

for the first time. Yes. Yes. I remember thinking oh well this is not a job I'm going to do when

I'm a grown-up because this seems like a very silly job. I just learn lines and then I say them

and somebody usually says to me the first direction somebody tells me is usually act natural.

Or maybe they'll say something like be excited on that line. That part of it had held no

sway for me. I had no interest in that. The part that was interesting to me was being on set with

these families of mostly guys they really were all these brothers and fathers who would teach me

things and they'd talk about how the camera worked and we would all be freezing together

or complaining about the food together and there was this community of people that I belong to

and because I love movies and love television and love that was such a big part of my life I was a

part of something so that that's the part that I remember I don't I don't remember the work

particularly as being intriguing. You were mulled by a lion at age 9 I read it but what was

what happened? Was it was this on a shoot? Yeah it was an accident. I was working with a lion who

I loved and but worked with every day it was an old lion had no teeth very old on a Disney movie

and they kept them in zoo structures at night but they hadn't put enough security on them so

at kids at night in the middle of the night would come and shoot BB guns at the lions there were two

other lions one was a stand-in lion and one was like a stunt lion so they let the

they're in the union exactly yeah oh yeah there's a whole you know animal training thing that we do

in the film business and so the trainer couldn't get the old lion to work so they he just wouldn't

move and you can't make a 500 pound line do anything so they got the stand-in lion and the stand-in

line worked all day and we were ending the day going up a hillside I think they might have been

tugging him with a guiding him with a piano wire which is a thin filament and I guess he snapped

I mean he came around he picked me up by the hip and shook me wow he picked you up like in his mouth

yep yep he held me horizontally and then flipped me around and shook me so I watched the entire film

crew run in the opposite direction sideways and to get you help or to run away from the lion

run away from the lion and then I remember showing great courage yes and then I remember thinking

oh this must be an earthquake I knew about earthquakes like ribbon LA so I knew about earthquakes

and then I you're saying you didn't know you were in the lion's mouth no I guess I was you know

it's a shocking thing that happened I had no idea what was happening the only thing I remember

as I remember his main coming around my when I looked down I could see his main coming around

and then the next thing I knew it was an earthquake and then he dropped me and the trainer said

drop it and the land was so well trained that he dropped me and then as I was rolling down the hill

he came running after me and then then he put his paw on me like I got this what do we do next

so yeah it was it was a scary moment of the good news is I'm fine I have like you know some scars

that are very delicate and dainty and have moved all over my body because apparently that's

what happens when you get older your scars move around your body and I'm not afraid of alliance

in fact whenever I see a lion I went to Africa not too long ago and and everybody else was terrified

they were petrified because the lions were so close and they were eating prey and all of this and

I was like oh man you want to go out there and ride on top of them didn't make you think that acting

was unsafe no no accidents happened and I think my mom was really smart I think she you know she

talked to me and she said you know it wasn't the lion's fault and I understood that I went back

and worked with the lion it was in hospital for you know three or four days or something I they

determined I was okay so they I went back and I worked with the lion and I think that was the

right thing to do which is you know I was very lucky and there are animals and we love them and

and you know we you go through the procedures to make sure that you're safe and I worked with lots

of other you know I worked with camels I work with pigs I worked with lots of other animals I think

she did the right thing which is just to make sure that I got through it I think your mother sometimes

exercise like such good judgment in terms of choosing roles for you um though some people might

find that judgment very questionable when it comes to taxi driver but that's one of my very favorite

films it's such a deep psychological study of the characters in it yeah I couldn't be more grateful

to have I mean what luck to have been part of that our golden age of cinema in the 70s some of

the great greatest movies that America ever made the greatest filmmakers otter films that were

really talking about our times in ways that challenging it in ways that had never happened before

so I couldn't be happier that she chose these roles for me and a lot of it was yes it was a

vicarious effort on her part that you know she wanted something for me that she couldn't achieve in

her life and what that was was respect um meaning and to be a part of an art movement um to resist

being objectified and to make films that matter and that would make that would matter to women of

the next generation and and you know my mom who grew up in a pre-feminist time just didn't she

didn't have those opportunities to be able to play a part in the next role that women were going to

play did she approve of feminism once that you know started really blossoming oh yes yes and filled

with mixed messages like everybody um of that era you know there was um it was always very confusing

which you know anybody who's my age probably has the same stories of their mom saying you can do

anything you can be a doctor you can be a lawyer you know but you know make sure you don't ever make

a man mad okay because you know try to manipulate him and say nice things about you know flatter him

rather than make him mad because making man mad is dangerous you know there was just a lot of

mixed messages of you know you can do anything but you won't be able to take care of yourself so

who are you going to marry that's going to take care of you and you know that's what we do as

as kids is you rebel against your parents for the things that um you feel are not true to your life

and that you feel are all fear they're they're just throwing fear at you and you reject that

to become your own person so did you ever take her advice of always flattering men

no but um I certainly knew when there was a drunken guy in a a bar who you know I knew to say

something nice and try to change the subject and you know leave as quickly as I could I think like

any woman who wants to save their life we know that historically we are in danger

we're listening to Terry Gross's conversation with Jody Foster we'll hear more of their

conversation after a short break I'm Tonya Mosley and this is Fresh Air Weekend

let's get back to Terry's interview with Jody Foster so I want to focus a little on taxi driver

since next month marks the 50th anniversary of its release so um let's start with a come

amazing yeah um and and this is an example of your mother being brilliant in accepting the part

for you and of being controversial because she accepted the part for you

because you you play um a 12-year-old and you were 12 when you shot this um and you are

what would then be called a prostitute and today a sex worker

who has a pimped played by Harvey Kytel and Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle the taxi driver

and De Niro sees this and so he wants to buy some time with you to save you he kind of has a

savior complex so here's a scene where you know he has tried to talk with you and rescue you take

him away from the pimped but you don't want to be rescued so he ends up taking you to a diner

he's trying to convince you to go back home be with your parents and live just live a better life

and um you speak first

what do you want me to go back to my parents I mean they hate me what do you think I split

in the first place there ain't nothing there yeah but you can't live like this it's a hell

girl she'll live at home and she'll ever hear of women's lip what do you mean women's

lip you sure a young girl you should be at home now you should be dressed up you should be going

out with boys you should be going to school you know that kind of stuff god are you square

hey I'm not square you're the one that's square you're full of s*** man what are you talking about

you can walk out with those creeps and lowlights and degenerates out on the street and you

say you say a little s*** for nothing man for some lowlight pimped stands in a hole

I'm the I'm square you're the one that's square man

I think Paul Schrader doesn't ever get quite enough credit for for writing this I mean people

who really know movies like think he's made terrific movies but Scorsese he did a brilliant job

directing it but Paul Schrader did a brilliant job writing it you know God's lonely man and all

of Travis's monologues did you get to talk to Schrader I've got the just screenplay well you know

it's well here's old my mom if you saw a Pell Schrader at that time he he really was Travis

Bickle right he wore that army jacket and he mumbled a lot and he stayed up all night and stayed

up for hours and hours at a time my mom didn't want me anywhere near Pell Schrader she was like don't

talk to him whatever you do that's funny because it's like you can play a prostitute who's 12

years old in the movie but don't talk to the person who wrote this well yeah look I was an actor

I finally understood through working with Robert De Niro because he really took the time to

show me what acting was that it wasn't just saying lines that somebody else wrote that it actually

was creating a character I didn't know that before that was 12 now how did your mother feel about

playing you know a 12 year old sex worker and how did you feel about how much did you understand

what that meant and also the film has some pretty explicit violence yeah I mean I think that my mom

knew he was not great artist which he loved mean streets we saw it three or four times

my mom saw that I was interested in art and cinema and took me to every foreign film she could

find mostly because she wanted me to hear other languages but you know we went to very dark

interesting German films that lasted eight hours long and you know we saw all the French new wave

movies and we had long conversations about movies and what they meant and I think that she before

you were 12 yeah and some of them were inappropriate you know some of the moments I remember where

she'd be like why don't you go get pull let's go get popcorn because they were moments in the film

that were not appropriate for a kid too sexual yeah yeah my mom was saying last time in Paris and

my mom going like maybe this is a good time for you to go get a coke did adults in the ladies room

ever look at you and say what are you doing here uh yeah but I also think they admired her I think

they knew that I was I'm precocious as a weird word I think I did have a skill that was beyond my

years and I had a strong sense of self so you know I'm not very good at math I'm not terribly good at

science but I did have a almost like an idiot savant ability to understand emotions and character

that was beyond my years but you've also said that it was hard for you to express emotion unless

you were acting yes and thank god I was acting so it gave me an outlet that I would not have had

I had to develop it was a sink or swim I had to develop an emotional side I had to I had to cut off

my brain sometimes to play characters in order to be good and I wanted to be good you know

what if I was going to do something I wanted to be excellent so in order to do that I had to learn

emotions and I had to learn not only how to um access them but also how to control them

so that I could give them intention you've said to nero state and character

during during the whole shoot and and before it too so what he would do is take you to a

diner and not necessarily say anything yeah yeah he had a very travestical personality during

that shoot so he was pretty boring he was very awkward and very boring and it was difficult from

yeah I was a 12-year-old kid I was like oh god here comes this guy again he's taking me to a

diner and he's going to not talk for 20 minutes and I would talk to the waiters and we also would

run lines so we ran the lines um you sort of a normal rehearsal process where we ran the lines

and I think by the third time he started going off and improvising around the lines and encouraging

me to do the same and trying to show me how to dip in so you know he would go off on a tangent some

long improvised tangent and then I had to find the opportunity for me to place my next line

to when was the right time and really talking about reactions you know how does that make you feel

he really he he he he he was the first person that ever took the time to treat me like an actor

was that fun for you doing those improvs oh it was amazing it was just this huge eureka moment I'll

never forget it I remember being excited and being kind of sweaty in my heart racing when I came

home to the hotel room and came up in the elevator and I said to my mom like wow I finally get it

like I really get it and I want to be a part of this um and I remember that summer specifically

because we were in New York City so of course you saw a million plays you know I saw a pippin

and a little night music and Chicago and you know just all these made equists all these amazing plays

and we also went to see movies you know we saw panic and needle park and we saw

straw dogs and all those films of that era and I suddenly was like oh I want to be a part of this

amazing thing that I feel passionate about and it was just it all happened in a moment

Jody Foster I've enjoyed this so much thank you so much for coming back to the show thank you

and good luck with the new movie and um I hope we talk again me too

Jody Foster's latest film is called a private life she spoke with Terry Gross

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my next guest is actor and producer Tessa Thompson many of the characters she's played

share something in common their public facing but privately conflicted grappling with visibility

identity and control over their own lives she starred as the warrior valkyrie in the Marvel

universe the musician Bianca and the Creed franchise civil rights strategist Diane Nash and Selma

and a woman navigating the fraught boundaries of racial identity and the film passing and a

biracial college student wrestling with racial dynamics and dear white people she was also nominated

for golden globe in her portrayal of hella nia de costas reimagining of henrik ipson's classic play

tessa is also starring in a new murder mystery the netflix limited series his and hers

she plays a once prominent news anchor who returns to the small Georgia town where she grew up

after a murder pulls her back into the spotlight and the detective leading the case

is her estranged husband it doesn't take long to realize they're both hiding something

there are at least two sides to every story yours and mine ours and theirs

his and hers

which means someone is always lying

the series is adapted from Alice fini's best-selling novel and is structured around competing

versions of the truth tessa tomson welcome to fresh air thank you so much for having me it's a

pleasure am i right that this is your first lead in a murder mystery this is my first lead in a

murder mystery i hadn't thought about that until just now you're very intentional in the roles

that you choose i think that most actors are but there's something that is very specific i

talked about it a little bit in the intro there's a through line many of your characters many of

them are of course they're highly intelligent but they're also deeply self-reflective and aware

they use control as a way to survive anna this particular character in his and hers is no exception

and i actually want to play a scene where she's having lunch at a diner with a camera man

his name is Richard Jones and he's played by Pablo Schreiber and he's married to your nemesis

another news anchor which i should just say is really real like this steps there's so many

photographers who are married to news anchor it's so true and there are also so many anchors that

have some you know testy relationships which i learned when i did when i did my time shadowing

some of them oh you did so you shadow yeah shadow which was it's just such a delight i did a ton of

edited lantern i'm so grateful to all the folks there that were so generous with me but

you know it's gotten better now but it has been you know for a very long time a very competitive

industry and for women in particular there is a scarcity of opportunity which creates its own sort

of drama did you go out on stories with them or what was your shadow yeah what got to go out on

stories they got to help me with my copies so i would send my copy in the show they would help me

rewrite i got to go in studio and watch them work it's one of the great extraordinary pleasures of

what i get to do is to really in the process of preparation and research to meet so extraordinary

so many extraordinary people that do incredible work and to really get a window into worlds that

i think i might know something about but truly like anything you know nothing about it the closer

that you look oh i'm so curious what did what's something you learned that was a surprise to you

about the job something that was really surprising to me is i'd always sort of assume that anchors

in particular were people that were just reading the news as opposed to writing it that they

actively are really you know writing those stories and have so much to do with that and then also

just being in the room where they're deciding what stories are important or when something's

breaking but you know i had a similar thing just sitting across from you because when i played

Sam and dear white people and got to play someone that worked in a radio station in a radio station

i still every time i do a podcast or i'm in a radio station i have like a rush of that feeling

again because i just loved doing it i just so enjoyed doing it sometimes when i play parts this

isn't always the case but sometimes it feels like i get a sense of a window of like another trajectory

i might have taken where i not in actor you know sometimes i find things that i go god i probably

would have really loved to to do this thing and and doing what you do is one of those things i

i thought when i was working on it goodness i really like this i have this clip that i want to play

where as i mentioned she's sitting with this camera man and he's married to her nemesis

and she's talking to him about the perils of being married to a news anchor and she's so she's

talking about her nemesis but she's also talking about herself in that same way let's listen

richer Jones married to a rising star lexy Jones what's that like

exciting lonely right friends tell you must be exciting to have a celebrity wife or what passes

for a celebrity in Atlanta but it's not is it people recognize her in the grocery store asking to

take their photo next to her you're invisible she leads it to for the four the six and she stays

for the eleven and there's meetings after so she doesn't get home until after one you're already

asleep so goodbye sex she makes five times more money than you do oh and you're happy that she

does but it creates an imbalance so happy or not it hurts you both okay um i love this scene

it also is so accurate sorry i just was in this world for so long yeah right and you know they're

often these um these shows that try to portray this world yes and they never quite get it right but

this this particular piece seem to do that but if what strikes me the most is that she's talking

about her nemesis but she's also talking about herself she's talking about herself yeah take me

to that scene take me that to that particular piece of dialogue so as i said i i would lean on some of

my you know new friends who worked in the space to go through my copy but also with that scene as

we were developing it i also asked them like what feels right um you know Anna is someone who is

newly back or trying to regain her footing in her professional world and meanwhile is having to

contend with um a lot of choices that she made in her personal life and so i think you get to see

her in this moment she's someone that um deflects a lot and is probably projecting on to Richard

but really she is really talking about herself if you're just joining us my guest is actor Tessa

Thompson she stars in the new netflix murder mystery series his and hers we'll hear more of our

conversation after a short break i'm tanya moseley and this is fresh air weekend this message comes

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let's get back to my interview with tesa Thompson she starring in the new limited series

his and hers a true crime thriller on netflix over the last decade tesa Thompson has built a career

spanning blockbuster films television and independent cinema she's known for her roles

and dear white people creed door ragnarok and other marble movies sorry to bother you

and passing she began her career in theater before moving into television and film she started

nea de costas feature debut little woods and is continued to collaborate with her on subsequent

projects including de costas hetta an interpretation of henrik ipson's classic play hetta gabler

your first TV role before verana kamar's because people talk about verana as is your breakthrough role

yeah but before any of that you were a lesbian bootleg from the 1930s on the show cold case

and i was beginning to feel like a theme just like a period lesbian just a lesbian of the past

a lesbian of the by of a bygone era well gosh you were so young i was so young and i thought what a

hell of a way to start yeah you know but um you talked about being drawn to characters that

don't fit neatly who um you know they cross lines they resist categories um where does that

actually come from though you know you go out and you audition or whoever represents you says

oh there here's a role for you to go to audition or but like this is a pretty specific role to say

like i i'm gonna go for this you know yes i mean the truth is early in your career as an actor

if you're someone like me that doesn't have any folks in hollywood in my family i was like cold

calling agents you know i was like sending my little resume i put together like a little collage

in a handwritten note and i would send it out to agents around town i mean it was like very scrappy

in those early days but i remember that cold case audition came after i'd had like a lot of

commercial auditions which i never had any luck at you know you never got one oh i'd be holding

a pizza box and i just found the whole process really challenging i was not very good at it

it convinced me that i was probably not a very good actor because i couldn't do any of the things

that they wanted me to do it these commercial castings and also typically be like one of like

85 people that look vaguely like you just in like slightly different outfits and i was like i don't

know if i'm going to make it this way but i remember when cold case came through i thought oh my

goodness this is so fascinating because it aligned with so many of the things i already loved in one

of which was research i was like oh i get to do so much research into the time and that i remember

when i got the part i went to i think it was on the universal lot got to go to their costume

archives and you know the suit that i'm wearing it in it is an actual boys suit from that time from

the period um and i remember just thinking like wow if if this is what it's like to work in tv

and film because that was my very first time doing it i was like i never want to stop this is extraordinary

this collage that you made with these little handwritten notes um that's something that is a

through line that i i see and a lot of um the roles that you ultimately got i mean there's this

story about you um writing Tyler Perry um you first off you sent a tape to Tyler Perry

for colored girls yes after you heard that the film was already cast yes i heard it was cast but

i knew sadly because i think she would have been extraordinary journey smolette had to fall out

of it and so i got a call i was in the supermarket at the time i'll never forget um and i got a call

from my then agent who said journey has to leave this i know you love this play because for colored

girls who have considered suicide when rainbows enough is one of the first plays i fell in love with

i still have my hard copy that i stole sorry from the Brooklyn library i still own it i'm so sorry

to them i will pay whatever i owe you but i just devoured that play and and read it so many times

and loved it um and so my agent at the time knew that and said they're making a movie version of it

and there's a part in it for you how soon could you send a tape and i went home immediately from

the market and recorded a tape and and send it to Tyler and sent him a note just about i don't

even remember what i said maybe just how much i love the play yes i mean for colored girls it's a raw

poetic exploration of what it means to be black and a woman in america and you are alongside all

of these titans when you go back and watch it will be gober keri washington thandy newton

philicia reshade what did you absorb being among them jenna jackson jenna jackson how could i forget

literally all the women all i cannot tell you all of the women i watched my whole childhood i mean

so many of these women had had had such an incredible impact on me i remember the first time i

saw tandy newton in that film gridlock my dad showed it to me and was like you got to see this

woman i mean all of their work collectively jenna jackson i was her for three times at a

Halloween i used to know full of i mean very poorly but the rhythm nation dance i could do that

as a child wait three times so so rhythm nation and what other eras of jenna rhythm nation twice

yeah it's a good one it's a good one rhythm nation twice yeah you got the hair today that's

true i do have the hair today i mean i'm always trying to be jenna but these women met so so so

much to me and so being on that set with them was just i mean like pinching myself every single day

but also i feel like i'm so deeply aware all the time of just how we're in relation to each other

you know the the women that both came before me many of them still working today absolutely

the women that are working currently that feel like they're they're coming after me the women

that will come after them i just spend a lot of time energetically feeling connected to black women

and inside of this business because i just know from watching film and television growing up that

it meant so much it shaped so much of my ideas of self seeing black women on screen

i want to ask you about your your parents and in particular your father mark anthony tomson

uh he's a musician um i have so many questions i want to ask you about growing up with uh

parents who were artists but in particular your father he was always photographing you always

filming you what do you remember take me there what do you remember about being on the other side

of his camera hmm yeah he loved um he always had cameras whether it was a super eight or a digital

camera or still camera he loved images still does but then it was relentless he's just always

recording and he would use me to test light and because we just sort of needed a subject but then

we graduated eventually and i could use him as my cameraman and my cinematographer so i would come

up with these stories and then and then i would tell him and sort of directs him and he would shoot

them and some of them actually were quite elaborate i cast my older sister very begrudgingly who is

deathly shy just in general but camera shy especially and so she's in one of those early films

that we made i don't know i think i remember a sense of um feeling a tremendous amount of

excitement and abandon you know i i was lit up by by a camera's presence it was actually later in

life when i began working professionally that i had to build a new relationship with with a camera

but then it's the no self-consciousness at all just uh just uh just uh in excitement and being

able to capture and then my dad would also because we drive around Hollywood a lot he would hand me

the camera so i would get to record a lot too and i really loved that i loved being able to see

life through a lens it made even the most mundane thing exciting suddenly to get to see it behind

the lens that's so powerful because i just it makes me think about your ability to clearly see the

people you want to work with and how you want to work with them and um if those foundational

experiences with your father were pretty foundational in you understanding how it feels and what

you need from from the people that you work with yeah i hadn't even connected that but you're so

right because i think obviously it's my dad and there's such a kind of intimacy and trust and trust

and so there's absolute freedom you're right maybe i'm always tracing that now your um he's

this music he's a musician chocolate genius really um he had several different

arcs in his career as a musician but i'm always fascinated by the neo sole era because

that was just a special era of a time when it was a bringing back of music in such an intentional way

and musicality and such an intentional way and i know that you are that's another form of storytelling

for you you did it in creed where you were a musician who was writing a music but also you wrote

music as part of it can you talk a little bit about how music kind of plays into your your storytelling

as well do you see yourself as a musician i don't see myself as a musician know just because i

know with anything like it's requisite it's it's sort of like an eat sleep breathe it is your world

and music is not necessarily but it has such a huge place in my world and i think in terms of

formative early experiences a lot of those films that i would make with my dad or that time of

creation was also at a time when he lived in his in his studio so when i would be spending because

my parents weren't together i would spend time with my father and when i was spending time with

my father i was in hollywood in this studio so there were so many people coming in and out in

creation and i would be playing or watching a movie while my dad would be recording and so there

was this sense of constant music around and constant kind of creation and i still work in a very

similar way when i'm working on something music is a huge part of of how i'm beginning process

and and character and understanding characters there's so much that happens with sort of connecting

kind of a sonic landscape with an emotional landscape and so i think that had a huge influence

on me for sure your mom you all are extremely close and i want to read something that you

said about her it was at an essence black women in hollywood luncheon back in 2020 so you said

something pretty poignant about your mother and your grandfather and here's the quote i want to

acknowledge someone who is not black and is not in the room because she couldn't be but it's

my mother her father my grandfather was of mexican descent he was a performer in a time where

there was very few of them and he was the only very often and i think because of this he had a

real pressure to assimilate because he didn't want my mother to speak spanish and i was just really

struck by the fact that you wanted to acknowledge her in this room you wanted to say the sacrifices

that she made allowed you to be in that room and also her understanding of identity in that way

how did your mother's experience actually help you hold on to the parts of yourself in this world

as you navigate trying to pinpoint the storyteller you are yeah firstly i think she um

she really recognized because i was doing plays in school and and one of my early productions

i remember she came and i had never seen her look at me that way i think it was the moment that

she realized that i had found something that was gonna occupy really so much of my part and life

and then separately i think as someone that grew up you know i remember and i think her father was

just trying to give her the best odds but for example suggesting that maybe she changed her name

on a resume to sound less ethnic because it might help her get jobs and in fact it did it worked

he was not wrong you know in the 1980s um but i think my mom really wanting to make sure that i

didn't feel like i had to make any concessions of self that i could show up exactly as i was and she

did it in really small ways for example i remember very early on wanting to straighten my hair to get

my hair chemically straightened and my mom was very sweet and very generous and she's like we can

investigate the whole process and do it and we investigated everything i had had like a series of

very terrible blowouts that the weather didn't agree with and she was like whatever makes you happy

but she outlined everything for me and finally i it was my choice i said no i want to keep my hair

just like this and i remember when i made that choice she cried because she was so happy

but she had given the choice to me you know um and and i think that was just an early indication

that was so helpful for me then when i navigated Hollywood and eventually it was on sets where people

deeply decided that i had to straighten my hair or that i had to look one way or another

my mom gave me an early sense of of self enough that um that i could say no actually i i want to

look like myself um and i'm not sure that i would have that i would have known how to do that

were it not for my mother you know what i also note based on what you shared about your mother

and in particular that speech you gave at that women's luncheon where you said i want to acknowledge

this woman who's not in the room i mean oftentimes when we're talking about your identity it is

really focused on your blackness yeah but you are biracial and your mother is white in mexican

and so she's she's really not in the rooms when we talk about black discourse but this sounds like

she was such a fundamental part in you understanding who you are yeah and also i think she did a really

phenomenal job at raising a mixed race daughter and like connecting me to my black identity and

making sure that i was like in those spaces and taking me out of private schools that were

completely white where i was the only kid of color in there on scholarship and understanding that

what what that felt like you know you were even homeschooled for a while yeah because i was in a

school system that frankly was racist and and not great and i was bullied in that school and

um and she understood how detrimental that was to me at a very young age and we didn't have the

money to get to a better school district and so she took me out of school and homeschooled me

until we could yay for mom yay for mom something interesting about you is you have uh you may have more

but i but i don't know this but you have two tattoos one that is a yes yes and then one that's a no

yes the yes is bigger and more visible to to audiences than the no is but you know i got the yes

first and then many years later i thought i needed to get the no for good measure but i think

and they're on separate arms i do think i'm constantly wrestling with that i think i wrestle with

my cynicism and my optimism i think they're always in because that's what they remember it's all

there's the optimism and there's the cynicism yeah but why did why did the cynicism need it need to

happen a few years later with the no after this big declarative yes it was a reminder to myself

that we are as much defined by the things that that we don't do than by the things that we do

and i think i needed to be reminded to to say no i think i'm i think i'm partially

because of my optimism and boundless energy i'm someone that's inclined to say yes and also

i think in this industry there is a perceived um feeling of scarcity and so i think you're

constantly kind of like what's next what's you know and sometimes it it breeds a yes that maybe

should have been that should have been a very polite no test of Thompson this has been such a pleasure

the pleasure has been all mine thanks so much for having me

tesa Thompson stars in the new Netflix series his and hers

fresh air weekend is produced by Teresa Madden fresh air's executive producers are Danny Miller

and Sam Brigger our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham our interviews and reviews

are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers Roberta Shorock and Marie Boldenado Lauren Crinsle

Monique Nazareth they a challenger Anna Bauman Susan Nakandi and Nico Gonzales Whistler our digital

media producer is Molly Cevingesper with Terry Gross i'm Tanya Mosley

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