tavis: good evening. from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with danai gurira. for her rolenown fighting zombies in the hit series "the walking dead" which returns for its fourth season. she can also be seen in the independent film "mother of george," which is getting outstanding reviews. immigrantlight in the community in brooklyn. we are glad you joined us. a conversation with danai gurira coming up right now.

♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. versus warrior in the hit series "the walking dead name muchnounces her more beautifully and lovely than i do. what is your name? >> danai gurira. as sheseems invincible

battles throughout the apocalypse. in a new independent film entitled "mother of george," a nigerian immigrant struggling to have a baby. let's take a look at a clip from "mother of george." >> i went to the doctor today. >> what dr.? >> fertility specialist. this, her business? x she can help us. her, i not talking about am talking about us. the doctor can help us. everything, on me. and you.

me. than likely it is onis: i am glad to have you the program. to "the walking dead" for all your fans. and there were a significant amount of times you turn down of the inauthentic way that african women are portrayed. there must be something authentic about the way you are played in this or portrayed that you wanted to do so tell me more about why you wanted this role and you did not turn this one down. >> this one was a no-brainer, really. the director was fantastic and he is nigerian and has lived in the u.s. a very long time but is still connected to his homeland and telling stories from the

continent's perspective. he is a fantastic artist. he is a photographer and has been in the fashion world and doing television and going into film and he had such a tangible and palpable vision of celebrating the african expression on american soil which he has been around in brooklyn for the past 20 years and what he was missing and not saying and i felt the exact team way so connecting with him, i knew i was in the exact right hands to tell the sort of a story which is rarely told but is the new american story. unpack that statement, the african expression on american soil. unpack that for me. >> for me, a goes way back, back to that generation that first came here in the 1960s like my parents. like barack obama's father who came here from those countries that were still under colonization and they were pioneering be some -- this new moment where they were allowed to come here to get an education and to get back home.

my parents took us back home and raised us there. that whole sort of movement of time has moved -- brought more immigrants into the united states from africa who come here and build homes here and lives here but still bring their language here and there expression of self here and andte a hybrid meld of self i feel like it is fascinating to me, watching my own family and seeing my cousins have children here, seeing the generations go on and say how people are connected to their home but are of course americans, to, and that sort of hybrided sense of self is something i yearned to see more of expressed. tavis: what is it about that african expression on american african americans still do not get? >> that is a big question. i still do not get -- tavis: do not get, do not appreciate.

there is always this ongoing conversation between black folk and african folk or black americans and african americans or africans, i should say that you're going to go to any barbershop on any given day and you have some black folk talking about africans and african talking about black folk and some things we agree and some things we are like ships passing in the night even though we are all from the motherland, you get my weight. isre is the diaspora but it -- there is not always a connect to my does that make sense to you? >> it does. i was felt in the middle of that. you have both experiences. >> when i came back here for liberal arts at a college and there is a lot of of africans come there and caribbean's come there and african-americans. there is an interesting election

i feel to everybody. i grew up on the continent so i have a connection to that experience but i have parents who were here from the 1960 posta the 1980's and i grew up a picture of martin luther king on the mantelpiece and he signed for my mother in zimbabwe. my mother is a university library and so my house was full of african-american literature. i grew up reading "roots" and and james baldwin. i had a connection to the african-american experience and i was deeply connected to the african experience and it would be distressing when i saw that tension. there is a beautiful connect here, and the idea that the africans have that i always want to say the africans, do not feel so disconnected because all the struggles that were fought enjoy privileges

that were fought for by african americans over several generations and i looked at the african-americans and say -- sometimes if you like the african-american could feel intimidated by the african coming in and having their language. you guys are an amazing manifestation of african strength create i look at an african-american and i see someone who looks like my cousin. how beautiful all that you endured and you still stand strong and african identity. you are like the strongest of the pack after what you have been through in a place where you were the minority in number said to me there is such a beautiful connect right there in all of that we have experienced and where we have gotten to at this point. and the beauty of -- anct that we have an office kind of meld all that. that is the strength we have, to learn from each other. tavis: that is a slice of what you get in the community.

there'll all kinds of examples africane that african- connect is being made, certainly on the continent in south africa and beyond. those connections are being made every single day. i do not mean to suggest that is the universal story, you have lived in both universes. back to "mother of george," because the story has some twists and turns in it. i will let you top line what the movie is. >> it does deal with a lady who comes into the united states and she is married to a man whom she loves dearly. she is very traditional and keen to bring a family to this man who has navigated this realm and built up a small business and they want that tradition alive, she wants to bring in the beautiful home and beautiful family and he has a very --ticular mother who is very a very strong lady and she has a vision that she will receive a

son who is called george and that happens on the actual wedding night at the mother ordains that this is going to happen. you will have a son, he will be called george which of course this lady totally embraces and wants deeply. the snag is when that does not -- that is not happening and a year and a half has gone by and it is a question of what is going on and how you deal with that in this cultural realm, how do you actually start to grapple with that, how do you communicate something as tricky as a fertility issue in a realm where people can be very reserved and always took this as a given and all the family pressures and the desires for oneself is a woman to be a mother but also the pressures around her. how does that manifest in a new american immigrant? clearly, there are fertility issues here and we do not want to give to much of the story away. the story does get fascinating. to your earlier point about

rushers, fertility issues notwithstanding when you are ordained and it is declared that xyz is going to happen or as i said earlier, there are expectations that people have in certain cultures. if that -- is that something you familiar with, the expectations? >> no, i grew up in such an alternative way in the sense of, my parents were here for 20 years of the way they raised their children, was very different from the way my peers were being raised. i was a very loudmouthed little girl which was kind of rare, you know, i was very outspoken little girl. tavis: i cannot imagine. you outspoken? >> it was like that and it was unusual. it was unusual and i was in a home where my father was a very affirming man. he knows that he was an academic, he wanted his children to think and speak for themselves and make their own decisions, and he wanted to facilitate that so he has three

drawn -- strong spoken daughters. asks: be careful what you for. >> i think he is happy with that. i witnessed that around me. i witnessed the pressures of tradition on many people i grew up around and family and friends and relatives alike. i was very much in the culture around me. there was a lot of traditional pressures, but there is such an evolution that has been happening over the last 20 years as i have been going up of saying how people are still navigating it but feel the pressures, sometimes put it on themselves. sometimes you can walk away from that pressure but you have not giving yourself permission because you did not see your mother do it or your mother's mother do it and that is the navigation of this character, what do you choose for yourself and what do you look back and say that is what they did and that is what i have to do? tavis: you made the point earlier that you came back here to go to college.

you were born in iowa. back toents took you zimbabwe and you are raised there and you come back here for college. god knows that we have a lot of work to do vis-à-vis k-12 in this country. we need some real meaningful education reform, another conversation for another show, another time but it is still the case that around the world people claw and dig and bag and cajole, whatever they have to do to get here, to go to our colleges and universities and we are still the envy of the world when it comes to that. your parents having lived here send you back here, brought you back here to get you a good college education. since you go back and forth to zimbabwe even now, is that still the case, are people still clamoring on the continent to get here to get an education? >> absolutely. it is exciting. every single year i get like the list from the u.s. embassies of all the zimbabweans who are

going to stanford or yale. i am up way right at yale. i meet all these zimbabweans who are there and it is kind of amazing. it still does happen. there is that desire to do better than what has come before so you want to go to this place where you can do that are and the beauty is when people focus on investing back. i met one girl i knew, her sister was my classmate in some bubbly and i saw her ideal a couple of years ago. she said, i am going home when i am done and i am investing everything i am getting here back to their. thisdea understanding that is the place where you learn a great deal, where you meet a great number of people who will enhance your skills and allow you to create a standard that you can take home and bring to others. it is still very much in play. tavis: you are a playwright, an obie-winning playwright.

tell me about the term to start writing the cherry hill you want to see out there. >> it really was necessity being the mother of invention. i was looking for monologues to addition with and things like that and i could not find stuff that told the stories i felt were fascinating to tell. i fell in love with a lot of western playwrights. i love chekhov and shakespeare, i love shaw, and there were africanhere is an version of the stories. i could see how chekhov must have loved his people and going, i have got to write about these people. it repelled me to feel like i need to start writing stories and initially, it was like my need something to perform that speaks to my strength and speaks to women i know of and stories it think are important to tell

and that it became something bigger. there is an absence, a dearth of stories that come from a complex -- a lot of my plays are about africans that come from that complex african portrayal and that experience and mindset. i think there's something so interesting to say and see about us so i wanted to be seen and heard. i thought, why not see the stories as much as we see everybody else's? fors: if you could top line me, what is it about the portrayal of africans because hollywood has its own way of were training -- they portray cubans and mexicans a certain way and that happens around the globe. with about how hollywood for tracery is people. what are they still not getting about the complexity of african character and that is a strange question. it is the biggest continent in the world. every african is not every african. give us a sense of what they're still not getting in hollywood

about the portrayal of african people. >> we are at a moment when it is really right on the surface. i do not think -- there has not been that much of an investment in covering the african story in hollywood. it is a far ways away, i get it. there is a lot of stories to tell that are right here and i understand that. the next step i think, if you really want to tell the african story is to facilitate the african writer. that is where the disconnect happened when the people who write the story are not deeply connected to the story they are telling. you can see it reading chekhov. he gets his people and that bubbles through and makes it live through generations. he wrote that in the 1800s and we are still performing this today. that type of tangibility of life where things get so culturally specific that the -- they become universal. that is how it is structured.

cultural specificity results and universality. if you're not getting the specificity, how are you going to get to the universal ability to tell it and that is the trickiness because africa is so generally under representated. are 900 million people. it is the second largest continent on the planet. there is such a variety of stories and experiences but it is easy to nitpick the things that are on the surface, quick, -type new things and that becomes what you go to because it is easy. now it is at a point where it is not ok anymore, we are in the 21st-century. there are multiple mass of award-winning novelists from the continent who have written amazing stories that can be adapted and the story is already right there. the cultural specificity is on the page.

isare at a point where there no reason to nitpick in the sense of going for what is basic and on the surface and easy. we are at the poor it -- point where it is easy to go in and get the authentic story. the question is, who is going to invest in that and that is the next question for hollywood. are we willing to make that investment and telling the truly authentic african story because they are there and the writers are there and the access is there. is it question of making the investment. -- it is the question of making the investment. tavis: it is one thing to tell the story and another thing to shoot the story. i think you know where i'm going with this. the cinematographer of this project, "mother of george," has received wonderful awards and recognition for the way he shot this particular film and i suspect some people do not think about this when they watch movie. -- watch movies. -- see scimitar murphy

cinematography honored but specifically where lack people are concerned, where africans are concerned my there is a way that shoots -- to shoot them that puts them in their best light like other folks who want to be seen in their best light. en doing this show for 10 years and she would scream and yell and stomp their feet, and she is saying to the lighting people, you're not letting tavis look his best. you have to -- god knows i need some help that she was trying to help me. she was saying, you have to get tavis in his best light. you have to make tavis look his best and here is how you make a black man looked good on television. when it comes to movies, that is

a much bigger thing and there are millions of dollars that could go into this so tell me why about your cinematographer is getting all these awards and people are saying the way he shot these africans is delicious and beautiful. an amazing manis and he worked closely with andrew and from day one, he would have me come out and he would say stand against this a red wall would be in brooklyn and he would throw some fabric on me and have his team. he was creating a very clear vision from day one. he wanted to get what my skin tone was, what our skin was, how to light things. him and andrew when they talk about it, you are like, wow. they are quite a team. they were pulling from all types of things. -- yoruba.our about from that anding several different artists,

visual artists and planning something very interesting as they put together the story. and pushing each other to do it in a way that, i did not know that they were focusing on the hand or on the arm but on skin and some people were like, what was that about? and someone from haiti said there was this focus, on an ankle or wrist. she said i saw sawunt in haiti's skin, i the exact wrinkles on her wrist and i thought, amazing. that sort of celebration of the ,frican sense of self on screen you do not see very often. they focused from the beginning on celebrating the specificity of these people and the beauty is as we were saying that resonates into something universal where everyone appreciates that because you are saying something beautiful being highlighted, something rarely highlighted. they had an amazing vision.

i just have a quick story he cause it was such a beautiful moment of collaboration between the cinematographer and the filmmaker because they shot that as like a master. i am so used to cutting in and all that stuff for you go for actual coverage and they were like, no, we will do this one master and this one scene. it was long as are his scenes go. you were wondering, they were not cutting in and they were shooting it from their theiction of a mirror -- reflection of a mirror. it is amazing. finally andrew was debating whether or not he would do the more traditional thing and cut in for coverage. he was like, do not sell out, andrew. do not sell out. let's just keep doing it this

way. so they really challenged each other, do it differently, do it their way, not the way they have seen everyone else do it but do it in the way that was truly from their perspective. that is where i enjoyed it. though sort of choices allowed us to run our scenes without worrying about cutting and stuff and find the flow of things with knowing that there is so much being taken care of in terms of exactly how the have lit it, how they are shooting it, what angle they are coming from. it was really special. "walkingor all those kknow you will -- i know you will not tell me about the new season. take it away. >> we love you and we love the fans. it is an amazing thing to be part of. it is an insanely amazing crew and cast and stunning writers create the love is amazing.

it is the most unusual thing to beep heart of and it is -- to be part of and i am excited for the next season. it is so full of beautiful character stuff and action that you will not be able to predict. you will enjoy it. tavis: thank you. say her name once more. >> danai gurira. tavis: there you go. i tried but it is not as natural as you. the walking dead," and "mother of george." watching and as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with investigative journalist eric schlosser on his new book,

"command and control." that is next time. we will see you then. ♪ >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more. pbs.

>> the following kqed production was produced in high definition. >> tonight on qwest, video games aren't just fun, they're a cultural phenomenon. but for handicapped gamers, they can represent a landscape of impossible complexity. meet some game developers who'd like to change that. and speeders beware. think your radar detector will keep you safe? south san francisco police have some hot new technology out on the streets. [ ♪music ]