tv Larry King Now RT August 19, 2013 9:00pm-9:31pm EDT
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she's the girl who doesn't need a last name sometimes people were criticized me because i thought that i didn't do enough for race or racism i try to tell stories that allow people to see themselves in the lives of other people and you still have the experience of this elevation of racism bad experiences i think the higher up you go into and the the chain of capitalism people don't expect you to be sitting at certain boy to build confidence that a sin in the sense it in you know it plus they can. tell us what is she doing oh my god i'm like terrified oprah is next.
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to larry king knowledge the intro artist is you may not know or. is hope for the only one of the few people who are and you don't have to say the last name and she stars in a brilliant new film up off and i don't like stole movies on this program and i tried not to refer to myself but i saw the butler and the butler is the best civil rights movie i've ever seen the great dramas i've ever seen one of the great human dramas with an incredible performance by you when did you know you could act i'm going to sit up straighter for that when he didn't win do you know you could i mean you were a broadcaster i go back to baltimore with you know we go way back i didn't know i could act even in the color purple larry i had these i had taken the stanislaw ski acting books with me to bungalow in north carolina were shooting the color purple in one thousand nine hundred eighty five because i couldn't figure out why couldn't they. alan's acting with i knew instinctively that you've got to figure out
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a way to let that character be truthful but how do you do that if you're acting in the word act was hanging me up and i wasn't sure i could do it because i'd been an orator before all through high school i grew up doing sojourner truth and fannie lou hamer speeches misappropriated and public speaking so i knew i could do that i knew i could do dramatisations which is very different than acting going into the interior so i guess i really didn't know i could do it until that famous scene in the color purple where she comes to the cornfields and says you too hot to to be me all my life i had to fight i had to fight my uncles i had to fight my brothers that scene i had to fight my cousins i never knew i had to fight to my own house i did that in one take why didn't you do more because i had that day. and actually after beloved you know i was on the larry king show for promoting beloved
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and that was fifteen years ago and in fifteen years and i put my heart and soul into that i was a producer for that i really wanted that story to be told and then it was not successful i didn't understand the whole i think we got beat that that we can buy something called chuckie would check you were and then i remember saying to myself after saying you know you lost and chuckie you have beaten by chuckie makes a mess running in cheese and i'm going into it went into a macaroni and cheese have you got movie offers over the years yes i've got movie offers over the years but i gave up the dream because it would be like you the daily. i've been or other movies but i play my show from year in and that's right so if you're going to commit to something other than playing yourself because i think it's hard to play yourself you know where you go and who is yourself as in yourself you don't have to act you've got to find out who you think yourself is anyway i've given up the dream of the. acting because the day job had taken over
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and i was really content with that and said oh well that must that wasn't supposed to be my life so how did the book come around because lead ten years had been calling me about other films and sending me scripts and saying he really really really wanted to work with me and i wanted to work with him after obviously seeing precious i stepped up to help promote precious and say you know just because i want to move is many eyes on it is possible and i wanted the opportunity to work with him but he called me at the worst time i was going to the building of all in and all of the you know michigan michigan us insured and fraud of that and i simply you just couldn't have asked me a worse time i'm i'm just trying to keep my head above water here i am just trying to dig myself out of a hole that you know i got all this were to do with that work in finding the right people because i cannot think of a ticket because i'm going to go with this will be so what he said was i'm going to
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shut you out and let you come in and i'm going to shoot all your stuff and you'll be out won't take much of your time so. three months in and out you know why because in the middle of it there was a big hurricane down in. new orleans so it stopped for that and i was in between shooting gloria go into the gloria character come out go interview riata go in the going to character come out and go interview jason russell go interview or so it was a challenging time but i'm now glad i did it i finally said yes because of the story i am a product of the civil rights movement and there are so few stories that i you know strongly strongly believe that if you don't know who you are if you don't understand your history then you have no idea of what your future in the possibility of future conflicts this movie the butler yeah it's going to teach oh a lot of people. i know how hard it was to become
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a doubly know mark you know the other night we came out of a screening and there were some young people like in their thirty's saying you know do that that stuff really happen and i just went yeah that stuff and so much more stuff happened but you know what is beautiful to see is you know this is that amazing country that we live in that butler film starts with the butler sitting in the white house reflecting on his life in me and the whole of the local and beautiful in that whole lynching scene so you begin the movie with a lynching and you end it with obama that is really the arc of this country and for that to happen in one man's lifetime i know it's popular. for us to talk about all the changes that need to calm and we're not where we need to be but look at how far we actually have come that you can in the span of one man's life eugene allen for whom the stories told have that i love that the butler himself eugene
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allen was quoted as saying that. but you know he went to the inauguration of obama after being there for eight presidents from eisenhower and said i never dreamed that we could even dream of such a day and he was in the white house with all of those presidents you know in the crowd in chicago and obama yes yes yes i started to dream that dream of obama when i first saw him at the democratic national it was just when i saw him i felt something i felt a fire under the autobiography missed him and force and cicely tyson actually touching just when it abroad with yes and when she's holding the babies and say she we look at each one of them and we wonder is this the one this is the one that when i saw him that way it will i believe that's the one this woman who play in the book well yeah it's an extraordinary lady she has depth she drinks too much yes she defends her husband and gets mad at them. because better son yeah there are
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so many emotional pivotal scene but she is she is every woman you know larry you know. one of the things i tried to do all those years on the oprah show. sometimes you were criticized me because i felt that i didn't do enough for race or racism but this is what i always understood that for me my role and my goal in life is to open this open people's hearts that's what i do is i try to tell stories that allow people to see themselves in the lives of other people and for me it was always more powerful and effective to do a show for example on single parents raising their children and just on the panel of parents to have a black father and to show the photographs or images of that father putting his child to bed and reading a story night that to me is more powerful than doing
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a story and let's talk about fathers black fathers who are raising their children because the goal for me is to show that we are all more alike than different and that in our humanity in our ability to express our humanness we are the same so when you see a father putting his child to bed at night and reading stories and that man is black and you know that's what your husband does and that's what you do you feel a sense of connection in human life surely you see how did you approach her though i was so nervous about stepping back into this this this role of acting having not picked up the instrument in fifteen years and i called susan that and susan that and who's an acting coach who's worked with a lot of the greats and. i was just happy she took my call like will you come in would you please come into a session with me because i was so worried that i wouldn't be able to cry on cue
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because you know those years and i was doing the color purple i couldn't cry i couldn't cry on cue there was a scene where where i've been in the color purple there's a harpo character my husband in the juke joint and i was a kind. i was so excited to be in the color purple that i went every day to set let me even if i didn't have a role to play i would just be there watching and i was there watching and crying just as if you were in the background and steven saw me and he said i like that i like that i'm going to turn the camera around this afternoon i want you to do just that and i went do but he says that that that you just did and i don't know i don't know how to do that i don't know how to say i did not have the skill the technical skill to do that on cue and there was a moment where he and alan wu cinematographer they're rolling the camera the cameras on me and i'm just supposed i'm supposed to be crying and i couldn't do it so all night long i cried because i couldn't cry did you know you were making
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a great movie my it was the first shot the first day i was the first person up i've never even been to a universal tour i had no idea how movie how movie worked so i walked in to the juke joint first scene first day and i say i walk in and i was looking for the camera because i have been a student of television my whole life i walk in and i look at the camera and i say how you doing is silly. alan and steve it felt like a cat's what is she doing oh my god i'm like terrified and they said because he becomes and he does what are you doing and i said i was just saying the line because why are you looking in the camera i was saying whoa are not supposed to look at the camera he does now you're supposed to look at mess family that is who you're talking to so that was how little i knew about making movies over the years many admission told me they never liked to shoot him so yeah
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on the screen bizarro sheen and being lower sasha good to have you as exactly what happened to me the first time i've seen the second roger ebert said this to me years ago that it takes about five. years before you can you will actually he said it's me when it's comfortable they will take you five years before you can see he said if i were you i would look at it for another five years and i actually did look at it really taken. over the book in the butler i couldn't see myself i just like the super long what it was that and should have done that and they shouldn't do so could have thought was very self-critical the first time all i could see and still was this movie has been elevated to a place it's bigger than i thought because and i think that that happened because of lead and yells and because of forest and obviously because all of our contribution but because of the vision for the film to be bigger than the story than the life of one person or with oprah right if.
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i was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little bit. there is breaking news tonight and they are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry hears a noise great thing that i had read or cared a court of law around online there's a story made for movies playing out in real life. here's mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call. i don't know. i'm sorry i mean the guy here is not what you.
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are you know what that is my son. want to give us a defeat terrorism be on the ball and the current. can you believe that it's. going to look for you to distract us from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industry that fell over from facials to garbage because that breaking news i'm abby martin and we're going to break that.
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was far as kids before you know i was cast before for this it was out of a selection in him that you have to say well i wouldn't say. well we were trying to find someone that would partner with me that would be real a little bit would be realistic and that we could have a chemistry so what actually happened was i addition with several people that did one two three four five he was a six person all of the moment all of them pretty well known yeah he was the academy only academy award winner he came in and. saying oh gosh we're going to ask academy award winner to audition and i said i even like an audition it's just a feel like does does this work and the fortune fetish i looked at lee and lee looked at me and he pulled me into the kitchen because we were at the shuttle my mom and one of those all sweets and i think it's him don't you and i go stuff and so we say would you be my husband. where did they do the white house seems
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they created a house down there in new orleans or maybe our unit was one of those good looks that i thought it was and what they did a really great job we shot it we shot all of that in. arlen's on some of the hottest days wearing polyester i was saying we shall overcome polyester. for ok vote for the kid question what was it like on film to die oh oh that's good i'm nothing anyway but you big characters grow old and it takes you through their life so i'm not taking anything away from you it's a boiler alert spoiler alert but she did she died she died the day before obama was elected did you know oh well it's sort of so in the film my mother went to the rally yeah and she had to resign she died november third two thousand.
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you tied up in pretty good two thousand and eight was a tough scene yeah because you can overdo it dying you can overdo it being drunk you can really over killed you can those and you can really you can you can they told me from the beginning susan that it said people who smoke will know a smoker so you've got to train yourself yeah and people who drink will know a drunk. and. i guess people who've died will know if you did that will or not. know you can you know most people over do death you know you can make death so big you think death is going to be this big dramatic thing and coming to the space i don't like to die actually i didn't i don't want to go and well i actually think death is going to be quite a surprise you know that with that movie the piano. when holly hunter goes underneath the piano drags her down the first thing she says. what is you don't tell me you know i'm not looking forward to it but you know we are going to we're
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not going to get out of it where we are some are afraid of america or so want to be there we're going to happen and used to ever experience a this elevation racism other than on twitter when some some nitwit gets on and uses the n. word. but he's going to do that to my face but i've experienced it i think the higher up you go in the in the chain of capitalism you experience it sexism huge because the expectation for who you are and what you should be doing as a woman and as a black woman you know people you know we hear breaking new ground and so people don't expect you to be sitting at certain board tables people don't expect you to be able to break down certain barriers they don't expect you so i thought i didn't say that i said if you sense it in you know if i had a really interesting incident i didn't i didn't say anything. about it because
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several years ago i was in in france and i had an incident at a store there and i you know complained about which which i knew was clearly racism because it only happens so often where i am directly confronted with it where it's so obviously in your face years ago this is was a late ninety's was only was a number we've gone to see sarah theme and we're like center of the you know and the fall of the beach we're going down the street and i saw sweater in the window this is something that isn't happening and they wouldn't open the door i am not the person who pulls the race card so i am just sold like well gee i wonder what it cut they see is out here so we called to say are you open yes we're open ok coming over just cross the street didn't let us in we had seen on the way across the street these these two white women go in the store and suddenly it dawns on the
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both of us andre and i was in the hall caused question. i think we have an oasis moment and it was i later called back to the store you know i was by your store today and i was a lead in a number and they said they had been robbed by two black people the week before and they were afraid to open the door and i mean the fact that they actually admitted that was so striking and i said i was coming in to buy the sweater and they said well we had to give you the sweater for free and i go you know keep sweater whatever just recently i was in seward and i was at a store and this was last week. i was in zurich and. i had gone there for tina turner's wedding and i had gone out to go shopping and i'm in a store name brand store and i say to the woman i would like to see that bag on the shelf and she says no. that one's too expensive
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i'll show you this when she did it and she proceeded to tell me about the bag and how the bag was created for jennifer aniston and it was did that and did it you should want this one and i said no but i really want to see the black when there are black women and she said no no no. how does it make you feel to see that well i wanted to laugh and i wanted to i wanted to create a pretty woman moment and go and come back and buy everything in say big mistake but then i thought she'd get a commission so let's not do that but that was just one of those that was just one of those thing only from where you came yeah wow how does it feel to. have monetary yeah materialistically everything you know there's a feeling. you have an absence of worry in a key area that most people were about as the economic leader was a guide for you personally to go to that is a really good question attained all you've attained. so you don't think about it i
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do think about it first of all i live in a space of gratitude and that's just not some rhetoric you know. oh me baloney. this morning every morning i prepare myself for the day so i listen to some four hour of either spiritual side. are i read some kind of spiritual passage a diary read something called the bowl of saki which is written by a. sufi master or read a daily word and then i meditate and i do a gratitude journal. and whether i'm doing it electronically or whether i'm you know writing in my little journal that i don't carry the journal around if i'm going to be a long distance like vacation because once i left the journal in a hotel and god only knows what you could sell that for so the books know that but i keep some form of spiritual practice where i remind myself
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daily of where i've come from when i look at this film and i think about jesus i lived that i lived that and only through the grace of god being born at the right time in one thousand fifty four you and i talked about this before i was born just two years earlier my entire life would have been different i was born in the year brown versus board of education so because of that i've never ever sat a day in a segregated school do you know the difference that made in the way i thought and felt about myself i never had to listen to or be in an environment where a school teacher told me or made me feel in any way inferior just the opposite by the time i went to school my grandmother taught me how to read i learned reading the bible so by the time i entered school i was i was always the first kid raising my hand those are amazing to me reasons removed economically abiotic was stupid why would my someone i'm cold to preprinted is to pre-judge he has remains to be
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rejected yeah why would i prejudge something for him but i understood you know i understand being a student of the world looking at not just racism in our country and oppression in other countries where ever there is someone who is the superior there's always human nature the feeling of i've got to make myself feel like i'm going to kick someone there i've got to kick someone out and so i understand that and part of my role is to build a gate that is to in my own way try to open as i said open the spaces of people people's hearts of that they can see that we are more like a different way to answer your question it feels sometimes i'm never not aware of it. and sometimes i have to remind myself it was funny and that stuart always said oh you can't afford this and finally you know it's sort of causing a scene you know. like i just said you know you're probably right you're probably right and i turned and walked out of the store but the truth of the matter is i
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don't that it is a luxury beyond what everybody thinks it is it is really it's so i got to be one of those people say oh you know when he doesn't matter and it is amazing and i will tell you i remember the exact first time i was in a store trying to decide so i get this plate was in tipping nice and i was buying a pattern of dishes and i was anxious to get this one which i did kaplan so this is an island and a friend of mine was with me she said can't you afford both and i went. i could afford both though i did. so that's called who so the idea of being able to have anything you want. and buy anything you want and not to have that as a worry because you don't leave this so you have to me but you don't even know how you know it's all relative i mean how much money can you spend all my time and
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after you have the house you want or the houses you want or the car or cars or shoes or whatever the square footage you want then what so it put you in a space as you know to think about the broader picture of really why am i here because the goal is no longer just time i mean when i was just trying to survive you know when you're writing a check or not signing your name i was on relief or you could coping the light the gas unless you cut off it does not set off your coverage of quick things his own health we know everything ok did you not see the story to my shoulders during a storm ask ok rest or took so long how many. everybody you know the thing is were ahead of schedule because everybody said it was going to take me five years and i was under the impression that it was going to be as easy as other things have been for example when i started the magazine they said you will not see a profit for at least the next five years and we were profitable the first month
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the second month and have been sent and so i thought out and those predictions that is not really actually i had no idea how difficult it would be however i am really there's an old spiritual that says wouldn't take nothing from a journey and i really was speaking to stedman this morning he was saying it's a good thing that you went through that because you were living on the mountaintop for the past twenty five years you created this machine of the oprah show that it just felt like walking into. so no struggle no just it become easy for me to do so to be in a position to build from scratch this network and to go through everybody thinking it was going to fail and there were days when i had doubts myself like. i had to force myself to actually practice what i had preached for years about going inside staying with the vision taking having every step millions of direction of
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the vision and trusting trusting that building the right team it was difficult for some days and you know in between takes of this film i was on the phone with people you know i was playing in between takes of this fell on the phone talking to tyler perry about coming to owen and what that would look like and how we would do that and so forth but it's been you know i wouldn't take nothing for the journey i can see them moving with great admiration for you treasure roll of all the years we've known each other bumped into each of them and i wish you the best of everything and i will tell you you are great in the book i'm good great you know thank you so much i just didn't want to embarrass myself so the fact that you're saying that it means i surpassed embarrassment right grateful thank you.
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