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Red Pill is a horror film that is a blend of The Handmaid’s Tale and Get Out centered on a Black woman who needs to know her friends a hell of a lot better. Tony Award-Winning Actress Tonya Pinkins’ wrote, directed, stars and produced this horror film that feels like I’m watching FOX News and when I turn off the channel it’s a new reality.

Red Pill is grounded in our current reality and I want to get out since it evokes very strong emotions. Cassandra (Tonya Pinkins) & Bobby (Adesola A. Osakalumi) go on a road trip with her friends on the eve of the presidential election. It’s a mix of old couple friends that include Rocky (Rubén Blades) & Emelia (Luba Mason) Nick (Jake O’Flaherty) & Lily (Kathryn Erbe) all of whom are the type of liberals who pat themselves on the back for having ONE Black (or ethnic or LGBTQ) friend that they sort of look down on.

She’s the canary in the coal mine pointing out the odd happenings, signs (literally a damn sign), and her friends dismiss everything she has to say about not feeling safe. It’s a movie that can make you feel uncomfortable navigating America as a Black person AND a woman so quite a few of the scenes made me feel like the first time seeing Roots (without the gentile slave owners). I don’t want to give anything away since it has quite a few unexpected twists that had me gue#ssing till the end. Watching Cassandra navigate her friends Whiteness or proximity and trying to explain to them that they are in danger was more terrifying that Jason coming out of the lake. Its especially telling when she tries to explain to her immigrant friends and didn’t grow up with USA racism but are still ‘White’ enough that they don’t deal with anything since they can ‘pass’. A few scenes reminded me of trying to tell people about microaggressions and being dismissed, told that I’m not understanding or ‘what did I do’.

This challenging and provocative horror film centered on a Black woman is a double whammy of when the worst happens. It’s a good film but difficult to watch since it’s a little too close to how easily we can slip backwards. I recommend watching and thinking about what Tonya is telling us about who we surround and trust. Afterwards watch videos of puppies and kittens!

“I wrote my own personal GET OUT,” says Pinkins, RED PILL’s is a dose of what’s coming to America if liberal White people don’t wake up.” ~Tonya Pinkins

SYNOPSIS: RED PILL follows six liberal friends who drive down to Virginia to rally democratic voters for the 2020 election; their dreams of getting the vote out are quickly slashed—death is their final ballot entry.

STARRING: Rubén Blades (Fear The Walking Dead), Catherine Curtain (Orange Is The New Black, Stranger Things, Homeland), Kathryn Erbe (Law & Order: Criminal Intent), Tonya Pinkins (Fear The Walking Dead, Madame Secretary), Colby Minifie (The Boys, Fear The Walking Dead), Luba Mason (Person Of Interest, NYPD Blue), Jake O’Flaherty (Criminal Minds, Shameless) and Adesola Osakalum (Sex & The City 2, Ice).

FILM PREMIERE: At the 2021 Pan African Film Festival in February

NOMINATIONS: The film is nominated for Best Narrative Feature at PAFF

nspired by horror films like Get Out and Midsommar and enraged by 401 years of American white supremacy culminating into the Trump administration, the clearest mode of catharsis for Tonya Pinkns was to write, direct, produce, and star as Cassandra, in a film about the 2020 election, Red Pill.  BGN had a fascinating conversation with Pinkins via zoom.

What attracted you to using the horror genre for your first feature film?

I love horror. I’m one of those people who watches two or three horror films a day. I think it is a space where you can say truth and be authentic. Because it’s a non-realistic world, you can actually say things that are true that we don’t normally say.

So this film, for you, was a form of catharsis?

Yes. I don’t even think I knew how much it was until it was done. Like, I thought, “Oh, here’s some things that I think are going to happen, and if I say them people are gonna laugh at me or treat me with contempt, the way they did when I said that he [Trump] would win in 2016, so I can just put this in a story and then ha ha ha.” And sure enough, when people read the script, they said that it was so extreme and so farfetched, it just came to pass. Like today I did an interview with NY1 [a local news TV station in NYC], and they asked me if I rewrote the ending after the election. I was like, “No.” [Laughs.]

You define the red pill as a person who infiltrates a group and destroys the group from the inside.  Which character is the red pill in your story?

I wanna ask you which character is the red pill in the story for you?

I want it to be Cassandra? But I don’t think it is.

To destroy them? It’s not Cassandra. Not for me. It’s not Cassandra, but people have different ideas. I’ll say for me as an artist, I’m more interested in people’s response to my work than telling them how they should experience my work. I feel like existentially we all experience this world in a specific and alone way. Art and music are ways to share your experience with someone else. Then the way they experience it, you get to get some of their experience, and all of it is how the divine experiences itself, in exponentially larger ways, as everybody’s reacting and responding, and the divine is having greater and greater expression. But, for a factual point, to me, who I structurally laid out the red pill to be is… [she proceeds to tell me, but you should watch the film to figure it out for yourselves].

PIN IT

The white supremist cult women in the town take the sacred symbol  ॐ  “Om”, which represents the self within or the soul in Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and turn the symbol on it’s side, appropriating it as their totem, “W.S.” (white supremacy). Tell me more about your take on the appropriation of this symbol in Red Pill.

Theft is what the identity of whiteness does all the time. Hitler did it with the forked cross. The writer Yuval Noah Harari talks about how “the lie” is one of the most powerful organizing forces in the world. I think that is what they [many white folks] do. They organize around these lies. Actually that symbol shift just came to me as a burst. I saw the “W” and the “S” in the image when it’s sideways. I was like, “Okay, well, here’s a lie they can organize around.” Taking a symbol from the beginning of time and using it to say, “This is the proof that we are it!” So this is me just showing them a part of themselves.

How does it feel to use a horror film to rip the Band-Aid off and reveal the raw ugliness of whiteness?

It feels really freeing and naughty. It’s also scary. One white female filmmaker friend of mine said, “You know they’re going to crucify you.” I said, “Well, I’d rather be crucified than buried.”  It’s an interesting moment in time. I did my first interview with a white person about Red Pill today and he was very tippy toey…and so, I pushed him. I think my film will mess with white people’s heads, and I delight in that. More importantly, what I always felt about this story was that most Black people were just going to know the truth of Cassandra’s experience and understand what’s going on and be laughing because they get it, while most white people will be like, “What’s going on?” because they don’t know how to know that they are the monster.

I know I’ve broken lots of rules, but hopefully, I break these rules, I’m successful, other creative people will break a whole bunch more rules, and we’ll begin to see stories that actually reflect the authenticity of how the majority of the people on the planet experience the planet. We are in a moment where this is possible, and they [some white folks] are going to keep trying to deny the reality. But we got the receipts now. Smearing [bleep] on the walls of Congress. Who’s looting? Who’s a savage? Okay? They’re gonna deny it; they’re gonna do what they do. We got the receipts.

What were the biggest challenges in writing, directing, and producing this project?

Doing it all by myself. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t have a person to brainstorm off of, I didn’t have a helper. So, I had to learn every aspect of making a movie. I failed again and again, but I felt like I was supposed to tell this story. If it was meant to be, it was going to be. I was just walking blindly. I originally thought this film was gonna come out in March 2020. We had a screening set, and it didn’t happen. Six months later, I still didn’t have a rough cut and at the end of nine months from shooting I still didn’t have a rough cut. I thought, okay I failed. Then, I found myself in South Korea with a new editor! I didn’t fail. That nine months was what  it took to get ready for this person in Korea because she was supposed to be here. My, sort of, “spiritual practice” is non-attachment to outcome. I’m just going to keep showing up and putting one foot in front of the other and the outcome is not in my hands.

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How was it to have your community of actors show up for you?

What that said to me was that somehow that with the reputation or whatever that I have, I’ve done something right. The fact that I could pick up the phone and ask some very successful actors to come work for me for two dollars, and they were like, “Yes. Because you do fantastic work!”

What was your  greatest joy of this project?

I feel like I found what I was born to do. I got to build a world. I built a world that I have never seen on the screen before. Most of the people who have the ability to get this film out in the world very quickly are white people, and…it’s just not going to speak to them! Did I know that when I decided to make Red Pill? Absolutely. Even when white people tell me what they think would be scary, I’m just like, “I’m not making a movie to scare you. I’m showing you what scares us…and it’s you!”

Red Pill written, directed, produced by Tonya Pinkins. Starring Rubén Blades, Catherine Curtain, Kathryn Erbe, Tonya Pinkins, Colby Ninifie, Luba Mason, Jake O’Flaherty, Adesola Osakalumi. Streaming at the Pan African Film Festival, February 29–March 14, 2021.

https://www.paff.org/films/red-pill/   website: https://redpillmovie2020.com

Tony winner Tonya Pinkins is headlining Red Pill, a horror film which she wrote, directed and produced. The political thriller, which is focused on the forthcoming presidential election, is set to be released this fall.

“I wrote my own personal Get Out,” Pinkins explained in a statement, referencing Jordan Peele’s acclaimed 2017 horror film that starred Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams. In addition to Pinkins, the cast of Red Pill includes Girl From the North Country‘s Luba Mason, Kathryn Erbe, Rubén Blades, Catherine Curtain, Colby Minifie, Jake O’Flaherty and Adesola Osakalumi.

Pinkins won a 1992 Tony Award for her performance in Jelly’s Last Jam. She also received nominations for Caroline, or Change and Play On!. Her additional Broadway credits include Holler If You Hear Me, A Time To Kill, The Wild Party, Radio Golf, Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Merrily We Roll Along.

Watch the full trailer for Red Pill below.

RED PILL is a political thriller focusing on the upcoming presidential election. The film production first began in 2019, but the themes of “the weaponization of Whiteness and White supremacy” seem made for this political moment in 2020.

As a writer/director Pinkins finds the importance of giving the space for the voice of Black women in the entertainment industry. Pinkins explains how the film was inspired by Get Out and Midsommar, both paid homage to in Red Pill. 

Here, actress, director, and writer Tonya Pinkins (TP) discusses her new film Red Pill, her experience in the entertainment industry and her thoughts on the Black Lives Matter Movement with Picture This Post (PTP).

(PTP) Please tell our readers about your personal and professional background.

(TP) I grew up in Chicago. No one in my family is in the arts. I had a mentor/molester who pushed me into a career in the arts. My mother struggled with mental illness and had a hard time keeping a job, so when I began working as an actor, I accepted any job I was given because a job was a gift. It took me a long time to learn that I could say no to a job.

My first love was always writing. I had an experience in fourth grade that was traumatic and stopped me from writing for a long time. I’ve always been trying to get back to writing.

Directing was the bridge to return to my love of storytelling. I also found that I was now being offered roles that were as one of the props that eat. For example, I was Madam Secretary on Madam Secretary and I wasn’t even a recurring character. I had very few lines and was in the background mostly.

I have too much creativity to spend the rest of my life doing that. Although it pays better than McDonald’s or Uber.

Can you talk about your experience as a Black woman in the entertainment industry?

I would say that the story that tells the difference between how I, as a Black actor, was treated differently is that when I was on All My Children. The White actors Susan Lucci, Cameron Mathison were doing other tv/films outside of the soap.

Let me backtrack, when I was on As the World Turns with Julianne Moore, Marisa Tomei, and Steven Weber, the producer made me turn down numerous Cosby’s, Law and Orders, and Miami Vices and I was working less than four days a month. When I got to All My Children, they tried to do the same thing but all the other producers for Jelly’s Last Jam and some tv/film arranged their schedules so they only used me on my days off. So finally, ABC required that for any job I did outside of the soap, including a $1200 theater showcase, I had to return $10,000.00 of salary. I know they weren’t doing that to Lucci and Cameron.

Caroline or Change and Martha in Fear the Walking Dead were the most fulfilling roles I have had in theater and television respectively. After each of them, I had little desire to do anything less. Both roles challenged me to express the fullness of my potential. Once I expanded into that, trying to stuff myself into a smaller container just wasn’t a viable option.

Could you give our readers an insight into your work process for the film?

I often feel I am a channel. I am downloading a message. Red Pill began with a visit to a friend’s country house. I told her that her house was where a horror movie would happen. I started to make a story about a malevolent space because my friend said I could shoot in her house. Then we had a conversation about politics and in a typical progressive fashion, she was dismissive of the other side. And after our talk about how she felt the conservatives were so stupid and unorganized etc. I found myself saying ‘It appears that way because you don’t see their Hitler who has a vision for a thousand-year reign.” I find progressives to be quite delusional. Progressives have a lot of theory and talk and education and insufficient and ineffective action. Thus, one of the tag lines for RED PILL is a riff on The Help “You is kind, you is smart, you is important. You is Dead”

When I went home all these metaphors about Red v Blue kept popping into my head like Rock-em Sock-em Robots. I started with a deck. I knew it had to be visual. And then I pitched the log line to various people for a few weeks. Once I had a log line that several people hummed to, I wrote the script. This was August 2019.

(Editor’s note: a deck is a presentation/storyboard to present the premise of the film. In a way, a more visual and concise version of a script. A log line is a hook. It serves as a quick summary of a film that catches people’s attention).

Red Pill becomes more prescient every day. It reminds me of Jerzy Skolimowski’s film Moonlighting which was released simultaneously to Poland declaring martial law. I also realized that had we released pre-pandemic the film could be light fantasy. In the present moment, it is about the clear and present danger and I have changed some of the scores to reflect the urgency the story now has in light of current events.

I was reading Steven King’s essays and he talks a lot about how horror allows you to say things you cannot say in polite company. And then Yuval Harari talks about how the “lie” has been a unifying force for society and communities forever. So, when I wanted to make Red Pill, I thought I could wrap what I think in a dystopian future and say everything I wanted to say and entertain cause it’s only a movie.

But now the world has caught up with my storytelling and the movie can stand as a historical current and dystopian future. The challenge of the genre for Red Pill is that so much of what I wrote in 2019 that was the “lie” or fiction part of the story has either come true or seems so highly probable that I almost feel like I need to write a feel-good movie instead of a horror because we are living a horror. And we are specifically living the horror of my film.

It’s so close to home now that some folks will find it personally terrifying, some will dismiss it, some will laugh at the irony of it. Kamala Harris’ nomination will hopefully shed light on the factual trope of folks ignoring the Black woman. “Black women know the truth, live the truth, we the truth.”

What is the meaning behind the title Red Pill?

Red Pill means something different depending on the community you come from. In the film, a character says that a red pill is someone who infiltrates a group and destroys it from the inside out. That is a common far-right strategy. There is also the red pill competing, conquering, controlling men and the red pill, docile, submissive, silent women.

But from the Matrix perspective, you take the red pill to wake up to reality no matter how harsh. It is easy for me to tackle racism. It’s the water in my fishbowl. What is challenging for some who have read or seen Red Pill is that it holds a mirror up to White people and progressives and they don’t like what they see. It makes them want to attack me personally or attack the storytelling. Red Pill is a reflection of how I see America. White people are not accustomed to being others or seeing themselves through anyone else’s eyes. Hollywood doesn’t green light stories where white people are “otherized.” My film may be the first time many White people see themselves through the eyes of a Black woman. I realized that when I go into predominantly White rooms, I don’t listen to the words coming out of folk’s mouths. I have learned that White people say what is expected so I am looking at facial gestures and body language. Red Pill has that eye.

I believe Black people will sit down, figure Red Pill out pretty quickly and go along for the horrifying ironic laugh ride. Some White people will reject and hate it outright in the same way some hated Caroline or Change because they did not want to go on that ride. But if White people can be open and think of Red Pill as an excursion into an exotic and unknown world: the honest point of view of Black women, they can have an exhilarating experience.

There is a lot of practical magic in Red Pill. It is my greatest desire that it is a key that unlocks our humanity and turns off the irrational attachment to the caste system which harms us all.

Is there a reason why you chose to focus on the theme of the “weaponization of Whiteness and White Supremacy” for the film?

I focused on these issues because they have been the greatest obstacles to my life and most BIPOC people. This movie is a mirror of the American culture BIPOC people live and see every day and that White people have the privilege of being oblivious. If it weren’t for all the videos, White people would still deny the Karens and Kens and killing going on every day.

I heard an interview from someone who said slaves were family. White people treat their animals better than they treated their slaves. White people have been denied the truth of their history. But they say ignorance of the law is no excuse and ignorance of history is not one either.

The invention of Whiteness is killing White people. As Byron Katie says, “argue with reality and you lose but only 100% of the time.” White superiority and non-White inferiority fly in the face of the reality of exceptionalism in all communities. If the folks clinging to Whiteness let it go, they will be open to an abundance of riches that have been filtered through the narrow thimble of “whiteness.”

What changes do you hope to see as a result of the Black Lives Matter Movement?

 Kimberly Latrice Jones said “Black people want equality. We don’t want revenge” and Hannah Nicole Jones said, “Black people fight for everybody.” So, when Black people get equality and equity, we will work for everyone in the world to have equity and equality.

The entertainment business is about capitalism. Capitalism elevates property over people. Capitalism could sell anything it chooses to sell false degrading images of Blacks, Latinos, and Indigenous people to perpetuate the false narrative of White exceptionalism and superiority.

The film industry perpetuated racism from D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation which created myths of violence by Blacks on Whites – which were factually false. The film industry can fund films and storytellers that tell a real, truthful, uplifting story about the contributions every culture has made to the world. The film industry can market and sell stories that uplift all the people of the world and which model ways of working together as a global community which is the only way the species will survive the apocalypse of global warming.

As an actress and director, what do you feel is your personal role in the Black Lives Matter Movement?

As Ruth Wilson Gilmore said, “We only have one thing to change, and that is everything.” The non-hierarchical structure of The Movement for Black Lives which is the umbrella for hundreds of other organizations makes it much harder for the police or FBI or CIA to kill off the leaders. Yet, six Ferguson protesters died under mysterious circumstances. There was the lynching of the Palmdale organizer, Robert Fuller, and the murder of the Florida organizer, Oluwatoyin Salau. And please don’t say Salau was killed by a Black man as if Black people cannot betray their own. William O’Neal served Fred Hampton up for a Chicago Police assassination.

I support BLM financially and with my voice. It is the movement of the new world. My time is past. The young people get to build their world.

Tony award-winning actress and author Tonya Pinkins has written, directed and produced her first feature film, Red Pill. A political thriller, the film was designed as a scary wake-up call that shines a bright light on American politics.

The television, film and Broadway star decided to step behind the camera and use her voice as an artist and storyteller to paint a vivid picture of the grave repercussions that the current political climate in America has on the country’s people.

The film features the work of a talented cast and crew, including eight-time Grammy award-winning Latin music star Rubén Blades (Fear the Walking Dead), Catherine Curtain (Orange is the New Black, Stranger Things, Homeland), Kathryn Erbe (Law & Order: Criminal Intent), Tonya Pinkins (Fear The Walking Dead, Madame Secretary), Colby Minifie (The Boys, Fear the Walking Dead), Luba Mason (Person of Interest, NYPD Blue), Jake O’Flaherty (Criminal Minds, Shameless) and Adesola Osakalumi (Sex & The City 2, Ice).

Red Pill is currently in post-production and is set for release this autumn.

For more information, visit: https://redpillmovie2020.com/

What is Red Pill about?

As a plot, it’s about a group of progressives – that would be our blue in America – going to canvas the weekend of the 2020 election and confronting the red opposition that is determined to stop them in their mission.

I made this story because I’ve been watching my country become a dictatorship for a very long time. And I think when you live in New York City, where they just think they run the world, there’s a kind of delusion that people have and so the movie for me is about the disconnect between liberals, the blue, and their believes about themselves as opposed to the people who are the conservatives, the red, who are very committed, very organized, very structured, who know what they want and take action.

Even in the way I wrote it, the red pill women don’t ever speak until the final scene. Whereas the blue people, they’re just always talking, they’ve got theories and they’ve got ideas and then when the violence begins, they don’t know what to do! [laughs] Which is how I see my country right now. Essentially, civil war began in Portland. Our president had US military attack US citizens. It’s already happened and nothing has been done.

At the time that I wrote it, some people thought, ‘Oh, gosh, you’re so far out, Tonya!’ And now we’re kind of there. And so, in a way, there’s this part of me that feels like, ‘I’m making a movie, but we’re living it.’ When I wrote it, I felt that it was coming and I thought, ‘Well, this can be the wakeup call, but it’s too late for a wakeup call.’

Was the film inspired by the recent developments in American politics or has this story been at the back of your mind for a while now? 

It’s been at the back of my mind since before Obama was elected. Just watching how America’s leaning very far to the right politically. The majority of people in our country want health care for everybody and fair wages, but the people in power don’t want that. And the people who don’t want that have the most money and there’s been a lot of ‘red pilling’ – which my movie is about – of even what we would have thought of as our organizations that uphold equality, like the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). They were very strongly for this thing called Citizens United, which made money speech. See, I can’t support the ACLU when someone clearly from the other side got into the ACLU and dominated to push that agenda through.

I think that that’s happened in more and more places and I really just feel like I need to get out of the country. So it’s like, ‘Get your movie out. Get out of the country.’ [laughs]

You play the role of Cassandra. Is she the main character in the film? What can you tell us about her?

I think of the film more as an ensemble film.

It’s funny because I was directing and I needed to be over there. I was trying to get my other performances. Cassandra does not have a lot of coverage. She gets like one solo scene really. But Cassandra is the character who keeps saying to her friends, ‘This place is spooky. Let’s go home. Let’s get out of here, it doesn’t feel good.’ And nobody listens and then it’s too late.

Did you write the character specifically for yourself?

I did write her for myself. I’m a Cassandra – I’m always that person who’s warning people and they don’t take things seriously.

Have you always wanted to direct?

I’ve dabbled directing theatre a lot and then I spent the last three years shadowing as a director in television. I made a couple of short films over the years and I’ve loved it every time I did it. But it takes so many people. You need a village to make a film. And after three years of shadowing as a director and having relationships with showrunners, producers and execs, I didn’t feel like I was any closer to getting the opportunity.

First of all, it’s a privilege to get to shadow. You have to know somebody or get in a program to get even the opportunity so that in and of itself is a big hurdle that a lot of people can’t do. I had the relationships that I had with the directors and showrunners because I’d worked for them as an actor. But even at the end of that, you’re taking a month off your life where you fly yourself to wherever the show is, you’re putting yourself up. Yes, you get to eat on the set but that’s a month when you can’t work on anything else. You’re like being an intern and taking time out of being a self-supporting person in order to get this opportunity.

Having spent about four months over three years doing that, I was like, ‘WOW, I can’t afford to keep doing this and it doesn’t feel like anybody’s going to hire me.’ So I was like, ‘I better just hire myself.’

After having been involved in so many aspects of creating this film, are you considering leaning more towards writing and directing going forward or do you still feel more comfortable in front of the camera and on stage? 

I don’t think I ever need to get in front of the camera or on stage again. I love it on this side. I love being the person who creates opportunities for other people. I’m very happy telling stories. I have a bunch more horror movies I want to make because that’s my favourite genre.

You’re working with Matthias Gohl on the soundtrack. Can you tell us a bit about the direction you gave him for the music?

He’s going to record a string quartet in Iceland. He’s insisting on that, which is very expensive.

I love strings. I loved what [composer] Arthur Simonini did for ‘Portrait of a Woman on Fire’. I went and listened to some other of his music, particularly this French documentary he did, ‘Le monde sous les bombes, de Guernica à Hiroshima’. I loved that entire documentary score. When we temp-tracked the movie, we used this classical music with a lot of strings.

I like counterpoint. If it’s a scary moment, I like the music to kind of be funny. And I like to give you a big laugh before some really tragic thing is going to happen.

If used properly, art can be a powerful weapon and you’re obviously doing your bit with your new film. But how can we, the people on the other side of the screen, help make a difference?

Great question. I was talking to a friend this morning. We were talking about just what was going on politically. The Guardian wrote an article that Trump is consulting with this guy [John] Yoo, this attorney who drafted the document that gave Bush all of these powers. And he’s known for saying, ‘What do you want to do? We’ll figure out how to make the law do it’. And I started feeling like, ‘Why am I making a movie? A revolution is going to happen.’ And my friend said, ‘Yeah, but artists have always have been at the forefront of every movement. And if we don’t keep making art, then aren’t we letting them win?’

You know, whenever the fascists take over, they kill all the artists because we are so powerful. There’s this sculptor named Egon Weiner and I’m told that he said, ‘The only appropriate response to abuse is creativity.’ So I think that we have to keep creating work that both warns of what may come but also posits what is possible, what can be, better worlds, as well as showing what the possibility of the dystopian world is.

In making this movie, I definitely wanted people to get scared. But not just through the adrenaline of a horror movie but feel like, ‘Is that possible?! I don’t want that to be possible! Let’s do something!’ And trying to put it in an entertaining genre because the working class love horror. And the working class has the power to get out and vote and control what happens in this election. So painting a picture of what might be your worst nightmare. I wanted to have people go, ‘Whoa!’ OK, wake up! [laughs]

Have the recent protests in the US have made any real impact on the current situation in the US?

The uprisings have continued. The mainstream media isn’t covering them, but they are ongoing. That’s why what happened in Portland happened. Because people have been in the streets for fifty-four days. People have been occupying the mayor’s office here in New York. If there were no uprisings that were ongoing, Trump wouldn’t feel that he had to send federal agents into the cities. It has not subsided. It’s just not getting the coverage anymore.

 How have you been keeping yourself busy during the pandemic?

I think that for a lot of people, the pandemic has been a windfall and a gift. It has not been that for the essential workers, for the health care workers, for the grocery store people, for the delivery people. And so this divide is really showing me that we never really had a democracy here. For people who had jobs and lost them, there was this amount of money that they received every week and that was lovely because a lot of people were like, ‘Great! This is more money than I was doing.’ That’s about to end in a week. But all those essential workers and health care workers didn’t get that. And they’ve been risking their lives and they don’t have sick pay and health care and the hospitals don’t have room for them.

I’m a hermit and I like being alone. I have not suffered during the pandemic. Most of my suffering is just sitting up worrying and watching people being brutalized in the streets. And feeling like, ‘I’m an old woman. What can I do?’ But I really care about the fact that this country is just proving every day that it doesn’t care about any of us. It isn’t about black or white or female or trans. It just doesn’t care about humanity. Property is more important than people. And that’s got to change, whatever it takes. It took a pandemic for people to go, ‘Oh, they really don’t care about me. Revolution – we got to have it.’

A lot of artists are struggling during the pandemic because they miss the spotlight, the stage and the applause. What advice would you give them?

I just feel like creativity can be in a lot of different ways. I studied with William Esper as an adult and he would say about actors that, ‘It takes seven years to become an actor. Most people start out wanting attention. And then after you’ve gotten over that, then you can become a real actor.’

I think perhaps this is a time to go inward and figure what it is you really want. Is it attention that you want or do you want to have impact where people are changed by the work that you did, where you’ve touched them in a way that they have to think about their life differently?