Transcript
Into America
For Delroy Lindo and Tracy McMillan, Art Imitates Life
Archival Recording: Does anyone know where I can get a healing?
Trymaine Lee: Tracy McMillan is a successful television writer. After a career in journalism, she wrote for shows like “United States of Tara” and “Marvel’s Runaways,” and she won a Writers Guild for her work on “Mad Men.” But she always went back to one piece of advice she’d gotten.
Tracy McMillan: Early on, somebody said to me, you have to write what only you can write. So what could only I write? This was my story.
Lee: After years of working out the kinks, she ended up with a script based on her life and her dad, Harold, who was in and out of prison most of her life. Today, around one and a quarter million kids have a parent who’s currently incarcerated, including a disproportionate number of Black children.
That means Tracy is just one of millions of people all around the country who grew up with a parent behind bars. But she hadn’t seen her experience portrayed on screen in a way that resonated with her. Tracy sent her pilot script around to a few people, including Kerry Washington.
Kerry Washington: I think we tell a lot of stories about what people going into prison and a lot of stories about what it’s like in prison. But we don’t explore the challenges of what it’s like to be a returning citizen as much. The challenges of trying to reenter society as a formerly incarcerated person and what it’s like to love a formerly incarcerated person.
Lee: Kerry not only signed on to produce the show, she told Tracy that she was going to star as Paige, the character based on Tracy. And Kerry also knew who she wanted to play her dad, the great Delroy Lindo.
Washington: I mean, I’ve always been a huge Delroy Lindo fan. He’s one of my acting heroes. And when I read the character, I just thought we have to find somebody who can do all of this.
McMillan: Yeah.
Washington: Somebody who you can believe as a career criminal, but who is lovable, and charming, and smart, and vulnerable and tough. And I just felt like he does it all. He can do anything.
Lee: That show became “UnPrisoned,” which is out now on Hulu. On the show, Paige is a therapist instead of a writer and it starts as Paige’s father, Edwin, is released from prison for the last time and he comes to live with Paige, something that didn’t actually happen in real life.
You can hear it all come together in this clip from early on in the show, when Paige tells her dad that he can live with her and her teenage son.
Washington: I think that you can stay with us for as long as you need, but obviously all the same rules still apply, right?
Delroy Lindo: I know, yeah. Yeah.
Washington: You have to keep this job and —
Lindo: Don’t ask you for money. Don’t get in your business and don’t put the knife back in the jelly after I don’t licked it.
Washington: Are you doing that? Is that —
Lindo: No, it was a joke. That was a joke.
Washington: No —
Lee: The show chronicles Edwin’s re-entry into society and the challenges that come with his freedom, like trying to find a job.
Lindo: Hey. There he is. My man Carl. Didn’t I tell you I’d be back to celebrate?
Archival Recording: Yeah. Goodness. I was actually going to give you a call. Turns out there’s a policy. We can’t hire ex-felons. I’m so sorry.
Lee: And the bright spots, like meeting his grandson for the first time.
Lindo: Finneas. Finneas James. Edwin. Your granddad.
Archival Recording: Obviously.
Lindo: You know, I kept every single card you ever sent me. Boy. Look at you. Good-looking kid.
Lee: It also follows Paige as she navigates her relationship with her father under these new circumstances and heals the wounds of her inner child.
Archival Recording: You’d think I feel different after 30 years. I have a Volvo SUV now and an 800 credit score. But the universe is like, “(EXPLETIVE DELETED), so?” Your dad is (EXPLETIVE DELETED) with the same hoe from 1992. Your boyfriend gives you fancy dinners instead of actual attention or emotional support. But there’s nothing you can do about it. Talk about repetition compulsion.
Lee: Just like life, “UnPrisoned” is threaded with some hurt, but also joy and love and laughter. And it all comes together to make the show the most watched Hulu original program this year.
I’m Trymaine Lee and this is “Into America.”
Today, I sit down with Tracy McMillan and actor Delroy Lindo to talk about the backstory behind “UnPrisoned.” We talk about their own experiences from childhood, their relationships with their fathers, and how their lives have been shaped by the healing power of art.
Tracy McMillan is from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and grew up in and out of foster care. When Tracy was three, her father, Harold, got his first major prison sentence. She bounced around until finally ending up with a Lutheran foster family for a few years.
Once Harold was released, Tracy moved back with Harold and his girlfriend until he went to prison again. He wouldn’t be released for the last time until Tracy was 47 years old.
McMillan: This is the family system that are the basis of the show “UnPrisoned.” And I wanted to write accurately about what it’s like to be a family dealing with the aftermath of mass incarceration.
Lee: You know that there’s a moment in the first episode when you flash back, and you see the little girl.
McMillan: Mm-hmm, yeah.
Lee: Do you, today, feel like that little girl is still there grappling with all the issues that shaped you as a child?
McMillan: I’ve been to a lot of therapy. I’ve done a lot of everything you can possibly do to work through those issues. Even getting this show made is a huge testament, I guess, to the fact that all those things worked.
I mean, I think most people in my situation, I think the number is 1 percent of foster kids graduate from college, right? So I’m already in 1 percent. And then you’re like, how do you stick around, create a career? You know, in some ways, I sort of am like, wow, I didn’t give my kid away. So that’s like a major win over here.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: Because these patterns are bigger than our conscious or intellectual ability to understand what’s going on. It kind of doesn’t matter if you understand it, it matters if you heal it. And so what the healing is, that’s the other thing that this show is really about.
It’s about how do we go about doing that work.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: And I’m not out here alone. There’s millions of other people and families in my boat, in our boat.
Lee: These projects bring together different cogs and people from different universes. And Tracy, your upbringing was a very kind of specific one.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: Delroy, I wonder if you could speak to where and how you grew up.
Lindo: I was actually born in England. My family is Jamaican. My mom traveled to England as part of a movement of Caribbean peoples to the United Kingdom that started in 1948, very specifically.
McMillan: Hmm.
Lindo: The boat that took the first group of Caribbean people to the U.K. was called the Empire Windrush.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: And all of the Caribbean peoples who followed that boat in 1948, immigrated to England through late 1960s, early ’70s, became known as the Windrush generation.
McMillan: Hmm.
Lindo: So my mom was part of that, I am a part of that, and will be a part of the memoir that I’m currently writing. Plug, plug, plug.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: But one of the things that Tracy and I share, I had a period in my life when I was unofficially fostered out.
Lee: Hmm.
Lindo: My mom was a nurse. And while my mom was studying, she was not allowed to have an infant son with her.
McMillan: Hmm.
Lindo: So I was —
McMillan: Wow.
Lindo: — unofficially fostered out. I was fostered out. I say unofficial because it was unofficial.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: But I ended up living with a white family in southeast London.
Now, when Tracy and I met, we met over Zoom. And we were having our very first conversation about this work. There was a connection with that foster component.
Lee: Hmm.
Lindo: Because I understand empirically what it is, A, to be taken away from one’s parent forcibly. And I understood, and I understand, the dynamic of being very much a fish out of water. I also understand the component that involves a family that is not one’s biological family, embracing, being embraced as best as they can and dealing with the various dynamics that result as an outgrowth of being in those kinds of situations.
Lee: And one of the dynamics to emerge in that space between your biological family and the family that raises you is this idea that emerges in the show around fatherhood and, in some ways, I would say manhood and masculinity.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: Amen.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: Amen.
Lee: How was your sense of manhood shaped and what were those father figures or relationship with your own father? And how was that shaped by the chasm between your biological and those who raised you?
Lindo: That’s a fantastic question.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: What makes it a fantastic question is because it’s a prodigious question, there are a lot of responses.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: How can I say simply? I would say that my father did not raise me at all. My father had virtually nothing to do with my upbringing. Having said that, my pops, I can count on the fingers of two hands and probably one hand the instances in my life in which I saw my father. I actually physically was in his presence, maybe six times, maybe seven.
Unfortunately for our relationship, when my father would come into my world, it was negative. It was always negative. Another component that I think I share with Tracy is that I have forgiven my father.
Lee: Hmm.
Lindo: With regard to his impact on my life, how it has shaped my concept or my idea of manhood and fatherhood, I will say this without an ounce of irony or facetiousness. One thing my father taught me was what not to do with my own son.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: Hmm.
McMillan: Yeah.
Lindo: If I kind of sort of do the opposite of what my father did to me and to my mom, I’m kind of sort of already ahead of the game. And I’m not being facetious, seriously.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: So it has given me a sense of what I don’t want to do as a man and as a father. And therefore, following on from that is what one strives to do, what one aspires to be as a man and as a father. Because I am human, of course, I fall down. Right? It’s not a perfect process.
And by the way, anybody who has the handbook for parenting out there, please send it to me. I’ll pay you.
But certainly, broadly speaking, my sense of manhood and my sense of fatherhood has been shaped by many of the things that I did not have as a child coming up. Does that answer your question?
Lee: That does.
And Tracy, that doesn’t sound too dissimilar from what I’m gleaning from the show, this idea of this person’s presence bringing catastrophe, until it doesn’t.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: And so I wonder if you could speak to your relationship with your father, Harold, and talk to us about just —
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: — obviously we see some of it in the show, but how has that experience shaped you? And just tell us about him as a man.
McMillan: So my dad was, like, kind of a sweetheart. He had a vulnerability about him. He was very stylish. He’s very warm. He’s very charismatic. Everyone loves him. He’s got a real gentlemanly quality. He wants you to like him. He really, really wants you to like him.
I would also say, like, he was never mean. Like, he doesn’t have any meanness in him. He had no violence in him. So my experience of him was, like, warm and fun. And he had a lot of insight into things. He’s really kind of a basically good person.
Lindo: Hmm.
McMillan: And then he’s a basically good person who, like, his shadow side was, like, he was vain. He was like needy in this one way. In this one way he was shallow, you know?
Lindo: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: You know?
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: He was never, like, hard on me. Oh, well, here’s where he was hard on me. He did have a lot of ideas about how women were supposed to look. He made that clear. I definitely picked up on some of that.
So I look at narcissism as narcissistic material. Everybody has some. Right? It’s whether it’s out of control. It’s like algae in a pond. Is it, like, killing all the fish?
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: Or is it just there’s some there because everybody has that part of themselves that’s very self-centered. It’s like the child part of you. And narcissism full-blown really comes from being wounded.
Lee: Hmm.
McMillan: And so, my dad had a lot of narcissistic material. But I was his favorite mirror to look into because I’m the piece of him that he could have been, if he had my opportunities in life and also if he had certain character elements that I have. I’m more disciplined than he is. I’m more realistic than he is. I have certain things. But who’s to say whether that was the nature or the nurture, you know?
Lee: Delroy, with your father you said you can count on maybe two hands, maybe one and a half, how many times you’ve seen him.
Lindo: Mm-hmm.
Lee: Was there a moment when you had to separate yourself or was that decision made for you because of his lack of presence?
Lindo: That decision was made for me.
Lee: Hmm.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: I had no choice in the matter. He was just absent.
McMillan: Hmm.
Lindo: Part of what enables me to forgive him is that, even though this is somebody essentially that I did not know —
Lee: Hmm.
Lindo: — there are certain aspects of his personality, of his way of being that I glean, that I think I’m aware of.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: That he handed down to me on some level.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: Or that I have inherited.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: My father had a sense of style. There were two things. On the one hand, I can say he was a very stylish man. On the other hand, I would say he aspired to be stylish.
Lee: Mm-hmm. There is a difference.
Lindo: There is a difference. There absolutely is a difference. But I think I have inherited a certain sense of myself and how I walk through the world, how I carry myself through the world. And I think my father was very, very aware of that for himself.
Lee: Mm-hmm. Delroy, I wonder without knowing any of this backstory, I feel like you’ve translated a lot of that into your roles.
Lindo: Absolutely.
Lee: It’s kind of this energy. So one, I guess, I’ll ask you how you got into acting and how intentional was all of that translation of your experience and the mirror that you saw of your father pushed into the roles you played and how you portrayed them.
Lindo: God. These questions, in fact, or the answer, they’re very, very nuanced because I don’t think it’s any one thing. Right?
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: It’s a mixture. It’s a conglomeration of things.
Lee: Hmm.
Lindo: Being in the Nativity play as a 5-year-old in elementary school was when I got the bug.
Lee: Hmm.
Lindo: And as a child I always had in my head, when I grow up, I want to be an actor, without really necessarily understanding what all that involved. But I was intentional from that standpoint.
One of the components for me in being able to forgive my father has to do with the fact that I think I understand, or I have an understanding of, the kinds of obstacles that were placed in front of him as a Black man, certainly in the United Kingdom in the ’50s and ’60s, what kind of hell he must have caught, what kinds of obstacles.
And therefore, in my process of being able to forgive him, that involves a certain kind of empathy. And certainly, being empathetic is foundational to being an actor.
Lee: Mm-hmm. I’d imagine in that empathy and seeing that flawed humanity, that flawed humanity is still humanity.
Lindo: Oh, absolutely.
Lee: And I think that’s one of the things that we see in your work.
Lindo: Thank you. I mean, I appreciate that. And on some level, I would say that the more deeply flawed one is, the more human. That is indeed a manifestation of being human.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: Because, well, I am deeply flawed. My father was certainly deeply flawed and so was my mom, and on, and on and on.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: Can I say something that is coming to mind in this conversation of fathers?
You know, I used to ask myself, and this is a question I’m still sort of interacting with, why couldn’t my dad be Michelle Obama’s dad? Which is to say, the guy with the ability to put those egoic needs aside or maybe he didn’t have it so much in the first place.
I used to say to my dad, how come you couldn’t drive a bus? Like, you know, you needed a pinky ring. You needed, like, a lot of women.
And I get it. So the women aren’t going to be there if you’re not, like, with the money and the cars and everything. But why couldn’t he modestly work at the school in the boiler room like Michelle Obama’s dad, so that Michelle and her brother could go to Princeton? Because they’ve got that person there who has provided that steady thing. This would be the other version of fatherhood, the one my dad didn’t choose.
Lindo: So, look, I have an answer.
McMillan: Okay.
Lindo: Well, I have a response.
McMillan: Yes. I feel like this is huge.
Lindo: My response to what you just asked —
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: — Tracy, you know, why couldn’t my dad, why couldn’t my pops be like Michelle Obama’s pops?
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: Unfortunately, actually, it’s not a linear question and it certainly is not a linear answer because you have to deal with the circumstances of both of those men’s lives. Trymaine, I met Harold.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: Spent time with Harold, and quite a bit of our conversation involved Harold telling me about his childhood.
Lee: Hmm.
Lindo: And what I know about Harold’s childhood, I know nothing, obviously, about Michelle Obama’s dad’s childhood, but it was probably different.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: Mm-hmm. Right.
Lindo: Because he got dealt —
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: — a hand.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: Yeah.
Lindo: And he took the hand he was dealt and did what he did.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: And it sounds, Tracy, like that little girl is the one asking that question. Like, that little girl was just like —
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: — I wish you would just be this way and not that way.
McMillan: Yeah. I mean, you look back and you’re like, this was a character choice.
But then I can also look at how people are. I mean, I know the superpower of being a foster child is that you are able to understand people very quickly. Your success, your survival is dependent on being able to correctly figure out who people are and predict what their behavior is going to be, even if you just met them.
But yes, and I can even look at my dad and go, well, he probably went with the path of least resistance.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: Because he had such a pretty face and he had so much charm, like, why wouldn’t you go in this direction?
Lindo: Right.
McMillan: You know?
Lindo: Right.
McMillan: You know, it’s funny, because my dad died right before the show premiered —
Lee: Wow.
McMillan: — and first of all, I’m still very much in the process of kind of understanding what that means, because in many respects my dad lived in my phone. So as far as I’m concerned, he’s still in my phone. You know what I mean?
Lindo: Wow.
McMillan: It’s like I haven’t noticed yet —
Lindo: Wow.
McMillan: — that he’s not here anymore, because time flies. I’ve been busy. Lots going on. At some point, it’s really going to get real. And I don’t know how it’s going to be real because his body and self really wasn’t there. That wasn’t my relationship, was with this human, my relationship was with a voice, a presence. That’s a whole other thing to unpack, honestly.
So when you talk about the little girl and the unpacking, I feel like I crossed a (ph) Rubicon and I’m in a whole new kind of unpacking. I’ve heard a lot of people talk about their parents dying, you just don’t know what they’re talking about until it happens. And then you’re like, oh —
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: Oh, okay. Yeah.
Lee: Tracy, disentangling this in a conversation is already tricky enough and it’s fraught, right? And it’s like it requires a lot of mental and emotional intellectual energy, right, to just disentangle this stuff. But you’re doing this on the screen. And I wonder how —
McMillan: Yeah.
Lee: — you arrived at the moment. Again, I know that your career has been winding, right?
McMillan: Yeah.
Lee: You basically just got in the game.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: But how did you arrive at the moment to want to do this on the screen with “UnPrisoned”?
McMillan: Early on, somebody said to me, you have to write what only you can write. So what could only I write? This was my story. And I’ve been writing this since 2007.
Lindo: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: I wrote an hour-long spec script called Life After Life about a woman who her dad gets out of prison and comes to live with her in a gated community in Scottsdale. You know?
Lindo: Mm-hmm.
Lee: Wow.
McMillan: Now, that wasn’t my life at the time, but I was imagining. And I think I didn’t start writing scripted television until I was 42. And I came from journalism, so I had been a television news writer and producer. And then I had a baby and I just got real creative, and I was knitting and in a band and, like, doing all these things that were about sort of like a form of authorship.
So by the time I came into writing scripted television, I was a very formed person. I was a mother. I had been through a ton of stuff. So I think I was very interested in kind of going, well, here’s the stuff that I can write about that nobody else can write about.
And then in the meantime, I wrote a book, a memoir that was really about my relationship with my dad and how that translated to my relationships with men. And in one respect, this show is the sequel to my memoir.
Lee: Hmm.
McMillan: My dad was still in prison when I finished my memoir. My son and I went to see him in that period. And that’s what really got me thinking, what are we going to do when he gets out? What is that going to be like?
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: I hadn’t had him be out of prison pretty much my whole life. You know? That was where the exploration really started. And I wrote it a million times. The simple answer is that it got made this time because of Kerry Washington and Delroy Lindo. That’s the simple —
Lee: That’ll help. That’ll help.
But with all the heavy themes and all the grappling, it is kind of a funny show also.
McMillan: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Lee: Why was that important to make sure that there was some sense of levity throughout this thing?
McMillan: If I’m just telling the truth about my life and the way I look at things and the way my dad looked at things, we laughed all the time. Like, we’re funny people who are light. We are not heavy. I’m not a heavy person. He’s not a heavy person. My kid’s not a heavy person. I don’t know why.
I guess it’s a spiritual thing. Like, that moment when we went to my dad’s hometown and we went to the church that his great-great-great-great-great-uncle started in Midway, Alabama, after slavery.
You look at the wall where all those McMillans were ministers. And I’m like, well, this is just how we are, we’re just these folks. We’re just seeing past everything that’s going on down here on the earth plane and looking at, like, God and the folly of being a human being, and how kind of silly, and loving and everything, and flawed and everything that we are. And if you really come at it from that standpoint, it’s funny. I don’t know.
Lee: Mm-hmm. Delroy, I see gravity in you.
McMillan: Yeah.
Lee: Obviously, you are well-versed, and versatile and nimble, but there’s a gravity here, not so light and ethereal necessarily. How did you approach this? Because, again, you’re playing a role that has some funniness in it.
Lindo: Yeah. The simple answer is, and Kerry and I have said this, playing the truth of the writing, the truth that is inherent in the writing, the fact that Tracy refers to herself, her dad, her son as light people —
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: — is beneficial because I have to get on that light train and not eff it up. I mean —
McMillan: No.
Lindo: — no, wait, let me just kind of deconstruct that.
McMillan: Yeah, go. Sorry.
Lindo: No, it really comes down to, Trymaine, playing the truth of the situations that is in the writing. And the humor comes out of that.
Lee: You can hear the humor in this exchange between Delroy’s Edwin and his grandson, Finn, over the bougie contents of Paige’s fridge.
Lindo: I’m hungry. You hungry? Well, let me see what you got over here. Kale and wild rice salad. Curried chicken quinoa. Salad. What is this (EXPLETIVE DELETED)? Y’all don’t have, like, a turkey sandwich?
Archival Recording: Dude, same.
Lindo: And I think, knock on wood, you know, I never concerned myself with being funny per se.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: I did concern myself with trying to excavate the truth that was in the situation. And oftentimes the humor is in that truth, just as Tracy said.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: So what you referred to as my gravity or gravitas, I am well served by trying to make the most legitimate attempt I can, to meet this work where it is and be truthful to the work and trust that the comedy and the humor will come out of that.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: I’m having a quite, I started to say bizarre. I’m going to do a photo shoot and a interview on a comedy roundtable this weekend. (LAUGH) Which is really —
Lee: Yeah, you got to laugh. You got to laugh at that. Like —
Lindo: I got a laugh. (LAUGH)
Lee: — now that you’re (ph) part of this.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: You know.
Lindo: The fact of the matter is, that’s because of “UnPrisoned.” That’s because of my participation in this work that somebody now says, come be part of this comedy roundtable. And I’m thinking, well, I’m not a comedian. I’m not comedic in general. But yeah, the work has transported me there.
Lee: When we come back from the break, more from my conversation on “UnPrisoned” with Tracy McMillan and Delroy Lindo. Stick with us.
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Lee: Your feet are firmly planted on the ground. You are a craftsman dealing with real words on a page.
Lindo: I try.
Lee: But you’re also playing an actual real person. Was there pressure in that? A man who still existed, right, and as Tracy’s father —
Lindo: Yes.
Lee: — to say the least, how did you grapple with that?
Lindo: That burden was not placed on me because from the very beginning we all agreed, Tracy, Kerry and myself, that my character, Edwin, is inspired by Harold.
Lee: So be free to interpret it and go in the direction that you want?
Lindo: That’s correct.
McMillan: Exactly.
Lindo: Exactly right. Be free to interpret —
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: — however was appropriate for myself and the narrative.
Lee: Tracy, what was that like for you to find out that Delroy Lindo had said yes to this job and will be playing your father? What was that like? But then also, what do you make of his interpretation of your father?
McMillan: Well, I feel like —
Lindo: Oh, wait a minute, man. Don’t ask her to answer.
Lee: In front of you.
McMillan: No.
Lee: In front of you.
McMillan: No, let me answer it. Let me answer it. You can trust me, Delroy. You can trust me.
He’s playing a person who is facing the same circumstances my dad is facing. I feel like we all need to hold on to who we are or who our parents are or who you are very, kind of, lightly. I just kind of take a sort of Buddhist standpoint to it. So I am not who I think I am. Right?
Lindo: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: Like, if you’re mentally healthy, you know that who you think you are is like, well, it’s probably a little bit of that, but there’s probably all sorts of stuff going on that you can’t see about yourself.
Lindo: That’s right.
McMillan: So when I’m looking at what people are doing on the show, I’m trusting that it doesn’t need to meet my, who’s me anyway, my idea of what something is. That’s too narrow. I just don’t think you’re going to get the most interesting work out of that.
Lee: You know, Delroy, to Tracy’s point there, and she said something earlier about this half of her life, right, this half. And so many Black men in particular experience that other half, that other side of incarceration and the life thereafter. And I wonder in playing this role and preparing for this role, how you got into that space of the life after incarceration?
Did you have to have conversations with folks who came out? Do you have experience knowing people that you cared about who experienced this life? And just how did you approach that?
Lindo: Yeah, I had conversations with a lot of folk who had been inside the system. And I always feel compelled to identify them because they gave me a lot of gifts. The first was Tracy’s father, was Tracy’s pops, Harold.
I reached out to a lady that I know here whose name is Ramona Massey. Ramona put me in touch with an organization here in San Francisco called Positive Direction Equals Change. I went there and I just sat with brothers who talked about their experience.
I went over to a halfway house, the Sober Living Network, and I spent time with those gentlemen. Then I spoke with a gentleman named Louis Reed (ph). Louis (ph) talked to me about his experiences being, you know, inside and outside of the system.
You know, I have to say that I always feel compelled to identify these organizations, and these folk specifically, because what they contributed to me and, by extension, this work is invaluable. Right?
And at the heart, Trymaine, at the heart of it, one of the things that I said to these gentlemen, okay, where and how did you end up making those kinds of choices?
And there was a connective thread and it had to do with the lack of family, the absence of family, the absence of fathers.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: You actually met Harold before he passed away.
Lindo: I did.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: When you asked him those questions, what did he say?
Lindo: He spoke about his father, your grandfather, Tracy.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: He spoke about the relationship that he had with his dad. His dad was an itinerant preacher. And he spoke about the impact of his father’s presence, or lack thereof, in his life and also the impact of his father’s influence on the family.
So even though our specific circumstances were quite different, there was enough commonality, similarity that there were certain things that resonated for me which, absolutely, I was able to take into this work.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: The last question I’ll ask, because I could literally do this with you all day. This has become even more than I expected.
McMillan: Yeah.
Lee: So this has been great. But I will ask you, now that this project is out in the world, and it’s still in the beginning, but I wonder what you hope its legacy will be and what seeds do you hope it plants (ph) out there in the world for people who are seeking this stuff for entertainment, but they’re also disentangling all their own mess?
McMillan: Well, what I hope is that people can feel a little less shame, which is where you stigmatize yourself, a little more free. I hope they get a little bit of a road map. Here’s how to get free. Here’s the direction of freedom. I’m all about freedom. Like, let’s get free. You know?
So that’s what I hope is that people experience themselves as having more possibilities than they might experience themselves before they see the show.
Lee: Delroy, what do you think?
Lindo: Piggybacking on that, there’s a term that’s in my head, and the word is ownership. Ownership of self, that this work allows people to take a more constructive ownership of whatever their stuff is —
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: And enables them to out into the world on those kinds of terms as compared to staying stuck in your stuff. Right?
It is not lost on me that in various of the press junkets, the press interactions that we’ve had since the show was released, what, a month ago, various of the journalists and I would say all of color —
McMillan: Yeah.
Lindo: — have spoken about their own families being directly impacted by incarceration, that a parent or a relative who is either locked up now or who has been locked up. And the fact that journalists are able to share that, divulge that about themselves on air, in public spaces —
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: — for me, is indicative of people taking an ownership of their lives, those aspects of their lives, and being comfortable and confident enough to share publicly.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: Yeah.
Lindo: So I’m hoping that that continues.
Lee: I’ve resisted it because I’ve talked about it before, but I spent almost a decade visiting my stepfather in prison every single weekend.
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: See?
Lee: And I remember all of the kids would be in there playing —
Lindo: See?
Lee: — and I still to this day —
McMillan: Yeah.
Lee: — the vending machine with the chocolate-covered pretzels and —
McMillan: Oh, my god, yes.
Lee: — that experience. So it was sad that so many of us have experienced this kind of —
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: — thing in life.
McMillan: Right. And yet, for me, I don’t think anybody knows that what the prison visiting is about a vending machine and kids playing.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: They don’t know that.
Lee: Right.
McMillan: They think it’s, like, grim or, like, heavy and it’s like —
Lindo: Right.
McMillan: — no, this is just women —
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: — and children, and a lot of kissing at the end.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: And you’re like, whoa, this is intense. (LAUGH)
Lindo: Well, the other thing I was going to say was, and this may sound a little something, I don’t know, but the fact that you’re on the air, Trymaine, you do the work that you do. Tracy is on the air, Tracy is doing the work that she does and you all both had these very intense interactions with the incarcerated, with that system. Right?
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: I’ve had a slightly different version. But I think —
McMillan: Mm-hmm.
Lindo: — perhaps what we share, let me speak for myself, the circumstances might have dictated a different outcome.
Lee: Mm-hmm.
McMillan: Yeah.
Lindo: But the circumstances got turned on their head. And one said, uh, no, I’m not making that choice. I’m making this choice over here.
Lee: Many times over.
McMillan: Many times over.
Lindo: Many times over.
Lee: Here, here, here.
Lindo: That’s right.
McMillan: Yep.
Lindo: And here we are right now, 2023, here and not someplace else.
McMillan: Yeah.
Lindo: And I’m aware, for myself, that certainly things could have been very, very, very, very different.
Lee: Last week, the world lost one of its brightest stars, a legend, a pillar of cinema and civil rights in America and the globe, the indelible Mr. Harry Belafonte.
He passed just days before my conversation with the folks from “UnPrisoned.” So I wanted to ask Delroy about how he was processing the news and how he’ll remember Mr. Belafonte’s legacy.
Lindo: It’s going to be really hard for me to put in just a few words. But Harry was a brilliant example of service and sacrifice. Service and sacrifice that he took his brilliance and placed it in service of his fellow human beings. The print that he made throughout his life and the print that he has left, the legacy that he has left, is an extraordinary challenge for all of us.
What is the print? What is the print? The space that your life is taking up as you live and is going to leave when you pass on. And Harry Belafonte was an exemplar for me of those kinds of dynamics.
Lee: Born Harold George Bellanfanti, Jr. to West Indian immigrants in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance, Harry Belafonte was renowned for his charisma, charm and incredible crooning. He was working as a janitor when someone gave him tickets to a show at the American Negro Theatre in Harlem. And soon after, he decided to pursue a career in the arts.
Within a decade, he released his 1956 smash hit “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and his album Calypso became the first full-length record to sell over 1 million copies.
Harry Belafonte, “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)”: (MUSIC PLAYING) Day, is a day, is a day, is a day, is a day, is a day-o. Daylight come and we want go home. Come Mister tally man, tally me banana. Daylight come and we want go home. Come Mister tally man, tally me banana. Daylight come and we want go home.
Lee: By the end of the ’50s, he was the highest-paid Black singer in the world and his acting career was also taking off. He starred in hit movies like “Island in the Sun” and “Buck and the Preacher.”
Mr. Belafonte eventually became one of just a handful of performers who have become an EGOT, a winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, but his legacy isn’t just in the arts.
In 1963, Mr. Belafonte marched on Washington with his close friend, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And through the years, he continued to use his platform and his popularity to fight for justice. Here he is on the “Today Show” back in 1981.
Belafonte: The 1960s, for instance, the issues were civil rights. They were about trying to change legislative laws in this country.
And now today, I think the issues are all economic. I think many Blacks are very, very disillusioned. I don’t think that there’s anything that’s currently being offered by the present administration, the Reagan administration, that suggests that that disenfranchisement, which many people are feeling, especially the poor, people are feeling quite befuddled and desperate —
Archival Recording: Do you think you hurt your career over the years being so involved in politics?
Belafonte: Quite the contrary. I think that it has enhanced my career because those things which I’ve supported politically have supported things and institutions that, I think, were very, very important to my own artistic endeavors.
Lee: Over the years, Mr. Belafonte organized the “We Are the World” charity single to raise funds to fight hunger in Africa. He spoke out against apartheid and war. And, in 2005, he started a nonprofit called The Gathering, dedicated to ending child incarceration and racial inequities in the judicial system.
After 96 iconic years of contributing to American culture and legacy and dignity of Black folks in this country, we’d like to say thank you, Mr. Belafonte, for all you’ve done. You are, have been and always will be an icon and an inspiration. Rest in peace and power.
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook using the handle @intoamericapod, or you can tweet me @trymaine.lee, my full name. And to send us an email, the address is intoamerica@nbcuni.com. That was intoamerica@nbc and the letters U-N-I.com.
If you love the show, help spread the word. You can do that by rating and reviewing “Into America” on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening right now.
“Into America” is produced by Isabel Angell, Allison Bailey, Mike Brown, Aaron Dalton, and Max Jacobs. Original music is by Hannis Brown. Our Executive Producer is Aisha Turner.
I’m Trymaine Lee. We’ll be back next Thursday.
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