The singer Lizzo performs a brand of rap and pop with a strong empowerment vibe that’s taken on new resonance in the Trump era; SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris says calls to the union’s hotline to report harassment have increased since the Harvey Weinstein story broke.
Lizzo wants to 'make the world a little bit better' with her music
The singer-songwriter known as Lizzo is getting ready to take her pro-woman, body-confident empowerment music on the road, which includes a Nov. 8 show in Los Angeles at the Fonda Theater.
She performs with a core girl group that includes her DJ, Sophia Eris, and two dancers who she calls "the big girls." Sporting unitards, they do coordinated choreography behind Lizzo while she belts out her music, dressed in a stylish leotard, no less.
Her song "Good as Hell," which appeared in the film, "Barbershop: The Next Cut," was a big hit last year. Samantha Bee invited her to perform it on "Full Frontal" the night after the 2016 election. She opened her performance with a rendition of "Lift Every Voice and Sing," also known as the "Black National Anthem."
Though the song was a last-minute addition to her performance, Lizzo says she'd been thinking about singing it for awhile:
I have been thinking about "Lift Every Voice" for a while. My old manager asked me months earlier, Would you ever sing the national anthem at a football game or ... a basketball game? And I told him, Yeah, I'll sing the national anthem, but I'm going to sing the "Black National Anthem." And I said that initially not as a joke — everything I say kind of comes off like half-joke, half-dead serious. And I said that ever since and I've been thinking about it.
The Frame recently visited the recording studio where Lizzo makes her music, up a winding road not far from Dodgers Stadium. After showing us around the studios and the back garden, we settled in for a chat.
Click the play button at the top to hear the conversation. Below are some highlights.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
How do you cast dancers? Because your dancers don't look like people you see dancing in most shows. They look like ordinary folk.
Well, you know, everybody's ordinary to somebody. And I'd like to think that the big girls are pretty extraordinary. I think that they're more of a "spectacle" than the size two, super-buff dancer that you see. I want the women who dance on stage with me to be an extension of me, to be my dream. They dance like how I think I dance in my head. And I want them to be an example for anyone who doubts bigger women, who think that they can't be flexible, who think that they can't be spectacular and sharp.
I was thinking about this driving over here — that if someone were to watch your show and not hear anything, that what you were saying by who you are and the way you're performing on stage says as much about who you are and what you have to say as your lyrics do. Do you buy into that?
I think that's pretty cool. I With a lot of people who have an impact like that, it's never really intentional. Like, I didn't say, OK, being pants-less on stage is going to be this statement. I just don't like wearing pants on stage and I think I have really nice legs.
It's the era of the individual. I think that we've been kind of homogenized and put in boxes and socially taught that certain boxes are who we should be. I think the desire to be an individual is starting to flourish and I think that's why people catch on to me.
I want to ask you about something that happened almost exactly a year ago. You went on Samantha Bee's "Full Frontal." It was the night after the presidential election and you began your performance by singing "Lift Every Voice and Sing," which is also known as the "Black National Anthem." Was that something you planned to do? Why was that the right song at the time?
We had months and months and months of planning for that. The girls were wearing suits because we were going to have a whole montage of women in power suits and we had so much planned to celebrate women and the first female president, you know? We were on the plane flying to New York and I was watching the election on the back of someone's [seat] and I went to sleep and I woke up in New York in a Trump presidency.
And then Samantha came in my dressing room — she was crying, she was so devastated — and she said, What do you want to do? And I said, We're going to continue to do "Good as Hell" because, first-off, I have a job to do. And also part of that job is to uplift people. So when I thought of "Lift Every Voice," I asked her, Can I do anything? Can you see if [the rights are] clear? Can I sing this on television? And they just were like, We don't even care if you can't. And they did the research and said, You can. And then I was like, Okay, horns, just play this one note and I'll sing over that.
I realize there's two things you can [do]: watch history happen or choose to be a part of it. And instead of ignoring it, I chose to engage in it.
How much of your music and your art and everything you believe in is about empowering other people to live up to their potential and do what they can do to change the world? You're not telling them what to do, but you make them feel as if they have the opportunity to do that.
I think that's the reason why I am doing this. A couple years ago, I decided to dedicate myself to positive music because if I'm going to do this, I might as well make the world up a little bit better. But I never want to tell anyone what to do because I don't want anyone preaching to me. I'm not a preacher, I'm a musician and I'm a singer. So what I love is when people listen to my music they put on a Lizzo suit or a Lizzo mask or a Lizzo mindset or mind frame and they feel emboldened. But the reality is my music is what I'm going through and created to help myself.
I wrote "Good as Hell" a year ago to help me, now I'm performing it on stage. I'm so sad all day and then I get on stage because it's my job and as I'm singing "Good as Hell" sometimes, I'm just like, Oh, I wrote this for me! And I think that's super important. It's helped. I mean right now we're at two million views and I heard almost 10 million streams, which is massive for me. All those millions of people are being helped, but I wrote it for me.
I want to ask about your musical education, about the whole idea of growing up in a world in which Pentecostal gospel music was where your ears and eyes were opened — that there was a different way of using music to say something that was important.
I used music as a vessel into religion into Christianity. And then I used religion, the Pentecostal church, as a vessel into spirituality. And then I realized spirituality and music came back full circle. So I realized that music is transformative and all of my songs are a vehicle for change, for self-reflection, a vehicle for self-care, self-love. It's important and I think that it was instilled in me as a child. I continue to have little Eureka! moments when people tell me what my song has done for them. The last time I heard something that I was completely floored was last year in Austin when I play South-by-Southwest for NPR. Someone came up to me and told me that they were transitioning from male to female and when they listened to "Scuse Me," it helped them during their transition.
Because when I [sing], Look up in the mirror, oh my god it's me, she would look in the mirror during her transition and see this person and would be shocked at who she was becoming — sometimes excited, sometimes unsatisfied and wanting more. But mostly just appraising herself and praising herself. And that for me was, like, Yo, people are taking this music and traveling so far with it. They're flying with it and that's why I continue to do it.
To listen to John Horn's full interview with Lizzo, click on the player above.
SAG president: 'We must shift the culture' of silence and harassment in Hollywood
Netflix has officially suspended production on “House of Cards.”
This comes after the show’s star, Kevin Spacey, was accused of making a sexual overture to actor Anthony Rapp about 30 years ago, when Rapp was just 14 years old. Spacey was 26 at the time.
Today, Netflix and the show’s production company, Media Rights Capital, issued this statement:
MRC and Netflix have decided to suspend production on House of Cards season six, until further notice, to give us time to review the current situation and to address any concerns of our cast and crew.
This is yet another story that sheds light on the culture of silence in Hollywood when it comes to sexual misconduct. So what role do Hollywood’s guilds and unions have in curbing this behavior and offering resources for their members?
The Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, for example, has a safety hotline that its members can call. The hotline isn’t just for on-set safety concerns, it’s for reporting any issue of misconduct that may come up.
For more on this we asked SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris to explain how the hotline works and how the industry's guilds and unions can help curb sexual misconduct.
Interview Highlights:
On whether there has been an uptick in reporting:
There's definitely been an increase, yes. As terrible as these stories are, the idea that people are actually feeling empowered to speak out is really essential. That's the only way to be able to help is to be able to hear of the story and to be informed about it. As a union we are able to be effective and helpful when we're informed of the situation.
What can SAG-AFTRA do to make sure that this conduct stops and that the proper authorities are alerted?
It's really an industry thing that we need to do together, but when it's outside of the place where a performer is shooting, and it's prior to the time of the contract, it's in the audition process, or it's in the creative process, people need to speak out, not only to the union but to their reps, agents, lawyers, managers, to the studios. There's a place for that — to be able to reach out to us and we can help facilitate where they can go for help. On set, if something is happening at any time they should absolutely call immediately. What would happen is we would, depending on what the situation is, we would say to them, probably, they should walk off the set, leave immediately. If we needed to, go and call the proper authorities. If they don't want us to share their name, but they've informed us, that puts us in a different situation. If that takes place, then we can only recommend to them certain things to do and where to reach out and hope that they do it.
How does a guild create a culture in which an actor can complain and not fear that it is going to be the end to his or her career?
There are laws against sexual harassment. So if we're able to go in and present these issues right when they're happening, I think you're going to see much more of an effective kind of response. If people can know that there will be action taken. One of the things that we're really talking about in terms of the industry and as a union is, how do we help empower our members to feel safe that they can go and speak on the truth without losing their jobs? I can't change someone's emotional state if they have that fear, but if we continue talking about it and it's out in the open — just like you're seeing now — more and more people are stepping up.
What is it like for you to be listening to your members talk about these issues?
I'm a woman in this industry and I share some of their stories. Every woman I've spoken to within this industry, and there are men as well, has a story to share. So when I hear it, it breaks my heart. I think it's appalling and it's disgusting. That's why I'm really focused and this is so important to me. I'm glad that people are speaking out. What I want to do is to be able to empower them so that we can stop these things from happening. It's something that has been going on, it's not new ... This is an incredible opportunity for us, there's something that has been exposed in a public way and people are resonating with this and they're taking a stand and using their voices. This is the time for us to take it in our hands and actually start to shift the culture. We must shift the culture ... we really have to work deeper, otherwise it's just going to be something that continues once Harvey Weinstein is put in prison [or]whatever happens. I don't want the story to end there. I really want us to make a difference.