Filmmaker Nia DaCosta Defies Categorization

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Speaker 3 This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley.
And today I'm talking with director Nia DaCosta, who's had a meteoric rise over the past few years.

Speaker 3 Little Woods, her first feature in 2018, was an intimate story about two sisters in North Dakota who turned to a life of crime to make ends meet.

Speaker 3 It got a lot of attention, including from Jordan Peale, who later brought DaCosta on to reimagine the horror classic Candyman.

Speaker 3 That film made DaCosta the first black woman to direct a movie that opened at number one at the U.S. box office.

Speaker 3 DaCosta made history again with the Marvels, becoming the youngest director and first black woman to helm a film in the Marvel universe.

Speaker 3 And now she's turned to something even more personal, a project she wrote years ago and never let go of. It's called Hedda, and it's Da Costa's take on Henrik Ibsen's 1891 play, Hedda Gabler.

Speaker 3 In Da Costa's hands, the story becomes a dark exploration of a woman suffocating in a life she never wanted, trapped in a 1950s English manor house over the course of one wild, unsettling night.

Speaker 3 Tessa Thompson stars as Heda, and here's a scene at the start of the film where police interrogate her about what happened that night.

Speaker 4 Heda,

Speaker 1 Tessman,

Speaker 5 is that right? This is your husband's home.

Speaker 6 Hedda is fine.

Speaker 5 So, could you tell us the events of the evening the way you remember them leading up to the shooting?

Speaker 7 You know, my memory's a bit fuzzy.

Speaker 4 It was a party after all.

Speaker 6 Certainly, I can do my best.

Speaker 6 First thing I remember seeing is a bloody mess of a person dragged into my face.

Speaker 4 Before that, please.

Speaker 5 There was a lot of yelling.

Speaker 3 What ensues is a dark and twisted tale of jealousy and control. Nia DaCosta grew up in Harlem and studied film at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Speaker 3 She started out as a production assistant, working on sets for Martin Scorsese, Steve McQueen, and Steven Soderberg.

Speaker 3 She recently rapped directing 28 years later, The Bone Temple, the next film in the zombie horror trilogy. Nia DaCosta, welcome to Fresh Air.

Speaker 7 Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 3 You know, you have been quoted as saying that this particular story, Heda, it was like a revelation when you first read the play.

Speaker 3 And I just have to know, what was it about Hedda's character that you couldn't let go of.

Speaker 7 Oh, man, I mean, so much.

Speaker 7 I think, you know, she does some pretty terrible things in the play, and she does some extreme acts that are emotionally violent, and she asks people to do some terrible things, but she's so vulnerable.

Speaker 7 She's as vulnerable as she is vicious, and she's so complicated, and she's funny, and she's all these things.

Speaker 7 And I just thought it was a really interesting portrait of a woman who was trying to express herself while living under oppression, essentially.

Speaker 3 That's so interesting you use the words vulnerable and vicious because

Speaker 3 Heda is a product of her time. The original play is set in 19th century Norway.

Speaker 3 So we understand what life for a woman was back in those days. But in your version, that confinement takes on new dimensions because you've reimagined her.
She's a mixed race woman.

Speaker 3 Her former lover and her husband's rival is also a woman.

Speaker 3 Walk me through those decisions.

Speaker 7 At the time, when I came to writing a script, I always just thought a black woman would be the center because I wanted more visions of us and more diverse kinds of visions of us, black women, in media.

Speaker 7 And also, I was lucky enough to have Tessa Thompson as a collaborator in my first film and as a very good friend. And I just thought, oh, well, Tessa's going to play Hedda.

Speaker 7 You know, that was just an assumption I made. And I told her about it.
And so from that point on, I'm like, yeah, so now Hedda is a black mixed race woman.

Speaker 7 You know, now she's this dimension that I have to feed into

Speaker 7 the script.

Speaker 7 And then turning Eilert Loveborg from the play into Eileen Loveborg was really about me wanting to dig into what I found so compelling about the piece, which was really this idea of a woman trying to navigate a repressed society who's trying to put her into a box.

Speaker 7 And I thought she needs more women around her. And this character, Eilert, he's always complaining about being so brilliant and no one understands him and no one listens to him.

Speaker 7 And I thought, well, if that's a woman, if that's a female character, then I want to empathize a bit more and then I understand even more fully why she's so depressed and why that leads her to drink and to kind of keep self-sabotaging in a way.

Speaker 7 I thought she was much more compelling as Eileen than Eilert.

Speaker 3 Okay, this is so fascinating. First, I want to start with the race thing because

Speaker 3 your approach kind of feels different than blind casting, which is something that we've seen recently over the last few years.

Speaker 3 It's not like you're ignoring race entirely by just choosing someone and just plopping them into a time period. How do you view it? How do you look at it?

Speaker 7 Yeah, you know, I think in the sort of correcting the sins of our past, the dearth of visibility for people of color in cinema, I think sometimes the easy answer was, oh, color blind casting.

Speaker 7 So you can have people of color in the film, but you don't have to contend at all with their race and what that actually means for them moving through the world.

Speaker 7 And then the other version is the film is only about that. It's here to educate you about the experiences of being

Speaker 7 a black person or a person of color or a queer person or any minority and that's a function of it.

Speaker 7 But that wasn't really interesting to me

Speaker 7 when it came to doing this adaptation.

Speaker 7 I really just wanted to represent characters, in particular a black woman, a mixed race woman, in her experience, not in an educational way, but just saying, yeah, she's she's black and this is a part of what that means in the the context of the story, so that it feels lived in.

Speaker 7 It felt like what it feels like to live the life as opposed to, you know, a seminar about race relations in the 1950s in England.

Speaker 3 I think I heard you say that the 1950s were kind of the great age of pretending.

Speaker 3 And I wanted to unpack that a little bit. What made it the perfect time period for your adaptation?

Speaker 7 I mean, everything you said, but also I'm really fascinated by the post-war period and how it shapes our lives even today.

Speaker 7 I mean, it's so many of the conflicts that we're dealing with now are directly related to the end of that war.

Speaker 7 And I found it really interesting how people try to recover and heal after, you know, 44 million people die. And these conflicts have opened wounds and maybe pasted over some other ones.

Speaker 7 And what a society does to say, you know what, we're okay. It's over now.
Let's go back to normal.

Speaker 7 And the women who've been experiencing this new kind of freedom, you know, they're working now, they're kind of taking more prominent places in society are like, are told, the men are back.

Speaker 7 Bye, girl, leave the factories you go home and then these men come back traumatized and they're told okay go back to work thank you so much let's go we're good everything's fine and so the 50s have this energy and it's no surprise the 60s came right after

Speaker 7 you know with this explosion of freedom this questioning of like what is freedom what does freedom look like from like a sexual point of view but then also like you know the civil rights movement in america in particular exploded in this time so I think the 50s were this time of a reaction to trauma in a way that I found really fascinating.

Speaker 7 And that reaction was safety comes in conformity.

Speaker 7 And because this film is about people trying to find safety and fighting against that conformity, I thought it was a really interesting parallel.

Speaker 3 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 Is that what we're going through right now?

Speaker 7 It's just a story. Oh my God, girl.

Speaker 7 I'm a bit of a stoic, I think, capital S, when it comes to trying to navigate the horrors of humanity

Speaker 2 in our present day.

Speaker 7 And history really helps me to sort of process what's happening, the cyclical nature of it. And I think it is what's happening right now.
The world is so confusing.

Speaker 7 There's so many forces we don't understand. Social media is as scary as nuclear weapons.
And we just want to feel safe. And I think that's where Tradwives come from, by the way.

Speaker 3 I think you're right. I mean, that's when you say safety comes in conformity.
I mean, I thought about all of those things.

Speaker 3 I actually want to play a scene that really gets at the heart of this idea of safety, this conformity.

Speaker 3 And it's also at the heart of the dynamic between Heda and her former lover, Eileen. So, in this scene I want to play, they've stolen a few moments alone at this party.

Speaker 3 And Eileen, who is played by Nina Haas, she's an academic. She's a rival, as I mentioned, to Heda's husband in the academic world.

Speaker 3 And she's basically telling Hedda, you're wasting your life playing a housewife. Let's listen.

Speaker 3 You could be so much more. Look what I've done.
You could do anything.

Speaker 9 No like what?

Speaker 4 Become a professor?

Speaker 9 Tell me, how many women are at the university teaching?

Speaker 9 Two.

Speaker 9 And they're both white, I presume.

Speaker 3 Whatever.

Speaker 9 You're upset I couldn't choose you.

Speaker 9 I was.

Speaker 9 Once.

Speaker 9 Not anymore.

Speaker 9 Not for a long time.

Speaker 9 Since Thea?

Speaker 9 I know she's still there.

Speaker 9 I saw her her little bag near the door. Do you know that a roach can live without its head for a week?

Speaker 9 Excuse me?

Speaker 3 That was a scene from the new movie Heda, written and directed by my guest today, Nia DaCosta. I'll tell you, I had to Google that roach can live without its head for.

Speaker 7 Oh my gosh, that was a Tessa Thompson Ad Lab. I loved it.
Oh, it was. Yeah, because earlier in the scene, Eileen says you scramble around like a roach trying to control a man's destiny.

Speaker 7 You know, shape your own. And that's why Nina responds in that way.
She's like, huh, that wasn't the line.

Speaker 2 It's so fun.

Speaker 3 Were there a lot of et-lubs in the film?

Speaker 7 No, actually. I mean, I have a pretty robust rehearsal process.
So if there's any thoughts and feelings, we can bring it up then and I can adjust the script accordingly.

Speaker 7 But I also, like, once we get what we need, I'm like, okay, jazz riff if you want. But it's not like a, you know, free-for-all.

Speaker 3 There's so much tension in that scene because it's not just about their romantic past. It's it's two completely different survival strategies.

Speaker 3 So Eileen thinks she's free because she's refused to marry. She has this career.
But Hedda sees something else.

Speaker 3 And I was just curious when you were writing that dynamic, were you consciously setting up two different kinds of traps?

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 7 Something I think a lot about is what does freedom look like? What does it mean to be free, especially as a black person in America, but just as a human being?

Speaker 7 And the tension of the movie is this question for women who don't have the access that they think they have. But I think often people, their shortcut to freedom is trying to attain power.

Speaker 7 And so, what these two women are actually doing is trying to attain power, Hedda, through marriage and through the conformity, and Eileen through her intellect.

Speaker 7 But those are both incomplete things because power doesn't necessarily equal freedom, especially if you have to hold on to the power to feel free.

Speaker 7 And freedom should really be divorced of those things. So, that was a really intentional sort of dichotomy I was trying to set up between those two characters.

Speaker 3 After your first film, Little Woods, Jordan Peel tapped you to direct Candyman, which is a reimagining of the 1992 film directed by Bernard Rose about an urban legend, this supernatural figure with a hook forehand who appears when you say his name five times in a mirror.

Speaker 3 But your version digs deeper into

Speaker 3 racial violence and systemic erasure that created that legend. And I actually want to play a clip from the film.

Speaker 3 In this scene, Billy Burke, played by Coleman Domingo, lives in what was once the Cabrini Green Housing Project in Chicago. And he's telling Anthony a story of the candyman.
Let's listen.

Speaker 10 But the first one, where it all began, was in the 1890s. It's the story Helen found, the story of Daniel Robotai.

Speaker 10 He made a good living touring the country, painting portraits for wealthy families, mostly white.

Speaker 8 And they loved.

Speaker 4 But you know how it goes.

Speaker 4 They love what we make,

Speaker 8 but not us.

Speaker 10 One day, he's commissioned to paint the daughter of a Chicago factory owner who made his fortune in the stockyards. Well,

Speaker 4 Robotai committed the ultimate sin of his time.

Speaker 4 They fell in love.

Speaker 10 They had an affair. She got pregnant.
The girl tells her father, and what,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 4 he hires some men to hunt Robotai down and told him to get creative.

Speaker 10 Chase him through here in the middle of the day. He collapses from exhaustion right near where the old tower and chestnut used to be.

Speaker 4 They beat him,

Speaker 10 tortured him,

Speaker 10 cut off his arm, and jab him meat up as a stump. They smear honeycomb from the nearby hives on his chest and let the bees sting him.

Speaker 4 A crowd started to form to watch the show.

Speaker 10 The big finale:

Speaker 10 they set him on fire, and he finally dies.

Speaker 10 But a story like that, a pain like that,

Speaker 10 lasts forever.

Speaker 10 That's Candyman.

Speaker 3 That was a scene from the 2021 film Candyman directed by my guest today, Nia DaCosta.

Speaker 3 What was it about the original Candyman and specifically about what you could bring to it that made you know you wanted to direct it?

Speaker 7 Oh, I mean,

Speaker 7 I think that movie came out when when I was quite young, but when I was in middle school, it was very much a part of our, you know, bathroom shenanigans. It was Bloody Mary and it was Candyman.

Speaker 7 And because it happened in the projects, I grew up in Harlem and the projects, you know, I lived across you from the projects. The high-rises were over on 148th Street.

Speaker 7 Like, that's where I imagined these things happening. So it didn't feel like it was in a movie or far away.

Speaker 7 And so it was just such a part of my childhood, a part of my lore that horrified me when I was younger.

Speaker 7 But I loved what Jordan wanted to do. He really wanted to expand it, to turn it on its head.
And that exploration of how to do that was really exciting.

Speaker 7 And I thought I had a point of view on it as someone who

Speaker 7 lives in America and remembers not just the Candyman legend, but also,

Speaker 7 I remember when Amadou Diallo was shot. 50 times by the cops in New York.

Speaker 7 That was my first time understanding what it was to be black in America. That was when I was like, oh, okay.

Speaker 7 So I think also holding that and holding all of the people who become martyrs and sort of emblems of our pain and our systemic oppression is why it was really important to me to balance all these things properly.

Speaker 7 You know, the the horror and the thrills, but also the real pain that we're talking about.

Speaker 3 I also want to talk with you about your aesthetic because I'm starting to see it. Like with every movie, it becomes clear there's a moment in Candyman.
Actually, there's several.

Speaker 3 And actually in Heda as well, where you are holding on to these long, unbroken shots. So we're locked into the character.
We're moving through space

Speaker 3 and you just don't cut it. There's like no tight, medium, wide shots of these different spaces.

Speaker 3 Where does that come from? What are you trying to make us feel when you are refusing to cut away?

Speaker 7 Yeah, I think it's just really great for

Speaker 7 tension and building anticipation. You know, why aren't we cutting? What's going to happen? Why am I sitting here on the shot?

Speaker 7 I think it makes the audience lean in.

Speaker 7 I think sometimes when you cut too much, viewing a film can become something of a passive experience where I'm literally telling you, look here, look here, look here, look here, do this, feel this.

Speaker 7 But what I really want is for you to feel the things I want you to feel, but because you are participating in a way, you're actively looking at

Speaker 7 the frame. You're like, okay,

Speaker 7 what am I looking for in a way? Especially when it's a wide shot and we're holding on a wide.

Speaker 7 And then I just think it's great to just get out of the way of the actors sometimes, you know, to really trust

Speaker 7 and be confident in what they're doing and that they can hold the intention of the audience.

Speaker 3 Candyman opened at number one

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 3 it made you, as I mentioned before, the first black woman to debut at number one at the box office.

Speaker 3 Do those titles, like first black woman or youngest director in the case of the Marvels movie, do those titles mean anything to you?

Speaker 7 Oh man, it's so interesting because

Speaker 7 so much of what I love about this is the process of doing it. And that being said, it was pretty amazing.
I was like, oh, I didn't know any of these things actually.

Speaker 7 Like, I think I was in an interview when a journalist told me I was the youngest

Speaker 7 Marvel director. And, and, and I had no idea I was going to be the first black woman with a number one film.
Absolutely no idea. I was kind of dumbfounded by that because to me,

Speaker 7 You know, I grew up with Casey Lemons and Gina Prince Bythwood making films.

Speaker 7 And,

Speaker 7 you know, I was in college when Ava was making her films. Ava Duvernay.
Ava Duvernay, yeah. And

Speaker 2 so I'm, I thought it was Ava or

Speaker 2 Gina.

Speaker 7 I was like, me.

Speaker 7 And so it was kind of amazing. And of course, I'm so proud of it.
And then I think, wow, we got a ways to go, guys. But I love what the landscape is doing right now.

Speaker 3 There's a shift.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 And I felt that when I was, like when I was making my first films, I really felt, oh, I think they're, they're actually opening the door to us right now. So I better run through it before it closes.

Speaker 3 Is that what it is? Because it does, when I look at your career, it almost feels like a sprint. It's like you're not just walking upstairs, you're like sprinting up the stairs.

Speaker 7 Yeah, and now I'm at the top huffing and puffing like, okay, time to take a little break before I go up the rest of these flights.

Speaker 7 I think so. I think I have this feeling of having to prove myself.
And

Speaker 7 also, like, speaking of freedom, like I really wanted to feel as though I had the freedom to make the kinds of projects I wanted to make.

Speaker 7 And I thought, okay, how do I build a career that facilitates that? And part of that was knowing, okay, I need to not get

Speaker 7 typecast as just an indie drama director. I need to also pursue these other genres that I love, like horror,

Speaker 7 like comic book movies.

Speaker 7 You know, I really wanted to do those things, not just because I love them, but because I also was thinking, like, about how to build a career that sustained and that could eventually allow me to make original films that that were bigger scale.

Speaker 7 So yeah, I definitely have this feeling of like, I don't know how long this will last. So let me make sure that I make the most of it.

Speaker 3 If you're just joining us, my guest is filmmaker Nia DaCosta. We'll be right back after a short break.
I'm Tanya Mosley and this is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 3 So, yeah, you went from Candyman to The Marvels, which is this massive Marvel movie. And I heard that when you pitched for it, you wrote that it's a story about sisters.
And that stuck with me.

Speaker 3 Because that's not what people think about when we think about a superhero movie.

Speaker 3 How did you hold on to that emotional core when you're also dealing with, I don't know, you know, CGI sequences and intergalactic battles?

Speaker 7 I mean, the great thing about making a Marvel film is like

Speaker 7 the relationship between the amount of work and how huge the movie is is directly proportionate to how much help you get.

Speaker 7 And so, you know, the first thing they tell you to do is they're like, call the other directors. They'll tell you what it's like.
So I did that.

Speaker 7 But then you also have like an amazing crew.

Speaker 7 Like everyone wants to make a marvel film so you get like the best of the best helping you through through the experience and that includes you know my executive every film has an exec and mine was mary lovanos and and she helped me to make sure that the emotional core of the film this these three women and and how they develop and relate to each other and how their relationships change and shift could stay prominent so it was it was one me like really believing in it and also just having the help that I needed to bring it all to life.

Speaker 3 Okay, Nia, I want to go back to where it all started for you as a filmmaker. I know it started as a child, very young, but I want to talk about your idols.
So

Speaker 3 a lot of filmmakers who make their mark in the 1970s, Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, they're all folks that you talk about quite a bit. And these are guys you believe could do anything with a camera.

Speaker 3 But you're not a guy and it's not 1970s. What is it about their particular brand of filmmaking that speaks to you?

Speaker 7 Yeah, that was like the age of the new American cinema. And

Speaker 7 I just, I mean, the audacity of it all is for me that I really responded to.

Speaker 7 I mean, I remember the first time I saw Apocalypse Now, I was like, what do you mean? Like, what?

Speaker 7 You recreated this and it's a brilliant film, but it's also like this managed chaos. And I was just so in awe of it.

Speaker 7 And I think also with Apocalypse Now, actually, I was, the reason why I watched it was because I was studying Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in AP English.

Speaker 7 And my teacher said, oh, there's an adaptation of it, a loose adaptation called Apocalypse Now. And we happened to have it in my dorm because I was at boarding school at the time.
And

Speaker 7 actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if that's why I'm so loose and goosey with adaptation and feeling I can do anything because, you know, that's from the heart of Africa to the Vietnam War, that that transliteration was very, it's a very different world that he set his adaptation in.

Speaker 7 So, yeah, it really made me feel brave

Speaker 7 watching those men be audacious. And I didn't really think about their maleness, their whiteness, you know, their privilege.
I was just like, oh, movies, great.

Speaker 7 And because at the same time, I was watching Casey Lemon's film, watching Eves Bayou, Lemon Basketball. And so I took for granted that I could make movies too.

Speaker 3 You went into college knowing what you wanted to do. Do you remember when you,

Speaker 3 when the seed was planted in your mind that you could be a filmmaker and then the choice that I am going to be a filmmaker, even aside from just all of those great films that you watched? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think it was

Speaker 7 between the ages of 11 and 13, I think.

Speaker 7 My mom.

Speaker 7 And I were talking a lot about like film and what I wanted to do with my life. And I I was always writing and I was always saying, I'm going to be a writer.
I'm going to write some stuff.

Speaker 7 And my mom was like, yeah, you are. I can see that for sure.
And then I got into film and I thought I wanted to be an actor. I was like, well, I mean, they're the ones you're skiing.

Speaker 7 You know, they're the ones who you're empathizing with and feeling through. And then my mom said, no, you're too sensitive.
I think

Speaker 7 the way, yeah, she said, you're too sensitive, babe. The way you want,

Speaker 7 the way you talk about. this, the way you talk about film and the way you are, I think you want to be a director.
I don't know what she was saying. I was a tyrant, but I

Speaker 7 was like, oh yeah, I think my mom's right. But now I have this word, director, and then I can ask myself, what is a director? What does that mean? And that sent me down the rabbit hole.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I remember being at NYU and I would,

Speaker 7 I'd have like, okay, Cohen Brothers, let's go. And I'd go to the Fisher Center at Bopes and watch all of the Cohen Brothers films.
And then I'd go, okay, Ang Lee.

Speaker 7 I'd watch all of Ang Li's films and just go down the filmography. And that started because my mom identified for me.
Oh,

Speaker 7 I think it's director. I think that's you.

Speaker 3 You worked as a PA, not just for Scorsese, but for Steve McQueen, Stephen Suterberg. These are directors with completely different styles.

Speaker 3 Take me back to those sets. What were you noticing? What were you absorbing? Is there a through line that you saw with all of them, even though they're all different?

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 7 I was a production office PA. And so

Speaker 7 a lot of my time, which was good because I would write my scripts

Speaker 7 at my desk.

Speaker 3 Oh, and you're doing your time.

Speaker 7 Yeah, you know? But when I got to go to set, it was really awesome to watch

Speaker 7 them run the set. And

Speaker 7 they're all very different people. But what I learned was...

Speaker 7 Everything comes from the top because even in the production office, you feel the difference because of how the director is running the set.

Speaker 7 You know, when I was working on The Nick, which is the Steven Soderbergh TV show, I think a PA got yelled yelled at by someone and the production manager said, whoa, whoa, whoa, who yelled at you?

Speaker 7 We don't do that here. And she went and talked to the person.

Speaker 7 And that's the Soderberg thing. It's like everyone is respected here.
And I thought it was so inspiring

Speaker 7 how that comes from the top. And then on Steve McQueen's sets, you know, he comes to the production office and I visit set sometime and

Speaker 7 you just see the way he talks to people and the gentleness and, but also the sheer honesty with which he communicates. I was like, ah, noted.

Speaker 7 And then Scorsese, I mean, geez, that was so amazing for me. That was my, um, that was my first big scripted job PAing on that show.
And

Speaker 3 what show was it?

Speaker 7 Oh, it was vinyl. I worked on the pilot of vinyl.
And, you know, it was, it was a whole production. Oh my goodness.

Speaker 7 I mean, 24-hour production office, which I have not experienced since I would never ask anyone to do. But I learned there, it's like...
those sorts of big muscular productions.

Speaker 7 It's like the rigor of the work, like the seriousness with which he's pursuing perfection was really inspiring as well.

Speaker 7 The sheer skill and experience of the people there, it was, it was very Hollywood, I'll say. It was very cool.

Speaker 3 You know, I was thinking all of those guys,

Speaker 3 something that's common for all of them that they all share is they are uncompromising. Yeah, like they will fight with the studios to protect their vision.

Speaker 3 And I'm so curious about what this looks like for you and what types of considerations

Speaker 3 have you had to make or you just decided I'm going to bypass that and stand in my power?

Speaker 7 I think a big thing for me has been

Speaker 7 I was educated in

Speaker 7 many predominantly white institutions and you learn

Speaker 7 what being a black woman does to the sound of your voice

Speaker 7 to

Speaker 7 how much presence you have in a room. You know, you learn pretty quickly

Speaker 7 what it means to other people and how that changes

Speaker 7 not who you are, but how you're perceived and how you're perceived changes perhaps how you will approach compromise, for example, or

Speaker 7 being uncompromising.

Speaker 7 That has been very helpful because Hollywood is a predominantly white space.

Speaker 7 And I mean as in general, I'm a person who's just like quite kind and really was wants everyone to have a good time and get along. And I and I'm also very honest.
I don't really have a poker face.

Speaker 7 So I've always just been like, kind honesty will get you through.

Speaker 7 But as I've gotten older and has become more confident, sometimes it's a hard, no, I'm not doing that. Or guess what? I'm doing this.

Speaker 7 And actually, even though I know that perhaps you'll perceive that as more aggressive because I'm a black woman, I'm okay with that. Now I'm okay with that.

Speaker 7 Though it's gotten better as I've gotten older, but it is as a black woman, like being audacious, having the audacity as a black woman.

Speaker 7 Frankly, you have to have more

Speaker 2 to do what we do.

Speaker 3 If you're just joining us, my guest is filmmaker Nia DaCosta. We're talking about her new film, Heda, a provocative reimagining of Henrik Ibsen's classic play, Heda Gabler.

Speaker 3 We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 3 You went to public school in Harlem for a short period of time, right? I did, yeah. And then you made the switch to private school, then to boarding school.
Those are huge shifts.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Going to boarding school in the middle of nowhere in Connecticut, in the heart of like Wasp Country was very,

Speaker 7 it's a very specific place. And I wasn't fully prepared for

Speaker 7 the lack of diversity. Like I wasn't, I like, I totally took for granted what a gift New York City is in all its imperfections and all its craziness.

Speaker 7 I really took for granted, like, because not just in terms of race, but also in terms of like socioeconomics. Like,

Speaker 7 I went to school, public school with rich kids and poor kids, and everything in between, because it's New York City. So,

Speaker 7 you know, going to boarding school, it was like a whole other ecosystem that I had to learn. And it was a rough ride my first year.
I was like, what is happening? I don't understand these people.

Speaker 7 Who am I? Who do they expect me to be?

Speaker 7 And it really shaped me

Speaker 7 moving forward, actually. Really,

Speaker 7 like trying to protect myself and my feelings was something that I really had to figure out how to do,

Speaker 7 you know, moving forward. But then eventually, again, I kind of matured and then it was like, okay, I'm just going to be myself, I think.

Speaker 7 I think that might be the way forward.

Speaker 3 Is there a particular moment that first year in boarding school?

Speaker 3 A time in school in general where you really learned that lesson of like, oh, I'm trying to be this thing, but I just need to be myself.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I think someone said to me, I don't know where you come from, but,

Speaker 7 you know, we don't do that here.

Speaker 2 And I was like, oh, like,

Speaker 7 you cannot, there is no conformity for me because

Speaker 7 I'm black. Like, you know, like, it doesn't matter if you wear like the Birkenstocks and the fleeces and, you know, have a juicy tube.

Speaker 7 Like, you're always,

Speaker 7 you know, you're always going to be black. And in a way, that's absolutely freeing.

Speaker 2 You're like, oh, great. Okay.
Well,

Speaker 7 if this doesn't matter to you, then I'm not gonna do it either. Like, you know, I'm not gonna like get a weave right now.
I'll just keep my braids, you know? Like,

Speaker 7 it's really freeing. And then also, and then, and then this, again, owning your authority, like owning your space.
I mean, I learned that over years, but

Speaker 7 yeah, I mean, I went to boarding school, I think, I think I was

Speaker 7 12 my first year and turned 13.

Speaker 7 So I was really young and I really wanted to fit in and I really was still also grappling with what it meant to be black.

Speaker 7 Like I remember my mom trying to talk to me about shopping while black and I was like, mom, what are you talking about? I was like,

Speaker 7 what is that? It's like, I just like didn't want to hear it. And she's like, and she'd be like, you know, if I was reading like Elle magazine, she'd also give me an essence.

Speaker 7 She just wanted me to know like.

Speaker 7 She was trying to tell me like the world's going to tell you some lies about yourself and I want you to not believe them.

Speaker 7 And I, being young, I was like trying to figure out how to be a person, let alone like get all this extra information.

Speaker 7 And she really, and I credit her so much for this, she really just, she just knew what it would be like. And

Speaker 7 especially going away to school, like, which she really wanted me to do too, because my mom is huge in education and I really got that from her.

Speaker 3 Your mother,

Speaker 3 Charmaine Da Costa, She was in the girl group Whirl a Girl. They were a reggae group that did the Jamaica bobsled chant for the movie Cool Runnings, which came out in 1993.

Speaker 3 And I actually want to play a little bit of it because I think that everybody kind of

Speaker 3 knows this once they hear it. Let's listen to a little bit.

Speaker 8 No people can believe.

Speaker 8 Jamaica Abba Boxley team. Boy, no people can believe Jamaica Abba Boxley team.

Speaker 8 Sometimes in life there's disappointment.

Speaker 2 We've got to keep on working for a world.

Speaker 8 You know you can achieve whatever you believe.

Speaker 13 Keep your eyes on the prize.

Speaker 8 Take it on your high.

Speaker 8 Lots. No people can believe Jamaica Abba

Speaker 3 That was the reggae group Whirla Girl singing the Jamaica Bob Sled chant, which was written and performed by my guest today's mother, Charmaine DaCosta.

Speaker 3 You have to be around three or four when that game is.

Speaker 7 Oh my gosh, I loved hearing that. I mean, I remember meeting Dougie Doug, and I remember my mom, like, Shaggy used to watch me when they performed together.

Speaker 7 That was like my childhood. And I was like being on their music video sets and being in the studio with my mom.
And then my mom would go on tour for, you know, for some stretches of time.

Speaker 7 So crazy. Like, I,

Speaker 7 so fun. I love it so much.

Speaker 3 Your mom,

Speaker 3 she's a powerhouse in her own right. She's also been a gospel singer.
She has a juice business.

Speaker 3 How did watching her navigate all these different chapters shape or help you think about your own career?

Speaker 7 Oh man, I mean,

Speaker 7 my mom is someone who's had so many lives, it feels like, and she's so fiercely intelligent and she also,

Speaker 7 I really feel like can do anything. And

Speaker 7 she always said to me, like, I'll support you whatever you want to do.

Speaker 7 But I think she valued, one, education, but also ambition. And when I wanted to be an artist, I remember her saying, you know,

Speaker 7 you just need to know that it's going to be tough and you're going to be broke and you're going to be like, why am I doing this to myself?

Speaker 7 But if you love it, it's worth it and the money will come.

Speaker 7 And I really believe that, you know, I, and, and, and she was right.

Speaker 7 Because like, you know, we're not, we're not well off, you know, I, and there was no, there's no backup plan for me in terms of, um,

Speaker 7 you know, if I don't make rent, it's like I don't make rent. There's no one I can go and say, can you give me money, you know? Um, but my mom prepared me for that life.
She was like,

Speaker 7 and watching her live it, watching her success, the modicum of success she had with her career in the 90s, and also the way she operated, like the joy with which my mom pursued her art.

Speaker 7 Like she's happiest when she's singing. And I've seen that.
It made me feel

Speaker 7 how important it is for me to do the same.

Speaker 3 You know, I've been wondering, your mom says to you, the world is your oyster, but yet you didn't grow up with a lot of money.

Speaker 3 Your mom went into a lot of debt to send you to these really great schools. And so there are these two things that exist together, like follow your dreams, but

Speaker 3 there wasn't like just this clear road to success. So how, how did you hold those two things together as a young person?

Speaker 7 I think the lesson I got from all that was

Speaker 7 follow your dreams, but it costs you something.

Speaker 7 You know, it's work and it's hard and you have to love it. I mean, they said that your first day in film school, but, you know, for me,

Speaker 7 I mean, I also, you know, I've seen my mom go from, you know, sign to Island Deaf Jam and touring a lot to not being able to make a living singing,

Speaker 7 which she was able to do when I was really young. So I also knew that that was something that could happen, that you could, you know, go from

Speaker 7 being at the top of the world to,

Speaker 7 because my mom, you know, she also worked in 30 Rock. She worked as

Speaker 7 an executive assistant at

Speaker 7 GE. And so, you know, I saw when the life changes and how you have to make space for your passions when it is no longer your vocation.

Speaker 7 But my mom, she just, her spirit is so beautiful. I think she just,

Speaker 7 she really believes in pursuing it no matter what, because

Speaker 7 I think her ethos is sort of like, have a plan B, but that's what you do when you fail. That's not what you do without trying.

Speaker 3 When she worked at 30 Rock, did you ever visit or have a chance to visit?

Speaker 7 Oh my God, I was there all the time. I mean, also like single mom, I was just like booping around the office like, hey.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I remember bringing your daughters to work day. It was so fun because as you can imagine, Very Rock, like everything gets shot there.

Speaker 7 We had like, they did like, you know, of course I did horror makeup. They did like a makeup thing and you can get like a wound or something on your head.

Speaker 7 And I got like a wound on my forehead and walked around with my mom. And people were like, is she okay? My mom's like, she's fine.

Speaker 7 But also like even that, like another parent might have said like, okay, take it off your head. We're going outside.
My mom just let me be a weirdo.

Speaker 7 Like she really did let me, you know, be a little freak. And

Speaker 7 she didn't stamp out my voice. If anything, the times when she tried to like shift or correct me was when it was about my safety.

Speaker 3 Nia DaCosta, this has been such a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 7 Thank you so much, Sony, for having me.

Speaker 3 Nia DaCosta's new film is called Heda. It's in theaters and also streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
After a short break, jazz critic Martin Johnson reviews the new album from Linda May Han O.

Speaker 3 This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 3 Bassist and composer Linda Mahon-O took the fast track to jazz prominence, quickly emerging on the scene in the 2000s and becoming the bass player in bands led by Pat Matheny and Vijay Iyer.

Speaker 3 But on her latest recording, Strange Heavens, she's inviting listeners to look back at her early work.

Speaker 3 Strange Heavens features an unusual trio, bass, drums, and trumpet, just like her debut recording in 2009. Jazz critic Martin Johnson says that there's significant insight in the comparison.

Speaker 11 Linda Mahon O's album Entry was one of the most intriguing recordings of 2009. The lineup was both austere and feisty, and it was for good reason.

Speaker 11 Oh and her bandmates trumpeter Ambrose Akin Missouri and drummer Obed Calvert were in their 20s and eager to tell the jazz world in no uncertain terms that they belonged.

Speaker 11 Mission accomplished, now each has an established academic position and all three are at the top tier of their profession.

Speaker 11 For this recording, O convened a new trio featuring Aken Missouri and drummer Tyshan Sori, who is her colleague in Vijay Ayers' trio.

Speaker 11 As you could hear on the track we just heard, Living Proof, they still make assertive music, but it's more relaxed now.

Speaker 11 Her new band has the convivial air of friends trading triumphs and challenges over drinks or a meal.

Speaker 11 The bass has long been regarded as a foundational or cornerstone instrument, but in O's hands it's nimbler.

Speaker 11 She can move from setting the beat to dancing with the soloist in the blink of an eye, as she does there on Portal.

Speaker 11 Or, as we can hear on the sweetest water, her solos energize the music like an accelerant.

Speaker 11 In between O's trio recordings, she built a reputation as a composer with a broad tonal palette and an appetite for experimental configurations.

Speaker 11 Her previous recording featured vocal leads from Sada Seppa and Mark Turner's reserved approach to saxophone on the front line.

Speaker 11 And she's written compelling music that honors her Asian heritage and Australian upbringing. This recording also offers an opportunity to contrast trumpeter Ken Missouri's development.

Speaker 11 Much of his work is complex and thematic, but here he lets his hair down and shows his playful side.

Speaker 11 By going back to her first setting, a smaller group than her typical band, Linda Mahon-O is presenting an argument that with the right musicians, less is more.

Speaker 3 Jazz critic Martin Johnson writes for The Wall Street Journal and Downbeat. He reviewed Strange Heavens, the new album by bassist and composer Linda Mayhan O.

Speaker 3 Tomorrow in Fresh Air, we talk about the man behind President Trump's dismantling of the federal bureaucracy and expansion of executive power, Russell Vogt, the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Speaker 3 He's also one of the people behind Project 2025. We'll talk with Andy Andy Kroll about his investigation of vote for ProPublica and The New Yorker.
I hope you can join us.

Speaker 3 To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.

Speaker 3 Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.

Speaker 3 Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lauren Crinsel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yacundi, and Anna Bauman.

Speaker 3 Our digital media producer is Molly C. V.
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Speaker 3 Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson. Roberta Shorak directs the show.
With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.

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Speaker 13 One of the core missions of NYU Lango and Health is research. We have a whole group who are looking at predictive analytics.

Speaker 13 Somebody comes to the doctor and he has an EKG and it looks normal, but there's a lot of information in quote normally looking EKGs that may predict disease.

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