Best Of: Jazz Clarinetist Doreen Ketchens / 'White Lotus' Actor Natasha Rothwell

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Speaker 2 From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley.

Speaker 3 Today,

Speaker 2 we're joined by a New Orleans institution, clarinetist and vocalist Doreen Ketchens.

Speaker 2 She's got several nicknames, Lady Louie, Queen Clarinet, and Miss Satchmo, all after her biggest idol, Louis Armstrong. Like the jazz great, Doreen has the gift of hitting long, high notes.

Speaker 2 She and her band, Doreen's Jazz New Orleans, have performed on the corner of Royal and St. Peter Street in the French Quarter for almost four decades.
And we'll also talk with Natasha Rothwell.

Speaker 2 She returns to HBO's The White Lotus as Belinda, a spa manager who was duped in season one by a wealthy visitor played by Jennifer Coolidge.

Speaker 2 And book critic Maureen Corgan reviews Last Scene, a book about newly freed black Americans in the 1860s who took out ads to find lost family members.

Speaker 2 That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

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Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley.
And if you're ever in the French Quarter in New Orleans, chances are you've spotted my guest today, clarinetist and vocalist Doreen Ketchens.

Speaker 2 For over 30 years, she's performed on the corner of Royal and St. Peter Street four days a week, sometimes 12 hours a day, with her band, Doreen's Jazz New Orleans.

Speaker 2 Doreen Ketchens has many nicknames, Lady Louie, Queen Clarinet, and Miss Satchmo, nods to her passionate performances of Dixieland and traditional jazz, and for her ability to hit and and hold high notes for long periods of time, like the great trumpeteer Louis Armstrong.

Speaker 2 Ketchens has performed for four U.S. presidents, Bill Clinton, George H.W.
Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter.

Speaker 2 And initially, she played classical clarinet before her late husband, Lawrence Ketchens, introduced her to jazz while the two were students at Loyola University.

Speaker 2 Lawrence was an accomplished musician in his own right, too.

Speaker 2 As part of Doreen's band, he played the tuba, valve trombone, drums, and piano, becoming a major attraction for his ability to play the sousaphone and drums at the same time.

Speaker 2 A few years ago, Ketchens fulfilled her dream of performing at the Kennedy Center. She's also played with orchestras around the world.
Doreen Ketchens, welcome to Fresh Air.

Speaker 3 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 I want to offer my sincerest condolences on the loss of your husband Lawrence, who

Speaker 2 just died this past January. And I had the pleasure of going down the rabbit hole of watching your performances.

Speaker 2 And aside from being utterly captivated, I was also just taken by what felt like magic watching the two of you performing together. Are you still performing?

Speaker 3 Yep.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 I don't want to get haunted for the rest of my life, you know. And that's what he'd do.

Speaker 3 He used to always tell me, you know, you got to play, no matter what.

Speaker 3 So that's what I'm doing. And it's working.
It's working. I get strength from just

Speaker 3 thinking about the times he's been in the audience, you know, and

Speaker 3 giving me a nod, you know, one way or the other.

Speaker 2 It seemed like... there was such a great love between the two of you and your love language was the music.

Speaker 2 You all performed together for many decades and I think maybe a beautiful way to start our conversation is to actually hear a little bit of the two of you.

Speaker 2 I watched this video of you two performing for the New Orleans jazz station WWOZ

Speaker 2 and there you are playing the clarinet and singing. And Lawrence was playing sousaphone and the drums at the same time.
I don't actually think I've ever seen that in my life. I was thinking how.

Speaker 3 Can I play a little bit of that performance? Yes, please.

Speaker 2 The song is House of the Rising Sun.

Speaker 2 They call

Speaker 2 the world

Speaker 2 He's been

Speaker 2 the run

Speaker 2 of a money

Speaker 2 young line

Speaker 2 and now

Speaker 2 I know who

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 want

Speaker 2 my mother.

Speaker 2 That was my guest today.

Speaker 2 Doreen Ketchens and her late husband Lawrence playing House of the Rising Sun.

Speaker 2 Doreen,

Speaker 2 what a remarkable performance. I mean, as I mentioned, Lawrence is playing the drums and blowing into that sousaphone, which is a type of tuba, at the same time.

Speaker 2 How did he figure out that he had that talent?

Speaker 3 We had drummer problems,

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 the drummer didn't show up, and he was tired of it, you know, and we were on the street.

Speaker 3 He said he wasn't that good anyway. I bet you I could play just as good as him and play the tuba.
And so he sat behind the drums and he took one stick in his left hand and uh he just started to do it.

Speaker 3 I mean, just like that. And it was there.
He can't play roles and stuff like that, so he does the inflections, you know what I mean? So um

Speaker 3 if you're just listening to the drummer, you know, there's a lot of space in there.

Speaker 3 But if you're listening to the group, then he fills in all of these spaces that you would normally hear the drummer do. It's just amazing, you know.

Speaker 3 But uh necessity is the mother of in of invention, and

Speaker 3 he invented the tuba drummer.

Speaker 2 One thing I noticed is that you've got a growl that, you know, it's not only present in your singing voice, but we also heard it while you were playing the clarinet. How do you do that?

Speaker 2 Like, you make your clarinet growl.

Speaker 3 People have asked me about that growl a lot. So I did it.
Actually, I did some videos on it on YouTube during the pandemic when I was going absolutely crazy because I couldn't go out and play.

Speaker 3 But there are two ways of doing a growl. There's one with the throat, you know,

Speaker 3 like that, like you're gargling. And there's another one with the tongue, like a Spanish R, you know.

Speaker 3 And both of them basically sound the same when I do them.

Speaker 3 But you pick one, you know, and I picked the Spanish R because I thought the transition to and from

Speaker 3 was smoother.

Speaker 3 So, and that's how I do it. I just,

Speaker 3 that's how I do it. That's it.

Speaker 2 You know, to watch you perform, you really are. You're like putting your whole body into it.
Your eyes are closed. And I mean, I guess that's not unusual.

Speaker 2 I mean, when you are like intensely focused on your instrument, I've heard you say when you're playing,

Speaker 2 you're constantly digging for more information within yourself. And I was like, wow, really taken by that, but also wonder

Speaker 2 more of what you mean.

Speaker 3 I mean, just like with anything else, you know, if you're

Speaker 3 a parent, you want to be a better parent than your parent, even though you had a great parent, you know, you know, but

Speaker 3 I just don't want to fall into a rut. People are growing up listening to what I'm doing, what I did,

Speaker 3 and, you know, I want to be above that.

Speaker 3 It's flattering.

Speaker 3 In some senses,

Speaker 3 you know, it's insulting because people steal your licks and everything else and they don't acknowledge it, you know.

Speaker 3 But it's still, you know, you want to stay ahead of the game. You want to be the best.

Speaker 3 Lewis Armstrong is like a big influence on me. And

Speaker 3 I have listened to, well, I thought up until the other day, actually, I thought I listened to everything that was out there about Louis Armstrong, but there's always something new, you know.

Speaker 3 But I can hear the same song over that I've heard for hundreds of times and find something new inside of it. It's amazing.

Speaker 2 Is there a favorite Armstrong? I know that's like asking, is there a favorite child? But is there a favorite song of his that you love or you go back to often?

Speaker 3 Yeah, that is like

Speaker 3 asking about a child, you know what I mean? Because

Speaker 3 there's some that strike me

Speaker 3 in certain ways and others that strike me in others, you know,

Speaker 3 I mean, when you say that, you know, La Vian Rose comes to mind and probably because my daughter hates it.

Speaker 3 Oh, really? Why?

Speaker 6 She said that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you know, but

Speaker 3 and then, you know, she got, she got, she fell in love and stuff like that, and she like understood it, you know, and stuff like that. But

Speaker 3 La Vian Rose comes to mind because, you know, he had a way of doing things, things, sort of like Nat King Cole, you know. You can hear Nat King Co singing French in Spanish.

Speaker 3 It ain't the best French in Spanish, you know, but it's great, you know, because he had that respect, you know, for it.

Speaker 3 And you can hear Louis do all kinds of different kinds of music, you know, and still know it's Louis, first note, you know. I mean,

Speaker 3 so I just aspire to

Speaker 3 just be great. And in order to be great, you got to keep aspiring to be great, you know.

Speaker 2 Do you have your own take on that favorite, on your favorite Armstrong song? And if so, can you play a little bit of it? Not the whole thing, but just a bit.

Speaker 3 Oh, Will I Be on Rose? I set myself up for that, didn't I? Let me see.

Speaker 3 Home when you speak,

Speaker 3 angels

Speaker 3 sing from above

Speaker 3 every day what it seems

Speaker 3 to turn into love songs.

Speaker 3 Give

Speaker 3 your heart and soul to me,

Speaker 3 and life will

Speaker 3 always be

Speaker 3 long

Speaker 3 behind.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much for that. I mean,

Speaker 2 you're nicknamed all of these names, you know, Lady Louie for a reason. And that's very clear some of the reasons why.
But I'm very curious to know, when did you first discover yourself in Armstrong?

Speaker 2 Do you remember when you first heard that within his music yourself?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I didn't realize it at all. I was just doing what I do.
I was just learning songs and and playing songs. And

Speaker 3 somebody asked me, you know, when I was

Speaker 3 singing, you know, they said, how do you do that with those words? And I'm like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 3 And, you know, just Louis spoke like my dad, you know.

Speaker 3 And so without realizing it, you know, instead of saying word, I say void.

Speaker 3 You know, stuff like that, you know, because

Speaker 3 that's what, you know, I grew up with. You know, you change

Speaker 3 with society. You know, you go to college and you say, well, that boy, and they're like, what the heck are you talking about? You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 So, but, you know, it always comes back when I do that. And

Speaker 3 a lot of the melodies, you know, the way he interpreted the melodies and stuff, I really, really, really liked it. You know,

Speaker 3 and it appealed to me. So, you know, some Sometimes, you know, I start off, like, I learn a melody

Speaker 3 right from him. You know, I'll do exactly what he does

Speaker 3 but as you know as I play it as I develop you know with the song it becomes me you know I change a few things you know because he played a trumpet and I play a clarinet you know and he was a much older man I was a much younger woman and just other things that come into play that you don't expect but they do because it's human nature you know so

Speaker 3 yeah I didn't realize it.

Speaker 3 But once I realized it, I embraced it and just roll with it, you know, and I'm still rolling with it.

Speaker 2 My guest is clarinetist and vocalist Doreen Ketchens. We'll continue our conversation after a short break.
I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

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Speaker 2 Doreen,

Speaker 2 you're a fixture in the French quarter of New Orleans, but tell us a little bit more about the area that you grew up in.

Speaker 3 I grew up in the

Speaker 3 And yeah, a lot of people are familiar with that neighborhood because of the TV series. And

Speaker 3 I grew up in the house that I was christened in. Actually, it used to be a church.
It was a church. And I was christened in that very house.

Speaker 3 And then it became a whole bunch of other things. But

Speaker 3 yep, right in the middle. And my parents had a sweet shop.
And

Speaker 3 they named it after me. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yep. And that's a whole nother nother New Orleans traditional story in itself.

Speaker 2 Please tell the story of how the clarinet became your instrument because

Speaker 2 it's an infamous story that you tell that you started playing to get out of a pop quiz in elementary school.

Speaker 3 Yep, it was amazing.

Speaker 3 We were at my favorite subject, which was lunch.

Speaker 3 And there was a talk of a pop quiz. And it's like, they said we're going to have a a pop quiz when we go back.
And I'm like, we ain't never had no pop quiz, you know?

Speaker 3 Well, of course, we got back up and there was a pop quiz. And I got the stink eye from so many people, you know.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 the quiz was as such, because there was like 30 kids in the classroom. And

Speaker 3 he'd go down the line, he'd ask one question. And if you got it right, you passed.
If you got it wrong, you failed. And I looked out the window and I said, oh, God, he'd get me out of this.

Speaker 3 I'll do anything. And about two minutes later, the principal came on the loudspeaker, and she said, anybody interested in joining the band, report to the band room immediately.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, oh, my goodness gracious. I raised my hand.
Of course, everybody else raised their hand too.

Speaker 3 But by God's grace, he picked me.

Speaker 3 And I went running down the hall and I was so happy, you know.

Speaker 3 And we went to the band room.

Speaker 3 You know, we spent all our time in that classroom. But when I got to the band room, it was a huge room, and it was beautiful.

Speaker 3 They had music notes and you know pictures of instruments all over the walls and stuff like that and I saw the flute and I was like oh wow look at that

Speaker 3 I said I'm gonna play the flute you know the band director Mr.

Speaker 3 Berthelot you know he started out you know introducing different instruments and saying different things and then he asked you know you know he went row by row asking what do you want to play Well, I already knew what I wanted to play because the flute was so sleek and so silver and so beautiful.

Speaker 3 But the girl in front of me, she said the flute. The girl next to her, she said the flute.
And it went on and on about seven to nine times.

Speaker 3 And by the time he was getting close to me, I was like, well, I don't want to play that now. It's a pretty common instrument, you know.

Speaker 3 And the clarinet was right next to it, so I said, I'll play that. And that's what I played with clarinet.

Speaker 3 Of course, they had about five or six other girls that said clarinet, because they were boy girl instruments and girl instruments, you know. Right, right.

Speaker 3 But I was the first one, so I was all right with that, and it worked out pretty good.

Speaker 2 You're classically trained. When did jazz become your genre?

Speaker 3 Oh, that Lawrence.

Speaker 3 We were in college, and he knocked on my practice room one day.

Speaker 3 I went to this performing arts school called NOCA, you know, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. And I used to practice in this closet, the janitor's closet.

Speaker 3 And in the janitor's closet, you you could hear the clarinet all through the school. But since it was a performing arts school, nobody complained, you know.

Speaker 3 And one day, Ellis Marcellus knocked on my door, and he said, Hey, you sound pretty good on that. You know,

Speaker 3 you ever thought about playing some jazz? And I'm like,

Speaker 3 no.

Speaker 3 And he said, well, why don't you listen to some jazz clarinets and see what you think? You know, I'm like,

Speaker 3 okay. And Ellis Marcellus always did intimidate me, you know.

Speaker 2 And for those who don't know, I mean, he's a legend, but he's a was an acclaimed pianist and educator. And his sons, of course,

Speaker 2 are legends in jazz, too.

Speaker 3 Yeah, so, you know, I was like, he said, well, why don't you take a listen and, you know, let me know what you think. And I'm like, okay.
And see, I wasn't enthused because that's homework, you know.

Speaker 3 In addition to everything else I had to do, now I got to go to the library because, you know, you can't just take out your phone and go and look for, you know, I got to go to the library.

Speaker 3 I got to check this out and all this other stuff.

Speaker 3 But I did because I knew he was coming back, you know, and I listened and I heard a lot of clarinetists, you know, George Lewis, you know, Pete Fountain and, you know, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw.

Speaker 3 And I respected what they did, but we were different. You know, I was concentrating more on

Speaker 3 tone and technique and they were more concentrated on jamming, you know, bending the notes and not really concerned about tone and stuff like that, you know, so it wasn't my thing.

Speaker 3 And so, you know, a few days later, he knocked on the door again and he said, well, what'd you think? And I was like, you know, it's really not my thing.

Speaker 3 I can appreciate what they're doing, but it's not my thing. And he said, well, you're entitled to your opinion.
And as I tell you that, I could still see him saying that.

Speaker 3 before he closed the door. And I just, I thought the world was going to end because I just made Mr.
Marcellus angry, you know, but

Speaker 3 He wasn't angry. He was just chilling, you know.
And then I went to Loyola.

Speaker 3 And just to cut the story short, I was practicing in the practice room and, you know, there was a knock on the door. And when I looked at the door, it was in a cubicle.

Speaker 3 So you could, you know, the doors were glass. This gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous dude was knocking on the door.

Speaker 3 And I'm like, May I help you? And he said, almost verbatim, I kid you not. He said, you know, you sound really good on that clarinet.
You know, you ought to try playing some jazz. And I was like,

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 So that's how I started playing the jazz.

Speaker 2 Is it possible for you to play us something to give us an example of the difference between the classical clarinet that you were really into before Lawrence and then what you ultimately came to do?

Speaker 3 Well, how about this? Um,

Speaker 3 Mary had a little lamb, and I'll just give you an idea

Speaker 3 Right? So, you know straight tone you know fill the horn up with air and stuff like that and you know when you go high

Speaker 3 So but when I play jazz, you know, I I still consider those qualities, you know, the quality of the tone and the quality of the technique and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 But, you know, guys would do

Speaker 3 you know what I mean? Stuff like that, which was great in its own respect, you know, but just not, I mean, it's like taboo, you know, for somebody who, you know, played classical clarinet, you know.

Speaker 3 But, you know, by the grace of God, I figured out a way to combine the two

Speaker 3 because I wanted to hang with this tuba player, you know, this gorgeous tuba player. So I go something like

Speaker 2 Doreen Ketchens, thank you so much.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 2 Clarinetist and vocalist Doreen Ketchens.

Speaker 2 When slavery ended in 1865, newly freed black Americans began to search for their lost family members, taking out ads seeking information about children, spouses, siblings, and parents.

Speaker 2 In her new book, Last Scene, historian Judith Giesberg tells us about the stories of people who placed those ads. Book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review.

Speaker 7 In 2017, historian Judith Giesberg and her team of graduate student researchers launched a website called The Last Seen Project.

Speaker 7 It now contains over 4,500 ads placed in newspapers by formerly enslaved people who hope to find family members separated by slavery. The earliest ads date from the 1830s and stretch into the 1920s.

Speaker 7 Giesberg says that when she's given public lectures about this online archive of ads, the audience always asks the question, did they find each other?

Speaker 7 Giesberg says, I always answer the question the same way, and no one is ever satisfied with it. I don't know.

Speaker 7 Giesberg's new book, called Last Seen, is her more detailed response to the question.

Speaker 7 In each of the ten chapters here, she closely reads ads placed in search of lost children, mothers, wives, siblings, and even comrades who served in the United States colored troops during the Civil War.

Speaker 7 Giesberg isn't trying to generate reunion stories.

Speaker 7 Although there are a couple of those in this book, Giesberg tells us the cruel reality was that the success rate of these advertisements may have been as low as 2%.

Speaker 7 Instead of happy endings, these ads offer readers something else. They serve as portals into the lived experience of slavery.

Speaker 7 For instance, countering the lost cause myth that enslaved people were settled on southern plantations and Texas cotton fields, the ads, which often list multiple names of white owners as a finding aid, testify to how black people were sold and resold.

Speaker 7 The ads that hit hardest are the ones that illuminate what Giesberg refers to as America's Traffic in Children.

Speaker 7 Selling children away from their mothers, she says, was the rule of slavery, not the exception.

Speaker 7 Clara Bashup's story opens last scene. Bashup had been searching for her daughter and son for thirty years when she took out an ad in 1892 in the African American newspaper The Chicago Appeal.

Speaker 7 Here are some portions.

Speaker 7 I wish to find my daughter, Patience Greene. I have no trace of her since she was sold at Richmond, Virginia, in 1859.

Speaker 7 She was then twelve years of age. John William Harris, my son, went with some servants after the surrender.
He was fourteen years old.

Speaker 7 Both belonged to Dick Christian, in name only, by whom they were sold.

Speaker 7 The language of Bashop's ad is direct and somewhat defiant. Giesberg comments on the words in name only that Bashop appended after the name of Dick Christian, the man who owned her children.

Speaker 7 Against this legal right, Giesberg says, Clara Bashop asserted a moral and emotional one.

Speaker 7 In comparison, Giesberg unpacks the language of a human interest story aimed at white readers about Bashop's search. That story ran in the New York World newspaper.

Speaker 7 There, Patience is described as the missing child of an aged mother, and Dick Christian is a country gentleman.

Speaker 7 Giesberg says that white papers everywhere were publishing similar stories that threw a thick blanket of nostalgia over the history of slavery.

Speaker 7 Another ad that speaks volumes is one posted in 1879 by Henry Tibbs in the Lost Friends column of a New Orleans paper, the Southwestern Christian Advocate. It opens: Mr.

Speaker 7 Editor, I desire some information about my mother. Tibbs recalls being put in a jail with other boys prior to being sold away.
I cried, he writes.

Speaker 7 Tibbs says he was told that if he would hush, the slave trader would bring my mother there the next morning, which he did.

Speaker 7 Mother then brought me some cake and candy, and that was the last time I saw her.

Speaker 7 Throughout last scene, Giesberg steps back from these individual ads to give readers the larger historical context that made them necessary.

Speaker 7 For instance, she reminds readers that no federal agency existed to help freed people locate loved ones after the Civil War ended.

Speaker 7 Instead, there were things like the Grapevine Telegraph, which she describes as a sophisticated system of surveillance by which enslaved people kept track of one another.

Speaker 7 And there were the ads, many of which were read aloud in black churches.

Speaker 7 Those ads testify to the inner strength of people like Henry Tibbs, who was still placing ads in search of his mother when he was 55 years old.

Speaker 2 Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed Last Scene by Judith Giesberg, who also founded the Last Scene Project website.

Speaker 2 Coming up, we'll hear my conversation with the white lotus star, Natasha Rothwell. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

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Speaker 2 This has been quite a year so far from my guest Natasha Rothwell. She returns to the third season of the popular HBO show The White Lotus.

Speaker 2 Her Hulu series How to Die Alone, which she created and starred in, recently won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Ensemble Cast in a New Scripted Series.

Speaker 2 The win is bittersweet because the show, which premiered last September, was canceled after just one season.

Speaker 2 Well, Rothwell's return to The White Lotus signals a deeper dive into the tension between entitlement and servitude, which has been present along with murder in every season of the show.

Speaker 2 It follows the storyline of seemingly picture-perfect travelers with various dysfunctions who go to the White Lotus resort to escape.

Speaker 2 In the first season, Rothwell's character Belinda is a spa manager at the Hawaii location. She meets a wealthy visitor named Tanya, played by Jennifer Coolidge, and the two strike up a friendship.

Speaker 2 Belinda shares her dreams of opening up her own spa with Tanya.

Speaker 6 I do think that there's a purpose in helping even rich people, you know,

Speaker 3 helping them to find healing, making them feel more present, more aware.

Speaker 6 Yeah, because rich people they're the ones that you know

Speaker 3 the whole world.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean, I know a lot of rich white

Speaker 5 up people.

Speaker 3 They could really use you.

Speaker 3 Have you ever thought about starting like your own business?

Speaker 3 Come on.

Speaker 7 Lucas,

Speaker 2 I would be down for funding something like that.

Speaker 2 We watch as Tanya flakes on Belinda, never funding her dream to open a spa, instead running off with another guest who goes on to con and attempt to have Coolidge's character killed.

Speaker 2 Well, in this latest season in Thailand, Belinda experiences the other side of the guest staff dynamic as a visitor, taking part in a White Lotus Exchange program.

Speaker 2 Natasha Rothwell is an award-winning actor, writer, and series creator. Her early start in comedy included a stint as a writer on Saturday Night Live during the 2014-15 season.

Speaker 2 She also starred in HBO's Insecure as Issa's hilarious and sexually liberated friend Kelly. She also served as a writer and supervising producer on the show.
Natasha Rothwell, welcome to Fresh Air.

Speaker 3 Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 First, let's talk a little bit about the White Lotus because fans of the White Lotus were very happy to see you return, intrigued because we know that your return means something pretty big.

Speaker 2 And this season, she's at the Thailand Resort. So she's there to relax and, as I said, learn a few new things to bring back to the resort in Maui.

Speaker 2 Well, in the clip I'm about to play, your character Belinda shares what she's been through to a wellness expert assigned to train her, Pon Chai, played by Dom Hetrichal. Let's listen.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 you like Thailand?

Speaker 3 Very much.

Speaker 1 I am happy.

Speaker 6 I know before I got here, I was

Speaker 3 depressed.

Speaker 6 My My friend

Speaker 6 was my boss. Actually, he

Speaker 6 died in this freak accident at work.

Speaker 6 And this woman, this rich woman, she was supposed to help me open up my own spa, you know, so I could be my own boss.

Speaker 6 Something I've always wanted to do.

Speaker 3 And of course, she flakes,

Speaker 6 runs off with some guy she just met.

Speaker 2 That was my guest today, Natasha Rothwell, in the latest season of The White Lotus. I have to say, the music is always like the other character in the room, isn't it?

Speaker 2 It's just what Mike White does with music.

Speaker 6 It's so special.

Speaker 3 It really is.

Speaker 2 This season is in Thailand. But, you know, something that

Speaker 2 I found so interesting is Mike White, who is the writer, the creator of The White Lotus.

Speaker 2 You know, season one, he had no idea what he had on his hands. You're just making this cool thing and you don't know how the public will receive it.
I mean, it is such a hit now.

Speaker 2 How different was it for you on the set for this one versus the first season?

Speaker 6 Yeah. Mike jokingly said that season one was basically a Zoom TV show comparatively.
You know, we were, you know, we had one location. We weren't permitted to leave because of the COVID protocols.

Speaker 6 You know, we were shooting.

Speaker 2 You were shooting in Hawaii during COVID.

Speaker 6 Yeah, pre-vaccination. So it was probably, you know, we were one of the first, if not the first, you know, production back.
And

Speaker 6 there was a lot of fear, you know, and fear is a really tough place to make anything creative. But Mike somehow created this environment that made us feel safe.
And

Speaker 6 yeah, we were sold on a limited series. It was one and done.
And there was really no

Speaker 6 expectation that I would come back. And I didn't have it.
I didn't, you know, I'm not the type of, you know, creator or or actor that fights for it because I have deference to the pen for sure.

Speaker 6 And so I watched and was excited. And then when Mike asked me to be a part of season three,

Speaker 6 I was gagged, you know, because it's bigger. But I think

Speaker 6 for me, what grounded me in the bigness of what the show has become are the people. And, you know, showing up on set, I'm seeing, you know, the same hair and makeup team.

Speaker 6 I'm seeing the same DP, the same AD. And, you know, it was just felt like returning home.
I was like, oh, yeah, like the heart and soul of this show is the same. It's the perception that's increased.

Speaker 6 So it felt very comforting to land in Thailand and remember that it's, it is just at the end of the day, a group of people just trying to make some art, you know.

Speaker 2 How long did you guys spend in Thailand to shoot?

Speaker 6 It varied per actor. I was there for about five months.

Speaker 3 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 6 It was not a short trip.

Speaker 2 There is a theme in the show of mindfulness, and there are are lots of references to Buddhism.

Speaker 2 And really, for these characters, the visitors of this resort, they're coming to grips with the ugliness of who they are and their individual ways.

Speaker 2 Did you have a spiritual experience while you were in Thailand, or was it work, work, work?

Speaker 6 No, I think that like you can't help but have a spiritual experience there. It's such a special place.
You know, I learned while I was there, Thailand has never been colonized.

Speaker 6 And so it's a really interesting interesting juxtaposition to being from the States where we're constantly in this, you know, trauma response from our history.

Speaker 6 And to go to a place that doesn't have that, it brings out,

Speaker 6 I mean, at some level, a certain kind of levity of just being alive.

Speaker 2 Can you describe or explain, like, give an example of what you mean by that? Like, the differences?

Speaker 6 I mean, they call it the land of smiles. You meet people.
There's no preconceived notions of who you are, where you from.

Speaker 6 And I think, you know, walking around the world as a black woman, there's all these suppositions about who I am and where I'm from and what I believe in. And

Speaker 6 they wait for you to declare who you are, what you are about. And

Speaker 6 even in

Speaker 6 the language, you know, I found so interesting.

Speaker 6 When I say swadi ka, the K is the feminine sort of identifier. And it's given, not received.

Speaker 6 So even the power to identify, when you say hello to someone, I say the Ka to let you know how to receive them.

Speaker 2 How to, right.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's so interesting.

Speaker 6 Even so it's not the other outside in sort of descriptor saying what you are. It's not the world telling you what you are.
You're declaring it when you say hello. So it's small things like that.

Speaker 6 And I think that there's a warmth and a genuine, you know, spirit of acceptance there that just is pervasive.

Speaker 2 There is a scene in the show. It's where you're waiting for dinner and you see another black guest there.

Speaker 2 That was written into the show because you mentioned it to Mike White, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'd pitched it to him.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 we're close and, you know, I tell him about my travels and the like. And,

Speaker 6 you know, with Belinda being in a foreign country, I was just, you know, reiterating the importance of black travel and how once when I was traveling to Ireland, I was at some castle on the top of some misty hill.

Speaker 6 I can't remember. But what I do remember is when I was there, I was the only black person I could see.

Speaker 6 But this black family, a mother, father, and two kids that were like around 12 or 11, sort of walk up the hill and break through the mist.

Speaker 6 And I just looked at them and they looked at me and we just kind of walked towards each other and hugged.

Speaker 6 And I was explaining to Mike, I was just like, when you see yourself reflected in a space that you,

Speaker 6 I mean, it just lets you know you belong there, you know? I think when Belinda in that moment sees this couple, it's just there.

Speaker 6 She sees that and it's, it's this, I think, internal affirmation that she can lean back and enjoy her wine in this moment. She doesn't have to be in this servile position as a default.

Speaker 6 She can experience life from that perspective as well.

Speaker 2 There are so many themes that this series

Speaker 2 unpacks through these individual characters and their journeys. Is there anyone in particular that like

Speaker 2 really lights you up or like you like really are thinking deeply about as you're watching this series? Because it's actually quite deep when you start to think about these issues of servitude and

Speaker 2 white privilege and wealth and access and all of that.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think that is such a great question because I think that when you're talking about servitude specifically and Belinda being in a servile position, but stepping out of that this season, season, I think it highlights code switching.

Speaker 6 It highlights sort of the

Speaker 6 passport you'd need to sort of move between those two spaces.

Speaker 6 I think she's often seen as sort of like this moral compass, moral center, which I think flirts with the idea of sort of the magical Negro that, you know, doesn't have that any problem.

Speaker 6 She's there to like make sense of white mess.

Speaker 6 Belinda serves as such an interesting ruler to measure the other characters against.

Speaker 2 You auditioned for SNL.

Speaker 2 You ended up being a writer. Tell me a little bit about that audition and that time period.
Because this is, if I'm correct, this is like the time period when they were looking for a black woman.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah. They had their mission pretty clear.

Speaker 6 You know, they were doing

Speaker 6 these special secret showcases with black ladies because, you know, very famously, Keenan and Jay Farrow didn't want to wear a drag anymore.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 I

Speaker 6 got a place on the showcase and yeah, just shot my shot. And, you know, in terms of being aware of that, what was your exposure to audition?

Speaker 2 Do you remember?

Speaker 6 It was, I had a lot of different things that I auditioned with.

Speaker 3 I had

Speaker 6 a drunk Maya Angelou impression.

Speaker 6 I had.

Speaker 2 Why is that making me laugh just even thinking about it?

Speaker 6 It's just fun it's just fun um and then i did an impression of keenan which was just making looks with my eyes there was no dialogue and After that, I did get a call back and that meant we auditioned at Studio 8H.

Speaker 6 So we went down to 30 Rock.

Speaker 6 And of those who made the second round of auditions, you would go into the famous Studio 8H and in the audience is Lorne Michaels.

Speaker 6 And then it's populated by, you know, past and present cast members, writers, executives. And it's famously a very, very cold room.
And everyone tells you no one's going to laugh.

Speaker 3 It's going to be really quiet.

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 you know, I was auditioning alongside, you know, Sashir and Leslie Jones and all of these major, major comedians. And I was terrified.
I was absolutely terrified.

Speaker 6 But it was, again, one of those things where I was just like, just go hard or go home. And I did get laughs during mine, which gave me some feel-goods.
And it was the Keenan impression because

Speaker 6 he was in the room room and he told me once I finally was in the writer's room he was like you were killing me because I was just basically pulling face which is just like you know something he's known for and to do it in front of him got the room to laugh is there something you wrote that you are most proud of on the show yes um I

Speaker 6 worked with Taraji P. Henson on her monologue, which I'm so excited.

Speaker 2 I actually have a clip of this. So Taraji P.
Henson hosted the show in 2015. And at the time, she was starring in the Fox show Empire as Cookie Lions.
And the name of the monologue is I Made It.

Speaker 2 Let's listen to a little bit.

Speaker 2 This is so nice.

Speaker 6 Oh my God, being on Saturday Night Live really means so much to me because it proves that after 20 years in show business, white people finally know who I am.

Speaker 6 Empire.

Speaker 6 Thank you. No, no, no, real talk.

Speaker 3 This role changed my life.

Speaker 6 I mean, I spent so many years hustling in this business and now I'm here.

Speaker 6 So, I guess you could say I made it. Hallelujah.

Speaker 3 Don't worry about where you are.

Speaker 3 Be grateful that you've come this far.

Speaker 3 You may not always come in first.

Speaker 3 Just remember that it could be worse.

Speaker 3 I could have been an extra on the Lion King.

Speaker 3 Could be wearing some giant two can wings.

Speaker 3 Could be trying to make some bachelor holler.

Speaker 3 Could be jerking on a pole for a dollar.

Speaker 3 I could have been a hip-hop beyond.

Speaker 3 Did it once or twice, but not no more.

Speaker 3 None of that stuff

Speaker 3 had enough now. Cause I made it.
Oh, yes, she made it.

Speaker 3 Used to tip five, but now it's 30%.

Speaker 3 Almost on my own just to pay the rent.

Speaker 3 Oh, yes, I made it.

Speaker 2 Could have passed out.

Speaker 2 That was Taraji P. Henson in 2015 in her opening monologue on SNL, written by my guest today.

Speaker 2 I love that. Like,

Speaker 2 it's part monologue, it's part song. Did you write the song?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 6 Like, it's a team effort there for sure.

Speaker 6 So I have not heard that since.

Speaker 3 It's so hard. Oh, really?

Speaker 3 I was like, oh, wow, I do remember.

Speaker 6 No, it was a team effort. And the music was inspired.
You know, I grew up in the church and John P. Key, you know,

Speaker 6 has some really early 90s, late 80s jams that would be like, you would be cooking. And so I just remember working with the music director and I was like we got to hit these it has to have that sauce

Speaker 2 it's also so real you know like all the things that she listed it goes on to say like all these other things that oh these things you take for granted that yeah

Speaker 6 I made it she made it and I felt like she was singing for me for sure because there I was like writing for this iconic show that I just I had no truly no aspirations to be on because I didn't see myself on the show.

Speaker 6 You know what I mean? Like I didn't see myself.

Speaker 2 So it was never a dream of yours, even not seeing yourself. No.

Speaker 6 I mean, Ellen Clayhorn, who was in my show, How to Die Alone, I just remember her in early sketches. And there was this whole period of time where it was just black men in drag.

Speaker 6 And I didn't see myself as being on screen there. And I didn't think it would be an option.
So I was just like, well, I know I'm going to make it, but I don't know if it's going to be by way of SNL.

Speaker 6 And so when I was there, you know, working on the sketch and it was just, yeah, it was for both of us. I was just like, well, well, this is, both of us are here.
And we didn't think we would be.

Speaker 6 So it was pretty cool.

Speaker 2 Natasha Rothwell, this was such a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Thank you.

Speaker 3 I enjoyed talking with you.

Speaker 2 Natasha Rothwell is an award-winning actor, writer, and series creator. She plays Belinda in the current season of HBO's The White Lotus.

Speaker 2 Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.

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