Aug. 24, 2022
Jenifer Lewis Pt. 1
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Castro Actress and author Jenifer Lewis gives Team Supreme jewels of wisdom from her life, career, and travels. Listen as this queen of multi-hyphenates commands our QLS stage. Questlove calls this a top-3 all-time guest interview, and you'll hear why.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio.
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Speaker 2: Put him right now for a moment in his room, give him a treat and put him in this room. Little ship got me by the nose. Mosy scared of me. This nigga don't know, don't because he's so pretty.
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Speaker 3: Motherfucker.
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Speaker 1: I already told where this episode is going.
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Speaker 3: Already, I'm not gonna cut. I'll be.
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Speaker 1: Cursed. Were super Really, we're here for.
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Speaker 2: Gay.
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Speaker 4: Let's get in it, ladies and gentlemen of QRS ology.
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Speaker 1: Okay. Based on that.
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Speaker 4: Energy, people warned that this episode just my top the THEESUS mirror episode as the most.
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Speaker 1: Realist, mostly problematic, the most.
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Speaker 4: Realist in US history, and I'm here for it. I'm manifested it again. This Quest Love Supreme your your nerd paradise of sometimes awesome and occasionally useless information or edumacation. Are our two brethren, unpaid Bill and and.
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Speaker 1: Sugar Steve are?
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Speaker 4: I guess you could say they're holding down their illustrious careers right now so they won't be joining us. Uh So this is filing to be a pow wow with Hello, Laya, how you doing? You're in la right now?
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Speaker 3: I was waiting for you to say, with the.
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Speaker 4: Blacks nowte hello.
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Speaker 1: Be the ojs. We're a trio today, we are what a trio?
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Speaker 4: With that said, ladies and gentlemen, I will say that our illustrious guests is indeed okay. So since the title is somewhat self proclaimed, uh, it was the title of her first memoir, which was The Mother Black Hollywood. I would like to say that probably that title for her might be somewhat reductive, because I feel that she's more than just the Mother of Black Hollywood, you know, for a woman or a human of her stature, and I don't believe in numbers sometimes, especially when he is trying to remind me how old I am. But I will say that for over four decades, our guest has been going strong in ways that you know, her contemporaries can't even compete with.
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Speaker 1: And I will say that she is.
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Speaker 4: She is conquered and taken every medium by storm. I'm gonna I had to write them all down, so let's go with it. You'd be musical. In nineteen seventy nine, pre Broadway dream Girls, where she was the title of fie wright, Bette Midler's background singers were called Harlot's right, So yes, she was a Harlot and in.
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Speaker 1: Bette Midler's show.
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Speaker 4: She's landed many a scene stealing moment and practically every show that she's ever be a TV or movies. Name him Murphy Brown, Dream One, I Love Dream One. That's one of my favorite shows. And Living Color Rock, Hang with Miss Cooper a Different World. She's on Helen on Fresh Prince of bel Air. She was deemed Davenport on Different World, Tina Turner's Mom and What Love Got to do with It?
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Speaker 1: Yo? She was even in Friends. I didn't know that.
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Speaker 3: Black people right, I.
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Speaker 1: Don't even know that black people were in Friends. Lucky's Mom and Poetic Justice. Yo.
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Speaker 4: The way she tells him to shut the fuck up in Poetic Justice is my favorite.
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Speaker 1: That is my favorite use of shut the fuck up I ever heard, anyway.
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Speaker 4: Name it Dead Presidents, Girl Six, The Preacher's Wife, The Timp, Tats, Castaway, Strong Medicine, Pixar's Cars. She was Tony's mom and girlfriends uh see his Family Reunion right, Pethan Brown's You Are a Man, That's o. Raven Boston Legal, The Princess and the Frog Think like a man, baggots claim a gazillion.
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Speaker 1: Animated voice over. Yo.
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Speaker 4: Even Erica's mom in the on and on video She's so bad.
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Speaker 1: Yes, and I'm wearing my bother you shirt right now as we speak.
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Speaker 3: Yo.
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Speaker 4: She was even in this this this unknown local syndicated production of some show called Blackish.
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Speaker 1: You guys might have heard of it.
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Speaker 4: She has written two very informative books on her life.
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Speaker 1: She's the reason why I believe in audiobooks. Before.
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Speaker 4: I'm not saying I was one of those snobs that was like, you know, you know those people are like, oh, the book is better. You know you you see the movie and they're like, oh, the book is better. And then there are people that book shaming because I don't have a tangible thing to read, and they're like, well, you're not reading the book.
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Speaker 1: You used to listen to audio.
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Speaker 4: But no, during the pandemic, I've read like seventy books more.
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Speaker 1: I'm more ed you macated than I've ever been.
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Speaker 4: Ladies and gentlemen, this this introduction has been ten minutes long.
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Speaker 5: Please welcome, and we still haven't finished with her discography.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, dude, it's just too much. The name even Disney rides with her voice in it. Please welcome the Quest of Supreme Jennifer Lewis, thank you for coming.
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Speaker 3: He welcome. Yes, it's great to be here. It's great to be here, Scott.
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Speaker 2: I'm loving all of these conversations about the book and my career.
00:05:37
Speaker 3: Might as well get it out of the way.
00:05:38
Speaker 2: I received I just received my star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Speaker 3: Yes you did.
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Speaker 2: I am still flying high from it. Right before the Hollywood Walk of Fame, I went on one of my trips around the world. I went to and called Watt in Cambodia, helicopter through the Himalayan Mountain range and set my eyes on Mount Everest. I'm trying to say that without crying. What was that experience like, Well, let me give you this story.
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Speaker 1: Hit me.
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Speaker 2: It was one of the most beautiful moments of the trip. The captain of it. It's a private jet Abercrombie and Kent. It does these trips around the world. And because I only get so much time free, I have to get on a jet like that, you know, and go and do as much as I can. I'm trying to see the entire world before my knees give out. I don't want to go to march. You peach you and say, oh, the incors were up there. No, bitch, I'm climbing this motherfucker.
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Speaker 1: You climb it.
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Speaker 3: I just she will.
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Speaker 6: No.
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Speaker 2: I climbed. Anchor watches now. And I had this little Jordaanian boy take me up Petra in Jordan's the Hills of Moses. Most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
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Speaker 3: In my life. You understand me.
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Speaker 2: I have seen the cultural treasures of this world, the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. I just took a I just played camel polo in Dubai and took a helicopter over all those islands, the palm trees and the crowns. And I also, this is what happened. The captain of the pilot said, ladies and gentlemen, if you'll look off to the right of the plane, I believe I see the peaks of the Himalayan mountain range. And there was there was Everest sitting above the Cumulonimbus clouds. And I said, as I was filming outside of the plane, I just was saying to myself. There was a yoga teacher right next to me, one of the passengers, and she overheard me say dear God. I've wanted to climb to the top of that mountain since I was thirteen years old.
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Speaker 3: And she looked at me and said, look at you. Now you're above it. Shit, God, damn I.
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Speaker 2: And when I saw it with my own eyes, you know, they put the helicopter down at eleven thousand feet and we only have seven minutes to take pictures of Everest and that whole world of the base camp at the base of Everest. It was unbelievable. It was it was stunning, It was majesty. It was God itself. You understand me, A little colored girl from Kenlock, Missouri, who ate dirt at a little girl and set a little booty on our wooden hall to.
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Speaker 3: Shit in nineteen below zero in Saint Louis, Missouri.
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Speaker 2: We went on to India, Catman do and I stood in front of the taj Mahal.
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Speaker 3: It was an unbelievable trip.
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Speaker 2: And then to come back to the United States and become a part of a cultural treasure in Hollywood, it's been a ride, ladies and gentlemen. And let me tell you, I walk around in the state of Greece. I never gave one hundred percent y'all. I gave two thousand because I didn't know how not to. I was born with this charisma and this gift, and I have tried to honor it all my life. It's been a hell of a ride with my bipolar disorder, but I contained it.
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Speaker 3: I stayed. As I said in the.
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Speaker 2: Ceremony accepting the star, it was not the work I did on camera and on stage that has put this broad smile on my li face that defines my success. It was the work I did off It was the journaling, It was the therapy. It was after five years, agreeing to get on medication. I don't want to have a push medication, but I take it. And when I talk like this, I tell everybody this ain't the truth.
00:10:18
Speaker 3: This is my truth. This is my story, this is my song. So if you ask me, I'm gonna tell you this is how I did it. Ha ha, And look at me now I did it.
00:10:31
Speaker 1: This is already the greatest episode of in the five year history.
00:10:38
Speaker 5: So when you were talking about medication with your bipolar disorder, what led to the decision to get on it after years of not being on what how did you make that decision?
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Speaker 3: Let me tell you something.
00:10:50
Speaker 2: Human beings change for two reasons, and two reasons only because we are habitual creatures. One is a deadly disease. Two, you just got to get tired, sick and tired of being sick and tired. It wears you out right, It will wear you out.
00:11:11
Speaker 3: To continue a habit over and over and over again.
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Speaker 2: And see, I had a sex addiction, and little girl, there's only so much sex you can have, for God's sake. But here's the thing about the medication. It took my therapist five years for me to come to that decision because I thought it would take my edge. I told her, I said, he look, I'm Jennifer motherfucker Lewis, bitch. I don't even know goddamn medication. Ain't nothing wrong with me?
00:11:42
Speaker 3: Well, miss Lewis, yes, there was something wrong. I was not happy.
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Speaker 2: The mania of bipolar disorder is dangerous. You understand, you do dumb shit like speed in a car, and you're not thinking that you could hit a whole full of children.
00:12:02
Speaker 3: Come on, now, I don't do roll rage no more.
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Speaker 2: Because a friend of mine said to me once, when I flipped somebody out, I flipped somebody off when I was younger.
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Speaker 3: My friend turned to me, Jennifer and said, Jennifer.
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Speaker 2: Oh, what if that person's mother just died and they just heard about it and you and you telling them to go fuck themselves?
00:12:26
Speaker 3: What's wrong with you? I never now, baby, I let people go.
00:12:32
Speaker 2: Somebody's got to say something to stop you from ruining your life. And I say to everybody, with seven point six billion people on this planet, you've got to ask for help.
00:12:48
Speaker 3: Somebody's there.
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Speaker 2: Don't you dare spending your life in those dark rooms like I did?
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Speaker 3: You wake your ass up. Sometimes when I wake up, I have to pull on slow journ a skirt. Sometimes I have to say, Harry, where are you at?
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Speaker 2: Sometimes I have to pull up Mandela's photograph to remind myself of how fragile his shoulders were and that I'm standing on him. You don't go to South Africa and go over to that island and see that cell huh, and not walk out of there and come home and say I, Oh, you don't get to do You gotta give back, Jenny.
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Speaker 3: You got to tell the world what you've seen, don't you dare. We are as sick as our secrets, So don't keep not God damn it.
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Speaker 2: You tell somebody I don't care what it is, and if they don't miss to go tell somebody else.
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Speaker 3: Go ahead.
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Speaker 5: Oh the question, good question I had in regards to you talking about your sex addiction. How did you determine what was the line of demarcation between Okay, I'm a person who enjoyed sex versus okay, this is an addiction.
00:14:09
Speaker 2: Chiad when you start picking up men. I was so bold in my shit, and I was so well I know I still am, but I was knock on, honey.
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Speaker 3: I was a brick house. A motherfucker couldn't toutch me. In my twenties, I was so pretty. I got this take it.
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Speaker 2: But I had have skin like a baby's ass, and I was honey. I was at the top of my game. I was on Broadway. I'm largeous, I had that thin ass waistline. I still got it, but I needed to come down from those Broadway shows. When you can get a standing ovation, you think you you think somebody wants it to end. No, so I went and did another show in my bedroom. You see with more adoration.
00:14:58
Speaker 3: But let me yes, and let me tell you something. You get tired.
00:15:03
Speaker 2: You get tired I didn't think about because of the mania. I wasn't thinking of the dangers of that taking a strange.
00:15:11
Speaker 3: Man to your house.
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Speaker 2: I don't know if y'all might be too young to remember mister Goodbar, the movie with Diane Keaton.
00:15:18
Speaker 3: It's too much.
00:15:20
Speaker 1: It's wait. When we first got cable, my parents never that was like, go to your room and me. I'm like, what is good for?
00:15:29
Speaker 2: Something is like, yeah, well it was dangerous and let me tell y'all something. I never thought I'd run around quoting the Constitution. MM, but I understand this, and it is my motto. We all have a right to the pursuit of happiness. I wanted to be happy. I was depressed for many years and didn't even know it. They didn't have words like bipolar shit. I went on opera a long time ago, told them sixty million people out my pole.
00:16:05
Speaker 3: I lie, I'm tripolar in these streets.
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Speaker 2: Okay, new shit, trip all the new shit. There's another poll over there. But listen, you have to be in it to win it. I gave up many times in my career, but I didn't quit. You hear me, I didn't quite. I tell these kids, you must dream the dream and focus only on that so that you can be well with your soul. You know what.
00:16:40
Speaker 4: I'm glad you said that because Okay, so I too was trying to figure out and here's you know. The disclosure is, yes, I mean I've been in and out of not in and out of. I mean I've you know, I've had a therapist. I guess you can say in and out. I've been doing therapy for like thirty years. But you know, the thing is, when the pandemic came, really, you know again like I don't feel like I feel like a person shouldn't have to be at rock bottom to make the change. So that's why I'm really glad the pandemic happened because it wasn't a rock bottom moment, But that was definitely a somewhat of a paradigm shift for me and taken mental health seriously and all those things. But you mentioned something, and I noticed that probably the time that I might be liable to get in an argument, I mean not a fight, not like pugilism or anything. But there's a moment after I get off stage where I can't describe the feeling. And you you said that, and I was like, oh, so I'm not I've you know, I just thought like, well mereor sometimes you're just in an asshole after the thirty minutes after show. It's almost like after a Root show, I purposely look for a place to just sit silent and literally come down.
00:18:09
Speaker 1: And I can't explain it. And the thing is is like right after a show.
00:18:12
Speaker 4: That's when people were pulling for you and oh, Mair, let's talk to rite and I can't explain. And the thing is, it's like, because these people aren't entertainers, it's hard to really explain to them the process I go through, which is kind of why. It's almost like an ad that feeling of when you're done a show, and that how you feel is such a description less addiction that I can't describe that. I figured out that for the at least the last thirty years, I've been doing DJ gigs after the Root show because I love music and because I love DJ, but basically I need to slowly come down off that high normalcy. So usually after show I will DJ for three hours so that way I don't have to talk to people. I'm playing music and I come down. But and sometimes when I'm not DJing, I wonder what that is. And I thought I was the only person going through that because again, if you I feel weird in talking about the mental health space thing and have my occupation because I always feel like people look at me like, eh, here's the world Steiny's violin, like, if people are in a certain profession, they might not they might feel unworthy of having problems or whatnot.
00:19:35
Speaker 1: Like people might not.
00:19:37
Speaker 6: At this point, the world knows entertainers have trauma. Right, I'm just let me interject here, yes, yes, please please, yeah. First of all, we are not normal creatures. Yeah, right, we are artists. We are different, Are we better? Are worse than anyone?
00:19:57
Speaker 3: No, we just are who we are and we form who we form.
00:20:07
Speaker 2: The artistry. It's like Lena Simone said, an artist's duty.
00:20:16
Speaker 1: Is to.
00:20:17
Speaker 3: Speak to the times.
00:20:21
Speaker 2: Needa Simone didn't hide her pain. Needa Simone laid it on the piano. We have to learn where to put that quest. You have to put that somewhere. You have to compartmentalize that you expressed it beautifully. It's called a glory train. Love you hear me talking to you. It's a glory train. And nobody can stay on that train too long. You got to come off, You got to get in the grass, and you got to surround yourself with nature and have that. Gratitude is the gratitude moment, so use it for that. You don't have to go crazy. Most people go and get drunk and party and carry on. Okay, you get a couple of those a month, but then sit the fuck down and talk about those feelings. Write them down so that the next time you feel it you have something to balance it. Nobody's coming with the answer, nobody's coming with the recipe.
00:21:27
Speaker 3: You got to pay attention to the self.
00:21:31
Speaker 2: It is the journey within that will get you where you need to be, because what you will discover, HM, is how short life is. Listen to me, you want to know how You want to know how I live? I live like I got five minutes left?
00:21:51
Speaker 3: What if?
00:21:53
Speaker 4: What if you add found free minutes left?
00:21:58
Speaker 3: Who would you call? H? Think about shit? That shit what it? And I live like that. I ain't gonna lie to you.
00:22:11
Speaker 2: Sometimes something as a like when my assistant leaves, I want to swim, but the shadows have come over the pool, so it gets a little chill, and I stand there and go, oh, I don't want to Get in this pool, Jenny, Get in the fucking pool and relax yourself. You gotta talk to yourself. But guess why I got in the pool because when I woke up, I wrote it down. You will swim today, you got That's what living on purpose is about. You can't go Will and Nelly through this, bitch, It'll eat you alive.
00:22:57
Speaker 3: This is why that you are in charge. Write the ship down.
00:23:03
Speaker 2: You write your story instead of like I said, going Willy Nelly skipping, temptoeing through.
00:23:09
Speaker 3: The fucking tulips. That's what I look. Life is not a rehearsal. Live this bitch. Can I just say real quick? Excuse me? Let me let me just say this.
00:23:20
Speaker 6: And I hate to be all corny and go to the book that you have out the Walking in Your Joy? But I just realize, am I saying that walking in your joy?
00:23:27
Speaker 3: Yes? That's walking in my joy?
00:23:29
Speaker 1: In my joy?
00:23:31
Speaker 6: But it's so interesting because a lot of people write books and they say things, but I like that you have some real practical things, like what you just said to a mirror about living in those five minutes.
00:23:39
Speaker 3: And then you wrote something else that caught me and you said.
00:23:41
Speaker 6: When you're feeling down, you come up with a song about your how much you love yourself and how much people love you. That's I'm realizing, Although I haven't finished the book, can people like depend that? Like you pretty much got little workable jewels in here. Not just like girl, live your best life. It's actually like, no, it's actionable advice exactly exactly.
00:24:01
Speaker 3: But here's the work. The work is how am I going to live my best life? Right? And that's and that's the work. That's what you write down in the morning, y'all.
00:24:14
Speaker 2: I don't know if you know, but when I wrote The Mother Black Hollywood, I started writing in a journal in the seventh grade.
00:24:26
Speaker 5: No I.
00:24:28
Speaker 2: Because I knew I was going to be a star and I would need my book. That's seventh grade continuously.
00:24:36
Speaker 3: I am sixty five. There are sixty seven journals. Oh, I'm so jealous. That is, Oh why don't we do this? Why do we start? And stop? And I got about six damn it so good details?
00:24:52
Speaker 2: She saw Black Hollywood is so good. Because of the details. I can tell you that I.
00:24:58
Speaker 3: Had hot up pie mold with your only raft on this date.
00:25:04
Speaker 2: Damn you see you see you see, so nothing is wasted, live your life. And when I got into therapy the first time, my therapist looked at me when I told I had written all those journals, she said, that's.
00:25:18
Speaker 3: What saved your life, little girl.
00:25:20
Speaker 6: I believe it.
00:25:21
Speaker 3: I didn't know I was saving my life.
00:25:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that journal served in me learning at an early age. I didn't even know I was doing it. To be in charge of me and leave other people alone.
00:25:43
Speaker 1: Job.
00:25:44
Speaker 2: People come and go for a season, let it go. When they're no longer of reflection of you. You're not gonna be comfortable around them. If the toxic shit is going on the lines and the chaos, y'all get the fuck out of there.
00:25:58
Speaker 3: You ain't that there are many rooms to go to, They're many cities. All you do is leave the room. Fuck out of there.
00:26:05
Speaker 2: Shit simple, don't sit there with all that drama and shitty practical things you can use.
00:26:12
Speaker 3: It's so boring. It's boring.
00:26:14
Speaker 1: I said.
00:26:14
Speaker 3: The greatest sin is somebody to say, oh I'm bored.
00:26:17
Speaker 1: Bitch, They'll have my money, okay.
00:26:25
Speaker 4: So, of course, like in the last two years is the most that I've heard black people speaking on finding joy, finding their their their mental health, and all these things because previously there's a secret I would never like in two thousand and eleven, I would never share with nobody.
00:26:45
Speaker 6: That likes trauma attached it a you, right.
00:26:50
Speaker 4: Because you don't want to share like people think I'm crazy. Whatever The thing is is that I know that for black people, their go to answer was always the church, especially of an older you know, I was born in seventy one. I know you were born before I was. For a lot of people in you know, pre eighties people whatever, like their thing is always like I'll find God or I'll talk to my preacher.
00:27:20
Speaker 1: How So this is almost a phenomenally to hear.
00:27:24
Speaker 4: Of your your generation, of your experience, really not even diving into the pool of mental therapy. But I mean, you're going to the abyss of it, You're going to the deepest level of it.
00:27:36
Speaker 1: So what was it?
00:27:38
Speaker 4: What was the moment that told you that my mental health has to be addressed in and handled this way as opposed to I do consider that, I do consider organized religion as a vice akin to gambling sex.
00:28:00
Speaker 3: Let me say this to you.
00:28:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a line in the movie I did Karina Karina, where the where the little girl says these people believe I'm paraphrasing, but they said, these people believe in God, and the people that somebody that said it was Jewish. And the question that was asked by a child was she said, why do these people sing about this? And the mother said because it makes them feel good? And the little girl said, what's wrong with that? Mother said, I guess nothing. Look, if you want to be an organized religion, that's okay. Let people do what they want to do. That's what gets me through life. To allow allow others to be where they are.
00:28:52
Speaker 3: What you gonna do.
00:28:53
Speaker 2: Go and make them a Buddhist, Go and make them a move them. You gonna make them what you gonna do? Once again, once again, pay attention to yourself. Everybody on this planet has one job, and one job on it self care And if you need to cry to Jesus to do that, then you go on and cry with Jesus. But allow other people to cry to whoever the hell they want to cry to. That's what I don't like about religion. Everybody think their religion is the best one, So I don't believe in that.
00:29:30
Speaker 3: Lead people alone. Lead people alone.
00:29:32
Speaker 2: If they want to work, you let them work to Jesus. Let them work in Buddha or a Mohammed or Allah. Let people do who what the fuck they want to do.
00:29:41
Speaker 3: I know who I am. I searched every religion in this world. I have been down the road. Let's travel, and when I got to the end, that wasn't nothing but a big ass mirror. You cannot run.
00:30:01
Speaker 2: Wherever you run, you will meet yourself. So there's no running. And I told them on the breakfast club.
00:30:09
Speaker 3: I got money to run, and you can't even run. You can't run.
00:30:16
Speaker 2: You don't ask me. Don't ask me for now. I'm like, uh, what's his name? The baby I love? Dave Japel. I'm rich, bitch, don't ask me for shit?
00:30:26
Speaker 3: All right, there you go.
00:30:29
Speaker 6: What do you say to him to even like to what on Amir's question, like you're leading the pack of your generation in that way? Like he said, like you're it is kind of special. Do you see in the difference in the generational power?
00:30:41
Speaker 2: Now?
00:30:41
Speaker 6: I'm using words and have vocabulary for things that we didn't have before.
00:30:45
Speaker 3: When I went Huh, I got you.
00:30:47
Speaker 2: When I went on the road with the Mother Black Hollywood, because it was my journey through bipolar disorder. I was able to feel not only the temperature, but the temperament of the United States. I went all over during the Trump era, people are starting to wake up. I was very pleased. They're starting to get counseling in churches. They are starting to put more counseling in youth centers. Our children are falling apart, and I'm not the only woman in the world that cares. People are coming together. We are getting better. Everybody wanted to talk about the stigma. Yes, there is a stigma, but we are getting better. You see, my mother didn't have the Oprah Winfrey ship.
00:31:36
Speaker 3: Okay, that's what I'm saying.
00:31:38
Speaker 2: My mamma didn't know nothing about mental illness. And yet if someone were to ask me, I would say, absolutely she was. I do believe that she was depressed. She had me when she was twenty six years old and I was her seventh child. WHOA, She was scrubbed, and she was scrubbing white people's floors. You think she had time to give me affection.
00:31:59
Speaker 3: She was an.
00:31:59
Speaker 2: Exulted by the time I came along. Listen eve Insler, who wrote the Vagina Monologues. She went all around the world. She went to Africa with the women that were having the the clitteristism.
00:32:16
Speaker 3: If it's clitterists, I don't know. If it's plural.
00:32:19
Speaker 1: I only have one, all right.
00:32:24
Speaker 2: I used to have three, but I get all one out. Remember one of those first on stars that bitch tied too when we just had listen, God, damn, I have to web it. That bitch tied to glitter and she has something like that, something like that. It was funny, but it let me go back to the sorry, let me get back to serious ship.
00:32:58
Speaker 3: Listen. All I can say, did not go into three clitterists, honey in the glitter I did too. I need to find.
00:33:08
Speaker 2: Somebody to tell me whether clitteris it's clitterisis senis?
00:33:12
Speaker 5: Come on, Jennifer, if you don't need clitteriz, I have no idea.
00:33:22
Speaker 3: You know, I'll come out of the bag with anything. I don't multiple clitterists.
00:33:27
Speaker 1: Thank you?
00:33:27
Speaker 3: Did you look it up?
00:33:28
Speaker 6: No? I was in uh.
00:33:33
Speaker 2: When I was in the Sarah Gaddy Uh, two little baby rhinoceroses thought I had some food. So they came over to me and they just gone like this, just a don't get don't get done. And they when they saw I have no food. They kind of don't don't you don't away from me? And I start screaming, I.
00:33:53
Speaker 3: Never heard of Jenny Craig.
00:33:57
Speaker 4: Had no food for you.
00:33:59
Speaker 2: I'll cuss out a rhinoceros, bitch you hear me? And then I had to look up whether it was not rhinocerih because most of my friends wait, man, because mine listen. Because most of my friends are major intellectuals. I keep smart people around me. Honey, listen, I can feel enough for everybody. You just tell me what the ship?
00:34:22
Speaker 3: What's going on? But here?
00:34:23
Speaker 2: But if I listen, if I'm a stand in the serengetti and cusss out two baby, rhinoceros? Is what you think I'm gonna do with the story of the Glitterists, get the fuck out of it. Let's go what's next? Who cuss out? What you need to know is Jennifer Lord will go anywhere. I ain't no shame in my game, baby, I'll do anything to make people laugh.
00:34:51
Speaker 4: Is because I'm also interested in your need to see the world. Now, I would have liked to have thought that I'm you know that I've I'm well traveled, at least in my thirty years of touring the world and whatnot.
00:35:08
Speaker 5: But you've seen the airport, the hotel in the video.
00:35:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was going to say that I still and I know I've done things that are special whatnot. Like I'm I'm you know again, post pandemic. I am living life like I mean, not to the five minute rule. Once you said that, and I was like, oh shit, I'm not doing shit with my life for you. How did you even organize or make a bucket list of the things that.
00:35:34
Speaker 1: You wanted to do before you leave this plane called Earth.
00:35:39
Speaker 3: There was no bucket list. There was purpose.
00:35:44
Speaker 2: See when I travel, I go into the trenches. I tell my private guy to take me wherever they're not going. I want to talk to the people. When I was just in India, there were four people serving me one night. They had on their little beautiful chef hats, the white chef hats, and their white mask. And I said to them, because I had come through the poverty of Agra India, and I'd heard the stories of the untouchables and the cast system. So I went over to those four people that were cooking and I told them that I had I came from that kind of poverty. And I looked at them, I said, you do know that you must rise up? Do you understand what I'm saying. I got a little nods from them, and then I said, one of you is Gandhi. And I walked away with my plate a falafel and purposefully went back to them. Dramatically pointed to the girl and said, it's you. I said, And if it's not you, young lady, you better got theren make sure it's your daughter. And she sneaked over to me at my table. She took her chef off, she took her mask off, and came over to me like she had been invited to that party, which you know was against the rules of the hotel. She stood over me and she said, m I don't know your name, but I want to thank you. I will rise miss Lewis, because when she said that, I said, my name is miss Lewis.
00:37:35
Speaker 3: Oh, come on down Jesus. You see.
00:37:38
Speaker 2: I'll call Jesus when it's because my mama called Jesus when things were good, you understand.
00:37:46
Speaker 3: So I go into the trenches.
00:37:49
Speaker 2: There's a video going around of me talking about voting at Hollywood and Vine. After I got my star. I didn't know I was being fit. I was signing autographs. But when I get a bunch of kids in front of me, I'm gonna use that time.
00:38:07
Speaker 3: Whether I'm in.
00:38:07
Speaker 2: India or Hollywood, a Cambodia, show me whether people are suffering, bring them to me.
00:38:18
Speaker 3: Like oh okay.
00:38:18
Speaker 2: So I'm in Argentina and I tell my driver to take me to the real people. He said, oh, miss Lewis, it's dangerous in there. I said, I don't care.
00:38:30
Speaker 3: Take me in.
00:38:31
Speaker 2: I got out of that car. All these kind of people were standing on the corner and everything. They looked over at me getting out of that suv at Mercedes.
00:38:43
Speaker 3: But they saw the color of my skin.
00:38:45
Speaker 2: Oh oh yeah, And some of them came over and I said to them, oh honey, I'll use that celebrity.
00:38:54
Speaker 3: I said, y'all know who I am. I said, you watch television.
00:38:58
Speaker 2: I said, you know the show friend Sprints, and that's when everybody wakes up, because that ship is global, right, That show ain't just national and international, That ship's global. I was in a three hundred I was in a three hundred and fifty year old glacier in Iceland, and a bitch came up and said some shit about Fred real like I I got that.
00:39:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, im my god, damn girl, we're in a glacier. Get the fuck out of every ice. Come down. Fuck who I am that, Get.
00:39:28
Speaker 2: The fuck out of I come down.
00:39:31
Speaker 3: Keep the fucking boys down before you're carving the avalanche telling her to keep her voice down. That that's funny.
00:39:38
Speaker 5: I think that's actually our clip.
00:39:40
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, this was after I sang This was after I sang amazing Grace in the wedding chapel that they had carved off in the ice. Oh, I bet it's on YouTube. You can actually hear that. That performance is on YouTube. I sang amazing Great. Then whatever y'all.
00:39:57
Speaker 3: The the guy said this, anyone sing ah what you said?
00:40:03
Speaker 6: Men?
00:40:04
Speaker 3: And my friend went, bitch, you ain't said none but the word. But we went up.
00:40:08
Speaker 2: I went up to an ice podium and blasted that shit out. And I haven't released it yet, but I sang amazing Grace in the an caught tom in Cambodi, one of the great old ancient temples, and then I sang it in the Valley of Petra. I always get out and do a little something and leave my singing voice in those canyons and in those Mountain range. But I will tell you this, I didn't sing Amazing Grace up in the Himalayans. I got the fuck out of that before my lungs burst at eleven thousand feet.
00:40:47
Speaker 3: You can believe that shit fuck amazing Grace. I the fuck out of that.
00:40:53
Speaker 1: I don't think we've ever had an episode.
00:40:55
Speaker 4: We're forty five minutes into this episode, and I'm thinking to myself, I don't even and I don't even want to talk about the creative side of Jennifer Lewis, Like this show is more about like the creative Like, but listen to this. I just love.
00:41:16
Speaker 2: I just.
00:41:18
Speaker 6: A just.
00:41:24
Speaker 1: I just love Quest, I love.
00:41:30
Speaker 3: Ques.
00:41:32
Speaker 1: I get my own song, I love.
00:41:36
Speaker 3: I just love Quest.
00:41:40
Speaker 6: Is that like just just him?
00:41:41
Speaker 2: Is that what I mean?
00:41:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll share quarantines. Everyone is.
00:41:55
Speaker 6: Love.
00:41:56
Speaker 1: I shall keep that.
00:41:59
Speaker 4: All rightladies and gentlemen, we're pausing it there for now. After that serenade, I needed a minute. So Jennifer Lewis, you know, lively, real and raw as anyone has ever been on West Love Supreme, and I think she may have cussed.
00:42:15
Speaker 1: More than any guests, including Deesus and Merrill. All Right, you heard me say it. In an episode, but you can see.
00:42:21
Speaker 4: Why I called this one of the best QLs conversations ever. And so we expect you back next week for part two, and make sure you pre order Jennifer's second book, Walking and My Joy in the Streets.
00:42:33
Speaker 1: And uh, I believe that's August thirtieth. It's like this combo, all right, see y'all next week. West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio.
00:00:09
Speaker 2: Put him right now for a moment in his room, give him a treat and put him in this room. Little ship got me by the nose. Mosy scared of me. This nigga don't know, don't because he's so pretty.
00:00:28
Speaker 3: Motherfucker.
00:00:29
Speaker 1: I already told where this episode is going.
00:00:34
Speaker 3: Already, I'm not gonna cut. I'll be.
00:00:37
Speaker 1: Cursed. Were super Really, we're here for.
00:00:41
Speaker 2: Gay.
00:00:42
Speaker 4: Let's get in it, ladies and gentlemen of QRS ology.
00:00:46
Speaker 1: Okay. Based on that.
00:00:47
Speaker 4: Energy, people warned that this episode just my top the THEESUS mirror episode as the most.
00:00:52
Speaker 1: Realist, mostly problematic, the most.
00:00:55
Speaker 4: Realist in US history, and I'm here for it. I'm manifested it again. This Quest Love Supreme your your nerd paradise of sometimes awesome and occasionally useless information or edumacation. Are our two brethren, unpaid Bill and and.
00:01:16
Speaker 1: Sugar Steve are?
00:01:18
Speaker 4: I guess you could say they're holding down their illustrious careers right now so they won't be joining us. Uh So this is filing to be a pow wow with Hello, Laya, how you doing? You're in la right now?
00:01:29
Speaker 3: I was waiting for you to say, with the.
00:01:31
Speaker 4: Blacks nowte hello.
00:01:38
Speaker 1: Be the ojs. We're a trio today, we are what a trio?
00:01:43
Speaker 4: With that said, ladies and gentlemen, I will say that our illustrious guests is indeed okay. So since the title is somewhat self proclaimed, uh, it was the title of her first memoir, which was The Mother Black Hollywood. I would like to say that probably that title for her might be somewhat reductive, because I feel that she's more than just the Mother of Black Hollywood, you know, for a woman or a human of her stature, and I don't believe in numbers sometimes, especially when he is trying to remind me how old I am. But I will say that for over four decades, our guest has been going strong in ways that you know, her contemporaries can't even compete with.
00:02:33
Speaker 1: And I will say that she is.
00:02:35
Speaker 4: She is conquered and taken every medium by storm. I'm gonna I had to write them all down, so let's go with it. You'd be musical. In nineteen seventy nine, pre Broadway dream Girls, where she was the title of fie wright, Bette Midler's background singers were called Harlot's right, So yes, she was a Harlot and in.
00:03:00
Speaker 1: Bette Midler's show.
00:03:04
Speaker 4: She's landed many a scene stealing moment and practically every show that she's ever be a TV or movies. Name him Murphy Brown, Dream One, I Love Dream One. That's one of my favorite shows. And Living Color Rock, Hang with Miss Cooper a Different World. She's on Helen on Fresh Prince of bel Air. She was deemed Davenport on Different World, Tina Turner's Mom and What Love Got to do with It?
00:03:29
Speaker 1: Yo? She was even in Friends. I didn't know that.
00:03:33
Speaker 3: Black people right, I.
00:03:35
Speaker 1: Don't even know that black people were in Friends. Lucky's Mom and Poetic Justice. Yo.
00:03:41
Speaker 4: The way she tells him to shut the fuck up in Poetic Justice is my favorite.
00:03:46
Speaker 1: That is my favorite use of shut the fuck up I ever heard, anyway.
00:03:50
Speaker 4: Name it Dead Presidents, Girl Six, The Preacher's Wife, The Timp, Tats, Castaway, Strong Medicine, Pixar's Cars. She was Tony's mom and girlfriends uh see his Family Reunion right, Pethan Brown's You Are a Man, That's o. Raven Boston Legal, The Princess and the Frog Think like a man, baggots claim a gazillion.
00:04:08
Speaker 1: Animated voice over. Yo.
00:04:10
Speaker 4: Even Erica's mom in the on and on video She's so bad.
00:04:18
Speaker 1: Yes, and I'm wearing my bother you shirt right now as we speak.
00:04:22
Speaker 3: Yo.
00:04:22
Speaker 4: She was even in this this this unknown local syndicated production of some show called Blackish.
00:04:30
Speaker 1: You guys might have heard of it.
00:04:32
Speaker 4: She has written two very informative books on her life.
00:04:37
Speaker 1: She's the reason why I believe in audiobooks. Before.
00:04:40
Speaker 4: I'm not saying I was one of those snobs that was like, you know, you know those people are like, oh, the book is better. You know you you see the movie and they're like, oh, the book is better. And then there are people that book shaming because I don't have a tangible thing to read, and they're like, well, you're not reading the book.
00:04:56
Speaker 1: You used to listen to audio.
00:04:57
Speaker 4: But no, during the pandemic, I've read like seventy books more.
00:05:01
Speaker 1: I'm more ed you macated than I've ever been.
00:05:03
Speaker 4: Ladies and gentlemen, this this introduction has been ten minutes long.
00:05:07
Speaker 5: Please welcome, and we still haven't finished with her discography.
00:05:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, dude, it's just too much. The name even Disney rides with her voice in it. Please welcome the Quest of Supreme Jennifer Lewis, thank you for coming.
00:05:22
Speaker 3: He welcome. Yes, it's great to be here. It's great to be here, Scott.
00:05:30
Speaker 2: I'm loving all of these conversations about the book and my career.
00:05:37
Speaker 3: Might as well get it out of the way.
00:05:38
Speaker 2: I received I just received my star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
00:05:43
Speaker 3: Yes you did.
00:05:45
Speaker 2: I am still flying high from it. Right before the Hollywood Walk of Fame, I went on one of my trips around the world. I went to and called Watt in Cambodia, helicopter through the Himalayan Mountain range and set my eyes on Mount Everest. I'm trying to say that without crying. What was that experience like, Well, let me give you this story.
00:06:14
Speaker 1: Hit me.
00:06:15
Speaker 2: It was one of the most beautiful moments of the trip. The captain of it. It's a private jet Abercrombie and Kent. It does these trips around the world. And because I only get so much time free, I have to get on a jet like that, you know, and go and do as much as I can. I'm trying to see the entire world before my knees give out. I don't want to go to march. You peach you and say, oh, the incors were up there. No, bitch, I'm climbing this motherfucker.
00:06:44
Speaker 1: You climb it.
00:06:44
Speaker 3: I just she will.
00:06:47
Speaker 6: No.
00:06:47
Speaker 2: I climbed. Anchor watches now. And I had this little Jordaanian boy take me up Petra in Jordan's the Hills of Moses. Most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
00:07:00
Speaker 3: In my life. You understand me.
00:07:03
Speaker 2: I have seen the cultural treasures of this world, the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. I just took a I just played camel polo in Dubai and took a helicopter over all those islands, the palm trees and the crowns. And I also, this is what happened. The captain of the pilot said, ladies and gentlemen, if you'll look off to the right of the plane, I believe I see the peaks of the Himalayan mountain range. And there was there was Everest sitting above the Cumulonimbus clouds. And I said, as I was filming outside of the plane, I just was saying to myself. There was a yoga teacher right next to me, one of the passengers, and she overheard me say dear God. I've wanted to climb to the top of that mountain since I was thirteen years old.
00:08:09
Speaker 3: And she looked at me and said, look at you. Now you're above it. Shit, God, damn I.
00:08:19
Speaker 2: And when I saw it with my own eyes, you know, they put the helicopter down at eleven thousand feet and we only have seven minutes to take pictures of Everest and that whole world of the base camp at the base of Everest. It was unbelievable. It was it was stunning, It was majesty. It was God itself. You understand me, A little colored girl from Kenlock, Missouri, who ate dirt at a little girl and set a little booty on our wooden hall to.
00:08:54
Speaker 3: Shit in nineteen below zero in Saint Louis, Missouri.
00:08:59
Speaker 2: We went on to India, Catman do and I stood in front of the taj Mahal.
00:09:05
Speaker 3: It was an unbelievable trip.
00:09:07
Speaker 2: And then to come back to the United States and become a part of a cultural treasure in Hollywood, it's been a ride, ladies and gentlemen. And let me tell you, I walk around in the state of Greece. I never gave one hundred percent y'all. I gave two thousand because I didn't know how not to. I was born with this charisma and this gift, and I have tried to honor it all my life. It's been a hell of a ride with my bipolar disorder, but I contained it.
00:09:43
Speaker 3: I stayed. As I said in the.
00:09:47
Speaker 2: Ceremony accepting the star, it was not the work I did on camera and on stage that has put this broad smile on my li face that defines my success. It was the work I did off It was the journaling, It was the therapy. It was after five years, agreeing to get on medication. I don't want to have a push medication, but I take it. And when I talk like this, I tell everybody this ain't the truth.
00:10:18
Speaker 3: This is my truth. This is my story, this is my song. So if you ask me, I'm gonna tell you this is how I did it. Ha ha, And look at me now I did it.
00:10:31
Speaker 1: This is already the greatest episode of in the five year history.
00:10:38
Speaker 5: So when you were talking about medication with your bipolar disorder, what led to the decision to get on it after years of not being on what how did you make that decision?
00:10:48
Speaker 3: Let me tell you something.
00:10:50
Speaker 2: Human beings change for two reasons, and two reasons only because we are habitual creatures. One is a deadly disease. Two, you just got to get tired, sick and tired of being sick and tired. It wears you out right, It will wear you out.
00:11:11
Speaker 3: To continue a habit over and over and over again.
00:11:15
Speaker 2: And see, I had a sex addiction, and little girl, there's only so much sex you can have, for God's sake. But here's the thing about the medication. It took my therapist five years for me to come to that decision because I thought it would take my edge. I told her, I said, he look, I'm Jennifer motherfucker Lewis, bitch. I don't even know goddamn medication. Ain't nothing wrong with me?
00:11:42
Speaker 3: Well, miss Lewis, yes, there was something wrong. I was not happy.
00:11:48
Speaker 2: The mania of bipolar disorder is dangerous. You understand, you do dumb shit like speed in a car, and you're not thinking that you could hit a whole full of children.
00:12:02
Speaker 3: Come on, now, I don't do roll rage no more.
00:12:07
Speaker 2: Because a friend of mine said to me once, when I flipped somebody out, I flipped somebody off when I was younger.
00:12:14
Speaker 3: My friend turned to me, Jennifer and said, Jennifer.
00:12:17
Speaker 2: Oh, what if that person's mother just died and they just heard about it and you and you telling them to go fuck themselves?
00:12:26
Speaker 3: What's wrong with you? I never now, baby, I let people go.
00:12:32
Speaker 2: Somebody's got to say something to stop you from ruining your life. And I say to everybody, with seven point six billion people on this planet, you've got to ask for help.
00:12:48
Speaker 3: Somebody's there.
00:12:50
Speaker 2: Don't you dare spending your life in those dark rooms like I did?
00:12:55
Speaker 3: You wake your ass up. Sometimes when I wake up, I have to pull on slow journ a skirt. Sometimes I have to say, Harry, where are you at?
00:13:06
Speaker 2: Sometimes I have to pull up Mandela's photograph to remind myself of how fragile his shoulders were and that I'm standing on him. You don't go to South Africa and go over to that island and see that cell huh, and not walk out of there and come home and say I, Oh, you don't get to do You gotta give back, Jenny.
00:13:39
Speaker 3: You got to tell the world what you've seen, don't you dare. We are as sick as our secrets, So don't keep not God damn it.
00:13:50
Speaker 2: You tell somebody I don't care what it is, and if they don't miss to go tell somebody else.
00:13:54
Speaker 3: Go ahead.
00:13:56
Speaker 5: Oh the question, good question I had in regards to you talking about your sex addiction. How did you determine what was the line of demarcation between Okay, I'm a person who enjoyed sex versus okay, this is an addiction.
00:14:09
Speaker 2: Chiad when you start picking up men. I was so bold in my shit, and I was so well I know I still am, but I was knock on, honey.
00:14:18
Speaker 3: I was a brick house. A motherfucker couldn't toutch me. In my twenties, I was so pretty. I got this take it.
00:14:27
Speaker 2: But I had have skin like a baby's ass, and I was honey. I was at the top of my game. I was on Broadway. I'm largeous, I had that thin ass waistline. I still got it, but I needed to come down from those Broadway shows. When you can get a standing ovation, you think you you think somebody wants it to end. No, so I went and did another show in my bedroom. You see with more adoration.
00:14:58
Speaker 3: But let me yes, and let me tell you something. You get tired.
00:15:03
Speaker 2: You get tired I didn't think about because of the mania. I wasn't thinking of the dangers of that taking a strange.
00:15:11
Speaker 3: Man to your house.
00:15:13
Speaker 2: I don't know if y'all might be too young to remember mister Goodbar, the movie with Diane Keaton.
00:15:18
Speaker 3: It's too much.
00:15:20
Speaker 1: It's wait. When we first got cable, my parents never that was like, go to your room and me. I'm like, what is good for?
00:15:29
Speaker 2: Something is like, yeah, well it was dangerous and let me tell y'all something. I never thought I'd run around quoting the Constitution. MM, but I understand this, and it is my motto. We all have a right to the pursuit of happiness. I wanted to be happy. I was depressed for many years and didn't even know it. They didn't have words like bipolar shit. I went on opera a long time ago, told them sixty million people out my pole.
00:16:05
Speaker 3: I lie, I'm tripolar in these streets.
00:16:09
Speaker 2: Okay, new shit, trip all the new shit. There's another poll over there. But listen, you have to be in it to win it. I gave up many times in my career, but I didn't quit. You hear me, I didn't quite. I tell these kids, you must dream the dream and focus only on that so that you can be well with your soul. You know what.
00:16:40
Speaker 4: I'm glad you said that because Okay, so I too was trying to figure out and here's you know. The disclosure is, yes, I mean I've been in and out of not in and out of. I mean I've you know, I've had a therapist. I guess you can say in and out. I've been doing therapy for like thirty years. But you know, the thing is, when the pandemic came, really, you know again like I don't feel like I feel like a person shouldn't have to be at rock bottom to make the change. So that's why I'm really glad the pandemic happened because it wasn't a rock bottom moment, But that was definitely a somewhat of a paradigm shift for me and taken mental health seriously and all those things. But you mentioned something, and I noticed that probably the time that I might be liable to get in an argument, I mean not a fight, not like pugilism or anything. But there's a moment after I get off stage where I can't describe the feeling. And you you said that, and I was like, oh, so I'm not I've you know, I just thought like, well mereor sometimes you're just in an asshole after the thirty minutes after show. It's almost like after a Root show, I purposely look for a place to just sit silent and literally come down.
00:18:09
Speaker 1: And I can't explain it. And the thing is is like right after a show.
00:18:12
Speaker 4: That's when people were pulling for you and oh, Mair, let's talk to rite and I can't explain. And the thing is, it's like, because these people aren't entertainers, it's hard to really explain to them the process I go through, which is kind of why. It's almost like an ad that feeling of when you're done a show, and that how you feel is such a description less addiction that I can't describe that. I figured out that for the at least the last thirty years, I've been doing DJ gigs after the Root show because I love music and because I love DJ, but basically I need to slowly come down off that high normalcy. So usually after show I will DJ for three hours so that way I don't have to talk to people. I'm playing music and I come down. But and sometimes when I'm not DJing, I wonder what that is. And I thought I was the only person going through that because again, if you I feel weird in talking about the mental health space thing and have my occupation because I always feel like people look at me like, eh, here's the world Steiny's violin, like, if people are in a certain profession, they might not they might feel unworthy of having problems or whatnot.
00:19:35
Speaker 1: Like people might not.
00:19:37
Speaker 6: At this point, the world knows entertainers have trauma. Right, I'm just let me interject here, yes, yes, please please, yeah. First of all, we are not normal creatures. Yeah, right, we are artists. We are different, Are we better? Are worse than anyone?
00:19:57
Speaker 3: No, we just are who we are and we form who we form.
00:20:07
Speaker 2: The artistry. It's like Lena Simone said, an artist's duty.
00:20:16
Speaker 1: Is to.
00:20:17
Speaker 3: Speak to the times.
00:20:21
Speaker 2: Needa Simone didn't hide her pain. Needa Simone laid it on the piano. We have to learn where to put that quest. You have to put that somewhere. You have to compartmentalize that you expressed it beautifully. It's called a glory train. Love you hear me talking to you. It's a glory train. And nobody can stay on that train too long. You got to come off, You got to get in the grass, and you got to surround yourself with nature and have that. Gratitude is the gratitude moment, so use it for that. You don't have to go crazy. Most people go and get drunk and party and carry on. Okay, you get a couple of those a month, but then sit the fuck down and talk about those feelings. Write them down so that the next time you feel it you have something to balance it. Nobody's coming with the answer, nobody's coming with the recipe.
00:21:27
Speaker 3: You got to pay attention to the self.
00:21:31
Speaker 2: It is the journey within that will get you where you need to be, because what you will discover, HM, is how short life is. Listen to me, you want to know how You want to know how I live? I live like I got five minutes left?
00:21:51
Speaker 3: What if?
00:21:53
Speaker 4: What if you add found free minutes left?
00:21:58
Speaker 3: Who would you call? H? Think about shit? That shit what it? And I live like that. I ain't gonna lie to you.
00:22:11
Speaker 2: Sometimes something as a like when my assistant leaves, I want to swim, but the shadows have come over the pool, so it gets a little chill, and I stand there and go, oh, I don't want to Get in this pool, Jenny, Get in the fucking pool and relax yourself. You gotta talk to yourself. But guess why I got in the pool because when I woke up, I wrote it down. You will swim today, you got That's what living on purpose is about. You can't go Will and Nelly through this, bitch, It'll eat you alive.
00:22:57
Speaker 3: This is why that you are in charge. Write the ship down.
00:23:03
Speaker 2: You write your story instead of like I said, going Willy Nelly skipping, temptoeing through.
00:23:09
Speaker 3: The fucking tulips. That's what I look. Life is not a rehearsal. Live this bitch. Can I just say real quick? Excuse me? Let me let me just say this.
00:23:20
Speaker 6: And I hate to be all corny and go to the book that you have out the Walking in Your Joy? But I just realize, am I saying that walking in your joy?
00:23:27
Speaker 3: Yes? That's walking in my joy?
00:23:29
Speaker 1: In my joy?
00:23:31
Speaker 6: But it's so interesting because a lot of people write books and they say things, but I like that you have some real practical things, like what you just said to a mirror about living in those five minutes.
00:23:39
Speaker 3: And then you wrote something else that caught me and you said.
00:23:41
Speaker 6: When you're feeling down, you come up with a song about your how much you love yourself and how much people love you. That's I'm realizing, Although I haven't finished the book, can people like depend that? Like you pretty much got little workable jewels in here. Not just like girl, live your best life. It's actually like, no, it's actionable advice exactly exactly.
00:24:01
Speaker 3: But here's the work. The work is how am I going to live my best life? Right? And that's and that's the work. That's what you write down in the morning, y'all.
00:24:14
Speaker 2: I don't know if you know, but when I wrote The Mother Black Hollywood, I started writing in a journal in the seventh grade.
00:24:26
Speaker 5: No I.
00:24:28
Speaker 2: Because I knew I was going to be a star and I would need my book. That's seventh grade continuously.
00:24:36
Speaker 3: I am sixty five. There are sixty seven journals. Oh, I'm so jealous. That is, Oh why don't we do this? Why do we start? And stop? And I got about six damn it so good details?
00:24:52
Speaker 2: She saw Black Hollywood is so good. Because of the details. I can tell you that I.
00:24:58
Speaker 3: Had hot up pie mold with your only raft on this date.
00:25:04
Speaker 2: Damn you see you see you see, so nothing is wasted, live your life. And when I got into therapy the first time, my therapist looked at me when I told I had written all those journals, she said, that's.
00:25:18
Speaker 3: What saved your life, little girl.
00:25:20
Speaker 6: I believe it.
00:25:21
Speaker 3: I didn't know I was saving my life.
00:25:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that journal served in me learning at an early age. I didn't even know I was doing it. To be in charge of me and leave other people alone.
00:25:43
Speaker 1: Job.
00:25:44
Speaker 2: People come and go for a season, let it go. When they're no longer of reflection of you. You're not gonna be comfortable around them. If the toxic shit is going on the lines and the chaos, y'all get the fuck out of there.
00:25:58
Speaker 3: You ain't that there are many rooms to go to, They're many cities. All you do is leave the room. Fuck out of there.
00:26:05
Speaker 2: Shit simple, don't sit there with all that drama and shitty practical things you can use.
00:26:12
Speaker 3: It's so boring. It's boring.
00:26:14
Speaker 1: I said.
00:26:14
Speaker 3: The greatest sin is somebody to say, oh I'm bored.
00:26:17
Speaker 1: Bitch, They'll have my money, okay.
00:26:25
Speaker 4: So, of course, like in the last two years is the most that I've heard black people speaking on finding joy, finding their their their mental health, and all these things because previously there's a secret I would never like in two thousand and eleven, I would never share with nobody.
00:26:45
Speaker 6: That likes trauma attached it a you, right.
00:26:50
Speaker 4: Because you don't want to share like people think I'm crazy. Whatever The thing is is that I know that for black people, their go to answer was always the church, especially of an older you know, I was born in seventy one. I know you were born before I was. For a lot of people in you know, pre eighties people whatever, like their thing is always like I'll find God or I'll talk to my preacher.
00:27:20
Speaker 1: How So this is almost a phenomenally to hear.
00:27:24
Speaker 4: Of your your generation, of your experience, really not even diving into the pool of mental therapy. But I mean, you're going to the abyss of it, You're going to the deepest level of it.
00:27:36
Speaker 1: So what was it?
00:27:38
Speaker 4: What was the moment that told you that my mental health has to be addressed in and handled this way as opposed to I do consider that, I do consider organized religion as a vice akin to gambling sex.
00:28:00
Speaker 3: Let me say this to you.
00:28:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a line in the movie I did Karina Karina, where the where the little girl says these people believe I'm paraphrasing, but they said, these people believe in God, and the people that somebody that said it was Jewish. And the question that was asked by a child was she said, why do these people sing about this? And the mother said because it makes them feel good? And the little girl said, what's wrong with that? Mother said, I guess nothing. Look, if you want to be an organized religion, that's okay. Let people do what they want to do. That's what gets me through life. To allow allow others to be where they are.
00:28:52
Speaker 3: What you gonna do.
00:28:53
Speaker 2: Go and make them a Buddhist, Go and make them a move them. You gonna make them what you gonna do? Once again, once again, pay attention to yourself. Everybody on this planet has one job, and one job on it self care And if you need to cry to Jesus to do that, then you go on and cry with Jesus. But allow other people to cry to whoever the hell they want to cry to. That's what I don't like about religion. Everybody think their religion is the best one, So I don't believe in that.
00:29:30
Speaker 3: Lead people alone. Lead people alone.
00:29:32
Speaker 2: If they want to work, you let them work to Jesus. Let them work in Buddha or a Mohammed or Allah. Let people do who what the fuck they want to do.
00:29:41
Speaker 3: I know who I am. I searched every religion in this world. I have been down the road. Let's travel, and when I got to the end, that wasn't nothing but a big ass mirror. You cannot run.
00:30:01
Speaker 2: Wherever you run, you will meet yourself. So there's no running. And I told them on the breakfast club.
00:30:09
Speaker 3: I got money to run, and you can't even run. You can't run.
00:30:16
Speaker 2: You don't ask me. Don't ask me for now. I'm like, uh, what's his name? The baby I love? Dave Japel. I'm rich, bitch, don't ask me for shit?
00:30:26
Speaker 3: All right, there you go.
00:30:29
Speaker 6: What do you say to him to even like to what on Amir's question, like you're leading the pack of your generation in that way? Like he said, like you're it is kind of special. Do you see in the difference in the generational power?
00:30:41
Speaker 2: Now?
00:30:41
Speaker 6: I'm using words and have vocabulary for things that we didn't have before.
00:30:45
Speaker 3: When I went Huh, I got you.
00:30:47
Speaker 2: When I went on the road with the Mother Black Hollywood, because it was my journey through bipolar disorder. I was able to feel not only the temperature, but the temperament of the United States. I went all over during the Trump era, people are starting to wake up. I was very pleased. They're starting to get counseling in churches. They are starting to put more counseling in youth centers. Our children are falling apart, and I'm not the only woman in the world that cares. People are coming together. We are getting better. Everybody wanted to talk about the stigma. Yes, there is a stigma, but we are getting better. You see, my mother didn't have the Oprah Winfrey ship.
00:31:36
Speaker 3: Okay, that's what I'm saying.
00:31:38
Speaker 2: My mamma didn't know nothing about mental illness. And yet if someone were to ask me, I would say, absolutely she was. I do believe that she was depressed. She had me when she was twenty six years old and I was her seventh child. WHOA, She was scrubbed, and she was scrubbing white people's floors. You think she had time to give me affection.
00:31:59
Speaker 3: She was an.
00:31:59
Speaker 2: Exulted by the time I came along. Listen eve Insler, who wrote the Vagina Monologues. She went all around the world. She went to Africa with the women that were having the the clitteristism.
00:32:16
Speaker 3: If it's clitterists, I don't know. If it's plural.
00:32:19
Speaker 1: I only have one, all right.
00:32:24
Speaker 2: I used to have three, but I get all one out. Remember one of those first on stars that bitch tied too when we just had listen, God, damn, I have to web it. That bitch tied to glitter and she has something like that, something like that. It was funny, but it let me go back to the sorry, let me get back to serious ship.
00:32:58
Speaker 3: Listen. All I can say, did not go into three clitterists, honey in the glitter I did too. I need to find.
00:33:08
Speaker 2: Somebody to tell me whether clitteris it's clitterisis senis?
00:33:12
Speaker 5: Come on, Jennifer, if you don't need clitteriz, I have no idea.
00:33:22
Speaker 3: You know, I'll come out of the bag with anything. I don't multiple clitterists.
00:33:27
Speaker 1: Thank you?
00:33:27
Speaker 3: Did you look it up?
00:33:28
Speaker 6: No? I was in uh.
00:33:33
Speaker 2: When I was in the Sarah Gaddy Uh, two little baby rhinoceroses thought I had some food. So they came over to me and they just gone like this, just a don't get don't get done. And they when they saw I have no food. They kind of don't don't you don't away from me? And I start screaming, I.
00:33:53
Speaker 3: Never heard of Jenny Craig.
00:33:57
Speaker 4: Had no food for you.
00:33:59
Speaker 2: I'll cuss out a rhinoceros, bitch you hear me? And then I had to look up whether it was not rhinocerih because most of my friends wait, man, because mine listen. Because most of my friends are major intellectuals. I keep smart people around me. Honey, listen, I can feel enough for everybody. You just tell me what the ship?
00:34:22
Speaker 3: What's going on? But here?
00:34:23
Speaker 2: But if I listen, if I'm a stand in the serengetti and cusss out two baby, rhinoceros? Is what you think I'm gonna do with the story of the Glitterists, get the fuck out of it. Let's go what's next? Who cuss out? What you need to know is Jennifer Lord will go anywhere. I ain't no shame in my game, baby, I'll do anything to make people laugh.
00:34:51
Speaker 4: Is because I'm also interested in your need to see the world. Now, I would have liked to have thought that I'm you know that I've I'm well traveled, at least in my thirty years of touring the world and whatnot.
00:35:08
Speaker 5: But you've seen the airport, the hotel in the video.
00:35:10
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was going to say that I still and I know I've done things that are special whatnot. Like I'm I'm you know again, post pandemic. I am living life like I mean, not to the five minute rule. Once you said that, and I was like, oh shit, I'm not doing shit with my life for you. How did you even organize or make a bucket list of the things that.
00:35:34
Speaker 1: You wanted to do before you leave this plane called Earth.
00:35:39
Speaker 3: There was no bucket list. There was purpose.
00:35:44
Speaker 2: See when I travel, I go into the trenches. I tell my private guy to take me wherever they're not going. I want to talk to the people. When I was just in India, there were four people serving me one night. They had on their little beautiful chef hats, the white chef hats, and their white mask. And I said to them, because I had come through the poverty of Agra India, and I'd heard the stories of the untouchables and the cast system. So I went over to those four people that were cooking and I told them that I had I came from that kind of poverty. And I looked at them, I said, you do know that you must rise up? Do you understand what I'm saying. I got a little nods from them, and then I said, one of you is Gandhi. And I walked away with my plate a falafel and purposefully went back to them. Dramatically pointed to the girl and said, it's you. I said, And if it's not you, young lady, you better got theren make sure it's your daughter. And she sneaked over to me at my table. She took her chef off, she took her mask off, and came over to me like she had been invited to that party, which you know was against the rules of the hotel. She stood over me and she said, m I don't know your name, but I want to thank you. I will rise miss Lewis, because when she said that, I said, my name is miss Lewis.
00:37:35
Speaker 3: Oh, come on down Jesus. You see.
00:37:38
Speaker 2: I'll call Jesus when it's because my mama called Jesus when things were good, you understand.
00:37:46
Speaker 3: So I go into the trenches.
00:37:49
Speaker 2: There's a video going around of me talking about voting at Hollywood and Vine. After I got my star. I didn't know I was being fit. I was signing autographs. But when I get a bunch of kids in front of me, I'm gonna use that time.
00:38:07
Speaker 3: Whether I'm in.
00:38:07
Speaker 2: India or Hollywood, a Cambodia, show me whether people are suffering, bring them to me.
00:38:18
Speaker 3: Like oh okay.
00:38:18
Speaker 2: So I'm in Argentina and I tell my driver to take me to the real people. He said, oh, miss Lewis, it's dangerous in there. I said, I don't care.
00:38:30
Speaker 3: Take me in.
00:38:31
Speaker 2: I got out of that car. All these kind of people were standing on the corner and everything. They looked over at me getting out of that suv at Mercedes.
00:38:43
Speaker 3: But they saw the color of my skin.
00:38:45
Speaker 2: Oh oh yeah, And some of them came over and I said to them, oh honey, I'll use that celebrity.
00:38:54
Speaker 3: I said, y'all know who I am. I said, you watch television.
00:38:58
Speaker 2: I said, you know the show friend Sprints, and that's when everybody wakes up, because that ship is global, right, That show ain't just national and international, That ship's global. I was in a three hundred I was in a three hundred and fifty year old glacier in Iceland, and a bitch came up and said some shit about Fred real like I I got that.
00:39:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, im my god, damn girl, we're in a glacier. Get the fuck out of every ice. Come down. Fuck who I am that, Get.
00:39:28
Speaker 2: The fuck out of I come down.
00:39:31
Speaker 3: Keep the fucking boys down before you're carving the avalanche telling her to keep her voice down. That that's funny.
00:39:38
Speaker 5: I think that's actually our clip.
00:39:40
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, this was after I sang This was after I sang amazing Grace in the wedding chapel that they had carved off in the ice. Oh, I bet it's on YouTube. You can actually hear that. That performance is on YouTube. I sang amazing Great. Then whatever y'all.
00:39:57
Speaker 3: The the guy said this, anyone sing ah what you said?
00:40:03
Speaker 6: Men?
00:40:04
Speaker 3: And my friend went, bitch, you ain't said none but the word. But we went up.
00:40:08
Speaker 2: I went up to an ice podium and blasted that shit out. And I haven't released it yet, but I sang amazing Grace in the an caught tom in Cambodi, one of the great old ancient temples, and then I sang it in the Valley of Petra. I always get out and do a little something and leave my singing voice in those canyons and in those Mountain range. But I will tell you this, I didn't sing Amazing Grace up in the Himalayans. I got the fuck out of that before my lungs burst at eleven thousand feet.
00:40:47
Speaker 3: You can believe that shit fuck amazing Grace. I the fuck out of that.
00:40:53
Speaker 1: I don't think we've ever had an episode.
00:40:55
Speaker 4: We're forty five minutes into this episode, and I'm thinking to myself, I don't even and I don't even want to talk about the creative side of Jennifer Lewis, Like this show is more about like the creative Like, but listen to this. I just love.
00:41:16
Speaker 2: I just.
00:41:18
Speaker 6: A just.
00:41:24
Speaker 1: I just love Quest, I love.
00:41:30
Speaker 3: Ques.
00:41:32
Speaker 1: I get my own song, I love.
00:41:36
Speaker 3: I just love Quest.
00:41:40
Speaker 6: Is that like just just him?
00:41:41
Speaker 2: Is that what I mean?
00:41:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll share quarantines. Everyone is.
00:41:55
Speaker 6: Love.
00:41:56
Speaker 1: I shall keep that.
00:41:59
Speaker 4: All rightladies and gentlemen, we're pausing it there for now. After that serenade, I needed a minute. So Jennifer Lewis, you know, lively, real and raw as anyone has ever been on West Love Supreme, and I think she may have cussed.
00:42:15
Speaker 1: More than any guests, including Deesus and Merrill. All Right, you heard me say it. In an episode, but you can see.
00:42:21
Speaker 4: Why I called this one of the best QLs conversations ever. And so we expect you back next week for part two, and make sure you pre order Jennifer's second book, Walking and My Joy in the Streets.
00:42:33
Speaker 1: And uh, I believe that's August thirtieth. It's like this combo, all right, see y'all next week. West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.