RED PILL Director Tonya Pinkins Interview –Black Lives Matter

Editor’s Note:  Read related interviews in the George Floyd: In Memoriam roundup

(PTP) Please tell our readers about your personal and professional background.

(TP) I grew up in Chicago. No one in my family is in the arts. I had a mentor/molester who pushed me into a career in the arts. My mother struggled with mental illness and had a hard time keeping a job, so when I began working as an actor, I accepted any job I was given because a job was a gift. It took me a long time to learn that I could say no to a job.

My first love was always writing. I had an experience in fourth grade that was traumatic and stopped me from writing for a long time. I’ve always been trying to get back to writing.

Directing was the bridge to return to my love of storytelling. I also found that I was now being offered roles that were as one of the props that eat. For example, I was Madam Secretary on Madam Secretary and I wasn’t even a recurring character. I had very few lines and was in the background mostly. 

I have too much creativity to spend the rest of my life doing that. Although it pays better than McDonald's or Uber.

What is the meaning behind the title Red Pill?

Red Pill means something different depending on the community you come from. In the film, a character says that a red pill is someone who infiltrates a group and destroys it from the inside out. That is a common far-right strategy. There is also the red pill competing, conquering, controlling men and the red pill, docile, submissive, silent women.

But from the Matrix perspective, you take the red pill to wake up to reality no matter how harsh. It is easy for me to tackle racism. It’s the water in my fishbowl. What is challenging for some who have read or seen Red Pill is that it holds a mirror up to White people and progressives and they don’t like what they see. It makes them want to attack me personally or attack the storytelling. Red Pill is a reflection of how I see America. White people are not accustomed to being others or seeing themselves through anyone else’s eyes. Hollywood doesn’t green light stories where white people are “otherized.” My film may be the first time many White people see themselves through the eyes of a Black woman. I realized that when I go into predominantly White rooms, I don’t listen to the words coming out of folk’s mouths. I have learned that White people say what is expected so I am looking at facial gestures and body language. Red Pill has that eye. 

I believe Black people will sit down, figure Red Pill out pretty quickly and go along for the horrifying ironic laugh ride. Some White people will reject and hate it outright in the same way some hated Caroline or Change because they did not want to go on that ride. But if White people can be open and think of Red Pill as an excursion into an exotic and unknown world: the honest point of view of Black women, they can have an exhilarating experience. 

There is a lot of practical magic in Red Pill. It is my greatest desire that it is a key that unlocks our humanity and turns off the irrational attachment to the caste system which harms us all.

Is there a reason why you chose to focus on the theme of the “weaponization of Whiteness and White Supremacy” for the film?

I focused on these issues because they have been the greatest obstacles to my life and most BIPOC people. This movie is a mirror of the American culture BIPOC people live and see every day and that White people have the privilege of being oblivious. If it weren’t for all the videos, White people would still deny the Karens and Kens and killing going on every day.

I heard an interview from someone who said slaves were family. White people treat their animals better than they treated their slaves. White people have been denied the truth of their history. But they say ignorance of the law is no excuse and ignorance of history is not one either.

The invention of Whiteness is killing White people. As Byron Katie says, “argue with reality and you lose but only 100% of the time.” White superiority and non-White inferiority fly in the face of the reality of exceptionalism in all communities. If the folks clinging to Whiteness let it go, they will be open to an abundance of riches that have been filtered through the narrow thimble of “whiteness.”

What changes do you hope to see as a result of the Black Lives Matter Movement?

 Kimberly Latrice Jones said “Black people want equality. We don’t want revenge” and Hannah Nicole Jones said, “Black people fight for everybody.” So, when Black people get equality and equity, we will work for everyone in the world to have equity and equality.

The entertainment business is about capitalism. Capitalism elevates property over people. Capitalism could sell anything it chooses to sell false degrading images of Blacks, Latinos, and Indigenous people to perpetuate the false narrative of White exceptionalism and superiority.

The film industry perpetuated racism from D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation which created myths of violence by Blacks on Whites - which were factually false. The film industry can fund films and storytellers that tell a real, truthful, uplifting story about the contributions every culture has made to the world. The film industry can market and sell stories that uplift all the people of the world and which model ways of working together as a global community which is the only way the species will survive the apocalypse of global warming.

As an actress and director, what do you feel is your personal role in the Black Lives Matter Movement?

As Ruth Wilson Gilmore said, “We only have one thing to change, and that is everything.” The non-hierarchical structure of The Movement for Black Lives which is the umbrella for hundreds of other organizations makes it much harder for the police or FBI or CIA to kill off the leaders. Yet, six Ferguson protesters died under mysterious circumstances. There was the lynching of the Palmdale organizer, Robert Fuller, and the murder of the Florida organizer, Oluwatoyin Salau. And please don’t say Salau was killed by a Black man as if Black people cannot betray their own. William O’Neal served Fred Hampton up for a Chicago Police assassination.  

I support BLM financially and with my voice. It is the movement of the new world. My time is past. The young people get to build their world. 

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For more information on Tonya Pinkin’s upcoming film, visit the Red Pill website.

Top Photo Slider Images by Greg Nanamura.  All other images by Scott D. Snell Imagery.