071 Defiant One transcript (Sidney Poitier)

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Amit: [00:00:00] This is Famous Gravy, a humanizing look at modern pop culture biographies. Now the opening quiz to reveal today's dead celebrity.

Michael: This person died 2022, age 94. In 2009, President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Friend: Is it John Lewis?

Michael: It's not John Lewis. He directed the 1980 comedy Stir Crazy, starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor.

Friend: Stir Crazy. Have you ever heard of this movie? I've never heard of this movie. This is why I love getting you for the quiz. It's perfect.

Michael: Although often simmering with repressed anger, his characters responded to injustice with quiet determination.

Friend: Oh, he's also a writer? Well, I don't know. I'm not going to give you any more information.

That's the whole point. No, I have no idea.

Michael: He once wrote, quote, I felt very much as if I were representing 15, [00:01:00] 18 million people with every move I made.

Friend: I, Marlon Brando. Not Marlon Brando.

Michael: He was the first black performer to win the Academy Award for Best Actor.

Friend: Oh my god, um, I'm not a film buff. Like, I'm an English Literature PhD.

Michael: He was the lead in the movie, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

Friend: Oh yeah, I remember when he died, yeah. Is it Sidney Poitier?

Michael: Today's dead celebrity is Sidney Poitier.

Archival: I'm a relatively intelligent man. There are many aspects to my personality that you can explore, I think, uh, very, uh, constructively. But you sit here and ask me such one dimensional questions about a very tiny area of our lives.

You ask me questions that fall continually within the negrowness of my life. I am artist, a [00:02:00] man. American contemporary. I am an awful lot of things, so I wish you would, uh, pay me the respect and not simply ask me

about those things.

Michael: Welcome to Famous and Gravy. I'm Michael Osborne.

Amit: And my name is Amit Kapoor. Michael and I are looking for ways to make life better.

Michael: And we believe that the best years might lie ahead. So on this show, we choose a celebrity who died in the last 10 years and we go through a series of categories reviewing their lives to extract wisdom and inspiration.

We want to know, did they climb the upward staircase? At the end, we answer the question, would I want that life? Today, Sidney Poitier died 2022, age 94. Category 1, granting the first light of their obituary. Sidney Poitier, [00:03:00] whose portrayal of resolute heroes in films like To Serve with Love, In the Heat of the Night, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner established him as Hollywood's first black matinee idol and helped open the door for black actors in the film industry, died on Thursday night at his home in Los Angeles.

He was 94.

Amit: I like, off the bat. It's pretty good. Yeah.

Michael: So there's not just one performance. I think that there is kind of just one year. I'm sure you saw the same thing in the research. 1967 was this unbelievable year. And these are the three 1967 movies. To Start With Love. In the heat of the night, and guess who's coming to dinner, which combined made him the biggest box office draw that year.

Through

Amit: the next year as well, through 1968. Oh,

Michael: is that right? Yeah. I didn't see that. Resolute

Amit: heroes. I kind of love it. I love resolute. Heroes is a little stretchy, right? I mean, heroes, yes, from an audience perspective. Heroes within the plot, not always. [00:04:00] I don't

Michael: know about that. So what are you thinking of when you, like, what gives you pause with the word heroes?

I'm

Amit: just saying hero seems generous. I guess I'm wondering if he's an anti hero, but he's just, he's a protagonist. And to stretch that to hero, I think they're, they're bringing in the cultural context Yeah. of what he was representing. But is that wrong?

Michael: I mean, that, that's what gives you pause. Is, is, I mean, we're going to get into this as

Amit: the conversation goes on.

Yes, that's what gives me pause, because I said resolute heroes in such roles as. I see. Not necessarily, I just feel like if he's going to talk about being a cultural hero or being a role model, that needs some different language. I guess more specific,

Michael: I guess I don't, yeah, I I hear you. I hear you. Let's talk about resolute.

Resolute is wonderful. So

Amit: I want to throw in this anecdote and I, I, it's, it's so resolute just describes Sidney Poitier in one word. Yeah. So perfectly. It reminds me of this leadership class I took in grad school. There's this thing called Level five leadership, which are the most effective type of leaders and that carry two characteristics with them.

One is fierce resolve. You know, every time I hear the word [00:05:00] resolve, resolute, I kind of think, is this true of this person? And in Sidney Poitier, it is 100 percent absolutely true, in my experience of him.

Michael: So, uh, distinguish for me the difference between resolute and decisive. Because I hear resolute, and that's what I think is somebody who's like, knows what to do and does the right thing.

Uh, they're, they're similar. They're, they're near neighbors, but I feel like there's a difference between those words. I think

Amit: Resolve and Resolute has a follow through more than Decisive does. Yeah. It indicates that not only are you decisive and determined, but you actually go the distance. I don't know.

That's

Michael: interesting. I was gonna say, it's more like you're sure of heart, like there's more like confidence in Resolute that it's coming from the inside out, whereas Decisive is a little bit more like, we just gotta make a call, but I'm gonna be the one to do it, whether we're right

Amit: or wrong. Yeah. Correct.

It's more of like a coach's

Michael: characteristic. Yeah. And applies well to the character Sidney Poitier portrays. Yeah, I agree. I really like that language. What about, uh, matinee

Amit: Idol? That's interesting. I mean, that's very dated term, right? I think because that's a compliment. That's a [00:06:00] compliment, yes.

Michael: But I think I, that was exactly my reaction is that it's such a dated term, but that's actually really appropriate.

Matinee Idol. I kind of like that. It does anchor him in a time. This is the Hollywood golden Age. Yeah. You know, of which he is basically the only black. So I actually thought that, like, matinee idol. But it also, I hear that and I think sort of sex symbol too. Am I misunderstanding the phrase matinee

Amit: idol?

I didn't take that. I like idol there. I'm seeing idol in the same way that I saw kind of hero before. To specifically distinguish that, He is who people wanted to be. He was a role model. So the same way that James Dean or whoever was in, in an era slightly before him, Sidney Poitier is somewhat filling that role.

Michael: Yeah. And. We look up to

Amit: him. We look up to him, which is astonishing for a black film star. Yes. Who emerged in the 1950s.

Michael: No, and we're going to get into that. I mean, well, okay, actually, let's get into it now.

Amit: Go ahead. Yeah, let's get into it now. So I think that's why they have to include the word idol.

There's no way you can understand how big of [00:07:00] a deal it was that the biggest film star for a certain period of time in the 60s was a black man. It's hard

Michael: to capture just how significant, I don't know, just what a big deal he was for a period of time. Yeah. And I guess that's the one question I have about this obituary overall is like, do they do that justice?

You know, Matinee Idol. Helped open the door for black actors in the film industry. Does that capture the significance of the Sidney Poitier contribution and legacy? Maybe we're already there and they've used the words heroes and idol. And so

Amit: why do they have to say helped open the door instead of open to the door?

Or

Michael: something like that. It just feels a little bit, I just, I just wonder if it's honoring his contribution to the degree it should. It probably is in the whole stream of the sentence, but I don't know, that's the other thing I wanted to draw attention to. It's not just the verbiage you and I, you know, grade and critique and analyze.

It's also the like, I don't know, feeling you get of like, what a big [00:08:00] deal. any person is after reading the first line of an obit. Yeah,

Amit: it is, it is, it's a little soft on language. It's a little soft. It's forgivable because you, you've got a big history story to tell.

Michael: Alright, so, do you have a score? Yeah,

Amit: nine.

That's where I was gonna go. Alright, we can do

Michael: it. We can do that. You used to get mad at me when

Amit: I had the same number as you. Well, because normally you're imitating me. You're copying me. No, that's exactly what

Michael: I had. I was close, I was looking at 8. 7 for me, actually. You know, they went for it. I think they could have gone for it more.

Amit: Yeah, that's why I left one

Michael: open as well. Okay. Category two. Five things I love about you. Here, Amit and I worked together to come up with five reasons why we love this person, why we want to be talking about them in the first place. Uh, why don't you lead us off?

Amit: Alternative education. There's three main things I'm talking about, and I guess we have to back story Sidney Poitier a little bit, but he, uh, he's, uh, help me with this pronunciation, Bahamian.

Is that

Michael: Bahamian? Is that really? Bahamian? Bahamian. I [00:09:00] don't think it's Bahamian. It's

Amit: not either. He's from the Bahamas. He's from the Bahamas. So, uh, 12, moved to Miami. was, uh, the son of tomato farmers. I think it was He moved to Miami at 15. Yes. Right, but he dropped out of school at age 12. Yes. To work with the family.

Yes. Um, and then moved to Miami, uh, to live with his brother at age 15, escaped that, moved to New York City. So basically, he shows up in New York City at the age of 16, more or less illiterate. Yeah. Uh, so he does three things to get his own education. And we're talking about, like, standards of education here.

So one, he took a job, as he was He's, uh, working as a dishwasher. He read newspapers to learn English. A, uh, elderly Jewish waiter, uh, who worked at the same diner, uh, noticed this and started helping him. Yeah. And every night for a period of many months, this man helped him learn how to

Michael: read. Yeah, and Sidney Poitier on more than one occasion has thanked that

Amit: man.

Correct. The second thing is he used radio to refine his accent. [00:10:00] Yeah. Wow. Uh, so he was rejected in his first audition. ever that he tried to do at the, um, the American Negro Theater in, uh, in New York. And he was rejected, I think, for his first audition because they were like, you sound way, way too Caribbean.

And so, uh, he buys a radio for 14 and listens to the radio every single day and basically learns by imitating Norman, uh, Brokershire. Yes. Um, and so he learns by, by, by listening to him on the radio and imitating his voice. Yeah. Uh, exactly. Does that remind you of Better Off Dead? Exactly. Is that where you can

Michael: make it up?

Yeah. Language lessons. Wayne Meyer. The kid from Green Bay. Two brothers. One

Amit: speaks no English. The other

Michael: learned how to speak English from watching the wide world of sports.

Amit: So you tell me, which

Michael: is better, speaking no English at all or speaking

Amit: Howard Cosell? Yeah. . Um, and the result was this beautiful mix of this New York radio accent and, uh, the Caribbean accent [00:11:00] from The Bahamas.

Yeah. Uh, and the third thing he did to learn differently was, uh, when he was rejected from that first theater audition, he was like, well, I gotta learn a little more about the theater. Yeah. So he offered to be their maintenance man at the theaters, just so he could observe from a third person point of view how it all works.

Yeah. How people move, how they react. So these three things were. pivotal educational moments for Sidney Poitier, all incredibly informal and things that he crafted for himself.

Michael: So, I'm going to pick up on that for my number two. I wrote Self Determination, which I think is Resolute? Yeah, resolute. Yeah, very much.

But there's one example that I love from his autobiography, uh, called This Life. So, he grows up in the Bahamas. Um, he 10. They move to Nassau, which is, uh The bigger city in the Bahamas. So where he grew up there was no running water, there was no electricity, I mean it really was like island life and very, very poor.

So his parents sent him to [00:12:00] live with his brother Cyril in Miami when he was 15. And immediately he's like entering the Jim Crow South and like I do have no desire to be here whatsoever. Yeah. But he's sort of wandering around town trying to get work and he keeps seeing an opportunity to be a, to work as a valet, which the way he describes it in his book is like at that time that was pretty prestigious, nice job, but he doesn't know how to drive.

So he goes up to one of the valet places and they, Say he's like, I'd like a job and they say, do you know how to drive? And he says, yes. Uh, and he had sat there in the bushes and like studied somebody like move the gear shifts and work the pedals around. And he thinks he can do it. Uh, they say, do you have a license?

He says, yes, not true. Uh, and. So they're like, okay, go park that car and let's see how this goes. So he gets in the car and he crashes it. So they're like, get the fuck out of here. What are you, you have no business doing. And so he walks a few blocks down and he's like, okay, I think it's a [00:13:00] little bit more about the nuance between the gas and the pedal.

And he goes through the exact same motion. It's like, you know how to drive? Absolutely. Have you worked here before? Yes. I've worked just up the street. Uh, and then he crashes another car. The way he did this six or seven times. This is how he taught himself to drive. He was practicing in valet. I mean, it's a little crazy.

Yes. And there are other examples in his youth of him just like saying, I'm going to figure it out. It's self determination, but it's a lot of, I'm just going to act my way to education. Like, I'm just going to like fake it till I make it, or act my way to right thinking, or whatever kind of idiom you want to use.

Yes. Um, that is like, Who he is. And it's a real ethos with him. I mean, this man has an insane work ethic, and I, I think has a real sort of idea in his mind of what it means to be a self determined human being, and I think that that carries through his experiences as an actor and as an icon, right? I mean, I think it's a real core part of why he is so celebrated, is that [00:14:00] there is something About him taking charge of his own life.

And I have more to say about where that comes from, but it's like the first thing that pops up to me about him. So, it is resolute self determination. Yeah, okay. So that's my number two.

Amit: Okay, number three. God, I've got a lot. I'm gonna go secret mission. Oh! Do you know which one this is? Okay, so this is the 1963 money drop with Harry Belafonte.

Oh, yes, I do know about this, yes. So, uh, the story is in 1963, this were the freedom marches where they're doing voter registration in the South. Three activists are killed in Mississippi and the movement is hemorrhaging money. They need money. They need an injection of cash. Um, and Harry Belafonte volunteers 70, 000.

This being Mississippi, it is not easy to get 70, 000 cash, um, to these civil rights activists. And so, Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier, uh, very good friends, who we haven't talked about yet, volunteered to do it at the time. Uh, and so they [00:15:00] literally fly into Mississippi with, uh, a target on their backs, right, to deliver 70, 000.

Michael: It's not literally literally, but like a very big metaphorically, literally.

Amit: And so, uh, they go on this death wish mission. Yeah. Basically as they land in Mississippi, they have literally their cars being rammed by the Klan. Yeah. And they have another car trail them to essentially take the hits and they, they have to swerve and make sharp turns to eventually get to their destination with the 70, 000 that they transfer.

So one of the articles that covered it said they were pursued during a high speed chase, and men with guns fired upon their vehicle in the kind of action scene. Both might have filmed under less dangerous circumstances. So the interesting thing about this is, Sidney Poitier, and this will evolve in our discussion, was criticized later as being the safe black man.

You're right, Uncle Tom. Yeah, and this example of bravery counters that whole narrative. But I love that you're rising in your career, and you prioritize to do this. Yeah. That is resolute.

Michael: Okay, should I take number four? [00:16:00] Yep. My thing number four is spite and despite. I think this was a kind of like, there's something desirable about, to me, about somebody who does virtuous things for spiteful reasons.

I think spite is often, uh, can be described as a petty motivating force, and I think it gets a bad rap. And I think that I have done some of the greatest things in my life, uh, personally, uh, because of pure stubbornness, because I was trying to prove something mostly to me, and I'm not sure that that's always a bad thing.

And that was how Sidney Poitier got into acting. So he goes down to the American Negro Theater and auditions, and the guy throws him out like, you have no idea what you're doing here, you're not an actor. And as he tossed me out, he said something that changed my whole life. He said, Stop wasting people's time.

Why don't you go out and get yourself a job as a dishwasher or something? [00:17:00] And as I walked to the corner of 7th Avenue and 135th Street, I wondered how could he have known that dishwashing is what I did? By the time I reached the corner, I had resolved I would become an actor. Only to prove to him that I was not just destined to be a dishwasher.

This is all driven by stubbornness and pure, like, I'll prove you wrong spite. Um, I relate to that. I like it. And, uh, I wanted to bring it up with you because I don't know how wrong that is. I think when you can, what's the phrase, cut off your nose to spite your face, right? Like, you can do something in the name of self harm.

But it's also, I don't know, is it such a bad thing to, like, Have a competitiveness and want to prove yourself somehow, [00:18:00] especially to some asshole who said you don't know what you're doing, even if he's

right?

Amit: No, I don't think so. I mean, I think internal drivers are sometimes hard to identify. Yeah. And spite is not always a

Michael: terrible one.

It's probably mostly bad, but I think it's maybe not as bad as we sometimes make it out to be. And it's something I love about Sidney Poitier, especially with his, this is the turning point in his life. I mean, this is what leads him into the theater where, you know, as you said, he took a job as a janitor so he could get training, and the next thing you know, he's getting on stage, and the next thing you know, he's getting interest from Hollywood.

It's not like he grew up watching movies daydreaming about being a movie star. Anyway, spite and

Amit: despite. Love it. Thank you. Okay, um. Number five. Great parlay into late life pursuits. You, you stole it in the quiz with the directing of Stir Crazy. Yeah. Uh, which was 1980 at the tail end. Sidney Poitier was still kind of acting for a few more years.

Yeah. But let's just look at the significance of that. That movie with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, who we have an episode on. Yes. Uh, was [00:19:00] 1980, am I correct? Yes. Eventually made 100 million, which made Sidney Poitier the most successful comedic director at the time. Not even black comedic director.

Michael: Yeah, and held that for a long time,

Amit: right?

Yeah, so, I mean, what a pivot, right? And then later he becomes a board member for the Walt Disney Company. Saw that. For eight years, and that is not, like, they're not just handing that out like, Oh, you were a wonderful film star. You actually have to. to have accolades because you're in charge of one of the largest corporations in the world.

So that's extraordinary. And then. Diplomat. And then diplomat. But that's what I kind of love because it's so cheesy. This one they do just give out. Yeah. He was the ambassador from the Bahamas to Japan. Yes. Um, and which is just great if we can leave it at that. But then when you start to dig, it's like he didn't have to live in Japan, but it was just like, I mean, this is literally just a good political.

appointment. Yeah. But it sounds great. Yeah. And I love it for Cindy Poitier. I love that that's something that you can still do that is meaningful to your home country, for the [00:20:00] international community, but I love the parlay into meaningful later

Michael: life pursuits. In an interview he did with Terry Gross on Fresh Air in 2000, after his second memoir comes out, um, she's like, why don't we see more of you?

And he basically says, listen, my darling lady. I'm 73 years old. I have been working in films for 51 years. And, uh, I've made a great number of movies. And there are other areas of my life now that, uh, the most important currency I own is my time. And, uh, I just simply don't have the time to go over ground I've covered.

At least I don't want to spend the remaining time I have in this life of mine doing things that I've done before. All right, uh, let's recap. So, number one, you said Alternative education. Alternative education. I love that one. Number two, uh, I said self determination. Number [00:21:00] three, you said Uh, mission impossible.

Mission impossible. Number four, I said spite and despite. And number five, you said The parlay. The parlay. Excellent. Okay. Let's take a break.

Amit: Michael, you know, one thing that's very difficult about being a world famous podcaster is I just don't interact with very many people. It's hard to connect with the common man. It is. And you would think somebody of my level of infamy and notoriety would just be surrounded by intriguing conversations. I

Michael: think that there's a way of solving that.

I think it's about where you go. What are the spaces where you encounter the kind of people you want to

Amit: talk to? Oh, uh. Park benches, tree

Michael: climbing. Can I offer a suggestion? Have you been to half price books lately? I

Amit: have, but as usual, I just cover myself in a ball cap and sunglasses and keep my head down.

Michael: No, no, no. This is the place to go to actually have engaging conversations with people behind the counter, as well as people in the aisles. [00:22:00] I've been going there a lot lately for our show. The other day I said, Hey, I'm looking for a biography of Burt Reynolds. Angela Lansbury, Leonard Cohen, Nora Ephron, and Gene Wilder.

Can you help? And I found myself in the greatest conversation about the wide range of biographies that are out there, and what makes for a good biography overall. You're gonna have the kind of conversations you want to have, and meet the kind of people you want to meet at Half Price Books. Do you know

Amit: where to go?

You know, I think I'm just gonna check out the all new HPB. com, where I can find my local store, plan my next trip, maybe even buy online to pick up in store, possibly create a wishlist, and more. I like it.

Michael: Start on the internet, work your way to the store. Okay, category three. Malkovich, Malkovich. This category is named after the movie Being John Malkovich, in which people can take a portal into John Malkovich's mind and have a front row seat to his experiences.

Um, and I discussed it beforehand. We're going to do just one Malkovich today. So here's my Malkovich. [00:23:00] This one takes place right around 1950. At this point, Sidney Poitier has begun to. Become something of a working actor, but between age 15 and age 22, 23 ish, he had not once written a letter to his parents.

He had all but dropped off the radar for most of his family. He was so hell bent on being a self determined, self created man that he had this idea in his head that he couldn't write back until he had something to show for himself. So for eight years, you were out of touch with your parents. Yeah. And when you reappeared, yeah, you were in the movies.

Yeah. I have to explain that before we go into that. The years were hard and I had no money to send home. And to send a letter without something in it was very hard. [00:24:00] So I sent no word for eight years. So he flies home to the Bahamas and He goes to his parents home, and he sees just the two of them. The house is now empty, and he looks into what sounds to me like essentially a shack.

Um, you know, there's again no indoor toilet, there's no running water, there's no electricity, there's no natural gas, and he's Looking in at his parents, and this is age 23, and he's, he's put on a suit for this and he sees them and he says, I walk around to the back door, it's open. I step inside, put down my suitcase and just stand there looking at them.

Seconds tick by before they become aware of my presence. My mother looks at me, blank. My father looks at me, blank. Then my mother looks at my father, blank. He looks at her and my mother says to him, Who's that, Reggie? My father says with a smile on his face, but it's a smile of ignorance. I don't know. As my mother continues to stare at me in the imperfect light of [00:25:00] the kerosene lamp, I can see a thought come to her mind.

Kermit? Kermit is his older brother, Cyril's son. He would be a couple years younger than Sidney, but hadn't seen him since he was small. Anyway, he thought it might have been Kermit. My mother's smile is a quaint smile. While she's trying to figure out who this stranger is. My father, also smiling, his brow knotted with the question, looks to my mother for a clue.

And never having taken her eyes off me, it suddenly strikes her like a bolt out of heaven. And that woman leaps out of her seat and starts to scream. Such a scream, I can't tell you what was in it. It's a scream so penetrating, so agonizing, so anguished, so joyful, so filled with relief. She closes her eyes and her hands go to her head, and she just screams, screams, screams.

My father is looking on, and he's beginning to get caught up in the excitement, but still doesn't know. My mother leaps from where she stood a good six feet across the room, one leap, and she's on top of me. Her arms fly around my neck, and she starts to put some words into her screams, Oh my gods, my Sydney, my Sydney, my [00:26:00] Sydney.

Then she breaks down. Here's why that's my Malkovich. I don't know that we're going to be able to do it justice or get into all of it, but I think a lot of what makes Sidney Poitier tick is a certain ethos that was instilled to him by his father and his mother growing up. I think these parents are very, very important, and I think that this idea of self determination Of who I'm going to be, of writing your own story, is really, really powerful in him.

And I think there's a lot of integrity, and I think that there's a lot of, uh, complexity. in Sidney Poitier around that. This is the moment where he begins to present himself to his parents as a man. And it's so exciting on one hand. It's sort of heartbreaking that he'd broken contact for all those years.

Um, they end up staying up all night. And then he says, I'm checking into [00:27:00] a hotel, because I don't feel like carrying a bucket of water every time I gotta go to the bathroom. You know, which, there's 200 feet of walk and this little shack they're in. I, I see his independence as such a defining characteristic of him.

And I think that there is something wanting to be complete, or complete enough. But also a little bit ashamed that you've severed a relationship for so long. So, I wonder what's going on in his mind. The conflict.

Amit: The conflict. Yeah. Between who I've become and who I was. Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. So that's why I'm Alkovich.

Okay.

Amit: Uh, It's a hell of a story, right? Yeah, I'm still dwelling on it. I'm still thinking on it.

Michael: Okay, what do you got?

Amit: Okay, here's my Malkovich. So, uh, we mentioned that he was the first black person to win a Best Actor Oscar. In fact, the first To win [00:28:00] a best lead role, there was, uh, from Gone with the Wind, there was a woman named Hattie McDaniel who won Best Supporting Actress.

Sidney Poitier wins in 1964 for Lilies of the Field. You don't

Michael: even know what I am, Dad. You don't know who I am. You don't know how I feel, what I think. And if I tried to explain it the rest of your life, you would never understand. You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it's got to be.

And not until your whole generation has lain down and died will the dead weight

Amit: of you be off our backs! And flash forward 38 years to 2002. Yeah. And Sidney Poitier is going to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Oscars. No black man has won Best Actor since then. No black woman has won Best Actress.

So the night that Sidney Poitier is honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award, first off, Halle Berry wins Best Actress for Monster's Ball. Yeah. And then [00:29:00] the very same night, Denzel Washington, for the first time in 38 years, a black man wins Best Actor for Training Day. And he essentially dedicates his speech to Sidney.

God

Michael: is great. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all. Forty years I've been chasing Sidney, they finally give it to me, what they do, they give it to him the same night.

I'll always be chasing you, Sidney. I'll always be following in your footsteps. There's nothing I would rather do, sir. Nothing I would rather do. God bless you.

Amit: The reason this is a Malkovich is not what you might expect of like, look what the legacy that I've created and passed down. It is, this is the divine.

This is the divine coming down in a cosmic intervention to really double, triple down on the validation of my work. I don't believe these [00:30:00] coincidence just happened that easily. Yeah. This goes back to our Yogi Berra episode where the first time that he returned to Yankee Stadium, after a 15 year absence, the first perfect game is thrown in 50 years.

Right? And so this is it. This is is Sidney Poitier at the 2002 Oscars.

Michael: With the Lifetime Achievement. With the Lifetime

Amit: Achievement Award, and a Best Actor, and a Best Actress, both going to African Americans, that was the perfect

Michael: game. The cynic in me wants to say that was orchestrated. That there was a PR campaign, that there was like momentum for Denzel Washington and Halle Berry winning that year, and then they, that there's something staged about that.

But I'm gonna back away from that. I'm gonna back away from that, because I don't think you can know, I don't think that those envelopes are predetermined, and I prefer to think that the divine is involved, because I think if you look for the divine, it's more meaningful. Not whether or not you find the

Amit: divine.

Correct. And the divine can still exist even if it's orchestrated. Yeah. It's one hand [00:31:00] of a god, one hand of Maradona.

Michael: What do you think is going through his mind?

Amit: I think just pure joy. Yeah. You know, maybe looking back on arriving to, to New York at age 16, which at this point had been 50 plus years ago.

Yeah. And saying, look how far. We've come. Yeah, and Look at the role I played in it and look at the joy. Look at the tears on Halle Berry's face Yeah, it was a real emotional speech. Yeah, everybody remembers that 22 years ago

Michael: So much bigger than me This moment is for every nameless faceless woman of color That now has a chance because [00:32:00] his

Uh, so Aman and I discussed it ahead of time and we're going to do a couple of categories that we think are most relevant, uh, to the Sydney Poitier life story. The first category we're going to do is love and marriage. This is a question where we ask how many marriages, also how many kids, and is there anything public about these relationships?

We've started to broaden this one out a little bit more to look at family life more broadly. Yeah. Uh, you know, I've already talked a lot about his folks, and so I don't want to go too far into that. I think that the two things to talk about here actually probably are the marriages. Uh, so Sidney Poitier, just to go through the data first and then we'll come back to it.

There are two marriages. Juanita Hardy from, uh, they were married in 1950 until 1965. They had four daughters together. Sidney was 23 when they got married, 38 when they got divorced. Uh, in 1959, during this marriage, Sidney Poitier began a nine year affair. Fair with [00:33:00] actress Diane Carroll, and we're going to talk more about that in a second.

Amit: Can I speak? Or actually, do you want to talk about this now? I'm just going to throw in the fun fact. Diane Carroll is Lenny Kravitz's aunt. Yes,

Michael: but Lenny Kravitz had yet to arrive by the time Sidney Poitier and Diane Carroll had hit it off. Correct. And then in 1976, Sidney Poitier marries his second wife, Joanna, uh, Poitier.

Shiku, uh, they have two daughters. Sidney Pointier at this point is 49. They're together until his death age, 94. So they wound up being married for 45 years. So, okay. Juanita and Diane? Yeah. You wanted to talk about this a little, a little, a little

Amit: Diddy About Juanita and Diane.

Michael: Little Diddy . Yeah. Cute. The John Mellencamp.

Yeah.

Amit: So I did wanna talk about it because Sidney Poitier is, um, not only a resolute hero as the obituary would say, but he is a guy of extreme values. As he chose his roles, as he played his roles, as he defined most of his life, he said he, uh, wants to carry out the values of his parents.

Michael: [00:34:00] Well, and, I mean, just take that a step further, like, he's also the, like, quintessential representative of virtue in some ways, right?

In, in all the roles he's playing in the 60s. Part of the reason he's the man of the moment is that he's just, like, imbued with natural integrity, and We'll talk more about the complexity around what that means, but that's real. That's coming from the inside out in a big way. He's got big time family values.

Yeah.

Amit: I'm just confused, frankly, Michael. Like, the idea of a public extramarital affair in the 1960s with a person who is a symbol of virtues. As you talked about, I, I just don't get it, right? Like, I, I understand marriages fail and dissolve. I don't understand why not divorce. Well,

Michael: okay, so there's some weird things about this.

And it's kind of dated, like, how this played out to me. So, in 1959, [00:35:00] 1960, Sidney Poitier and, uh, Diane fall in love and they're both married and they say, let's go home and let's tell our spouses, which they do. And Sidney Poitier tells the story in his book about how difficult this was, one of the most, you know, gut wrenching moments of his life.

What I think is a little unusual, I mean, this still happens today, but is that not both of the other spouses immediately wanted out of the marriage. I think because divorce was just a lot way less common as part of it. Also, I think way more harder to get. But in any case, um, Juanita, uh, Sidney's spouse, is like, will you just get rid of that woman so that we can get on with our normal lives, essentially.

And then Monty, I think is, uh, Diane Carroll's husband's name, like, he's pissed off, but like, that they don't just run to court. I guess they just didn't do that back then. I

Amit: don't know. Is it as simple as that? It's just you didn't do it back then? I

Michael: don't know if you didn't do it back then, but I do think that the institution of marriage and [00:36:00] the Transgression of infidelity was just thought of in a broad sense in a different way.

Part of the thing is, though, that they didn't, like, have a fling. And it's not like they got drunk and hooked up. It was a

Amit: nine year on and get off kind of affair. Yes, it

Michael: was an actual, like, they fell in love with each other. You know, I don't know. The psychology of anybody, uh, involved in this scandalous love that's not triangles, quadrangle, whatever it is, rhombus, rhombus, scandalous rhombus.

The question I think you're trying to get at is the inner conflict in Sidney Poitier, that he represents things and he cares about virtue and family and integrity and so forth, and yet he can't seem to match.

Amit: That's not entirely accurate because I'm not saying he should withhold love. Right. If his heart truly does belong somewhere else and he's learned that through a course of time, then yes, he is entitled to happiness.

[00:37:00] Yeah. Fully. I am confused about the staying in the marriage. Ah, okay. Right, and this is very different from like Muhammad Ali, right, who had a string of dozens of affairs. And the wife was very privy to it, right? And Maradona was similar to that. And I'm not passing a value judgment at all. I just can't wrap my

Michael: head around it.

Well, I think I can help. I think that both relationships were fundamental to a man who was under unbelievable pressure, and he did not know how to navigate the world in any other way. In fact, I've got something on this from his book, uh, let me just lay it down because what he winds up doing is going to Harry Belafonte and saying, I need help.

And, uh, and he winds up going to a psychiatrist, uh, to, into analysis. This is when he's deep into therapy. Psychoanalysis offered several insights, one of which might eventually prove to be accurate that Diane and Juanita were for me, two halves of a perfect whole. Home, hearth, and children gave Juanita a such strong appeal, while the excitement of a cultivated, glamorous, and talented lady [00:38:00] suited the restless side of my nature.

Yet who could say for sure I would have fared better if I'd found the perfect combination of these qualities in a single person? Would such perfection in one woman have driven me through the furnace and tried my soul as happened when my ideal whole was represented by two independent halves? But enough of this futile effort.

If there are answers, however important, are they now? For those who are interested, here is a clue. When I was finally able to obtain my divorce, which she does finally get in 1965, I remember feeling liberated. But from what? From an unhappy marriage, surely, but I also suspect from one independent half of a two sided whole.

If the whole is dependent on the existence of the two independent halves, the liberation from one half weakens the need for, or dependency on, the other half. Just as much as he gives

Amit: us. Okay, so he's saying that the need for the, the safe, comfortable Side has been liberated. I guess. Do you get that though?

I mean, I think that was my interpretation

Michael: of the passage I actually reread this six or seven [00:39:00] times. Like what is he trying to say here? I mean the idea that You have a need That gets filled by two women, and you, or two partners, and you inevitably put them in a state of conflict. Uh, doesn't quite recognize their humanity.

Amit: It seems extraordinarily selfish,

Michael: right? Which maybe is the whole point of why we're bringing this up. There is something very contradictory about how we think in regard of Sidney Poitier in this moment and what's actually happening in his personal life. I feel like some of this is inevitable. I don't mean to excuse it.

Yeah, without a doubt. It's, yeah. I guess what does it impact? Does it impact his legacy

Amit: for you? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think honesty prevailed above all of these things. Whether there was somebody, you know, Juanita, it sounds like she, she may have, and Monty, bared the brunt of the hurt. At

Michael: least everybody walked away hurt in the end.

I mean, as soon as he gets the divorce. Like, the [00:40:00] relationship with Diane falls apart. There was something about the, like, irregularity and chaos of it that made the whole thing kind of hold together like a house of

Amit: cards. Yeah, the honesty and acknowledgement of it, I think, is what doesn't tarnish a legacy for me.

I

Michael: mean, what happens at the end of that is that he is a lot more aware of who he is, he winds up, um, falling in love with his second wife and they stayed married for 45 years. All of that tells me that he's in a state of conflict and he figures it out at some point after the fire of the 1960s civil rights movement and his experience as a, you know, top shelf movie star kind of cools off a little bit.

I just think it's hard to figure out who you are in that moment. Yeah. There's nothing surprising in a way about it, but it's also, it does stand a little bit in contrast to what we know of him and the kind of, I don't know, um, uh, high regard he's, he's held in today.

Amit: Yeah. It's funny that now like [00:41:00] 60 years after though, we can't really look back and say, you know, I would have done this differently.

Yeah. I don't know. This is, I mean, this is just the human condition. It is our tendency to have emotion and. To be evolving and changing and imperfect. Yeah,

Michael: I think it's also like, we want love to ground us. Like, we want love to tell us something about ourselves. I mean, there's this adage out there that like, what intimacy is really about is having somebody see you the way you want to be seen.

Yeah. And if you aren't clear on how you want to be seen and you're getting a lot of Confusing messages from the outside world of what it means to be seen and and how you want to be seen then it's hard to know exactly what shape that love looks like, you know, again, it's not necessarily forgiven, but it's just such a natural human response to the circumstances that he found himself in.

And I do think that I tend to see a lot of attention to family life. And as much as he can provide it in the years going forward. I mean, [00:42:00] he talks a little bit in the book about his relationship with his children.

Amit: Yeah, and they all speak very fondly of him if you see the Apple documentary.

Michael: Right, and there are some parts where it wasn't always easy, but there's like a lot of love and admiration.

So, I don't know, I kind of feel like Some point he gets right sized. I don't know. I feel like this happens to a lot of people in like the peak of their vitality, you know? Yeah. That, that, that you're just trying to wear so many hats that you're gonna, there's only so many balls you can juggle in the air and like to know oneself from the inside out at that stage is just hard.

Yeah. So that's

Amit: my take. Frankly, I'm, I'm not joyous, but I'm just like, every, every time that we unveil imperfection in the seemingly perfect is,

Michael: it's nice. I agree. It humanizes Sidney Poitier for, in a way that it, like, I kind of need this man a little bit humanized because he's, he's a little impressive.

He is like, oh my God. You know, like I, I would shrink a lot. Yeah. , if I were in his presence, I would, I would.

Amit: I think Oprah used those words [00:43:00] the first time she met

Michael: him. Is that right? Yeah. Is Okay. So if that's her experience, I can't imagine how I'd. All right, let's go on to the next category, voicemail. How did this person feel about their voice when they heard it on a voicemail or home answering machine?

Also, would they have had the humility to record the outgoing voice message themselves? So this is sort of a two part question. First, let's talk about the voice. I love these examples. You referenced this in five things where people. Take the time to train their own voices. You know, sometimes it's to overcome like a speech impediment or something.

But there's something, I think, very powerful about voice consciousness. And Sidney Poitier's voice is astounding to me. I don't know what the right word is, but it's so, it's got such like power to, you know. Like it's, it's like thespian, it's so, it's, it's placeless, you know. It's so exotic in a way. Like, when you learn that he was from the Bahamas, but then, [00:44:00] like, trained himself to try and talk like an American broadcaster.

I would plug in this little radio, and I would listen until I fell asleep, and whatever was said on the radio, I would repeat it. Like a parrot. I would just listen, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. And, it took some months, and my, the The heavy A in the Caribbean speech and the rhythmic sing songy patterns began to, to fade and I began to develop.

At least the rhythm and pronunciation of how people spoke in the U. S. I think he has tremendous voice consciousness. I also think he loved his voice. Yeah.

Amit: Was that your take too? Yeah, I challenge you to find anyone in the world that doesn't love

Michael: his voice. Yeah. You know, when he's interviewed, I, I, and I, I imagine myself being like a host on the other side of that microphone.

Like I just, I'm not sure if I can measure up, you know. It sort of like, it sort of [00:45:00] like challenges you to be as interesting as

Amit: that voice. Correct. So as a pure audience member, we love it. Yeah. Right, but if you're somebody that has to answer to it or you're on the other side of it.

Michael: Right, or just buddies with them, like, hey, you want to go get a beer?

You know, and yes, look, huh, you know. I do think part of his crafting of himself. I think that plays out in the voice. I think there's a deliberateness to it. Okay. Humility. This is the more interesting question here. He's somewhat conscious of his legacy, and there's a really telling passage from his book.

This is the last time I'll read it, I promise. As he's become the really only marquee black actor in the 1960s, um, he says something, uh, here's what he has to say in his book. My name had become increasingly familiar to film goers and by the end of 1962, so this is early 60s, developing in Hollywood a history making new attitude countering the long held conviction that the appearance of blacks in other than [00:46:00] menial roles would offend the movie industry's principal constituency.

The realization that Year by year, more and more white Americans were willing to pay their way into a theater to see entertainment about blacks or involving blacks would encourage most of the studios to make minor alterations in their rigid and generally insulting policy for dealing with America's black citizens.

Though history will accurately acknowledge my presence in those proceedings. My contribution was no more than being at the right place at the right time. One in that series of perfect accidents from which fate fashions her grand designs. History will pinpoint me as merely a minor element in an ongoing major event.

A small if necessary energy, but I am nonetheless gratified. at having been chosen. He's an elegant man. Like, really eloquent. Like, you know, when he speaks, it's for somebody who ended his formal education at age 12, my god, he's got a good [00:47:00] vocabulary. Yes. And uses it. Like, you hear it in his diction, you hear it in his spoken and written words.

So you're

Amit: choosing that paragraph as a case for humility. Here's

Michael: what's interesting to me, I guess, from a humility point of view. One, you feel lucky. Two, it's really exciting. Three, you're also being like lifted higher and higher and higher and higher and higher. Are you able to invoke the divine? Are you able to say, I'm the right man at the right time and I happen to fit the bill and have the right set of characteristics?

I mean, basically the question is, how do you not let all this go to your head? I see a yearning, an attempt, a recognition that humility and luck and fate have to be accounted for in order to just keep you grounded. So I, I think he knows in his head that that's the right, you know, place to track [00:48:00] for. You know, whether or not he arrives there, I think he does.

I think he records his voicemail. Yeah, I think so. Um, I don't know. As I was doing the research for this episode, I'm really asking myself this question over and over. What are the obvious signs of genuine humility?

Amit: Yeah, I think he's somebody that, you know, I'm going to go back to values and, you know, the golden or the first rule of values is often the golden one of, uh, of the way you treat others.

Yeah. And I think just on display, Sidney Poitier of being somebody guided by values. Does treat people as people. Yeah. You know, I think anybody that he may come across or that may call him is going to get the most personal interaction that they're gonna get. Yeah. I think, you know, that's the reason we spent so much time on this quandary of his marriage because it doesn't seem to fit that, uh, that.

It's just confusing. It's a confusing narrative. So,

Michael: with all of that, do you think Sidney Poitier left his voicemail on his cell phone or home answering machine? Yes.

Amit: So do I. Humans are too

Michael: [00:49:00] important to him. Yeah. Okay, next category. Cocktail, coffee, or cannabis. This is where we ask, which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity?

This may be a question of what to do. Drug sounds like the most fun to partake with this person, or another philosophy is that a particular kind of drug might allow access to a part of them we are most curious about.

Amit: What'd you go with? Cocktail. Which kind? Which kind? Uh, a, I didn't choose, but I'm gonna go Manhattan.

I think an ode, an ode to his, uh, 16 year old escape. I'm sorry, this is

Michael: Pete Nicolatas. What? He's from the Bahamas. I need a rum drink. Come on. I also want to have a drink, uh, some kind of cocktail. And I think it's a cocktail. I think it's a mixed drink of some sort. Uh, why did you go cocktail?

Amit: It's something I'm curious about, and we haven't talked much about this, but the whole backlash that came after the rise of Sidney Poitier, right, that as you moved away from the 60s and sort of the purity of civil rights and you had things like the Black [00:50:00] Panthers and Blaxploitation, there was sort of an anti Sidney Poitier movement.

Yeah. safe negro or, uh, white people's favorite black man. I would think that

Michael: would have made you even angrier when you get charges that you're not standing up, you're not black enough because you have, in your own way, behind the scenes and on the screen, been standing up for that which you believe to be true and right.

Yeah, but you know, history, uh, passes the final judgment and, uh, in my case, The body of work stands

Amit: for itself. So let's just pause right there. Okay. That's the cocktail conversation. It's about fairness. And this treatment specifically around race. Because I think there is probably nobody better suited to comment on that than Sidney

Michael: Poitier.

But what's the question you want to ask

Amit: him? Yeah, I would say this. And let me caveat this with there is a little bit of parallel. You know, and what I see in his, in his plight and a little bit of my own [00:51:00] backstory, right? There was, I grew up in the whitest possible neighborhood. Yeah. You know, all my friends were white.

Sometimes I have to very softly answer, to am I Indian enough? Yeah. Right? And that's why I'm curious. Personally, that's why I'm curious about it. Yeah, yeah,

Michael: yeah, yeah, yeah. Did I sell out

Amit: somewhere? Sure. Yeah, exactly. I mean, exactly. Yeah. So the question I wanna ask for Cindy Poitier is, first of all, I'd say you, you see their point, right?

Hmm. You do see how people take this position, right? How they can take this argument if you are not the ideal representation Yeah. Of us or you are not blank enough. And so what I want to talk to him about is you understand their point. You are a smart, very intuitive man as you understand where they are coming from.

Yeah. So what do you do? to straddle both lines of you being who you are, but you also wanting the, um, race to be properly representative and progressive. And I don't know how to answer that, because he got them to where they are, but what they're saying is that now it's 70s and it's time to move [00:52:00] over, suit it up as a neat boy DA.

And, uh, I am very, very curious. I guess

Michael: I have a similar question for him, which is like, what does progress look like next, you know? Next from

Amit: now or next from after he was climbing?

Michael: Next from

Amit: now. I mean, it's a variation on the same question to me. Is it? Okay. Yeah, I mean, it is this entire conflict of we don't want to see color, we don't want to see difference, we want to live just as John Lennon, you know, wanted us to.

But we also want to stand very pridefully behind our cultures and our affiliations. And that's the hardest fuck thing to straddle, right? And I think he's very uniquely qualified to provide that perspective, either whether it's from the perspective of 1970, when he started to receive a lot of backlash, or whether it's the perspective from right now of 2024, and the multiple, multiple groups we have here in the United States and in the entire

Michael: world.

I think I just need to sit and listen to that conversation. [00:53:00]

Amit: You can sit on the table behind. Yeah. Part and

Michael: parcel with that, I guess I'd also want to know, I still want to know how it felt. That moment of backlash, which I, I don't know, to me in retrospect sitting here in 2024 is sort of predictable. You know, I, I just wonder how he did the internal accounting.

Yeah. You know, what I did do, what I did with the hand I was dealt, what I'm going to do now, you know, and, and, and how do I find my

Amit: true north? So is that, is that what you were asking as well with your question you

Michael: wanted to ask as well? it, it is. I'm, I'm at a little bit of a loss for words. I, I, and I'll, and maybe just to step out of it a little bit, I really liked Wesley Morris drawing a parallel between him and Barack Obama.

This sort of like, what is the. figure of blackness that white America can tolerate at any given moment, and then how do we deconstruct those characteristics, um, in order to make sense of our sociopolitical lives, you know, and, and, like, [00:54:00] he is a fascinating figure that way, and I think more fascinating, actually, than almost anybody else.

Because he is also a character, like he's also an actor, right? And so we're seeing a range of portrayals of blackness across his movies. So I don't know where I'm at with it. I also felt like, what is the best place for me to sit and listen? Because I've got more to learn here and I'm not quite sure even where, what question to ask, but I think you asked the right one.

Yeah. That's the right start. Yeah.

Amit: So I think we're at the same, we're at the same starting point and the same ending point. All

Michael: right then. Speaking of ending points. The Van Der Beek named after James Van Der Beek, who famously said in Varsity Blues, I don't want your life. Do you want this life?

Amit: It looks pretty damn good.

Michael: What are the Knox against?

Amit: We talked about this 60s love affair, marriage, that confusion. And again, I have to reiterate, You don't fault anyone for the heart, but this duplicity seems just

Michael: difficult. But you created [00:55:00] some pain on the home front, and people were hurt.

Amit: Yeah, so that's a strike against, you know, there is the icon's burden, which is, I think, a lot of that conversation that we just had in coffee, cocktail, and cannabis.

Totally. That is hard as hell, to have that much weight on your shoulders, to bear the pride of a race at a certain, um, I've gone back and

Michael: forth on this show, whether I want that or not, you know, whether I want to stand for something or not, and like, because the more people we've covered, the more I've come to sort of like, appreciate the depth of that challenge, that burden.

Yeah,

Amit: I'm not sure I want something that difficult. Did

Michael: it look fun? Did this look like a fun life to you? Yeah. Yeah,

Amit: it sort of does, right? It did. I mean, I think the way he acted, it was a challenger role that he always played because he was correcting a stereotype, but he also, everything was assertive, you know, that wonderful voice of his.

He got to make the best speeches, you know. His

Michael: voice as instrument, that's the thing I never said in voicemail, like, if the voice is a musical instrument, this [00:56:00] man is playing with a Stratocaster 1960, whatever. I mean, you know what I mean? Like he is, he is working with one of the great instruments of all time.

Yeah.

Amit: And then to, you know, to start off and meeting Harry Belafonte when you're in your early twenties and both of you are nothings, you know, you're the maintenance guy at the theater and he is barely an understudy, you know, it's that's awesome. I love that friendship. And,

Michael: like, I do hear a lot of stories about him really trying to mentor the next generation of black actors.

Not in a, like, you should do this or should not do that, but just making himself available.

Amit: Yeah. I mean, you kind of hear those behind the scenes stories. And some people can't even utter his name without crying. Yeah. You know, like in that Denzel Washington thing I talked about. Oprah, for Christ's sakes.

Oprah cannot even utter his name without crying. I mean, that is significance. That is meaning. That is actual love. So, yeah, it looks fun. I don't think I have to at all explain the meaning, so, meaning, purpose, love, and fun. Check, check, check, check the burden. Eh, don't know. But I wouldn't mind having the muscle to do it.

[00:57:00] Yeah. And I think he did. Yeah. And if I can get that, if I can get the resilience and the, the head strength. of Sidney Poitier to have that life and enjoy the ride and enjoy the challenges and be able to look back at where I started and where I was in the middle and at the end, then yeah, hell yeah. I want your life, Sidney

Michael: Poitier.

I don't think I'm going to add anything to that, Ahmed. I could make this more complex because I do see real inner turmoil. I do see a tug of war in a lot of different places in him, but I also, I do feel like in as much as he. was born, you know, against the odds into a life that didn't look like it was going to have much power.

The amount of power and agency he rises to and the way he tries to temper that, you know, through example and through model and through deliberation and, and, and, uh, eloquence. I would like to have that kind of truth, you know, in every fiber of my being. And that's [00:58:00] ultimately what I see. Not faultless. By any stretch of the imagination, but no, this is a man to look up to and this is a life I would want.

So yes, I'm a

Amit: yes. Yeah. And you said, I mean, you said it, you know, you see a lot of inner turmoil and inner conflict. I mean, I, I've said it over and over again, Michael, if you don't see that, you're not looking at this person correctly. Yeah, we all got it. They all got it. We all got it. Yeah. Yeah. First person.

Yeah.

Michael: Amit, you are Sidney Poitier. Uh, you have died. You have ascended to the Part of the Gates, you stand before St. Peter, the Unitarian proxy for whatever lies beyond. You have an opportunity to make a pitch. What was your grand contribution to the stream of life? St. Peter,

Amit: we can look upon the world and accept it for what it is, accept our limitations, accept our portrayals, accept what other people think of us.

That's one route. The [00:59:00] other route is the Sidney Poitier route, where we defy them all. We defy where we came from. We defy all the roles that were set out before we were here. And we defied what other people thought of us. Let me in.

Michael: Famous and Gravy listeners, we want to hear from you. We need people to participate in our opening quiz where we reveal the dead celebrity. You can email us at hello at famous and gravy. com If you're enjoying our show, please tell your friends. You can find us on TwitterX, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Threads.

Our handle is at Famous Gravy. We also have a newsletter you can sign up for on our website, FamousAndGravy. com. Famous Gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me, Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss. Original theme music by Kevin Strang. Thank you so much for listening. See you next time.