Fast Forward Friday with Tonya Pinkins
For this week’s Fast Forward Friday, we interviewed the multi-talented, Tony Award winning actress-writer-director Tonya Pinkins. She has been nominated for three Tony Awards, winning for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Jelly’s Last Jam, and has won the Obie, Lortel, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, AUDLECO, Garland, L.A. Drama Critics Circle, Clarence Derwent, and NAACP Theater Awards. She is known for her portrayal of Livia Frye on the soap opera All My Children. She is also the host of the Broadway Podcast Network’s You Can’t Say That! https://broadwaypodcastnetwork.com/podcast/you-cant-say-that/
Q: What are you currently working on? Tell us about it.
I am working on expressing as much of the radiance of the divine as is destined for me this incarnation. Tangibly that looks like producing, writing, directing and acting in a socio-political horror film about the 2020 election starring Ruben Blades, Cathy Curthy, Kathy Erbe, Luba Mason, Colby Minifie and Jake O’Flaherty called Red Pill. I am also writing my next horror film Match.die, and then I am in edit on a series of 10 minute plays and songs that were produced at the Tank in 2019. They plays are about the ways women oppress one another and each play or song models a way to heal the wound. And then there is my novel The Angry Fat Black Woman Who Devoured The Earth and my travel memoir about walking the 100 mile west highland way in Scotland. It’s called A Woman’s Walk on the West Highland Way and it’s WILD meets 50 Shades of Grey.
Q: What was the inspiration and impetus for doing this project?
I am always creating multiple projects simultaneously. It is what I was born to do. I have four children. Egon Weiner said, “The only appropriate response to abuse is creativity,” so the harder life has hit me, the more creative I have become.
Q: Who are your artistic heroes who have had an impact on you and your work?
My artistic heroes include George C Wolfe, Eve Ensler. Larry Kramer, Jane Fonda, Ivan Van Hove, Sam Mendes, Colmon Domingo, and Lin Manuel Miranda.
Q: What other projects would you like to tell us about?
I have a spider comedy/horror trilogy called Blaracknophia. Yeah, its about black people’s fear of spiders and people’s fear of black people.
Q: What is one instance of knowing you are living in your vision?
I had a moment on the set of Red Pill where I realized that the thing I wanted most, which was to have a team, and the thing I have never wanted, which was to be a leader because I feared leading people astray, were inextricably intertwined. I have really successful colleagues but I had never been able to initiate a project with them. Yet here I was making a movie. I had a team and I was the leader. It was an epiphany. I had to trust that I would not lead them astray.
Q: If there were no barriers to entry, what is one thing you would be doing?
I would move from creative expression to creative expression. Write a piece of non-fiction, then a fiction book, Then run off to do a concert, then direct a film, act in a mini-series, write a Broadway show, travel and give away a lot of the wealth I accumulated from the success of my creative endeavors.
Q: What has been big your biggest obstacle in achieving your vision?
I know the value of my art and in the time when I came up and the way I was brought up I was allowed to be as smart, talented and ambitious as my heart desired. I had to fit into other people’s ideas of what i was. It has taken me a lifetime to step into what is inside of me and risk expressing it without fear or shame.
Q: If you could let go of something that has held you back, what would it be?
I would let go of the fear that pride goeth before the fall and have allowed myself to know that I was good rather than having to be faux humble for fear of inviting God’s wrath.
I would also let go of my screen addiction, which has slowed down my progress. I waste so much time mindlessly swiping pages.
Q: If you could be known and celebrated for one thing, what would it be?
I want to be know for defying every odd and becoming one the of the most successful creative artists in the history of creativity. And that isn’t on a fame scale. It is on an artistic expression scale.
Q: If you could describe yourself in one word what would it be?
Indomitable.
Q: What is your guilty pleasure?
I am a sugar addict. But food is my sex.
Q: If you could sit down with yourself 15 years ago, what would you say?
I would say: “Stop trying to do it the right way. Do it your way and it will be right for you, which is the best any of us can do.”
Q: Where would you most like to live?
I like mountains over the sea. So Bali or Mexico. But I have not traveled enough to say definitively.
Q: What is your idea of success?
There are many kinds of success.
I am successful at being authentic to my being.
I want to to be successful at magnetizing the resources to create any and everything I can imagine at the highest level possible.
Q: What is your idea of happiness?
Happiness is wanting what you have and having what you want. Doing things because you want to, and not doing things because you don’t want to and requiring no more explanation than that. Having the resources to live, travel, meet, and experience everything your heart can imagine. Being able to share your wealth and help others.
Q: Final Thoughts?
I don’t know how much time I have left. I hope I bring into the world all the stories that fill my heart. I hope I have left the world a better place for having been here. I know I have been blessed. I hope I have been a blessing.