AUP. Ep. 39: In Defense of Whitney Houston

AUP EP#39 TRANSCRIPT

Transcribed: Cameron Blackwell

Completed: 2/7/22

Cortney Wills: [00:00:03] Hello and welcome to Acting Up the podcast that dives deep into the world of TV and film that highlights our people, our culture and our stories. I’m your host, Cortney Wills, Entertainment Director at theGrio. And this week we’re sitting down with Gerrick Kennedy, author of Didn’t We Almost Have It All: In Defense of Whitney Houston. I’m so glad that we get to talk about this book today, and it feels so appropriate to kick off Black History Month with the examination of a life and a career that has made such a huge impact on our community had such a huge impact on how Black folks Black music Black women were looked at, thought about utilized in the entertainment industry and beyond. And I know that Whitney Houston’s contribution to the culture is really one that we’re just now starting to tap into. And now there’s been some time it’s been almost 10 years since her tragic demise, and we have this beautiful book from Gerrick Kennedy. Didn’t we almost have it all in defense of Whitney Houston? And it is so impressive and really quite unique. The book has a foreword by Brandy and it is really touching, and it prefaces an introduction from Gerrick that really kind of explains why he decided to write this book. That, I will tell you is not a biography and is not a Tell-All. It’s not going to answer all of those lingering burning questions. It’s not full of drama, but it is full of scholarship and perspective, and those things are utilized in a way that I’ve really never seen employed so powerfully to examine the life of an entertainer. He said that very clearly in the intro that if you’re looking for a straightforward cradle to grave story, this is not the book for you. It’s not a collection of anecdotes from her inner circle, and the answers to all the lingering questions of her fall are not inside these pages. What you are about to read is a roadmap of memory, shame, loss and love. This is a celebration of all that Whitney was and all that she was never able to be, as well as an interrogation of who we were when she first came to us and what we did with the Whitney we were given. Phew, that’s deep. Gerrick is a dear friend of mine, and I have not called him or texted him since I got my hands on this book. I texted him to tell him I had it, but I have been reserving all of my reactions for this conversation that I am so glad to have him here on Acting Up. Gerrick, this was not the book that I thought you were writing. [00:02:48][164.7]

Gerrick Johnson: [00:02:49] It’s been my biggest source of anxiety of like, OK, I I know there’s an expectation, but I worked really hard to do something completely different that doesn’t exist for this person who, you know, obviously we all care about a great deal, but also like this is needed. Like, we need this for our our people, you know, like we don’t get this kind of scholarship. We don’t get this kind of like critical fire like we don’t. And I really, really, really, really wanted to have that in the world. [00:03:19][30.4]

Cortney Wills: [00:03:20] I thought that your approach to this book, the talking about a celebrity in and contextualizing their career was so innovative. How did you come up with that? This book is so brilliant. It is so beautiful. It feels to me like a collective apology that I think we all owe her. I think the circumstances of Whitney’s tumultuous personal life and her tragic death make it difficult to kind of know where to file her in your brain now. Like, it makes it difficult to understand where to put her now, how to look at her now. And this felt like a really great guide to how to look at this career, how to examine this life and what to take from it. And also what we as a public, as fans, as critics contributed to it. [00:04:13][53.3]

Gerrick Johnson: [00:04:14] And that was so important, and it was also like me working out my own grief and also not just my own grief, but my own guilt, because I think there is a way in which we inadvertently are all complicit in how we treat these people because of, you know. Yeah, it’s it’s coverage. And yeah, people are talking about it. And so we do have to write about it. But I do think there’s an element where like, there’s been times where it’s felt cruel. And you know, and I thought so much about, you know, that last tour that she had in like having to write a piece about, you know, it’s like it’s a new story, right? And it’s, you know, people are booing and they’re asking for their money back and this whole thing. And that’s news. It’s huge news, but it’s also somebody at a really low point. And so that sort of dance that you do where culturally it was a joke, so you make jokes, you make light of it. You know, you do the whole thing. You know, you’re you’re pithy, your voice, all these things that we’re supposed to be right because it’s it’s what’s going to drive in the traffic. It’s it’s going to get it is going to get the clicks and whatnot and. The level of shame, I think I felt about how so many of us, some intentional, some just it was just how we were, it was how we write about people, how we spoke about people’s, how we talked about people. So all of those things that I also was trying to work through as well. And kind of. Honor, the fact that we’ve all changed, but we only change because we lost all these people. And that’s really complicated thing to acknowledge. [00:05:53][99.4]

Cortney Wills: [00:05:54] At the same time that we got the tragic news that Regina King had lost her son Ian to suicide and all of the emotions that I was going through reading this book and reliving that time were, you know, really front of mind when I even started thinking about how to cover that and how to digest that. And wow, I was really upset that on the day that she found out this horrific news about her son, she basically had to go to work to issue a statement, to respond to a report that we really shouldn’t have had yet. It wasn’t our business yet. She didn’t tell us this yet. He was not a public figure. I don’t feel like we’re entitled to that. I don’t think that she owes us that. I just hate sometimes the place that we’re in right now. It’s like sometimes the relentless desire to be first kind of negates any semblance of like human decency that people have. [00:06:57][62.6]

Gerrick Johnson: [00:06:57] And to see, I think you know what I struggle with with that story in particular, was to see one of our own, you know, sort of not only break that, but also celebrate with glee. Like, you know, we had it in like, why are you? Why are you upset with us for having it when you’re not upset, you know, with TMZ for breaking, you know, Bob Saget’s passing? And it’s like, well, it actually is different, unfortunately, because this is the child of a celebrity. So one, it’s not the news the way that you think it is, but also there is, you know, at least I know I learned it, but there is a practice around suicide and how you report on that. And I understand that we are in a time where there and we’ve been in this town for a long time where there are folks who have the same level of access, right? But they might necessarily have the same tradition, the same ethics, the same, you know, practices around, you know, how they do these things. And it doesn’t matter to most people at home reading this because they see it all the same. So it becomes a hit for all of us when these moments happen. And it really, really, really pains me to see, you know, that be a Black writer, a Black outlet, you know, write that and then not understand. You know, we’re not saying, yeah, you’re wrong, but this is why we’re saying that you’re wrong. And it is this thing of it became this fight against why do you only do this to Black media? And it’s like, that’s you’re missing. You’re missing the conversation. It’s so cruel in a way that I think you know this. Just where we’ve arrived to where social media has just desensitizes in a particular kind of way, and I know the pandemic has played a really big role in that, but it was, I felt like the Twilight Zone to watch this conversation play out. And so many people not understanding why we felt let down by this. To me, it felt just as awful as Colby in TMZ. And it’s just like, you know, there is no reason why anyone should be finding out through a news report. You know, and I get it, you know, obviously that’s, you know, sort of a different kind of situation because I’m quite sure Regina knew before this, but she wasn’t ready for us to know. [00:09:20][142.8]

Cortney Wills: [00:09:21] She wasn’t ready, she didn’t tell us. [00:09:22][0.8]

Gerrick Johnson: [00:09:22] And she didn’t tell us. And that was her, and that was her right. And that was her business to tell us because this is her child and her child is not a celebrity. [00:09:30][7.3]

Cortney Wills: [00:09:31] Your book did such a tremendous job of pointing us to really impactful moments that she had, whether in her personal life or on the charts and and frame it in terms of what was going on in the country and in our community. I think that made this into a real, a real. I mean, talk about Black History Month. You do go so deep, so effortlessly. Like, really? Are we talking about, you know, the Great Migration, and it makes sense. It really does. Yeah. How did you come up with this approach? It’s so innovative. [00:10:10][39.4]

Gerrick Johnson: [00:10:12] The approach, you know, I struggle deeply because, you know, here’s here’s the thing about, you know, this book this book did start as it started as a biography of her last 10 years because I believed there was no real work done around exploring who she was when she took time away from us in like doing the presentation of Whitney Houston. And yes, that was for lots of reasons, as we all know and as we all suspected. But I was really intrigued by that. I was intrigued by her. You know, living in Alpharetta and like having this quiet life. Although I mean, as quiet of a life as Whitney Houston was able to have, right, you know, and early 2000s. And as I started reporting that book out there was really kind of like two big questions that I had. One of those was, you know, God, I really wish that like one day we’d hear from Robyn, like just directly like not someone else, not not Rosie O’Donnell outing their relationship or whatever, which, you know? Sure. But I really just kind of wanted it to come directly from her because I felt she showed that to herself, because what I think so many people had tend to forget. Well, not that they tend to forget unless you are queer and have had this experience of like loving somebody in the shadows like you don’t. I mean, I really don’t care about your opinion about them, right? So I wanted her to have that moment because the world had made a decision about the two of them, and that had been how they had been spoken about for 40 years. You know, like 40, 40 years is a long time to be silent. And I think that said so much about her respect and her love for Whitney. And so when she wrote her book, I kind of thought, you know, this was the last piece of the puzzle. The other piece before that, of course, was, you know, the documentary that the family, you know, that they sort of, you know, sanctioned. And then of course, it became this investigative piece that they didn’t fully agree with. But that was that was part of a complication, right? You know, there was the story that they told us there was a story that she had that we were not aware of, but that we just, you know, kind of made assumptions around. And somewhere in between there, there was all the people who held those secrets or who wanted to protect or who didn’t feel like they should say anything. And so we kind of got this understanding around Whitney between the documentary and Robyn’s book. And also, you know, Clive put out a book and Bobby put out a book, Cissy published- everybody around her put out these books. And I understood part of it was, you know, she’s gone, and we are talking about her in a particular way that we were doing when she was still here, but it’s still only really steeped in her tragedy. And it made me really think about, you know, what I was working on. And the reality was I didn’t want to end up with what would have just been another biography about, even though I think that at some point someone should. I think I want to. I want to read a, you know, 500 page biography on Whitney in the entirety of her life with all these people and all this stuff. But I got to a place where I thought, you know, what I don’t see is I don’t see scholarship around her. I don’t see anybody that is studying not just what she meant, but what we did to her and what she did for us. What you know this time that we’re in now where we are reconsidering the ways in which we have like really, really, really torn down women, not just Black women, but especially Black women. But like this extends to Britney Spears. This extends to Lindsay Lohan. This extends to so many. Other women, but yes, it’s it’s a conversation that we are having with Black women, we’re having it about Whitney, we’re having it about Janet. We’re having it about Mariah. And I thought, because Whitney isn’t here, I at least wanted to write an offering about the ways in which I think about her and the ways in which you know her music. Once I was able to arrive back to a place of joy from all these years of grief like this is how I talk about her to my friends and just when I get to just be a music nerd and be like, Yeah, and did y’all noticed Cissy actually, you know, when I tell the story of, you know, Cissy and Mahalia Jackson and like people who love gospel, they just look at me and they’re like, what? I had no idea that there was a through line between the two, and I’m like, Yes, and can you imagine would then that means to someone who is in the belly of this person, right? And just what you can absorb through that the same way that we know when you play, you know, music for kids, when you know they’re in the womb, like that has impact. Imagine the impact when you know you have this woman who is so incredibly impactful to this world really pouring this into her child, you know, and there was something about that that I just it gives me chills to think about. And so I wanted to I wanted to write about that. But I also wanted to, you know, really also do the other thing too of like, God, why is nobody talking about, you know, My Love Is Your Love and the connection between that and waiting to excel and what was happening with hip hop and R&B with our women, you know, in the late 90s, after years and years and years and years and years of having to hear, you know, Oh, you know b*tch this, this hoe this, trick, all this other kind of stuff that was happening. And then we’re getting these responses. We’re getting a Little Kim, we’re getting a Foxy, we’re getting a Missy. We’re getting so many elements right. And how that then played into what Whitney did. And I thought that was so incredible. And I wanted to explore that the same way. I wanted to explore how awful it was that even in this current era, after we’ve had all these conversations, Kanye will still make a decision of, let’s put this photo of the drug den, then quote unquote on the cover of an album for shock value and just the way that our relationship with Whitney is still really rooted in tragedy and her tragedy, but also in our judgment of it. And that was something that I really wanted to unpack, and I see it now. You know, I’ve been, you know, obviously the book is coming out soon. And so, you know, I’m posting a bunch and I was scrolling down look at a couple of comments that don’t respond typically, but I’ll see these comments and it’s just like, well she’ll smoked it all away anyways. And just the way in which she’s just reduced to her addiction. And it’s this thing that I truly in my heart of hearts, believe if Whitney was a white woman, we would not have treated her this way with her addiction. If Whitney was a white man, we would’ve not treated her this way with her addiction. If she was the Black man, we would not have treated her this way with her addiction. There is something about the way in which Black women continue to be treated in this country. Yes, it’s it’s a it’s a it’s a global issue, but there’s something really specific about America because it’s kind of twofold. It’s coming from all sides. Our community, we do it outside of the community. We do it. You know, there was just all these layers to it that I thought was so worth unpacking and also really just kind of like doing the uncomfortable thing of like holding a mirror up as a writing and being like, this is just what it is and being really honest. And so that’s how I arrive to this. And it was, you know, it started, you know, with this one particular idea of these ten years and then it became, you know, let’s have a bigger conversation. Let’s have a different conversation because what I do hope happens from this book is I hope someone picks it up and is like, Oh my god, I like this. However, I thought about this album in this particular way, so I’m going to write a whole book about this album. I learned a whole book about The Bodyguard. I want to write a whole book about My Love Is Your Love. I want the book to be permission for people to celebrate her in a particular kind of way. But I do think we’ve gotten to with some of the music, but we don’t. We don’t do it with like. The totality of her, we don’t do it with all of who she is and was right, we, we and I and I get so much of that is rooted in a lot of our own collective guilt around the ways in which we showed up for her, which I wanted to write to that too. But I just think there was there was this thing that I had in my head where I was like, Well, you know, Gerrick, maybe you have to just give people the permission to think this way and so hold their hand and walk them through it, even when it’s going to be really uncomfortable, even when it’s going to be, Hey, we were awful. You know what I mean? But even when it’s those moments of she was awful, you know the things she said about Robyn? They were not great, you know, but it was a defense. And I don’t excuse it. I don’t let her off the hook the same way. I don’t let her off the hook for, you know, other particular things. But I also want to have the reminder of saying it in another way. [00:19:21][549.2]

Cortney Wills: [00:19:21] There were so many incredible chapters which I love that you named after some titles. That was really cool. I think my favorite one was Miss America the Beautiful, the Burden of the National Anthem and the Politics of Whitney’s Blackness. That hit me so hard because I feel like when I look back for the longest time, she was so like the most acceptable Black woman. Like, I remember going, I don’t know what grade I was from. Bodyguard came out, but it did something to me that the White Hall Kevin Costner saw her as desirable. When I went to my predominantly white school and had never seen a white guy attracted to a Black woman like at the time in what the 90’s like that felt big, it felt like white people are calling her. I knew that, like my dad thought Whitney Houston was pretty, but I didn’t think that his dad actually was pretty until I saw the bodyguard and just in my little, you know, mind, even that made an impact for us, for her to have met such disrespect. I think the disrespect that, like you just highlighted is has, you know, come to be expected for Black women. Like it didn’t even matter that she was working so hard to live up to these standards. That made her an acceptable representative, the most acceptable representative. It still didn’t do it. [00:20:51][89.2]

Gerrick Johnson: [00:20:51] It didn’t do anything. And I mean, I did. I did an interview a couple of months back. It was like Public Radio and DC and I got this DM from this woman. And she, she was white, only knows because she started off. I’m a white woman. But she like, you start off like I’m a white woman. And I was so disgusted by your conversation today. How dare you say the Whitney Houston faced racism? She was the most beloved woman on the planet, and she just kept going on and on and on about how no one ever saw her color in the whole, you know, and and those are my favorite words when it’s like no one ever saw her, I don’t see color. I don’t see color, and it’s just like, I want to just push back on you right there because you say, that lets me know that actually you do. And you think that somehow you saying those words means that you think that I am going to react in a different kind of way of, Oh my god, yes. You don’t see me for being Black, but also you do see me for being Black because you felt the need to tell me, I don’t see you for being Black because I know that usually that means you encounter some level of violence. Usually you encounter some level of hatred. Usually you encounter something, right? So to say someone like Whitney never experienced racism completely strips her of her entire experience as a Black woman doing the music that she did. Yes, she was loved by the world. Absolutely. Of course. But you are lying to yourself if her story is not rooted in racism. If the ways in which she was treated is not rooted in racism, you were completely lying to yourself. And I get I get wanting to be able to say something like that about someone like that because they were so beloved. You know, it’s the same. It’s the same way that I imagine, you know, there are some white people who will probably say that about Prince. Or they would say that about, you know, Michael, even though that’s obviously a whole, very complicated conversation around race. But I do think, you know, with with Whitney in particular, this idea that she couldn’t have encountered it because she triumphed so much and she was the one who sang the anthem. And it’s like, Yeah, but you have to have conversations around what that man and also what that looked like. And frankly, the price she paid for it. You know, I think back to, you know, a lot of the interviews that I went back to the television stuff because again, that was the era, right? You knew when you really wanted to know what was going on with celebrity. You had to be in front of your TV for that big sit down with the Katie Couric or a Diane Sawyer. You know what I mean? Like, that was the moment. And so. Look back on these moments, and I love the fact that you know, Britney is Britney Spears in this moment where she’s reminding these women like you, you were awful to us. So I went back to this Katie Couric, when you know and and again, as a kid, I didn’t see it this way because I was young, you know, I didn’t. And also, we didn’t have the internet in the way that we do. We didn’t have social media the way that we do. So we we weren’t constantly being educated by other people who were very smart being like, well actually, that’s probably kind of messed up, you know what I mean, if you watch this thing on TV, there was no all the discussion on the radio. The next day, it was all the hot soundbites. But to go back and look at these interviews now, they made me so uncomfortable. You are forcing her to answer. So, you know, why did you choose a man like Bobby and why could it have been someone else? And it’s just the way in which, like, you would never do that to anybody now, you would never sit with celebrity or not and be in an interview to promote whatever it is to promote and be like, so why did, you know, why did you marry his man or? And I know it’s been, you know, 15 years. But like, really? What really? What happened with Robyn? Like, I mean, come on. But what was it exactly? You know, and it was this way that she had to constantly defend her Blackness and all of these interviews that I do resent a comment like that of like, Oh, she never experienced racism. That’s that doesn’t make any sense at all. One of the my favorite chapter. You know, Bolder, Better, Blacker, I named that after. You know, there was this huge Time magazine piece in 87 that was written by a white man, and he said those three words. He wrote those three words about Whitney. And that was his reaction to I’m Your Baby Tonight it’s like, This is what she’s doing. She’s bolder, she’s badder, is Blacker. And it’s just like. Tell me a little bit about you connecting those three words in particular and you getting to and this is what we were at the time. You get to be the one to tell the world what someone’s Blackness looks like. You have that power. And you know what? I’m going back and I’m reading all this stuff. And I was and that was the hardest of all the things that was probably some of the hardest stuff like especially the place I used to work at. You know, I will go back in these L.A. Times clips. I have moments where I just was like, Oh my, oh my goodness. But this was this was not. They were not the only place New York Times, lots of places they were writing about these people in particular kind of ways. You know, one story you know, I read the New York Times and it was written by a Black man, a Black man I do respect, you know, comparing Whitney with Mariah and calling Mariah a white woman who sings Black. And it just is like this thing because it not only was a kind of that, but then it was calling Whitney, you know, a Black woman who sings white. And I just was always kind of like, I guess it was a different time. But what exactly does that? What would you actually mean by that? It might, you know, and it sets and it does. It sort of set the tone for the ways people continue to talk about her and to write about her and to think about her. And you know, all of those things together. I just thought, you know, wow, if there’s anything that we got wrong the first time, it was really just our level of judgment. You know, it was the way in which we just could not believe that this, you know, young girl who grew up in the church, you know, with her mom who did this. And then of course, there’s Dionne Warwick. That’s an attachment as Aretha. That’s an attachment. How could she ever want to see these kinds of song and not these other songs that we would prefer her to sing, even though every single album that she’s done has had R&B on it like every single one? And it’s kind of, you know, it always felt outrageous to me that that was that was the conversation. [00:27:20][389.2]

Cortney Wills: [00:27:22] I could talk to you about this book forever. I’m so sad that I have to let it go, and I really have two more questions. But OK, I found one discrepancy. I will tell you early on in your intro, you’re talking about every time someone who knew you were writing this book asks you about this book. They ask the same three questions or one of these three questions. But I contend that is a lie because I seem to remember. I cannot recall the exact event we were celebrating, right? [00:27:54][32.0]

Gerrick Johnson: [00:27:54] No, we were. We were at something. But you know, you’re not included in that. [00:27:58][3.2]

Cortney Wills: [00:27:58] Because I couldn’t remember the question. I asked you, do you remember the question that I asked you about this book? I’ll remind you, I said, Gerrick, do you think that Pat Houston is the villain? [00:28:09][10.7]

Gerrick Johnson: [00:28:10] Yes. Yes. Yes. [00:28:10][0.5]

Cortney Wills: [00:28:11] Or is a villain in Whitney story? Can we even trust what we think that we feel or what we think that we know? Can I trust this weird feeling that I have that that woman hurt this woman? When you really look at something like your book and realize that we really didn’t never know anything? [00:28:29][18.6]

Gerrick Johnson: [00:28:30] Yeah, and that’s and that’s what I and that’s what I’ve sort of always kind of felt about the way, you know, of course, I’m online a lot. So I do see how people, you know, think about Pat and talk about Pat. And, you know, the conversation that I had with her really kind of helped me really understand like one really, really important thing, which is like as close as that relationship was, as long as she was in the mix, there were things that Whitney didn’t tell her. And so when your job is one of protection, but also it is, you know, one where frankly, now that Whitney is not here, you do kind of have to be the one to manage, you know, the state and manage all of it. It’s there’s going to always kind of be a relationship that we’re going to have to that because it’s the person who’s in charge. So if there is a hologram that people dislike or a dance remix that people dislike, you know, it’s easy to say, Oh, there’s Pat, you know, doing this thing. But you know, the thing that I thought was so interesting with Pat that doesn’t really get explored, and I felt this kind of the same way with like, you know, Robyn was that these are Black women that’s helping build this person and managed this person. And you don’t you don’t really get to see that, I mean, Pat is one of few people, you know, with a legacy artists and like, I get it, you know, it’s there’s a relationship, you know, by marriage there, but it’s still this sort of level of, I don’t know the word out. I guess power is the right word, but it’s sort of like this thing that you don’t really get to see, which is like, it’s a family, you know? I mean, it’s it’s they are they are kind of the ones that’s like trying to help protect it, trying to help to the whole thing. And I can imagine what that felt like when there were complications or when there was, you know, challenges when they’re, you know, within a career or in a personal life and like what that must have felt like and looked like. And you know, we’re never going to know. I mean, I think unless Pat decides one day to write a book or like do a whole interview that we’re not going to know an extent, a certain kind of way. But yeah, that’s it’s one thing that I but I always at least I push back on because of the reality that we don’t know. But I do think it my my heart of hearts do I think that she is somebody who is has introduced harm or is trying to introduce harm? I don’t believe that, you know, I don’t I don’t believe that because I still tend to believe, you know, Whitney could have made a different decision if she felt a different kind of way and she didn’t like how it was her right or die. You know, I mean, and I think that’s a lot of us, like with certain family members like, you know, that’s our right or die. And and it’s hard because it’s like, you know, she is someone who when she passed away, there was so many questions and, you know, worries around the estate and, you know, her financial affairs and all of this. And so, you know, Pat was really stuck in this position that is unkind to be and which is like rebuilding and all of this and also our opinions. And we do have a lot of them there. You know, [00:31:48][198.6]

Cortney Wills: [00:31:49] it’s funny because that was my question. Obviously, when I hadn’t read the book months and months ago, but now that I have read the book, I care so much less about the answer because I feel so un entitled to my judgment on anybody that has to do with this, like the judgment that my opinion on it is so much less important than my feelings about it, and I feel like this book roped me back into allowing myself to feel for Whitney and about Whitney again, like a fan, like a person who just loved her and who just was extraordinarily impacted by her. And it was it allowed me to recognize how impacted by her. I really was once I was able to kind of let go of all of those issues, Didn’t We Almost Have It All: In Defense of Whitney Houston. This book is so fantastic it is absolutely worth your time. It is quite eye-opening, even for really knowledgeable Whitney fans. This reminded me of so many things that I forgot I already knew it reframed things for me that I thought I already knew about, and it was just so well researched and intellectual. It was so impressive, and I’m so proud of you for doing it and so glad that I get a chance to share this. This book did such a great job of contextualizing Whitney’s career and the impact that she had of where we were as a society, as a community, as we were consuming it. Comparing it to now. Comparing it to when it was created. Taking a look at how we’ve evolved in our treatment of not just celebrities, but just human beings in general and how many things that used to be common practice we just don’t do anymore or we have moved away from where we have evolved past. I encourage everyone to pick this book up. It is such a fascinating read. Thank you so much, Gerrick. This was a pleasure. [00:33:56][127.3]

Gerrick Johnson: [00:33:57] Such a pleasure. [00:33:58][0.4]

Cortney Wills: [00:33:59] I’ll talk to you later. Thank you for listening to Acting Up. If you like what you heard, please give us a five star review and subscribe to the show wherever you listen to your podcast and share it with everyone you know. Please email all questions, comments and suggestions to podcasts@theGrio.com. Acting Up is brought to you by theGrio and executive produced by Cortney Wills and produced by Cameron Blackwell. For more with me and Acting Up, check us out on Instagram @Acting Up.Pod. [00:33:59][0.0]

[2019.6]