ZIWE INTERVIEWS JEREMY O. HARRIS
TRANSCRIPT 7/9/20
Ziwe: We have our next guest. Well actually we don't. We are looking for Jeremy O. Harris, famously someone who's tardy, as I've read in every single profile of this man. Guys, thanks for the show. This is so much fun.
Jeremy O. Harris joins the stream.
Ziwe: Hello!
Jeremy O. Harris: Hi!
Ziwe: How are you doing, Jeremy?
Jeremy O. Harris: How are you?
Ziwe: I'm doing swell.
Jeremy O. Harris: I'm well. I'm…I am in London. There's really shitty internet here so I'm hoping that I'm on the right track.
Ziwe: Why did you move to London for quarantine? Was it to escape black Americans?
Jeremy O. Harris: Oh, no, not to escape black Americans to escape white Americans, honestly.
I mean also just to escape like familiarity. It's just sort of like why? You know?
Ziwe: I feel that. You're on your James Baldwin shit. Now, I have, I've just, I read Slave Play this morning, and this is a very, very important play in like modern discourse. I would say one of the most important plays of the 21st century. So my first question to you is, Jeremy O. Harris, why do you hate black women?
Jeremy O. Harris: I don't hate black women.
Jeremy O. Harris and Ziwe look at each other in silence.
Jeremy O. Harris: My mom's a black woman, my sister’s a black woman, my best friends are black.
Ziwe: Oh, you’re related to black women! Okay, interesting.
Jeremy O. Harris: Yes. I happen to be related to black women. I came from a black female vagina so.
Ziwe: Shout out to that. Now, as someone who claims to love black women, why would you use rape as a plot device in your play?
Jeremy O. Harris: Well, I don't know that it's rape necessarily. I think that if you talk to people like Saidiya Hartman or, or even Soraya McDonald, the Pulitzer finalist this year, I think that they would have a more complex relationship to the last moment in my play than articulating it as rape.
Ziwe: Okay, so I'll just refer to those black women and have them do the labor of defending you. Now, what was the biggest cultural reset in American theatre –
Jeremy O. Harris: No, I mean I'm not—
Jeremy O. Harris freezes.
Jeremy O. Harris: The biggest cultural reset is probably, probably the invent of like, the moment that that the door slammed in fucking A Doll’s House. Nora slamming the door was one of the biggest cultural resets of the 20th century.
Ziwe: Okay. Now, here's a question for you. Would you consider yourself American theater’s first influencer?
Jeremy O. Harris: No, I actually think that a better influencer than me was probably Tennessee Williams.
Ziwe: Wow!
Jeremy O. Harris: And then, and then I think that like, you know, thinking about other types of influence, you know, one of my favorite influencers on a sort of like academic level is probably Adrienne Kennedy. So I don't think there's any person that does experimental theater who doesn't like, like mine from Adrienne’s work.
Ziwe: Okay. What I, what I appreciated about researching you is that you have, like your recall is absolutely so poignant. Like you have such a sharp memory. You are an encyclopedia of American theater. So I think that that's really, really fascinating. Now, where do you stand on miscegenation?
Jeremy O. Harris: Miscegenation. I think it's really one of the best forms of entanglement in our country. It's like, you know, it's like where you can see all of the like nitty-gritties of the like scars we carry from our past inside of like a sort of a coupling right? It's like, you know, friendships can't carry all of the weight that miscegenation can. Working inside of a white institution can't carry that same weight, but they can have like the metaphorical weight of something as literal as miscegenation.
Ziwe: Do you date…do you, do you prefer to date white men or black men?
Jeremy O. Harris: I don't prefer to date anyone. I prefer to date men that want to date me.
Ziwe: Okay, okay. What does white love mean to you?
Jeremy O. Harris: I don't know. I mean maybe white love is like, you know, watching Little Women and wanting to see it again. I think that might be white love.
Ziwe laughs.
Ziwe: Can you name five white people off the top of your head?
Jeremy O. Harris: Yes. Greta Gerwig, Saoirse Ronan, Timothée Chalamet, Lily Rose Depp, and Johnny Depp.
Ziwe: Okay, now can you name five black women off the top of your head?
Jeremy O. Harris: Of course. Shonda Rhimes, Kerry Washington, Erica Simpson, Janelle Monae, Tessa Thompson, Janicza Bravo.
Ziwe: Okay, go off. I think you went over too. Now. Interesting. Oh, you are famously friends with Anna Wintour. What is that about?
Jeremy O. Harris: [Laughs] I don't know that I'm famously friends with her. I just think it's like very much like the Nicki Minaj quote, you know, like “when I'm sitting with Anna, I’m really sitting with Anna, ain't no analog punchline. I'm really sitting with Anna.” And I have sat with Anna, but I don't know that I'm like her friend. I just know that I've sat with her.
Ziwe: Okay, I love that you are a Barb. I famously love the verse in New Body. Now --
Jeremy O. Harris: Of course. Who doesn't?
Ziwe: Have you ever experimented in a race play sexually?
Jeremy O. Harris: No, I feel like I'm too much of a vanilla person to actually do it, but I'm very curious about it. Have you?
Ziwe: No, no. [Laughs] No. I'm not that fun.
Jeremy O. Harris: No, I don't know because I feel like it's one of those things, it's like, like I feel like it was a part of our imaginaries via Tumblr and Twitter more so than it was ever in part of, a part of anyone's actual sexual lived experience, but I'm very curious about people who have been able to engage with it. And after writing Slave Play, a lot of black people who do race play and kink intersecting with race, talk to me and like share their experiences with me, and it was like so exhilarating to see that not only could my play work on a metaphorical level for people who've never done it, but for people who do that kind of like exploration sexually and could feel like they were finally seeing their stories represented in a weird way. That was kind of cool.
Ziwe: Interesting. I saw, you know, the profile you did with Alex for Vulture or for New York Mag. You said that you were kind of writing Slave Play for people who watched ebony porn in incognito mode. So what kind of porn do you watch?
Jeremy O. Harris: I…so I'm really bad. I watch, I don't watch porn as much as I read it. So like I'm born on the same day as Marquis De Sade, and I found that out when I was 12 years old. And when I found that out, I read, I read Philosophy in the Boudoir, just like, you know like, out of curiosity, and I realized that like erotica actually like turns me on more so than like watching someone like penetrate someone else so I read a lot of porn.
Ziwe: Totally. Wow. I read a pornographic book, it's on my…it's over there. I hated it.
Ziwe laughs.
Jeremy O. Harris: You did?
Ziwe: Yeah, I did, but I don't think I like pornography. I think I like images of people hugging. Now, a question for you. How have you decolonized your mind since 2016?
Jeremy O. Harris: Well, I mean, there's been a lot of different things, right? Like I think that one of the biggest things was sort of erasing a lot of the close… deciding that like I didn't need to surround myself with like white thought leaders in order to be like someone that mattered. I think that when it, because like the way I was raised growing up, I felt like I needed to have like a proximity to whiteness that was also more of a proximity to a certain class because I wasn't hanging out with poor white people. I was hanging out with rich white people, right? So I was like trying to like ascend my like abject poverty by like hanging out with like wealthy white folks, and I think that there was a moment when I woke up in actually 20…2010, 2011 and realized that that didn't have to be my modus operandi in order to feel like I had worth in the world, and I think that's when I started to decolonize. It was more like decolonizing from like class racism than just decolonizing from like any sort of other type of like race thing because like every time I went home, I was hanging out with black people. My closest friends forever have been black people. So yeah, it was more about class I think early on.
Ziwe: Okay, I think that's totally, totally interesting. And so you talk about class. So today you bought a new iPhone to, in preparation for this show. In Alex's profile, you are wearing a $6200 Gucci suit, Gucci jacket. Now my question for you is are you a wealth hoarder?
Jeremy O. Harris: [Laughs] Could you repeat that?
Ziwe: Are you a wealth hoarder? Do you hoard your wealth?
Jeremy O. Harris: I don't hoard my wealth. I mean, I gave $100,000 away to like all of like my peer to write plays who like in this moment of covid might need that money. And also like my money for me is like a thing that happened by accident. Like no one, very rarely does someone write their first play and immediately get like an HBO deal out of it, and I think that like even the like recognition of that like class dynamic has like made it like more complicated for me to write and more diligent about how I redistribute my own wealth. Because like I don't need to vote for Bernie Sanders to like know that I have to like redistribute my wealth. I'd rather do that myself and also vote for politicians that like might make it possible for other people who have had the sort of like wellspring of luck that I have do that too. Do you know what I mean?
Ziwe: Totally.
Jeremy O. Harris: Maybe with more of a compulsory nature.
Ziwe: Definitely. You’re talking about it as like an individual act and just for the record, we have Sydnee Washington in the comments, and since you said you love black women, I was wondering if you would be willing to pay every black woman watching the show personally reparations.
Jeremy O. Harris: I don't know how many black women are watching the show, and I…I actually one of the only things I liked about Caroline Calaway…Callaway's Live was that she said that the minimum you can give a black person is $100, and I really I'm like, yeah, that's true. Like that's the minimum you can give a black person, and I don't know how many black women are watching this right now. And I don't know if my bank account can afford to give every black woman watching this $100, minimum, you know, because like that’s the reason I give everyone $500 for my like, the grant I created was because I was like $500 is at least enough to pay half your rent if you live in New York and all of your rent if you live other places.
Ziwe: Okay, so you're not giving black women reparations, for the record. Now, do you beat out --
Jeremy O. Harris: [Laughs] I never said that. I…don't play with me, don't play with me. Because you know, I'm giving multiple people like, I mean I'm paying for one of my friend to go to grad school right now.
Ziwe: Wow.
Jeremy O. Harris: Like actively paying for her grad school.
Ziwe: How many black friends do you have?
Jeremy O. Harris: Most of the friends that I DM are black.
Ziwe: Okay.
Jeremy O. Harris: And so I don't know that I have a number. I think that like it's most of
the people in my closest circle are black.
Ziwe: And how, what percentage of those people are black women?
Jeremy O. Harris: I would say, I mean, because I'm a faggot most of them are black women. That's the like sad truth.
Ziwe: That's an awesome truth, Jeremy. Get it straight.
Jeremy O. Harris: No, I think it's a complicated truth because I think that like, you know, even looking at the American Theater, right? Like most of the plays that have been done on Broadway this decade were done by black women and that's something that people don't think about or know. You know, Lynn Nottage, Lydia Diamond, Katori Hall, and Dominique Morisseau are the black women who have plays written on Broadway this season and the only men that have had plays read on Broadway this season are two black gay men. And so, there's no space in the American theater for black straight man. And I feel like -
Ziwe: Why do you think that is?
Jeremy O. Harris: I think that it's about like, you know, I think that like there is a thing especially because the two black men that have been on Broadway are both Yale trained and have a certain type of like regal faggotry that like makes them very acceptable by white like society and like we’re both like fashion faggots, I think. I think that that makes it a little more palatable than like a black straight man. I mean there's no Kendrick Lamar writing for theater that is getting produced, and I want that, and I hope that I could become friends with the black Kendrick Lamar, but I don't have that friend.
Ziwe: Wow. Now, what do you qualitatively like about black women?
Jeremy O. Harris: I don't know that there's one thing that I qualitatively like about black women as a whole but, I know what I like about certain black women. Like Erica Simpson is the person that I dedicated Slave Play to, and she's the funniest black woman I've ever met.
Ziwe: Wow.
Jeremy O. Harris: She's the only person I've ever decided to like -- I'm sorry. I've never met you really. Like, you know. I mean, like we haven't kiki-ed. Have we had a drink together?
Ziwe: Yes, we have.
Jeremy O. Harris: Where?
Ziwe: At Bushwick Starr, during your show.
Jeremy O. Harris: But like, but I mean like, at like a dinner, a dinner drink together.
Ziwe: Erasure!
Jeremy O. Harris: It’s not erasure. I'm saying. So, Erica is someone that, she let me sleep on her couch for two years when I was homeless ostensibly, right? And she's the funniest person I know. And the only person I would have ever made a web series with. Then like, my mom, I think, is probably the most fabulous person I know. She taught me everything I know about style and how to be chic without trying. Um, Kelsey Lou, who's staying with, wait she’s not saying with me, she's having dinner with me right, right now downstairs. She is one of the most like effortlessly creative women I've ever met, and I feel so lucky to know another person from North Carolina, Virginia who is like utterly unabashedly like queer funny and like artistic and like unafraid of where their artistry might take them. So those are some things I like about specific black women, but there's not one thing I like about all black women.
Ziwe: Okay, you don't like black woman. So here's a question for you. Who is your favorite black celebrity to appropriate?
Jeremy O. Harris: My favorite black celebrity to appropriate is probably Marvin Van Peeples.
Ziwe: Wow, deep cut.
Jeremy O. Harris: Yeah, because, yeah I mean I think…Melvin. Why did I say Marvin? Oh my God. That's, that's alcohol. Just know that's alcohol. I've been drinking wine. I'm smoking a cigarette what-the-fuck-ever. Anyway, um Melvin Van Peebles, I think was someone who was able to like come into the world and say like this is my block. This is where I'm going to sit, and if you don't like what I'm doing, fuck you. And I think that that's how I've tried to live most of my black life –
Ziwe: Didn’t he –
Jeremy O. Harris: -- inside of artistry.
Ziwe: He is the one who made Sweet Sweetback, correct?
Jeremy O. Harris: Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassssss Song was the first, the first film that I literally
appropriated to write my very first play.
Ziwe: Doesn’t that open with his like minor son having sex with like a sex worker? That's problematic.
Jeremy O. Harris: It does, but it's, I mean, I think that it's art, one, and I think that like we can't, if things aren't problematic than like, why are we even watching it? You know what I mean? I think that like we need things to problematize in order to like create better discourse for how to live our lived lives better. But art is where we go to see problems in order to like move beyond that.
Someone enters Jeremy O. Harris’s door.
Jeremy O. Harris: Oh my God, we haven't…
Ziwe: Hi!
A woman with a cello crosses by.
Ziwe: I feel like you're living a James Baldwin fantasy. Hi!
Jeremy O. Harris laughs.
Jeremy O. Harris: She says hi.
Ziwe: Wild, wild, wild.
Ziwe waves.
Woman: Love you so much.
Jeremy O. Harris: Oh my god.
Ziwe: Oh my gosh. That's wild. Yeah, I you know, I agree. I love art. I don't know if I love art with underage children having sex, but everyone has their own preferences. Now, here's another question for you. Do you, do you, did you consider how triggering and violent your play was towards black women?
Jeremy O. Harris: I think I considered how triggering the play could be for all people, right? Like….
Ziwe: All black people matter. I got it.
Jeremy O. Harris: Yeah. No, but I just think that like I think that the specificity of black womanhood is important, but I think that also knowing that like I was mining a collective trauma was something else that I was thinking about. And the thing that was very important to me from the very beginning of my play was figuring out how to take care of an audience that’s very rarely taken care of in work like this. When I want to see Manderlay, when I was 17 years old, I didn't have anyone to take care of me after I saw that that play, right, or that film. And so I asked that at Yale, for there to be an intimacy director to work with all of our actors. I asked for there to be like people that could stand and be like coordinators for trauma conversations after they witnessed the play because that for me was a type of caretaking that might be needed for some audience members that might not be needed for others because I know I've never needed a trigger warning before I've watched or read anything, but I knew the other people do, and so it was a it was an exhilarating question for me about how I could take care of my audience who decided from their own free will and agency to see a play titled Slave Play which in and of itself was a warning sign to people that they were going to witness a play about slavery and one of the facts of slavery were, like you know sex that was like violent. One of the things of slavery was like language that was violent, and positionalities that like are not positionalities that we hold currently necessarily.
Ziwe: I see. You're right. All traumas matter. I can, I can connect with you on that. Now here is another question for you. Oh discuss…well, we already discussed that. Ooh! People want to know: what does class racism mean? What is that? That's a term you just dropped.
Jeremy O. Harris: No, I think class racism is very real, and it's a thing that like, you know, I think that one of the things I love about what No Name’s doing right now is that she's calling attention to the fact that people who are in the culture class can feel like that like they're like erased from conversations about class because they're not Warren Buffett.
Ziwe: Yeah.
Jeremy O. Harris: Right. But if you make a $100,000 in a week doing a rewrite of a movie, you…
Jeremy O. Harris freezes.
Jeremy O. Harris: Does that…what, what happened?
Ziwe: Your internet is spotty.
Jeremy O. Harris: It is, sorry. If you're someone who makes $100,000 on a rewrite, –
Ziwe: Flex.
Jeremy O. Harris: -- you were someone that… excuse me?
Ziwe: I said flex.
Jeremy O. Harris: No, I mean I'm not saying that I do. I just know people who do, right. But if you're someone who makes $100,000 in a rewrite you were in a positionality that is very different than any other black worker in our country. And that's something that has to be recognized, and it's something I recognize acutely because I'm the only person in my family who like makes the kind of money I do for his little labor as I actually engage with so it's something that like black creatives have to be like deeply aware of when their espousing identity politics and saying identity politics without intersecting that with like class politics.
Ziwe: Wild. People are saying that your internet is anti-black by the way.
Jeremy O. Harris: Well, I live, I'm in London. So London is deeply anti-black. Look at every piece of architecture here. Every piece of architecture here is an ode to anti-blackness and colonialism.
Ziwe: Okay. Well this, I think this has been a fantastic interview, and you've been a fantastic guest. Now, I like to leave my guests with one last question, which is why on Earth did you come on this show?
Jeremy O. Harris: Well, I came on the show partially to ask you if you are interested in doing your show on another platform.
Ziwe: Yeah, for sure.
Jeremy O. Harris: Because I'm, you know, one of the things that happened was that like HBO asked me if I wanted to have a deal or whatever, and I was like, no, not really, but I'll do it if you give me money to produce the kind of theater I want to do and from the minute I, I watched your show, I knew that you were doing something that was in a black tradition of call and response, of audience interaction, that was important and necessary, and maybe something that the theater world would need right now, and I would love to invite you to possibly collaborate on like a theater project.
Ziwe: Sure.
Jeremy O. Harris: Where I would like produce a show where you would do this live.
Ziwe: You know, I'm open to all opportunities. I come from a deep, longstanding black tradition of Phillips Academy Andover and Northwestern University, so I would love to bring that to the American theater.
Jeremy O. Harris: Wait, you went to Northwestern?
Ziwe: I did.
Jeremy O. Harris: I said…so I went to DePaul University. And when I was at DePaul, I said that everyone who went to Northwestern was bisexual and obsessed with the Greeks. Do you agree?
Ziwe: Yes.
Jeremy O. Harris and Ziwe laugh.
Ziwe: Absolutely.
Jeremy O. Harris: What is your favorite? What is your favorite Greek character?
Ziwe: Favorite Greek character…Aphrodite.
Jeremy O. Harris: Aphrodite?
Ziwe: Of course!
Jeremy O. Harris: So what’s interesting about thinking about Aphrodite and thinking about Slave Play is that Slave Play ends with this like, like moment that some people consider rape some people consider like this like breaking through a kink like etc, etc, etc. But it's in the Greek tradition because a lot of Greek plays end with these like moments of transformation that happened after sexual violence.
Ziwe: Yes.
Jeremy O. Harris: And it's interesting because Aphrodite had some of her biggest transformations after like ostensibly both like coercive and non-coercive sexual assaults, maybe and I think that's something like that's just something funny to think about when you think about the histories that Slave Play was interrogating and it's like articulations at the very end of the play.
Ziwe: Yeah, I mean, I definitely see the connection between the Greeks and Slave Play. I found Slave Play to be deeply triggering. Deeply triggering. So –
Jeremy O. Harris: Yeah.
Ziwe: But I find Greek stories to be deeply triggering. So.
Jeremy O. Harris: Yeah, Lena and the Swan is like absolutely churning story, and I think that and I and I wonder what it means to look at our triggers and like lean into them for the people who have like asked to show up to a play, you know what I mean? Like, because I think that like what's the point of going to something that's milquetoast and not going to make you feel something?
Ziwe: I guess why people are concerned because what gives you the license to use triggers like a black woman's pain for your art?
Jeremy O. Harris: I think that the, I think that that's a very fair question, and I think that, you know, the only reason I felt okay doing it is because I'd done it with identities that were like my own in other plays. You know, my play that I wrote before slave play was Daddy and in Daddy there is like a lot of complicated like fucked up sexual moments that happened for the black actor on stage, and I think that when I was looking at the roles that black women were like in my circle were like excited at playing, a lot of them were in a tradition of like white men writing roles that were written for white women that like engage with certain things like this, right? And so, I was like, why not make my own Blanche Dubois, you know, right? Why not? Why not like work inside of that tradition myself?
Ziwe: I understand. Why would these white dudes exploit black pain when you could exploit black woman's pain? I got it.
Jeremy O. Harris: No, they hadn't exploited black pain. They exploited white… they exploited like complicated things about whiteness, and I think that like looking at black bodies and also the fact that like none of these plays were written like in isolation, right. Like every play I write is in collaboration. There's no way that a person can write a play and not have a litany of people’s voices around the play they're doing and the voices I was listening to the most acutely were the black woman in my room, and I wanted to change the ending of my play until I had a deep conversation with like three of my collaborators, and it changed everything completely.
Ziwe: God bless the black woman doing the emotional labor. Now, thank you so much for this interview. This has been fantastic. You are such an interesting guest, and I really appreciate your wealth of knowledge of American theater. So thank you! Everyone, please clap for Jeremy in the comments, go follow. Okay…bye!
Jeremy O. Harris: Bye!
Ziwe: I'll see you guys next week. We have two fantastic guests. We have Yassir Lester, one of the most problematic, hilarious people I know, and we have Alyssa Milano. Yes, I said it. So please, I'll see you guys next week. Okay, watch this on IG TV before I delete it because I always delete it. Bye!