ZIWE INTERVIEWS ROSE MCGOWAN
TRANSCRIPT 7/2/20
Ziwe: Hello.
Rose McGowan: Hi.
Ziwe: Hi, Rose. It's so nice to talk to you. You are so powerful.
Rose McGowan: I'm so, oh thank you, Zeewee. You're fucking hilarious and genius. So there you go.
Ziwe: Thank you, Rose. I have to correct you because you will get dragged in the comments for mispronouncing my name. It’s Ziwe.
Rose McGowan: I'm so sorry. I haven't heard it said out loud. Ziwe?
Ziwe: It's okay. I forgive you because of your contributions to cinema.
Rose McGowan: Thank you.
Ziwe: Now, how are you doing? You have had such a fascinating life. I mean you have traveled from Italy to Seattle to Los Angeles…Hollywood itself. Now my question for you, first question, how many black friends have accumulated over the course of your life?
Rose McGowan: How many black friends have I had over the course of my life?
Ziwe: Sure.
Rose McGowan: Over a hundred.
Ziwe: Over a hundred?
Rose McGowan: But a lot from Africa too. Not just African-Americans.
Ziwe: Okay, flex. You have African friends.
Rose McGowan: Yeah! I went to Uganda in January for my friend’s, uh, she's a tribal princess, it was her wedding, Very like humble, but like an amazing experience. Her name is Caroline Olweny, and I met her in Australia doing a blind friend’s date, and she's been my…I just, I don't know. I never quite like…my best friend since 14 and was uh, is Lydia, and Lydia..I experience with her. We’d walk down the street, and men would hoot and holler at her. And if she would say no thank you, she would get called “Uncle Tom” by the men. I got called “you're not that hot bitch,” you know, basically but with her…and it was specifically with black men doing that to her.
Ziwe: Wild. I can't believe that your friend was called Uncle Tom. How did that make you feel as a white woman?
Rose McGowan: I went and I figured out what the fuck Uncle Tom was.
Ziwe: When did you learn about American racism? What year was your coming of age?
Rose McGowan: 10 when I moved to America. When I went to the butcher.
Ziwe: And what was your first experience?
Rose McGowan: Mmm, yeah.
Ziwe: What was your first experience with American racism?
Rose McGowan: My first experience was when they changed my name from Rosa to Rose in school and told me I didn't want to sound Mexican.
Ziwe: Damn.
Rose: Yeah, my name is Rosa. Someday I'll take it back.
Ziwe: Reclaim it, Rosa.
Rose McGowan: Rosa. I wonder like if I would have had a different life. It seems like a softer name somehow…maybe. Not Rosa Parks. And ironically, my friend who's a great artist in Berlin, he with Rosa Parks’ niece saved her house in Detroit from demolition. He took it down bit by bit and had it all rebuilt. He tried to sell it to Oprah and tried to sell it to museums. Nobody would help here. Not the African American museums. Nobody. So it's currently in Berlin where they have a Rosa Parks Avenue.
Ziwe: Wild. Speaking of Rosa Parks, if I could just mention some civil rights leaders to you, and then you're just going to tell me the first thought that comes to mind. Now: Rosa Parks.
Rose McGowan: Amazing, incredible. They, in White History, they say she was a maid, she was not. She was very much involved in activism work, and she was a seamstress I think by day, but she was also helping Indigent black women that were being raped, African American women back then. And actually there was a girl who did the bus, who wouldn't get out of her seat, her name is Claudette Colvin, and she's still alive in New York City, and she was about nine months before Rosa.
Ziwe: Yes, and she, and she wasn't thought of, to be a good victim because she yeah. Okay, Martin Luther King.
Rose McGowan: Martin Luther King. [Pause] I mean what is there to say, incredible orator, incredible writer, incredible human. Like all leaders flawed, I imagine. But I…I'm more of an anarchist.
Ziwe: Okay.
Rose McGowan: So I…and I….and I do think it's hard. Non-violence. I mean what he did was incredible obviously, but I think it also really pacified white people and that's kind of a problem.
Ziwe: What you're saying is Martin Luther –
Rose McGowan: That's not his problem. That's the white people's problem.
Ziwe: [Laughs] Fair. Okay, Marcus Garvey.
Rose McGowan: Marcus Garvey, um, I don't know as much about Marcus Garvey as I should.
Ziwe: Okay, interesting. What about Huey Newton?
Rose McGowan: Black Panther.
Ziwe: Fred Hampton.
Rose McGowan: My friends joined the Black Panthers.
Ziwe: Oh, really? I believe that so we’ve spoken a lot and over the course of the last maybe two days, and you are a radical if I've ever met a radical. It is really interesting. Now, here's a question. Do you know who Marsha P. Johnson is?
Rose McGowan: Of course.
Ziwe: Who?
Rose McGowan: Um, Marsha P. Johnson is…Stonewall And was the first, was a black transgender woman that was beloved in that neighborhood and went off with Stonewall riots and kept going until she died.
Ziwe: Thank you, Rose. Now, I have a question for you. So you…a couple of months ago, you mentioned that women was the n-word for women or feminist was the n-word for women. “Replace the word women with the n-word. How does it feel?” That's what you tweeted. What does that tweet mean?
Rose McGowan: Okay. One: don't do tweets. Tweeting is sometimes is not the best way to explain things in small amounts of characters. I think what I was trying to say and failed to say was that for so many in the world, there's so much deep hatred for women, and it comes with so much baggage and so much history. I think I was meaning words like a whore and slut, which still would not replace the heaviest [unclear word] that get carried by the n-word. But I think woman, there's just this original sin, original hate that encompasses every race and that's I think more what I was trying to say. It didn't work obviously, but I think that's more of where my brain was coming from. Also I had smoked weed so my articulation wasn’t perfect and then…also I called James Corden a little pig on Twitter once. I smoked weed too. So sometimes I have to be careful. Do not smoke weed and tweet. Not a good idea. But what I was trying to say was like, what I think I was trying to say from what I remember, is basically just like, there is. I just hate like all labels period. They come with so much weight that we never agreed to We get assigned things that we never signed up for. You know, you say the word man it comes with all this bullshit, right? You say the word woman that comes with stuff. You say the n-word and that's violence. That is very different than women. But I think what I was trying to say, not well, was like how much hate do you harbor for that word “woman.”
Ziwe: Not as much as the n-word.
Rose McGowan: Well, obviously.
Ziwe: [Laughs]
Rose McGowan: Like I said, dumb.
Ziwe: Huh, how much hate do I harbor? I think I definitely understand where you're coming from in terms, there is, misogyny is real, but then you think about like all the black women out there who are –
Rose McGowan: -- So that's, that's a double-down, that's a doubled down, triple-down, quadruple down version I don’t know. And you are right.
Ziwe: Now you mentioned in your book, you said that Hollywood needs its own affirmative action to get women as directors and women as writers and more involved in the creative process behind the camera. What does, what is, what does the word affirmative action mean to you?
Rose McGowan: Fair play. Affirmative action means basically the statistics in the Directors Guild of America, which is where all the directors…for their union. That's I believe, it’s at around 94% percent male and that statistic hasn't changed since 1946, predominantly white. And that's who's giving [unclear word] all over the world. That's the propaganda machine for the world. And this is, that like they need to make [unclear word] left to them to be good people. Because they're not going to change. They're going to do it more now, but behind the scenes. It's like Hollywood thinks oh if we stick the…now we can have, not only the gay best friend, we’ll make him a black gay best friend. Behind the scenes. Those are the minds that put the information in your head, and that's what has to change to shift.
Ziwe: Yeah. Affirmative action famously helps white women the most, but I totally understand –
Rose McGowan: What?
Ziwe: Yeah, it does for sure. Yeah with Title IX in colleges and making sure women get equal funding for their sports, but yeah, that's a fun fact.
Rose McGowan: What if we take the word back and change the actual fucking meaning?
Ziwe: What should we switch up the word affirmative action to mean?
Rose McGowan: Let's think. I also think there's, there's a lot of words. I think we need a new dictionary for a lot of things. That would really help. Affirmative action...um. I think it just has to be like a, like look at who's giving you information. I don’t know. I'll think about that and get back to you on the word situation.
Ziwe: Totally.
Rose McGowan: Primarily white women, that fucking sucks.
Ziwe: Word. Now, here's a question for you. You are so radical. Where do you, what, where do you stand on reparations?
Rose McGowan: I believe in them.
Ziwe: And what do you think we should give as reparations? 40 acres and a mule?
Rose McGowan: Um, I think there would have to be like a, I imagine, a caucus that would come up with that. That would not be for me to say, but I do think, absolutely. I mean, I don't think, I don’t know how many mules are around right now. But I, I do think that something really significant needs to be done, also for Native Americans. It’s not okay.
Ziwe: Totally.
Rose McGowan: It’s not okay.
Ziwe: And what would you contribute in your personal life towards the reparations for Native Americans as well as black Americans in this country?
Rose McGowan: What I would contribute? I don’t know. Take my taxes.
Ziwe: Take your taxes.
Rose McGowan: Or I’ll donate. I mean take my fucking taxes. I don't get…allocate, allocate, allocate, be smarter. But I don't think, you know, America has such a problem. It can't even admit and apologize on a governmental level, you know, and not just apologize but work through it. I lived in Berlin and the way they work through the Holocaust there, the way they work through this. It's like one of the freest places I've ever been. It's almost like they went to the other side. I don't know about the rest of Germany. I'm speaking about Berlin specifically, but I do think, I do know what I was taught school in America, and I was like, I have read other books. You're lying. I was always in detention. I was like you're lying to your people. So I don't know what reparations would look like, but I do think at the very least, like unwiring people's minds. And I don't know, the best thing I did was leave America. I'm sorry like that was…I pay a quarter of the rent where I'm at and people are like you need to stay to fight and I’m like it's not my country. I don’t --
Ziwe: Wow! Drag us.
Rose McGowan: -- I don’t like it.
Ziwe: You don't like America. Do you, what do you like qualitatively about black people and black Americans?
Rose McGowan: Honestly? I… fuck of a lot more fun and a lot smarter and a lot deeper because when you go through shit, you get to the other fucking side. There’s a lot more to access in your mind, and you have a lot, there's just a lot, and it sucks that that comes with trauma and experience. You know, it's like is a white gay man necessarily gonna be interesting? No. Does he have a shot to be more interesting than the straight white man? Yes.
Ziwe: Rose. I don’t. Rose, this why you, you always get into problematic territory because a white gay dude can be boring as hell.
Rose McGowan: That's what I said. I said he's more likely to be interesting though than a straight white man.
Ziwe: What are these statistics based on, Rose?
Rose McGowan: I've met a lot of boring white men in khaki pants that are straight, and I have met way more fabulous gay white men that are just more interesting because I think they've gone through more. I think anytime you have someone that's not going through the most delicate experience…
Ziwe: Hmm.
Rose McGowan: …to have something on the other side.
Ziwe: I understand what you're saying, you're saying that trauma kind of makes people more fascinating ,which is a perspective.
Rose McGowan: I don't know about fascinating. I'm don’t know fascinating. I think more layered, deeper, think about things deeper. You have to. You have to…you just have to deal with shit and you know, what you are confronted with on a daily basis is different than what I'm confronted with. And…but frankly I also say like I look at, like when I was ten, I didn't know I was white until I was 10. I had that break, right, because of how I was raised with no mirrors for the first 10 years. No emphasis on... No nothing. I had a black baby doll. I had a black baby doll that I nursed when I was like 4, and I didn't even know that until I found it in my stuff, but also they are women, it was a it was an international commune of people from Africa, people from Mexico, people from the Middle East, people from, some from America, very few from America, but when I got to America, and I saw the choice of the sides of the aisles that I got to sit on based on what I was, I was like fuck. There is no real… or if… I just there's, I guess there's white community maybe if you're in the KKK. But other than that, I don't see a lot of white community.
Ziwe: You don't see any white…you don't see a white community?
Rose McGowan: No, I see white people. I don't see, like in the, there is…it’'s not…if they stick together, they're sticking together in hate and not sticking together in love.
Ziwe: Interesting. Now your last name. You have an Irish last name, correct, McGowan? Would you say that Irish people are the negroes of the white community?
Rose McGowan: I would say it varied with everybody that came. It could have been the Italians that decade, it could win the Irish that decade, it could have been, you know, but it's interesting. I was in Austin a couple years ago and was at this restaurant and this beautiful, beautiful African-American waiter came, and he told me this story that his last name was McGowan. And that was because historically there was, when his family was freed, they became sharecroppers next to this poor McGowan white family sharecroppers, and they didn't have a name, and they became so intertwined and so close that they asked if they could take that name.
Ziwe: Wow.
Rose McGowan: So they are now at the family reunions.
Ziwe: Would you…did your family own slaves?
Rose McGowan: I don't know. No, but not…no. I know that.
Ziwe: 100% sure?
Rose McGowan: What?
Ziwe: 100% sure?
Rose McGowan: I don't know anybody beyond grandparents, and we weren't in America. So I'm going to say no.
Ziwe: Your guess is as good as mine.
Rose McGowan: My guess is as good as yours. I fucking hope not, but I don't think so predominately because they weren't in the United States. But I mean, I guess they could have been propagators of it elsewhere and exported it. I certainly hope not. I've been told I come from no money so I'm going to say this probably less likely but I fucking hope not.
Ziwe: Okay, have you ever worn blackface before?
Rose McGowan: No.
Ziwe: Never?
Rose McGowan: No. Honestly, I was looking at an Alyssa Milano blackface last night that was supposedly about Snooki, Snooki, the tan lady. I don't know if it's blackface or tan. I actually just kind of vaguely checked in on that. But I just kind of thought at what point does someone think this is a really good idea.
Ziwe: Rose, you just called out Alyssa Milano!
Rose McGowan: So.
Ziwe: Y'all have beef?
Rose McGowan smiles.
Ziwe: Wow. Now. Hey, tea report. Okay, how have you used your white privilege for good?
Rose McGowan: What?
Ziwe: How have you used your white privilege for good?
Rose McGowan: Oh, I’ve used my white privilege for good. Yeah. Definitely. Right now….it's..I hate saying what I do. I fucking hate it. I hate the fact that I will tell you right now that the money I've made from Planet Nine, my album coming out, I'm housing four, three African-American women and one Hispanic woman and their children that got away from their abusers. I finance people to stay…to get away from their abusers, especially during Covid.
Ziwe: Totally.
Rose McGowan: With Los Angeles Center, which is primarily low-income Latinas, but takes anybody and it’s for them that I funnel money. Anytime anybody pays me to do anything, I funnel money to house them and get them away because I know what it's like to be in the background with a man chasing after your mom with a shot gun.
Ziwe: What I like about you, Rose, is I think that you really have, you have a long history of
being committed towards helping vulnerable women. So I think that that is cool. Like I think that that's really lit. Now, here's a question for you. Have you ever called the police on a black person before?
Rose McGowan: No.
Ziwe: Okay. Let's, let's just like, we're gonna roleplay. You're obviously a very talented actress. Now, let's say we're in an alleyway and I stab you repeatedly, okay? And you have a phone and it's right within reach. Now, who would you call? Would you call 9-1-1?
Rose McGowan: If you stab me?
Ziwe: Sure.
Rose McGowan: Well, if I was alive I guess, but then…that's a, that's a rock and a hard place question my friend. That's a…that’s a…you know, I don't… I think you go into shock.
Ziwe: Okay, but let's say, let's say I'm the 9-1-1 dispatcher. You’re yourself. You've just been stabbed by Ziwe.
Rose McGowan: Oh!
Ziwe: Hello. 9-1-1. What's your emergency?
Rose McGowan: Hi, I've just been stabbed by someone fabulous, and I'm not sure why they're trying to kill me, but I'm in an alley. If you could send somebody who's not racist every fucking awesome.
Ziwe: Okay, great. And what's this person's race?
Rose McGowan sticks her tongue out to the camera. Ziwe laughs.
Rose McGowan: Exactly. I mean. I would say, you know, what it is. Whatever it was.
Ziwe: Obsessed, Rosa! Okay. What black authors are you reading, Rosa?
Rose McGowan: Oooo, I just, um I just finished [unrecognizable name]. It's uh..oh my god. I'm rereading W.E.B. Du Bois.
Ziwe: W.E.B. Du Bois. Yeah.
Rose McGowan: And some of his writings, but also I just um…Zora Neale Thurston (J.G. I don’t think she is saying Hurston lol). I just read the book that she wrote that wasn't realeased for years and years. That was because the way she wrote it was in the original dialect of the man she was, you know, interviewing, the last slave that was alive.
Ziwe: Was this this Their Eyes are Watching God or a different one?
Rose McGowan: Different one. It's one that came out last year because they kept it, her publishers, kept it from being printed because they thought it was, the language was, it wasn't white enough because she put it in his dialect.
Ziwe: Wild. And so when you're reading black authors, what voice are you doing in your head when they're saying things like “color purple” and “enough”?
Rose McGowan: What voice am I doing?
Ziwe: Yeah.
Rose McGowan: That's interesting.
Ziwe gets close to the camera. Rose McGowan gets close to the camera. They laugh.
Rose McGowan: I'm going to think about the voice and get back to you on that one because I never thought about the voices, but I don't, it's not a caricature voice. That's for sure. I know that.
Ziwe: Okay, good to know. Rose, what was a bigger cultural reset: Beyoncé getting bangs or the Associated Press deciding to capitalize the B in Black?
Rose McGowan: Associated Press.
Ziwe: Wow. That's, wow. Hey, you know, you stand by your convictions, and I honestly respect that.
Rose McGowan: Well, I fucking hate the media because the, what they do, one of the things they may be doing, I like reading old…[video cuts out briefly]…white producer but if it was a black man, would he be a fallen anything or would he just be a convicted rapist? Let's call it what it is. Come on. And they do that too. They do that to race, they do that to gender, they do it everything. Make you look through the history of how its media that shapes the mind of the public, and they aren't direct, you know, propaganda. Like it's the media, politics, and Hollywood especially in America and then that thought goes out for the world and that's what makes us the most dangerous country, I think.
Ziwe: The soft power of influence. I understand what you're saying. Now we have a couple questions before we wrap this up because you've honestly, honestly been a fantastic, fantastic, guest. Now here's a question from @museummammy. Who is your favorite black person?
Rose McGowan: Who’s my favorite black person?
Ziwe: Yes.
Rose McGowan: Oh my God, this is so bad for all my friends. Um…Caroline cause she's the closest heart to me.
Ziwe: You're not supposed to say, Rose.
Rose McGowan: Oh, I'm not!
Ziwe: [Laughs]
Rose McGowan: I told ya, I always get in trouble. Like you ask me I tell you. That’s how I always get in trouble.
Ziwe: Okay, here's another question for you. So we have would you die for black liberation?
Rose McGowan: Yes
Ziwe: Good answer. That was easy too. Now, have you ever been on a plantation?
Rose McGowan: No.
Ziwe: Never been to a plantation?
Rose McGowan: That's not true! I went to Monticello, and I wanted to see what the motherfucker was up to and what it looked like. And there was, no one is, I've never seen a story, but there was a man named Hercules that was a slave. He was called Hercules cause he was so big and he was in the kitchen. And he was the only slave that ever managed to escape there, and he never got caught, and I always like that what story could they tell about him? Like I thought his story would be incredible. I don't understand plantation weddings. Like that to me is like the height of insanity. And you can see where they live and then party there?
Ziwe: Drag them, Rose. Now who is more tired: black people living in America constantly having to deal with racism or white people being called racist?
Rose McGowan: Pfft. Black people obviously.
Ziwe: Can you say for the record “imagine how tired we are.”
Rose McGowan: Imagine how tired we are.
Ziwe: And could you say for the record “a cultural reset.”
Rose McGowan: Cultural reset.
Ziwe: I love you, Rose. Now the last question. Why did you agree to do this interview?
Rose McGowan: Because I like you. I think you're smart, and it's okay to be dragged.
It's okay to be fragile. It's okay to be, I'm not scared, but it okay to be a tiny bit scared. It's okay to confront things. And it's necessary to talk about them. If you do it through comedy, and you do it through this, and I think white people need to know get more fucking educated, learn your shit, fight for others because it’s not about you and just because you're scared…so what? Be brave. That's what brave is, be scared, do the scary thing anyways. Stand up! And that’s what I say.
Ziwe: Wild and this is Rose McGowan. Everyone, please give it up for Rose. Follow her read her book, Brave, which I listened to on audiobook. Thank you so much, Rose. You were a fantastic guest. Auf Wiedersehen.
Rose McGowan: Auf Wiedersehen.
Ziwe: Bye guys. Guys, this was such a fun show! Next week, we have, oops, next week, we have Dana Donnelly and Jeremy O. Harris. 8pm. Thursday Eastern Standard Time. I'll see you guys. I'll be turning another look as always. Bye!