Special Guest
speaker
516 appearances
11 recordings
7 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Jun 2025
Special Guest’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
Call it a podcast. Come on. I don't even think of it as a podcast, but it is technically a podcast. It's called Legacy Talk with Lena Waithe.
And we've dropped two episodes so far. But basically the concept is really conversations, is dialogue. This has been a lovely dialogue and conversation, which I love. But I, you know, people were trying to get me to do it. And I was like, well, what's the intention? You know, what are we doing? And they were like, well, you can talk to who you want to talk to.
And I was like, okay, why don't I talk to Black women who have legacies that have impacted mine?
And they were like, okay, cool. And so we got six episodes so far. We want to continue to do them, so stay tuned. But the first episode was with Sheryl Lee Ralph. Yes. Who was an icon, amazing, the original Dream Girl, our original Dina. And we sat down and had a lovely conversation. That episode is out right now. It's such a wonderful listen. I had such a wonderful time talking to her.
And the second episode that came out was with Gina Prince-Bythewood. And her name may not be super familiar to some, but she's behind some of your famous... favorite movies, like Love and Basketball. She did Woman King. She did The Old Guard that was on Netflix with Charlize Theron. She's a phenomenal writer-director. Secret Life of Bees, which was the first thing I worked on.
But I used to be her assistant back in the day. I was her assistant for like two years.
Boom. Yo, that's all I could ever want is to be a part of her legacy. So that episode is out. And then coming up next is Mara Brock-Akeel.
Who created Girlfriends, The Game, and Being Mary Jane. I was an assistant on Girlfriends in its last season. Were you really? And Mara's the reason she got me that job working for Gina. She's like, you need an assistant? You should get Lena. And that's how that journey began. And then after Mara, we got Jada Pinkett-Smith. Cool. Okay. Comes to sit down. Pretty cool.
You turned the red table around. Okay. Look, look. You know, her legacy had a huge impact on me. Growing up watching Menace to Society. Obviously, she was on A Different World. A Lowdown Dirty Shame. You know, seeing her in Matrix. She did a voice in Madagascar as a hippo. That's right. She's had such a wonderful career. And so we talk about that. And then Jennifer Lewis. Oh, Lord.
Help help raise me. Oh, Lord. Like my mother.
Before she was, you know, you know, and she we talk about her glorious career as well, which sounds like what's love got to do with it? And she was also on a different world as Dean Dorothy Dandridge Davenport. You're on my list.
you know um and uh and obviously returning a really wonderful uh voice performance and uh princess and the frog yeah um and so and then and last but not least uh debbie allen wow who is my north star and she's a lot of people oh everybody everybody she gets mentioned in all these interviews so she's last she's the finale um as she should be uh and so basically i was also a big fan of a show called inside the actor studio oh yeah you see
to come on Bravo. And I learned a lot watching that show because even though I, it's funny because I did not have aspirations of being an actor, but because I had aspirations of being a writer, I was really curious to hear from actors what they were looking for in scripts.
And so that way, oftentimes, you know, James Lipton would often ask some of the greats, like, what are you looking for when you're trying to pick a project? So my, you know, I'm like 16, 17 watching it. Thinking like, okay, I want to write something that a great actor would want to do or want to play. That's a big reason why I always tell people like Daniel Kaluuya cast himself in Queen of Slim.
He read the script and emailed me and said, I am slim. I am slim.
And I was like, okay. And it really, like the fact that Daniel was like, he read it before Melina Masoukas. He was like, I want to be in this movie. And I was like, all right, okay. I did not see you as slim, but now I can't stop thinking about you as slim. I remember I called Melina. I was like, yo, Daniel Kaluuya hit me and said he's slim.
And she was like, I don't, I don't, I don't think, I don't know. I was like, just meet with him. And she did. And it's on the trifecta. So that came from me watching Inside the Actor's Studio and just wanting to, and also Reggie Rock Bythewood said, make sure you write characters that actors can't wait to play. even if it's like a small two-liner or something like that.
Make an actor like, I don't want to do that two lines. So anyway, I say this to say, I was watching this at the Action Studio, and when James Lipton never picked a successor, people would always say, what happens when you die? He's like, so does the show. And I would always feel depressed about that because I was like, we need somebody to sit and talk to
just performers and actors that have done really great things and get a sense of it. And so I don't talk to these people about their personal lives, any of that. I'm asking Shirley Roth, what was, what was the audition process like for dream girls?
You know, asking Jada Pinkett Smith, how much of peaches was on the page and how much of it was you? Yeah. You know, and so, and asking Jennifer Lewis, how do you play the mother of Tina Turner in a way that you do? Because it's such a complicated woman.
Showing 381–400 of 516 · page 20 of 26
← Previous
Next →