- So, from Mexico, came back,
ended up at Howard University.
- Oh yeah, many years later, Howard University was amazing.
That was amazing.
- What is your favorite Howard memory or experience?
- Well, you know, our anthem was,
"say it loud, I'm Black and I'm proud."
- Hey now.
- That was it, you know, I'm gonna write a movie about it.
I really am because it was such an explosive time,
coming into Howard University
and just being seeped in your culture
and your cultural identity
and then to be in the middle of the chaos
with the assassination of Martin Luther King.
That was all in my freshman year.
It was a lot of growing up,
it was a lot of, you know, coming into age very quickly.
- I'm trying to think of a gentle way
to breach this next subject because...
- Why?
Why do you have to be gentle?
- I don't know.
- Okay.
I think I'm just socialized to try and be that way.
- Just became a therapy session.
Now I'm just like, oh my God,
why am I so gentle, oh no.
- I'm gonna start questioning you.
- Oh no, okay, all right.
I'll ask the questions here, madam.
Are you aware that there is a conversation
on the internet about whether or not
you pledged any sorority and if so,
whether it was Delta or AKA?
Is something that you're conscious of?
- I'm not aware of the conversation
but I'm aware of it every time I'm in the company
of multiple Black women
who go "oh wee" or "skee wee" and they talk to me.
So I was at Howard University,
my sister Phylicia Rashad,
who's footsteps I was following everywhere,
pledged AKA.
So I was gonna pledge AKA
and I went and I made line and they,
oh my interview, I just remember it,
I was just so sharp, they thought I was schooled
or I don't know what but they were gunnin' for me,
they were gonna really let me have it
but my mother, Vivian Ayers, said to me,
"if you pledge a sorority,
"then I'm gonna take all the money that I have saved
"to send you to dance school in the summer
"and I'm gonna buy a car because your consciousness
"is not in the right place."
- Oh my.
- "Your focus is off."
And I'm like, "no mom, no, okay."
So I dropped out of line and so I never did pledge
and I went to the New London Dance Festival
where I met Alvin Ailey,
where I met the protégé of Katherine Dunham,
I met Twyla Tharp, I met Martha Graham,
I met the greatest icons in the dance world
and mama was right.
- Yeah, so worth it?
- Yeah, see that's what she did.
She used, those were her tricks.
- How do you think the trajectory of your life
and career would have been different
had you not gone to an HBCU?
- Wow, well you know, I tried to go to a school
of the arts that rejected me,
that was not predominantly Black.
I think things happen in your life for a reason
and you might not always understand it,
you can't accept it but sometimes,
it's the best thing for you.
- Mm hmm.
- I mean, I grew up in Houston, Texas
in an all Black environment
because everything was segregated.
Our elementary, junior and senior high schools,
movie theaters, everything, everything was segregated
until, I want to say '65,
somewhere around there things start to really change.
When they started to make us play the songs
the other band was playin', we're like, "oh, hell no.
"Don't play that horrible march.
"We want some..."
- We want some..
- "Some soul, chile," anyway.
- Put some sauce on it as the kids say.
- So I think Howard, was the right place for me.
It defined me in a way that I had no idea it could,
to be not only at Howard but to be in Washington D.C.,
the center of this, the capital of this country,
which is a predominantly Black city
and to just be in a place where you were
never the minority, you were always the majority
and your opinion mattered.
- Wow.
- And it counted for something and so
we came out of Howard knowing we were gettin' ready
to roll and rule the world
and so my mother had already convinced us of that
but Howard, you know, validated it.
It just did, you know, those professors, those teachers.
- Yeah.
- You know, when I did the movie, Amistad,
Howard University is how I came to that story,
going to the bookstore.
I picked up a book called
"Amistad," a collection of essays
by Black academicians and philosophers
and in the front of it was a preface that talked
about what Amistad was, this slave ship
upon which there was a mutiny
and I just, I was like whoa,
Howard University has been a,
it fueled me when I did A Different World,
when I did that movie, all of my teachers
were my best advisors,
Howard University is a big part of my DNA.
- I cannot leave your home
until I talk to you about A Different World
because it's the reason why I feel like
we grew up together. - Mmm.
- You know?
Even though I did not see you physically on
the screen in every episode.
Once I'd learned and found out
that you were the one behind the camera
I was like, oh of course.
Of course this is Debbie Allen, of course.
(laughs)
I am very very taken with your entry to the show,
which you joined second season, correct?
- My coming in to this show was certainly somewhere between
my sister who was, you know Denise's mother,
and had visited the campus of Hillman on the show.
And seeing what was happening behind the scenes.
We need you to get out your broom
It was not a happy place
at A Different World behind the scenes.
They didn't quite have the right
producing director there.
Phylicia went back and talked to Bill
and the next thing I know
I was getting a phone call from him saying,
We need you to get out your broom
and dust it off over there.
Go and clean house.
I said all right.
So then I met with Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner
and Caryn Mandabach,
and I said okay, give me every episode.
They said, you wanna watch every episode?
I said absolutely, so I know
how I'm gonna fix this and what we're going to do.
And so then it was about breaking down
in the writer's room, to let them open up to new ideas.
And Denise, yes she was pregnant
and we were gonna do such great stories
about a girl who was a Black girl from
a upper-middle class family, pregnant,
and not married for a change.
You know how it's usually portrayed.
And then finally Bill.
I took her to meet Bill to tell him,
and he saw us coming.
It was the funniest meeting, oh my God.
Anyway, he said, "no Debbie,
Lisa Bonet is pregnant, not Denise Huxtable.
No, you can't have it."
"I'm like, okay."
'Cause it was gonna be great. - Yeah.
- We wanted to use that but it was
a little early for him to let go.
But we made the show so relevant.
Jasmine Guy I had brought to Los Angeles,
she was one of my Fame dancers.
- That is so great.
- And then, Kadeem Hardison, I had known him as a kid.
His mother Beth Hardison was one of
the baddest models in New York, and we were friends.
And I remember him coming over as a little kid
jumping on my water bed.
And he said, I'm your Kadeem.
I'm like huh?
(laughs)
I'm like oh my God it's you!
So we took that show apart and put it back together.
Susan Fales was amazing as the lead writer on that show.
We developed that show and made it so relevant
and made everybody wanna go to college.
We tripled the enrollment.
- Really?
- Of historically Black colleges, yes.
We made all kids, Black and white,
everybody want to go to college,
because they felt that there was something there
that they connected to, that they loved,
that they wanted to have that experience.
Having come from Howard University,
I knew what to do with the show.
I had lived it and breathed it.
So I knew the stories that they needed to be telling.
- What were those stories?
- Well they didn't need to be walking around
talking about a egg.
They needed to be doing stories about voter registration
or date rape, their cultural identity.
You know, who is Whitley Gilbert?
Who is the boy in this cast that she needs to be with?
And I was hands down, it's Dwayne.
- Yeah, yes. - And they were like, no no.
I said "It's Dwayne."
I said "Don't tell me about some pretty boy,
that's not, no."
She's gonna go with whoever's more intelligent than she is.
Can make her laugh and give her shit.
- And earned her.
- Yasss honey.
- Absolutely.
- Yeah, claimed his woman.
- I wonder if you had a lot of push back
with the changes that you were trying to make.
Like what do you think the impact
of having Denise on the show, pregnant,
upper-middle class but still at school,
like what impact do you think that would've had on viewers?
- It would've been a huge impact
because already, The Cosby Show was changing
the way people were looking at Black people.
For what reason, it took a television show
for them to realize that we're middle class
just like everybody else, upper-middle class.
This was something that people just weren't ready for it.
I don't know why. - Yeah.
- We wanted it but we did many other things
they weren't ready for.
I was always being called in to
what I call the principal's office.
(laughs)
For doing shows that were, you know really about something.
We did an episode once called "Mammy Dearest"
where we reclaimed the image of Aunt Jemima.
We took her out of that gingham fabric
and we took the gingham, that gingham Mammy dress
and wrapped it like an African Queen.
And this was one of the most difficult episodes
we had to do, because we had people that were
wearing Blackface and it was very controversial.
But we were just dealing with it straight up.
And then the cutest little white boy
that you ever wanted to see in your life
is who wrote it.
- I was gonna ask.
- Glenn Berenbeim, yes he wrote it.
It was amazing.
And then I introduced Ego Tripping.
Nikki Giovanni, that was Howard University speaking again.
- Yes, yes.
- You know 'cause we met Nikki, we were all doing that, yes.
They didn't know anything about that,
we needed to introduce it again.
- I think that's how I became aware
of Nikki Giovanni's existence.
- From that tele-- - From that episode.
Because when she was like, "I turn myself into myself"
and I said, "What?"
"Who is this lady and how can I be like her?"
- Well this is the thing, television is so powerful.
This is something that I'm sure is part of
what your conversation is,
and why you're talking to any of us.
Television, film is so powerful.
It penetrates.
It's for the arts to address
those things that are most difficult, challenging.
Things that people need to know about.
- Right. - And if we're not doing that
we're not really doing a good job.
- I really, really wanna talk to you about you
and your sister Phylicia on Solange's album.
- Oh, oh okay.
- I don't know how I did not know until
today that the poetry that you and Phylicia
are reading is from your mom.
- It's from a poem called "On Status."
One of my mom's poems from her book Spice of Dawns.
And this was the book of poetry that was the
contender for nominees. - For the Pulitzer?
Yeah. And so it's about
a woman who comes from a very simple place
and aspires to be in a big city in
all these other places but realizes that
where she really belongs is with the folk
that she comes from and what really matters.
So we did this Mother's Day special.
Oh my God. 25 years ago. I don't know how long ago,
where we kind of surprised our mom. It was me,
Phylicia, and my brother Tex, and we recited
one of her poems, "On Status."
A beautiful poem, it's something I used to
win poetry contests with when I was a kid.
- Yeah.
- And Solange had seen that special,
and really liked it. I'm friends with her mom Tina.
And so Tina called me and said "Debbie,
Solange is just obsessed,
with you and your sister's poem."
I said, "really?"
I said of course she can have it,
she can have anything she wants.
- Awww
So Phylicia and I said yes to,
you know that poem is,
how does it go? It says,
I boarded a train kissed all goodbye.
And in my heart was a sympathetic sigh
for I would go and live in a city
where people in hearts in buildings were bigger
while they remain to work in toil
in a town who's thriving was of soil.
For long it worked. I knew no distress,
I even decided to write them less
What needed I for old folk degenerate,
who's living and thinking was way out of date.
Then one quiet day I found all of me confusion bound
with problems as high as Jack's beanstalk
and no one with whom to talk.
My dilemma was all my own. No counseling dad,
no kindness shown and for once I knew my real status
cockroach in a park theater.
Now my heart knows no delight
like a trip back to the old homes site
and not for money would I scoff
at a screen door hanging off?
So they got no tall skyscrapers,
clowns in nightclubs, cutting capers, it's home.
The folk are warm and most important, I belong.
(clapping and snapping)
Thank you. I just needed that first line.
- That was, beautiful.
And this, like as you're sitting here now,
reciting this poem that,
as I'm listening to it seems to reflect
so much of you and your life like
what does it feel like?
How do you connect with that poem now?
- Well it was interesting because
I was winning poetry contests with it
when I was like 12 and 13 years old.
And it's so true because my life is,
my careers taken me around the world.
I've seen everything but at the end of the day,
it's really my family, that makes me whole.
It's really my family's love for me,
that makes me feel like I can keep going
and doing what I do. It's that.
- So tell me about, what is "Hot Chocolate Nutcracker"?
- Well, it is a new telling of the classic "Nutcracker."
It's something I was involved with many years ago.
You know, Ellington wrote a "Nutcracker Suite"
that is all of the music from Tchaikovsky,
but it's jazz.
- Oh, ooh. - And we did a version then,
using that music,
but Gil Cates, who was my personal rabbi,
he produced The Oscars 10, 15 times, I don't know.
I did all of them with him.
He said, "Debbie, you need a Christmas show.
"You need to do a Christmas show."
So I said, "Okay."
So, finally, I wrote it,
and I was inspired by my son, Thump,
who, when he was a little boy,
he's 30 now, but when he was like five,
I took him downtown to see "The Nutcracker."
He was bored to death, chile.
(Tracy laughing)
And when they started dancing,
and he's like, "Mom, when is the rat coming?"
(Tracy laughing)
He said it out loud!
(Tracy laughing)
He said that loud.
The audience screamed.
I said, and that stuck with me.
I said, "Okay, the boys want to see a rat."
So I created something called the Rat Pack,
and I took who was the Mouse King
and made him Harvey, a New Yorker,
(Tracy laughing)
who's got two sidekicks, and they're like,
"You know, enough already
"with this battle with the Nutcracker,
"we're gonna change this around."
And it's just a musical fun delight,
and we go to the Land of the Candy Canes,
you know, we still go to Fairy Land.
We go to Egypt.
We go to-- - Oh, wow.
- To New Orleans.
We go to Bird Land.
(Tracy laughing)
We go to China.
We go, all original music
composed by Arturo Sandoval, James Ingram,
some Mariah Carey.
- Love James Ingram!
- Right?
Rickey Minor, all of us.
And it is just a new classic.
And I'm telling you, every time we do it, we sell out.
- Really?
- So the 10th anniversary was off the hook.
It was off the hook.
I'm hoping, one day, we will make it a movie.
It's gonna, there's gonna be
a behind-the-scenes special on Netflix.
- I can't wait!
- Christmas time, yeah.
It's gonna, it's coming.
Shonda Rhimes actually produced it.
- Shout out to Shonda.
- Yeah.