- Let's meet our first guest, everybody, I'm super stoked.
He was born and raised here in Harlem
and started out on Broadway.
He went on to star in movies
like "Lady Sings the Blues" and "Mahogany"
but billions of people around the world,
including my family, probably know him best as one name:
Lando. Yes.
From his role as Lando Calrissian
in the Star Wars franchise.
His autobiography is now out,
it's called "What Have We Here? Portraits of a Life."
Earlier this week, The New York Times actually praised it as
"effortlessly charming, revealing the person
behind the persona."
Beautiful compliment.
Everybody, please welcome Billy Dee Williams.
(audience cheers) (funky jazz riff)
We're so stoked to have you here!
- (singing) It's very clear our love is here to stay.
- Well, you should have got up there and sang with us.
What are you doing?
- (singing) But for a year, but ever and a day.
- I want you to sing with me next month.
(audience cheers)
If I'd known you were gonna do that
I would've dragged your behind up there with me
to sing as well, oh my gosh!
You were raised here in Harlem-
- You look fantastic, by the way.
- Oh, thank you. Thank-
I'm spanked up, man. (audience laughs)
So these are not loose.
I'm just gonna let you know, Billy Dee,
But I was gonna say, we just moved here, actually,
from LA, our show,
and I love living here in New York,
and you were raised in Harlem, right?
- Right.
- What did you do, like, growing up as a kid?
My kids love Central Park. Did you grow up like-?
- Well, I lived right across the street from Central Park.
- Oh, you did?
- Yeah, I lived down on Central off 110th Street.
- [Kelly] Oh, right on.
- On Central Park North.
- [Kelly] You had the best playground ever.
- Oh yeah.
- [Kelly] Just right out your door.
- Oh, it was incredible.
- Yeah. Did I hear this right,
you have a twin, right?
- I had a twin.
- You had a twin sister, right?
- Yeah.
- But you had a twin growing up, so like,
did y'all always go play in the park?
- Oh, we used to go out during the summers,
we'd go out and catch fireflies.
- Oh, we did that in the south!
I grew up in Texas, that's what we did.
I thought that's just what, like,
people that lived in the boonies did. (laughs)
(audience laughs)
I didn't know people in like, big cities did that, too.
- We put them in jars. - Yeah!
Like mason jars, we used to do that, too,
and make sure they can breathe.
Learned that lesson the hard way.
I was like, "Oh no!" (laughs)
But in the book, I wanna talk about this,
because the biggest question is, where is light?
Like, where is the light?
So I think that's a beautiful thing in general,
I always try and find that
'cause I feel like life can be kind of dark sometimes.
Is that a big thing for you?
- Well, I mean, I'm always probing, I mean,
I spent a lot of time throughout my life
trying to figure out more specifically if that's,
it's not really possible.
My sister and my mother was Jehovah Witness.
- Yeah.
- They kind of knew where they were gonna go.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- I have no idea where I'm gonna go.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- You know. - I mean,
at the end of the day we all kind of don't.
- [Billy] It's a quest right now, you know?
- Yeah.
- At the end of the day, yes.
- Yeah, at the end of the day, I mean, we can't-
My daughter asked me that question right now-
- But I have nightmares every-
- [Kelly] Oh, you do? - Yeah.
- I heard you had a reoccurring dream, like a-
You've had a reoccurring dream like most of you life.
- When I was little, I had this one reoccurring dream
about being in the First World War,
but I died in a muddy trench.
- Damn, you didn't even get a good dream.
You died in your dream. (Billy laughs)
Like that's not a dream I wanna have.
- And then at some point I just stopped having that dream.
- Do you think, do you believe in reincarnation?
- Yeah, I think that in my prior life
I was this soldier.
- Yeah.
- Which told me that I would never ever
have to go to war again.
- Oh, yeah.
- Because I was drafted, but I was not accepted.
- [Kelly] Oh!
- And my son was born at that time
and I was declared 3-A, I think it was 3-A.
- Yeah.
- And so he, well, I always bow to him.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- That I didn't have to go through that experience.
- Yeah, and you got to be there with your son.
That's important, family is important to you.
- [Billy] Yeah. - Yeah, absolutely.
- Very important.
- I always love when people talk about reincarnation,
though, I love that you had like a normal story.
Most people I talk about, that believe in reincarnation
are like, "I was a princess" and "I was a-"
and they were always this fabulous thing
and I'm like, nobody's out here being like,
"I was, you know, I took care of people.
I did something like, I was in service."
Like, nobody ever says that,
it's always some wonderful thing.
I love that yours is like, real.
- Oh, I'm a walking absurdity.
- "I'm a-" (laughs)
I think my family might call me that (laughs)
behind my back, but that's okay, we're fun.
That's what I say.
(audience cheering) His new book is called
"What Have We Here? Portraits of a Life,"
in it, he tells stories from Broadway to Star Wars.
So you sang a bit in the beginning,
but you also, you had a record.
You had like a- - Yeah,
do you know who Kurt Weill is?
- No.
- He wrote the Threepenny Opera with Bertolt Brecht.
- [Kelly] No.
- I was on stage with him-
Well, I did his musical
when I was six and a half years old.
- [Kelly] Oh, my God, That's a lot of nervousness.
- That was a hundred years ago.
(audience laughs)
- Was that like your first thing to do on stage?
- Yeah, that was the first thing.
And I was on stage with his wife Lotte Lenya.
Do you know who she is?
- No, I feel like a loser.
I know. (Billy laughs)
Yeah, I'm gonna go Google after this. Yeah.
- No, and I had a chant.
I had two chants. - What did you have to do?
Do you remember?
- I played a little page boy and I had to do
(singing) "Make way for the duchess,
for her grace the duchess.
Make way for the duchess for her legal, regal duchess."
And then I come back on the second time,
(singing) "Message from the duchess,
from her grace, the duchess."
- Isn't it funny? Wait, isn't it funny?
'Cause I can remember things I did when I was young,
like, had to memorize things,
but if you ask me to memorize something now, no.
(audience laughs)
But I can recall like, even, you know what I'm saying?
Like, song lyrics from when you learn songs
when you're a kid.
But like for some reason now, I'm like, "Nope."
- Well, you know, that's very interesting
because there's one particular song
that I used to play on a piano.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- I can't remember it anymore.
- Oh really?
- It's went straight outta my head.
- I think that happens. That's the same thing with me.
And I can only play one song on the piano.
And it's the first song I ever wrote
and it's the only one I know.
- Get out of here.
- I am a horrible pianist.
Yeah. - Really?
- Even worse on guitar, if that's possible. Yeah.
Yeah. People are like, "Oh, you're really good at singing."
I'm like, "The one thing. That's it, that's it."
- Wow, that's interesting. - That's the talent.
Yeah, yeah.
But this I find interesting, too,
I'm a huge Streisand fan
and I heard that you saw her when she was like 19 years old
in like some jazz club?
- Well, no.
It was a friend of mine, Herbert Jacoby,
owned one of those chic East-side nightclubs
- [Kelly] Yeah. - Called the Blue Angel.
- Okay.
- And Streisand at that time, she was singing there,
but she was also singing in a place called The Bon Soir,
which is down in Greenwich Village.
- Yeah.
- And that was part of that whole genre.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- In those days.
Anyway, yeah, I met her,
and I wasn't flirting with her or anything like that, but-
- Opportunity lost, my man. (audience laughs)
- I was just so-
Well, she's obviously very impressive
and she, at that age, was-
- [Kelly] One of the greats, yeah.
- Really extraordinary.
- Yeah. I can't imagine seeing her that young and feisty.
Yeah.
- But I went backstage and I told her, I said,
"You know what? The whole world's gonna know about you."
- You're like, you should have been an A&R guy. (laughs)
You knew.
Yeah, no, she-
I just, I love hearing stories like that,
especially I feel like when we moved to New York,
anybody that grew up here or around here, like,
there's so many cool stories of all these like,
mega-huge talents like,
that went on to become the greats
and people like, saw them in this like,
small environment like, that was so intimate.
I love stories like that.
What do you remember, speaking of singing,
what do you remember about "Lady Sings The Blues?"
- Well-
- Wait, was there a story there?
(Billy laughs)
- I was like, "What can you tell us on daytime?" (laughs)
- When I saw myself walking down the stairs
in a white suit- - [Kelly] Oh, yeah.
That's a great suit.
- I really, no. (audience cheers)
- [Kelly] (singing) Hey!
- I thought to myself, "My goodness gracious."
- "Damn, I'm hot!" (laughs) (Billy laughs)
- Walking past the mirror, woo!
You're welcome!
- I really had a good time on that shoot.
- Yeah.
- Working with Diana. - Oh, so fabulous, yeah.
- We were like two little kids in a playpen.
- Oh, I love that. - We had a lot of fun.
- Yeah, oh my-
I can't imagine.
Well, I have to ask too, like,
when you first, you know,
or I guess, why take the role of Lando?
What intrigued you about becoming Lando?
- Well, you know, first of all,
when I heard the name Calrissian.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- I said, that's an Armenian name.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And I thought, "Now, that's very interesting.
Let's see what I can do with that."
- Yeah. - Play with that.
And then of course, when I got the cape,
that sort of-
- Who doesn't want a cape?
(Billy laughs) Yeah.
It's like the first real superheroes in Star Wars.
I like it.
- So I built the whole character around those two elements.
- It's really all you need. - [Billy] Yeah.
- And you just held down sexy as hell. Nicely done.
(audience cheers) Yeah.
Well done.
- The book title I wanna talk about,
'cause it's actually a line from Star Wars,
so it's "What Have We Here?"
- Well that's when I first meet Princess Leia.
- [Kelly] Leia, yeah.
- "Hello, what have we here?"
- I know. (audience cheers)
And Han Solo pops in. Yeah, yeah.
Why choose that line?
- Well, but at the same time,
there's a different reading, too,
which pertains more to my sense of the absurd
about myself. - Yeah.
- And it's like,
"My goodness, what have we here?"
(audience laughs) - Yeah.
Every day can be different if you're fun.
- [Billy] Yeah. - Yeah. (laughs)
- Anyway, there was something very whimsical about it.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- So I thought that would be an interesting title.
- [Kelly] I like it.
- But I love cover, though.
- [Kelly] Yeah, it's so cool. - [Billy] The cover's great,
yeah. - Yeah, well, okay,
so, I have to say, at first, Lando was not a fan favorite
and you got kind of yelled at in public, right?
- Well, yeah. You know, he was-
- Because people forget it's not real.
- There was something a little dubious about Lando,
but he was up against Darth Vader and Boba Fett.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And a lot of people don't take that into account.
- [Kelly] Yeah. - You know,
he was going to lose-
- Cut you some slack! - [Billy] Yeah.
- Exactly. - [Billy] Yeah.
- Let's get back at 'em right now, man. Let's get-
I'm just kidding. (laughs)
- But eventually I had to say to folks,
"Look, relax, it's only a movie."
- I know, to remind the crazies. That's amazing.
Okay, let's hear it for Billy Dee Williams, everybody!
(audience cheers)
Once again, his book is called "What Have We Here?
Portraits of a Life," it's out now.
And everyone in our audience is getting a copy!