Tonya Pinkins
Your performance in Caroline, or Change has been universally praised, but the critical reaction to the show itself has been wildly varied. Does that surprise you?
Not at all. There are great works of art that are controversial and new, and I always felt that this piece was going to be talked about for years to come. People want it to be something familiar and it's not.
What's different about the show, in your view?
Everything--it's not an opera and it's not a musical comedy, so people don't have an easy way to talk about it. So much of criticism is comparison to what has gone before, and there's nothing familiar about this piece. It's so rich in metaphor.
Is it realistic to think that a show as serious and, frankly, downbeat as Caroline, or Change can succeed on Broadway?
I always felt it would. When I first read it, I said, “This was downloaded from the divine.” There are some things that are just meant to be, and I knew that this piece would be successful because of its truth. It has power, and audiences are coming back four and five times.
Are they really?
Oh yes. That's what sold us out for 14 weeks at the Public. People came back and again and again, and they'd bring others because they wanted them to have the same response. I met a man the other night who said he'd seen it twice at the Public and three times on Broadway and he was coming back again.
What drew him back so many times?
One of the things I've noticed just in looking at the monitor backstage is that everyone is watching a different show. When you look at the audience, you don't see everyone looking in the same direction. [Director] George C. Wolfe has been brilliant in creating so many visual pictures onstage that you can watch any of the characters' storylines and can come back another time and watch a different story. There's so much going on, you're getting something new each time you see it.
The second time I saw it and heard you deliver Caroline's aria of pain at the end, it reminded me of “Rose's Turn.” An actress doesn't get moments like that very often.
Right. Well, how many times have moments like that even been written?
What emotions does Caroline bring forth in you?
Just a sense of joy, really, because I know that she is healing people in allowing them to exorcise their demons and see themselves reflected on the stage. It's a real gift when you can experience theater as having that kind of transformative power. It's very rare.
It's interesting that you use the word “joy” because Caroline is one of the least joyful characters I've seen on the stage in a long time.
That's true, but for me, having gone through a very rough time for 10 years and knowing that I've come out of it, there's great joy in knowing that my life didn't turn out like Caroline's. There was a time when I felt my work and my life were always doing the same thing — I was going through a custody battle and doing a custody battle on All My Children [where she plays lawyer Livia Frye Cudahy]. To see that I've broken that pattern , that I'm playing a character who is stuck but that's not what I've done in my own life, brings me joy.
You grew up in Chicago. Was it difficult to get in touch with the sensibility of a struggling Southern maid in the early '60s?
I think I was Southern in another life because I've always been completely connected to all those Tennessee Williams women; I should have been born then. My family is from Louisiana and Arkansas, so I definitely have that energy and sensibility.
It would be so interesting to see you do Tennessee Williams. Have you ever tried something like that?
No, but I did a short Arthur Miller piece once that he had written about Marilyn and he loved it; he said I was the best Marilyn ever.
There's nothing sentimental in the way Caroline deals with the young boy in the show. Did you ever feel the urge to make her more likeable?
I think I have made her more likeable! [Laughs] In the first readings and workshops, there was not anything redeeming, but as we worked on the play over three years, I did try to find moments of joy. Because one of the things George stressed is that if you want people to go there, you have to invite them to the party. He's always telling us that the piece has sentimentality and power implicit in it.
I was amused that during the run at the Public you admitted to Back Stage, “I've been told by the actors in this show that I take too long at the curtain call.” Do they still feel that way?
Some of them do. Most of them actually like it now. Someone came up to Anika [Noni Rose, who plays Caroline's teenage daughter] at the Tony press conference and said, “You need to learn from Tonya and take longer for your bow because she really knows how to receive.”
Did someone in the cast actually say to you, “Your curtain call is too long”? That would take some chutzpah!
I can hear them talking while I am bowing, and yes, they actually said, “Move it along, Tonya” and they told the stage manager to have me move it along. Actually, I probably take a longer bow now than I did then! [Laughs heartily] One of the reactions I've gotten from audience members is that they feel deprived of the opportunity to applaud during the show because the piece keeps going. Applause is very important as a release and an exchange for the audience. We don't give it to them during the show and I feel that it's an important completion of the evening.
I hadn't remembered that your first musical was the original production of Merrily We Roll Along. Have you done Sondheim since?
No, but I use him for audition songs all the time. I played Gwen Williams [in Merrily], a Hedda Hopper-type reporter. I left college to do it; I was 19.
What are your memories of Jelly's Last Jam?
The Tony win is the big one--and it was a real coming-of-age show for me. I'd been playing an ingenue on As the World Turns and this was my first role as a woman. I had to find that within myself, which was transformative for me.
You played Muzzy in the La Jolla workshop production of Thoroughly Modern Millie? Why didn't you come to Broadway with it? [Sheryl Lee Ralph replaced Pinkins.]
We mutually felt that it was not going to work. For me, the part just wasn't interesting, and they wanted something that I wasn't able or willing to give. Most of the stuff I've done has been with George [including his production of The Wild Party], so I like to do edgy shows that are rooted to character. That piece was more about being an entertainer for the sake of entertaining, and if I'm going to do that, I want to do it in a concert. After that experience, it became clear to me that at this point in my life, I don't want to do show unless it utilizes my full potential. It was like, “Oh you've won a Tony and now people want to bring you into a show to add a little spice.” I made the decision that I was not going to do a show again unless it was my show and I could use all of my training and gifts. And lo and behold, Caroline was gifted to me.
Do you consider yourself a diva?
I think I'm a diva in the best sense of the word.
Which is?
There are people who always try to work at the top of their game, who risk failing for the sake of being brilliant. George Wolfe says that brilliance lies in the moment that might not work, and I think that's what divas do--they're always risking being bad for the sake of being extraordinary.
How do you juggle starring in a Broadway show, a contract role on a soap opera, and two small children?
Well for this short period of time, which is Tony season, you don't have any time to relax. The thing I've always loved about being an actor is that we work really, really hard--and then we're unemployed. Right now, my relaxation comes in the form of getting a massage; it's scheduled time when someone is taking care of me.
Your personal life was raked over in great detail in a recent Arts & Leisure article in the Times. How did you feel about that?
So much of my life had already been out there, I just trusted that the writer would be fair. Considering that most of the stuff that had come out about me in the past had been from my older children's father's attorneys and it had been really, really negative, this was a wonderful correction.
I was surprised to see a reference to you as a “deadbeat parent” in a current biographical listing on a soap opera website.
My children's father requested that [designation]. That's a thing where one parent has to request that the other parent be put on.
Did your divorce and custody battle derail your career?
I don't think it had to; I think the choices I made did that. Certainly there are people, like Vanessa Williams, who have had much more difficult trials. But for me, losing my children just stopped me in my tracks. Career did not seem important when that was lost. I remember when I got my home in Los Angeles, there was great grieving and a realization that I had denied myself a home for a lot of years because I didn't feel I could have a home without all of my children in it. Finally, I had to go, “Well, you have two other children, and you need to make a home with them.”
Never mind the stage--you've lived three lifetimes of drama!
At least! At one point, Disney wanted to do a TV movie about it but I wasn't ready. What I'd really love to do is a pilot I've been working on about people who have had to represent themselves in court and won. Our forefathers felt so strongly about our right to represent ourselves in court that they made it a constitutional amendment. But when people try to do it, they're up against a clique of lawyers and judges who don't want us to exercise our rights. In many cases, when people represent themselves, their lives are at stake.
The perception is that people who represent themselves must be nuts.
That's the perception, yes.
But you don't think it's true?
I know it's not true, from the hundreds of cases I worked on after I formed an organization called Operation Z. You're constantly up against the media's and the establishment's perceptions. I've been shooting a documentary for three years about the history of child custody in America and the myth that only bad mothers lose custody. There's never been a time in history when a mother had a legal right to her child; a lot of mothers are silenced and stigmatized, and the same thing happens to people in terms of representing themselves.
Are you close to your older sons now? Have they seen the show?
They've seen it a couple of times. I get to see them, but they're teenagers, so they have their own lives. I'm sure their father doesn't get to see them very much because they have friends and girlfriends and can go wherever they want. They're wonderful boys.
You run workshops for actors called “The Actorpreneur Attitude.” What's the most important message of those classes?
The way we think of ourselves is the seed and the root of everything we have in our lives. And if we don't become aware of that and take responsibility for our own thinking, we are turning our lives over to fate and chance.
Do you think most people set themselves up to fail?
I don't know that they are setting themselves up, but most of the stories people are told about success are fairy stories. My class is an opportunity to reframe all of those beliefs and see that the world doesn't work the way you thought it did. Lack of success is a symptom of what's going on in your life.