“Your mind plays tricks on you when you experience trauma, and then you dare to dream. Dreams that are unimaginable. Everything that I’ve ever done is honest— and something that I know to be true because I’ve lived it in some way, shape, or form. Filmmaking is therapeutic.”
-Lee Daniels, episode 382 of Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso
This week, our guest is trailblazing filmmaker Lee Daniels.
At the top, we discuss his fifteen-year journey to the new Netflix film The Deliverance (5:00), Daniels’ relationship to spirituality (9:16), and his memories of directing theatre at eight-years-old (14:55). Then, we dive into the therapeutic quality of filmmaking (17:14), his work as a casting director at Warner Brothers in the 80s (19:48), and what it meant for Daniels to manage young performers like Morgan Freeman and Loretta Devine (23:38).
On the back-half, he unpacks the tumultuous process of making his award-winning film Precious (32:00), the projects that followed in The Paperboy and The Butler (39:30), the rise of Empire and his paradigm-shifting work in Hollywood (41:10), the peace that guided him to make his new film (46:10), and what motivates him to keep working (50:31).
Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at sf@talkeasypod.com.
Show-notes:
- Watch The Deliverance on Netflix.
- Find Lee’s previous work including Empire, Precious, The Butler, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Star, The Paperboy, Shadowboxer, and Monster’s Ball.
- Follow Lee on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
- For more talks, hear our conversations with Ava DuVernay, Lulu Wang, and Steven Soderbergh.
- Order your Talk Easy mug in cream and navy or our vinyl record with Fran Lebowitz.
Illustrations by Krishna Shenoi.
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