Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Marsha Warfield Talks 'Night Court,' Career Legacy, One Woman Show 'The Book of Marsha' + More

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INTERVIEW: Marsha Warfield Talks 'Night Court,' Career Legacy, One Woman Show 'The Book of Marsha' + More · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: Breakfast Club, yep, the one, the most dangerous morning show
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: to Breakfast Club. Charlamagne the God just hilarious. DJ Envy
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: had to step out. But we have a certified legend
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: in the building. You've seen her on a night court,
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: You've seen her on the Upshaw. She has a one
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: woman show called The Book of Marshall. Missus Marshall Wallfield
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: his head, Good morning, Good morning.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: How are you?
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm blessed Black and Holly favorite, all right, how are you?
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I'm doing all right? You know, all three of us
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: in red. I know we got the memo. Yes, that's
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: a good sign. You know, when everybody is like in
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: sync without even trying. That's right.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: As long as no crips walking here, we'll be fine.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: You've been working in the business since the seventies and
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: you gotta you're celebrating your seventieth birthday this month. Yes, Wow,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: do you feel like a legend?
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: No, I feel like marsha I just you know, I
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: do take every day as it comes, do the best
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I can and hopefully be able to rest at night comfortably.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: So things are going well right now, and I'm very
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: grateful for that. And very happy with the way it's
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: going in the second half of my career. But no,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: legend is something that I think they just say because
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: I'm old.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: You gotta have a ratherme to back it up.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Though, No, no, you know, if you hang around sooner
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: or later, somebody will will say you're a legend. But
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it. You know, it's nice to be thought of,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: well thought of, fine people and you just let them
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: say that.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Know better, Yeah, okay, Well it's not often that someone
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: with you know, your lunch, you know, like you has
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: long jevy in this business and you still manage to
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: say book and busy, you want three TV shows right now?
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Like what keeps you going? Well, it's not just you know,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: most people don't get a chance to have one successful career.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I had one, took off for twenty years, and came
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: back and have done it again. So I'm most proud
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: of that, of the fact that I could start all
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: over again from scratch and then make it work into
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: my seventieth year.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: When they called you about the night Court reboot, was
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: that something you wanted to do? Did you jump at
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: the chance to play Rods again? Or you just was
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: like I don't know.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: No, I don't take gigs, and I'm like, I don't know,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: you know, unless it's a whole lot of money involved,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not putting myself through that. I like night Court.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Night Court was good for me. It was good to me.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Hopefully I was good to night Court, And so when
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: they called me, it wasn't like I expected it because
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: they were going in a whole new direction. They doing
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: a whole different show, and I'm cool with that. That's fine.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I wish you well. I hope it does for you
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: what it did for me. I told Lacreta that as
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: soon as I met, I said, you know, this is
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: your gig now, this is my time has passed as
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: far as this is concerned. So you take this ball
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: and run with it. I hope it does for you
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: what it did for me. So when they called me,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, cool, you know, I'm happy to
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: do it. And it just seemed to snowball from there.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure you know. And see how times have
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: changed these days. How did you feel when you found
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: out that Ross would be getting married to a woman
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: in the season finale?
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, I thought it was great And I love the
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: fact that it's not the point of the show. The
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: point of the show is that she's getting married. The
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: fact that she's getting married to a woman is never mentioned,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: brought up, nothing. It's not a bone of contention at all.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: And that's a long way from where we started, you know,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: from where when I came out right and my mother
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: to my mother, and I wasn't even coming out publicly.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I was coming out to her and she said, well,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: let's you know, I understand, but just you know, don't
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: come out as long as I'm alive. I'm like, okay,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: that's a small thing to ask in the bigger problem
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: than it was growing up and everything. So I was like, cool,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: But now we can have h this character and not
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: just representing being a lesbian, but being a lesbian of
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: age of color marrying another woman, so that people know
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: there's there's hope. You know, there's hope for people. You
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: don't just stop living because you get another birthday and
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: there's you don't have to stop looking for love, you know,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: have to stop having sex, You don't have to stop
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: doing anything just because you're old. So I like the
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: way they handled it.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: When your mother tells you something like that, how do
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: you not feel suppressed though, like you're suppressed part of yourself.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Been suppressing a huge part of myself, my whole life,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, from birth. And when the society says this
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: is negative, this is bad. You know, people try to
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: insulect their children and help them because for them they
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: see it as one of failure they parenting. And two
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: it's like the world is gonna beat you up, so
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: let's guide you along this way. So my whole life,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: they've been trying, they had been trying to shift me,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: you know, over to the right side. It's like the
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: way they do left handed kids. You know, back in
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: the day, they would tie your hands behind your back.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: They would force you to use your right hand, because
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: left handed is a sinful, sinister it means left handed
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: in French, it was a bad thing. And so they
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: would let kids right with their left hand. So yet
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of converted right handers whose mind you know,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: when you're left handed, your mind thinks left handed, you know,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: they open books backwards, they see things totally different. But
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: then they had this cat and I've opened the book
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: the right way, no, but I've seen left handed people
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: open it the other way and go from the back,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: and it's not that they're reading from the back, it's
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: just that's how they see it, and so they try
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: to shift your whole mind. And the same thing when
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: they see your kids. You know, your kid is gay
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: from birth. You know, the little boy cries whenever you
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: put him in a blue something. Many look, I love
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: the pink, and they're like, no, you can't wear a
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: pink because you're a little boy. And he's like, but
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I don't care. And so they start shifting you away
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: from who you are. So when when you come out
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: and you're expecting the worst, you're expecting your parents to
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: be offended and defensive and all kind of stuff. And
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: some kids get put out of their houses. Some kids
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: at fifteen sixteen, their parents can't handle it. All. My
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: mother asked, was you know, don't put it out in
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: public in the whole world scheme? That was a small thing.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: And my maighbor was like, well, at least she's not
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: just owning me. At least she's not condemning me.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: If they tied your hand behind your back for being
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: left handed, I don't want to know what they did
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: to give people back.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Then they just tell you you're different, you're different.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: When you started playing back the character of Rosie, it
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: feels like a continuation or reintroduction.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: There's a little bit of both. You know that a
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: lot of time passed, so you know, Rod's was my
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: goal at the time was I had just done nine
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: one one and playing Hen's mother, you know, with the
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: short hair and every thing. They kind of established a
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: look and for that character. So I wanted Roz to
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: be more like she was back in the day with
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the haircut and stuff. So I got the wig and
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: went in that direction. But yeah, we picked up Roz
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: thirty years later for to have how many years it's
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: been and caught up with her life and I got
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: to meet her again too. I don't know what happened
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: to her.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: You was on TV. When being on TV meant something,
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: are you like, it was like real celebrity and being
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: really famous. So I did plan Roz back then in
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: the eighties change everything for you.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, back in the day, there were just
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: there weren't as many opportunities. There was only three channels,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: and cable was new, Showtime and HBO were just about
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: all the whole game, and so they didn't have as
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: many dating but there was no streaming. There was no
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: you know, and I tell people about like selfies and
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: stuff like y'all got pictures of everything you do. We
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: ain't have no pictures. We ain't had no It was
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: a big deal when somebody took a picture. So the
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: whole technology change. And as the technology changed, the opportunities
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: opportunities expanded. Plus, uh, black people have and women have
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: have pushed the boundaries so far away from where they were.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: When I was a kid, there were no black people
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: on the other there were no shows like this, There
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: was none of that stuff. All of this stuff is new,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: and it built up, built up from the Civil Rights movement,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: through the Black Power movement into more demands and more
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Red Fox and Bill Cosby and Flip Wilson saying, we
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: need representation behind the camera. I need somebody who knows
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: my skin tones to do my makeup. I know people
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: to do lighting and things who can understand how to
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: light black people. And so we need more managers and
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: agents and stuff, and all those things started happening. And
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: I was talking about it last night when Robin Harris
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: said at the Comedy Store, because we used to wait
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: for Paul Mooney not to show up, so we could
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: take a spot. That was the only way we could
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: get a spot at the comedy store, and Paul Mooney
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: always showed up. And so Robin said, I can't do
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: this no more. Marshall, I got to work, I got
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: to do I'm going back home. And I said, you know,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: that's cool, but you know the industry comes through here
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: looking fatalities. I don't care. I'm going home. So he
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: went back and worked all the clubs we worked, you know,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: to stay sharp, but didn't have the same exposure well
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: when he went back, and then he met Michael Williams,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: and the Comedy act Theater became a thing, and now
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: we have more black people behind the scenes, we have
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: more black people coming out the mail room and become
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: an agency now there. Then we had the cable uh,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: the cable WebLETS started w B, the whatever and the
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Frog Network and all those things. And so now they're
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: looking for talent. So instead of going to the comedy
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: store on the way home uh from the agency it's
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: black Uh, producers and managers and things could now go
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: the other way and come back and find a talent
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: pool of black talent, and a lot of those shows
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: were cast from that pool, and it kind of all
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: came together through the efforts of everybody along the way,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: but Keenan and Robin Robert Townshend doing doing Hollywood Shuffle
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: and independently, then we're gonna make a movie, and where
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: you're gonna get some money to make a movie. And
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: they said, well, we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: my credit cards, we're going to somebody, we're gonna hustle
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: it up. And they actually hustled it up and made
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: a movie that stands up today. And so all of
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: those things happened, you know, kind of organically, and followed
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: the trends of the technology changes and took advantage of
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: all of the opportunities that they made happen, and we
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: just kept on going until now you have representation. You
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: have you know, the idea that you can watch TV
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day and only see black people's
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: mind boggling to somebody who grew up with Ozzie and
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Harriet and that kind of thing and leave it to beaver.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: So I happened to be just come about in that
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: time period where it was between you know, when things
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: were coming up, and I got lucky and ended up
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: on Night Court and the rest is history.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: But I love how like you get excited when you
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: talk about like back then and stand up and all
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: of that.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Is that still your first love? I love stand up.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: That's my I don't see myself as an actress actor.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: I was reluctantly dragged into acting because I wanted to
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: save my piece. I wanted to be a standum. I
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: wanted to compete with the big boys. I wanted to
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: do stand up and so learning how to do, how
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: to act and all that kind of stuff, I'd learned
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: all of that on the job. I didn't know anything.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: It never took a I took a class once and
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: they told me to get a book and said, you know,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: read the book. And I opened it up and they
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: said on the first page, the key to acting is
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: to keep it simple. So I closed the book. I
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: never went back to the class. So I was lucky
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: enough to be on the show. At a time it
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: was like the Number four Show and tv H you
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: had actors. John Larrick had getting nominated every time he
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: opened his mouth. He had nominated for a nummy so
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: often he took his name out of contention. Uh And
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: they were Marky and and these actors. And I told
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: Harry when I first got there, I'm like, I'm not
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: an actor. I don't know how to do this. He said,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: I'm not either. He said, we just watch them and
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: do what they do. And so they made it easy
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: for me and I learned on the job.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: Just a question for you know you and you know
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: just Lara, she does stand up as well. Is that
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: age your safe space?
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: No, it's not nothing safe on stage. You're out there
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: by yourself. But the thing I think everybody has to
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: keep in mind when you do stand up, it's you're
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: doing you. It's all about you, and the closer you
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: are to who you really are, the better you know
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: you're you. We we uh come from a tradition where
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: for years black people weren't allowed to be themselves. Especially
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: there weren't no very few black men with moms. Maybeley
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: and that was it, but black men weren't allowed to
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: have facial hair, they weren't allowed to wear suits. They
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: had to be characters and play basically minstrels. And so
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: in the fifties and sixties, and people like like Dick
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Gregory and Timmy Rodgers and said, now we're going to
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: do it different and we're going to be people and
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: speak our minds. This was this was not allowed. You
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: weren't allowed to trick white people intellectually. And so to
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: be yourself and to be close to who you are,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: you can't fail at being you. And so if you'd
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: be the best you you can be, you're always going
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: to succeed.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: I like that you said you can't. You said you
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: can't trick white people.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: You can't trick white people intellectually. That was against the law,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: and in the South, that was dangerous. Dick Gregory said
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: after a show, the group of white men came in.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: He was he ordered a whole chicken and uh, and
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: these white men came up behind him and said, whatever
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: you do to that chicken, we're going to do to you.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: So she ate the chickens ass.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: You picked the chicken up and kissed it. So that
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: was the climate, you know, And and again he won
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: by tricking the people for tricking them.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing that you know, we act like like
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: when it comes to entertainment. And I was gonna ask
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: you about like roles that they've asked you to play
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: if they ever asked you to play a role that
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: might have been pushing some sort of propaganda.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Oh all the time, Holly, I refused. I came about
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: in the Black Exploitation, and before Black Exploitation, I don't
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: think there had been any roles for black women where
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: you where they didn't play a maid or a whoror
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: and most often the maid, and even some of the
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: classics that everybody loves, imitation of life, you know, the maid.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: And I said, I will never play a maid or horror,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: never ever. And so when roles came up and the
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: maid is she has a heart of goal and she
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: wins up and she ends up being and she's a
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: corpus comestter, but she's a maid, I said, if she's
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: a maid, I'm not playing her. So I turned down
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of roles, and I think we have to
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: start encouraging people. We have to lose to go along,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: to get along mindset, you know, and get back to
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: the to the kick ass, you know, yeah, mindset that
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: you know, you draw your own line in the sand,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: and you you have the right to say no, you know,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: and and we don't always feel that we have that
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: kind of agency to say, man, I ain't doing that even.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: If they make you feel bad for it, you know,
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: like because they will agents, and you know, it's even
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: like happens to me, like I will say no, Like
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: I was offered like three or four roles to play
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: a crackhead, you know, and but these would have been
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: my first roles and I don't.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to do that.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: And I remember meeting, oh my god, the guy that
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: played Eddie Kane. He was on the set of Row
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: I did a sitcom, which was my first big role
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: for Fox.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: But his name is Michael God.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Michael Rainey, I want to say, or something like that.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: But he played in the Five Part Beats and he
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: was Eddie Kane. And I met him on seton and
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: he told me, if you let them, they will keep
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: casting you for the roles that they want to see
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: you portray, you know, not for you know, and I
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: just I never. I grew up in Baltimore City. That's
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: all I seen growing up. I didn't want to play
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: that role. I'm not saying never, but that's not They
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: kept my agents kept bringing that to me, My manager
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: kept bringing that to me, and I remember him saying,
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: Michael right, Michael Wright, sorry. I remember he was like
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: my manager. He was like, this is you. The scene opens,
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: You're pissing behind a dumpster. Yep, after you snorted and
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: I'm like, and he said, I could just see you
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: play this.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: You don't know how.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Insultant that was. I fired him, but that was that
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: was very I just couldn't believe. He said, I see
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: when I first read this, I thought of you, and
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: to see I'm like, damn.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: We forget they worked for us. Yeah, don't work for
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: your manager. And they take the position that you do
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: work for them and that you have to do it,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: they say, and you have to let them know. No,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: I'm the boss of me, Like I said, do you
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: I'm doing me. I'm not doing what you see me. Yeah,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: so no, that ain't gonna work.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: Are you having fun?
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: I'm having a ball, you know. I believe you know.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I walked in here in the whole room is orange
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: and red and everything, so you know this is the
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: way it's meant to be. I'm I'm doing great.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: We'll tell us about your One woman showed the Book
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: of Marshall.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: People always told me that I should write a book,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, I'm not a writer. I'm a stand
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: up so if you want to know my story, you
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: have to come see me do standups. Ah, and I
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: can tell you better than I can write it down.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: And I didn't want to go through the ghostwriter thing
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: and have somebody else write my story. And I approve it,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: so I it's a kind of autobiographical stand up. I
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: grew up on R and B. I'm a big R
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: and B fan. That's my that's my thing. And so
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I sing a lot, and I you know, I'm not
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: a singer, but I have music in the show. You
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: know how you know how you have a party, and
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: whenever we have a party, there's always music playing. But
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: at about ten o'clock or so, that Auntie comes in
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: and say, okay, that's enough of that bang bang, no,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: it's lifting on some music. Play my record. And everybody goes,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: what's a record? And she don't. Don't get smart with me, boy,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: and play my record. And so I'm that Auntie and
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: this show is it's where I get to like it's
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: like a theatrical show, but it's like coming into my kitchen.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: You know. She always takes her place in the kitchen,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: that Auntie and starts talking about everybody else's foods and stuff.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: So that's the way the show hopefully feels like you've
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: come into my party at the time where was down
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: now to the real people and not just the people
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: you have to be fake with.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Who helped you on the on the come up?
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Everybody, everybody, everybody you know. That first night I went
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: to the comedy store, well, the first night I went
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: to do stand up, it was because Tom dreason had
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: just started open Mic Night. We had never had one
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: in Chicago, and he had just started opening Mike Night
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: after he broke up with Tim Reid and they had
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: a Tim and Tom comedy team. And uh so that's
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: when I met a bunch of people who helped me
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: along in my career. Brad Anders who used to do
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: the It's Your World, It's Your World radio show and
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: he's done a lot of movies in the Hollywood Shuffle
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: and stuff, and Tom Dreeson and the whole bunch of
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: other people helped me along. And I stayed in Chicago
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: for a couple of year, and then the first night
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: I got to the comedy store, the first person I
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: met was John Witherspoon. He was at the door. He
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: played He played tennis back then, so he had on
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: tennis shorts and had a sweater haat around his neck
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: like a preppy dude, and he started talking. I'm like,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: you're not from here, he said, no, I'm from Detroit.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: So I'm from Chicago. He said. I introduced you to
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: people as they came in, and one of the people
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: he introduced me to was Paul Mooney, and he said,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: this is Paul Mooney. I said, hey, Paul. He said,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: mister Paul Mooney, and I said yes, sir. And so
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: then we hung out and Nest started talking. That's where
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: I learned how to drink kognac because I was, you know, young.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I'm twenty two, and so I'm still in the stage
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: where I'm drinking fruit the umbrella drinks or I'm drinking
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: or trying to drink like grown people. And I don't know.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: For a while, I was drinking Scotch and milk.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, me telling them club bathrooms up.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: It was nasty. But he was drinking this. This drinking.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: Back then, they used to light your cone jack first
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: and so the you know, burn and warm it up.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: And they learned that you were burning all the alcohol
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: off and so stopped doing that. But it all came
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: with a flourish, you know, and I was like intrigued,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: and he was drinking out of a sniffer and and
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: what is that? Is what he said. This is the
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: stuff Massa wouldn't let us have. So if it's free,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: always get the kognak. So I started drinking kognak. And
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: from that point on, he got us all on the
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: Bridge prior show, the where we all got our union
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: cards and everything. And then as time went on, he
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: would help people get gigs. Whenever he was in, you know,
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: he would recommend me. And then when I got my
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: talk show, I hired him as the as the head writer,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: and so we went back and forth collaborated. And that's
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: one thing I just want to say. We talk about
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: how we don't stick together, and I don't know where
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: that comes from. It's like some people were come in
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: here with everybody in their family, a whole posse full
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: of people following behind them, and we all stick together.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, and they help him. I signed him
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: to my label. I got a deal, and I signed
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: that girl over there, and it's we all stand on
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: each other the shoulders, and we all stand side the side.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: And people have always helped and open doors and did
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: you go and check out this so and so they
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: got a gig over there. It's not right for me,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: but that might work for you. And that kind of
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: networking and everything is what made that kind of progress
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: I was talking about earlier happened. So we doced it together,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: and we have to change the narrative. It's not like
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: you change the facts, but when other people tell your
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: story and then you internalize it, now you're saying things
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: that ain't true while you're living your own truths. So
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: we have to start telling those truths and we stick
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: together real good. And and I've never had any situation
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: when I came back Wander Sykes, Kim Whitley and the
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Dell Gibbings and there's so many others helped me in
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: all kinds of ways, gave me gigs and it just
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: helped me out. I am passionate about how dependent we
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: are on each other and how we come through for
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: each other. So we need to change those those narratives
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: that just live.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: It's just for us not to forget when we get
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: in those position, because it feel like you had a
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: bunch of unwritten contracts, Like when I get here, I'm
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: gonna look out for you, and you hear you look
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: out for me.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, you're you're kind of forced into that.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: At the comedy store, like I said, everybody's waiting for
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: a spot, trying to get on, and you're all together talking, sharing,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: you know, as a group, and so you're kind of
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: forced into it. But then you're looking at people, like
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I said, who are making those demands, who are making changes?
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Who are who are opening doors unions that were closed
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: and if you weren't related to somebody, you didn't get
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: in certain units. But they said, no, that doesn't work,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: and let's let's open these things up. And they fought
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: for these opportunities that we, you know, wasked into. So
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: uh and I think that's been tradition all along, but
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: we don't. We've never had the opportunity to tell those stories.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: And now we do, and we can tell them from
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: a perspective. You don't change the facts, but you change
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: the perspective. You know, something can happen if we all
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: watch an an accident happen, we all saw something different
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: from our wherever we were, and if we're only hearing
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: the side of the driver or the victim or the whatever,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: you get a distorted view. And when we start telling
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: those truths, then people start thinking in a different way
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: and maybe you have a different understanding of what went on.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think people like the most so focused on
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: who didn't help them and who didn't like Okay, well
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: they could have opened the door. But it's a hole
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: ass of people who have y you know, and like
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: you said, your family, you got to focused on like
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: how you got here instead of where you wanted to
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: get because this person.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Didn't put you there.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: So that speaks to everything that especially the world of comedy. Now, yeah,
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: that we're in in all the trajectory and everything, but
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: I love the meaning you and I.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Know you got to go.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: The last question, is there anything.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: On your bucket list career like that you for your
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: career that you want to do that you haven't done yet.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: I'm my one woman show, the Book of Marsha I
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: want to do as a as a one woman show
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: and have that be a special I'm working to make
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: that happen in the future. And then from there, I'm like,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I'm just grateful for every opportunity I've been blessed more
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: than I have always appreciate it. You know, when you're
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: in the struggle and trying to make it, you think
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: nothing's happening, But when you look back on it, it's like, dang,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: I was doing a lot right. So I just want
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to keep on going. You know, I don't want to
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: grow old gracefully. I want to grow badassidly and just
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: that's right. That's right, kick it, you know, hick the
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: door in and keep on living until I hate live
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: no more.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: That's right, Ms Warfield. It was a pleasure. We could
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: sit here and talk to you for hours. Thank you
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: for your wisdoms, Thank you for coming. It's Marshall Warfield.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: It's the Breakfast Club.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: Wake that hands up, hear in the morning. Breakfast Club.