YouSaid · the spoken record

Andra Day

lines on the record: 45
first: 2021-03-10
most recent: 2021-03-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I don't. I think there's nothing that would pull me out of my own personal meditation like Rise Up. I would be like, okay, turn myself off. No, I don't.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like really, really thinking about it, it just made me, you know, obviously we had to stay home because we were in a quarantine and I felt like sometimes I get very, very restless and I'm kind of, okay, I need to get out and I need to go see something. But I realized sometimes I'm doing that, and actually, what blesses me more is if I'm just home and I'm just present and I'm in that space. So I realized I didn't need to go out to sort of find peace or to find, you know, I could be home and really like be present and get that from people and from my family.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As simple as it sounds Keeping my word to myself. You know, I think that that is sort of, I mean, I'm never good with time, so that's always an issue. But I try to consider myself like an honest person. Something that I wanted to definitely break in the pandemic, which I probably didn't fully do, but I was making strides, I think, towards trying to get better at that. Okay.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Citadel of Ilam next to the river Ulay. And I remember just diving through the layers of that, and it really means you're in a place of purity, a place of clarity in a citadel, the fortified place, you know, and so, because I was like, how will I kind of survive through this? And it was a reminder that you are in a place of purity and clarity in the fortified, protected place and you're elevated. That's what Ilam means. You're being shown on a lampstand right now and just trust and to be loved, allow yourself to be loved in this moment.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's actually a great question. And I think I have just recently gotten to a place of clarity, you know what I mean? And understanding. I was actually just reading, it was funny. I do devotion, and that's a huge part of it. So I make sure to start my days with prayer and with devotion, with reading scripture, with meditating, and just to remember that no matter how things are shifting under me or how unsettled I feel and trying to discover who I am because I don't know, I still don't know who I am in this season yet. But the one thing I do know is that I am loved. You know what I mean? I am loved and that I am a lover, you know, of God and of people. And that from that sort of stems everything else, I was reading a scripture and I was bawling because it was actually the night before they announced the Golden Globe nominations. And God was reminding me, he said, you are in Shushan.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm definitely more going with the flow. I will say that. I want the recognition for the movie. I want it for Billy. I want it for my cast. I want it for Lee. I want it for Susan Laurie Parks in her amazing script. And every single one of my cast members, I say their names all the time, you know, from Lee down to Trevante and Tyler James Williams, Devine, you know, Miss Lawrence, Garrett, Rob, you know, but my gift for sure was Lee and was Billy and was my cast and this set and this experience definitely.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And why is she not allowed to be a human the way everyone else is allowed to be? So I love that they brought that up in the film.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Here's the thing I don't think there was anything in her spirit that wanted to behave, and I don't think there was anything in her spirit that wanted to do. Or to misbehave, or to be, you know, she was just being and she was being free. And so, you know, this idea that what is good behavior even look like for a black woman according to, you know, a white man at that time or according to a man or to anybody, you know, there's such conflicting ideas and it's sort of like black women have so historically not been allowed to be human and to live in all of those layers, to be layered human beings. And we've seen that represented even in cinema, in movies and music, you know, either just do nothing and be this or be hypersexual. And, you know, so it's, I love that it touched on the expectations of black women by society and by even people in our lives.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I want them to be motivated. I want them to be sort of mobilized. I want people to not enjoy the song. I want them to say this is ugly and I need to find out why it's so ugly and why it's so necessary and why it's so important and to do something about it. I want people to be active when they listen to it.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, I want them to feel gratitude for her and towards her. You know, I want them to say thank you to her. I want them to realize that this was truly the great godmother of the civil rights movement. She did this on her own. She reinvigorated the civil rights movement, you know, as we know it today, along with the death of Emmet Till, by singing this song about lynching in America. And so I want them to say thank you to her. The other thing I want them to do is to, you know, I don't want them to enjoy it. Now having played her and being on the other side and while I was on set, the idea of people going, oh my God, that was so beautiful. I love that it kills me, you know, because I just am like, this is not a beautiful song. It is an ugly song. And the song is about the blood on the leaves, blood at the root, the twisted mouth and the bulging eyes and the smell of burning flesh. It's horrific.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can you do that for us here? Yes, absolutely. Because I think her voice is very much another character and another person. And I look at her voice as a scroll and I say, on that scroll is written every betrayal, every hit, every time she slammed heroin and she dragged a cigarette. She smoked every time she stood up to the police and stood up to the government. Every time she integrated an audience and had to fight for that, every time she sang strange fruit in defiance of the government, every suitor that came calling when she was in the brothel, everything is written on her voice. And so it was like to not have her voice in there would almost be like to cut Billy Holliday in half and only show one half of her. You know, you can't do it without the sound and the tone of her voice.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the road. I mean, being terrible. I can't even, I wish I was like a deeper thing. I did not want to suck. And that is like really like I was so terrified. And then, and I think layered underneath that was because I love her so much. I wanted her story told. I love her. I love her story. I love her fight. And I just thought I would dishonor her. The idea of dishonoring her was like horrific to me. You know what I mean? I did not want to be bad. And that was the main thing.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How about that? Or let's start with raised and then sent to a reform school for girls for being raped. That's complicated. You know what I mean?”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he believed it for most of his life, you know, until 60 years old. And so he was so adamant. And almost, and to the point, actually, he was so adamant about her not being a victim that once he looked back at it, he was like, oh, she's maybe a little too hardened, you know? And so we did some like pickup shots, you know, to just kind of get more vulnerability. But I think it was imperative that we showed her that way because that was a part of the false narrative that the government was spending, was that one of the things I hear that really kills me is when I hear people say that she was a wasted, that life wasted, you know what I mean? And then the other thing that really gets me is when people say she was a complicated figure. And I go, well, why? And they're like, well, because she did drugs and she did. Okay, but, you know, was she a complicated figure or were her circumstances complicated and impossible?”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, thank you so much. No, that means, well, first of all, that means the world coming from you because the color purple was a huge influence for me on scent. Just studying every little nuance, every detail about the film. I will say I think, first of all, two words, Lee Daniels, and I cannot stress that enough. I can't, you know. was said in the beginning he was so so clear he said i do not want her to be a victim you could tell that he was slighted that he was mad he was mad that they made her look like this weak sort of victim”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think I have to say honestly now, yes, I do. As a fan of Billy Holliday's, it is so satisfying for me to not only to have read the script and to have played her, but to see people. I think what's so beautiful about the other side of this and going through all of this press for the movie and all this is I am seeing so many people go, wait a minute, I didn't know this about Billy Holliday. Wait, let me look this up. And I think that's what God wanted. I think He wanted her story told. She's very much loved and she's a fighter and a hero. So I do believe that now.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I actually think that's what most people think when they look at people who are homeless. They did it to themselves. They're on the streets because they're addicts. They're on the streets. 65% of people on the streets are actually, they're dealing with mental illness. And so it's trying to manage mental illness. And then obviously drugs becomes a part of that. And so in and of itself is a disease. And so, you know, and one of the things Billy says in the movie so beautifully, and she really said this because she thought this. She said, I need help, not jail time. We're sick. We're not well.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I tell you his focus, that we couldn't even shake him out of his focus and the look in his eyes, it gave me everything I needed to know about the need and the moment before when doing that. And so I'm so grateful to him because he's sacrificed a lot, definitely.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was really revelatory for me sitting and speaking with. Using the bigger needles that they would have used that Billy would have used in the 40s. And I look up at him and he is now sweating and his pupils are dilated and he's not responding sort of to what it is that we're saying. And I was terrified for him. I asked the man that was with him. I said, is this okay for him? Like, is he good? He said, trust me, I do this all the time. This is a huge step of overcoming in his sobriety.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'll actually give you an example because I owe this kid so much examples. I owe this kid so much and I just want to share because just the sober living community is just such a beautiful community, one of just support. So really what I got from them more than anything was the need, you know, and this idea, I think we think the need. The need is the reason it will make you steal and destroy relationships for this. And with heroin addicts specifically, they're actually, once you use one time, you're not getting high anymore. You're just getting well. And they were very clear with me about that. And actually, physically speaking, you're staving off dope sickness. And if you, at which dope sickness can actually kill you. And so it's your actual survival that is wrapped up in this drug, your ability to...”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was really understanding that and then living in that trauma and that pain and the need to get rid of it was that's what I needed to understand more so than the high.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Disappear from your trauma, from your life, from the pressures of those things. And so it was understanding addiction that we all cope and we are all addicts. It just manifests differently in our lives. Some were healthy, some less healthy.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just physiologically speaking, the cigarettes and the alcohol for me slowed me down and put me, I have no frame of reference for what Andra is like smoking a cigarette. You know what I mean? And so if I were to walk outside right now and smoke a cigarette, I feel like Billy. It is way too, it's visceral. You know what I mean? And it kind of, my brain is very much not used to it. It affects me. It really, really affects me. And the other part of it is, you know, understanding addiction. You know, if you understand addiction as a sickness, as an illness, as a means to survive and to get well, not a means to get high. It's not just like a woohoo, we're having fun. You know, it's really a means to survive and to get healthy and to...”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's so funny. I tell people they're like, wow, how did you do it? I was like, well, I wasn't a virgin. I mean, I have my, you know, you just like getting back on a bike. You know what I mean?”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And no sex. That was the other thing as well. I made a commitment personally to be abstinent like almost seven years now, too. So it's just, it's very different. Her life was very different, her experience. Yeah”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No. Had you ever drank? But when I was like 21, drinking was never my thing. And so it was very easy to give drinking up.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're drinking water. I would drink juices, you know, sometimes here and there and have tuna. On set, I would have like grapes and nuts, you know, just to give me enough fuel to go. And then in between, I would have like a bigger meal. You know what I mean? Like some type of meat and some type of something. But the other part of it was, you know, I didn't want to walk on to set and like all of a sudden it's 1947 Billie Holliday has an eight-pack. It like turns out she got a membership of 24-hour fitness and now she's just working it out. So I was very like, I want a period. I want a period body. And not just a regular period body, but a period body of a woman who looks like she would have been using drugs, you know, drinking a lot of alcohol had a very hard life, you know. And so I wanted there to be loose skin.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To slow myself down, you know, obviously, you see, I'm very fast, and Billy Holliday is sort of molasses slow, and that's what cigarettes and kind of starvation and alcohol, and that really slowed me down in a very important way for the character. And then the other thing was I wanted...”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You did first. I mean, that's the first thing we started because we knew we wanted, I mean, that's another part about Billy Holliday that people don't know. I think people will see pictures of her when she has more weight on or when she was healthier. But her weight fluctuated drastically. And there would be a lot of moments when she was using where she would be sort of skin and bones. And so the weight was definitely something we knew we wanted to do because I was a, well, actually when I first started losing the weight, I was 163 pounds. But before that, I was a juicy 170. You know what I mean? But yeah, that was one of the first things we did. And I knew with the time that we had, I wanted to lose it healthily at first. But I always knew from the beginning that once we got closer to filming, I would just, I do not recommend it or, you know, whatever you have peace about. But I did begin to starve myself, you know, and I did that because I wanted to.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there was like not hot thing. And it was one of those things that sexuality was a huge part of who she was. You know, she grew up in a brothel. Again, she was raped at a young age. She had, you know, relationships with men, beautiful relationships with women. So you can't not tell that part of her.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He did me right. And Lee asked me in the beginning, was very courteous and just asked if I was okay with nudity, and I told him not typically, but if it is, but it is the truth of Billie Holliday's story. And I don't want to tell her story without nudity, without cursing, without the drugs, without the sick. This is her life, and I don't want to try and boil down her story to a G-rated version of her life. This is a part of who she was. And sexuality.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What help you get there? Once I read that scripture and I had a piece about doing this role, you know, my father always reminds me, you're either in or you're out. You know, there is never an in-between. There's not a gray area. Don't float. You know what I mean? Like, you know, be fluid, but don't float. And so my mother, the same thing. If you have peace about it, move forward and commit to it. And so that was a huge part of it. It was like, I can't ride the line here. I can't say I'm in for some of this. I'm in for, you know, I'm in.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't tell where I am in the audience. I'm watching her perform, and it's almost like a camera sort of panning around. And then I can see myself sort of on stage singing as her, you know, and it was just a really, I don't know, it was a brief moment, but it felt like a really validating moment. So we had so many conversations and I enjoyed her laughter. I enjoyed her. One of the things I remembered was her repeating stories to me constantly about people in her past, right? Her manager. I find this incredible. It was a very, very interesting experience.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always, always. And she would always make me laugh, and she would always, you know, just most of the time, Billy was just cussing everybody out all the time. She was happy with what was going on, but she only expressed it in cussing. You know what I mean? That's all she had like a PhD in it. And there were moments. I had a dream actually as well. And it was almost like sort of solidifying for me that she was okay with our spirits being entangled like this, you know, that she wanted it. And maybe she was a part of the selection process, right? And so it was a dream. And we were in cafe society, but it didn't look like cafe society. And I was watching her perform.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But she showed up. She showed up for us. She showed up. She sang strange fruit. She showed up. She integrated audiences. She fought against the government. She showed up every single time. And I think that being her, I was forced to show up. I had to show up for this role. I had to show up for Lee, for my cast, for what God was bringing me there to do, for Billy's spirit. And so just her ability to sort of almost throw caution to the wind and to be present and to show up was really, really just transformative for me.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But she had to go through. I think that, first of all, yes, just the experience of her, but it's because she showed up. I think that's a huge part is that Billy had these feelings. I'm sure she had fears. I mean, this woman's life was threatened every time she would get on stage and sing strange fruit, right? I mean, she was targeted. She was harassed. She lost her father to Jim Crow. She was raped at a young age. She was sent into a brothel by her mother. I mean, and then she was constantly abused by men. I mean, she had her fears. And she was a performer. So she knew what it was like to get on a stage and to be scared and terrified that the audience would not love you and you would not have that beautiful exchange.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And maybe it was to disrupt the plans I had for my life, right? I had a different idea of what my career was going to be in that period of my life, here were my plans. This is what I was going to do with my album. And I think that that maybe was God's way of just saying, no, no, no, I have to sort of shake you loose of some things because she really freed me of a constant fear that I have. I have real sort of deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness, you know, and that's which is interesting because sort of faith that living in that same space with that And I really, and that's actually to answer your question why I believe maybe this role came from me was really to heal me and to shake me of this idea of sort of self-sabotaging, of feeling constantly unworthy, constantly inadequate because I didn't have the right education or I don't feel like I'm smart enough. You know, she freed a lot of things in me, I will say.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wow, that is actually a fantastic question that I have not been asked in the 5011 million trillion interviews that Wow, that is such a great question. Why? Why did it come to me? I don't even know that I've ever asked that or thought about it. I mean, I think maybe it has to do with the season. And I think you sort of hit it on the head, right? Because I am a person of faith and I believe in faith, but I do believe that faith needs to meet works, right? And works needs to meet faith. I believe in that.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think absolutely. I mean, I felt like her. Also, I have to say that being, you know, I'm so appreciative of the recognition, but I have to give so much credit to Lee. You know, his technique, and as you've worked with him, is he keeps you on your toes. And so he has such a brilliant ability to really bring human beings to life and to show them in all of their sort of their facets and the multi-layered humans. So it was a combination of just living as her and loving her. I think that was the big part of it. I actually enjoyed, I enjoyed so deeply, maybe too much in certain respects, having her spirit in me. She opened me up. She liberated me in certain ways. I believe in divine appointments, and I truly believe that this movie and this experience was one of those appointments.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, I actually started auditioning for the role in 2017, so I started sort of dropping into her then. On set it was, no one ever called me Andrew. Everyone would call me Lady or they would call me Billy or they, I mean, no one called me Andrew. And it's almost, oddly enough, I feel a little bit like I sort of forgot her, right? Forgot Andrea in the midst of all of this. So, yeah, I had to be in that space to feel it in my body and to really, I had to believe it or I don't think I could have conveyed it, you know, to an audience.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they were like, the research is wonderful, but you actually have to inform this character with a human being, a real human. And so they really taught me how to sort of pull out these emotions, pull out pain, pull out triumph, joy from different places and memories and to be very present and to fill her with my actual life. And so, you know, you are seeing an amalgamation of myself, of Billie Holliday, and of Lee in my entire cast and everyone who poured into me.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, literally, it was, and then thank you. I'm glad you said that because that is. Quit me, and so I asked for her spirit as well. I asked her receive her, for her to be released into me. And then Lee connected me with Tasha Smith, who was my great acting coach, and Tom Jones, who was my dialect coach. And I did a ton of research as well because I'm a researcher. I feel like I'm like a typical Capricorn. I need every shred of information, every documentary, every book, every interview, everything.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I will say the portrayal of Billy Holliday was extremely just paradigm shifting, was life altering. So I'm changed so drastically with the role alone. Even had not all of this sort of happened on the heels of it. So I'm definitely, I don't think anyone, right, is the same that they would be three years ago. We're constantly growing, but she pushed me in a lot further and a lot faster than I think I would have gone. you know, on the heels of all of this, it's, you know, I'm definitely busier. I didn't sleep much before, but I sleep less now at home and with my team. I've been with the same people for a very long time and I try to keep a really just normalcy when I'm at home with the family, with my mother, with my cousins. And so, you know, that part of it has not, you know. Also, my family is like incredibly grounding.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great question, and as you know, when you sort of start the merry-go round of all of the press and everything that comes out, you actually have very little time to sort of think about, you know, what is in there. So I think I feel, I mean, a range of emotions, gratitude mostly. You know, I feel a little bit like a spectator almost in all of this. And I still feel a healthy dose of discomfort, nervousness, you know, when it's in going into any each and every sort of scenario. But I feel Feel aligned, if that makes sense, you know, if that is how I worked and a range of emotions sort of swirl around it, but gratitude and alignment are the two things I think I feel most consistently.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But my spirit is definitely there with you. At least I desire to be. My body's physically in LA, but my mind, my heart, and my spirit is definitely in Maui.”
2021-03-10 · Oprah's Super Soul · Andra Day · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source