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Tavis Smiley

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3 Mar, 2014

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Keys discusses her career and album, Girl on Fire, in this interview for PBS.

Well, I personally, this whole project, this whole time in my life, this whole album really represents a really important time for me, where I’ve actually – it’s funny you bring up that word – where I’ve actually been in the process of removing fear from my vocabulary, from my essence. Because I feel like we can do so much greatness when we’re not afraid. It’s when we become afraid of everything and worried about everything that you are never going to reach your highest potential.

27 Feb, 2014

Tavis Smiley interview

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Whitaker discusses his latest movie, Repentance, and touches on his foundation that empowers young people into becoming community leaders.

It tries to work with peace-builders to become community builders in their neighborhoods. We work with the first 34 youths and we train them in conflict transformation and life skills, because we work with life coaching and things of that nature, and trauma release and stuff like that.

25 Feb, 2014

Tavis Smiley interview

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Lennix discusses his career and his new role on the NBC drama, The Blacklist, in this interview for PBS.

We were up against some pretty stiff competition, some old standbys and a couple of new things. But we somehow managed to break through, and it only took me about 50 years.

21 Feb, 2014

Tavis Smiley interview

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Perlman discusses her career and latest project, the TV Land sitcom, Kirstie, in this interview for PBS.

Really, really, I mean, like working with Kirstie Alley, you know, she’s just such a nut job which is my favorite thing. I mean, she is. If you’ve seen her on anything, she is just like she is. You know, she’s a wonderful person.

14 Feb, 2014

Tavis Smiley interview

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Bryant discusses her career, including NBC drama Parenthood and movie About Last Night, in this interview for PBS.

I just think – I mean, we’re not a post-racial society no matter what anyone wants to think. But it is a sign of progress that I can be in a relationship with a white guy on a show and not be a big issue within the show.

13 Feb, 2014

Tavis Smiley interview

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Ejiofor discusses his career and role in the film, 12 Years a Slave, in this interview for PBS.

It’s been an incredible journey with this film. I really – I think it’s just a film we’re all so deeply proud of, and we were just deeply passionate about making. It’s been incredible, the way it’s been received. So I’m kind of thrilled about it.

12 Feb, 2014

Tavis Smiley interview

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Pierce discusses his career and latest project, directing a Los Angeles production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, in this interview for PBS.

There are so many bad productions of Chekov, because he’s really hard to do. Because it’s not slapstick, it’s not drama; it’s kind of like real life. There’s a great quote about The Cherry Orchard, someone had said about his play The Cherry Orchard: “Nothing happens except one world ends and another begins.”

10 Feb, 2014

Tavis Smiley interview

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Curtis discusses addiction, including her own struggles, in this interview for PBS.

But 40 million people are addicted. This is a nationwide epidemic that we have to look at, and if my voicing my own personal, very – by the way, very personal experience – so that others might feel that they can voice their own personal struggles, then I will feel that my “outing” myself in a public way then had some value.

23 Jan, 2014

Tavis Smiley interview

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Gaynor discusses her career and memoir, We Will Survive: True Stories of Encouragement, Inspiration, and the Power of Song, in this interview for PBS.

Well I first started collecting the stories in my head because people were telling them to me. Ever since I first recorded the song, people have been telling me these stories, and the stories have been uplifting, encouraging to me, so I thought I’m being a little bit selfish here. I need to share this encouragement, this inspiration, with the world, and hence the idea for the book.

22 Jan, 2014

Tavis Smiley interview

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Delpy discusses her career and newest film, Before Midnight, in this interview for PBS.

We were very happy, and I have to say I was a little surprised, because we went in such dark places with the story sometimes, even though the film is quite funny, that I was worried we would get a little bit like some people would get angry at us or something, some critics and stuff. But in the end it paid off, and when we were writing it we decided to be completely genuine, to just do whatever we felt, even though it wasn’t necessarily a crowd-pleaser. It turned out to be even more successful than the two other films, so somehow, it worked out for us.

17 Jan, 2014

Tavis Smiley interview

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Branagh discusses his latest project, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, based on the book by Tom Clancy, in this interview for PBS.  He speaks on directing and co-starring in a film in which another one of the actors, Kevin Costner, is a director himself.

Well, you know what I found is that they are very, very sensitive to what you’re going through. I think that they’re aware that the major time preoccupation you have is the logistics, you know. People need answers from you all the time. So they know that people are coming at you and that sometimes messes with your brain.

16 Jan, 2014

Tavis Smiley interview

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Cheadle discusses the upcoming season of his Showtime comedy, House of Lies, in this interview for PBS.

He’s always feeling like he’s got to be the top dog. And we see in this season coming up where he does let that guard down and what it cost him. Every time he does that we’ve seen it, for Marty, there’s a cost.

15 Jan, 2014

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Dern discusses his life as an actor and coming from a family of well known politicians in this interview for PBS.

I ran from it all, and when I was 18, I ran for good. I ran because there was a lack of – when you grow up in that environment you’re taught that you’re privileged and you have a lot, but you still have to prove it every day to everybody in the household.

9 Jan, 2014

Tavis Smiley interview

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McDonnell discusses her career and her role as Captain Raydor, first seen in The Closer and now the spin-off, Major Crimes, in this interview for PBS.

This spinoff stayed in the environment and took one character and put her into a different professional position inside of it. So we were able to move it forward in a more organic manner than I would say other spinoffs, and it was highly successful, so we’re really thrilled.

17 Dec, 2013

Tavis Smiley interview

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Huston discusses her new memoir, A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London, and New York, detailing her early years growing up in a famous family in this interview for PBS.

I think – and that’s any help that I can get that may be people outside my family. I was always reticent about taking offerings from my father, and I think it was maybe because I felt the caveat was that I had to give something back, and I didn’t like that position.

12 Dec, 2013

Tavis Smiley interview

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Burton discusses the 30 year run of Reading Rainbow and his current campaign to relaunch the project as a mobile app in this interview for PBS.

It is a mobile library for tablets for kids. We’re on the iOS platform and the Kindle Fire platform right now. Our immediate plans are to get to the Web as soon as we can, so that our product can be enjoyed more ubiquitously. However, we are a mobile library on the tablet. A library of 300-plus books and growing, and 75-plus videos, new video content. Original video field trips with LeVar, just like the original television series. We deliver it all in an environment that kids are really excited about exploring, so that they can discover books they want to read.

25 Nov, 2013

Tavis Smiley interview

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Bochco discusses his career and his upcoming series for TNT, Murder in the First, in this interview for PBS.

Well, cop shows are by definition melodramatic, they’re larger than life. They create very stark contrasts and conflicts emotionally. They’re provocative, assuming they grapple with – to the extent that cop shows are mirrors of the culture. They really provoke thought and conversation and I think people have always liked the sort of certainty of good guys and bad guys. One of the things I always tried to do in the cop shows I did was to blur those lines and be a little more ambiguous, whether it was a cop show or a lawyer show.

6 Nov, 2013

Tavis Smiley interview

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Haysbert discusses his career and his role as host of the third part of the Smithsonian Channel’s documentary miniseries, CIVIL WAR 360, in this interview for PBS.

I learned about what, how steadfast I am in how I approach life. Because I saw on this show and I saw when they were introducing these artifacts just how cruel things were, how inhumane things were. But on the other side, I found bits of humanity that didn’t quite jibe with what’s going on. There’s one gentleman in the stories who had a book that he wrote and that his family wrote, and he was a slave. I don’t like to call our people slaves. I call it being enslaved.

30 Oct, 2013

Tavis Smiley interview

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Abrams discusses his new project, an interactive novel entitled S, in which two readers leave notes for each other in the margins in this interview for PBS.

So what occurred to me was what would happen if someone found a book and there was a bunch of writing in it, and the person read some of the book and read some of the notes and, almost as a joke, wrote some notes in response, and then left the book back for the person. What if that person who originally wrote the notes found the book, saw those notes, and actually left a thing? What if a relationship began between two people through a book? What if a book became a means to communicate?

15 Oct, 2013

Tavis Smiley interview

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McQueen discusses his career and his film, 12 Years a Slave, in this interview for PBS.

Look again. Never forget. Look again, never forget. To remind ourselves where we are, where we come from, and possibly hopefully where we could go in the future. You have to go back to our past and see where we’re going, and the sort of unfortunate situation, events such as Trayvon Martin, the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, 50th anniversary of March on Washington, the voting rights being revoked, having a Black president.