Alfre Woodard still remembers what it felt like to act in her first play as a teenager in Tulsa, Okla: “It was as if I’d been walking around on dry land my whole life, doing the breaststroke … and then just somebody came by me and tipped me in the water,” she says.
Woodard was hooked: Acting, she says, “propelled me into just the most open freedom I’ve ever felt in my life.” After college at Boston University, she moved to Los Angeles and thrust herself into the entertainment industry. Her TV and film credits include critically acclaimed roles in Hill Street Blues, Cross Creek, Crooklyn and 12 Years a Slave.
In the new Netflix series The Boroughs, Woodard plays Judy, a former journalist living in an upscale retirement community where something supernatural is preying on the residents. The ensemble cast is mostly actors over 60, while the showrunners are decades younger.
Woodward says the generational gap led to some interesting meetings early, like a Zoom meeting held by human resources where the cast was particularly rowdy.
“It was very irreverent kind of stuff going on,” Woodard says. “We’re hearing things like ‘You can’t call people honey.’ What about baby? No, you can’t … Can I say ‘You know, your butt looks really good in those jeans?’ Just giggling and laughing. But that’s our generation, and that’s one of the things that I think we bring to The Boroughs.”
For Woodard, The Boroughs is also a chance to spotlight senior citizens, a population rarely featured prominently on screen.
“That’s the thing about accumulating years is people take away your humanity when they look at you,” she says. “But … just like anybody playing music, anybody painting, the longer you do it, the more fine-tuned you are at it. We’re constantly in the process of becoming more of our true selves. So look to your elders.”
Interview highlights
On her Emmy-winning 1983 performance on Hill Street Blues, in which she played a mother whose young son was killed by police
I understood quickly what honesty was. Honesty in portrayal, in terms of your intention, that’s what you bring. … It’s like being on-pitch when you hit a note. Everybody can recognize a flat or a sharp note. … They know something’s off, so your job is to use your mouth, your fingers, however you’re playing the instrument. And for an actor, your body — and especially your heart and your mind — is your instrument.
On the research she did in order to play a prison warden in the 2019 film Clemency
Just walking through the prisons, you recognize the boys and the girls who … got off the track, and it was because people weren’t listening to them. They didn’t have my father or my mother or my teachers. … The great thing about being an actor is you have to learn something. Not just the skill, knowing about the skill of what your character is doing, but you have to come off your own opinions to do something. … You listen with your heart.
On representing Black culture on screen in the 1980s and ’90s
A lot of the country and certainly the world didn’t know we were as complex and … smart and whole, because we’d never been presented that way on screen. The whole point [of] storytelling is for the help of the community, and it always has been. Since the griots, since people first stood up around the fire, we need stories like food and water. That’s how we know who we are. The recreating, the retelling of the story lets the tribe look at itself, laugh, cry, get scared — but to reflect and to know how to walk forward.
On starting Sistahs Soiree, a pre-Oscar party for Black and Latina actors
The reason I started it was people would say things like, “Oh, you’re so great, too bad there’s not any roles for Black women.” It was like, no, I have to answer you. If it’s the Queen of England, yeah, let all the Kates be Queen Elizabeth. But if there’s 99 other roles, then shame on you for not seeing all these women who are not only prolific but profound. They have a track record and they have made bank for people. … And I got tired of hearing, … [fans say] “You know who would have been better in that?” You know what, you don’t do that to the Kates, don’t that to us.
On the secret to staying in the entertainment industry for as long as she has
There’s nothing in my history to know to [give up]. I don’t know how to do that. My father would say … “Why don’t you run for [class] president?” … And that was in my school [where] there were only 10 Black kids. “Oh, you know, they’re gonna let a guy do it.” My father … goes, “Well, then you gotta figure out a way to get it from him, don’t you?” You never said, “I can’t because somebody won’t let me.”
Ann Marie Baldonado and Nico Gonzalez Wisler produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Clare Lombardo adapted it for the web.
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