Without hesitation, I yelled, “Stand back from the door!” It was as if my entire molecular structure suddenly recalled the moves I learned at the karate dojo when I lived with Miguel and his mom. I unleashed a powerful forward snap kick, which knocked open the door. A couple crawled out. I repeated the kick five more times that night. It was like I was in a Bruce Lee movie. Adrenaline or some force greater activated inside me.
I found my neighbor Tina underneath two curio cabinets that had collapsed over her head, forming a steeple in midair. Shards of glass stuck out from the cabinets, one just inches from Tina’s neck. I said, “Don’t move, Tina.” I put the flashlight in my mouth and oh so carefully moved the shard away from her throat. Some young men appeared, and I asked them to help move the cabinets so she could get free while I went off to the next apartment.
In the midst of kicking down doors, I paused to look up. I saw stars in the sky like I’d never seen before. In the absence of electric lights, I saw the Milky Way in all its splendor. I said a prayer of thanks. Everybody in our complex had helped each other and made it out safely. We stood in the street together, crying, praying. When the sun came up, we learned the enormity of the disaster—the quake measured 6.7 on the Richter scale and fifty-two people died. I figured our building would be condemned, and a few days later, documents posted on the front door made it official—FEMA would be placing us in temporary housing.
Just a few weeks after the earthquake, I was asked to step in for disco queen Donna Summer at a fundraising concert for AIDS Project Los Angeles. The AIDS crisis was rampaging, and Hollywood royalty came out in droves that night. Whitney Houston, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Holliday, Madonna, and countless more stars were there to honor entertainment idols whose lives were taken by the epidemic, including Rock Hudson, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Freddie Mercury.
Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman directed the show. My performance recognized Paul Jabara, the brilliant composer who wrote disco hits like “Last Dance,” “It’s Raining Men,” and the duet “Enough Is Enough,” which was a huge success for Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer.
When I took the stage accompanied by a sixty-piece orchestra, three back-up singers, and a half-dozen dancers, I could see two of my biggest idols, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barbra Streisand, sitting next to each other in the fifth row center. As one might expect, my performance was highly energetic and highly irreverent—my first words were “They couldn’t get the bitch,” referring to the fact that I was singing Donna’s songs!
When I got to the part in the Jabara medley where I would sing Barbra Streisand’s verse in “Enough Is Enough,” I deliberately missed a note. Walking to the front of the stage to address Ms. Streisand, I said, “Barbra, can you help me with this note, honey?” When I saw Barbra and Hillary turn to one another and laugh, my life was complete (and I got the first standing ovation of the night!).
At the after-party, Barbs came over to me (alright, I pushed my way through so I could stand next to her). Now, everybody knows Barbra Streisand is a germaphobe, so when she placed her hand on my cheek, I was deeply touched. She said, “You are so special.” Wow, I had been dubbed by the queen herself and never washed my face again.
Seriously, though, I must have been really “special” that night, because it just so happened that Rachel was at the show and after-party. At our next session she told me she wanted me to begin taking “add-on” medication to reign-in my manic behaviors.
Also, Rachel and I agreed I needed a focus outside of work and myself. Most entertainers spend a lot of time either being the center of attention or seeking to be the center of attention. We can lose perspective, thinking everything is about us. Fortunately, I had a strong circle of support around me; friends like Jeffrey Gunter and Kiki Shepard, Ron Glass, and, of course, Roxanne, helped me to stay on track. Plus, my cousin WiLetta Harmon had moved to LA from Kinloch and she was a steady, loving force.
While I was filming Panther with Kadeem Hardison, I arrived on set one day and Dick Gregory was there. What a wonderful surprise! Dick was a giant in the realms of social justice and entertainment, and like me, he’s from Kinloch. I was eager to speak with him about nutrition. About ten years earlier, Dick had created the Slim-Safe Bahamian Diet in response to the appalling health status of African Americans. The diet became a sensation in the black community because it reflected our culture and traditions around food. My conversation with Dick was a timely reminder of the importance of eating right for my mind and my body.
During the summer I went on a study tour of Egypt with acclaimed Egyptologist professor Asa Hilliard. Dr. Hilliard, who also was known as Nana Baffour Amankwatia III, provided an Afrocentric perspective on the history of this once-great empire. As we visited the Great Pyramid of Giza and the open markets in Cairo and viewed two-thousand-year-old ceiling paintings in the Temple of Karnak, Dr. Hilliard demonstrated that the roots of modern civilization lie in Africa, not Greece or Rome.
While we were in Cairo, I scheduled a massage. The masseuse was a young, and of course fine, Egyptian man. He truly worked out my knots. He was so good that I scheduled a follow-up massage, fully intending to fuck him. But I was conflicted. Rachel and I recently had talked about how others can’t rescue you, so I tried to work through the situation by writing about it in my journal. After a couple of drinks, I called Rachel to talk me out of it.
“Jenifer, it’s three a.m. in Los Angeles!”
“I’m sorry, Rachel. But I’m going to have sex with this man.”
“NO, you’re not.”
She hung up. Rachel was not suffering my foolishness, and I didn’t fuck the masseuse.
I returned to the States, only to learn from my answering machine that four friends had died from AIDS while I was away. I called my eternally wise acting teacher, Janet Alhanti, and said, “What do I do with this? How do you mourn four friends at once?” She said, “You live it. You just have to live it.”
I was dealing with so much loss and so many abandonment issues that I couldn’t comfortably be alone. I would hang out with the Boat or my gypsy friends as much as possible. I spent a lot of time with Michael Peters who had moved to Los Angeles. We had gone together to Joshua Tree National Park, where the Mojave and Colorado deserts meet. Amid the beauty of Joshua Tree, Michael told me he’d been suffering with HIV/AIDS for quite some time. To come home from Egypt and hear he’d made his transition was almost too much to bear. We celebrated him like the king of dance that he was.
At dinner one night with Marta Kauffman and Michael Skloff, the conversation of course turned to Friends, the sitcom Marta and her partner, David Crane, had created. Michael wrote the opening theme music and my friend Allee Willis wrote the lyrics—“I’ll be there for you!” Naturally, I asked, “Is there anybody black on it?” That’s how I became the first black person on Friends. I played Paula, a chef working in a restaurant with Courteney Cox’s character.
I was taking my medications regularly. There were side effects, including dry mouth and a loss of sexual appetite, which was a blessing. So much for my sex addiction. My psychiatrist worked with me to adjust the dosage. It took patience, patience, patience to get the medication right. Don’t walk into a doctor’s office and think they’re going to fix your shit overnight. You can’t take a cocktail of pills and know immediately what the results are going to be. I feel fortunate that psychiatric medicines have become sophisticated enough that doctors can customize various kinds of drugs and dosages for each person. Please remember: I’m not pushing drug treatment. I am telling you my story, my song.
The best effect of the meds was that when the phone rang with bad news, I wasn’t going to fall apart emotionally. My responses were no longer as extreme. No matter what big issue or catastrophe loomed, I could say, “bring it, feel it” and move forward like an adult. I was better able to listen and be present and aware of the world around me.
I have learned that medication works best when you create a calm atmosphere for your
self. You have to slow your roll; give yourself quiet time and stop to smell the roses thorns and all.
At the New York premiere of the film Waiting to Exhale, Lela Rochon sat on one side of me and Loretta Devine was on the other. Whitney was behind me on the right, sitting next to Angela, behind me on the left. I was surrounded by friends who starred in the film—the film that I had not gotten a part in. I came home insanely depressed but then felt very proud of myself because I actually got out of bed, grabbed my journal, and sat with my feelings as Rachel had suggested. Must’ve worked because I had a great time on The Preacher’s Wife set the next day. Whitney and I took to each other like eggs and bacon.
Lordy, we laughed, sang, and acted a fool together! I loved Whitney, not only for her extraordinary talents, but for her warmth and humor.
The Preacher’s Wife was shot mostly in Yonkers, New York, during terrible winter weather. One morning, I sat in the chilly hair-and-makeup trailer preparing for a scene with Whitney. Just as the stylist finished teasing my hair to the roof, I was notified that Whitney had phoned and would not be appearing for work that day. Therefore, I would have to shoot a different scene that required a completely different hairdo. I was furious. The stylist would have to wash and restyle my hair. I was already cold and the small heater in the trailer would never get the area warm enough for me to sit there with wet hair. After a miserable hour of shivering while my hair was redone, I called Whitney’s private number.
“Hello?”
“Hi baby, it’s Jenifer.”
“Oh Mama, I can’t come to work today. There is too much snow!”
“But you should have called two hours ago! I had to sit in that freezing-ass trailer with a wet head because you called so late. I probably caught my death of cold!”
“But we couldn’t even get the car down the driveway.”
“Listen little girl. This ain’t no concert tour. This is making movies. This is teamwork. This is not the Whitney show! You have to think about the people who you are working with!”
“Please Mama, I won’t do it no more. It won’t happen again. Please don’t be mad, Mama.”
And how could I be mad? I knew she had heard me and was sorry.
It became more and more clear that Whitney carried heavy burdens. Later that week, we were shooting at a pier on the Hudson River. I could see that something wasn’t right with Whitney that day. I didn’t know what. She looked beautiful in her wardrobe, but she seemed troubled and disconnected. I said to her, “You know Whitney, I went to therapy to take care of my challenges, and baby. . .” Before I could say another word she whipped her head around and said, “Oh no Mama! My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ take care of me.” She said it with such fervor and determination that I never brought it up again.
The next summer, Whitney invited me to Jersey and gave me the grand tour of her house. Her sweet little daughter, Bobbi Kristina, was swimming, so I jumped in. We had fun, but after an hour, I was ready to get out. She of course was not but nevertheless allowed me to wrap her in a big, fluffy towel and take her back inside to her talented mama.
Whitney and I stayed in touch off and on but we didn’t see each other much. Years later, I was in Atlanta filming Meet the Browns and Whitney asked me to her home for dinner. When I arrived, she was “indisposed” and could not come down for the meal. I spent the evening with Cissy and Pat, Whitney’s mother and sister-in-law. Then, a couple of months before Whitney passed away she called me. She was very excited about Waiting to Exhale 2 and said she was on her way to rehab so she would be in top shape to shoot the movie. “I’m going to do it this time, Mama! Don’t worry, this time I’m going to do it for real.”
I never heard Whitney’s voice again, but I often recall the day we filmed in the church where she sings. I was giving an interview in the back of the church and without moving my eyes off Whitney, I said to the journalist, “Her voice is the eighth wonder of the world, and that’s all I have to say.”
I went to a big birthday party given by Carrie Fisher and Penny Marshall, who directed The Preacher’s Wife. It was a celebrity-filled affair. In addition to my castmates Denzel, Whitney, and Loretta, the crowd included Jack Nicholson, Jane Fonda, and Jay Leno. I was excited to meet Carrie, “Princess Leia” from Star Wars. She, too, lived with bipolar disorder and, similar to me, had turned her story and struggles into art.
Oprah Winfrey called, and I flew to New York again, this time to participate in a reading of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I was so excited. Oprah put us up at the Four Seasons, and that morning I ordered a $40 frittata. Disgusted at that, I was still happy it gave me energy to face a day with the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Mary Alice, Thandie Newton, and Oprah. There were about twelve of us sitting around a long table, poised to impress the great one herself. Well, I for one had studied my ass off. Now, before my big speech, Oprah and I had been trading side glances, teasing like regular girlfriends about Thandie Newton’s character was trying to take Sam Jackson’s character from Oprah Winfrey’s character.
In other words, “Don’t let her get your man, girl.”
We were bonding, and I was very happy that Oprah was so down to earth and playful in real life. But then came time for my big monologue. I took a deep breath, slowed myself and delivered one of the finest performances of my life.
My speech had been so impressive that even the seasoned theater veterans started to applaud the delivery. Oprah clocked this exaggerated praise. Let’s just say the “girlfriend bonding” shit stopped on a dime. I immediately knew I would not, under any circumstances, be cast in Beloved. It was Oprah’s first starring role, and experience told me she was not about to let my happy ass upstage her even happier ass.
Thomas was back on the scene and he and I drove from Los Angeles down to Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s beach house in Laguna. We had fun, but we mostly fought. It was all because of that “I’m the man” bullshit. I’m sorry, baby. Everybody in the world knows I’m the man. How I am not a lesbian, ladies and gentlemen, is beyond me. But when you’re a Dick Diva, you’re a Dick Diva. He left for Detroit, and I flew to Hawaii to hang out with Bette Midler and her family, Marc Shaiman, Scott Wittman, and hallelujah, Mr. Bruce Vilanch himself. We had an insanely full-out and fabulous time.
When I returned from the trip, there was sad news from home. One of my favorites among my mother’s eight sisters and seven brothers passed. Aunt Louise was the first of Grandma Small’s children to die. My first cousin Carol and her family were living in Compton, so I drove down to be with them. We had always been so very close.
That month I had a small meltdown because I hadn’t had a job for a while. When you’re in therapy it’s often one step forward and ten steps back. But I didn’t give up. There is no elevator to success in health or work. I was climbing the stairs against the winds of life. I responded by getting drunk, going shopping, and buying an electric-blue fox coat. Sorry, PETA.
Things picked up when, God help me, my new manager, Barry Krost, made a deal with Disney to do The Jenifer Lewis Show. A talk show. To make a long story short, I was basically incapable of asking other people about their lives without going on and on and on about my own. The show was a fucking train wreck and was never aired. I told y’all—yeah, I can sing, and act, and entertain, but apparently I just can’t stop talking about myself!
Thank goodness the writer Lee Rose called, and I was off to Vancouver to film An Unexpected Life. In the cast were the great Elaine Stritch, Stockard Channing, S. Epatha Merkerson, Christine Ebersole, and RuPaul. I am under court order to never reveal stories about the carryings-on during that shoot. Ask Ru.
I won an audition for a role in an animation created by Eddie Murphy called The PJs. It was a cast of wacky and talented people. Phil Morris’s fine ass was doing Eddie Murphy’s voice, and even if you listen carefully, you can’t tell the difference. I was fired from that job for reasons unknown. I think somebody was having sex with somebody and before I knew it, somebody else had my job. But
I didn’t give a fuck, because I had fifteen other jobs. To this day, I don’t remember doing The Proud Family. There was just a whole lot of shit going on, y’all, and I was in high demand. Thank you, Jesus.
The phone rang, and it was Suzanne de Passe inquiring about my availability to film a television mini-series called The Temptations. Before flying to Pittsburgh for filming, I took a side trip to the Optimum Health Institute in Lemon Grove, California. They should’ve called it Wheatgrass, California, ’cause these motherfuckers advised you to put wheatgrass in pretty much every functional hole in your body. Ear, nose throat and even the eyes. I was so green, I felt like Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz. You know she never got that green shit off her face, right?
I left the health retreat ten pounds lighter, feeling like I could conquer the world. Then I made one of the worst decisions of my life: I took myself off my meds.
Two days later, the mania had me zigzagging throughout The Temptations’ base camp on a vintage Schwinn, with Suzanne de Passe running behind me screaming, “Get her off that bicycle!” Later, I got on the phone with Rachel, who knew immediately what was up with me. She asked if I was on my meds; I lied and said I had taken them. All the while I rattled on, excited about the cool 1960s cars they had on the set.
That night was, to quote James Weldon Johnson, “blacker than a hundred midnights down in the cypress swamp.” At 1 a.m. I went down to a local bar and threw back a few too many. How I didn’t pass out on the street walking back to the hotel, I’ll never know. As I fell face first onto the hotel bed and the room spun around, I had one thought only: I’m in trouble.
I turned over to reach for the old phone in that old hotel, in that old smelly room. As I reached, I fell out of the bed and wound up in fetal position on the carpet. The phone had also fallen, and somehow I dialed Rachel’s number. It was midnight in Los Angeles. In what seemed to be my darkest hour, I prayed she would answer. When her answering machine picked up, I wailed over and over, “Rachel, I need help.” She picked up. Thank God. I told her I was ready to admit I was sick. I told her I’d gotten off my meds and that I was out of control. I apologized to her for being so rageful in my sessions. I told her I wanted to be well, that I was tired of hurting myself. “I’m ready now, Rachel. This time I’m really ready.”
The Mother of Black Hollywood Page 19