Hey there it's Jonathan Cape Heart and welcome to Cape Up.

Actor Jesse Williams lit up social media with his acceptance speech at the BET awards last year.

And so on this episode, you're going to hear more of his cultural criticism

and the reason he co-created a new app that puts Black expression center stage.

So much of everything we consume is centered around whiteness and then maybe they'll have to feel a quota and splash in some so-called diversity.

Oh, there's so much more, including us reminiscing about that time we parted in the White House

with Naomi Campbell?

No, for real.

And you can hear it all right now.

Jesse Williams, it is fantastic to have you on the podcast. Thanks for coming in.

My pleasure to be here. Thanks for coming in.

My pleasure to be here.

Thanks for having me.

So I'd seen snippets of your BET speech

from last year, but I'll admit that I hadn't watched it in its entirety until I was preparing for this.

How dare you?

I know, I know, I'm bad, I'm bad, I'm bad, I'm bad, I'm bad black man.

But listen, that speech was so powerful, so beyond on point and so eloquent.

Did you have that already planned? Because you were speaking, you were speaking from the heart there was no teleprompter and yet you gave

this incredible sort of diagnosis of what the country had been going through up until that point.

I believe this was November or December 2016.

June, July, end of June and something like that.

...