Pushkin. This is talk easy. I'm Sam by Director and producer Lee Daniels. In 2001,

Halli Berry made history as the first black woman to receive an Oscar for best

actress for her work in Monsters Ball.

That was also the first film Lee Daniels had ever produced.

To the people who weren't paying close attention, it appeared as if Daniels had just come

out of nowhere, the kind of overnight sensation

we only see in the movies.

But in fact, before Lee Daniels was a household name, or an Oscar-nominated director of

films like Precious and The Butler,

he was working quietly for two decades behind the scenes.

Well, maybe not quietly.

As you'll hear today, Daniels, like his movies, is animated and full of life, whose tough

upbringing in Philadelphia made him a consummate salesman.

That gift served him well, by the way.

First working as a casting agent for Warner Brothers in the

1980s, then later as a manager as he discovered actors like Morgan Freeman, Loretta Devine,

and Michael Shannon. But as the early 2000s rolled around, Daniels grew

increasingly frustrated with the limited roles offered to his clients, most of whom

were black. And so he did what Lee Daniels always does. He imagined a world he wanted to live in and

then went about making it. First, as a director, then as a producer and showrunner of hit programs like Star and Empire.

His latest is a new film called The Deliverance,

which stars Andred Day as a single mother trying to raise her children in a home

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