Liesl Tommy, Director of “Respect”

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2021

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Aretha Franklin was the Queen of Soul, the greatest voice of her generation, an eighteen-time Grammy Award winner whose career spanned five decades. She was also a famously private person, which makes the project of directing a film about her life challenging. The job of telling Aretha’s story went to a South African-born director named Liesl Tommy, known for her work in theatre and nominated for a Tony, in 2016. Tommy had also directed episodes of TV shows like “The Walking Dead” and “Jessica Jones,” but the movie about Franklin—called, almost inevitably, “Respect”—is her first feature film. Tommy’s long-standing passion for the singer, she says, made the job relatively easy, even though she first fell in love with Franklin’s voice as a child living on a different continent. “I don’t think I ever thought of her as American,” she told Vinson Cunningham. “I thought of her as a woman that I wanted to grow up to be.” As a small child, she recalls, “Even if I don’t understand the feelings specifically, I understand how the way she sang them made me feel. And that was, excited to be alive.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:08.8	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. This week, a new film about Aretha Franklin hits the theaters, and it's called, what it should be called, respect.
0:23.6	Aretha Franklin was the Queen of Soul, the greatest voice of her generation,
0:27.6	far none.
0:28.6	She was an 18-time Grammy winner whose career spanned five decades.
0:33.6	She was also famously private, which made producing a biopic a little more challenging.
0:39.7	The job of telling Aretha's story went to director,
0:42.5	Liesel Tommy, who comes from the theater.
0:45.1	Tommy has directed musicals and plays,
0:47.7	and she was nominated for a Tony in 2016.
0:50.8	She's also directed episodes of TV shows, including The Walking Dead and Jessica Jones.
0:55.4	But respect is her first feature film.
0:58.4	I have to ask, I mean, so your first film, you choose, you know, just sort of as a warm-up,
1:03.3	kind of, you just decide to take on this very small, obscure subject, Aretha Franklin.
1:10.0	Liesel Tommy spoke the other day
1:11.6	with the staff writer, Vincent Cunningham.
1:14.5	So I just wanted, like, I would just love to know
1:17.5	how this film becomes your debut.
1:20.7	Like, I mean, what was the process?
1:22.2	How did you become the director of this film?
1:26.3	Yeah, no, it does seem crazy.
1:29.5	I spent a lot of time during COVID talking to students,
	...

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