Tracee Ellis Ross on Being a “Black-ish” Woman and Jon Hamm Gets His Life Back from Don Draper

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

🗓️ 9 January 2018

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tracee Ellis Ross, who plays Dr. Rainbow Johnson on ABC’s “Black-ish,” joins Doreen St. Félix for a conversation about television, race, and self-acceptance. “Black-ish” has a reputation for breaking boundaries and tackling political and racial questions rarely discussed in prime time. But Ellis has found room to push back on the show’s treatment of her character as the wife on a family sitcom. And Jon Hamm won audiences over in “Mad Men” as Don Draper, the quintessential man’s man. “Navigating what the show became and navigating the success is the trickiest part of it,” he tells Susan Morrison. So he flexed his comedic muscles as often as possible, with roles in “Bridesmaids” as one of Kristen Wiig’s love interests (for which she wrote them a very long sex scene) and on “30 Rock” as Tina Fey’s too-handsome-for-real-life boyfriend. And his sensitive side is no put-on: as a young man, Hamm worked at a day-care center called Kids Depot, remembering that as a young child he had lacked male role models. “It felt nice to be that person I didn’t have in my life.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a real trade to bond.
0:03.0	The One World Observatory,
0:06.0	The Strait of the Block for West Boulevard and makes that right.
0:09.0	I basically just think it would be interesting to look at the emergence of a criminal economy.
0:14.0	And also, I'm always amazed that there aren't more profiles that are out there,
0:19.0	this really subversive, strange thing, in rap, especially,
0:22.1	and see what there was are like on websites. From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is
0:29.6	The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio
0:36.8	Hour. I'm David Remnick. Today we've got for you two great interviews recorded live at the New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:38.1	Today we've got for you two great interviews recorded live at the New Yorker Festival.
0:42.5	John Hamm talks about trying to get his life back from Don Draper.
0:46.4	And we're going to start now with Tracy Ellis Ross, one of the stars of ABC's Blackish.
0:51.7	It's a show that's been breaking boundaries since it went on the air in 2014.
0:55.9	In form, it's a family sitcom, pretty typical.
0:59.0	Mom, Dad, a bunch of kids, friends, wacky neighbors,
1:02.2	but in content, it's something else.
1:05.1	It tackles the real issues that any black family in America
1:08.0	might talk about and deal with.
1:10.7	And even today, that's a pretty big deal for a network show in primetime.
1:15.4	For Tracy Ellis Ross, though, the show needed to do something else,
1:18.4	and that was to confront some of the gender stereotypes
1:21.2	that are more or less built into that form of show.
	...

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