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РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS
7 Questions
Niecy Nash The star of Claws on the sudsy
thriller’s third season, her role in a new miniseries
and her first directing gig
laws, which is set in a nail
salon, has sex, drugs, dance
C numbers and a mostly female
cast decked out in high Florida glam.
Is it as much fun to make as it is to
watch? It is—from interacting with
the cast to figuring out costumes. On a
show like Breaking Bad or The Sopranos,
the things that the women [of Claws] are
doing are reserved for men. But we have
badass women doing badass things.
Most of the time, it’s for a good reason.
You directed an episode of the new
season, a first for you. How was
that experience? Amazing. First of
all, who doesn’t love being able to tell
people what to do? Second, I felt I was
walking in with a gift and a purpose.
The thing I loved most was being able
to shift the atmosphere on set. I played
music between setups: ’90s R&B,
Stevie Wonder. And because we film in
New Orleans, I brought in a second- line
band and beignets. When I filmed on a
Friday, it was mandatory that everybody
wore their pajamas. I learned that I
like to direct my actors in private
but praise them in public.
You also have a role in
Ava DuVernay’s Central
Park Five miniseries
When They See Us, which
comes to Netflix on May 31.
You’ve cited her as a hero of
yours. Why do you find her so
inspiring? Ava was able to com-
pletely course-correct her life. She was
a publicist and got off that train, got on
another one and created a whole other
life for herself. Anybody who can stand
in their truth and bet on themselves, I’m
going to see as a hero. You can change
your life in the blink of an eye.
In When They See Us, you play
Delores Wise, whose son Korey was
one of five teenage boys of color who
were wrongfully convicted in the
case of a white woman who was
raped and left for dead. How do
92 Time June 3–10, 2019
you go about performing this real
person’s pain? With care. You have to
pay attention to the scope of the life
and not the one moment in time. I was
happy to be able to speak with her be-
fore filming. You have to acknowledge
IT WOULD BE that this is somebody’s life, and you
‘ UNFAIR OF ME have to be [aware of] what bringing up
the past may cause them.
TO SAY, “I’M THE
BLACK LEAD OF When you’re shooting such somber
material, what is the atmosphere like
A SHOW, GUYS.
on set? I’ve never been on a set like this,
WE’RE ALL
that provided crisis counseling to those
GOOD HERE.” ’ who needed it. It’s hard, being a mother
in real life, to watch these children
being dragged out of this courtroom and
feel helpless. Having the real men who
experienced this or their parents on set,
too, you feel very responsible.
After raising three kids as a working
actor, you’re finally an empty nester.
How has that changed your life? It
makes me feel better about jobs out of
town. That is one X factor in this industry
that you cannot control. If a job shot in
Vancouver or Atlanta or New Orleans
and I was based in Los Angeles, it
was challenging—because when
my children were younger, I
felt like I needed to be home.
Now, I can go where the
work is and feel all right.
You’ve been in Hollywood
for about 25 years. In light of
Time’s Up and the increasing visi-
bility of people of color in front of and
behind the camera, do you see the in-
dustry changing in the long term? I do
think it’s changing, and it still has a ways
to go. It would be unfair of me to say,
“I’m the black lead of a show, guys. We’re
all good here.” It was a childhood dream,
getting a star on the Walk of Fame [as
Nash did in 2018]. But there are so many
other deserving people who exist beyond
the realms of black and white—who
are putting in the work and deserve to
shine. There are so many stories that still GET T Y IMAGES
need to be told. —Judy Berman