Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart. There is a new television adaptation of journalist and author Laura Lippmann's 2019 bestseller Lady in the Lake. In it, a housewife turned aspiring reporter's life collides with a mother navigating the political underbelly of 1960s Black Baltimore. In the seven-part limited series, we're introduced to two women. First, Maddie Schwartz, played by Natalie Portman, who's a Jewish woman in pursuit of a career as an investigative journalist after helping to solve the case of a young missing girl. And then there's Cleo Johnson, played by Moses Ingram, who's a Black woman aspiring to do more than work to make ends meet to provide for her sons.

At first, the two are living what seems to be parallel lives to one another. However, Maddie launches an ambitious investigation into the strange circumstances, circumstances surrounding Cleo's death, which has a ripple effect on everyone around her, including Cleo's husband and Maddie's lover. Lady in the Lake premieres on Apple TV+ on Friday, July 19th. And we are very lucky to be joined in the studio right now by three wonderful people. First, the creator and show runner, Alma Har'el. Welcome, Alma.

[applause]

Alma Har'el: Thank you. Thanks for describing the show like that. You're good at what you do.

[Kousha Navidar: Oh, well, I've got give a shout out to L. Malik Anderson, our producer, who definitely did a lot of the lifting on that, but thank you. Expertly delivered and collaborated with, I guess I can take credit for. And we just heard some applause as well from two other folks. First, we've got actor, Y'lan Noel, who plays Officer Ferdie Platt, and that is who develops a relationship with Maddie. Y'lan, welcome to All Of It.

Y'lan Noel: Thank you, man. Good to be here.

Kousha Navidar: Great to have you. And of course, lastly, joining us is actor and comedian Byron Bowers, who plays Cleo's husband, a comedian named Slappy. Byron, welcome to All Of It.

Byron Bowers: Yo, what's going on, everybody? All of them. All of them and All Of It.

Kousha Navidar: So All Of It. Alma, how were you introduced to Laura Lippmann's novel? What struck you about it?

Alma Har'el: Oh, I was handed the book by Jean-Marc Vallée, who tragically actually left us a week before pre-production. He passed away and he gave me the book with his partner, Nathan Ross. Natalie Portman was attached as an actress and as a producer. So that was pretty tempting right away off the bat. I took it with me, honestly, kind of thinking, "I probably don't want to make TV right now," and all those thoughts. Then I just read it and very much got hooked on it right away and felt like I can just kind of reimagine it in a way. And Laura Lippmann was very cool with us kind of playing with it and changing it, so it was-- Yeah, it just rolled from there.

Kousha Navidar: When did you realize that you wanted to adapt the novel into the series? Or what are some of the major differences between the two?

Alma Har'el: I think I was very much-- you know, I was very into Maddie Morgenstern and Cleo Johnson, which are the two characters that are now leading the show. The book itself had a bit more of a kaleidoscopic point of view of different people in Baltimore, kind of observing the situation, and different characters all speak for like just two or three pages sometimes and then disappear.

I wanted it to become a two-hander between these two women and make Cleo who-- the investigation of what happened to her is done by Maddie. I wanted to just add a lot of background to her world and build it up, add a lot of characters. Wrote a part for Slappy Dark Johnson right here, and a few more characters. Like, there's one, Reggie, played by Josiah Cross and another character named Dora in the club, so she's kind of expanding on her world.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, and for you, a lot of people are familiar with you as Daniel King from Insecure or Dmitri in The First Purge. What aspects of this script really resonated with you?

Y'lan Noel: Honestly, really, it was Alma. I'm not even just saying that because she's here. I've been wanting to work with her for a while just because of who she is and I've been a fan of her work, so it was really that. And I knew that if it went through her hands, there was going to be some part that I could dive into it. And when I read the script, Ferdie just really spoke to my every fiber of my being. I really appreciated that he was a man that wouldn't compromise his values and his integrity, despite his circumstances. So, yes, and then of course, going back to Alma, I knew I'd be in good hands and my expectations were beyond met.

Alma Har'el: We kind of actually tried to work together before on Honey Boy. The funny thing is that I was trying to decide between the two of them for a part and ended up going with Byron and was like, "I've got to work with Y'lan on something." Then when this came, I was like, "This is going to be it," but wasn't sure until he read for it. Then he read for it and I was like, "Okay, we're home." I showed it to Natalie and we were all kind of like, "That's him. It can't be anybody else."

Kousha Navidar: That's wonderful. And Byron, a part was made for you, right? It was a new [unintelligible 00:06:02].

Byron Bowers: But now that I think about it, I wonder if I could have reversed with him and he did Honey Boy and I did this role.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: Well, what was it--?

Byron Bowers: And I got that sexy swag that he got, it would have been messy.

Y'lan Noel: You'd make it work.

Alma Har'el: You have the other sexy swag.

Kousha Navidar: Yes. There's a lot of swag in this room right now, and a lot of it from me, let's be real, but otherwise, you got it.

Byron Bowers: Thanks.

Kousha Navidar: How about for you? What resonated for you about the script?

Byron Bowers: I mean, it was created for me, so I think it was-- As a storyteller, you want to look for stories that are real. This story wasn't preachy. Lately we've been getting a lot of preachy and programmable shows and these characters were able to exist. Part of my real life is in this character. A lot of comedians are like, they're like hackey or whatever. When you watch the shows, they don't have the soul, right? It's just joke after joke, but this, you see what a comedian's life is really like.

A lot of comedian, woman leave them 'cause these guys are just out every night just trying to tell their truth and we get to see a version of that. Also, as a Black male, the representation of man in this show is so powerful 'cause we not really out really trying to kill each other or you know. These are guys that have emotional ties and show vulnerability as a Black man in a great way outside of anger. So that's why. All those reasons are why and more. That's why you all should watch every episode, all of it.

Y'lan Noel: Twice, three times.

Alma Har'el: All of it.

Kousha Navidar: The show that we're talking about if listeners are just joining it is Lady in the Lake. It's a limited series. It's starting on Friday, July 19th, exclusively on Apple TV. We're here with Alma Har'el, who's the show runner, Y'lan Noel, who's an actor, and Byron Bowers, who just talked about giving that fantastic answer, also an actor on the show. And Alma, there's-- kind of to Byron, your point, it's clear how much research went into doing this show to make it work. Lippmann was inspired to write the book by two deaths in Baltimore in 1969. There's the murder of eleven-year-old Esther Liebowitz and a 33-year-old Black woman named Shirley Parker. For you, what research did you do into the actual cases which Lippmann's novel was based on?

Alma Har'el: Shirley Parker's death was never really resolved, so the mystery of her death was never solved. There was a lot of information available about her life and that was what inspired a lot of the rethinking of the world of Cleo because it's a fictional character, and obviously, we take a lot of liberty with it, but we wanted to be very respectful of these cases. There was so much with that character that surprised me, like the different jobs she juggled, and her political involvement, and her work in this jazz club, which was club members only for only Black members.

Realizing how Penn Avenue has been kind of a mecca of jazz in Baltimore and the amount of culture and Black economy that revolved around dreams really, the dream books, things like that. People waking up in the morning and putting money on their dreams and gambling on them. By that, creating an economy that was later on taken on by the state and turned into the State Lottery in a very cynical way. All of that really came together and helped me create that world that I thought was only starting in the book and we wanted to develop it.

Kousha Navidar: Byron, how familiar were you with the novel before you started this project?

Byron Bowers: I'm a part of a Jewish book club, so we read a lot of books like the Torah, and this book was a part of it and-- No, I was just playing, but I wasn't familiar with it at all myself, but once we got down in the room, 'cause I was there with her, this thing became beautiful, especially 'cause it's a Black man and a Jewish woman. I mean, I date a Jewish woman, I date the Jewish woman, you know, so--

Kousha Navidar: The Jewish woman, yes. shout out to the Jewish woman.

Byron Bowers: Yeah, shout out to the Jewish woman. You know what I mean? So, yeah.

Kousha Navidar: And, Y'lan, how about for you? How familiar were you with the novel?

Y'lan Noel: I went ahead and read the book just because I wanted to know what the background is and what I was getting myself into and because my character was in the book, right, you had to--

Alma Har'el: Yeah.

Y'lan Noel: Byron was created. His character was created. But it's interesting when you're adapting for the screen because I think Ferdie, when I read the book two years ago now, he's so mysterious. We wanted to capture a bit of that, but we had to find ways to flesh him out. Alma and her team did a really good job doing that and then it was up to me to embody him and bring him to life, but yeah.

Alma Har'el: Yeah, I was really lucky because I think in the process of it, every actor and these guys specifically, but also every actor on the show, I think, brought so much of themselves into the parts, and that was kind of part of the process of doing that is opening it and making room for that, so--

Kousha Navidar: Yeah, that collaboration.

Y'lan Noel: And that's the great thing about this project, is like how collaborative it is. When Alma was asking how we felt about it, it's almost like, "What do you mean what I think?"

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: And I'm an actor.

Y'lan Noel: Yeah, I'm an actor. I'm here to make this work. You mean you want a bit of my DNA in here? Is that all right? So it took a minute. It's a bit of a learning curve to see that that was not only okay, but what was needed to make it even more authentic. That's an experience that I haven't had often and it's a testament to the people we're in the room with right now.

Kousha Navidar: We got to take a quick break, but we're going to come right back and we're going to talk more about The Lady in the Lake, which is a limited series on Apple TV+. We'll talk more, we'll hear a clip from the show, so stay with us.

[MUSIC]

Kousha Navidar: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart, and we are talking about The Lady in the Lake. It's a limited series on Apple TV+. It comes out this Friday, July 19th. We are lucky to be joined in the studio by a fantastic set of people, Alma Har'el, who's the showrunner, Y'lan Noel, the actor, and Byron Bowers, the actor on the show.

We are talking a little bit about the characters, and I'd love to dive into that even more. There's a clip I'd love to start off with. In this scene, Maddie calls the police to report her apartment has been robbed and a ring was stolen. However, the robbery never actually happened. This is her conversation with officer Ferdie Platt as they're waiting for the burglary detective. Here it is.

Ferdie Platt: Can I ask you something?

Maddie Schwartz: Sure.

Ferdie Platt: Was the ring insured?

Maddie Schwartz: Yes.

Ferdie Platt: You know, it could take months for the insurance claim to come through? You should take that into account if you're counting on that money.

Maddie Schwartz: I'm counting on that money?

Ferdie Platt: You know what I mean. Anyway, burglary detective should be here by now. Let's go.

Kousha Navidar: Y'lan, what is Platt's first impression of Maddie, and why does he allow her to continue with this plan of hers?

Y'lan Noel: I think he just wants to let her know that she's not the smartest person in the room. She's managed to find herself in the bottom in the community that she doesn't know, and he's just letting her know that, "Hey, this is not what you think it is." But I think it evolves to, Ferdie is sort of a-- he's an outcast, right, because he's a good cop in a community of not so good cops. Then because he's a cop, it comes with that inherent fear from his community. They don't really trust him.

Then Maddie, he sees a fascination and a curiosity in her pursuit for truth that I think it mirrors some of the qualities that he has. Those are a bit of his first impressions from-- and then also, I think he's quite fond of-- she's an attractive woman so there's always going to be that element as well.

Kousha Navidar: So you feel like that pursuit for truth is something that he can recognize from the jump?

Y'lan Noel: Yeah, well, 'cause he's a cop, and he's also an aspiring--

Alma Har'el: He also sees that she found the-- I guess, like, that she's searching for the missing girl and all of those things.

Y'lan Nel: Yeah.

Alma Har'el: I guess that's a detective kind of job. It's kind of an alignment there.

Kousha Navidar: Game recognizes game a little bit.

Y'lan Noel: Exactly. As an aspiring detective, he's like, "All right, well, what you want do?"

Kousha Navidar: Byron, for you, your character, Slappy, is also a comedian and Cleo's estranged husband, but he didn't actually exist in Lippmann's novel. Can you tell us a little bit about your character, what he wants out of life?

Byron Bowers: He wants to tell his truth. This character was created by Alma Har'el for myself, and it's based on things I went through as a comedian as far as not being allowed to perform because of some of the material that needed a home and it's found its home on this show. And I've also had my ex leave me before because I decided to find my truth and tell my truth. So I think that's what he wants.

He's also an outcast. He's not liked by his in-laws. He didn't grow up in the well to do house, and he's rough around the edges, which I've experienced coming up in the social economic group that I had come up in, even within my own community. So I think it's good to explore things. People were able to see kind of what that's like, because that's kind of what we go through. I mean, everybody has a version of that from different cultures or whatever, so, yeah, man, I think that's very important.

Kousha Navidar: How did it feel for you playing a character that hit so close to home?

Byron Bowers: As a comedian, we have to deal with those things every day. That's why we really like dark souls. We have to face ourselves like that. So, I mean, it was cool to show people that story and do it in a time period where our heroes developed their truths, like the Lenny Bruces and the Carlins and the Richard Pryors all took those chances with their truth. So it was great for me to go back in that time, because that's the time.

Kousha Navidar: Alma, that got a reaction out of you. Tell me about that.

Alma Har'el: Yeah, that was just a big part of why I wrote this character was obviously because I love Byron and admire his work, both as an actor, but as a comic. I mean, the first time we met-- we've been together for eight years. The first time I came and met him was at the comedy store where he performed. I was so blown away by seeing him on stage and just hearing him do a set, it was like 15 minutes or ten minutes, I can't remember, and I've never seen anybody like him. I was just like, "That's--s"

I could see over the years how challenging it is for him to fit in, in any kind of expectation of people of what comedy is and sometimes even what Black comedy should be or how he speaks about those themes or from that place. So, yeah, I just felt, as I was researching, seeing that period in time, and I always say in comedy, but also in music, seeing all these people at the time that were, like Byron said, finding their voice and also standing up to the expectations, especially Black comics, of entertaining white folks, of telling jokes that white folks can laugh at. Instead of it, showing a comic that is saying, "No, I'm just going to talk about what's me."

Byron Bowers: Which I'm in that transition now, I want to speak to certain groups. And it's funny, 'cause your friends that saw me, they was like, "Urgh."

Alma Har'el: Which one?

Byron Bowers: Some of them, they was like, "Oh, [unintelligible 00:19:14]."

Alma Har'el: Oh, yeah, the first night that I came, they were like, "You're staying?" 'cause they all went to a party. I was like, "You know what? I'm going to stay, talk to this guy." They were like, "Really? After that show?"

[laughter]

Byron Bowers: Yeah.

Kousha Navidar: But it worked out. It's about finding your voice.

Byron Bowers: I say Slappy is the guy who knew that Rosa Parks wasn't the original person who didn't get up on the bus. He knew it was Claudette, and he talks about it, but people don't want him to talk about that.

Kousha Navidar: That's such a great way of phrasing it. I hear that. I want to talk about Baltimore for a little bit as well, because that's another big character in this series. Alma, Lady in the Lake is set in the '60s, which is not just a unique time in American history, but really in Baltimore history. Can you talk a little bit about the role that Baltimore plays in the story?

Alma Har'el: Yeah. You know, I'm an immigrant, so I have to admit my ignorance, and I think my whole knowledge of Baltimore was from The Wire. The pictures I had in my head, the people that I imagined when I heard about it, it was really had to do with that. So as I was diving in, I was like, "Wait, what?" It had all of that culture. Penn Avenue was like the mecca of jazz. Like, all these people performed there. It had these clubs. It had just that kind of nuance of also within the Black community, having different classes and that I wasn't familiar with that, and how Black excellence and those things sometimes infringe of Black folks that come from different economical backgrounds. I was just really diving in into all of that and then the Jewish community, obviously, and the contrast between the two in a time that created a fracture.

So, yeah, I think we spent-- I insisted on filming there. It was like, a lot of possibilities to shoot in a cheaper way, I think, or in studios and just do exteriors and somewhere else and really wanted to go there and feel what it's like to live there and shoot there. It became a very big decision for production, which we followed up on and very, very happy we did that. Now, every time I watch the show, I can't imagine not filming it there. Also, because all the background artists and everybody that worked with us were local people that informed so much of the texture and the vibe of the show.

And because of COVID by the way, and things like that, we couldn't open it up so much all the time to new background artists. It almost became like a small theater group where you know every background and they just play a lot of different people. So, yeah, I feel it's like a huge, like you're saying character in the show and--

Kousha Navidar: Y'lan, you were born and raised in New York City, and it's just three to four hours from Baltimore. How much did you know about the history and politics of Baltimore before taking on this role?

Y'lan Noel: Interestingly enough, I didn't know a lot either. It wasn't until reading the book and going into this story and getting playlists from Alma and learning about the-- you know, in our-- I guess, what is it called, like, a mood board, which you sent us?

Alma Har'el: Yeah, the bible.

Y'lan Noel: About Penn Avenue and the bible, right, and learning about the different artists, Coltrane, [unintelligible 00:22:34] and all this stuff. So I didn't know much about Baltimore prior to being in Baltimore and living there seven months.

Alma Har'el: And surprisingly, there's just such a huge amount of newsreels of that era that were actually filmed on film. There were like with a lot of interviews of just people from the city, and there were just always so many things going on there, politically, locally, socially, racially, so there was a lot to dive into. And, yeah, we ended up making this, like, interactive bible of 1,200 pages where you can go neighborhood by neighborhood.

And in order not to recreate Baltimore in a way that felt sort of processed and taken from other people's point of view of what it is, we insisted on finding street photographers that were either Black or women, some of them not famous, but had private archives or worked for newspapers, and just sort of tapped into their photography of the streets and recreated a lot of stuff from their eyes. And it just gave, I think, the whole show a very different perspective on what it looked like and how it felt.

Y'lan Noel: And being-- I mean, like what you said about the background actors, I remember one of my first scenes, I came into it with this whole expectation of what it would feel like. I remember I was doing a scene with a guy who was actually from Baltimore, so he had a certain tone and cadence about him. I remember Alma coming to me like, "I like what you're doing, but, you see what he's doing?" and I was like, "Yeah, okay, yeah." And it was just all right, 'cause it was a laid back quality. Whatever it was, we just had a conversation. And because he was really planted in this without any acting, just organically--

Alma Har'el: He was a non-actor.

Y'lan Noel: It was just like, all right, cool. It became a different scene just from-- It was more like real life and that's, we won't get that if we end up being somewhere else, you know?

Kousha Navidar: That authenticity.

Y'lan Noel: Being in Baltimore.

Alma Har'el: Yeah, I love that scene.

Byron Bowers: And the rawness of Alma's filmmaking, somebody who didn't go to film school, so she wasn't trained by colonizing how to make film. She has a rawness to it and she will pull people from the streets and place them there with us for us to get a little bit more authenticity.

Y'lan Noel: And grounding.

Byron Bowers: Yeah, and it comes from being a documentary filmmaker when you have to go to these places and surround yourself in the environment, just to absorb it and edit it. So I think that's the beauty of how she developed her craft in this game and I think that's what would separate her from all the noise out there.

Kousha Navidar: That's such a wonderful thought to end on. I'm looking at the clock. We've got to wrap up here, but what a wonderful way to say thank you with all of this. We're talking, we've been talking about the new limited series Lady in the Lake. It's based on the Laura Lippmann novel. We've been talking with showrunner Alma Har'el and stars, Y'lan Noel and Byron Bowers. The show premieres exclusively on Apple TV+ on Friday, July 19th. Check it out. Thank you all so much for hanging out and for your work. Really appreciate it.

Byron Bowers: Thank you all.

Y'lan Noel: Appreciate it.

Alma Har'el: Thank you for having us, man.

Byron Bowers: Watch every episode, all of it.

Kousha Navidar: And that's All Of It for today. I'll be back next Thursday. Alison is back on Monday, and she'll kick off a weeklong celebration of the winners of our public song project. Plus, we'll hear about the work of street photographer Vivian Meyer, whose work only came to light after her death. Have a great weekend. We'll see you back here on Monday.

 

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