Sarah Jones - A Walk on the West Side

 

 

Hi, I'm Sarah Jones. I'm a solo performer and I did a show on Broadway called Bridge and Tunnel. It's a one-woman show that I did. I can do that any time. [applause] Thank you. But basically, if you don't know it, I did characters, lots of multicultural characters. That's what I do in my work. Kind of like Whoopi Goldberg or Lily Tomlin or Tracey Ullman. These are some of the people who really inspired me when I was a kid because I just admired their ability to transcend physical type and portray anybody they wanted. Meryl Streep, also a huge influence on me. Anyway, the story I'm going to tell you happened about 10 years ago when I was still very new to performing.

 

It was a very sunny, beautiful day in LA and I had just finished crossing an intersection when I realized these two LAPD, not NYPD, but LAPD officers were trying to pull me and my friend Julissa over. And I don't even know if you can call it being pulled over since we were on foot. [audience chuckle] But I had no idea what was going on because we hadn't done anything wrong. And also, the one idea, I guess, that did occur to me was this was not the way I had envisioned my first big trip to Hollywood going.

 

A couple of weeks earlier I had gotten word that MTV wanted me to star in a sketch comedy show that they were doing and I was really, really over the top excited about this. It was huge. It was a really big deal for me. I was like, "Oh my God, this is amazing." Okay, well, it was the 90s, the late 90s, and it was a hip-hop sketch show. So, I was probably more like, "Yo, this is going to be really dope. Like, this is going to be fresh." It was probably more like that. But the point is that MTV, this was a really big deal. It was a very gratifying thing in particular because I had been trying to get something like this, auditioning and things ever since I had come home from Bryn Mawr College while I dropped out.

 

Well, one doesn't really drop out of Bryn Mawr College. Rather, I would say, one defers indefinitely in order to embark on a journey of alternative, nonlinear lifelong learning. [audience laughter] So, that's what I was doing. And I had found my way back to New York where I was stumbling around and I stumbled into the writing and performance scene and I had some success there. I did a one person show, the first one I did off Broadway and then I thought, "Wow, this is really great, I'd like to reach a broader audience." And I started getting approached about TV. 

 

Now the only problem was a lot of people in casting didn't quite know what to do with me and all my multicultural cast of characters. They really would have preferred it if I could do celebrity impressions, or at the very least, they hoped that I could stick to urban from the hood characters rather than the multicultural range that I was doing. And that really didn't work for me because part of the reason I had started writing in the first place was I was frustrated with the dearth of well-rounded images on television for someone like myself. It's fair to say that I felt like there was some stuff on TV that was just demeaning one-dimensional stereotypes of ethnic people and then the limited roles for women. And then on top of that, if you're a black girl, it was like, "Girl, you better learn how to talk like this. Oh, and you better get you a chiropractor girl, so you could play neck rolling bitch number one and neck rolling hoe number two and not injure your neck." [audience chuckle] 

 

And so, it was kind of like really frustrating. And so, the challenge there was-- I felt like this was a whole different thing with MTV. They had come to me and they said, "Wow, we really love your characters and we know you have these urban characters, that's great. But we hear you also have this other stuff. You do a whole range. Is it true you do a Jewish grandmother? We'd love to see that." And I thought, "Wow, this is wonderful. Thank you so much. Finally, somebody cares about me finally." And I said, "This is fantastic. Of course I would love be in your program. I'm so flattered." And it was wonderful. We had a lovely audition together. They really let me play. They wanted to meet all my different characters. They wanted to meet my French character, my Russian character, Indian anything that was unexpected. They wanted to hear that, right? So, they just did not want to hear the same thing that you are typically going to hear. They wanted something fresh and new. And I was very excited about that because that's what I was trying to give them. 

 

So it was kind of like this really thrilling thing that was happening for me and I was like, "Wow, this is awesome." And so, then now I found myself in LA. They flew me out there and we were going to get to rehearse the next day. I was really excited because up to that point, we had only done improv, so I had never seen any actual scripts from the show. But we were finally going to get to do that. And into all of this, the cops. And I remember standing there and thinking, "Am I about to get arrested right now? Like, Boyz n the Hood, like, what? Like, what's going on?" I hadn't done anything. And I was like, "Could this jeopardize the show?" I mean, I was freaking out. And I remember thinking, "Oh, what are we doing? Like, walking while black maybe, or walking while Mexican." Julissa's Mexican. And we realized that, in fact, they were stopping us for jaywalking, because in LA, I did not know this, but if you are in the crosswalk and the Don't Walk sign is flashing, even if the light is green, you're in trouble. So, I should say that if I have any religious affiliation at all, I would say that I am a devout orthodox, jaywalking New York pedestrian. Like, that is my religion.

 

So, I thought this was blasphemy. But I figured Julissa is the Angeleno here. So, I figured I would just keep my mouth shut. I wouldn't say a word. I would let her do all the talking. But before she could get a word in, one of the police officers-- both of these guys happen to be white guys. One of them said knowingly, "So, you girls working tonight?" And motioned for us to bend over the hood of the police cruiser so that we could be searched. And that's when we put it together that these guys thought we were prostitutes. 

 

Now, I should say that it was broad daylight, okay. This was not nighttime. And we were dressed far, far less provocatively than I dare say most of the women I had seen since I landed at LAX, but somehow, they had seen us walking together, a couple of brown girls. And we were walking, and it is LA. Nobody walks. And so, they had sort of put it together that we fit the description of some prostitutes. And so, I was in shock, and as was Julissa. And she's trying to explain that we were just trying to walk to our car. But I remember thinking, I was just so incensed, I thought, "This is disgusting. Like, how can they think they can treat people like that? How could you think you could treat someone this way? How could you do this?" And that's what was going through my mind. But what actually came out of my mouth was, "This is disgusting. Who do you think you are? How do you think you can get away with this? This is outrageous. I'm going to get on the line straight away to my agent." And this is the accent that was coming out of my mouth. Okay, but wait, wait, wait, wait. [audience laughter] So, what's important about this, Okay, is the fact that if you know my work and if you know my characters, they really all come from my childhood, okay?

 

I come from multiracial, multicultural family-- and multicultural family. And my neighbors, my friends, all these diverse people, that's where my accents come from. That's where my people come from. And long before I brought them on stage, these were all people whose accents I sometimes found I would use in a given situation if I thought it could be helpful. And I will tell you that a British accent has a certain impact on people. It stops them, it arrests them, if you will. And these guys, in the case of these cops, they got really nervous really fast. And Julissa was looking at me like, "What are you doing?" [audience laughter] And I forged ahead. I said, "You don't know who we are. We are here to do a television project." You know, I was really-- and I'm going to ring," and I whipped out my cell phone and I started dialing, and I don't know what it was, but the fact that these guys thought we were prostitutes, bitches, and hoes, if you will. And then that what was coming out of my mouth, there was such a disconnect between what they thought we were and what they were hearing, the entitlement and everything, I think they completely freaked out. They got really rattled and they dropped the whole thing all of a sudden. It was a mistake, and I guess we didn't fit the description. And we went on. 

 

So, the next day, I was trying to put this incident behind me, and I was at MTV Studios. I was really trying to refocus on why I was there, the show. I was excited. This was a huge opportunity, and it was really starting to sink in. No, I wasn't going to get arrested, this was really going to happen. My name on the dressing room door and I met the network president, and I was like, "Wow, this is awesome." And I kept thinking, "I'm going to have the opportunity to get up there. I'll be the female lead of this overwhelmingly male cast of this show." It was going to be like rapper/actor types, Mos Def and people like that involved. 

 

But even with all that machismo, I thought, "I'm going to get up there and I'm going to do my characters, and I'm going to get to be just like my heroes. Whoopi and Lily and Tracy and Meryl. I'm going to do that." And I remember thinking, "Maybe some young girl is going to turn on her TV and see me on MTV and think, 'I can do that. I don't have to be a stereotype. I can play anybody I want.'" And as I was thinking this, I was getting my hands on the scripts finally in the writer's room, we were finally going to see the material we were working on. And it was about that time I read that among the sketches we'd be doing that day was something where I'd play a woman named Sybil Licious. Sybil Licious, she was a hoe with multicultural, multi-personality thing. [audience chuckle] A hoe with multiple personalities, right? [audience chuckle] So, I would get to play the prostitute, but with multiple personalities. And of course, I was outraged and they didn't have Punk'd back then, but I'm sure I was like, "Where are the--" 

 

But I remember thinking, there's got to be some mistake because MTV flew me out here because I'm fresh and I'm new. But I didn't understand how it worked. And there was a room full of writers. These were veterans who had been doing this writing these kinds of things, some of them people of color. And they wrote these kinds of jokes because these are the tropes they work with. And this is the stuff that they thought sells or that's edgy or whatever. And so, quickly I told them I couldn't do it. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. And they thought I was crazy. They were writers on the show. I was not. And in short order, it became a very tense situation. And it got so bad, in defense of MTV, they tried to do whatever they could to address my concerns. They said, "We'll fire the whole writer staff if you will stay." But I knew that at that point that even if I would no longer have to play the hoe, I would definitely be the bitch. [audience chuckle]

 

So, I decided that was probably not a good idea. And as painful as it was to have to walk away from all of that and not have this opportunity, I wondered if maybe they were right. I was crazy. I was squandering my shot at national television. I just couldn't do it. And so, I left. I went back to New York and I went back to theater, and I kept writing and performing the stuff that I thought was compelling. And I wondered a lot whether I had really made a mistake. And I have to say that one thing that helped was eventually I met Whoopi. Not only met, but got to work alongside Whoopi and Tracy and Lily. And as for Meryl, I was at a benefit performing one night, she saw me, and she was so generous with me. She said, "I'd like to help you." And she agreed to put her name on my show and help Bridge and Tunnel get to Off-Broadway and then to Broadway and win a Tony. And I look at all of that and think, I don't know if that happens in LA, but that is the kind of thing that happens in New York City, where jaywalking is considered, high art. Thank you.