It's Where I Am with Zandra Polard

Unknown Speaker 0:23
Good morning Las Vegas. It's where I am. This is entrepreneur heart. Today, my guest, our Marshall Todd, co creator, executive producer and writer of the hit series, woke. Also, my mental health professional is Dr. Lawrence Jackson. Thank you guys for being on the show. Good morning. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 0:47
Good morning. Good morning.

Unknown Speaker 0:49
Good morning. So I want to talk about the show woke. Okay. With woke. I want people to be woke. In therapy? Yes. Because therapy is so important. And part of the process of unraveling things, his writing, which is why I invited you on the show. So first, tell us about your show. And then we'll, we'll go a little bit further.

Unknown Speaker 1:22
Okay, woke is a TV show about a comic strip artist who is as non threatening and middle of the road as you can get and still be black. He sees what's going in the world and he doesn't think is going to touch him. One day, the cops in San Francisco with his ass. And after that he has post traumatic stress syndrome. And he ends up seeing cartoons, these old cartoon characters start talking to him. And really speak to him is to sort of get him into trouble. And have them sort of speak up and be the black man he should have been before the beat. Put it that way.

Unknown Speaker 2:05
But when I when I saw the first episode, he was about to hit success, right? He was about to make it big as this artist. And then he has a stapler and he stapling his paper to advertise. And the police think it's a weapon. He was

Unknown Speaker 2:23
he was about to become successful. Denying a part of himself. So he was about become successful, basically living a lot. And the actual incident actually, in my co writers is going to keep that the guy on the show is the fictionalized version that night. Okay, the staple incident actually happened to true story. The real key is woke as hell. So he asked me to bring him to see the lab. But he was putting up flyers and the cops jumped on him and cuffed him put him on the ground. Yeah, exactly. So that that became sort of the anchor for our show.

Unknown Speaker 3:03
Okay. And it was so you got a lot of publicity for it because you wrote this and it aired before the unfortunate incident with George Floyd,

Unknown Speaker 3:15
what was crazy about about that, we shot the series in January, February of this year. Okay, that was a day where I was on set. And I actually got the keys and I said, I don't know man, maybe maybe by time the show comes out. People forgot the whole you know, Captain kneeling who's fatality maybe this maybe we should talk about something that's going to be sort of passe. Comes out and keep looked at me and said, quote, but time I feel comes out. They're gonna kill three, four more. Yeah, don't you worry. This is evergreen. This will always be relevant. And not two months later, George what happened? So yeah, yeah, it, it's always, it's always relevant.

Unknown Speaker 3:59
Here. I was, you know, so funny. Because I went to school. I went to college, later in life after kids. And I'm in class, and they're talking about the Rodney King riots. I was there. So when we were learning or what they were learning, was that it was the first time that has been caught on video. Because of course, this has happened for ever.

Unknown Speaker 4:23
Will Smith said something to the effect of it's not. It's not the first time tapping it's just the first time is going to take bones bones out. So all these sort of coming out, right. So you know, it's not this packing more. You said we're seeing it out for what footage?

Unknown Speaker 4:42
Yeah, that's so very true. So let's get back to you. Okay, how did you become a writer? Did you start writing as a kid when you did? old were you 670 Okay,

Unknown Speaker 4:56
but you know, when you're a kid, you don't know it's a job that someone can Before one that is our mystery stories in my little notebooks. I had a friend who camera when I was a kid, and we used to write movies shooting. And then I realized that film was a major in college, you could actually be a filmmaker and they would pay you for it. So, and I wanted to be a director. I've never really wanted to be a writer. But how are my teachers? Like, No, you're a great writer. Nice to say I, you know, I write stories about screenwriters. I didn't want to do that for a living. And then I came out here bounced around for a few years. And so the script and that was I

Unknown Speaker 5:49
know, you're from the south somewhere.

Unknown Speaker 5:53
Born in North Carolina, okay. My parents were in the military. So I live in North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, high school in Germany, high school in Germany, okay. And then went to college, our

Unknown Speaker 6:05
Okay. Our family lived in Germany. When I was very young. We thought it was home. We came here to say nobody was paying attention to us. And we wanted to go home. My mother said, This is your home. But anyway, so you started doing some comedic writing for barbershop.

Unknown Speaker 6:26
Okay, no, I,

Unknown Speaker 6:28
what was your involvement with barbershop read the first

Unknown Speaker 6:31
script I ever wrote was was in trouble. Okay. What happened was never the whole comedy thing. It was a it was a heist movie. But people can't read the script. Go ahead. And it's kind of funny. I mean, life has humor in it. So he sort of liked humor, snap jokes. So someone at MGM barbershop needed a rewrite. And ICQ was sort of floating around the project. And they hired me, right. Right. And after we wrote it, Ice Cube signed on to do fell. And then just like that was

Unknown Speaker 7:12
nice. Yeah. So you are kind of the reason Ice Cube got involved.

Unknown Speaker 7:17
is useful to me. Yes. Because it was. He did not like my draft. He was like, okay, cool. What's odd is, that's the second time when I first my personal ever worked on as a PA will be called Glass shield. excute was the star.

Unknown Speaker 7:33
Oh, yeah, I remember that one.

Unknown Speaker 7:35
Yeah. So the barbershop ice cubes. The star? Yeah. I've connection with

Unknown Speaker 7:41
with you. Cool. You know, who's also connected with you? Not me. But our good friend, Paula J. Parker. Yeah, I spoke to her this morning. She's going to do the show next month. Awesome. She disappeared for a while? Yeah. Well, you know, she has a show called family time. And then I think that bringing the proud family back. Wow. That would be awesome. Wow, okay. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 8:07
it was good. It was a good shot.

Unknown Speaker 8:09
Very good show. So, Dr. Jackson, I think we have to bring you into the conversation. Let's do it. Let's do it. So I know you're a professor here at UNLV. And you also have your own private practice. You concentrate on married couples marriage, and family therapy versus SP. Okay, so tell us what you do at the university, and then also about your private practice.

Unknown Speaker 8:34
So yeah, I am currently an associate professor in the couple and family therapy program at UNLV within the School of Medicine. And so some of those responsibilities involve me teaching undergrad classes, master classes, we have a mastery level graduate program for clinicians who want to pursue a degree in Kabul family therapy be couple of family therapist one day. So my primary job is to prepare them, get them ready, get there to get the given their training, given the supervision needed, and these skills and expertise to get them into the world, right, you know, whatever state that they're working in, and for them to continue to flourish. Outside of that row within the university, I do have a private practice, where I specialized working with diverse couples and families and individuals as well. I'm really passionate and being a person of color. Believing that as a person of color, having that isomorphic process, a parallel process from a professor, to a clinician to the community. I like that pipeline. And so I want to be instrumental part of that pipeline, being a person of color seeking and working with other people of color as well.

Unknown Speaker 9:45
Awesome. Well, let us know what insurances do you take I currently

Unknown Speaker 9:51
don't take any insurances right? Now. This cache disk has paid me and my private practice is pretty small because of course of working with somebody You know, the, however, what I try to do to still connect with community is I am active on social media. Okay, I'm going to Instagram and Facebook at the black male therapist, I do something what I like to call black therapy Fridays. And kind of like Black Friday is to, you know, for companies during the red to get back to the black, I use black every Friday, there's opportunity to connect with the community. And if they're struggling during a week, give them something that can help the aid them to get back to their okay and normal functioning. So I utilize that platform that tool to this to connect, I asked the community questions, as my father's questions with things you want to know about. Because versus a lot of people just a first time hearing about therapy, or being comfortable about our seeing somebody of color having conversation about

Unknown Speaker 10:44
therapy, or trying to break that stigma? You're absolutely absolutely. So

Unknown Speaker 10:47
them Strangely, I call it getting a piece of that pie, promoting mental health and expiring youth and empowering others like this test with all black baby phrases about that assault on the platforms about I also have a clothing line where I promote mental health awareness through that as well. Oh, wonderful. You're doing whatever you can to just break that stigma and change the narrative, especially for individuals of color for sure.

Unknown Speaker 11:10
So now let's incorporate talking about being woken therapy, and the writing process. Absolutely. Doctor, how can we manage our emotions and goals? Through writing, I view

Unknown Speaker 11:23
myself as a social constructionist. And pretty much what I mean by that is that I believe that we as humans we save our realities are we say, we represent our perception, save our realities, in a way that we communicate those perceptions is through the use of language. So to summarize, power, in language to language, in a lot of cases saves our reality, the way we communicate things, we're communicating reality that we probably have bought into. So writing within itself can help co construct different realities that are more fitting that are more healthy, that are more powerful for for clients. And so I view one of the one of the main types of therapies and models, I use narrative family therapy. And pretty much narrative family therapy is taking into consideration that we develop and create problems, right, and we keep them and maintain those problems through our use of language. And so we change our language, we change the outlook on a problem, and we change our realities and our solutions as well. And so utilizing that way of storytelling, and how we communicate what's going on with us was going wrong with us. It's going right with us was healthy for us unhealthy for us through the use of language and storytelling and in CO constructing with my clients a different narrative that better fit their situations and benefits and circumstances and then buying into their process and changing their realities.

Unknown Speaker 12:45
So that's why Jana says you have the power to create your story. Is that right? First of all, Marshall, what can we expect for? Woke? Is there a second season?

Unknown Speaker 12:56
We're getting to that right now. Okay. Why do you pitch to our take on season two to the network, and they love it. And I think Season Two will will deal with the post George Floyd world. Which in many spaces, it's overwhelming. It's too woke. For instance, we like you wouldn't ask for realtors to stop calling a master bedroom master bedroom. Okay, we asked for them to stop showing the Golden Girls episode where they're in blackface. All we want to have is the cops not with our ass. So so is the Shogun to sort of that how it's been corrected. And how in a lot of cases, maybe corporations have has co opted sort of the movement that they're profiting from woke. So the issue is, can you be woke and make money from it? And he'd be pure, if you will. So yeah, man, but we're,

Unknown Speaker 14:04
we're close is Nike do that with Colin Kaepernick. I would say yes. Am I wrong?

Unknown Speaker 14:10
Oh cap use his platform to get a message out. That turned out to be 100%. Correct. After the fact, but now when you have like, who is the Kardashians when Pepsi commercial, where she's in the middle of a protest? And the guy gives her a Pepsi?

Unknown Speaker 14:30
Oh, I didn't see that kind of stuff.

Unknown Speaker 14:35
When we were promoting the show, Disney and Hulu, to the credit, were very aware of what was going on in the world. And they came to us and he said, We know you're angry. You know, you want to say something? Whatever you want to say we'll find out. Right? we'll back it. And our director looked at them and said thank you. But if we if we do that in anything we say You probably have that Disney logo on it was sort of some take take something away from it. So we sort of went off on our own and did our individual saying, Oh, but But yeah, but we took it to their credit they were down, but it just didn't seem it wouldn't have played well.

Unknown Speaker 15:16
Okay. You got me dumbfounded here. My next question was just, or not my quote, next question, but my next comment was that I really liked the relationship of the three guys the roommates. Yeah, yeah, that that gives the comedic relief. And, of course, JB smooth, is hilarious as the band very funny

Unknown Speaker 15:47
guy, man is effortless. Just everything he

Unknown Speaker 15:50
says. Well, you know, I love him on Curb Your Enthusiasm. I love that show.

Unknown Speaker 15:57
I always thought that relationship, he was too scared to kick him out. And he just became friends eventually. He was too afraid to go, you gotta go.

Unknown Speaker 16:07
But then he also has like, relied on his perspective for a lot of things. Yeah. So anyway, I know you're working on a movie as I write. me here.

Unknown Speaker 16:18
Oh, no,

Unknown Speaker 16:19
no, you were telling me about a movie. Okay. This is the tie in. When we spoke on the phone. You were telling me about a movie you did. And it went to like the very last. Oh, ready to like you were popping champagne bottles and partying. And then something happened. It didn't go through production. Did that make you go crazy?

Unknown Speaker 16:45
Yes, sir. I tell you was by movie I put in 10 years ago, we finally got a green light, who's ready to go. And the actor got arrested for impersonating a police officer. Or green light. And by Monday morning, the studio pulled the plug on the movie. So I think that's when I had my love. Mental episode, I call it a nervous breakdown in slow motion. I got so caught up in the years, it took me to get it to where it was and how it was gone. That it took me a minute to recover. It took me 314 years trigger. And people have will be followed through every day. It's all relative.

Unknown Speaker 17:30
Yeah, but this was like, you know, you're getting to like, I graduated school. This is my big break. You know, I'm about to be famous or successful writer. And so did you seek therapy? Or you dealt with it yourself? Did you write more? What did you do?

Unknown Speaker 17:47
I should have I probably should have taught someone because something was wrong and goes through the years I didn't write.

Unknown Speaker 17:57
And something was wrong. But the irony is, I read a pilot script called benefits of being struck by like, about a black man who's in the middle of a nervous breakdown, but he won't get therapy. What happens is his life comes apart around him. But he's like, Oh, walk this off? Well, why is walking it off? He's losing everything. So that simple script led to the job to UBC Viola Davis and that led to work. Okay, so the thing I wrote for my own peace of mind, my own full of kind of therapy ended up getting me you know, getting me here

Unknown Speaker 18:34
I'm glad you miss as well too. I think sometimes we I like to call it tending to the need of the feeling and not know the thought. Right? And so what I mean by that is sometimes we over analyze you figure out like there's a linear process to our pain that we're feeling right? So just tune into that feeling it's like when you're hungry you feel it first thing you think right there's some exact same way we sometimes we struggle as human beings just tend to are feeling where I can sit with discomfort. I think that's the process

Unknown Speaker 19:06
but isn't it like with a man they feel like they have to have this strength in you know, are they more reluctant to get therapy?

Unknown Speaker 19:13
Oh yeah conditioning you have to think about we think about how we do it as early as as kids right? Imagine we had twins I have twins one was one was making a selection shutter boy and girl right my girl falls on playground with pick her up. My let her feel her motions. I'm a support through the process. My son falls and be like all played less you put, the more you play, the less you feel right. So even from a young age, we socialized men to not have less emotions, but to show and exhibit them less, right because the thing is we all have the same emotions. Anything men struggle with identifying those emotions. We've only had a process and maybe heal from those emotions. But nevertheless, we actually have created a society where we have condition over years and years for men to be told I seem to exhibit them in their motions list and deal with them and tend to them.

Unknown Speaker 20:05
Yeah, I agree. I'm gonna be honest though i Something was wrong. And it kind of goes on the back of my head. But I think black people normalize their pain so much. I know something's going on. So after I got through as to where I taught somebody, but whelmed if I was beached. All right, I gotta keep it moving. I can't be broke, broken. Because as a black man, I got so much other stuff we got to deal with. How do I be broken? But that is that's a that's a stigma. That's, that's something that keeps us from getting the help we need. So yeah, yeah, it, that statement should be removed.

Unknown Speaker 20:57
And you know, Dr. Jackson is has like, it's so hard for people if they don't have Medicaid, therapy can be expensive. And for those who have Medicaid, they don't even take advantage. Because there's so worried about the stigma. And it's like, do you understand if you could afford it, that you'd be gone? I'd be going every day?

Unknown Speaker 21:24
Yeah, I say I'm on top of mine, I don't think therapy, or access to therapy is the challenge, right? I think the challenge is, is to get the type of therapy that you believe is going to be the most impactful become challenging, right? When you want to find a one to one, you want to find a black male therapist that specializes in a couple of family, those type of things makes it more challenging, right. But even that being said, there's times when I work with pro bono clients, right. And so if I see a need there, and I had the x add the ability to do so, you know, I think a lot of us therapists, we care about helping them feel about healing. Right, and they will attend to that. But I think it is a statement there about, you know, know whether we I grew up in the South as well. And so you pray about it, you know, you don't go to therapy. Are you about it? You're saying Did you did you ask God you know, saying and, and in that even I remember going through school in my family members, look at me like what you do it with me? You know, you got to keep in mind you in on knowing this idle job? That's right. It really helped me to recognize that during the reasons why I got to therapy is because I was at a time where I must see your posts go off my best friend. And right before I got the call, as I want to ask you went to Howard, I went to Xavier in New Orleans. So for sure. But right before I went to college, and my parents said, Oh, he's struggling, he's really struggling, and we don't know what to do. Right? We probably wouldn't, but he's still struggling. So they they found me a therapist as a black therapist at that. And while I was only able to go for three or four months, and even then I think the other thing about therapy is that sometimes you can go for a short amount of time. And the benefits of therapy are not immediate, something sometimes therapy can be beneficial in a moment. But the really the big bang strategy, we're looking for habits two years later, sometimes people are not ready. But their therapies a lot of work is about this is to me, it's like working out, you know, you got to be consistent, you got to put no pain, no gain, exactly with therapy, you got to invest in that process, you got to really be intentional about doing what you need to do to make yourself better. I tell my clients all the time I can I can lead you to the water. I can't make you drink it. I want to get bass. You say you were sad. But at the end of the day, I will see you once a week.

Unknown Speaker 23:42
So I'm married. Do I start with me? Or do I start with us?

Unknown Speaker 23:48
Oh, yeah. I recommend starting with you. Yeah, sorry. And the reason being is because I think we've developed a narrative within our society that unfortunately like to protect, you think about marriage doing 5050, right? Instead of 100 or 100. So it's actually over creating, like, you know, I'm in therapy, we're not gonna prove unless you do something, right. In actuality, baby's not gonna prove to both of y'all doing something for yourself, that's going to benefit the relationship as a whole. Right? So one of the things I really appreciate about my training as a systems thinker, is that I look at the relationship as there's two people in a room, I don't look at this one relationship, I look at the relationship, that one perception on the relationship. The other session refers absent otherwise to relationship as a whole. So there's three relationships happening, right? And those are things that to get aligned in the way that that comes along, is that both partners are working to better themselves, but I've been in a relationship.

Unknown Speaker 24:43
Let's see, when I am on I imagined going into therapy with my husband. I'm thinking either him or I want to feel like the therapist is gonna be on my side, and I'm gonna win. Yeah, yeah. But you can't do that. I think. I think there's Sometimes

Unknown Speaker 25:00
when when, when stuff like that's acceptable, right? What I mean by that is I do my best to to validate each of my clients experience. Right? Because at the end of the day, that's that's their truth. I can't say, oh, that definitely did happen, right. That's their experience, that's what's going on with them. And if I were to, if I were to discount that or minimize that, how different would I be for anybody else in society, especially the people call it we're so used to our experiences being minimized. And we just want to be heard and a lot of cases right intended to. So as a therapist, I gotta do my very best to, to empathize with invalidate their experience, and use as opportunity to buy into the process to then share them different ideas, right, like, Hey, I get that I get your pain. I feel your pain. I'm wondering if we tried this will alleviate some of that. Right. But if I would just say, Oh, you're good. I want to try this. Yeah, that that that little bit of validation, limited empathy, allows them to buy into the process, right? By to be like, Yo, maybe you get me, right. I don't believe once therapy is not a one size fits all, you have to tailor that approach to everyone's experience. And I think that's something you have to work on doing as a therapist, right? Something has to be a priority, to to be able to touch people and to help them heal through some of their they're the most vulnerable things. Right? If you if you don't feel comfortable with your therapist, you don't have that connection, you not gonna be vulnerable. If you're not gonna be vulnerable, you're not gonna get the most out the experience,

Unknown Speaker 26:26
and then try another one. Yep. Yep. It's not a one stop shop. Keep going. Do you find that fit?

Unknown Speaker 26:33
Absolutely. I think it's all about the catalyst that therapy is connection. Yeah, I tell my clients I was on we can't connect. You can't even begin to be with me. You can't even begin to let me know what's going on. Right? Whether it's good or bad, whether it's healthy or unhealthy. If you said, Hey, Doc, this ain't working for me this week. I don't know that I might be continue to do something that'd be hindering your ability to grow. Right. And so I'm really big on being authentic and being genuine in my therapy practice, because I think that that's the catalyst to grow in a therapy room.

Unknown Speaker 27:02
That's awesome. You know, I have one minute left and I want you guys to give your social media handles or whatever information you want our 91.5 listeners to know.

Unknown Speaker 27:18
Instagram is hex chief editor at AG X TGIF.

Unknown Speaker 27:23
On Instagram, I'm at V black male therapists on Facebook is the black male therapists LLC on Twitter. It's black therapy fry at our high like web every Friday. Also the website www dot FBI, black male therapist.com We can also find my social media outlets and also see some of the apparel and merchandise so related to promoting this and all the words.

Unknown Speaker 27:48
Well, thank you, gentlemen, for coming on. It's where I am. I appreciate it. Thank you, Marshall for sharing your world. And thank you Dr. Jackson for explaining a few things. We'll see you next month. second Saturday of the month at 8:30am. Sandra Paul art it's where I am

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