Super Soul Special: Oprah at the Apollo, Part 2: Stephen Colbert, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Yara Shahidi, Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson

0:00I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time. Taking time to be more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now. Hello, Holland! From the famed Apollo Theater in New York City, so much talent on one stage. Three trailblazers and game changers who are shaking things up in a big way. Host of The Late Show and New York Times bestselling author Stephen Colbert. The Pulitzer Prize, Grammy and Tony winning genius behind Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda.

0:50Star of Black-ish and its spinoff Grown-ish, she's Harvard bound and a remarkable young woman to watch, Yara Shahidi. First up, Stephen Colbert. Hey everybody! That's nice. Thanks for saying yes. Thank you very much. Thanks for saying yes. You, I did not think, would say yes. How? I can't say no. Yes, I thought you were going to. You don't say no to oh. I was so excited. And it's been six years since you got you. I've sat down for an interview that you're conducting. Yes. I miss it. Yes, I came down to your home and did that. But this is the interesting thing. When you're doing a daily show, I understand that it's kind of hard to take a break.

1:32in the middle of that day. No, you don't even leave to have lunch. You don't leave your desk at all. You don't leave your desk at all. So why'd you say yes? I want to know what you want to ask me. I don't know. Because I'm tired of me, but if you're interested... I'm very interested. ...that makes me feel better about myself. I'm very interested in you. Oh, thank you. We had a great conversation once before, but I just wanted to say that I think you're better than ever. I think something happened to you. This is why I came up. This is why I came up today. I'm good. Thank you very much. You're the best.

2:12I think we just peaked. I don't know. We're having a really good time. To do a daily show, you've got to care about it. You know, to do the grind. That is absolutely right. You've got to care about what you're talking about. And we're living in consequential times. And the opposite of, like, it getting you down, it actually fires you up because you want to talk about it you want to get it out you want to have a sense of community with the audience that's what we want more than anything else is like we want to tell jokes and thereby build a community of people who can all share their feelings with each other i get to say all the words but we're sharing our feelings with each other because they're laughing back you know because you don't want to be alone it's a lonely time this feels like a lonely time right now.

2:51Yeah, and you're usually the last voice we hear before we go off to sleep, and so do you feel like... Makes me sound like a daily executioner. No. Do you feel... Does that come with a responsibility, or you're not thinking about responsibility? Responsibility is to make jokes on whatever the conversation today was. Like, we try not to ever, like, break news for the audience. We want to keep aware of what the national conversation is today and then give our opinion about it because jokes are opinions. Because if you're breaking news, this is an interesting thing. If you're breaking news and I'm just hearing the news from you, I'm going to have the reaction of somebody who's just hearing the news.

3:34It's hard if you're breaking the news to make that break funny, right? Right, depending on what the news is. But there's not a lot of funny news these days. No, you want the audience, what we want to do is we want to be an addition, a catalyst to what they've been thinking all day. People come to the show at the very end of the day, they've been thinking about something that happened all day, and we go, yeah, we've been thinking about it too. Here's what we think. So do you think that you found your stride after the 2016 election? Do you think you found it? I think we found it internally. The thing about doing one of these shows that it's hard to explain is I love doing the show for the audience.

4:11Yes. 51 % of my joy is what you see. Yes. 49 % of the joy is what did it take to get there? That's the process. I love process. You know, I love seeing how things are put together. That's why I love cooking shows. I love Chopped because, like, you know, three secret ingredients that you don't get to see until you start cooking at the end of the day and you have to have a meal. That's what every day is like on a nightly comedy show. These are the three stories. Those are your three ingredients that you didn't find out until you walked in that morning, and you have to make a meal for the audience that night.

4:40You have to curate it, you know. You have to cook this thing up for them. And that requires a very tight process. Everyone needs to know how to do their job, stay in their lane. And he made that happen for us so that we were ready for Donald Trump to happen. Because if we hadn't done that work, you know, if we hadn't done all those live shows, if we hadn't seen how fast we could cook, then we wouldn't have been ready for a president who changes the news every 15 minutes. Yeah. And that's not an exaggeration. He changes the news every 15 minutes. Aren't you amazed at how the country has become kind of obsessed about it, though?

5:19I'm amazed at the speed. I'm not amazed with the obsession, because he, A, wants the attention, knows how to get it. He's a very good showman. And everything he does is of consequence. He is the most important man on the planet. So we should be amazed. Yeah. And so, you're the number one late-night show. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Yes. On television, do you feel the same when you're number one as when you're number two? Nope.

6:03Thanks for being truthful about it. You just don't, do you? No, it feels a little better. So you are a practicing Catholic? Yep. And how does your faith sustain you is what I want to know. There are not many Catholics here tonight. Or if there are, they're not willing to admit it. How does my faith sustain me? Yeah. Well, my mother used to say that in hardships in your life, try to look at this moment in the light of eternity. You know, let's try to see this how God might see it. If it's good or bad, any hardship or victory, with humility, with acceptance, and with love. And you can't love something until you can accept it.

6:48That is correct. That is correct. So people, a lot of people are calling this the age of fear. How do you counteract that? I know your favorite Bible verse is Matthew, the don't worry one. It is. So I say to you, do not worry, for who among you by worrying could change a single hair on his head or add a single cubit to the span of his life? You know, and then it goes on from there. And, you know, sufficient, my father used to say, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Tomorrow will worry about itself. I was a young man, actually, walking down the street in Chicago. It was a very, very cold day.

7:21It's common in Chicago. And there were Gideons giving out Bibles. They're handing out the New Testament Proverbs and Psalms. And it was so cold that I had to, like, crack it over my knee because it had kind of frozen, the humidity had frozen it in place, and I opened it to that passage, and it changed my life, because I had lost my faith, and I opened it to that passage in Matthew, and I was so wracked with anxiety, and it was the first time I had read the Bible or anything that I understood the phrase, it spoke to me, because I wasn't reading it. It just spoke off the page, and the words of Christ are that for me.

7:54The words of Christ speak off the page. There's no effort for me to read them, and they just... It's like he's talking directly to us now. Wow. Yeah. So... With a harrowing challenge. Yeah. Which is to love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies. That's the one. That's the one. To love your enemies. Okay, so at the beginning of this event, Super Soul Conversations, I was saying to the audience, first of all, how surprised I was that you'd said yes and that you were going to leave your show in the middle of the day and that we're going to have this, you know, uplifting these cultural conversations and not to worry.

8:33So in the privacy of your own heart, if you would open it up a little bit and share with us, are you more afraid for this country right now or more hopeful for this country right now? I'm always hopeful for this country because our country... See, I told you it's going to be all right. No, our country is... our country is remains the last best hope of mankind and it is already great this is a great country this was a great country in the heart of the depression yeah this was a great country when we were torn apart by the civil war it was a great country because we are based on civil war and civil rights.

9:21We're based on an idea that we imperfectly, a harrowing idea, a harrowing challenge that we imperfectly embody at all times, which is that all men are created equal. And then they have equal access to justice and to prosperity. And as long as that idea does not disappear, as long as our constitution is not changed from that idea, and of course the non-constitutional inspirational document like the Declaration of Independence, as long as we always keep that, there will be good presidents and there will be bad presidents. There will be good congresses and backgrounds, it'd be good judiciary and bad judiciary, but if we can all agree on that thing, then America will always be the last best hope of mankind.

9:58Wow. I love that. For America.

10:06Because every bit of darkness is only for now. The light always wins. So I want to know what you're most hopeful for. You know what? I would know what would give me hope, and what to a certain extent does give me hope is that love is not a bad word, that we can say love or I love you or love is the every only God. Like to say that love is the most important thing and to mean it without embarrassment. Six months before my show started, Spike Jones, the director and pretty good actor too, he came by, he just said, do you need any help starting your show? And I'm like, hi, I'm sure, let's talk. So he just came by and he interviewed me six months before my show went on the air about what I wanted the show to be.

10:46And after we'd been on the air for a while, and he actually sent it to me this past year, he sent those notes back to me to say, I want to remind you what your intention was. And one of the things he said that he sort of circled or pointed out in it was, I don't know how to do a nightly comedy show that's also about love. But I'd like it in some way to be about love. And there's so many different ways to express that, I suppose. And that's always... That's what you had said. That's what I said to him in the interview, which he showed back to me as a reminder. And when I look at the show that we're doing right now, I hope that...

11:19I think it's interesting that you set an intention for it. Yes. I live through that. I live that. I live that. Yeah, yeah. And then you start and you don't know how to find it, and that gives you all kinds of jitters. But wasn't that helpful? Not knowing the way helped you find the way. Right, because anything is possible, and it's always going to be painful to make a transition or a change like that. But you know the thing... Anyway, the hope for love. Yeah. The hope for love. And I think now we found it is that I love my country. I love science. I love facts. I love people regardless of their race or their gender identity.

11:51And the challenge now is to love the people who don't seem to have that value in their heart, or at least how it's politically expressed. I don't know what's in their heart. How it's politically expressed. Even the people I disagree most with, if I sat down and had this conversation with them, we might leave the conversation hand in hand. Yes. And so that's the challenge. The last challenge is to love the people you disagree with the most. to love the people you disagree with the most. Right. But that's the harrowing challenge that Christ sets forth. To love the people you disagree with the most.

12:22Because loving the people you agree with, anybody can do that. That's right. Yeah, anybody can do that. That means you have to find a path to love Donald Trump. Yeah, that's true. That's true.

12:45I DIDN'T SAY I WAS A GOOD CATHOLIC. I WAS BAD. SO THANK YOU FOR DOING A SHOW ABOUT LOVE EVERY NIGHT. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANKS FOR COMING DOWN. THANKS. WELCOME, LIN MANUEL Miranda. The Apollo. The Apollo. And it's showtime. Ah! Did you just get back from Puerto Rico? Did you? No, I just got back from having a new human head on my chest. I know, you have the baby. You have the baby. The baby just came. A week ago. A week ago. Yeah, a week ago. So now there's two. Yeah. I said I'm not leaving the house for two months, and then Oprah called. So here I am. You're the only thing I'm leaving the house for.

13:36I know, you said yes. Yes, you said yes, thank you. What's it like with two? It's, well, we had a day of brilliance and my other son came home and he was like, oh, I love him and it was like peaceful for a day. Okay. And then my oldest son got... Sebastian's three, right? Sebastian's three and then he got the stomach bug. So I have been, my wife and that beautiful child have been with her parents all week, is sequestered and I have been in the diarrhea upside down. For a week with the stomach bug and I'm fine, but I've just been nursing the other one. So I was like, oh, this is what two is like.

14:10You kind of sometimes have to tag team and that's what I've learned in the short week I've been a father of two. So it's disrupted the household. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Yeah, we live in different places. What did you tell Sebastian about this baby coming? Oh, so excited. And it's his baby, right? That's been the whole thing. That's my baby. And then for a while he was growing some and that was amazing. He was like, well, I have two in my stomach, not to be outdone. But it's wonderful. It's very surreal to, I'll put it this way. There's one song in Hamilton that's like truly autobiographical. There's no historical precedent for it.

14:49It was just a song that came out while I was writing. There's a moment where Eliza is singing to Hamilton's called That Would Be Enough. And there's nothing in a textbook for that moment. I didn't do any research for that. It's just a moment where Eliza is telling Hamilton, as long as you come home at the end of the day, that would be enough. If my child is going to have a bit of that mind, my wife is going to kill me for telling this story because she doesn't like this, she doesn't like how she comes off in this story. But I played it for my wife and tears are streaming down my cheeks. And she goes, is that what you wish I would say to you?

15:24And I went, no, that's my love song to you. To you. Yeah, I can't even think about it. But that's the thing that changes is you have this new person that, with any luck, is going to get some of the attributes of the love of your life. So when you originally started Hamilton, you weren't trying to create this social musical phenomenon that was going to bring us a better understanding of history and ourselves, or were you? No, I was trying. I knew that he sang. I just knew that it was a really compelling idea for a musical. And I look at the musicals I love, and there's different kinds, right? In the Heights, when I was writing in the Heights, and when Kiara came on board, we realized this, thank you, this was, um, this is about a community changing.

16:10It started as sort of just my college musical, but then we realized, oh, this is about neighborhood changing. And so we looked at other musicals about communities changing. We looked at Fiddler on the Roof. We looked at Cabaret, which is about Germany changing fast. We looked at those musicals that are about a community. With Hamilton, it's about Hamilton, and his force of personality is so strong that every other character is just trying to make sense of him. Either they're falling in love with him, or they want to kill him. Kill him. So I watched Sweeney Todd, and I watched Gypsy, and I watched those musics where it's like, name above the title, here comes Mama Rose.

16:49That's Hamilton. You know, it's like he's this force of nature and this whirlwind, and so those were sort of the things I looked to. So I just knew that he was very propulsive and he had a very event-filled life. And then I found myself drowning in research. It had been two years and I'd only written two songs. I'd written the opening number. It took me a year to write my shot. Because if I'm going to back up my claim that Hamilton is the most hip-hop guy who ever lived, he has to announce himself with the best lyrics I've ever written in my life. So every couplet took me about a week. You know, it would rhyme at the end of the line.

17:24and I'll go, I bet I can make this rhyme like six more times in here. And it had to be as dense as my favorite rappers. It had to be as dense as Jay-Z. And by dense, I mean like, don't rhyme just at the end of the line. Rhyme seven syllables. Rhyme in, you know, I'm past patiently waiting. I'm passionately smashing every expectation, every action's an act of creation. You know. And like that. When I'm doing that, it took me months to think of that. How do you define the times or describe for yourself the times that we're living in now? Because you were just talking about as an artist, and I do think this is as a human being too, because we are all artists of our own lives, that the most important quality is empathy.

18:08Yeah. And we don't live in a time where it feels like people are being empathetic towards one another. Absolutely. And I think, well, I think several things. One, I think we're living in a time of enormous moral clarity. That is what I felt the day after the election. I was like, okay, well, here are the things we can't go backwards on because we've made immense strides towards LGBTQ rights. We've made immense strides as a country that have taken a long time. We can't go backwards. And so I think everyone felt like, oh, I have these internal battle lines that are being drawn, and these are the things that we're going to fight for.

18:43I don't know about you guys. I open Twitter like this now, like grimacing, like, what happened in the night? What am I about to read? I am so, you know, terrified because it just feels, and I think because of social media, it all just feels like it's happening even faster. Everything just feels like there's 20 things a day happening internationally, nationally, locally, and I think the thing that I challenge myself to do all the time and I fail all the time is, all right, what can I focus on? What won't let me go unless I do something about it? because you can drown in how much... how many people need help all over the world.

19:21That's right. And you have to pick, all right, what can I be effective at, and what can I do? You know, the success of Hamilton has offered me a really big megaphone. That's it. I don't... I'm not running for public office. I'm not doing anything like that. I'm not either. I heard that!

19:38Because... Because... You've divided the audience. You and I both know that there's so much... You can do so, so much. I would argue that Oprah is a more powerful position than president. Thank you for that. But no, I think each person should use their platform. You use your platform, your platform, how you most see fit, and what is the most authentic for you. Right. How is Puerto Rico now? Puerto Rico is still a third without power. 40 % without power. It's how many months later? My parents' hometown does not have power They have been running on generators Waiting in line for gas for four months The gas situation has eased, the money situation has eased Because for a while, ATMs were putting a cap On how much you could even take out And there are places that are harder hit And are still as if the hurricane happened yesterday And there are places, metropolitan areas Where it's business as usual And so, when are you taking Hamilton there?

20:36January 2019 Yeah And what do you think that's going to be like for you doing it there. Well, here's the thing. With the people of Puerto Rico who've been through so much. Well, it's impossible to talk about this without crying, so I'm just going to cry while I talk. Go ahead. I knew I was taking Hamilton to Puerto Rico the second we got our New York Times review, and I knew this thing was going to run and have a tour. And the second I did my first Spanish language interview, the first question was, when are you going to Puerto Rico? I said, I don't know, but I promise I'll be Hamilton when it happens.

21:11And so we had been planning for about six months before Hurricane Maria even hit. And so all we did was expedite the announcement. But I did In the Heights there. In the Heights was the first equity tour ever to go to Puerto Rico. And, yeah. And I jumped in. I jumped into a tour in progress to play Usnavi for a week. And it, I told you, it closed something in me I didn't even know was open. you know, to be a kid whose Spanish sounds pretty gringo to Puerto Ricans, spending a month a year there and feeling a little out of place there, a little out of place at home, a little out of place at school.

21:53That's a great way to make a writer. Be a little out of place everywhere. And two... Because you use it. You use all that. You use it and you're kind of always watching. To quote Sondheim, there's a part of you always sort of watching your interaction even as it's happening. Yeah. And I played Usnavi there and we did the show as I wrote it for New York and the love that came out of there. And, you know, I remember one review was like, this show is about our families who left. It's a dispatch. It's a dispatch from the people who left. And it's them telling us they're okay. And I told you. And so it was the most creatively and emotionally fulfilling week of my life.

22:38So I knew I was going to bring Hamilton back And I knew I was going to play Hamilton because I just wanted to feel that again. Yeah. And so with the fact that it is coming at a time when it can be of great use, our goal is to basically have a third of the tickets be 10 bucks and affordable to Puerto Ricans on the island and then really wildly overprice the other tickets for tourists so that that money can restore arts funding in Puerto Rico. That's the goal.

23:10And then I get to do it for three weeks again. You get to do it for three weeks again. Yeah. Do you, you know, when you did your Tony acceptance speech, you wrote a sonnet about Hamilton. You said, the show is proof that history remembers. We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger. We rise and fall and light from dying embers. Remembrances that hope and love last longer. That feels like a prayer. It is. And it was a prayer that came out. Oh, thanks.

23:41It was a prayer that came out of a really tough day. I spent that morning, like, really normal, you know, 6 a.m., rehearsal at Radio City. We have a record-setting number of nominations, rehearsed our numbers, and then I get home and read about the worst shooting in our nation's history. It was the Pulse shooting that morning. And I would have loved nothing more than to just write a very sweet sonnet about my wife and all of my collaborators that night. But if this is training for anything, if what you're doing when you're writing is you're trying to meet the moment. You're trying to be that character and meet the moment.

24:16And that was a time when we were all in mourning, we were all grieving, and yet it was also a night for celebrating years and years of hard work. And so I was like, I can't freestyle rap to this moment. I will not be able to meet the moment that way. It demands something else. And so I started writing this sonnet. So it's speaking to both Hamilton and this notion that we're going to go through trying times and we're going to go through challenges. Lord knows we're going through challenges. But if we're survived by the people who love us and remember us, then we'll kind of go on forever. I love you.

24:53I love you. I love you. Thank you for that. Just to be in this head. Thank you so much. Welcome, Yara Shahidi. Yara, I love you, girl. Wow. Hi, everybody. Get your love on for Yara. It's so much pressure to be you at this moment, I think. Do you? Yes. I'm feeling it. You are being heralded, rightfully so, as this great spokeswoman, person, humanitarian for your generation. And I just ran across recently an old speech I had done when I was about your age, about and it was entitled, What Young People Want Today. And I was talking about something crazy, like the generation gap between parents. But what I realized when I was looking at that, I really didn't know what young people want today.

25:51And it's really hard when everybody expects you to. Do you feel that? Well, first and foremost, I'm honored to be here. Thank you. Thank you for saying yes. But, of course. But quite honestly, I have to say, I haven't had to feel too much pressure because I've been so fortunate to have support not only from my family, but from the world around me for being authentically myself. And so I've had the great fortune of not having to perpetuate a facade for the sake of love or support. Every little thing you say sounds like a tweetable moment. Well, do you recognize how incredible that is that you get to be a true...

26:33I say this to my daughters from South Africa. They literally are the born-free generation born after Nelson Mandela was elected president. But to be born free, not just physically free, but in heart and spirit, where you get to be... Because my definition of freedom is that you get to wake up in the morning and decide for yourself what to do with the day. To be born free in your heart and your spirit, to never have to pretend to be anybody else other than yourself. It is surreal to even think about. And I do have to say, I mean, just being able to benefit from the work of previous generations is something that I do not take for granted.

27:14Well, I think for so long, not just your generation, because you're Generation Z. Yes. I don't even know who the Ys are.

27:26But a lot of people get lumped in with millennials, but you clearly are not. You're Generation Z. But you know, the Millennials I think have been labeled I think many times unfairly as being this sort of me me me me generation when in fact I think that this generation is probably more woke than a lot of previous generations have been and are certainly aware of what they need to do to step into the moment quite honestly I think it is a matter of access though Millennials and Gen Z we've had again the great fortune of an incredible amount of access at such a young age whether it's social media whether it's just in general the digital age of being able to watch people who inspire us being able to watch you being able to watch all of these people and absorb wisdom now in which it doesn't matter where you are in the world to be able to learn these lessons at such a young age and so there is a general awareness and I think this administration has put extra pressure on my generation in particular who felt as though they had time to grow into their political awareness to really speed up because we understand that the policies that are being implemented not only are a detriment to all of the work that's been done before us, but really will affect us as young adults.

28:44And so how do you describe your role right now in the culture? Oh, goodness. Um, well, I guess I'd have to say the one thing that I'm doing or one thing that I can point to that is happening currently is I'm turning 18 on Saturday, and it's also... Thank you. This is my early birthday present. Um, but, um, I'm launching an initiative called 18 by 18, which is to increase voter turnout and youth voter turnout for first-time voters. For midterms. Yes. And I think being blessed enough to be on a show like Black-ish, being on shows like Grown-ish, and to be able to work with people who I align with more than creatively but politically and philanthropically, it has given me such a lovely platform to then say, I have these opportunities to speak about what's affecting our generation.

29:36I have these opportunities to speak about what's affecting our world. And so now trying to turn that into quantifiable action with this initiative and see and impress upon everyone that midterms are such an important moment for us to reclaim our government. I was just thinking, when I was 17...

30:00I remember going to the drugstore, waiting on Seventeen magazine. I didn't, I don't think I ever knew the word quantifiable action at 17. Well, happy birthday early. Let's all say, happy birthday to you. to you, Yara.

30:26So how has the Black-ish experience informed more of who you are? I know it's not who you are. But it has played such an integral part in who I am because I signed on to Black-ish. I was 13 turning 14. And it was the first place in which I was in an environment to people who really wanted to continue conversations. So many times I have fellow actors, fellow peers who aren't as supported by production, by writers, to have politically aware conversations. And so to be able to be on a show in which that is our core goal really allowed us to have so many more conversations at such a young age in which we were talking about whether we were talking about our Hope episode in which we discussed police brutality, and they want to know how we feel as actors.

31:16So more than just how our characters feel, How do we feel? And so each episode brought with it a new conversation. And more importantly, I think it translated because then when I stepped off of set, more people wanted to continue the conversations that Black-ish started. And so it allowed me to go from there and just pick up where Black-ish left off. And so when Grown-ish came about, which Grown-ish just got picked up for 20 new episodes. Yes, it did.

31:44I'm so excited. When Grown-ish came up, were you really excited or were you thinking, this is going to interfere with my school plans? It was a bit of both. So Grown-ish came up and funny enough, it happened the day after I submitted my own college applications. And so they understand, everybody from writers, production, understand how much I value my education and we're doing our best to figure out how we want to make it work. but I feel pretty lucky to be able to make a commitment to a school and to be able to make a commitment to a show and I'm gonna do my best to figure them all out. I just believe you will.

32:17Thank you. I have no doubt. You said it, so now it's gonna happen. I know it's going to happen. So when you have all of this going for you, all of this going for you, first of all, your parents have done an incredible job. Thank you. Incredible job.

32:38You've done some stuff right there, creating this powerful, independent woman. How do you keep yourself grounded? Well, one, you've heard the jangling of my shotgun necklaces in my mic. So that's one way, for sure. But also, I think my parents have done, again, a great job of giving me my semblance of normalcy. And I guess my normal may be different than everyone else's normal, but at the same time, they've always treated me as being a kid and being a human to be most important. and it may sound counterintuitive, but the one thing that they've always said is, acting is something that we do, but it's not who we are, and that we're not allowing this one role in our life, even as instrumental as it is, and even with as much time as we've dedicated to it, to define our very existence.

33:22And so I've been able to enjoy school. I remember the first movie that I auditioned for, it was Imagine That. I ended up booking it. I played Eddie Murphy's daughter, And I remember it was the first big audition process ever, and I was seven and there were like ten auditions or it could be hyperbole I was young so it felt like a lot and I remember halfway through they were like, you know what they haven't called yet So let's go travel and we went to travel and we actually went to Italy Which was amazing because I was so into Renaissance art and Renaissance history that I was able to see But...

34:05Of course you were. Yeah. You're a powerful girl. You are a powerful girl. About to be 18 years old. Thank you. Happy birthday. It's amazing. Just amazing to talk to you. It's amazing. I just want to say something. I just want to say something to you, and I'm going to pass this on to you. You don't even need it. But when I did the color purple, it was the thing I most wanted to do in the world I never wanted anything and haven't wanted anything more sense since doing the color purple And when I finished it because it was a thing I most dreamed of I thought I guess everything's over now I guess it's all done and Quincy Jones said something to me that I want to say to you Baby your future's so bright.

34:49It burns my eyes I was feeling bad. Thank you. Your future's so bright, it burns my eyes!

35:05Really! Really! Really, really good. Really, really good. What a wonder girl you are. Wow. Before we go, keep your eyes on these two. They are on the rise. I want to thank comedians Phoebe Robinson and Jessica Williams from the popular podcast Two Dope Queens for stopping by the Apollo. They had me in our audience laughing it up. Jess and I were extremely excited, as you can imagine, when we were asked to come out. So we did, like, a little preparation, because this is Oprah. It's a big deal. You don't phone it in, okay? You don't roll up in your sweatpants. You got to bring it. So we both did a little prep.

35:47What did you do? I started a juice cleanse... And then I ended it six hours later. Yeah, what did you do? I, um, I shaved my legs last night. That's great. After, you know, such a harsh winter we've had. And instead of just going, like, to here, I went up a little bit past my knees. That's amazing. Like, I went, like, that to me is like, that's my journey. Yeah. This is my... That's great. This is my, my moment. So I did that, and then last night I started to listen to the audio book that I have of The Power of Now, which I love just to get, like, connected. It was very spiritual. I'm going through a weird, cathartic crisis right now, but I'm feeling great up here.

36:35This is nice. Let's dig into it. I don't want to. In front of everybody. It's not appropriate. It's not appropriate. Let's talk. We have chairs. Let's talk about it. I love it. Let's not. I can't either. I wear a Spanx. Well, I'm just, honestly, I'm just questioning, you know, what my emotions are versus, like, what I choose to put back out there. Like, there's a separation. Right. And really, it's about, like, learning, like, your emotions. They're real, but they're not. You know, they're valid, but you don't have to succumb to them. Right. I'm so proud of you. You have to talk these things out.

37:09You've got to journal. How are you? Like, how? You said I have to journal. Do you think I need to journal? You've got to journal. to your parents, you gotta... Reach out. You know... Just reach out. Watch, you know, old episodes of America's Got Talent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like the living single uploads on Hulu. And done. We're done? And done. Woo! Woo! I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation.

37:53Thank you for listening.