 Hello, and welcome to At the Crossroads. I'm your girl Keisha King, and we're back again. Thank you so much for viewing with us today. I am so excited that you're here, and I'm really excited that we have a special guest with us on set as we discuss Hollywood and diversity. Our special guest today is none other than Steven Hill. Hello. Aloha, Steven. How are you? I'm great. I'm great. How are you? I'm doing just fine. Thanks. Steven, you are with the latest show right now, filming in Hawaii. Tell us what show that is. Magnum PI. Magnum PI. Awesome. And what? What character do you play? I play the role of T.C. T.C.? Awesome. So, as a few people here know, I've been referring to T.C. as the helicopter guy. Helicopter guy, but it's T.C. played by Steven Hill, and I am so glad you're here. How long have you been here? Maybe about six months now. Yeah? That long? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Filming episode 17, so it takes about a week to film an episode. We had a break, so yeah, about six months. About six months. That is a good long time. Yeah. Yeah? So have you become acclimated to Hawaii and our lifestyle? I think so. I went home for the holiday break for about a week and a half, and I was ready to come back after three days. Yeah? That's what happens? Yeah. And where is home for you? New York City. New York City. Well, I'd go back and forth between New York and Jersey, which is how I also grew up, so. Oh, okay. Neat. So an East Coast friend. Yes. Okay, so I'm also from the East Coast. I went home during the fall, and it was so beautiful, right? Because the leaves were changing and all that good stuff, and it felt kind of nice. My last day there, it got so cold, I was like, please get me out of here. Well, I was looking forward to going home and putting on my coat, because before I booked this job, I had just bought this new fall raven coat, and it feels good when you're in the winter and you've got the proper coat on. It's cold outside, but you're still warm, so I was looking forward to that, and then when I got home, I went and put my coat on, came outside at 65 degrees, so I was sweating. I think I brought the Hawaiian sun with me, because then when I left, it got cold again. I was warm pretty much the whole time I was there. Wow. So that's good. You bring good vibes only, right? Yes. Right? Took some of that Aloha sunshine. Yeah. But that's good. We're so happy to have you here on the island. We have an array of events that always go on throughout the city and throughout all the islands, in fact. I have watched some of the episodes. I'm shocked that they're 17, though, because I think I missed one or two. So I'm going to go back. Oh, yeah. We're filming, so we've only aired, I think the last one was 12. Okay. Okay. Now I feel so bad. 13 should come. 13 will be on this coming Monday. Okay. What night? Monday night. Monday night. Monday at 9. Monday night. 9 Eastern. Okay. And here in Hawaii, I think it comes on at 8 o'clock. I think so, too. And it's 8 o'clock, as well, in West Coast time. Okay. Pacific. Yeah. Okay. Good. Good. So how could you not be familiar, but you can catch them on Magnum P.I. on Monday night. 8 o'clock. CBS. CBS. That's right. Gotta get it in there. You know, I downloaded the CBS app, and I watch it that way. Okay. I haven't watched live television quite some time, but... Well, you're on live right now, so, hey. But you can't watch it because you're here, so I get it. Yeah, exactly. Well, good, good. So in addition to that, I know that you've done some other work, some other, I want to say, some short films and things like that. A million short films, a lot of NYU films, a lot of student films, a lot of indie films. There's one called Writes that I actually just put on my Facebook today, no, Instagram today or yesterday at some point that is streamable on Amazon and a couple of iTunes, a couple of other platforms. I have a show on Netflix called Maniac right now, and I am in the film Widows, which I think is still in some theaters, with Viola Davis and Liam Neeson. Oh, nice. What was it like working with the Viola Davis? Well, she wasn't... We weren't in any scenes together, so I actually didn't get to work with her. She was on set one day, but I was trying to wait around my trailer to see if I could get a little glimpse of her, but I didn't get to talk to her. But she's a really nice person. She will chime in on your Facebook page. Oh, really? Yeah, she's done that a few times, and I'm like, wait a minute, is this Viola Davis talk? Do you even see Viola Davis? Yeah, yeah, she gets involved with the black acting community, the theater community, and she'll have something to say, she's always encouraging as well. That's good. That's good. I think it's wonderful when we have such great actors, such as her, Denzel Washington and others, that will kind of reach back and help the up-and-coming actors. Yeah. Yeah. I remember recently there was a speech from Denzel, maybe a couple of years back, and he was just so helpful, and he said, if it wasn't for this person, there wouldn't be you. Yeah. And he just went down the line of so many greats. Yeah, well, I do know that Denzel, he took in Omari Hardwick at one point. He was couchsurfing on Denzel's couch, you know. And I remember reading something where Omari's first check he gave to Denzel, and Denzel has it framed in the house or something like that. Oh, wow. And also Chadwick Boseman and Susan Kalichi Watson, who's on This Is Us. Okay. I know that Felicia Rashad and Denzel also paid for them to go to the conservatory program in England for acting. So, you know, they've been putting in their dues and giving back for a really long time, you know. Right. I think a lot of times what happens is those types of things go unnoticed. People don't always know that that giving back is taking place, and that's what makes them even more of a great person, right? A lot of stuff goes unnoticed, you know. We think we're abreast of everything because we're in our little internet social media bubbles. Like, for example, I saw an article recently that said, hey, Hollywood, Howard University isn't the only black school, right? So, you know, they're all the only HBCU because, you know, typically any storyline that has an HBCU in it, they're always going either going to Howard or getting ready to go to Howard, right? Exactly. But, you know, people don't know. For this show, I've done my due diligence in trying to get as much Hampton University representation as possible. But I think I've decided today I wanted it to be known that, you know, the character T.C. went to Hampton, but I think I want to make it more ambiguous now and do kind of like what Cosby did during the Cosby show, and he wore paraphernalia from different schools. It's going to be a lot of work on my part because then I have to get permission from each school in order to do so and get them in contact with CBS, and, you know, I don't know if that's necessarily something that CBS wants to put in a lot of work to do, so I'm going to have to do it. So, yeah. That's interesting. If you want something done, you're going to have to do it. You're going to have to do the background work. Yeah, there are a lot of calls back and forth between CBS and Hampton in order to allow myself to wear a Hampton University sweater or a T-shirt or have like Hampton University poster in the background. Right. Right. So, if I were a person that was able to reach out, I would simply say we have HBCU Buzz, I know is on Instagram. If you're listening or watching, please, he has called for HBCU paraphernalia so that he can have it on Magnum P.I. So I think that is a really good cause, you guys. Jump on board with that. I'm giving free shouts out to anybody who does it. Okay. And you should also, if you can, use the hashtag, check on the hashtag stand with Bennett. Bennett College is in a little bit of financial turmoil right now where they may lose their accreditation unless they can come up with $5 million pretty quickly. And it is a all-girls school, one of the first, I think maybe, no, other than Spellman, it might be the only other all-girls HBCU. But you know, some smart sisters coming out of Bennett College so we want to support them as well. That's right. And if you're not familiar as a listener with what an HBCU is, that is a historically black college and university. So I appreciate you for reaching out like that. I think it makes a world of a difference. And anyone who has a platform should do things like that. You know, Cosby did it and he did it very well, but he wasn't the only one. There were others, you know, living single. The original TC. The original TC. TC wore a lot of, I remember watching an episode not too long ago and he had on a Gremlin hat. Okay. You know, I don't think his character went to Gremlin or it wasn't instead. But you know, people do their job of giving back to the community. I do know that he made, he was credited with helping to make Kwanza very popular. His character, it was a Christmas episode of Magnum PI and his character was celebrating Kwanza. And it was the first time a lot of people had ever heard of it and he put it on a large platform like that. So you know, I mean, if you have the opportunity to say something, do something positive, why not? That's amazing. I appreciate you. I appreciate you doing that. I appreciate all the others who are going to help to make sure that this happens. And then when we come back from our break, we're going to talk a little bit more and we're going to talk about diversity, but a different type of diversity, right? And I'm seeing it a lot more in Hollywood where we have diverse peoples that are on screen. They're on television. They're on the big screen, silver screen, whatever it's called, right? So that's his world. It's not my world. I don't know it, but we're going to talk about it. All right. All right. We'll be right back at the crossroads. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host, Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, where we motivate, educate, empower, and inspire all women. We are live here every other Thursday at 4 p.m. and we welcome you to join us here at Sister Power. Aloha and thank you. Aloha. And welcome back to At the Crossroads with Keisha King. We have been talking with my special guest, Steven Hill, the actor from Magnum PI. We've been talking a little bit about what he's been doing on the show and what he intends to do. And now we're going to switch gears just a little bit and invite another guest. We're going to invite Gina Hummer to come and speak with us. And she is a wonderful children's book author and we're going to talk about diversity. Welcome to the show, Gina. Hi, Keisha. It's so wonderful to be here. Thank you. Thank you so much. So tonight we are just talking with Steven Hill, Steven, Gina, Gina, Steven. Hello, Gina. Hey, how are you? All right. You good? We are just talking a little bit about what we are, I'm sorry, we're talking about diversity as it portrays to Hollywood and all throughout. We have noticed that there have been quite a few people in Hollywood nowadays in our movies and what have you who have had different abilities, such as we have an actor right now on a hospital show who has autism. Kevin Hart's recent movie has a character who is, I believe, has cerebral palsy. So he is in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the neck down. Gina, you have written a few children's books about special needs and how it portrays to children. Can you talk to us about that a little bit? Sure. I'm a special educator in New York City and the children's book came about for a number of different reasons. One because I didn't believe that my students' stories were kind of told. So I don't know if you guys can see it, but there's the cover. Yes, we can see it. Yeah, hold it up a little bit more. There you go. You have different characters and so my students very much so we were used to reading books that didn't include what they look like or didn't include their different abilities in children's books and it became important for me to begin to tell a story that not only included them but to include a lot of other different characters were excluded from literacy, such as the discussion of melanin or ethnicities or religions and we kind of, as it pertains to literacy, deal with one kind of character and that character is usually European-American or European-centered so when I came up with the book it was to look at diversity and how it should be looked at which is in a whole kind of complex way of different ethnicities, religions, sizes, that kind of thing. So children can be seen in the stories and be seen in terms of how they see themselves within this world. Amazing, thank you so much for sharing. That sounds really good. Having participated in some of those readings, I am very familiar with how the books typically look and so I appreciate what you bring to the table for all students. Stephen, we wanted to talk with you because you also have some experience with those who have differing abilities. Yeah, my young sister has Down syndrome. She's a low functioning Down syndrome because she was born with three holes in her heart and then she was too young to be operated on so she got very low oxygen to the brain until she was about two years old when she could actually be operated on so that affected her to the point where they said she would be a vegetable but she is not. She still walks around. She doesn't talk. She makes noises and sounds and stuff but she doesn't actually talk and she can't feed herself. You can assist her in feeding herself but you have to take her to the bathroom, you have to help walk her to her program bus in the morning so on and so forth. I've had a lot of experience with that and then also my mother and now my sister who has taken over from my mother since my mother passed away was a respite caretaker where it actually not respite because I think respite is when someone comes to your house just for a short period of time but my mother had two ladies from the state that they weren't down syndrome but they have some learning disabilities and they live with us. So I've always grown up with them in the house since maybe the seventh or eighth grade. So in two of them they're still there. So they're basically family members now. They live there and my younger sister lives there. And my older sister pretty much holds down the fort now that my mom passed away. Wow. Well I'm really sorry to hear about your mom's passing away. Yeah. It was in 03 she passed away so it's been a while now. I think a lot of times when you are caring for someone who has any type of special needs I think that usually there is one person usually a matriarch in the household who does the primary caregiving of that person but everyone in a family is affected. And wouldn't you agree Gina every person has a role to play in the keeping and caring of a person who has special needs. Absolutely. But that would be for any of us. Right. That's the thing that we don't want to think too broad about it. We don't want to have a body who in our house so we all take special care to take care of them. But I totally get what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. I think what we all are noticing now is that when or even in your books you bring a certain type of awareness that maybe the general typically developing person may not have been aware of. What has the response been to your books? Oh wow. It's been wonderful. I debuted at the museum of natural history in New York City about three years ago. I've had the pleasure of being on the own network in regard to the book and what we do. It opened up or gave birth to the company of diversity as a verb and to make diversity more than just this kind of popular word but an action behind it. So the book gained a lot of momentum especially during the hashtag Oscar so white. So it worked out really well because it gave a platform of discussing many different ethnicities and groups. So I mean I'm really pleased about the progress with this book. I can't extol it anymore. So I'm really pleased with everything from dealing with melanin to dealing with body size to dealing with awareness, sorry, dealing with awareness abilities as well as different ethnicities. So it's worked out well. Thank you. Thank you. It sounds like you cover the full gamut of different differing abilities and we appreciate that. And I thank you so much for getting the word out to so many different people about so many different people. And next time you're on own you can just go ahead and mention me. Just tell Oprah. Tell her say hey Oprah I'm so glad you're here. But no I appreciate what you do for educators and for parents. I think when I'm out and about I hear a lot from parents how they wish that their child was better represented. Do you feel that same way? Oh absolutely. It goes back to what I was initially saying. You want to be seen and heard but they said before like I've heard this quote where a good children's book teaches the child but a great children's book teaches both the child and the parent. And when you have a book such as this that allows those dialogues and those discussions between each character that allows you to see yourself in others. It brings the humanity discussion into play. And sometimes that is missing from children's books in terms of understanding other people's perspective. Right. Well we wish you well. Thank you so much for being here today Gina. If you'd like to learn more about what she does you can find her on diversityisaverb.com. Is that right? Oh no. No. It's okay. I can find you best well on either Instagram at Gina Humber H-U-M-B-R or Twitter which I happen to love at Gina Humber 720. Okay. Alright well I tried. We'll find you. We'll find you. And you can. Alright and then of course you can subscribe to her on Twitter or on YouTube. I think I also found you on YouTube at one point on Instagram. So wherever you find her along social media please invest and get the word out. Share diversity is a verb. Thank you so much for being with us today Gina. Bye bye. Bye. Well Steven we have talked a great deal about diversity and as it relates to family members and in our books and things of that nature. Let's talk about Hollywood. Have you also noticed that there is a great deal about diversity in Hollywood? I think there's probably more diversity than we care to acknowledge sometimes. I think there's so much diversity that we may not even notice. It's kind of like if you give somebody a plate of food and you give them just enough they'll consume all of it. You have a buffet or a smorgasbord of options a lot of that food is going to go to waste. So in this climate of so much content a lot of things are not recognized. So just to make it personal me playing this role of TC when the original show was out in Roger E. Mostly played TC there were maybe a few black actors that were in roles that were non-comedy roles where it was action on location sort of thing. And that was Mr. T. That's right. That was TC. And I want to say Avery Brooks and he played a man called Hulk and before that he was in a show called Not the Equalizer and a show called Spencer for Hire. Wow, yeah. So outside of those three I could be wrong, it could be more but those are the three that I remembered being in action roles, right? There was a lot of black comedy there was tons of black comedy shows but in terms of there being an action role for a black man there weren't a whole lot of them. Now we have it's funny because you guys kept seeing abilities and it made me think of Luke Cage because in there that's how they mentioned powers they called them abilities. So now we have Luke Cage when I was growing up there was no you had Steve Austin, a million dollar man you had the Hulk you didn't have strong black men lifting people up and throwing them through the walls when I was growing up. So I don't think there were any black characters on Batman. I don't remember any. They had a bad guy. They had a penguin but they didn't have a black man he counted his black penguin suit. He was mixed. Yeah, exactly. So I just feel like my character being on this show that was something where 30 years ago black audience had to tune in it was like whoa it's a show with black men on it gotta watch it. And now I don't know the conversation is more in shows like Power and in the black community at least from what I see I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter I'm still pretty active on those platforms and the things that I see people talk about not necessarily a very diverse show like Magnum PI because the show is extremely diverse. Yes it is. There's not a lot of black folks on the show but you know I represent I want to say black folks pretty lovely on the show. Thank you you do a great job. So it's me there are Asian actors on the show there are Hawaiians represented on the show that's right. There are you know even in diversity of gender we have our Higgins the original Higgins was the man now Higgins is a woman she does well. Magnum is Mexican Jay Hernandez is a Mexican-American so there's a ton of diversity in our show now and I'm not sure if all of the audience is even ready for that and I just think that it's something that may fall in deaf ears sometimes so I think we are getting way more diversity than we had do I think we probably still have a long way to go for there to be full equality right but I don't know I don't know how soon we'll get there but we do have a number of things to watch now that we did 30 years ago. And I appreciate them all. I appreciate watching you. Oh thank you. You do a great job flexing out there doing the helicopter thing right? Yeah well we thank you so much for being with us today at the Crossroads we thank you for what you do as an actor. One thing I want to say though because I have a little brother and I don't think he knows this so I want to put him up on game real quick and simply say I know you did something with the Wu Wu Tang and I loved it so can you just give a quick little shout out about that as we close yeah so I it's actually a project that I put together with a couple of filmmakers from Philly and it's called Tales from Shaolin Part 1 Shaky Dog so we basically take a Ghostface killer song it's called Shaky Dog it's on his album Fishgale which I think is his third album but it's the second song on that album and all of his lyrics become the dialogue for the film and it's dispersed through a couple of characters mostly my character but a few other characters say the other lyrics and we make it a story and it kind of comes across very Shakespearean I call it Ghostsperean experience okay okay that's new you heard it here first so it's a fun a fun short and we turned some things we flipped a few things where in the song there's a woman that is kind of like taking advantage of and kind of discarded in the song but in the film she's totally badass she's played by Ninja DeVoe friend of mine who came on and she's been on Queen Sugar she was just in the film Green Book she played a bartender in that and now she's in our film kicking kicking butt okay instead of her just getting shot and killed she is a strong female lead we love that we love what you do and it's free that's right that's how I watched it so that's for my brother Mo my little brother Mo forever great work thank you so much for being here with us today we hope to have you back again you've been here six months we don't know how much longer you're going to be here I'll bring you back not a problem we'd love to have you right here at the Crossroads thank you so much for tuning in tell your friends you can find us on Think Tech Hawaii on Facebook you can find us on our own website and you can watch us on YouTube I'm here every Wednesday at five o'clock I'm your girl Keisha King and we are at the Crossroads hello hi I was beginning to tell people where to find me ah me too I'm sorry I'm telling people where to find us you don't want to buy power I got about six thousand powers maybe I might have reached it so weird six thousand powers on a TV show you know what I mean and then the girl with the girls in bikinis got millions millions easily and they don't talk about nothing they don't have anything to talk about they don't have anything