Excerpts from a 2017 Feature in the New York Times
Insult Tonya Pinkins? She Got There First
Someone has it in for the Tony Award-winning actress Tonya Pinkins. In a video posted to YouTube just after Christmas, a woman in a blond wig and lethal-looking lipstick spits rhyming insults at Ms. Pinkins while a backing track plays. “You’re a has-been, a hack, a floozy, a slut,” she seethes, “Your initials are T.P. so — ”
The tone nose-dives from there.
Yet what’s most shocking about the video is its mastermind, major cinematographer and star: Tonya Pinkins. A year ago Ms. Pinkins, 54, set Off Broadway tongues and fingers wagging after a vexed departure from the Classic Stage Company’s production of “Mother Courage,” an exit as gossiped about as Shia LaBeouf’s from “Orphans” or Jeremy Piven’s from “Speed-the-Plow.” Now she has returned with a video that repurposes that gossip for a higher, hip-hop-inflected end. Rather than trying to protect herself, she’s embracing every attack — in ways audacious, profane and uproarious.
The video, “Tonya Pinkins Rap Roast (Diss) Challenge YouTube,” features Ms. Pinkins in three roles — that blond battle rapper, a brunette battle rapper and a Rastafarian referee. As the female characters slam her, personally and professionally, a passel of guest stars including Ellen Page, Téa Leoni and Bebe Neuwirth look on, appalled. Viewed without context, the piece seems a postmodern taunt or a bridge-burning implosion. But there’s something more potent and more joyful at work….
When she decided to leave “Mother Courage,” she wrote an open letter, published by Playbill, criticizing a “cultural misappropriation” of the African setting and a vision of the lead character who “would not be an icon of feminine tenacity and strength, nor of a black female’s fearless capabilities,” but rather a “delusional woman.”
In writing the letter, she was, she felt, “the most authentic I may have been as a human being.” She liked that feeling. Yet her friend the playwright and activist Eve Ensler warned her that she might face consequences — attacks on her character or a chilling effect on her career. “I was saying: ‘Be aware of what you’re going into. Do it with your eyes open,’” Ms. Ensler recalled recently by telephone. A host of negative comments did ensue, including at least one website dedicated to her disparagement.
It was a difficult time, Ms. Pinkins said, but she got through it. “Most people think if that happened they would die. They would disappear, they would crawl under the rug,” she said.
But she didn’t die and she didn’t disappear. Last year you could see her in popular television series like “Madam Secretary” and “Gotham.” She also appeared in the Hulu mini-series “11.22.63.” Its showrunner, Bridget Carpenter, described her work as “intelligent, insightful, clear, with wonderful emotional depth.”
She received offers for several plum Off Broadway roles, in shows like “Marie and Rosetta” at the Atlantic Theater Company and “War” at Lincoln Center Theater, she said, which her filming schedule precluded.
Still, she never forgot the comments she received in the wake of “Mother Courage,” and as soon as she heard about the Roast Challenge, she knew that she could defuse them by turning them into unrestrained comedy. Through a mutual friend she contracted the writer Isaac Klein to compose the rap and sent him link after sneering link to the criticism she had gotten. “I want it all in there,” she told him.
Mr. Klein had a lot to work with. A performer of indisputable virtuosity and bite, Ms. Pinkins has seen perhaps more tumult offstage than on. She landed in the tabloids after a contentious custody battle and subsequent fights over child support, and has been open about her time on public assistance. If professional ructions have been fewer, she has developed a reputation as a fierce and fiercely opinionated artist. In addition to the “Mother Courage” ado, she has fought publicly over salaries, resisting the idea that “women are supposed to take less because a man likes you or says something nice to you. I’ve got four kids to feed, and I’ve got to keep a roof over their heads. You liking me can’t pay my bills.”
| Credit Type | Production | Season |
|---|---|---|
| Actor | The Fabulous Miss Marie | 2013-14 Season |