Kendrick Sampson

Houston-born, activist/actor Kendrick Sampson is passionate. Sampson is best known for his role in Insecure HBO, How to Get Away With Murder, co-starring in the film Miss Juneteenth with Nicole Beharie, and his involvement in BLD PWR, an organization working in the intersection of grassroots and narrative activism. On a Thursday evening, Sampson calls in from his home in Los Angeles and he sounds excited but exhausted.

Tiffany: How are you taking care of yourself these days?

Kendrick Sampson: (laughs) I’m trying to figure out how to take care of myself. We’ve been in crisis modecompounded crisis: COVID-19, economic crisis, health crisis, the ongoing crisis of police violence and murder, and trash leadership. All this stuff weighs down and it’s a very stressful time for everybody.

Amid a looming presence of an ongoing global pandemic, unemployment at the highest level since the Great Depression, and demonstrators across the country gathering to stand against racial injustice and demand change. Sampson can be seen in the midst of it all- on the frontlines of the Los Angeles protest demanding immediate action to stop 32 racist policing. After a video surfaced of him being shot by rubber bullets and attacked by LAPD at a peaceful protest the question bears, “How are you coping with all of this?”, “How are you maintaining your sanity?”

Kendrick Sampson: The best I can do is eat properly and nourish myself. I try to get some sun to help my melanin out (laughs). Fresh air, if I can get it in Los Angeles. I go to therapy once a week- I should be going twice but my schedule is intense and all over the place. The good thing is that we get to organize in community. The way that Black Lives Matter- Los Angeles does it, they start out with libations and letting the family of the ones that have been murdered by at the hands of police speak and talk about the solutions. We then close out with Assata Shakur for healing. There is some catharsis around that- the fight ain’t over and it’s intense. I also have the privilege and honor to work on beautiful Black projects like Insecure and Miss Juneteenth and that has provided some healing to folks, which have been encouraging as well. It’s complicated, I’m not going to lie, I haven’t gotten any sleep. I’m doing the best I can to be conscious of how I operate and take it day-by-day.

Tiffany: Your character, Nathan, on HBO Insecure Season 4 is vocal about his mental health and is vulnerable with Issa about how he suffers from being bipolar. Why is it important for characters like Nathan to exist?

Kendrick Sampson: Hollywood has had a very damaging effect on Black folks. There have been a lot of anti-Black narratives. For the most part, the people that control our stories in Hollywood are all-white. The more that we control our narratives the better. In addition to the glorified police violence and anti-blackness that is often seen in Hollywood, they also portray mental health as violent and sensationalized or the big ominous, foreboding moment when someone reveals that they suffer from some type of mental illness. Usually, it’s paired with a crime. [Hollywood] criminalizes mental health and our trauma. Coupled with the history of this country, never having any mental health infrastructure. Prisons have been our biggest mental health institutions especially for Black folks which in reality just makes us worse. It’s necessary to have a regular-degular, Black man from Texas with a regular-ass bi-polar disorder live and be human. It’s so important! So often we don’t get to play those characters. I was honored to play him and be a part of that especially because he is from my hometown, H-town.

Tiffany: What do you want people to take away from Issa and Nathan's relationship with regards to mental health?

Kendrick Sampson: It’s so layered. I have mental health issues and have pretty severe anxiety. My brother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder which at a time was often misdiagnosed. Many of my family members have varying mental health disorders. To talk to them about their mental illnesses depending on the person you are talking to, can be a completely different type of experience. You saw Nathan try to communicate what was going on last season (HBO’s Insecure Season 3) but was rejected by Issa due to Issa being hurt and dealing with her own mental health struggle. Although she wasn’t dealing with a bipolar disorder, she is dealing with the trauma of friendships, relationships, career, and many other things. She only has so much capacity!

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Kendrick

Sampson

interviewed by tiffany bullock

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Kendrick Sampson: There is so much you can break down from that last conversation they had last season and how both of them have grown to a place now where they are open to having the conversation while holding each other accountable. They don’t go about it in a perfect way. The conversation is not a roadmap or a perfect example of how to have a mental health conversation but it is a beautiful nuance example. It shows how the conversation can be presented and how to hold space for people to have those discussions. I think Issa was properly addressing her hurt in an imperfect way- which all of us will do and Nathan was addressing his exploration and the hurt that he’s caused. I loved that scene and Kerry

35 Washington who directed that episode was super sensitive to it and gave the space and the direction needed to find what both characters would do in

that situation.

Tiffany: You co-founded BLD PWR, what makes a movement work?

Kendrick Sampson: I’m not a professor. I take my cues from liberators all over the country like Patrice Cullors, Dr. Melina Abdullah, Mary Hooks, and Tia Oso. The people that mostly taught me were Black women, queer Black women, and transwomen, in addition, friends like Phillip Agnew. They can all explain it better than me. What I think makes a movement work is people, community-based solutions, and paying attention to what the community needs. Together with, prioritizing people over profit and making sure you seek out the most vulnerable- the people closest to the pain. Abolition and reparations as a focus and a framework for a movement is absolutely necessary. The way I see it and I say this a lot, a bad seed produces a bad tree which produces bad fruit. A good seed produces a good tree, which produces good fruit. So all the systems that were formed were bad seeds, which have to be uprooted. Policing was born in slave catching, a direct linkage that has been rebranded to what we see today. Prisons were born under continued slavery under the guise of the 13th amendment. Capitalism born out of greed, anti-blackness, anti-indigenous, and making people a commodity. All of these systems have to be uprooted so then new seeds can be planted, and new trees/systems can be grown that are founded in wellness in care for our communities and they will bear good fruit because of those seeds. I think that framework is necessary for an effective movement. Coalition building to not only find out who your allies are but your accomplices and knowing you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. People have been working on this for a long time.

What makes the movements work is us. We have to take responsibility to do the work every day even when nobody's looking.

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Sampson on protesting.

Kendrick Sampson: Protesting is the external strategy, it’s the strategy in the streets where we show our power and our numbers with direct action. The real movement of the work happens every single day and when everyone knows their part. There are people that babysit kids, those who organize phone numbers, knock on doors, email, those who do text support, do programming as well as people that keep their eye on politics. They have their ear to who’s voting in which direction and who might vote in another direction, and who is holding up the process. All of that- making sure we know those leaders and who has their community and know where the pain is and how to address it. Making sure you have healers and medics. People who know the legality, who can warn you of the legality and can efficiently work around legal systems- give you all of the strategies you need. It’s a very complex thing. I would advise anybody to make sure you connect with organizations and organizers who are doing great work already. Learn from them- don’t try to reinvent the wheel.

Tiffany: Being on the frontlines can be traumatic and mentally/ physically taxing. How do you recharge?

Kendrick Sampson: I like to eat- I love, love good food. I love playing the piano, it brings me peace. Exercising and being out in the sun. Going to the beach is nice as well- I love warm water. The beaches in LA have cold ass water- I’m not talking about those. I

36 can recharge myself really well- I can go about the whole day by myself. But, I love being in community as well, being around the people I love. Oh, and watermelon. I love watermelon- I will put in my mouth and that is all I need.

Tiffany: Being that Miss Junteenth isn’t the expected period piece about oppression and the white gaze- it’s nuanced- with the story being told of Black people just being. Talk to me about the significance of nuance Black stories?

Kendrick Sampson: Juneteenth is my favorite holiday! There’s an invisible villain in Miss Juneteenth, which are all of the systems that are up against Black people. Systems that target us. Ronnie ( Kendrick Sampson) has a run-in with the American legal system and Turquoise (Nicole Beharie) has to deal with the desire to appeal to this pageantry and competition. She has problematic reasons as well as good reasons- there are layers of what they are dealing with but it’s just Black folks being human. Black people going through life and seeking liberation internally and their personal relationships. Turquoise figuring out what is best for her daughter and trying to understand what her daughter wants. As well as navigating her relationship with her husband who doesn’t live with them. It’s the complex lives that we all have. Being Texan and country and being a former Miss Junteenth- that is complex. We are complex.

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Sampson on Black portrayal in Hollywood and storytelling.

Kendrick Sampson: In [Hollywood] we are often demonized and criminalized, the hidden figures- the first Black person to do everything - where we have to be perfect and flawless. Hidden figure stories are great stories, and we need to know those stories but we also need to know they weren’t extraordinary people by design. They were people, regular everyday folk that decided to do the work, get involved, and make excellent choices. A lot of the time they do not connect these stories to the community. People cannot achieve that success without community and everybody playing their part. Dr. Melina Abdullah often references Ella Baker who says, “ We don’t need a leader of the group, we need group leadership where everybody plays a part.” Another portrayal is the slave that is strong, who grinds through and forgives her master. We need the stories that say fuck master - because slaves did often. They fought and they won! That is what Junteenth shows us. I think the stories like Miss Junteenth are stories about our humanity that we aren’t allowed. You see stories

37 about mediocre white people all the time. I believe the most mediocre Black people are more excellent than the greatest

white folks because of everything we experienced and had to fight through. That is what I look at this story is us just being able to be nuanced, making mistakes, missing the mark, and hitting the mark and what that looks like.

Tiffany: As we are reframing how our stories are being told, what our reality looks like, how we think about ourselves. What should people keep in mind in storytelling?

Kendrick Sampson: To move past the idea around diversity and inclusion and into liberation. Diversity is just representation. Inclusion is just being included- finding what pieces of culture need to be considered when having a person that is normally excluded finally included in the process. It’s being allowed into spaces which is not true liberation. True liberation is not having to be allowed and not having to fight to get into spaces where you are necessary, where you deserve to be. Liberation looks like Insecure. Looks like Nathan being bipolar and that not being sensationalized. It’s people seeing themselves represented not only by face but my experience, humanity, and humanizing stories. Those are liberatory frameworks for storytelling. Also know those who are greenlighting our stories, if you ever think you are producing too many Black stories and giving us too much of a share of the pie, or that there are too many indigenous stories-you are wrong. They can’t make enough! They can’t produce and distribute enough Black stories to make up for the anti Blackness that came before this.

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