Alumni Interview: Denise Nicholas

Denise Nicholas made her television debut on the ABC series "Room 222," as the guidance counselor, Liz McIntyre for which she was nominated twice for the Golden Globe. She went on to feature films, starring with Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier in the comedy films Let's Do It Again and A Piece of the Action; both of which earned her NAACP Image Awards for Best Actress. Denise co-starred as Councilwoman Harriet DeLong on the NBC/CBS drama "In the Heat of the Night" opposite Carroll O'Connor. During her time on the show, Denise wrote six one-hour episodes and a two-hour movie, several of which were among the series' highest rated segments. As actress and producer, she received two LA Emmy Awards for the KCET-PBS special "Voices of the People," a celebration of African-American poets and poetry. Denise began her career as an apprentice with the Free Southern Theater touring through rural Louisiana and Mississippi during the violent days of the Civil Rights Movement. Her novel in progress comes from that experience.

Q: How did you do the research for this project?

DN: I still have my notes and journals from the sixties when I was in Mississippi. I have stuff in boxes and file drawers and on bits and pieces of paper. And I'm sorting through it and putting that all together for this.

Q: Could you talk about the autobiographical nature of this work?

DN: The taking off point is autobiographical. When I went South, I worked in a theater group. I didn't work in voter registration, but I knew many people who did. I did take the train my first time going down. That's the jumping off point. But it quickly goes into fiction from there.

Q: You seemed to create a rich background by selectively including the history of the period.

DN: I think we live in an incredible place and time. I think the tapestry of America since the beginning has barely been mined, and I think that for me it is extremely important to create a social and political fabric as well as to be poetic. My favorite type of writing is that type of writing which uses the technique of mixing fiction with factual events. Like Ragtime, which I think was the most successful book I've read at weaving in historical characters and places with fictionalized characters and events. I put the Chaney (sp????) murders in because I felt that you can't possibly write about that period without that being there somewhere in the character's consciousness, in the story's context. It has to be there; otherwise, you're lying. And there's enough of that.

Q: How did that experience--being in the South during that period--impact you?

DN: I met so many remarkable people. So many people who made such an impression on me. So many people that you don't see on television or very often in the movies. I must say that those experiences really formed me. And I tried to take those experiences into Hollywood, but it's been a little bit difficult, needless to say. This Odessa Robins character I used in a script I wrote for "In the Heat of the Night." I used the same character. I pitched it to Carroll O'Conner, and he liked it, bought it, and let me write the script. So those experiences have had an extraordinary and lasting impact on my work and on me.

Q: Was that the first script you wrote for "In the Heat of the Night?"

DN: Yes, it was. That was the first one I pitched, and he bought it. Again, that came out of that experience. That show was about Mississippi, so it fit.

Q: Did working with "In the Heat of the Night" inspire you to come back to these stories?

DN: Not really. I'm grown up now. When I was down there first, I was a kid. So when I went back, I really didn't have the patience for it anymore. I was reclusive; I didn't care about it. All I cared about was the trees (laughs). I mean, there was a Klan meeting in the town we were filming in while I was there. Carol O'Conner sent a film crew over and filmed it. But I had been there and done that, and I felt like, I don't want to know this anymore. I'm sick of it. But there is something that still impresses one in the South. And that is character. The people. I don't know what it is--I can get really cliche and talk about people being close to the Earth or something, but the fact of the matter is, character jumps out at you there. It really does. So in that sense going back for "Heat of the Night" was an influence. And maybe it is the historical context, and we come there loaded with our information and feelings about it, so we impress upon it as much as it impresses upon us. But I think people are carved clearly there, and I don't get that here in the city, maybe because we're all in cars. I don't know. But in the South there is that meeting people and being impressed with their rootedness, or to look in their faces and to see it all right there, all that anguish, all that emotion, their whole lives right there in their faces. I don't get that here. I see a lot more placidity, blandness.

Q: I'm always impressed by how different artistic crafts influence each other. Could you talk a little bit about how your acting influenced your writing?

DN: The writing classes came later for me. The acting classes that I had early in New York were good, basic kinds of classes. Classes in the study of detail and observation. I remember being in a subway in New York and taking notes, observing people. Having to go into bars and places I didn't really want to go so that I could observe people for details. And those skills I think translate from acting to writing, and I imagine to photography or painting. I think the artistic sensibility just is, and you hone it and develop it over time. There are probably certain things that cross all the boundaries, which cross over better than other things, techniques, skills.

Q: Your dialogue is so good.

DN: Caroll said my dialogue was the best part of my writing. That's the acting part for sure.

Q: But also your narrative flows well and is poetic.

DN: Thank you. But, there, my mother made us read. You have to read when you're young and impressionable so the quality of language seeps in. That way, for the rest of your life, you know when your language has fallen below an acceptable level. I think it kind of sets a standard when you read the classics as a young person. My goal now is to balance the two languages--the language of dialogue and the language of narrative, because of my backgrounds in both acting and writing.