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Red Pill


KingWolf catches up with Director and Actress, Tonya Pinkins, to talk about her latest film, Red Pill, her passion for acting, and what’s next for her career-wise.








1. What attracted you to create the movie "RED PILL"?

  • I’ve been wanting to direct for a long time. I shadowed for years. And no one would hire me. I got tired of waiting. I got a credit card and I just decided to make something. I felt really passionately about what was going on in America. I was tired of telling people what I thought and being ignored. Art is great place to put your frustrations. I was very frustrated with American politics. It went fast. I wrote it in august and we shot in October. I wrote for actor friends who I knew. Fortunately, they were all available in my very small time window.


2. Did you find it difficult or easy to wear both the directing and acting hat for this film?

  • Making a movie in ten days with very little money , everything was difficult. But I was so in over my head that I had no time to stop and think or worry about any of it. I had to get it DONE. I had been told by two producers that it was not possible to make the film with my time frame and budget and I was like well I save this money and I have this time and I’m gonna make something. We’ll see what it is when its done. And wonder of wonder it was a feature film. There are certainly many things that could have been better with more time or more money. But folks waiting for those things can’t say that they’ve made a feature film and I can.

3. Besides yourself, what celebrity would you like to see tackle this character.

  • Well I cast myself because I worked for free. I think Karen Pitman would have been a great Cassandra in RED PILL

4. I see you have been cast in all kinds of films, what is your favorite genre to act in?

  • My favorite genres are South Korean anything and then sci-fi, action adventure, horror KING

5. How and when exactly did you realize you had the passion for acting?

  • What I really love is change , switching up what I’m doing a drama, then a comedy, theater then film, directing then writing. I get bored easily. When I was 15 I studied at The St Nicholas Theater with William h Macy and Stephen Schacter . The Meisner work is all about honest listening and honest responding. I was the kid who would tell someone that they had acne on their face when everyone else would pretend not to see it so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings. I enjoy being authentic. There is not a lot of place or appreciation of that anymore.

6. What do you believe is the most challenging aspect of being an actor?

  • For me right now the most challenging part about being an actor is SELF TAPES. I find it humiliating. Between lighting, make-up, finding a reader, editing there is no energy left for the work of mining the character. Perhaps young people find it easy because they grew up filming their entire lives. But they also didn’t grow up seeing great work and studying and aspiring to deep work. So the values of the day are not the same.

7. What, according to you, is the best part of your work?

  • The best part of my work is that I get paid to express the ideas that spark my passion from within my soul. What could be better than that. Most people only get to do that with hobbies.

8. What would you consider your "dream role"? Like a specific kind of character you've always wanted to play, but haven't found the opportunity yet. Who would that character be?

  • I love playing the villains. There is just so much range in complicated characters Producing and Directing really excite me now. Acting feels like being a tool for someone else’s vision. I have some visions of my own. That said I’d love to have been on OZARK or to be on WESTWORLD.

9. If you had an opportunity to work with any director, who would it be and why?

  • You know I have met too many of my heroes and they all have clay feet. Ivan Van Hove and Sam Mendes’ work excites me.

10. What is next for you? Do you have any projects in the works to either director or act in?

  • I am adapting a series Urban Fantasy Novels by Mark McGowan for television I have the options on two film scripts. Free To Be Us and Freedom Code. The first is an interracial romance set before Loving v Virginia in the Jim Crow South and the latter is a true story of three generations of women who stitched codes into the quilts that guided run-a-way kidnapped Africans to the North. There is something coming up this fall but I gotta wait for the press release.

Indie film supporters, check out Tonya Pinkin's comedy, horror. thriller RED PILL. Starring Ruben Blades (Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Safe House), Catherine Curtin (Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black), Kathryn Erbe (Law & Order, Stir of Echoes), Colby Minifie (The Boys, I’m Thinking of Ending Things).



Attention bloggers, and podcasters, for follow up interviews with filmmaker and actress Tonya Pinkins, contact Sharry Flaherty of Samera Entertainment at: SameraEntertainment@Gmail.com





















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