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• Ms. Carroll's official site
• About The Legs Are the Last to Go
• Excerpt from The Legs Are the Last to Go
• "Diahann Carroll Memoir, 'The Legs Are the Last to Go,' On Shelves Sept. 30"

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Award-winning actress-singer discusses her affair with actor Sidney Poitier and how she handles the subject in her new book. (4:02)
 

Full interview. (23:38)
 

Tavis: I'm pleased - talking already. I'm pleased and honored to welcome (laughter) my "shero," Diahann Carroll, to this program. The legendary actress and recording artist is out with a new memoir about her life and career in show business. The book is called "The Legs Are the Last to Go" - indeed they are (laughter). That's not part of the title.

The subtitle is "Aging, Acting, Marrying and Other Things I Learned the Hard Way." I'm just, you know, as the brothers say, "commentating," like that's a word. But anyway, offering commentary about the legs. Amen, the legs are the last to go.

Diahann Carroll: Yes, most of the time, most of the time.

Tavis: (Laughter) It is nice to see you.

Carroll: When I exercise, they'd better. Thank you. It is a joy to see you. I haven't done this with you in quite a while.

Tavis: Been a couple of years since you came by to see me on TV.

Carroll: Yes, yes.

Tavis: Speaking of TV, let me take you back right quick before I come forward to present day in the text. When I was on BET years ago, we did a couple of conversations. The first conversation I had with you on BET some years ago was in New York. I came to talk to you on location and the place I met you at was the place where they were designing and doing your clothing line. So we did an interview on location in New York. You may not recall this.

Carroll: In the garment district.

Tavis: Absolutely. So I brought my crew; we came to New York; we sat for a show with you for BET. It was a great conversation, the first time I'd ever met you. Because I love you, I was fit to be tied. What I recall about that conversation besides just being so nervous to meet you was you walked on my set about fifteen minutes prior to tape time and rearranged my entire lighting setup.

Carroll: Lighting, yes.

Tavis: You remember this? You walked on my set, you were very kind.

Carroll: Guilty, guilty.

Tavis: Diva that you are, you asked my permission. You said, "Do you mind if I move this light over here? I want to adjust this over here. Can this camera shoot from this angle? Do you have a gel for this camera?" Then you said to me, "Look at the monitor, Tavis. Do you think it's better?" I'll be doggone, you looked better and I looked better after you got done doing that. I was like here's a woman who knows how she looks best.

Carroll: The first person to do this to me, to teach me about this, was Marlene Dietrich. It really is something that, after you've seen the difference, when the light is on you, you're really compulsive about it. I'm glad you remember it favorably. There are those who do not remember favorably (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) No, I just remember thinking that here's where you know you're dealing with a true artist, a real diva who comes on and, with kindness and you were very nice about it, but knew how to readjust what respectfully these guys and gals did every day to make you look and me look better, so thank you.

Carroll: Well, there are those who would say, "There she goes wasting her time again doing something about her career," but that's what I do.

Tavis: I still have to say, before I walked out - you beat me on the set today - did you readjust stuff before I walked out?

Carroll: No. They had everything done.

Tavis: Okay.

Carroll: Thank you very much. Everything is where it belongs.

Tavis: Okay. Roger will be happy to hear that. That means I'm looking good right now, so thank you. Enough of that nonsense. To the book, have you always been a diva? I referred to you as a diva a moment ago and I said it lovingly. Were you a diva at 12 walking around the house?

Carroll: You tell me what it means to be a diva and then I'll tell you if I'm a diva.

Tavis: In charge, in control, knowing what you want, not being pushed around, don't care if they call you a "B" because you know why you're doing it and the purpose you're doing it. Just firm, firm about what is in the best interest of you and your craft.

Carroll: Okay, all right. I'll accept that terminology because I think all of the things that you just mentioned are important for those of us who are going to be in front of the public. Those are the things we have to master in order to become something that people want to watch. So I'm always trying to hone that into the finest - but you know that it's important.

Tavis: Yeah. How do you - how have you because you've done it successfully all these years -

Carroll: - what was that "Yeah" you gave me? Do you know that that's important?

Tavis: Why?

Carroll: You do it.

Tavis: Yeah.

Carroll: You do it too. You're a diva.

Tavis: Oh, you're welcome, okay. Diva, divo, whatever. I've been called worse. Just don't call me late for dinner, but that's another conversation.

Carroll: Oh, you are funny.

Tavis: How have you navigated so successfully, as evidenced in my hand - how have you navigated so successfully being a Black woman in a business that ain't Black, being a diva, and not being put down, being denied because of it?

Carroll: Oh, no, I was put down, I was denied.

Tavis: Right.

Carroll: I was the "Who does she think she is?" Yeah, I received a lot of that. But the message that I remember, as far as racism is concerned - we're talking about that as something that can really knock you off your center.

Tavis: In the book, you talk about this.

Carroll: Yes, when you need to concentrate on whatever it is that propels you forward. But my mother said the most interesting thing to me. "If there's someone who doesn't like you because of the color of your skin, remember they have a problem, and if you can help them with that, do that. Other than that, just move on." I think the words "move on" stayed in my head.

I knew that certain things I had to learn. How was I going to learn them without asking questions? And how was I going to learn without saying, "Can we try so-and-so, please?" I didn't do what (laughter) Barbara did when she went to see Oprah. She brought her lights. She brought everything and I think maybe that's taking it a bit far. But there is a certain quality to people who have a kind of success and you know that. You pursue everything to the nth degree. How many years have I been watching you?

Tavis: All told, now about 16.

Carroll: Yeah. Look what you've done with you. You can't do that without paying attention.

Tavis: How do you help people with the problem of racism that they have once you recognize they have it? I love your mother's advice to you. How do you help people with their racism problem?

Carroll: It depends on how their racism manifests itself between you and that person. If there's something in there that you can work with that you're knowledgeable about, maybe even a phrase, it could be that, or something that takes them off-guard for just a moment, it could be very helpful. I don't know that I've always been helpful. I've been direct about it.

A young man many, many years ago, I was in Florida when Florida was really not a wonderful place to be. I arrived with about 15 pieces of luggage. I was going to work there. He carried them because it was a little hotel. There were no Blacks in any of the major hotels at that time. He carried them and I said, "Thank you very much" and I tried to give him a tip.

He said, "No, no. I couldn't do that. My grandfather would turn over in his grave." I said, "I'm sorry to hear that. But what you must do now is take all this luggage back downstairs and leave it there until someone who has some intelligence about you being white and my being Black, tell them to bring the luggage up. I don't even want you in my room."

Tavis: So he took the bags all the way back down?

Carroll: Yes, he did.

Tavis: Wow (laughter).

Carroll: Yeah, I was pretty direct about that.

Tavis: You asked me a moment ago what a diva is? That's part of the definition, yeah (laughter).

Carroll: Okay. We've got it clear now.

Tavis: I'm gonna add that to my definition, if I might amend my definition. Out of respect and love for you, I can ask you the Poitier question now or I can hold it for a few minutes to the end of this conversation. How do you wish to proceed, Ms. Carroll?

Carroll: It's fine with me. You know, we can talk about Mr. Poitier any time you wish.

Tavis: Well, let's do it right now.

Carroll: Okay.

Tavis: Here is my question. Is nothing sacred?

Carroll: Yes. Lots of things are sacred. Surely you don't believe that the whole period of our relationship is related in this book.

Tavis: No, I do not.

Carroll: Okay.

Tavis: But the part that you did relate, you're comfortable with what you have related that's being talked about?

Carroll: I am comfortable.

Tavis: Okay.

Carroll: It's important, I think, for people to understand the relationship received an awful lot of attention and I think maybe more than we thought was going to happen, but it was uncomfortable attention. He was married; I was married.

I think and I've mentioned this - you've almost agreed with me on this - I think that the press is much - they express their curiosity about the private life to the female, not so much to the male. I don't know how many times you've interviewed Sidney here. Have you ever asked him a personal question about his wife, his children and what happened between you and Diahann Carroll?

Tavis: That's a very legitimate point and the answer is, he sat in this chair weeks ago. With all due respect to you, Mr. Poitier, I did not.

Carroll: So the responsibility of the clarity of whatever happened is very important that the woman says it.

Tavis: Let me cut in right quick. I suspect if Mr. P were here - I call him Mr. P - I suspect if he were here, he might say to me, "Well, Tavis, you didn't ask me about my personal life because I didn't put it out there in my book like Diahann Carroll did."

Carroll: Well, that's very true. He could answer that. In the first book - Sidney knows that in his first book, he decided to write about me, which we had never discussed. When he wrote, he sent me what he had written. I didn't like the fact that he had written about me. Then I became accustomed to it with time and I thought perhaps we were interesting for a lot of reasons.

We were also interesting because we were the first two Black television and film stars, let's say, that the community, Hollywood, the Black community, had ever seen. We were very legitimately involved with each other emotionally.

Tavis: And you looked good together.

Carroll: I thought we did.

Tavis: I think you did (laughter).

Carroll: I thought we did.

Tavis: Not as good as you would have looked with me, had I been around back then. Sorry, Mr. P.

Carroll: Thank you. Well, you were three (laughter). But it's important to understand that we had a very rough time. That's why we didn't end up together and it's probably better. He was much more involved with his - I know it's better - much more involved with this career and I was very involved with my career. The wife that he needed, I could not have been. And the husband that I needed, he could not have been.

So what happened? Well, that's what happened. I put it in the book. That's what happened. I think part of that is because I think it's also his beginning. He's a West Indian male. He's not an American man. The discussion with a woman about what she should and should not do is very male-oriented. He wants it to be his way and he's human, he's human, and I adore him.

Tavis: You talked about it in the book, obviously, and I want to move beyond it. There are any number of lessons, I suspect, life lessons that you learned from that situation when it was over. Is there or are there one or two abiding lessons to this day that you still live by, having learned because of that experience, that relationship?

Carroll: I think so. Yes, it was very important to me that there are no relationships with married men. Let's start there. That's out of the question.

Tavis: Okay.

Carroll: But I learned a very positive lesson, that a relationship with a very intelligent, very gifted man, filled with wonderful, good lessons. That, I got from Sidney.

Tavis: You and I talked recently - you talk about this in the book as well to some degree - your relationship with your daughter and the strain that being in this business puts on the relationship between parent and child. There's no shortage of examples today. We see them every day.

For me, at least, Ms. Carroll, it's beyond laughable. It pulls at my heart. It troubles me to see the relationship between parents and child played out on "Entertainment Tonight," "Access Hollywood," "Insider," run the list. We see this stuff being played with every day. These are people who have emotions. These are families.

Talk to me about how you have navigated being in this business and all the ground that you were breaking and, at the same time, being the mother of a child in this tumultuous period.

Carroll: Many of the situations that you see today on television are things that my daughter and I have lived through in order to keep our relationship close. Therapy? We went through that together and separately as well. Dealing with the fact that I am going to be away too much of the time, I confess, but it is something that's important.

I am very involved in your having a wonderful life. That is necessary for me to feel like a complete success as a mother as well as a performer, but I can't do that at home. We have to step out of the circle of the Johnson family and the Faulk family by moving on into the world and I cannot do that if I'm at home. I do hope one day that you will understand that and one day that you will forgive me.

Tavis: As a parent, when you look back on that period where the relationship was kind of up and down, regrets? Wish now in the rear view mirror that you would have done it differently? Made different choices then as a parent?

Carroll: Well, as a parent, I think the area that I would say is a disappointment, there were too many major decisions in my life that I made while I was away from her and I didn't have the opportunity to sit and say, "How do you feel about this? Would you really like me to marry Mr. So-and-so? He seems very fond of you." You know, whatever the conversation would have been, and I didn't do that. I was away sometimes too long to remember that that connection was absolutely imperative.

Tavis: I'm staying with the book because there's so much good stuff in the book. We're moving beyond, we're past Sidney Poitier, but I want to talk about something else you write in the book relative to men.

You hinted at this a moment ago, but given the relationships that you had with men, the marriages that you had, you talk in the book honestly - and I'm paraphrasing here - about your - my word, not yours - your deference too often in these relationships.

I'm trying to juxtapose in my own mind how this diva that I celebrate could be deferential. Those two "D" words don't match up for me. Diva-deferential; deferential-diva. I don't get it.

Carroll: I think you and I have had a discussion about the fact that I feel that most people in show business are really victims. They seek out that kind of at-a-distance relationships with hundreds of people, hundreds of thousands of people.

Tavis: People they don't know.

Carroll: People they don't know. That's the key. People they don't have to be intimate with. They don't have to share intimacy with them. I think that's a very sad situation. I'm not saying that with pride, but most of us have that problem. Therefore, many of the relationships that we choose are relationships that carry on the character of being subservient.

It's not a real role and I think that, when you're with someone and you try to play that role, eventually you're not going to be able to carry that out because you are very strong, most of us that have been around for a long time - God knows I've been around longer than most people - and you're able to do for yourself.

So there is a question that you always want the man not to deal with. What does she bring to my life? You want to try to bring everything if you possibly can. It's impossible. You cannot. You can't be everything he wants because you're not there.

Tavis: Tell me about - I don't want to color this question any more than I'm about to color it - tell me about your parents.

Carroll: I saw a very loving couple all of my childhood and they adored each other. When they decided to separate, it was a very difficult time for all of us, but in particular for my younger sister. I was aware that marriage had become very unimportant to me when I watched my mother and father as they decided to end this long wonderful time together they had when my sister really needed them to stay together. She was, I guess, a teenager.

Tavis: Do you think that has had any impact on - I don't want to psychoanalyze you or attempt to - any impact on you, your relationships, the way you process?

Carroll: I think that has an impact on all of us, yeah.

Tavis: All of us, yeah. I accept that.

Carroll: Did your parents remain together?

Tavis: My parents are divorced now. I asked that question because - I mean, I always make a joke about it to this extent. I have nine brothers and sisters. Don't ask me why, after ten kids, they end up splitting. Maybe we drove them apart. I don't know (laughter).

Carroll: Well, that may be. No room in here for me (laughter).

Tavis: It may be Tavis (laughter).

Carroll: What is your mother's name?

Tavis: Joyce. She's watching right now, as is my father. My mother watches every night. But I know the impact it had. I'm the eldest, so I know the impact it had on my three or four younger siblings, certainly the last three when they got divorced. It does have an impact.

Carroll: It does. There's no way. I mean, I was an adult almost. At least, I was the age to be an adult, but I don't know that I responded to it as an adult. I was hurt really. I didn't understand how that could possibly happen, not to my mother and father.

But as I learned, got the information little by little, as you will too, there is some very profound information as to why they could not any longer. I mean, it was also connected to my career because my mother began to travel with me almost constantly.

Tavis: You felt guilty about that?

Carroll: Yes, I did.

Tavis: You did.

Carroll: Yeah. I asked her to go home. My father was there with a teenager.

Tavis: Speaking of your career - a great segue, thank you - I want to ask you the flip side of a question that I know you've been asked about a thousand times and I've asked you about it a thousand times myself in our conversations. I've talked to you so many times, I've celebrated so many times the trailblazer that you are, the first in so many ways that you have accomplished on "Julia," being a Black diva on "Dynasty."

I mean, we could do this all night. The firsts, the places you've sung and performed. You've done so many firsts. The flip side of that question about celebrating these firsts is that there's a cost to that, I would assume. Certainly Black folk are so quick to celebrate these African American firsts, it in part explains the euphoria around this guy, Barack Obama.

I get it because I'm an African American, obviously. I get the celebration of African American firsts, but there is a price to be paid for being a first in so many ways. What's the old adage? "He who - he or she in your case - who breaks through the brush first gets the thorns." Talk to me about the thorns.

Carroll: Well, I have to really just mention that, when Halle Berry won the Academy Award and she made a to-do about Dorothy Dandridge and myself and then she made a speech and the camera panned over the audience, most of the English actors - some of the American actors as well - but most of the English actors were perplexed. "What is she talking about? I mean, please, take the award."

They had no idea what this meant, that a whole country filled with Black Americans were saying, "Oh, she got it! It's hers!", which means it's ours. So it's very difficult for people to really - I don't ask them to relate any more to what it is that I'm going through. I'm usually very quiet about it because, as you say, there are not that many people who do understand the depth of that.

Tavis: Talk to me about your music and what you do with it these days. I know you're singing. I see here and there that Diahann Carroll's going to be here, Diahann Carroll's going to be there. I'm trying to catch you somewhere myself. I missed you at Feinstein's in New York when you were there last. I wanted to see you.

Carroll: Yes. I'm sorry.

Tavis: But how's the singing?

Carroll: We're doing fine. You know, I don't do it a great deal. I told you, as Cher says, "It's my back and my high-heeled shoes." I'm fine.

Tavis: (Laughter) Not me, my back and my shoes.

Carroll: That's right, and I know exactly what she's talking about. I'm older than she. But we do it. We do quite a bit, but sparingly. It's not something I pursue that often.

Tavis: I used to work for a man who you knew well, Tom Bradley, the late great mayor of this city. That's how I started years ago in this town. The mayor, as you know, was always so handsome and regal, even in his 70s.

Carroll: Yes.

Tavis: I remember him saying to me one day in his office, he was telling me to take care of myself, to physically take care of myself. His advice to me was, "All other things being equal, I don't care who you're up against, all other things being equal, in this country, if you look better, there's always a chance you're gonna come out on top whatever the contest is."

He says we're just a vain society. All other things - now if you're a bonehead, that's another issue - but all other things being equal, if you look good, you never know what's gonna happen for you. I want to close by asking you what it has meant for all these years for you to be so conscientious about how you look when you step out.

Carroll: My mother really gave me the same message. Everything was about "We have to." That's the first thing they - you know who "they" are - that's the first thing they see, so it should be as it's supposed to be. My mother did it when we went to Father Divine under the L in New York because she could find the fabric, take the fabric to Father Divine and have a coat made for a dollar or have a suit made for a dollar.

She meant it. She meant that this is the way I had to look. I was not about to dishonor that. I've continued it whenever I had private time with my mother or my father. It took me as long to dress for that event as it did for going on stage because it was that important to them. It was a status symbol.

Tavis: Well, she's a testament to the fact that the legs are the last to go, as I'm sure you've been noticing for the last 30 minutes around here.

Carroll: I hope so, I hope so.

Tavis: It's hard to kind of keep my eyes on your face when I'm looking at them legs.

Carroll: They look all right. I'm looking. They look all right.

Tavis: No, they look great (laughter). That's the book. "The Legs Are The Last To Go: Aging, Acting, Marrying and Other Things I Learned the Hard Way" and. because she learned it so well, we are all the better for it. What a delight, as always, Diahann Carroll, to talk to you. Thanks for coming to see us.

Carroll: Thank you very much.

Tavis: My pleasure.

Carroll: I feel as though you've grown up in front of my eyes. It's such a pleasure. Thank you very much.

Tavis: The pleasure is mine. Thank you, dear.