Whoopi Goldberg promotes new memoir at 92NY
On May 6, legendary actress, comedian, and EGOT winner Whoopi Goldberg (née Caryn Johnson) appeared at 92nd Street Y to promote her new memoir, “Bits and Pieces.” Interviewed before a packed audience at the venue’s Kauffman Auditorium by award-winning playwright, television writer, producer, and novelist Adriana Trigiani, Goldberg opened up about the thing most important to her: family. Specifically, she discussed her memories of her mother Emma and brother Clyde and all they meant to her.
It’s clear that though Goldberg lost her mother and brother in 2010 and 2015, respectively, she still misses, perhaps even grieves, them. She shared that her mother kept an extremely neat home in the Chelsea-Elliott Houses where she grew up, and was an extraordinary person all around. Goldberg’s mother Emma started out as a nurse and pivoted to become one of the first teachers in the nation’s Head Start programs, which prepare children for school.
“She became one of the great teachers for Head Start for kids,” Goldberg said. “It did amazing things for children.”
She also detailed some of her mother’s struggles, including with mental illness, and how they affected her.
“I had to go through changes. My mother had a nervous breakdown. I was seven or eight and she disappeared from my life for two years.” Goldberg seemed to draw somewhat of a parallel between this experience with her mother and her own of raising her daughter as a single mom, working long days and often being away to build a career in Hollywood. “I know that most mothers would say let’s wait and it’ll come back around again, but I didn’t think that’s going to happen for me,” Goldberg revealed.
Her daughter later opened up to her about her feelings around that decision. “My kid said ‘Hey, listen. I know when you left I got more than one pair of shoes. We ate, we did things, we went places. But I missed you.’ I said ‘Well, as strange as this is going to sound, I missed you too.’ And she said, ‘Not enough to stop what you were doing.’”
The advice she received from her mother even helps Goldberg navigate the challenges posed by today’s social media-dominated media landscape. “Social media is meant to f— up your day. Make you feel like you’re not enough. My mother always said, ‘Don’t let people throw you because people want to throw you. They want to make you uncomfortable.’ These people don’t know you and you give them the power to shut you down.”
Goldberg shared that she never attended high school but always believed in herself because of the confidence instilled in her at home. “The upbringing I had gave me the conditioning that I needed to never doubt that I was thinking smartly,” she said.
As someone who once struggled with addiction, she was quick to add, however, that being “stoned” negatively impacted this otherwise steady self-assuredness.
Trigiani, whose love and respect for the comedian was evident throughout their conversation, called Goldberg her “heroine” and revealed that Goldberg got her through a rough time in her own life. Asked if she was always funny, Goldberg shared that she didn’t believe she was.
“I don’t think I was funny in high school. But my mother and my brother and my aunt were funny,” she explained. “They were funny in the house, and whatever I have I stole from my mother and my brother and her cousin.”
Whoopi added that she was entertained, as a child, by their imitations of the dialects from various people found in the environs of their Chelsea neighborhood. “They were doing ‘New York’ and they were irreverent. I wasn’t humorous, but people thought the stuff I was doing was funny so they labeled me as a comic.”
During the conversation, Goldberg displayed one of the best examples of how and why she has held steady as a sought-after celebrity, even after more than 40 years in the business. The famously picky eater did a five-minute long riff on the virtues (none) and flaws (too numerous to count) of food, setting them in the context of everything from candy stores to alien invasions.
Much of the conversation was centered around grief and the grieving process. Goldberg’s grieving process, she shared, was easier because of the relationship she had with her mother and brother while they were alive. She stated that after each died, she kept waiting for a big moment where she would be physically overwhelmed with the weight of it. “But that moment never came,” she said as if still surprised. “I didn’t understand why. And then like two weeks ago, I was like ‘Oh, I know why. It’s because you don’t have to.’ There was nothing left unsaid. They knew I knew how they felt about me. So there is none of that.”
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