|
Interview with Dana Roc Snoop Pearson got her degree from the school of hard knocks and the lessons that she has learned are paying off. She is young and although she has lived a thousand lifetimes, she is just starting out with her whole life to look forward to. Her manager Ally Roberson,writes this about Snoop: On May 18th 1980 a premature baby girl, Snoop Pearson, was born fighting to survive. Hours old and about 3lbs, doctors didn't expect her to live, Moms and Pops were locked up, so she was on her own. Days went by and she was holding on so Snoop, was made a ward of the court and was placed with a Foster Grandmother on the Eastside of Baltimore. She was so small she was fed with an eyedropper until she grew stronger. There is no pretty story here, just the gritty truth of growing up in the system on the Baltimore streets but...Snoop is a survivor. While other 12 year olds were in school Snoop was learning the drug game. While other 14 year olds were starting high school, Snoop was standing before the judge being sentenced to an 8-year bid. She finished school while behind bars and earned an education the hard way. Snoop was released 6 years later in 2000. Her pretty face showing no sign of the struggle life had been for her so far. She's not trying to be pretty, she just is and she'll pull your girl if you're not careful. I witnessed this myself when the waitress blushed and gave her special treatment as we ate dinner one night in a Brooklyn restaurant. Snoop's story is proof that we can overcome the odds. Snoop was offered a role on HBO's hottest series "The Wire". DR: Talk to be about your life, so far. SP: I come from, how can I put this? I am adopted. I just found out where my parents are at. They are deceased now. I am twenty five years old. I went to jail or prison when I was 14 1/2. I came home when I was twenty. I came home and tried to get a couple of jobs. I was never trying to hide any of my criminal background... The Wire I met Michael K. Williams from The Wire. He told me to come on set one day. I came on set. He introduced me to the writers and the producers and I've been on {the show} ever since. DR: How long ago was that? SP: Ah, two and a half years ago. I mean, I have just been on very since. DR: So, tell me about your work. SP: My work? DR: Yeah. SP: I play a female gangster. I just play a female gangster. If "my boss" says go ahead do this do that...I really can't tell you too much, you know what I mean because it hasn't aired yet. I just play a gangster. DR: Well then tell me what you love most about your life right now. SP: I am traveling a lot and doing different things. I'm meeting a lot of different people; stars! I mean who doesn't want to meet stars! One day I hope somebody feels the same way about me, like "Who doesn't want to meet Snoop?" Whatever. It's like, if I am gone today or tomorrow, I've made my mark. DR: And what is something that you don't like about your life right now. SP: Fake friends. That's the only thing I hate, fake friends. DR: Tell me about that. SP: I mean I can always get money and now it's legit. Nobody can do anything or say anything to break this up, you know what I mean? No matter what I say or what I do, they can't break it up...Friends are just unfolding right now. I'll just leave it at that. DR: How important do you think friends are? SP: I am adopted. I don't have too much family so I hold friendship to the heart. So if I "mess with you", it's me and you 'til the end! Nothing is going to break that up. That's how I treat friends and family because I don't have a lot. DR: What has been the biggest lesson that you have learned so far? SP: I don't know. Do you want positive or negative? DR: Whichever one you want to talk about. SP: Well I'll talk about the positive. The lesson that I am learning right now is that there is more than one way to get money. I mean The Wire; they have given me a chance. I never knew that I could act - you feel me?! I mean, I'm a natural! I mean, I'm going to school for acting. I mean, I'm going to school now. DR: What about the lessons you have learned on the negative side? SP: I don't want to speak on that. I don't want to speak on that. DR: O.K. So then tell me what advice you would give to young people who are trying to overcome their circumstances. SP: I mean, just stay focused! Whatever goals you have or whatever you want to accomplish - just stay focused. Keep it movin'. Don't let nothin' stand in your way! There ain't nothing out here that...there's a lot of negative... Like, kids are hard headed right now. I know I used to be and I still am. "A hard head makes a soft behind". I mean, go that-a-way and find out if you've got a soft behind or, just focus and just keep it movin'. There is nothin' to it but to - DO IT! DR: Do you have any heroes? SP: My Uncle. DR: Tell me about him. SP: His name is Arnold and he wasn't really my adopted uncle. He was part of the street. He took me under his wing. He told me not to do this or not to do that but like I said, I've got a hard head and I do what I want to do. He is dead and gone now. He was the only one that told me "No! No! Put that down! Don't do that! Don't do this!" I mean, that's my hero. DR: Do you think that you are a hero for someone right now? SP: (Laughs) I hope I am. You know what I mean? I hope I am. I hope I am. DR: Whose hero do you think you might be? SP: Some kid in a foster home. People in my Gay community out there...I don't know. I don't know. DR: I am sure there are a lot more people than you realize. SP: (Laughs) There probably are. I don't know. I would like to know, though. I'd help them. DR: How would you help them? SP: Whatever their goal is, if I could help them accomplish their goal then I would just try to help. DR: Speaking of goals, what do you want to do with your career after The Wire? SP: Me and {my manager} we've been working on getting more roles. Nobody really knows me yet. I mean, they know me but, they haven't seen my work yet. I just want to continue my acting career. I've got both of my feet in the door and I want to see what its like to be a star. (Laughs) DR: You said that you were taking acting classes - how important do you think it is to study and keep learning. SP: It's very important! I mean, for example, I couldn't cry just like that. I couldn't do a lot of things and yeah, acting class helped me learn how to remember things and other things. (A fan interrupts Snoop to ask for an autograph) SP: My head hurts right now. I have been up since six o'clock this morning but just keep asking me questions. DR: O.K. Do you believe in miracles? SP: Yes ma'am! My life is a miracle and a blessing right now. Yes ma'am. It's in God's plan that I met Michael and that things are going the way that they are. I mean, I come from nothin'! I didn't have no mother, no father, no nothin'!It's hard. It's hard. It's hard. It's hard. It's just God. It's just God's blessing. It's just God. Let's just put it like that. It ain't even a miracle. It's just God because if He wouldn't have did this, nobody would know me and nobody would ever hear my story. DR: What do you think has been your biggest contribution to the world so far? SP: Just showing them my work. I don't know. DR: Well just think about it. I really think that you are selling yourself short in this conversation. Think about it. To do what you do - there are people all over that would love to be doing what you are doing and it's hard under normal circumstances. But you have had to overcome a lot to do what you do. SP: Yeah and you ask me about miracles but miracles don't come to the ghetto. I come from the heart of the ghetto. You feel me? There are no miracles there. We work off of the Lord God. You feel me? God makes the miracles. You've got to give credit where credit is due. God makes the miracles happen, right or wrong? DR: Right. SP: I am not saying that this isn't a miracle but I am giving it straight to you and I am going straight to the Power. Like God! You know what I am saying? If it wasn't for Him, I wouldn't be here! DR: Right. SP: Exactly. DR: But you could be somewhere Snoop... SP: No! No! With the life I was livin', I wouldn't be here... DR: But what I am saying is that you could be feeling sorry for yourself... SP: No. No. I ain't feelin' sorry for myself. Even when I was doing what I was doing I never felt sorry for myself. DR: Most people would. SP: No! Why would I!? Feeling sorry for myself - for what?! Why feel sorry for yourself? DR: You talk about God. Is that where all your strength comes form? SP: Yes ma'am. That's all I had! Listen to my words! I never had a mother. I never had a father. The family I was with, I mean they showed me love but it wasn't like love, like your family. You feel what I'm saying? Like love you feel from your mother and father. Like your mother and father come home everyday and hug you and kiss you. Yeah. That's all I had was God. He would keep me movin'. That's one thing that my adopted parents told me was to always pray. Yeah. Just pray for what you want and that's where your miracles from. DR: Tell me, a hundred years from now what do you want to be remembered for? SP: I want to be remembered for coming out of the ghetto, coming from nothing and making something - and passing it on. That's all it's about. Source: DanaRoc.com |
|
An Actress�s Hard Life Feeds �Wire� Character With her braids, oversize clothes and baseball cap turned to the side, the small, youthful Snoop looks like a teenage boy. With her partner, Chris Partlow, she is the muscle for the drug kingpin Marlo Stanfield. She is a cool, calm female killer who creatively makes enemies disappear with the use of a nail-gun, hiding the bodies in Baltimore�s vacant and condemned row houses on HBO�s much-praised series �The Wire.� The actress Felicia Pearson, who plays Snoop, has emerged as one of the show�s most compelling characters; Stephen King, in Entertainment Weekly, called her �perhaps the most terrifying female villain to ever appear in a television series.� In a show that is known for authentic characters, the 26-year-old Ms. Pearson has lived the kind of hard life embodied by her character. She was born to two drug-addicted and incarcerated parents and reared in an East Baltimore foster home. �I was a crack baby,� Ms. Pearson said by telephone from Baltimore. �I was, like, three pounds, and I had to get fed with an eyedropper.� She started selling drugs at 10 and at 14 was locked up for more than seven years after shooting a woman. �I grew up not giving a damn about anything, because why give a damn if you are in a foster home and your parents didn�t care anything about you?� Ms. Pearson said. She added that she had so many drugs in her system when she was born that she was cross-eyed as a child. �Kids would tease me, saying that I�m cross-eyed and don�t have a real mother, and all those kids who said those mean things, I beat the hell out of them,� she said. She said her life turned around at 18, when a man she called Uncle Loney, a local drug dealer who looked out for her and sent her money in prison, was shot and killed. It was he who had given her the nickname Snoop because she reminded him of Charlie Brown�s favorite beagle in the comic strip �Peanuts.� �He was my best friend,� said Ms. Pearson, who was an inmate at a women�s penitentiary in Jessup, Md., when Uncle Loney was killed. �When he got shot, I had a reality check and said to myself, �Man, you got to get yourself together and get yourself out of here, because nobody�s going to keep taking care of you.� � After earning her G.E.D. in prison, Ms. Pearson was released in 2000. She landed a local job making car bumpers, she said, but was fired two weeks later after her employer learned she had a prison record. Then, two and a half years ago, while employed at a car wash, she got her big break. At a local nightclub she met Michael K. Williams, who plays Omar, a gay gangster who robs drug dealers for kicks, on �The Wire.� Mr. Williams said he saw that Ms. Pearson had charisma, and he was fascinated with her hard-knock story and thought she would be perfect for the show. After a meeting with �Wire� producers, Ms. Pearson was hired to play the nail-gun-toting Snoop, despite having had no acting experience. �She just blew me away,� Mr. Williams said. �There was just this beauty in her. When I looked in her eyes, I saw all this pain, but she still smiled and lit up the room.� Ed Burns, a �Wire� producer and former Baltimore police officer, said: �She�s just a natural-born actor. She came from a very, very tough background, but it didn�t scar her. So she can interpret that background in her character.� Ms. Pearson said her first day on the set was strange. �Everybody was staring at me, I thought that I was doing something wrong,� she said, adding that she was told not to look into the camera, and to just act natural. �I was like, �You want me to act like I was on the corner?� They were like, �Exactly, just be yourself,� and that�s what I did.� Mr. Williams loved what he saw. �If you meet her and you talk to her, she is unmistakably Baltimore.� he said. �And the city of Baltimore is the lead star of �The Wire.� � There�s nothing more Baltimore than Snoop�s accent, which at times is so hard to decipher that a fan on the Internet Movie Database said she watched her scenes with closed captioning so she could read her words. �It�s basically a Baltimore thing,� Ms. Pearson said. �I say everything that�s in the script, but I put a little twist on it, like the way we would say it in Baltimore.� Ms. Pearson is now taking acting classes at the Baltimore School for the Arts. �I�m just getting prepared for whatever comes my way, because I know people are saying that this is luck,� she said. �But luck ain�t never come my way, so I�m preparing myself for everything.� And she said that she has put her troubles behind her. �I did what I did when I was younger, but I am a changed person,� Ms. Pearson said. �My character Snoop on the show is a coldhearted person, but I�m not coldhearted any more.� Ms. Pearson said she hoped to be an inspiration for others. �I still can�t believe it, because I come from the gutter,� she said. �I hope and pray that someone reads my story, or hears me talk about my story and will be, like, �She did it, I will see what my chances are.� � Source: New York Times |