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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. Thanks for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on demand, I am grateful you are here. Let's continue with our show dedicated to some of our favorite creative icons we've spoken with over the last year. Later we'll hear from the great short story writer George Saunders about his new collection and Chilean author Isabel Allende about her new novel. First, let's get to costume designer Ruth Carter of Black Panther fame.

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Alison Stewart: Ask anyone in the film industry about Ruth Carter, and chances are they'd respond with iconic. Ruth Carter is responsible for the looks of some of Hollywood's favorite characters. Carter is the first black woman to win two Oscars, both for her role as costume designer for the two Black Panther movies. She's worked with directors like Spike Lee for Do the Right Thing, as well as Steven Spielberg, and also waded into television with the hit series Yellowstone.

Her career, creative process, and more is detailed in her new book, The Art of Ruth E. Carter: Costuming Black History and the Afrofuture, from Do the Right Thing to Black Panther. We were lucky to have Carter in studio around the book's release. I started by asking Ruth Carter about what's the first thing she wants to know about a character before she begins the process of designing the look.

Ruth Carter: I need to know what world they live in, whether it's a period piece, I need to know about their neighborhood, about the inside of their home, about the socioeconomics of the times, what were people going through. I need to actually understand the world around them and then move into more details about the costume.

Alison Stewart: That brings me to the next question. I keep thinking about this when I see your work. You have to make the unbelievable believable or make something believable in the unbelievable. We have to believe that these security guards, the Dora Milaje exist and this is what they would look like or the men in [unintelligible 00:02:26] would rock skirts.

Ruth Carter: The costume can't wear them. They have to wear the costume and it has to feel like it's a part of them. It's a part of their world. It's a part of their being. It's a fine line.

Alison Stewart: You've said some of your major influences are writers, Baldwin, Nick DiGiovanni. What did you learn about storytelling from some of your favorite writers that you use every day?

Ruth Carter: I started to hear about history for the first time, Black history for the first time, reciting poetry like Crystal Stare and Mother to Son. I think it's James Baldwin's Mother to Son. Even the music that I grew up around, Curtis Mayfield and The Temptations, all of those artists were storytellers and I could see who they were talking about. I could see the images in my mind and so that just opened me up to wanting to understand more about myself and about the history of African Americans in this country first.

Also, when I started working at 40 Acres and a Mule, I was determined to be as authentic as possible because that's what we wanted. We wanted to see images that we weren't seeing on screen. We wanted to create those images. I think that answered your question.

Alison Stewart: Sure did. My guest is Ruth E. Carter. The name of the book is The Art of Ruth E. Carter: Costuming Black History and the Afrofuture, from Do the Right Thing to Black Panther. You majored in theater arts-

Ruth Carter: I did.

Alison Stewart: - at HBCU Hampton.

Ruth Carter: I sure did. I started in special education though. I wanted to be an educator like some of my aunts were and also do theater for the deaf. That drew me into the theater department to audition and it really brought me in and I changed my major to theater arts.

Alison Stewart: How did your work as someone who was an actor, acted at some point in your life, how has that impacted your costume design?

Ruth Carter: I feel like I understand the actor a little bit better because I know what kind of journey that they go on, emotional journey, there's a mental journey. They need to feel supported by the costume. I always ask questions when they come into the fitting room about how they're planning to play the character. I'll ask them what kind of background work they've done. I share with them the character arc that I've created and together we come up with all of the details.

Alison Stewart: It sounds really collaborative.

Ruth Carter: It is. It's a very collaborative medium of filmmaking. Very collaborative. I understand the world through the production designer, I understand how it's lit in the mood of the environment from the director of photography, I understand the story from the writer and the director's way he's going to guide the art, way he's going to guide us in making what type of film that we're going to make together.

Alison Stewart: What does a film need to have for you to say yes at this point?

Ruth Carter: Oh, I have to be challenged. I like to be challenged. I also like to be shown things I haven't done before. I love doing the research. If I get to research something more in-depth or come up with something I've never seen before, I'm excited.

Alison Stewart: I want to start with Do the Right Thing since you're in New York. New York Public Radio. How did spending time in Brooklyn make its way into the costumes in Do the Right Thing? What's an example?

Ruth Carter: Oh, wow. Well, it was during a time when, and we were making independent film, Do The Right Thing was done. It was a protest film. It was during a time where Tawana Brawley and there was the Bensonhurst issues and Mike Tyson and all of that was happening. Spike wrote this protest film. There's a part of it that feels very surreal, the saturated color, the vibrancy of Do the Right Thing. When you look past the block where we were shooting and looking into Bed-Stuy, you did see a vibrant community.

We may have been a little more vibrant because we got a lot of product placement from Nike and there was a lot of sports team colors and saturated colors so we balanced it out with Ankara fabrics, but it felt alive. That's what I think we took from our environments in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, that the neighborhoods were alive. You saw the melting pot. You could go get some Jamaican food at the corner and you could go to the Korean grocer. That's what Do the Right Thing was all about, this melting pot that was Brooklyn.

Alison Stewart: I think you mentioned the book having something specifically made for one of the characters. I think that was interesting.

Ruth Carter: Well, the artist of The Neighborhood were part of the costuming process. The t-shirt that Radio Raheem wears, Bed-Stuy, Do or Die, was painted by Nasha who had a shop in Brooklyn. I loved all of her graphic colorful painted t-shirts and so I asked her to do that t-shirt for us, and she did. We both spelled Bed-Stuy wrong. We spelled it S-T-Y instead of S-T-U-Y. Telling Spike, I was pretty shaken up. He just instructed me to go see Barry Brown who was editing in the editing bay and see how much of the shirt we saw on camera so we could correct it.

There were a few times like that, that happened early on, early on, but things happen.

Alison Stewart: Lesson learned.

Ruth Carter: That's just part of filmmaking. Things happen all the time.

Alison Stewart: In the book, you write about John getting a note from Spike. I think it's from Spike. He says John Turturro has some ideas about his costume.

Ruth Carter: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Well, every time we returned to New York to work with Spike, he would take us, either myself or Robbie Reed, who was the casting director, and we'd sit across the table at a lunch place and he'd spit out all of these people who we wanted to have, actors he wanted to have in the films, and their phone numbers. He'd give me their phone numbers and he'd say, "Call John Turturro. He has some ideas. Talk to him about some of his ideas. You don't have to do whatever he says, but just see what he wants."

John had the idea of wearing all black when he showed up for work at Sal's Pizzeria as if he really had an outside agenda. He really didn't want to be there. That really did play out in how he played his character. When they come with ideas like that that are so dead right in smack in the middle of what their intent is, you have to go with it. It's not a dictatorship. It really is a collaboration.

Alison Stewart: You received an Oscar nomination for Malcolm X, and in the book, there's a photo of you in Egypt on location. When was the time, it doesn't have to be with Malcolm X, but a time in your career when the location really dictated something about the costuming, maybe you had to either pivot or you planned for, even.

Ruth Carter: We were very prepared for that shoot. You can imagine, here I am, 30 years old, standing in the middle of the desert at the pyramids on 40 Acres, and a Mule, Spike Lee join, I felt then that I was right where I needed to be. I was in the right place at the right time. Costume-wise, I did rely on the local team that I assembled there in Egypt to help guide what was the proper wardrobe for a Ḥajj. They assembled all of the Ihrams that they wore, the traditional garb that is actually worn when the pilgrimage members are flying in, sometimes they put the Ihram on so that everyone is dressed the same.

That's part of what Malcolm X discovered on his Hajj, that there were Muslims of all types and all colors. He came back to the US a changed man. That's where I made the change in his look. While he was experiencing those times, while Denzel Washington was experiencing those times, I made slight changes to the color of his tie. I soften things up. When he comes back, you see he has more facial hair, he's wearing more of a sport coat than a full suit. Those were some of the transitions that were made when we traveled through his life.

Alison Stewart: You do a lot of comedy as well, which I love, some of the sketches of B.A.P.S.

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Alison Stewart: Then there's Meteor Man, starring Robert Townsend.

Ruth Carter: Yes.

Alison Stewart: When you are working on a costume and you know you're working on humor and the idea is to evoke levity, how do you know when to pull back?

Ruth Carter: Yes, it's hard. Comedy is harder than drama because I think that the writers do work on the joke all the way up to the second that it's performed. That might mean that the costume is no longer working for them, and so you'll have to pivot. You do rely on not only the writing but also the performer. With Eddie Murphy, he usually says, "I don't want to wear the joke. I just want the costume to be the proper clothing for the character, and I'll tell the joke."

Alison Stewart: So interesting. The name of the book is The Art of Ruth E. Carter: Costuming Black History and the Afrofuture, from Do the Right Thing to Black Panther. The opening of Wakanda Forever, the funeral scenes really-- I'm so curious about your conversation with Ryan Coogler because it almost feels like you had to really think about us the audience, too-

Ruth Carter: Yes.

Alison Stewart: -because we were really shook up having to go through it with the passing of Chadwick Boseman.

Ruth Carter: Yes. Once we got our script and we knew we were doing this celebration, we understood it from the historians that were brought on the project. They told us about different African societies that have usually two celebrations, a small intimate funeral, and then a big, elaborate one. Ryan wanted everyone to wear white. That's what the historians told us. It was two colors that are commonly used, red or white. Ryan wanted it to be a pure white, the same white, a unification of Africa, by showing all the tribes.

There was a lot of thought and a lot of work that went into assembling all of those different tribes to have that unification, but also be in white. You think of African fabrics and cloth, just colorful, the Ndebele prints and things, and now I am doing this all in white. I printed a lot of fabric and gathered a lot of fur pieces for the Zulu, and the Turkana wore the turbans. It was just an amazing process. Once everyone was dressed and assembled for the procession, it was very emotional.

Alison Stewart: I see. What were you feeling?

Ruth Carter: I was jubilant because it felt like everyone had come from all over Africa to honor the king of Wakanda. It was so beautiful. At the same time, I felt that this is something that Chadwick would have wanted us to continue doing, but he wasn't there. That was like our love letter to him.

Alison Stewart: He wasn't physically there.

Ruth Carter: Yes, he was emotionally there. Yes, spiritually there.

Alison Stewart: That was Oscar-winning costume designer, Ruth Carter, talking about some of her most iconic onscreen looks. Her book is called The Art of Ruth E. Carter: Costuming Black History and the Afrofuture, from Do the Right Thing to Black Panther.

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Alison Stewart Next, we hear from short story writer, George Saunders, whose new collection is his first in more than a decade. This is All Of It.

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