Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome back to The Take Away. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Composed by the late great Stephen Sondheim who passed away last year, Into the Woods, last ran on Broadway in 2002. Twenty years later, it's been thrilling audiences again. Thanks in part to Tony Award-winning actress, Patina Miller, who's brought the iconic role of the witch right back to life.

Now, the witch with the vengeful spells she casts on neighbors and her overprotectiveness towards her daughter, Rapunzel, is commonly considered a villain, but she also has nuance. Eight years away from Broadway, and there was a pandemic in the midst of all of that. Can you talk to me about how things have changed since the last time that you were on Broadway?

Patina Miller: Yes, last time I was on Broadway was 2014. After that, I got married, I had a child, I started my TV career, my TV and film career. After I moved away from Broadway, I had the fortune of going straight into a TV series, Madam Secretary. Then I got my next show, Raising Kanan on Starz, and then the world went to coup. Everything closed down in 2020, and life as we knew it became something different.

In that time, I just did a lot of self-reflection, I sang a lot, I got to spend so much time with my daughter watching her grow, spending time with my husband, and really figuring out what's worth it, and what life is all about. Really trying to get that, and spending time with my family even though it was a pandemic, it was great for us, but I was so happy to go back to work, let me tell you, and do my love of theater and performing.

Melissa Harris-Perry: When you say that you were singing a lot, are you the type to just walk around the house singing, singing, while making breakfast in the morning, singing in the shower, or were you taking time and singing, singing?

Patina Miller: I took some time to sing sing for a bit, being in isolation like that it calls on you to come up with ways to entertain yourself. I found little ways. I downloaded a little app called Voici, and I would make little music. I would make some music during the pandemic, and then I sang with my daughter, who was a fan of, I played The Witch and Into The Woods in 2019, right before the pandemic.

She was such a fan of the music of that show. I did a lot of Sondheim during that time. Music really saved me during that period of time, and movement, and fitness, and all those things. I had COVID during that. It was right at the beginning, and I had read somewhere that working on your lungs is a good thing, and so I just started singing everything I knew every day. It really became like a lifeline singing the way that I did. It healed me along with fitness, my daughter and my husband and things, but it was definitely a part of my recovery.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You had COVID before there was--

Patina Miller: I had the OG COVID, yes. When no one knew what it was, when everything was just crazy, and everyone was scared. It was a dark time. I won't lie. It was very dark, but I just kept pulling from the things that have always brought joy to me, and I focused on that. I'm really, really glad I did because it really kept me from going down a dark path.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I love knowing that you were both therapeutically, but also as a matter of spirit walking around and singing all the time. I cannot carry so much as a tune in a bucket at all and yet I sing always often to the great consternation of my beloved family who lives with me. I've often said I wouldn't be a nice person if I could actually sing. If I was a talented singer, because it's a talent that I find so extraordinary that I feel like I would just like, you were a little resistant to call yourself Tony Award-winning, I would walk around with a little sign. Did you know that I won a Tony?

Patina Miller: Yes, I'm a little crazy with that. I do need to get over that, pull my shoulders back and just be proud of that because it takes a lot of work and I'm really proud of that moniker as you will. It took a lot to get it and yes, I'm really proud of it, so you're right. I should.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yes, they don't just give those out. Those are-

Patina Miller: They do not.

Melissa Harris-Perry: -earned. Talk to me about The Witch. It's an iconic role, but I don't know, there may be someone out there in the world that doesn't know about Into The Woods. Tell me about how you see The Witch, is she a villain?

Patina Miller: It's very easy to label The Witch the villain, which is so odd to me, because before I really, really sunk my teeth into what the material was and really did a deep dive into who The Witch was, yes, it's very easy, obviously. It's The Witch. The archetype of the witch, obviously, the Witch and everything that we know in fairy tales or whatnot, is always bad, but Sondheim has this beautiful way of just going so deep. There's so many metaphors.

I in 2017 I had a child, and then 2019 I was able to take on the role of The Witch. Of course, all of the beautiful women who had came before me had done it. I am just such a fan of their talent, Bernadette Peters, I grew up listening to her on The Sondheim, and Vanessa Williams, after her, and all the women who have carried the torch of being able to play The Witch. There was these iconic performances.

For me, I wanted to go deep, and really investigate the villain thing of it all. Really, what I found was that The Witch is I feel not the villain. I think she's a mother, who was on a time clock. Her daughter, who she's trying to keep safe, who she's trying to keep with her, things are fast. Things are happening, and her daughter's growing up, and the world is a terrible place.

The Witch knows this, and she's just a mother who's trying to fight for her place, fight for her daughter, and fight for that relationship. I think she's just wounded. I think she has a lot of issues, trauma from growing up. Mother who curses her because of what someone else's does, and so that tends to pass itself down, and so the witch acts out in certain ways, but we all do. It's human nature, she is not good or bad. She is just like anyone else trying to figure out their journey. She's honest, she's the only person who is telling the truth in the piece.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Even as you give this really beautiful reading around that, and yet you point to the fact that so often, not only in our fairy tales, and our fables and our narratives, but in our world, women who are in those roles of woman trying to work through trauma, all of that is often labeled as The Witch, as the bad guy, as the villain.

Patina Miller: Yes. For me, it's nice to investigate what makes a person that way, and what makes people see a person in that way. I think it's so much more interesting to not play the villain. Nobody believes they're a villain. We're all fighting for something. In our normal lives, we act off of emotion, but what's behind all of that, and we all carry trauma in some sort of way. All characters in Into The Woods are carrying a lot of different things.

Little Red, she never mentions her father. There's a lot of things that Baker, he's dealing with his father. There's Jack, Jack doesn't have a father, so there's all this different trauma that I've been trying to figure out these characters, and what make people fall in love with them is the human part. The humanity, and we can all see ourselves in some way reflected in these characters. Whether you think The Witch is the villain or not you can identify with that desire, and that want to protect your child more than anything in the world. In doing so, it can look different to people because they don't understand.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Speaking of your children, of your daughter in this case, is it true that she requested the Last Midnight in the Witch's Rap as lullaby?

Patina Miller: Absolutely, absolutely. Every night. I have a new video on my phone as of last week of her performing The Witch's Rap in the kitchen. She knows all the words now.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I Love it.

Patina Miller: She says he was robbing me, raking, raking, R-A-K-I-N-G, I'm like, "I'm okay with that." Robbing me, raking me, we'll go with it. We'll go with it, and she is just so proud of me. She loves to tell everyone she knows that her mommy is in Into The Woods. It's so great that she saw it in 2019, and it sparked an interest, and she has continued to sing that material. That just let's you know how deep this musical is for people and how it is able to touch people and it's so iconic and memorable to so many.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You said that your favorite lyric from the show is this lyric about being careful about what you say because children will listen.

Patina Miller: It's such an interesting lyric and it's just being mindful. As adults, raising children we have the joy, the great responsibility of nurturing and fostering what this little human will grow into. We have to be cautious of the things that we say because even the slightest hint of something could alter a child's life, telling them certain things and so we have to always be mindful of the things that we say because the kids are always listening even what we think they're not.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I have to remind myself sometimes after a very long day-

Patina Miller: Same.

Melissa Harris-Perry: -that I've got to greet my eight-year-old with an enthusiastic smile. I want her to see my face always light up when she walks in the room, even if that's not how I'm feeling, is not about her, has left me feeling that way but I want her to think she has that power every time.

Patina Miller: Yes, every time. It's knowing that it's okay to be sad, it is okay. mommy is sad right now, but I'm not going to sit and look in the mirror and beat myself up because I have a daughter. All of those things, all the traumas that I maybe have had, I am making a conscious effort to not pass that along to her because it's not fair and I want her to be able to make her own choices, not because of something that she saw mommy do. I want to positive reinforce but also be real with her, but give her space, if that makes any sense.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Look, if parenting was easy, they would just be handingout mama Tony's too. [laughs] It is not. Can you tell me what's next for you? What's on the agenda for all this talent? Where is it going?

Patina Miller: Well, right now my talent is being split up between another due piece that is just I love so much Raising Kanan where I play another mother trying to protect her child. We are in our second season that's airing right now on Starz. I have the great pleasure of throwing myself into another role where I get to create a character who could be looked at as the villain and try to break that in and try to find the vulnerability in that and to really just portray who she really is. It's great to be doing both. Both are strong women, Raquel Thomas, she's the matriarch of her family business. If she doesn't work, nobody eats.

She's also raising a 15-year-old son by herself. It is a high-stakes criminal world that they are involved in and this woman is just trying to make her way in a male-run business, male-run thing as a female, and also take care of her family. My life is very full with that character who I think is so human who whether you can identify with what she does because it is what it is, but she is a woman who is making her way and taking names and is unafraid in this world and also being what she needs to be at home. I just love it so much and I'm doing Broadway. I'm doing Into The Woods right now. It's great to have both of these outlets to just continue to be creative and create really good work.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Patina Miller is an actress, a singer, a Tony-Award winner, and one heck of a parent. You can see her perform as The Witch in the Broadway play, Into The Woods.

Patina Miller: Thank you very much.

Melissa Harris-Perry: The new Broadway cast recording featuring Patina Miller is out now.

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