What Happened, Miss Simone? Page #6
probably are happier,
but you see, I have to live with Nina,
and that is very difficult.
I think 19 people
depend on me for their livelihood.
That's a hell of a lot of people.
I know that if I say, "Well, look,
I'm too tired to work tonight,"
I'm gonna get it from both ends.
Nobody's going to understand
or care that I'm too tired.
I'm very aware of that.
Now, I would like some freedom,
somewhere...
where I didn't feel those pressures.
By the late '60s,
I realized that Nina was fighting
demons that could appear
at any moment and you wouldn't know it.
She could get violent,
she could get really physical,
and the change in her
would be dramatic...
boom, like a switch.
And I... I, after a while,
realized that I was...
I wasn't with my sister,
I was with "that one..."
and that one was... menacing.
She was very concerned,
in her sane moments,
about these fits of depression and anger.
We even went
to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital,
I think, signed her in
for four or five days.
known to... medicine at the time
and they were unable to find anything.
And her downward spiral,
it just got worse and worse.
We did a tour with Bill Cosby,
and the last night,
she became erratic.
She had a can of shoe polish.
She was putting it in her hair.
And she began talking gibberish,
and she was totally out of it, incoherent.
It appeared she was having
a nervous breakdown.
And when it came time to go on,
I had to escort her
by holding her arm onto the stage
and sat her down at the piano,
and I immediately stood in the wings
on the opposite side
where we could see one another.
She's watching me pantomime
and she performed.
Basically, she had no control
over her emotions,
and underneath it all,
sex dominated her.
There were times, once or twice a week,
when there was a sex attack
when she goes into a maniacal rage.
There had to be sex.
I mean, this is driving her.
was that we should have it all the time.
How did Andy act towards you?
I just wanted him to move me
sexually, and he never was able to.
Right.
He didn't know how to touch me
He'd come to see me late at night
and be there two hours and leave.
I knew that she was
dating other people.
have our own outside partners...
but we would work together for the sake
of the business and the child.
I can't sit here and speak about
Aunt Nina and Uncle Andy's marriage.
What I can say is that
participation and activism
during the '60s...
rendered chaos in any individual's lives.
People sacrificed sanity,
well-being, life.
Nina Simone was a free spirit
in an era that didn't really
appreciate a woman's genius.
So what does that do
to a household and a family?
Not because of income,
but because of your soul
not being able to do what you need to do.
Direct from our newsroom in Washington,
this is the
CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.
Good evening.
the apostle of non-violence
has been shot to death
in Memphis, Tennessee.
Jesus!
Jesus.
There was shock
in the nation's negro communities.
Men, women and children
poured into the streets.
They appeared dazed.
Many were crying.
made its biggest mistake
when she killed Dr. King last night.
He was the one man in our race
who was trying to teach our people
to have love, compassion, and mercy
for what white people had done.
When White America
killed Dr. King last night,
she killed all reasonable hope.
We want to do a tune written...
for today...
for this hour
We had yesterday to learn it, and...
so we'll see.
Last year, Lorraine Hansberry
left us, and she was a dear friend,
and then Langston Hughes left us.
Who can go on?
Do you realize
how many we have lost?
Then it really gets down
to reality, doesn't it?
Not a performance.
Not microphones and all that crap,
We can't afford any more losses.
Oh, no. Oh, my God.
They're shooting us down, one by one.
Don't forget that...
'cause they are...
killing us one by one.
I knew that we were lost.
I felt chased all the time,
no matter what I did or how sad I got.
I felt that there was just
no life for me in the country.
I knew I had to quit
or I had to leave Andy
or do something.
So I took my ring off,
put it on the table...
and I left the country.
According to my godsister
Attallah Shabazz...
I was staying with them,
and Mom had gone away,
I would go running, saying,
"Is that my mommy on the phone?"
And then I remember going back
and Dad just wasn't there.
He wasn't there.
And nobody told me anything, you know?
And, um, so...
One day you're at home
and the staff is there
and your dad's there
and the dog's there
and everything that's familiar
to you is there,
and then you come back,
I don't know, weeks later
and... nothing's there,
nobody's there.
I decided that I wanted
to go to Africa to live
and never come back to America.
I got a divorce from Andy
and I went to Liberia...
When I got to Africa,
I am happy, I'm beyond happy.
Liberia is a place that was founded
by the American slaves,
and it only makes sense
that I should feel at home there.
I wore... Bikinis and boots is all I wore.
Yeah.
Well, there was no loneliness.
There was no boredom.
The days flew into nights,
and you just couldn't
keep up with the times
'cause there was so much to do.
It was always fun.
I also am keenly aware
that I've entered a world
that I dreamed of all my life
and that it is a perfect world.
And I remember thinking
of the United States
as something that
I had had in a dream
sometime in my life,
but is now gone,
like it never existed!
It was a dream that I had had
and I had worked myself out of it
'cause I had toiled so long
in that place, in that prison...
and now I'm home, now I'm free,
There, it was vast and open,
and everything was natural.
Everything!
I have seen lightning in Africa
not flash, but hover,
and what it does is it electrifies you
into complete speechlessness.
I have seen it!
I have seen God.
Mom moved me to Liberia,
but she was always traveling,
and I never knew half the time
if I wasn't going,
that she was leaving
or when she was coming back.
So I lived with a family for a year
and I went to school there,
and I lived with them
until Mom came and decided
to buy a house on the beach,
and I went from living with them
to living with her,
and she just...
I could never do anything right.
She went from being my comfort
to the monster in my life.
Now she was the person
that was doing the beating,
and she was beating me.
One time, we were in public somewhere,
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"What Happened, Miss Simone?" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 24 Nov. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/what_happened,_miss_simone_23272>.
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