This Thursday, April 30 marks the 24th year Dining Out For Life will raise money to benefit AIDS service organizations. Legendary actress Pam Grier is lending her name to the national event (which now takes place in over 60 cities) for the fifth year in a row, which she told us has a lot to do with her being a cancer survivor.
“Knowing what happened when I was ill,” Pam said, “knowing that people were afraid of ‘the C word’ in 1988. I thought I had more friends and it’s very difficult for family to take time off to help you in your recover and I realized that no matter how much money you have, sometimes it’s the dear closest people to you that can’t be there. So when you don’t have the funds and you don’t have family, how do people who are living with HIV/AIDS make it, survive, get well?”
Pam is proud to be a part of the fundraiser, which just last year helped more than 5000 people get health insurance and almost 200,000 receive counseling and testing. She’s adamant that people know these numbers include women. “Straight, bisexual, gay-all across the board,” she said. “You don’t know when. If someone’s mentally ill or just doesn’t care or you’re raped-you don’t know. You should be aware and there’s a generosity of intelligence and people wanting to know, wanting to learn.”
Pam has been a kind of activist since she got her start in Hollywood in the 1970s. Her first film roles were in women-in-prison films like The Big Bird Cage and The Big Doll House and she’s thrilled that shows like Orange is the New Black are continuing the kinds of stories she was a part of more than 40 years ago.
“I think it’s excellent, because when you have people who are incarcerated, who know they’ll be giving up freedom, they’re people who think, ‘No matter what, I’m getting through this. Maybe I’m remorseful,'” Pam said. “But it shows what happens when you lose freedom, how you survive and how you keep your identity and how you live, how do you make it? Do you reinvent yourself, do you fall victim of your acts? do You fall victim of others? So psychologically and societally, it’s really an exploration of humanity and I think when you watch it and you see the storylines, you’re not as quick to judge.”
Throughout her film and television career, Pam has played iconic characters from Coffy to Jackie Brown, but one of our favorites is, of course, her six-season role as Kit Porter on Showtime’s The L Word. Pam said she keeps in touch with almost all of her co-stars.
“I stay in touch with Jennifer [Beals],” Pam said. “She’s like a real sister to me. And Leisha Hailey. Leisha’s always on tour. Mia [Kirshner]-we all support each other’s charities and art and Laurel Holloman is doing great things as an artist. So we do try to stay in touch when we can.”
Pam says she is disappointed the show was cancelled after only six seasons.
“We miss the show. We could have gone a couple more years,” she said. “There were significant storylines that could have been done. They can be done other places but I thought it would have been another year of breaking out and exploring even more so I think it was so groundbreaking and I’m so glad so many people watched it because right now there’s dialogue on the table, there’s legislation and people that are exploring freedoms and demanding freedom for the LGBT community. It’s wonderful to see this dialogue that’s going on, it’s serious. You can’t be educated if there’s mute silence.”
Because The L Word‘s creator Ilene Chaiken is now the showrunner on Empire, and Kit Porter was such a musical character, it seems only right Pam Grier might show up on the Fox hit.
“I love Empire and I even tweeted ‘Our fearless leader Ilene Chaiken! Everyone will be in great hands.’ Of course I love Lee Daniels,” Pam said. “They were trying to reach me not too long ago but I was trying to deal with family issues. It just wasn’t appropriate to talk about, you know, television successes and all of it that goes with it. My family came first. So I don’t know [if I’ll get the chance to appear] and if I’m never on it, it’s OK because it’s just a delight. I hope it has legs to tell a lot of stories about the music industry. With Ilene and Lee and so many people, it’ll open the door for so many great writers who were on The L Word. We had tremendous writers and producers so every opportunity opens the door for hundreds more.”
Pam has had to turn down a few other roles (including one alongside Halle Barry on Extant) to take care of some things at home, but she’s still an avid TV watcher who is thrilled to see the progress being made for minorities on the small screen.
“I’m recording many shows and I can’t watch them all!” she said. “It’s just enlightening and I’m euphoric over the roles and and storylines, the challenges and there’s not a lot of fear-mongers. It’s just wonderful. You’re creating an audience. When you build a brand, you build your audience-that producer, that brand is going to bring us a good story and let us make a decision about how we feel about it.”
Pam said that when she does take roles, she won’t do a “redundant storyline” (“I’m not gonna do it. I look for stories that can really open the heart.”) and she wants to be a part of the kind of shows that are moving America forward.
“I’ve been working on it now for 45 years!” Pam said. “You want to create a society where your young people, your children-you want them to feel confidence that they have a place to go where they feel loved and accepted. That gives them hope and inspiration and the sky’s the limit. I’ve been working on it for a long time. They say you take small steps but you still move forward-that’s what’s been happening. It’s a movement. It’s a spiritual movement.”
Pam is hands-on in her activism, too, saying that during last year’s Dining Out For Life, she approached two tables of businessmen and asked them to participate.
“[I said] ‘Please don’t cuss me out but today is Dining Out For Life!'” she said, laughing. “They not only signed up but donated as well. Who can cuss out this face? They couldn’t turn me down! So if I made 14 more people aware of it, they may be inclined to look for it next year or spread the word.”
Besides being a cancer survivor and a respected public figure, Pam also wants people to get past the homophobia, racism, xenophobia and other kinds of hate that plague America today.
“Being a black woman, I’m very familiar with the Jim Crow era, growing up, and how people were horrible to one another, ” she said. “And the fact it could be that again. You see people fighting for humanity and it’s almost like the law of the jungle, you know? When does the religion and the spirituality and the affluence–when does it all come together and uplift one another? It takes all of us. It takes the few or the many but that’s what it takes. Every year we have to do it. I can’t imagine Dining Out for Life not existing next year. It can’t. It can’t happen. There are too many people living with HIV/AIDS-and living. “
Toward the end of our conversation, I thanked Pam for being such a great ally, and she stopped me mid-sentence.
“We’re all family!” she said. “Once you recognize that, boy your level of stress goes down. I want to see people live. I want to see communities live happily and with wellness. Just the greatness of what we have-we live in a country of great abundance in all ways and there’s no reason why people should suffer.”
Join Pam and thousands of others this Thursday, April 30 in Dining Out For Life, happening in cities all over America. Visit diningoutforlife.com to find one near you.
