My guest today, Danielle Henderson, is a tv writer, former editor, rookie, co host of the film podcast I saw what you did, and author of the achingly poignant and funny memoir, the Ugly Cry.
Abandoned at ten years old by a mother who chose a drug addicted, abusive boyfriend, she was raised by grandparents who pretty much thought their child rearing days had ended in the sixties.
She grew up, in her words, black, weird, and overwhelmingly uncool in a mostly white neighborhood in upstate New York, which created its own identity crisis.
And under the eye rolling, profanity laced, yet unconditionally loving tutelage of her uncompromising grandmother and the horror movies that she obsessively watched, Danielle found writing as a powerful outlet and form of creative expression and went out into the world and started to build that as her life and career.
And along the way, she's written for many major outlets, tv shows, and as she, she shares, she drove from New York to Alaska by herself, survived a bear chase for alaskan winters, junior high school, working in a convent, aqua net hairspray, acid wash jeans, and the entirety of the Mets 1987 season, which as a kid who grew up on Long Island, I remember that season as well.
So we talk about it all in today's conversation.
So excited to share it with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields and this is good life project.
We have to start in a really important and maybe touchy area because from what I understand, you actually recreated rapper Rick Ross's famed jewel pendant of his own face, but with sequins for your husband's face.
Yeah, my ex husband now, but, yeah, ex, right.
Yeah, I'm pretty crafty.
And, you know, I didn't have access to jewels in grad school.
Or now.
Or now, let's be fair.
And I just love, it just cracked me up that those pendants were just so present.
They're just so present.
And, you know, my ex husband had a beard and glasses and I thought it would look really funny to kind of recreate it.
I know there was that window right where it was sort of like the giant hanging.
You had like flavor things, the clock.
And like, there was a.