Cicely Tyson chronicles nearly a century of life, career in new memoir ‘Just As I Am’
Cicely Tyson’s new book cuts into her tree of life – and the legendary actress showcases the rings of her seven-decadelong career in her first memoir, “Just As I Am.”
Her youth growing up in New York, life pre-fame and groundbreaking work span 400 pages in the book (HarperCollins, out now), written with collaborator Michelle Burford and broken into three sections: Planted, Rooted and Bountiful.
Viola Davis, Tyson’s onscreen daughter Annalise Keating in the ABC drama series “How to Get Away With Murder,” pens the foreword, sharing emotional memories of her first discovery of Tyson’s work and how it impacted her.
Cicely Tyson memoir ‘Just As I Am,’ Joan Didion essay collection
Tyson shares activism through art
Tyson begins the book’s second act with a quote from Charles C. Seifert: “A race without the knowledge of its history is like a tree without roots.”
Her roles as nuanced Black women are infused with the act of taking up space, changing the narrative and giving humanity back to Black communities in the same industry where it is simultaneously denied in other pieces of art. “As a people, we’ve done what we’ve had to do to survive, and rather than feel ashamed of it, we should celebrate it.”
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She reveals an assault early in her career
As she began to act, Tyson didn’t want to rely just on her emotional talents – she wanted the skills to back it up. Tyson wanted actor/director Lloyd Richards of Paul Mann Actor’s Workshop to teach her the art behind acting. But an assault threatened to derail her career before it began.
In order to take classes and get mentorship from Richards, Tyson had to go through Mann’s acting workshop. At an initial meeting with Mann, Tyson recounts that he “rose from his desk and walked over to shut his door. I stood, as did every hair on my neck.”
Tyson continues: “Paul, a menacing tower of flesh, thrust himself toward me and began manhandling my breasts, attempting to remove my blouse as I shoved him away. ‘No!’ I yelled. ‘Get off of me!’ He tried to jam me against the wall and shove his hand under my camisole, but I somehow managed to break free.”
Tyson says she was able to escape the encounter, but that she still had to interact with Mann as she took his acting workshop. “Life is choices, and as I saw it, I had two. I could’ve fled from that man’s office and never returned. Many, understandably, might have chosen that route. … I had arrived at that studio with the singular purpose of training with Lloyd. And though Paul, in a show of breathless lasciviousness, had attempted to thwart my mission, I was not to be deterred.” Mann was later found guilty in a civil suit of harassing other women from his acting workshop
Her career connected her to theater, Hollywood greats (plus her famous godchildren)
Maya Angelou. Oprah Winfrey. James Earl Jones. Sidney Poitier. Diahann Carroll. Viola Davis. Tyler Perry. All Black pioneers of the screen, stage and page, and all close friends of Tyson.
Tyson shares personal details of her yearslong friendships with industry veterans: Angelou, the hostess who didn’t need a special occasion “to pull out her finest cutlery and Baccarat crystal”; “painfully shy” Jones; her gossip sessions at New York Italian eatery Sardi’s and her laughs with Carroll; Perry paying her “double … even triple or quadruple” on projects once he heard how underpaid she was for her landmark roles; and her “cherished sisterhood” with Winfrey. She also goes “way back” with Frank Sinatra and recalled a legal “dust-up” with Elizabeth Taylor.
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Her romance with Miles Davis spanned two decades
Not only did Tyson form friendships with future icons, but she also formed a relationship with legendary jazz musician and master trumpeter Miles Davis that lasted on and off for more than 20 years.
The two initially connected in 1965 after a chance meeting in Riverside Park, though Davis’ struggles with addiction and infidelity ultimately drove them apart. They had other romances over the years, but Davis and Tyson reunited years later in their 50s, marrying at Bill Cosby’s home on Thanksgiving Day in 1981.
At the start of their marriage, Tyson nursed Davis back to health after years of drug use had negatively affected his vital organs. But once Davis’ strength improved, Tyson writes, he “resumed the cycle” of drugs and adultery that first split them up. An ongoing tryst between Davis and a woman in their New York apartment building – which led to a physical altercation between Tyson and the other woman – proved too much for the relationship, and Tyson filed for divorce. Of their relationship, Tyson insists: “I loved Miles and he loved me.”
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