More Than a Powder Puff and a Lipstick

[00:00:00] Paula: Welcome to Chatting with the Experts, which is a podcast for immigrant women like me who have immigrated to North America, Europe, the United Kingdom, or even Australia. In this podcast, we talk about things that matter to us as immigrant women. We talk about our triumphs, but we also talk about the times that we’ve struggled, and today’s no exception.
[00:00:28] Paula: My guest today is the beautiful Marietta Carter- Narcise, and she’s originally from Barbados. I want to describe her as a makeup entrepreneur, but I know she’s more than that, so I will let her describe or give a better description of who she is and why she’s here. So welcome, welcome to Chatting with the Expert Marietta.
[00:00:53] Paula: Thanks for saying yes.
[00:00:56] Marietta: Thank you so much for having me, Paula. What am I, What am I? A beautpreneur, I’m like a 30 plus year veteran, celebrity makeup artist, department head makeup artist, fulfillment television. You know that, that’s kind of where my career has been built. I am a global, I won’t say international, global educator, so I teach, I taught makeup in several parts of the world, and I teach the business of film and television makeup, which is very different than when you think about makeup.
[00:01:28] Marietta: I, I’m not dealing with a consumer. The makeup that I do is makeup that is generated from a script. So I, am a storyteller, a filmmaker, I tell pretty much the evolution of my characters through makeup. That’s really what I do, and I teach.
[00:01:46] Paula: Oh, that’s interesting.
[00:01:47] Marietta: Because the makeup is, it’s scripted, it, it’s character development.
[00:01:51] Marietta: So, and the biggest thing that people don’t understand is when you do makeup, film, and television, and I wanna say scripted, film and television, very specific, very different. And unscripted. Unscripted, you’re doing the look of the day, the look of the moment, the look of the, Whereas what I do is not trendy.
[00:02:07] Marietta: What I do is the evolution of the character. So it has to look, a lot of times you wake up in the morning, you’re not wearing any makeup, it cannot look like somebody came in at three in the morning when you get up to go to work, get for work or something, and somebody in and makeup the character’s doing the makeup themselves.
[00:02:25] Marietta: So a lot of people don’t realize that it’s not about, The makeup being done by somebody. It’s about when Marietta gets up to go to work in the morning or when Paula gets up to go to work in the morning, Paula gets up, brush her teeth, showers, you know, whatever, and she goes in the mirror and she just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
[00:02:44] Marietta: And she’s done. Mm-hmm. , That’s what I’m doing. I’m in your head. So now I’m in the character’s head doing the makeup as that person.
[00:02:52] Paula: Got you.
[00:02:53] Paula: That’s interesting. Wait, let’s go back to the beginning. You’re from Barbados, so you need to know how did you even get into this? This is so interesting. Let’s talk about how you came here and how you evolved into this.
[00:03:04] Marietta: How did I get into this?
[00:03:05] Marietta: You know, so, and people ask me that question all the time. It’s not that that’s the path that I started off being ok. I arrived in America, Brooklyn, New York, JFK Airport to be specific. January 2nd. Yeah, January 2nd, 1971. Why January? Yeah. . I don’t know what my father was thinking, or maybe he wasn’t even thinking.
[00:03:28] Marietta: It was just a matter of getting the kids and his wife here to America, . But it was my mom, my four brothers, one of my dad’s younger brother, and there was seven of us, right? Five, seven of us. Yes. Never traveled, never got on a plane, never got outside. That 166 square miles of the rock called Bar. So traveling in the middle of the winter to a place we only heard of, because for us, Barbados was the world.
[00:03:54] Marietta: Nothing existed outside of Barbados. We just knew that of course, as we called, my father just lived far away up in a place called New York, you know, in America. So my mom got us winter coats in the whole nine yards and we packed everything we could and suitcases and you know, closed up the house and moved to America.
[00:04:13] Marietta: That PanAm flight that left, you know, PanAm, Remember PanAm left [4:00] PM I remember PanAm. Yep. 4, 4 30 nonstop to jfk, New York from Seaville International. It was a grantee. Adams airport. Yeah. From Seaville International Airport. Landed in jfk probably like 9 30, 10 o’clock that night. Cause I think the flight was delayed.
[00:04:33] Marietta: Actually, I’m have to check my notes cause I have it all written down. ? Yeah. Have it all written down. There was no jet way. You had to walk on tarmac. Tell
[00:04:43] Marietta: me that. Jet in.
[00:04:47] Marietta: There was no jet yet. Jets weren’t around yet. There was no jet. So when that plane door opened up and Mother Nature came in, we all froze because it was, we had never experienced anything like that.
[00:04:58] Marietta: It was colder than opening up the refrigerator. , of course,
[00:05:03] Paula: especially you had never traveled, so you weren’t even anticipating that.
[00:05:07] Marietta: We had no clue, no concept of what to look for, to feel nothing. We were young, you know, I mean, my oldest brother was what, I was four months short of my 13th birthday. So my oldest brother was probably 15.
[00:05:19] Marietta: It was, it was torture. And you know, you could tell that we were arriving as permanent residents because every permanent resident back then had the big manila envelope with the chest x-ray, because we collect, they, the US Embassy in Barbado. So we collected our green cards before we left Barbados got, yeah, we collected our green.
[00:05:36] Marietta: So my dad, you know, he filed for us and the whole nine yards. So we all came with our green cards One time my mom had the big stack of. Manila envelopes with the chest x-rays for all of us. And um, I think it was like 10 suitcases and, you know, everything we own pretty much we’re in those suitcases.
[00:05:53] Marietta: Whatever we could bring. And that was it. That’s our life migrating, you know, we’re immigrants migrating into the great big way in America, you know, to collect the money that grows under trees to start a new life. To start a new life. So my dad closed escrow on the house the night before we arrived. What?
[00:06:10] Marietta: Because he did not want to bring us here and make us latchkey kids and coming from our own home in bar. You know, we are coming from a home in bar with our nanny and housekeeper to Brooklyn, New York. So he closed escrow and we moved to the east flat section of Brooklyn. And as we were moving in, all the white folks were moving out to Long Island, , you know, and that’s where we moved to and, and settled there.
[00:06:34] Marietta: And it’s only on, my parents lived there until 2011 December when we moved them down here to my home in Florida. So all that time they lived in the house. When we moved there, you know, my dad bought the house and agreed to keep the tenants until their lease was up, which was a year after the year. He.
[00:06:52] Marietta: They were gone and reoccupied the entire house. So there was a lot of space. You know, we, we had a lot of space and that made a tremendous difference in our lives because we had the freedom and flexibility to utilize from the first floor, the second floor in the basement. So we weren’t choked up together.
[00:07:08] Marietta: It was, you know, a lot more freedom and flexibility than most people had. And yeah, and my dad brought our nanny at the time here. He brought her up to the states to help get a little bit more acclimated and stuff. And she stayed with us about six months, I think. Only six months. Yeah. She stayed with us about six months.
[00:07:24] Marietta: It was a big adjustment, you know, it was a big adjustment. And then of course, getting. Into schools and we knew nothing about the school system or anything. And you know, my dad didn’t, I don’t think he really investigated the school systems the way he should. You know, that’s another story for another . I, you know, you and you know, for Indian family, if you’re not a.
[00:07:45] Marietta: A nurse, a teacher, you know, a profession, what they consider the old professions. You’re really not. Yes. Making a living. You know, the arts don’t give you a living. So I was in school on the track of being a
[00:07:57] Paula: pre-med. You was a good child. You’re doing, Yeah. Going along the right path. Yeah. Doctor, lawyer, accounting, engineering, those
[00:08:05] Marietta: things.
[00:08:06] Marietta: Yeah. Okay. I was a pre-med student and my whole mind was science track at the time. I didn’t understand that both sides of my brain worked. I did not understand what that meant. All I know is I go to school and I come home and I sit in the sewing machine because I didn’t realize at the time that I was giving myself a creative out.
[00:08:24] Marietta: And that’s one of the things that you realize later on in life, that as much as I was science oriented, science and math oriented, I also was exceptionally creative. So that was my outlet, but I didn’t know that at the time. There are a lot of things I learned after the
[00:08:38] Paula: fact. All right, so. Okay. You said something, so you come home from school.
[00:08:42] Paula: Okay. You say science based subjects you’re doing in school and you go to the sewing machine. To sew or to sew to, Oh, okay. Got you.
[00:08:53] Marietta: No, to sew. Yeah, because, And I should have prefaced that, um, better, but. Pretty much when I arrived here, my dad said, You want, I was the only girl for my mom. Oh, you’re the only girl For my mom.
[00:09:02] Marietta: Yeah. And I have four brothers and I have a sister for my dad. So pretty much he said, You want clothes, you make them. Okay. Right. That was the end of the, That was the end of the discussion. The Caribbean .
[00:09:13] Paula: Right. The Caribbean in those days, except someone was send and clothes from abroad, you had to make your clothes
[00:09:20] Marietta: Right.
[00:09:20] Marietta: My mom was an amazing seam. I come from a line. Mm-hmm. of people who sew. My mom, my grandmother, who I never knew, my great grandmother. My great grandparents had Aash Street, so they imported fine fabrics from abroad and then people would pick out and then they would make them. So my mom comes from that line.
[00:09:39] Marietta: Her cousins, all of them. They tailor, they do all of that. But I knew none of that at the time. My dad just said, You want clothes, your. So it was like, okay, we got
[00:09:47] Paula: the sewing machine.
[00:09:48] Marietta: So yeah, sewing machines were endless in our house. So once those tenants were, were gone from the house, return the upstairs kitchen into a sewing room.
[00:09:58] Marietta: Oh,
[00:09:59] Paula: okay. But you had the basement, you said you had like three or four stories or levels. It’s three. So why the
[00:10:05] Marietta: kitchen? The upstairs, that’s where the kids were. My parents moved downstairs and the upstairs where the kids were, cause upstairs had four bedrooms. We turned up there and all the cooking was downstairs.
[00:10:15] Marietta: So we turned up there where the kids were into a sew room. So my youngest brother and I were sewing upstairs. We had about three or four sew machines and lots of fabric. My dad would never object to gonna the store and getting fabric. He objected, gonna the store to buy clothes, but gonna the store to buy.
[00:10:33] Marietta: We piled it up to the ceiling.
[00:10:34] Paula: So he probably saw a creative St. Streak in you and your
[00:10:37] Marietta: I don’t think, I don’t It was that deep with him. No, No and no, he, he wasn’t looking for any of that. He just said, You want clothes, you make ’em. So I would go to school and come home and I would tell my friends at school, Look in the mag.
[00:10:50] Marietta: I’m gonna wait to school tomorrow. And I go home and sew it after I finish my homework and sew it away to school next day. I don’t think I, You must have been popular. I don’t think I ever duplicated my outfits in high school. Wow. I think I, from age 12 to 24, I made everything I wore. Wow.
[00:11:07] Paula: That is creativity to the tilt or the
[00:11:11] Marietta: hilt.
[00:11:11] Marietta: I made red made wedding dresses. I made love bridal dresses, beaded them, everything.
[00:11:16] Paula: Wow. So this was something you were interested
[00:11:18] Marietta: in. But I didn’t know I was an entrepreneur. I just did it. I was suing and all through college I sued and I had a scholarship cause I was a pre-med student, so I had a scholarship to work in Brooklyn, Jewish Hospital for nine weeks.
[00:11:31] Marietta: And I worked in two departments. I worked in the lab doing what they call lupus preps, spinning the blood and stuff, doing lupus preps. Mm-hmm. . And then I worked in home health. The lady in home. The Caribbean grenade. Actually, she was from Grenada. She was from Grenada, and she said, Wow, every day you come in here and I don’t understand, you always look so polished.
[00:11:52] Marietta: She said, When you get all these, I said, I make them. She said, You do what? And my nails were always done. She said, You make them? I says, Yes. She said, Well, I got two daughters at home. Can you teach them how to sew? Now, I hadn’t been teaching anybody how to sew. I was just sewing. And sewing for clients.
[00:12:10] Marietta: Right. You know, I had about 16 clients I used to sew for all the time and Oh,
[00:12:14] Paula: so you were selling commercial? I mean, when I say commercially, you had actually started a small business. But I didn’t know, not
[00:12:19] Marietta: thinking about it. I didn’t know, I didn’t know I was an entrepreneur. I didn’t even know the word. I had no idea what that word was.
[00:12:23] Marietta: I didn’t know, I just did it. People say, Oh, I like what you’re wearing. I make it from, you know, and they pay me. I didn’t, I didn’t think about it and I did it. It was such a, it wasn’t something I thought about, I just did it. I didn’t think about entrepreneur, I didn’t think about business. I just did it. Oh sure, I can make you half a dozen pair pants, no big deal.
[00:12:41] Marietta: Took me no time. Right. And, um, it was a, a no-brainer for me. And, um, she said, But I got two daughters. Can you teach them? So then I started doing, teaching them sew in math and I was teaching them how to make.
[00:12:54] Paula: You had to kind of come up with a plan, like, okay, now get the machine, the next thing, Show how to thread the machine the whole bit and
[00:13:04] Marietta: all of that.
[00:13:04] Marietta: All of that. How to ham, how to darn. All of that. But I Did you enjoy it? Yes, but it was a no brainer. I never thought about it. I just did it. It was automatic. Wow. So I was teaching. But not knowing what I was doing, if that makes sense. Okay. Because it was just automatic. It was not something, you know, I had this deep plan about, or you know, Oh yes.
[00:13:27] Marietta: This, none of the above. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . It was just something that
[00:13:31] Paula: I did. So right now, So you’re in the Brooklyn? No. You’re in the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital. Brooklyn Jewish Hospital. Yeah. The Brooklyn Jewish Hospital. And you have started, I mean, so you are on the premed track, but now you’re beginning to teach these young girls of teenage girls probably how to sew and you still don’t realize Mm.
[00:13:50] Paula: There’s a creative side of me and there’s a business side to my creativity. None of it.
[00:13:55] Marietta: So, let’s see. So nobody, you know when nobody points that out to you. Mm-hmm. , you don’t know. And, and the same token in school, I didn’t realize that my focus could have gone in one or two directions pre-med. You know, majoring in chemistry, if I had known about interning in a place like Esther Lauda, the labs, you know what I mean?
[00:14:17] Marietta: That kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. , those things were so well guarded that I knew nothing about interning in a lab or working in a lab where I could foster the skills of, of that creativity. But yet with the science combined, the two. So I didn’t know anything about that and I didn’t know anything about Fashion Institute.
[00:14:36] Marietta: Cause it’s not like you can Google stuff back then. You had to right away, or somebody tell you about it. Somebody introduced you to, So, you know, and with my parents not being, you know, a lot of the things that happens, I think with island parents, if they’re not exposed, they’re stifled and they’re afraid to come out that comfort.
[00:14:54] Marietta: To seek out and to learn. So they only learn this is scary. Yes. They only know what is within the confines of whoever they venture out with or you know, And, um, yes, it’s a scary thought. It was very scary for my mom. To step outside of what she knew. Yes, I can see. And even though my dad had lived in America, he was a typical man.
[00:15:17] Marietta: I was like, they go to the local school, they do this, they do that. He didn’t think about, He didn’t think about things like that, was there to think about, You know, the school is there, you go to it. Okay.
[00:15:26] Paula: And you say he was a dentist? A dental technician. A dental technician. Okay. So still thinking, you know, kind of, Yeah.
[00:15:33] Paula: Narrow thinking, you know. But he had his own
[00:15:35] Marietta: business. Okay. He had
[00:15:36] Paula: his own business. He had his own business. My dad was an entrepreneur. He had his own business. So he ran in the family, ran in your blood, you had the entrepreneurial blood in you, you had the creative blood in you, and you still didn’t recognize it.
[00:15:50] Paula: Oh, it wasn’t
[00:15:50] Marietta: recognized. It wasn’t recognized. Wow. I think more so for my mom, she understood what we were doing, but again, she was scared. She didn’t, she didn’t explore. So by not exploring you limit. So just what’s right there within your vision, you know? Yes. And my younger brother and I both should have probably gone to Fashion Institute of Technology.
[00:16:10] Marietta: Yes.
[00:16:11] Paula: Well, who would’ve thought about that then? We don’t know what we don’t know. Right. So now, in hindsight, right?
[00:16:16] Marietta: Yeah. That’s where we should have gone. Yeah. If you don’t ask the right question, you can’t ever get the right answer.
[00:16:21] Paula: True. So, and continuation ask the right question. So now you are, at that point, you’re teaching these girls, and what happens?
[00:16:28] Paula: You decide, I’m not doing pre-med. These girls love it, or what’s
[00:16:31] Marietta: happen? No, I was so pre-med. Great. I, I, Yes, of course. I didn’t realize that you can make money off of a hobby. It was looked at as a hobby. So I just continued doing what I was doing. I was, you know, I went all the way to the door of Jersey Medical School.
[00:16:46] Marietta: I was on the waiting list of Jersey Medical School, and then what happened? Boom, that’s not where I wanna be. . Uh, Wow. After working in the hospital, I realized that’s not where I wanna be. And I graduated. I couldn’t wait to get outta Liu. I went, I went to Liu, Long Island University and a full scholarship.
[00:17:02] Marietta: Wow. It’s not like I was dumb. I went on a full scholarship. I was very involved in the community, the Western Indian community. So I entered beauty pageants. I mean, I got pictures of me and Bob Marley. I ended beauty pageants. What? Yes, yes, yes, yes. All of the above. And I was very involved, very active. I used to model a lot of community stuff.
[00:17:21] Marietta: I mean, I did a lot of stuff. I was very, very involved. My younger brother and I used to sew clothes for fashion shoes and stuff. I mean, we did a lot of stuff, but, And I won trip to Barbados in one. Competitions I was in, and I went home and I took a book with me called What Color Is Your Parachute? And I what, Sorry, What color is your parachute?
[00:17:43] Marietta: Okay. Woo. And I, I read that book. I studied that book, and I came back to America and I enrolled in beauty school. Wow.
[00:17:52] Paula: So that book helped change or shape you into understanding, okay, I need to do something different. Because even though you said you realize that, Mm, this is not for me, But it seems like in listening to you, it’s the book that made you think outside the box.
[00:18:08] Paula: Yeah.
[00:18:08] Marietta: You don’t get that push. It’s like, how you gonna survive? It’s like the only way to make it is by doing. Yeah. And every single, I, I mean, once I graduated li. I worked at New York Life Insurance Company because I had to get a job, you know, and pay bills. Yeah. I, I had no bills. I lived at home. You were living at home?
[00:18:29] Marietta: I no Bills downtown. My dad didn’t want me to go away because he said, you knew you foreign, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Long story. Mm-hmm. , that’s another story. And you get the train to get off at ne Street and you go to Liu, because I got into Fordham, but I would needed to live on campus. He wouldn’t live on campus.
[00:18:47] Marietta: So that’s his pressure. And then Liu was a full scholarship. It was a private school, but a full scholarship. So I paid nothing. And you know, I, I. After I started to work at New York Life Insurance Company, I started as a correspondent and then I became an underwriter. So I underwrote health and life. Wow.
[00:19:06] Marietta: And I thought I must be crazy. When I went home to Barbados and I read that book, Richard Balls and by Richard P W L E S, I think, and everything, I did all the exercises in the book, kept bringing me back to the same thing, creativity, beauty, everything other than pre-med or when medical, you know, again, because I didn’t understand that both sides of my brain worked.
[00:19:31] Marietta: So I applied to beauty school, I ruled, I didn’t tell anybody other than my mother and I finished beauty school. My goal was I set a goal for myself, seven months complete. Take the state board the whole bit. If I didn’t pass state board on the first try, that was it. I’m done. Did all of that and my clients followed me right out of the beauty school to my home.
[00:19:51] Marietta: Wow. So, because my brothers, my brothers, most of my brothers had left home by then. So I had the whole upstairs pretty much, and I opened up, I started doing clients upstairs, unbeknownst to my father. He had no clue. Cause he was never home. He was
[00:20:06] Paula: never home. When you said doing clients, you would, what were you doing?
[00:20:09] Paula: Doing hair.
[00:20:10] Marietta: Yeah. Okay. I was doing the hair. Cause in beauty school you don’t really learn much makeup. I was doing the hair and then had a clientele from off my block. So they would come at night and I’d set the hair. They’d come in the morning before they went to work, I’d come out the hair. So I had a serious clientele.
[00:20:24] Marietta: I was building with the hopes that I would then open up my own place until my dad discovered I was running a beauty shop outta his house.
[00:20:32] Paula: Out of his house. Right. So what did
[00:20:33] he
[00:20:34] Marietta: say? Let it go very well. . That that, that’s another story that was, I had to prove myself and me. We got into a knock drag out, but it just really solidified what I needed to do for me.
[00:20:46] Marietta: Then I broke up with the boyfriend I had and my whole beauty life and everything that I was thinking and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It all changed just like that and I thought, what am I gonna do? So I had to redirect my thinking and I was freelancing. I was also, in addition to doing the hair, I was freelancing for Revlon at the time because I thought that would gimme opportunity to meet people.
[00:21:09] Marietta: So I was freelancing at Kings Plaza and I met a young lady who was also freelancing a black America. Mm-hmm. . And we started, one thing led to another and she said, Oh my God, I need to touch up. And you know, when she found out, I did hear, she said, Oh, I need my relaxes. Touch it up. Right? So I told her, Oh, you can come over and I’ll do it.
[00:21:27] Marietta: So she came over to the house. The day she came over to the house, happened to be the day that my younger brother. Was passing through New York. Cause he had moved to California and he was working with the Commodos, the recording group, The Commodos, the
[00:21:41] Paula: recording group. The Commodor, Yeah. Okay. Those are my people from way back.
[00:21:46] Marietta: Yes. So they were passing through on his way back to California. They were coming from Bermuda.
[00:21:51] Paula: Okay. Oh, Bermuda. Yeah, we talked about that
[00:21:53] Marietta: today. That’s so funny. And they, whenever he had an opportunity to come to New York to see my mom and dad, he would, so they would swing into, So here it is, they came into the house and my client that I just.
[00:22:05] Marietta: Like a couple of days before. It’s under the hair dryer, so, Okay. One of them started playing the piano. I had a piano. My parents would gimme a piano cause I play the piano. And this one of the singers that’s with them, one of the background singers. So they started a whole jam session in our living room upstairs.
[00:22:20] Marietta: And she’s under the dryer, my client, and she’s here this music now I again, I tell you, I just met her so I know nothing about her background. So all of a sudden she jumps from under the dry and she comes out and she starts to join them singing. I had no idea this woman could even sing. What? In talking to her, I find out that not only could she sing her degrees in music,
[00:22:40] Paula: Oh my word.
[00:22:41] Paula: Okay. Now this is getting interesting.
[00:22:43] Okay.
[00:22:43] Marietta: So they’re having a whole jam session. She’s in roller. And they’re having a whole jam session in my living room in Brooklyn, New York. Cut two couple of days later when I go into the store and I see her, I said, What are you doing next week? She said, Well, nothing.
[00:22:57] Marietta: I said, Do you wanna move to Europe with me indefinitely? She said, Move
[00:23:01] Paula: to you. Yeah. She said, Move
[00:23:03] Marietta: to Europe. She said, I’d love to, but I don’t have any money. I said, Well, I don’t have any either. How are we gonna do it? She convinced her mother to take out a loan from the credit union. The mother worked at Bellevue Hospital.
[00:23:15] Marietta: She convinced to take out a loan so she could buy a ticket to accompany me on a,
[00:23:20] Paula: Going to Europe, going to
[00:23:21] Marietta: Europe. So we bought, but no money with no money. So, but I had my, I had this really great client who traveled a lot, so she took me down to her travel agent and we bought two open tickets for a year on an Eric Fran’s flight.
[00:23:36] Marietta: That’s a special vacation flight thing that they had. But the tickets were open for a whole year and we coordinated that trip cause Commodos were coming back into New York. And we coordinated our trip to tag along with my younger brother on the Commodore’s flight. Mm-hmm. . So we left New York, January on an open ticket to Paris and traveled all through Europe with the Commodore.
[00:23:59] Marietta: Wow. But
[00:24:00] Paula: your brother and tag. Yep.
[00:24:02] Marietta: And that’s where I got introduced a whole different world. I saw some of the biggest entertainers in the world, Aretha Franklin, Paul Williams, um, John Luon, um, Jeffrey Os. They were all Melissa Manchester. They were huge. They were attending a festival in the south of France.
[00:24:22] Marietta: So we were in the south of France. I went all through Europe, Commodor. It was just wow, the biggest. I met Isaac Hayes. I met, um, the one that lived with Bobby Short, that lived with Gloria Vanderbilt. I mean, um, Rems and John. I mean, it was, I can’t even begin to tell. How it changed my life. So
[00:24:42] Paula: I’m just thinking, Wow, these are names, because I mean, you’re probably like, you know, much older than me, and those are the names of, you know, the celebrities of our days.
[00:24:52] Paula: Exactly. Isaac,
[00:24:53] Marietta: well, that’s, that’s who they were. They were the biggest celebrities at the time, and mm-hmm. , It opened me up to a whole new world that I never even anticipated that I was gonna be a part of and mm-hmm. , I bought a one way ticket from Frankfurt, Germany to Los Angeles. And that’s how I ended up in la.
[00:25:11] Marietta: I followed my younger brother that’s, and then through him I met Natalie Cole. Natalie Cole, Yes. The late Natalie Cole. So through him and my girlfriend was with me too,
[00:25:21] Paula: so she came Oh, so she you through all of this?
[00:25:25] Marietta: I mean, I was now getting to know her. So we arrived in LA and I met Natalie like a few months after.
[00:25:34] Marietta: Yeah, I met Natalie, No, the fall year I met Natalie, I think. And because she’d already known my brother through Commod. Mm-hmm. , it was a no-brainer in meeting her because I went to the airport to take my brother and when she was at the airport, She brought one of the other commod to the airport and we met and she said, Well, you getting on the flight, that’s when you could walk all the way up to the, the, the plane door back then, Oh,
[00:25:56] Paula: there was no the security,
[00:25:58] Marietta: no nothing like that.
[00:25:59] Marietta: And I said, Well, no, I’m gonna leave. I’m just dropping him off. She said, Oh, you wanna walk out the airport with me? And I’m like, I’m walking out the airport with Natalie Cole. Okay, let me compose myself. I’m having complete internal dialogue with myself. And finally I got up enough nerve to see, you know, Ms.
[00:26:14] Marietta: Cole, if you have a knee. She said, Call me Natalie. I said, Natalie, I said, If you ever need anybody to do hair, makeup, a wardrobe, I’m available. She said, As a of fact, I’m putting my tour together and I’m probably gonna need someone. I learned Confucius said, If you can do what you say you can do, it’s not boasting.
[00:26:33] Marietta: And I thought, this is my long shot. I don’t think I’ll ever get another opportunity like this. So what do I have to lose? And I gave her my number and a little piece of paper she gave me that I didn’t have a pen of paper, a little piece of paper. Three days later, her manager called and said, Natalie would like you to come down and meet her after rehearsal.
[00:26:48] Marietta: And I went down to where she was rehearsing. She introduced me to the band. And then from there we went to her studio as I, where she stored her wardrobe. And we went through a storage unit of God knows, probably a thousand gowns. I picked out 25. And they needed altering, They needed rebe because you know, she put on weight and I needed to open up all those gowns and re sew them and then rebe them.
[00:27:13] Marietta: And so did
[00:27:14] Paula: she know you could do that? Or that was an additional scale you were bringing? She
[00:27:19] Marietta: didn’t know what extent I could do until I did it. and she was blown away because she was shocked at how I was able to do it. She was impressed by my work, the end result, and I rearranged. I cleaned out all her the trunks that she stores, you know, repacked all her stuff, got her all new stuff.
[00:27:37] Marietta: She was so blown away by my organizational skills that she said to manager Dan. She said, She gotta go with me. A couple of days later I was on a flight to Hawaii with Natalie. Look at, and that’s how my career started off.
[00:27:49] Paula: Look at that. Look at that. And it all started with the fact, well, kind of in my mind, listening to your story started with the fact that when you got to the states and you wanted clothes, your dad said, I’m not buying clothes.
[00:28:01] Paula: You learned to sew. Mm-hmm. . And you started that sewing and it was innate every day, from what I’m hearing, you went to school with a brand new outfit and you know, you’d look at magazines and say, Tomorrow I’m gonna wear that. And sure enough, you did, you did your homework, you’re still doing very well in school.
[00:28:20] Paula: And then you, you know, got to Brooklyn Jewish Hospital and the, you said somebody from Grenada, Was she in
[00:28:28] Marietta: the lab? She, No, she was in, um, she was the head of the home health department in the hospital.
[00:28:32] Paula: Okay. The home health department. And she’s like, How come you always look so good? And you say, Well, I just do and I make my clothes myself.
[00:28:40] Paula: And that opened up a whole new world for you.
[00:28:44] Marietta: Wow. Something I never, it just never, it’s not like I had it written down that this is what I’m gonna do. Mm-hmm. , as far as showing and stuff, it was so far off my radar as a profession. Mm-hmm. makeup artistry here. None of that stuff because, you know, you grew up thinking.
[00:29:01] Marietta: Hair dressing is for high school dropouts.
[00:29:03] Paula: Yes. And I gotta have a profession. I need to have money. I need to have a profession. I can fall back on. This is a hobby. Yes. And now you’re, let’s see, this is almost like, what, five years later? And you are, you, your hobby has become sought after skill and not just for, and I mean, I’m not minimizing non-celebrities, but it’s not just for people in your neighborhood.
[00:29:26] Paula: These are big names, at least in our days, that still are, these are names that people know world. Right. So I’m gonna stop here just for a little while. This is so interesting. We have to have two parts, . So now you realize that, or you had realized for a little while that this skill or this hobby is more than a hobby.
[00:29:45] Paula: It’s something that can earn you money and you are meeting amazing people and now you’re part of the late night. Because I used to love her music. Still do, I guess. Wardrobe team, Wardrobe artist
[00:29:56] Marietta: team. No, it was just me. I was the first woman to go out. Just you. It was just me. I just, I was the first woman to go back on Naro, Natalie.
[00:30:03] Marietta: Natalie had gone to, you know, several bouts of rehab and stuff, and they wanted somebody who didn’t drink, who didn’t smoke, who didn’t do drugs or anything. And because she already knew my brother, she’d met him with the Commodos. It was a comfortable arrangement to have somebody like myself who didn’t have a background on drugs or none of that stuff, you know, And I could be with her.
[00:30:21] Marietta: So I became her personal confidant. Her. Assistant, her wardrobe, her hair, makeup, everything. I ended up doing all of that for her and coordinating and dressing her band and her. Wow, Wow, wow. A lot of work.
[00:30:37] Paula: So, to listeners, this is my guest, Marietta Carter Narcise, and she’s originally from Edda. She’s given us a story, not her story, but she’s telling us about her life and how, you know, sometimes skills you learn that you don’t think are important can actually change your life.
[00:30:54] Paula: Now we are talking about how she became a companion or a wardrobe, wardrobe
[00:31:01] Marietta: confidant, wardrobe, makeup here, pretty much personal confidence and that, yeah. Yes,
[00:31:08] Paula: yes. So go on. So now you are in Hawaii with her? Yeah. And
[00:31:11] Marietta: she was opening up for
[00:31:13] Paula: the commod. Okay. Was Lyna Richie with them at that time? Le
[00:31:17] Marietta: had just left them not too long after that.
[00:31:19] Marietta: My brother was actually with the Commodos when N was still with them. He started with working with the Commod. Okay. Yeah. I had an opportunity to travel. You gotta remember coming from Barbados to New York. The only other travel I had done was back to Barbados to visit. So now here I am going to Europe.
[00:31:34] Marietta: Mm-hmm. , which. A whole different can of worms and back to the states and now I’m seeing a whole nother side of the world that you know, did Hawaiian Canada and lot of parts of the US with Natalie, places in the US you heard of, but I didn’t know I would be going to. Absolutely.
[00:31:52] Paula: Yes. So I’m gonna bring it back.
[00:31:54] Paula: So what’s your dad saying to this now? Because, you know, he was shocked initially when he saw what my daughter, she’s running a business in my house, you know? And in those days it was, this is my house, and you do what I say in my house, I’m sure. Oh, maybe not.
[00:32:08] Marietta: Oh, no, no. Those are the words. Those are the exact words.
[00:32:12] Marietta: you said it just like him. . You know, it was a big exploration of finding me, of finding myself. Mm-hmm. . And with Natalie, as great as it was, was a lot of work. It was a lot of responsibility. And I still didn’t have the internal satisfaction that I was looking for. And I was sitting at the movies one night, it was a day off as the end credits were rolling on the screen, I had an epiphany.
[00:32:37] Marietta: That’s what I wanna do. I wanna do makeup fulfillment, Televis.
[00:32:41] Paula: Mm. Even though you were already kind of in it and you were working alongside the Commodos and you’re working with naco, but you hadn’t quite put a name or description
[00:32:51] Marietta: to it, it’s a very different kind of makeup. It’s a very different world.
[00:32:55] Marietta: It’s still the entertainment world, but a different avenue. And when I looked at the credit, I came home and I looked to the phone book for makeup schools and I decided I was gonna enroll in the makeup school to learn how to do makeup for. Because even though I could do makeup, I didn’t know anything about makeup for film.
[00:33:11] Marietta: Mm-hmm. . Then once I got accepted to makeup school, I spend the next 10 months in school learning how to do makeup for film and television to do cuts and bruises and burns to read a script, break down a script, all the things that go with film and television, which is very, very, very different what I was doing.
[00:33:29] Marietta: And then I really did a lot of affirmations and you know, the school referred me to different people. And then I set my sites and my career started to build. I started to see what I wanted to see and I started meeting different people. I, my best friends still to this day. I met on the set of Commodos video, I was helping my brothers make the clothes for the night shift video.
[00:33:52] Marietta: My brother’s in custom designer too. Oh, okay. And so I was helping him make the clothes for the night shift video and I went on the set to visit him and help him with, and I met the makeup artist. And she pretty much redirected my life. She was doing the video, what was her name? Robin Siegel. And we, yeah, we exchanged numbers and stuff.
[00:34:12] Marietta: A couple of days later she called me, she said, I’m doing a Jeffrey Osborne video. And I remember seeing Jeffrey Osborne meeting Jeffrey Osborne in Europe, like the year before. And so I did two Jeffrey Osborne videos actually. So I started working with her and then, you know, I started meeting a lot of people through her and you know, we did a lot of videos and then from that led to doing film to meeting different makeup artists and working, you know, as an additional artist and meeting people who eventually I was on a film set and I really started to enjoy what I went to school for and, you know, meeting different people and being true to yourself and, and my career started to.
[00:34:52] Marietta: And on one of the films, I met Clara’s Hart. I, I met Whoopi Gold and Whoopi pretty much another one who was really instrumental in changing a lot of things for me. I met her on Clara’s heart, but I didn’t do Whoopi’s makeup on Clara’s Heart. We were on the eastern shore of Maryland actually shooting. We, we shot on the eastern shore of Maryland, but I didn’t do her, I did Kathleen Quinlan’s makeup on the hair.
[00:35:15] Marietta: I was the only black person on that crew. And you know, Whoopi recognized that instantly and we bonded. And then shortly after that I was on another film called Her Alibi, and Whoopi was on that because her boyfriend at the time was the camera operator. So again, I was the only black person on that crew.
[00:35:34] Marietta: So we hung out together a lot. We would go antique in and you know, and it was great. It was wonderful. And when I got back to LA I called her to say hi. And she’s like, What’s wrong with you? You know, we got to talk. And, and she said, You know, as a matter of fact, I’m doing comic relief. Can you come down and do my hair and makeup?
[00:35:52] Marietta: So I went up to the Hollywood Bowl and did her hair and makeup for comic relief. I did two comic relief with her Comic relief three and four, I think with her and Robin Williams and Billy Crystal. And so I did two of those with her. And then I did a few more movies and then, Halfway through one movie I was doing, I got a call from her office from her assistant saying, You know, Whoopi’s doing a movie called The Long Walk Home and she would love for you to come and do her makeup on that.
[00:36:20] Marietta: So I went to Alabama and I did her for the Long Walk home. Before we would finish that movie, she said, I’m getting ready to start another movie in LA and I told Paramount Pictures about you and I would love to do that when we get back there. And that was Ghost and I did it for Ghost. That was her personal for Ghost, the, the key on the show.
[00:36:38] Marietta: And um, I did it when she got nominated for the Oscars. And you know, then I did bag that cafe with her and I did a lot of photo shoots and you know, things with her. And to this day I still consider Whoopy a friend of mine and she fought for me. She, you know, because back then black actors didn’t really have a say in bringing their own makeup persons to whoop be fought for me to be a person for her.
[00:37:03] Marietta: And that was huge. That was huge. From there, my career started to build. I went on to do Boys in the Hood. From there, John Singleton hired me to do Boys in the Hood, and then I, from Boys in the Hood, I think I went on and did Malcolm X. And after Malcolm X I came back to LA and I, I did, um, the Jacksons of American Dream and I met Angela Bassen on Boys in the Hood.
[00:37:26] Marietta: I did her on um, Malcolm X and then Jackson’s American Dream. I worked with Angela for about five years, and I did, I met Denzel on the Mighty Quinn in Jamaica. So when I did Malcolm X, I’d already known Denzel. I’d already worked with him, and I did Shirley Ros makeup. I didn’t do Denzel on the Mighty Quinn.
[00:37:44] Marietta: I did Shirley Ros makeup and here and the might. Because in the beginning of my career, I did makeup and hair until I got to her alibi, where her alibi became a union show. And on that show, I made a choice to no longer be worried about flyaways on the hair, just do makeup and the union, you have to make a choice.
[00:38:04] Marietta: You can’t do both. You only do one or the other. So I chose to do makeup and build my career in makeup as opposed to makeup. I still consider myself a hairdresser, but I don’t really do hair. I just keep my license in there. Okay. So I went on to build my career from there, from Whoopi in Angela, and then I had my baby.
[00:38:23] Marietta: I was doing Dangerous Minds. It was a Michelle Pfeiffer movie, and that’s when I found out I was pregnant. And then I continued working and that was like a four month shoot. I had like two weeks off that I interviewed for Strange Days, and I just did Angela Bassett for Strange Days. That was an all night shoot, four months and nights, and I was pregnant the whole time.
[00:38:44] Marietta: So I was pregnant. I worked my whole pregnancy. I stopped like two weeks before my baby was born. And then I went back to work and I think the first time I went back to work after my baby was born, I was, it was uh, in living single. I went to cover for my girlfriend and then shortly after that, I think my baby was born, was only like three months old.
[00:39:00] Marietta: I got a phone call. Was he three months? I was breastfeeding still. I got a phone call and my girlfriend was in Florida and she said, Hey Carter. Cause she called me car and she’s said, Hey Carter, I need you to get on a plane. This was a Wednesday. Mm-hmm. . She said, I need you to get in a plane by Friday and get to Florida.
[00:39:15] Marietta: I want you to do Cindy Crawford for me for fair game. I’m like, I’m breastfeed and I got a new baby. I have no nanny. So Friday morning. So it means I had to prep, convince my husband I’ll come, I’ll take care of the baby. And I was like, I had to shop and pack for three months to come to Florida and
[00:39:32] Paula: shop and pack for three months.
[00:39:35] Paula: With a
[00:39:35] Marietta: new baby? Yes, with a new. So yeah, that Friday morning I arrived at Florida lax Carnival Airlines. I didn’t even know Carnival had an airline, Carnival Airlines nonstop to Miami first class. But when we got to the airport, every Hispanic in Los Angeles was at the airport. I’m like, Who’s on the flight?
[00:39:52] Marietta: Something’s going on. So we seated like literally right by the cockpit. So my husband by the window, myself in the aisle see? And the other aisle, the, this beautiful Latin woman, beautiful, gorgeous woman dressed from head to toe, Armani suit, the whole night yard. She was striking here, pulled back in the shin, beautiful red lips and stuff.
[00:40:11] Marietta: I said, I know she’s somebody. I just dunno who she’s . She played in my baby the entire flight. The entire flight. Well, did she tell out to me? And I still didn’t know who she was. And the pilot when we landed, he kind dropped on the runway and she was like, Really funny. Oh my God, look at this. He opened the cockpit door.
[00:40:28] Marietta: She’s like, Look at this. My glasses were all crooked and stuff. Cut to two days later, my husband said to me, That lady that was sitting next to us, she’s on the news. It was Sele, had no clue who she was. It was Sele. She was on her way. She came into Miami for pae ocho. Oh no. She played with my son the entire flight.
[00:40:50] Marietta: Okay. It was so bizarre. It was the most bizarre thing on the planet. Hi. Yep. It was Selena. I, I was, Had no clue. Yes. Had no clue. Had no clue.
[00:41:00] Paula: Wow. And you had no clue who she was. I
[00:41:04] Marietta: had lost my abil, you know, starstruck was over for me, you know, a long time. So, you know what I mean? So it was like, it was just another celebrity as far as I was concerned.
[00:41:13] Marietta: So it didn’t matter to me. She’s just another human being. And, um, all I knew is she played with the baby the whole flight. I had no clue who she was until we saw her on the news
[00:41:21] Paula: that night. No, I was gonna say, and that what happened as, as you said, because you were with so many celebrities, it’s like, okay, this is another one.
[00:41:28] Paula: Yeah. But it didn’t
[00:41:29] Marietta: even register. Probably
[00:41:31] Paula: just one that I don’t know, or who’s up and coming, or something like that.
[00:41:35] Marietta: So I did Cindy Crawford. I had a chance to do Cindy Crawford. I did a lot of photo shoots with her. She was still with Revlon at the time. She was in MTV at the time, so we did a lot. So even on my days off, I was still working because she, she worked all the time.
[00:41:49] Marietta: So that was amazing opportunity for me. I came back to LA and my friend Anna Maria Horford said, I think my buddy would like you to do his makeup. And that was Samuel Little Jackson. And I had met Sam when I was doing Malcolm X, cause I did his wife at Malcolm X too, so I had already known her. So she said, Call Sam’s wife.
[00:42:09] Marietta: And she said, Well call his agents. And I said, I just want the right to first refusal. So when he gets a job, give me the opportu. I don’t need you to make my deals. I can make my own deals, but gimme the opportunity to work with him. And I did my first movie with Sam, the Great White Height, because shortly after that I got a phone call from the production office saying, We got your name and number from Sam’s agent and we’d like you to interview for the job.
[00:42:33] Marietta: And that was, I think, the beginning of me learning how. To turn my confidence into reality, I guess, to learn how to fight for myself. And I just finished working with Cindy and I refuse to go back in the rate, you know, because you really have to fight for yourself. And he offered me the rate and I said, I’m not gonna work for that rate.
[00:42:52] Marietta: When you figure out how you can pay me correctly, you can gimme a call. And I left the man’s office, the production manager by the time I got home, he called me, said, We figured out how we could pay you, because he knew that. He would’ve had to have gone back to Sam’s manager and said, Well, we can’t pay her.
[00:43:07] Marietta: And it would’ve been, Why can’t you pay? So that was the beginning of a three and a half year run with Samuel Jackson. 10 movies with Sam as his personal makeup artist. Wow.
[00:43:16] Paula: So I, I’m listening to this and I’m in for many reasons. One that I’m speaking to you, one that, you know, you’re from the Caribbean and you have done so well.
[00:43:26] Paula: And another reason is that as you are just speaking, I can see I’m, I’m in awe of the passion. And this is not scripted. This is something that you’ve done and you’ve enjoyed doing this. And I know when we first started, you said, But I’m in the business of film and television. Yeah,
[00:43:45] Marietta: no, I pretty much focus on film and television.
[00:43:48] Paula: And I was wondering, I mean, is this something now you’ve made a business out of and you are training people or you give talks? I mean, is that it? Because I mean, I’m sitting here, we could talk forever because these names you are talking about, that you’ve worked alongside with, these are household names.
[00:44:03] Paula: I mean, these are not just people in the neighborhood, as I said, in the community. These are well known artists, well known celebrities, well known entertainers and actresses and actors. So you must have turned this into a business of some sort.
[00:44:18] Marietta: Well, yeah, I, by then my career was full blown as I developed a name for myself within the industry.
[00:44:25] Marietta: So I was working all the time,
[00:44:27] Paula: but enjoying it. Yeah. It’s not like you are working and you’re like, Oh no, another,
[00:44:32] Marietta: another one. I didn’t have time to think about if I was enjoying it or not. It was automatic because I never. When I worked with Sam, I think over the course of three and a half years, I probably spent maybe two months in my own home over three and a half year here.
[00:44:48] Marietta: Wow. I was always gone six months in Toronto, four months in Mississippi, four months up in Northern California, two and a half months in Louisiana. I mean, I was always gone.
[00:45:05] Paula: And what was happening with your family? What was happening with your son? Because
[00:45:08] Marietta: I had a nanny, I, I had to have a living. Okay.
[00:45:12] Marietta: Because you know, Greg Wal was with me the whole time when I, when I first traveled all the time. Um, but once he started school it became very tricky. He started school when I was on the negotiator. The negotiator. We started off in Chicago and it kept going over and over and over and over. And we started off in Chicago.
[00:45:32] Marietta: Started in Chicago about a month with the nanny. And then, um, we came back to Los Angeles and it was, I’ll never forget that flight, because they chartered. I had never worked like that before. A month in Chicago. And we left just before the cold weather came in, and they chartered a plane to bring us back to Los Angeles and literally brought the makeup in here, trailer onto the tarmac so that when the flight landed at Burbank Airport, we had to unload our makeup in here, load into the trailer.
[00:46:06] Marietta: This is when I, I hit a breaking point with production. I told production you’re gonna send two limos. One to take my baby and nanny and not gonna sit on a for the next four hours while I load myself into a makeup trailer to be ready to work next morning. So you’re gonna send a car to pick them up and get them home, and you’ll send a separate car for me?
[00:46:27] Marietta: There’s no way. You know, and that was very, very, very difficult because you’re flying three hours from Chicago and then you have to unload, load all that stuff into a trailer, set it up, and be ready to work next morning. That’s,
[00:46:44] Paula: that’s tough. Without
[00:46:45] Marietta: missing a beat. That’s tough. It was, it was very, very, very, very tough.
[00:46:50] Marietta: I mean, I never, I’d never done anything like that. I’m like, you can’t give us a day off to, you know what I mean? And stuff. Literally the trunks had to go, I mean, they had all the cars because when I traveled with Sam, I was, My dear memo always included a limo and it was just, it was tough. People don’t see, they see the glamorous end result, but they don’t see the back end of what you go through.
[00:47:15] Marietta: Yes. And it was just a really tough one. It’s like, No, I gotta get my baby home. So the nanny lived with us. She lived with us for, for quite a while and, and then we started school. And he started school and I was on the set. My husband had to take me to school. I couldn’t even get. Because I was doing Sam,
[00:47:32] Paula: because you said you were home for only two months.
[00:47:34] Paula: That’s three what? 36? 36 months. You were home for two months. That’s 34 months. Out of the 36 you were home. Wow. That’s tough. I mean, as you And we’re
[00:47:46] Marietta: Sorry, go ahead. No, I’m working an average of 75 to 90 hours a week, so Oh
[00:47:51] Paula: my gosh. People hear the glamour. They don’t know the work behind the glamour. They don’t know the work behind that finished product.
[00:47:58] Paula: And that’s what you were doing.
[00:48:00] Marietta: What people don’t understand when you work in film, it’s any five days of the week, any five consecutive days of the week is considered a week. So the week is start on Sunday. Wow. But we can start on Wednesday. Wow. And it’s any hour of the 24 hours in a day is your call time to start work.
[00:48:19] Marietta: So sometimes I’m going to work. I get up at one o’clock in the morning to go get ready for work. Sometimes I get up at three o’clock in the afternoon to get ready for work. Wow. So these
[00:48:29] Paula: are things that people don’t
[00:48:30] Marietta: know. It’s, it’s not your, Oh, I’m nine to five. That went out the window years ago. It’s a very different, and when you run the show, it’s very different.
[00:48:42] Marietta: Very, very different. So those were the kind of hours I was keeping. So therefore, sometimes I would leave home in the morning, Greg asleep, I’d get back home, he’s asleep because the hours that I kept were so difficult. And, you know, thank God for understanding and supportive partner. Cause you can’t, you can’t do it by yourself.
[00:49:00] Marietta: This business is not conducive to family life. It just isn’t, it’s not a family friendly business. It’s, um, it can tear families apart.
[00:49:08] Paula: You can say I’m lost for words because I’m thinking, And you said something that’s very, very important. You had a supportive partner because if he wasn’t there, he was like, Okay, I’m done.
[00:49:18] Paula: Oh, yeah. Now, I mean, you would’ve had to have made a very difficult choice because this was something that you did, you enjoyed doing and you were successful at. But at the same time, you did have a personal life.
[00:49:30] Marietta: And that’s why I tried my hardest to make sure that my career was part of my life and not my life.
[00:49:37] Marietta: Because it could consume your life. Mm-hmm. . And whenever I left home, my life stopped until when I got back home to pick it up because everybody else’s life continued. Mine stopped where I left it. Mm-hmm. until I got back home. And that was very, very, very difficult to deal with. It was quite, quite challenging.
[00:49:56] Marietta: You know, I missed out on a lot of things that my kid did at school initially. Because I just was not there. Just
[00:50:03] Paula: weren’t there. Yes. So how old is he now? He is
[00:50:07] Marietta: gonna be 28 years, November, November 15th. Wow. And does he recall any? He recalls some of it. Cause he’s, Greg’s got pictures with Sharon Stone, with Billy Baldwin, with Dustin Hoffman, with Angela, with Blair.
[00:50:23] Marietta: He’s got pictures with Sam. He’s got pictures with so many people. I mean, his first birthday party, Sandra Bullock was there, you know, so he’s not starstruck. But the most important thing was I made a decision as my career got to a point, I finally decided that I have to switch priorities in my life. And I had to give myself permission to realize it’s okay to switch priorities.
[00:50:47] Marietta: And um, and I made a concert decision. To not be on the road with Sam anymore because I was now living Seminole Jackson’s life and no longer my life.
[00:50:58] Paula: Right. This is three years into it. Mm-hmm. . Okay.
[00:51:01] Marietta: And, um, and I made a conscious effort to change things around so I could be part of my child’s life. Yeah.
[00:51:07] Marietta: Because he didn’t ask to be born. What is the point of me being in this career? But then all the money that I would’ve made would’ve been paying therapy for him. Right. And um, so I made some major changes in my life, and that’s one of the things that propelled us to move to Florida so we could raise him.
[00:51:28] Marietta: So when I knew I had a, a very small window to do it in because, um, you know, when a kid gets a certain age and you move them, there’s a lot of resentment because they have their friends, they have their own life. So we knew we either had to move them at nine before he had so many friends, or after high school.
[00:51:47] Marietta: Mm. And then he would’ve been in college. So we made a conscious choice to move here. So we moved to Florida in 2004. He was nine years old.
[00:51:55] Paula: That makes sense because I was gonna say, after high school, he’s more or less an adult, or, I mean, going off to college, they come back of more or less, uh, semi adult, depending on the personality, but I mean, most likely they’re not coming back home.
[00:52:08] Paula: So that was a smart move.
[00:52:10] Marietta: Well, and I didn’t wanna do it the way we came to this country. Mm-hmm. , our feelings weren’t taken into consideration or anything. We just, you know what I mean, at all. And um, and it was a very hard adjustment coming at age 12. To the states. And I didn’t wanna do that to him. I wanted him to not have to go through what I went through.
[00:52:30] Marietta: Mm-hmm. , because being teased, being poke, being, you know, ridiculed, all, all the above. I didn’t want him to have to go through any of that. So, And Greg was enrolled in the French school. He was enrolled in the Lisa Los Angeles. So pretty much my kids’ first language is more French than English. And we wanted to maintain the same French education that he had.
[00:52:52] Marietta: Mm-hmm. . Cause it’s French immersion education. So in moving to Florida, we specifically sought out a French immersion school. And it happened to be here in Davy, you know, 10 minutes away from the house. And, and the only other French emergent school was all the way down south in Coral Gables. And that’s really far.
[00:53:12] Marietta: So we decided up on DV and, and stuff, Best decision we ever made. It, it catapulted our kid into a whole nother dimension and, and he ended up, Get. He started college at 14.
[00:53:26] Paula: Whoa. You got a genius
[00:53:28] Marietta: down your hand. And he graduated with his associates and his high school diploma at 16, and then from there, went to Florida State University and graduated at 18 as the youngest ever in their history of Florida State University.
[00:53:43] Marietta: And nobody has touched that record yet. Impress. And at 19 graduated from the University of Miami with his master’s in
[00:53:50] Paula: 19. And his master’s in
[00:53:53] Marietta: languages you said? No, he has his masters in higher education. Mm-hmm. with a focus on sports management. Wow. Impressive.
[00:53:59] Paula: You’ve done a good job in spite of, you know, as you said, all those long hours away from him.
[00:54:04] Paula: You did a great job. And I guess, you know, a lot of thought went into it, you know, did mention that you and your husband had made a decision that you’d move him either at age where he didn’t have a lot of friends or after high school. And I think that decision moving him at night was wise, really wise.
[00:54:24] Paula: Wow,
[00:54:24] Marietta: that’s impressive. No regret because that, And he’s a good kid. He’s, he’s a good human being because that, that was first and foremost we, him to turn out to be a good human. He’s compassionate, very thoughtful, and, and with moving my parents down here, there’s something majestic with the older generation and the younger generation.
[00:54:44] Marietta: And he has an amazing relationship with his grandmother. Cause my father’s deceased, so he and my mom is gonna be 94 this year, and he has an amazing relationship with her. Wow. That’s so, No, no regrets. You know, that’s the challenge of being in this kind of lifestyle. Yeah. He grew up around celebrities. He grew up, but I did not want him to be affected by h.
[00:55:05] Marietta: And not realize that he has to have a real life.
[00:55:09] Paula: I’m glad that you were able to see behind, you know, the glitz and the glamor, that there’s a real life. And do you think you could put it down to the fact that you came from, from Barbados, where you know, it’s the real life there. You know, your formative years were there, Where, How many celebrities do we have?
[00:55:26] Paula: You know, in those days, America was the land of everything. You know, As you said, money was being picked from the trees, and then you landed in New York and the reality hit home with, you know, stepping off the plane of glass, of icy, frigid air and having to live, you know, go to school there and be foreign and be teased after accents and everything else.
[00:55:48] Marietta: Oh, yeah. And trying to tell people that Barba is not in Jamaica. You know, they’re two separate islands. They’re three and a half hours apart flying from each other. No, no, no, it’s not. No, it’s not in Jamaica. No, no, no. I’m telling you.
[00:56:02] Paula: And getting the, But who cares? Look, you know, like, okay, right. You’re telling me that, but I don’t care.
[00:56:07] Paula: I’m not gonna go check on
[00:56:09] Marietta: the map to see where its, Yeah, it was quite interesting growing up. Quite interesting. And I got teased all the time. I got teased. I would sit by myself and eat. Cause I was very, I was very, very shy. I would sit in the cafeteria, uh, and in auditorium. Sometimes I eat by myself because I was, they would poke at me all the time and ugh, tormented and tortured all the time.
[00:56:30] Marietta: And then my eyes, my eyes was a huge issue because I have, I have hazel eyes and they’re like, Are those yours? Where’d you get those from? It, it was just, it was, you know, that I had a heavy accent. It was, it was, it was just tortuous as far as I was concerned. Oh,
[00:56:46] Paula: you know, these things are what make us sometimes resilient.
[00:56:49] Paula: Make us, you know, determined. Like, I’m gonna get through this too, or I’m gonna make something. I mean, yes, I, it was rough, but because I went through this, I will see how to make a difference in the world or make people more aware of what I’ve gone through or be able to empathize with others, because that’s the whole point of chatting with the expert.
[00:57:07] Paula: I did not like. Being asked her, Ma’am, where you from? Or somebody? Actually, the first time I called to make a doctor’s appointment, they ask, You need return? I’m like,
[00:57:17] Marietta: Speak English’s. So funny. They like, Yeah.
[00:57:27] Marietta: Oh, you should. Somebody said for foreign, you speak pretty good. English is my first. Right. That’s the only
[00:57:34] Paula: thing. But you know, as, as we’re talking about celebrities, I’m coming back about accents. So have you ever met Rihanna and what do they say about her accent?
[00:57:41] Marietta: Her, she has got a rank major accent, Right.
[00:57:46] Marietta: And she doesn’t hide it. I’ve never, I, I’ve come very close for her. 21st birthday we happened to be in Barbados and she was there. She was like that. But I’ve never met her. Never met her. I never had the pleasure of me there. That’s one of my dreams is to meet her. All right. I met a lot of people, but I’ve never met
[00:58:02] Paula: her.
[00:58:03] Paula: Yeah, because she’s also, I mean, she’s from your, From the Barbados that isn’t in Jamaica, right. .
[00:58:08] Marietta: Right, Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yep.
[00:58:13] Paula: Oh boy. Well, this has been very interesting, but you know, there’s something I found out about you. You have been nominated for the Emmys. You didn’t talk about that. You
[00:58:22] Marietta: know what, I was never, That is incorrect.
[00:58:26] Marietta: And I can’t get it. James, though. Oh, really? Uh, you went an imdb and you saw that
[00:58:31] Paula: mm-hmm. . I saw that. Like she has not said anything. She’s
[00:58:34] Marietta: just been helpful. That’s, that’s Marie Carter. Oh, got you. Listen, I have spent years from the time IMDB came out. They’ve merged me and Marie Carter together. I’ve gotten most of it off, but I can’t get the anything off.
[00:58:48] Marietta: I was never nominated for. Hmm. I I was nominated for a Guild award for Whitney, for the, the TV movie Whitney. So I was nominated for, Yeah. Oh, really? I’ve watched that. I was nominated, Yeah. I was nominated for a Guild Award for that, and I got two African Movie Academy awards for Bar Freedom Fighter and for Joseph, which is a movie I, I produce the Barrow Freedom Fighter.
[00:59:16] Marietta: I produce Barrow Freedom Fighter, and I, I did the makeup. And I did the wigs for, uh, and the costume design. Impressive for that. For that one. Yeah. I did not know about it. Yeah. Bar Freedom Fighter is actually an excellent movie. It talked about bar the man taking Barbados into independence. Actually, I think it’s showing on Amazon and Joseph.
[00:59:38] Marietta: Okay, I’m gonna look for that. Yeah. And Joseph, the movie, we shot it in Jamaica, Barbados and Ghana. And that, that’s a beautiful movie. And it’s, we were playing in AMC theaters. We had a deal in AMC theaters. It was very unusual for a foreign film like that to be in amc, but, And the killed everything. So that was a whole nother, But, you know, I, you know, God has blessed me with a really wonderful life.
[01:00:04] Marietta: And, and I’m at this stage now where I focus on teaching to help bridge the gap of those who really want to build a career in film and television, because a lot of people don’t understand what I do. They, they see the makeup, but they don’t understand that. It’s so much more than a powder puff, and my tagline is more than a powder puff and a lipstick because it’s so Right.
[01:00:25] Marietta: Most of what I do as a department head in film and television is not about makeup application, it’s about logistics. It’s about organization, It’s about dealing with budgets. Sometimes I’ve got a budget of millions and millions and millions of dollars right on my head. So it’s so much more. It’s hiring people.
[01:00:42] Marietta: It it, you know, it’s hr, it’s, it’s all the above and there’s not a stitch of makeup involved in that. It’s the planning, the, the operations, you know, it’s running the department, running the department effectively. It’s negotiating deals, all the
[01:00:56] Paula: above. And that’s what people need to be educated on and be informed on, you know?
[01:01:02] Paula: Yes. It’s more than what did, It’s more than a powder puff. An a lipstick. I love it.
[01:01:08] Marietta: Lipstick. Oh my god.
[01:01:10] Paula: So all good things have to come to, and I’ve been talking to you for over an hour and still interested. There’s one fun fact I want you to share about your island, Bob Beats, and this involves a close relative
[01:01:24] Marietta: of yours.
[01:01:26] Marietta: must be my grandfather. Grandfather,
[01:01:29] Paula: Yes, yes, yes. You told me that your grandfather is in the Guinness Book of Records.
[01:01:35] Marietta: Yeah, it’s, he’s in, um, what do they call it? London has a, a thing where it validates too, so he’s validated. So he is in, because a lot of, a lot of people aren’t verified, but he’s in, he’s verified cause I have to send to them his birth certificate, copies of his, um, dad’s birth certificate, grandparents marriage certificate.
[01:01:57] Marietta: I, I researched all of that and I had copies of all of that from 1860. His, his grandparents were married in 1860 and interracial. And, and we know it was interracial because they did not allow, did not, they did not allow interracial marriages in the church at that time. That could only be done in the chapel.
[01:02:16] Marietta: So it was an interracial marriage. And so I have copies of the marriage certificates and all of that from, and his father’s birth certificate and stuff. It took a lot of research because in Barbados you have in the archives. Anything before 1900 is meticulously documented in the archives. And then after 1900, it’s in the registrar’s office.
[01:02:37] Marietta: So I spent a lot of time in the archives digging into piles and piles of books with meticulous handwriting. It’s unbelievable. And tried to backspace all that. So he was born in 1900, February 21st, 22nd, 1900. And he died May 27th, 2013. He was 113 years old when he died. Wow.
[01:02:59] Paula: Of course, this was a recorded, but in talking with you, you mentioned how he didn’t have any diminished cognitive, um, skills.
[01:03:06] Paula: He was able, he was a farmer, if I remember
[01:03:09] Marietta: correctly. He was a farmer and an engineer. Yeah, he was an engineer. The sugar and the sugar factory. Yeah. And, and he was a farmer. And, you know, at 105 he finally stopped farming because he was so frustrated because somebody stole 500 pounds of carrots from him.
[01:03:24] Marietta: And he just, just made him, just made him just so frustrated. At 107, he had cataract surgery to remove both cataracts because he said to my mom, My mom is the oldest girl, and, um, he said to my mom, I just wanna be able to read the Bible myself. And, um, he did extremely well with that cataract surgery extremely well up until, as we celebrated every year after he turned the hunter, we celebrated his birthday, so we would always go down no matter what we were doing.
[01:03:51] Marietta: All the kids, grandkids, we all flew down and greats to our to celebrate his birthday. From a hundred until 113, we celebrated the 13th birthday also. Wow.
[01:04:02] Paula: Wow. So it must have been an, if he was a storyteller or he liked talk about, you know, the past. It must have been amazing, you know, Cause he’s seen things from let’s at these, the age of recognition about the age of six.
[01:04:15] Paula: If he could recollect from there. Till 2013, he’s seen the world change big time. He saw
[01:04:21] Marietta: the bird flew, which is the plane. But, you know, you know what? Granddaddy could tell you what he had for breakfast the first time. He, he just, his memory was just beyond anything you’ve ever, My mother’s like that. A couple of months ago my mother said, Oh, today make 85 years old, my mother died.
[01:04:39] Marietta: I’m like, How did you remember that? Oh, she, my mother has a memory that is outta this world. Absolute amazing memory. And so does my grandfather’s impress oldest nephew. He’s a hundred. Wow. And he still drives and that’s very, he still drives.
[01:04:54] Paula: Wow. Impressive. Impressive. Well girl, you know, we could talk forever.
[01:04:59] Paula: We could probably do another podcast, a third or fourth .
[01:05:02] Marietta: Cause I mean, your material is so interested
[01:05:06] Paula: and so, um, I’ve gotta just wrap up here and say to my amazing listeners, you have heard from Marietta Ka isn, Isn’t she one amazing woman? If you have a story similar to her, well, who can have a story similar to her, she’s unique
[01:05:25] Paula: please reach out to me on my website, which is www.chatwiththeexperts.com/contact us and drop me a line. I would love to have you come on, especially if you are a daughter of an immigrant woman or an immigrant woman herself from Africa or the Caribbean who. Found herself in Europe, North America, the uk, or Australia.
[01:05:50] Paula: Please join me in celebrating these women because their stories are worthwhile listening to. Thank you again, Marietta. Thank you for saying yes. I said so at the beginning and I’m saying so again, thank you.
[01:06:05] Marietta: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I really, you know, sometimes you do these things and then you go, Oh, all about, wow.
[01:06:13] Marietta: Just made me think about things I haven’t a while. It’s the case, so thank you having me.