DANIELE WATTS ANSWERS THE TOUGH QUESTIONS

Daniele Watts, an actress from Django Unchained, and Chef BeLive aka Brian Lucas www.ChefBeLive.com should be sampling the best of what L.A. has to offer. They are artists with a strong hand in the creative community with Daniele educated at USC and the British American Drama Academy in London.   But they are both people in the center of an ongoing controversy that’s going back to court in just a few days.

Certainly, the questioning and subsequent arrest of Daniele Watts seems as though it was a situation that blew up into more than it should have. She admits in this conversation she had a hand in that as well.
The incident, in which police responded to a call about Daniele and her boyfriend having a sexual encounter in a parked car on an L.A. street, became a high profile case about race and policing. We ask her and Brian what was going on in the car that day.

Ultimately the story involved an audio tape recorded by Sgt. Jim Parker (the responding officer). The tape gave listeners an idea of what went on during the exchange between officers and Daniele and Brian.

The tape was leaked to TMZ apparently to clear the reputations of the cops who were taking on ugly charges of racism around the arrest both in published reports and internet postings worldwide.

The now famous tape seems to reflect an exchange that, indeed, has nothing much to do with race.

But in this conversation, Daniele Watts explains the emotion and history that’s coming to the exchange and how the encounter with police officers was a flashpoint for her.

While not explaining away her emotion, the conversation certainly helps the listener understand what’s in her head.

Heather Ankeny and J. Elvis Weinstein (Josh) join Mark Thompson and press Daniele about why the whole thing turned into such a mess. And ask her about the now controversial, court ordered APOLOGY LETTER (the full text below). The court ruled it insufficient and ordered the letter rewritten.

We also don’t think it’s much of an apology and we ask Daniele why the apology is so difficult.

It’s a spirited and enlightening conversation with two people who we haven’t heard in a long form conversation since the incident.

(NOTE—Daniele seemed to have softened within hours of having recorded this show—as though maybe the conversation was oddly therapeutic she seemed anxious to apologize and put this whole chapter of her life behind her—we’ll keep you updated.)

Read Daniele’s apology letter rejected by court