Topher Payne
@topherwrites in his backyard. He is upset I didn’t want to photograph him with the flowers he just planted.
-Theatre-
Topher gets me the most clout with my family and friends who aren’t involved in the entertainment industry. Whenever I tell someone I have a friend who writes Hallmark Christmas movies they look at me with stars in their eyes, as if that closeness to celebrity validates my career choice that most of the time they don’t understand or value.
But then I talk to Topher and I get stars in my eyes, not because he is “famous” or even professionally because he is doing what he loves and is “successful”, but because he almost instantaneously makes you feel like family. He validates you and what you do just by looking you directly in the eye and telling you how he feels. There is a power in eye contact and his feels like you are staring into the idea of understanding itself. I guess that is how you can communicate when you are a writer and really good with words.
Interviewed 6.1.20
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Casey: Hi Topher.
Topher: Hi Casey.
Casey: How are you?
Topher: I am sweaty and dirty and doing fine.
Casey: I mean, cause you've been obviously busy in your backyard here, looking fantastic.
Topher: We've been in the house for two years and never took advantage of this space because we have a closed swimming pool that we can't use. And I feel like we spent two years looking out the back windows at what it couldn't be. And now if we want even the possibility of seeing the people we love, then I need an appropriate space where people can be comfortable and also maintain a distance. And so I started coming up with the idea of doing little staging areas so that people can just kind of holler at each other from about ten to twelve feet away, and everybody can bring their own booze. And hopefully this summer we'll figure out how to bring people together as best we can.
Casey: So how have you been? You're here. You're messy and dirty or whatever. But how are you doing mentally? How are you doing emotionally?
Topher: I'd say the last week has certainly been really interesting. It's the most curious thing because, of course, all of my out-of-town friends see Atlanta on the TV and then I get all of these, "Are you OK? Are you OK?" We live in the suburbs and we live in an extraordinarily diverse suburb. Clarkston and Tucker have so many new American families. So there's already such a beautiful spirit of kind, of collaborative and cooperative living in the area where we are. And it's a very, very quiet neighborhood. I've spent the last few months being very, very grateful for our very quiet neighborhood. And then in the last week, it also kind of smacks of my own privilege that there can be that degree of distress and fear and anger and frustration taking to the streets 15 minutes away from our front door. And we're in a very quiet neighborhood.
You know, we did the Women's March, we did the airport March, we did the Science March. We respond very quickly to a call to action. And I've had cancer three times. I can't go hang out in large groups right now for any reason. So that feeling of being isolated from the activity that I would normally be compelled to run toward, it kind of makes the things that I was missing for the last few months feel naive. Because now I feel like there's something happening. There's a moment in our cultural history happening when allies are needed and voices are needed and bodies are needed. And I can't contribute to that in the way that I would want. That's where my head's been.
Casey: Yeah. Definitely the last couple of days have been very very hard.
Topher: Yeah.
Casey: How is your family?
Topher: My mother and father live already in isolation in a very, very small town of about 200 people in Mississippi. So I guess it's like technically a village. And she was not comfortable with the Kroger app, and so she calls me with her grocery list and I go on the Kroger app, order her groceries, she goes, they throw it in the trunk of her car. We do that every two weeks. I have never been so grateful for the relative isolation that my parents chose for themselves. But we've reached a point now where I would have seen them this year by now. I probably would have seen them twice by now. And the most loving and caring thing I can do for my family of origin and family of choice, for that matter, is stay the hell away. But on the upside, Momma and I are talking on the phone like three or four times a week just to chat, you know, and just for her to get away from her husband and me to get away from mine, and both of us to have something new to talk about when we return to them—and so I'm grateful for that.
The conversations just by volume aren’t surface level exchanges, you know, and I love that. I'm grateful for that now, and I will be grateful for that later, that I had this period of several months where my Momma and I would just get on the phone and talk about real shit, you know? And I've never had those conversations with her before. The conversations we've had in the last week have been so complex. She was the daughter of an itinerant farmer, and the families she grew up around were predominantly Black in Mississippi in the 1950s. And so her point of view on that brings a completely different kind of life experience to the table. I made the decision at the beginning of May that I was going to stop waking up every morning and thinking about the things I don't have, and just not give myself—I don't have the luxury of feeling bereft because that's such a luxurious place to be.
Casey: So what are you doing instead?
Topher: Focusing on what could only have happened because of this. Like those conversations with Mama, which never would have happened otherwise. Like finding out the strength of the companion ability of my marriage—that there are a lot of people in this world that I can picture being quarantined for three months with, and one of us not making it out alive. Just the enjoyment we have of each other's company and also respect for each other's need for silent work. So that when we come together, we enjoy that time. And when we're separate, neither of us feels deprived. And these are things that I suspected that you don't find out until you're in lockdown, you know.
You know, my film manager has begged me for years to just write a screenplay on spec. And it's like with the Hallmark movies, when I'm not working on a Hallmark movie, I have all of that endless time, and that's the time that I would always use for theater. And to protect my own sanity, last year, I said, "I am taking a year and focusing on theater." I had two movies coming out that were already written and done and I had money in the bank. And I just wanted to focus on theater. And so I directed six shows last year. I got back on stage and did Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and did Designing Women. And Designing Women was the last thing I did in the world of theater. And that's why I so fervently believe theater will come back, because I can't let Designing Women be the last thing I ever did. But I felt good about that choice all throughout the year, and now I am so unbelievably grateful that I chose to prioritize what would feed my soul rather than what would feed my bank account. Because film will come back first, and I am very blessed to have careers in both. And I have time to fulfill my manager's dream and write a script that nobody's paying me to write. And when we start making movies again, I'll have a brand new screenplay to put out into the world. And that would not have happened otherwise because, you know, I had a very full calendar for the rest of 2020, and now I do not.
Casey: How has it been creating for the sake of creating?
Topher: Took me a really long time to get started. First, I have the “this is temporary” feels, you know? That was like maybe the first two weeks, three weeks, and then the crushing realization that this is not temporary. It wasn't pushing things until July or pushing things to September. It was, “this is the world we're living in, until it isn't.” And I feel like there was a grief process for that. I had to let go of the things I guess I had thought I had a right to, you know?
Casey: Like what?
Topher: Well, like life experiences that I thought I had a right to, that I thought I had earned. I put in so many years to finally reach a point, four years ago, where I could become a full-time writer. And I write plays and movies, and nobody's doing those now. So it's entirely possible that, you know, by the end of the year, I'll need to employ a different skill set. Well, that's OK. You know, I spent the first 15 years of my professional career hustling. And so I'll employ a different skill set if I need to.
But I did have to get over that sense of entitlement of “but I earned the position I was finally in." Well, plenty of people earn it and never get there. So I had this beautiful period of time when I was able to make a living doing nothing but telling stories. I firmly believe I will get back to a point where that is true again. There may be an in-between. And I can't approach that with fear because I'm good at other stuff, and I can get good at things that I haven't done yet. We have the things that we achieved and we earned the achievement, but nobody ever promised that you get to stay there.
Casey: I feel that in my soul.
Topher: And it doesn't diminish the achievement.
Casey: No.
Topher: It doesn't diminish everything that you put into earning the position that you attained. But the needs of the world around you shift, and the opportunities within that world shift. I had this cocky belief, particularly once I developed a relationship with Hallmark, who makes 60 movies a year.
Casey: An unending need.
Topher: Yeah. And they like me and I like them. And so I had this idea in my mind of "Well, how wonderful that I have that relationship because they will always, always be making movies."
Casey: Except when they're not.
Topher: Right. Everything in this life is temporary, including this life. And if you—as best you can—if you can shift your focus to what is actually directly in front of you, then there is beauty, there is possibility, and there is work to be done.
Casey: What do you think you'll take out of this? Because like you said, it's no longer going to be as temporary as we thought.
Topher: I think if we needed something to really slap us into focus on the fact that this is the end of the world as we know it and it probably should be. We were all ready, and when I say we, I mean my household. We were all ready of that mind. And then, kind of starting with Ahmaud Arbery and then continuing to build an awareness of—there's a lot of things that didn't just need a reset, but a complete reimagining. There were very, very necessary conversations that people who would believe themselves to be of good conscience had simply been avoiding. And so it has the potential for us kind of having the same benefit of meditation or prayer or reflection, where you take a period of silence, reconsider your approach, and then go back out into the world again. Not just my hope, but my strong belief is that's exactly the path that we're on. I don't know how long that will take. That may be something that generations behind us really, truly reap the benefits of. We may reflect upon our lifetimes, whether they be short or long, of having lived in a very fraught period of substantial change. There will be beauty, and peace, and wonderful moments within that, but we had to have a starting point. And we might very well be at the starting point, and I strongly suspect we are. And that is super encouraging, but, Lord, the beginning is rough.
