Remembering classical pianist and musical prodigy André Watts

TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. Classical pianist Andre Watts died last week at the age of 77. Watts is known as one of the first Black superstars in classical music. He became famous at 16 after performing for composer Leonard Bernstein at the New York Philharmonic on a nationally televised program called "The Young People's Concert." Bernstein would later call on Watts to perform a concert in place of Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, who had fallen ill. Watts rose to international fame after that performance, recording extensively with orchestras in the United States and Europe. Here he is performing Brahms' "Concerto No. 2 (Haydn)" with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.

(SOUNDBITE OF NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC PERFORMANCE OF BRAHMS' "PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 IN B-FLAT MAJOR, OP. 83: II. ALLEGRO APPASSIONATO")

MOSLEY: Watts brought electricity and emotion to his performances, sometimes humming, stomping his feet and bobbing his head as he played. He was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and later raised in Philadelphia. His father was a noncommissioned officer in the Army. His mother was an amateur pianist from Hungary. She's credited with teaching Watts to play the piano beginning at the age of 6. Watts spoke to Terry Gross in 1985, and they begin their conversation talking about those early lessons.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

ANDRE WATTS: There was not a lot of discipline involved, so it was just fun. And actually, I'm, in retrospect, always very thankful about the way I started playing the piano, although it's the unconventional way. And, you know, it makes all those - and I say this with no sarcasm - all those decent, hardworking, long-suffering piano teachers - it makes them shudder when I say that, you know, I put the pedal down for a page at a time just to listen to all that sound building up, you know, and rattled around a mile a minute playing everything but the right notes. You know, and I did that for about a year.

TERRY GROSS: People worry if you do that, you're going to develop bad habits that will be very difficult...

WATTS: Yes.

GROSS: ...To break.

WATTS: It is true, of course, that then when I - this was all in Germany. And then when I came to the United States, when I came to Philadelphia, then my mother thought, well, it seems like he has some talent. So, you know, he - now he should study with someone. And she got me to a piano teacher, and then I had to do scales and had to be told that, well, you know, don't you think that's a lot of different sounds if you don't move your foot, you know, off the pedal? And, yeah, sure, it took a little time. But what I got in that first year, I think, was the real complete - I mean, complete hedonistic, sort of an unalloyed pleasure of playing the instrument, just sitting at the piano and running around with your fingers on it. And that has, in a way, never left me. And I'm very thankful.

GROSS: Did it take a while before your teacher gave you music that you could play that you also really enjoyed as music?

WATTS: No because, you know, when - I came to Philadelphia when I was 8. And by the time I was sort of 8 1/2 or almost 9, I had auditioned to play with the Philadelphia Orchestra with the Haydn concerto. So certainly, within one or two months, she must have gotten me to start learning the Haydn concerto 'cause I was no wizard as far as quick learning. I mean, I was a quick study but no genius, so it must have taken at least half a year to learn the piece. So I had right away challenge, you know, and it wasn't boring, drudgery exercises.

GROSS: Obviously, when you were very young, a lot of people had the sense that you were an especially gifted pianist. Did you feel gifted or special when you were 9 at the time that you played with the orchestra?

WATTS: Well, sure, I probably realized that this was something that I did well that the kids in my class didn't do. But, you know, there were lots of other children who won at the same time that I did and who did - every year, there were other children who won and played. And I remember Linda Child played the same year that I played, and she was only 8 years old. I mean, so she was a year younger and probably played better, you know? I mean, she seemed to be very poised. And there were all kinds of people around. I think that, you know, that uninhibited ability to perform of very young children - of course, if the child has no talent, it doesn't happen. There is no performing. But it - that uninhibitedness, if I can say that, masks a lot of other faults that will develop with the adult...

GROSS: Well...

WATTS: ...And prevent a career or prevent continuing to play in front of the public.

GROSS: It's funny that you should say uninhibited way that children perform 'cause a lot of children were very traumatized by having to get on stage and perform when they were young, either for talent shows or in school or whatever or even at family reunions when their mother would say, play them Brahms, dear. They're all here to...

WATTS: But...

GROSS: ...See us today.

WATTS: It's interesting that you're saying that. Do you think - I mean, I don't know if we should get into this discussion, but do you think they're traumatized by the actual act of, you know...

GROSS: Of playing?

WATTS: ...Of being a trained seal, by the act of it? Or are they traumatized by all the stuff that that entails, vis a vis the parent, the teacher and all that stuff? Isn't that what the hassle is?

GROSS: Yeah, I think the hassle isn't...

WATTS: And the...

GROSS: ...The playing but...

WATTS: Yeah.

GROSS: ...The playing at the beck and call of...

WATTS: Yes.

GROSS: ...The adult and...

WATTS: And being called out, you know?

GROSS: Yeah, being an object that you...

WATTS: Roll over and play dead.

GROSS: ...Show off. Yes, that's right. Well, did anything like that ever happen to you? I mean...

WATTS: No.

GROSS: Did you ever feel like a show piece for somebody else?

WATTS: No. I was, again, fortunate because my mother certainly was never, in any stretch of the imagination, a stage mother. She didn't like the idea of - she didn't think it was good to have young children performing a lot. When I lived here when I was about 10 years old, there was a television show called "The Children's Hour," I think. It was called the "Children's Hour." Yeah. And they asked - they called and they asked my mother. I had played with the Philadelphia Orchestra. You know, and they said, we'd like to have him on the show, you know, as a regular. They had wonderfully talented kids, you know? I probably might have gotten lost anyway 'cause the kids were talented in that kind of really fast, you know, spur of the moment kind of great gift way.

But they wanted me to play every Sunday a short piece, you know? And they would pay you $25 per Sunday, which was a ton of money for us at that time. And my mother said, yeah, well, that's very nice, but I don't think so. And then she - you know, she would talk to me and my teacher at that time and said, well, yeah, but the problem is he'll have to spend all week learning that little piece. And he'll be doing that for weeks and weeks, and he won't learn any real music. So I was spared all that kind of - that's why I was never - I never fell in the prodigy mold, really, in the real sense, you know - exploited prodigy.

GROSS: That's interesting.

WATTS: Yeah.

GROSS: By the time you were 16, you played with the New York Philharmonic for the Young People's Concert.

WATTS: Yeah.

GROSS: And then you sat in for the ailing Glenn Gould a few days after that...

WATTS: Yeah.

GROSS: ...With the New York Philharmonic. Did you start thinking at that point, well, I've made it this far; I can either keep going, or I can do something terrible here and fail? Did you feel the incredible pressure that was on you then?

WATTS: Yeah, but not till those concerts were over and not until maybe two or three months later. I felt the pressure very strongly. You see; I played that - the two subscription concerts in place of Glenn Gould, and there was all this hoopla and all this newspaper stuff and managers coming and saying - you know, ready to manage you and record companies and, you know, the whole business. And that was sort of - it was interesting. It was not a real problem. But that summer, I played a concert at Lewisohn Stadium. And then I had to play three concerts on tour with the Philharmonic. So these were my first sort of out there, professional concerts. And then I felt the pressure. And, of course, I was very young. Yes, I was 16. My birthday's in June. So that summer for that tour, I think maybe I'd just turned 17. And I was in a stage where I would sit up all night, you know, waiting for the newspapers to come out. I would watch television until it went off, which it did do in those days, you know, and then read something and then run out and get the newspapers. And, you know, the whole idea that you go someplace and play a concert and somebody wants to do an interview with you before you've played was already strange and unusual.

And I learned very quickly. You know, I would do an interview, and my mother traveled with me. And, you know, somebody would be very pleasant. And I would be very open and free. And I would talk about it, and then that part would be fine. That would all be accurately reflected in the interview when I would read it. But then there would be these things about, well, whether this is just a flash in the pan in this career. And I would think, what do they mean? Oh, yeah, I guess. Sure, I guess. You know, and then it began to dawn on me. You know, how many bad concerts can I play - not intentionally, but, you know - before they, you know, cut my head off and, you know, pitch it away and say, let's not hear from this one again? It didn't last very long for me, worrying about that. I must say.

GROSS: What brought you out of that?

WATTS: Well, I - a number of things, I think. It would be difficult for me to pinpoint. I really believe that at a certain point early on, I realized that you could have a great success even if you played like a pig, and you could play what you felt was truly beautifully and have - make no impact on people. And so I thought, well, you know, hope for the best, and just try to play well, and that's it.

GROSS: So at that point, you stopped using other people's reactions as your gauge of how well you were playing.

WATTS: Yeah. I began slowly to read reviews differently. I mean, they would still have a big impact on me. I remember, you see - so let's see. I played two concerts to substitute for Gould, right? Then I played at Lewisohn Stadium. The next concert was at the Hollywood Bowl. And this was a tour of Bernstein's with the Philharmonic, but Seiji Ozawa was conducting my portion of the concert. So it was Seiji and me. We were this little couple out there, you know, doing this Liszt concerto, and the big New York Philharmonic with Bernstein did the rest of the program. And I stayed up all night, ran down on the street - I stayed in a hotel in Beverly Hills - ran down on the street in the morning, got a newspaper. And you know those little subheadings on newspapers, you know, slightly bigger print, you know, the short headline? And the first part of the review was about the New York Philharmonic and Bernstein. And then there was a subheading, and it said, Watts' melodic line withers on the vine.

And I had just turned 17. And I want to tell you, boy, was this pain, agony, you know, and a lot of suffering. And - but I joke about it now. I talk about it a lot because maybe it was good, in a way, to get such a - that obviously was not meant as a constructive criticism, for God's sake. I mean, you know, you got some 17-year-old kid who's starting his career, and you want to do a hatchet job on him. That's - can hardly be viewed as constructive. You could say that he let the melodic line die, sag and that he needs to learn how to sustain, if that's the case, which I didn't think was the case either, frankly. I didn't agree with the comment, aside from the fact that I thought it was vicious.

And that made me then - it gave me a lot of grief. But I would think about things, and I would think, well, now wait a minute. How - if someone is so ill-disposed, how much faith should you put actually in their musical judgment? How objective are they? I mean, do they really know what they're saying? And that got me over that sort of quickly. I must say, though, I have learned from colleagues older and wiser that one should not read reviews before eating breakfast. And I do tend to avoid it. I really do even to this day.

MOSLEY: Classical pianist Andre Watts speaking with Terry Gross in 1985. He died last week at the age of 77. We'll hear more of their interview after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF ANDRE WATTS PERFORMANCE OF LISZT'S "4 VALSES OUBLIEES S215: I. VALSE OUBLIEE")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. We're listening to Terry's 1985 interview with classical pianist Andre Watts, who died last week at the age of 77.

GROSS: Your mother's white, and your father was Black. I'd like to know if you felt between two different worlds when you were growing up.

WATTS: Precisely. But actually, I've never been asked that question that way. People usually assume and ask with the assumption in the question that you either felt part of the white community or part of the Black community. And they're always a little bit surprised when I go through my palaver, which has developed into a set spiel over the years. But I mean it sincerely, and I'm happy about it, in a certain sense, that the reason that I feel comfortable about throwing stones at any and all races is precisely because, well, I am half Black and half white. That is simply a fact.

But when I was growing up, because of skin color, I didn't belong to the white world. And because it was, you know, in the neighborhood, rather clear that my mother was white, I didn't belong to the Black world. So I was some bizarre case. I mean, obviously, there are other cases. You know, it's not isolated in the world, but it was different. And that - I mean, it didn't cause me necessarily a lot of grief. But there certainly wasn't the sense of identity resulting from belonging to a group - that not. And I kind of like it.

GROSS: When you became of age and started entering the performance world and everything, did anyone ever say to you, well, say, you're part Black; shouldn't you be playing jazz?

WATTS: Oh, all the time.

GROSS: (Laughter) What would you say to that?

WATTS: Well, first I laugh because, I mean - and for a variety of reasons, I laugh. It's probably funny. I - perhaps I laugh out of embarrassment for the other person, not for myself. I really don't know what to say to you because I've heard it so much over the years now.

Because, you know, when I play, I have a lot of body mannerisms, and my mouth moves, and sometimes I sing, unfortunately, and I stamp my feet and stuff like that. And so sometimes people don't even ask. You know, they come backstage and they say, oh, well, we watched you, and boy, you must really play great jazz. And I just sort of say, oh, no, I don't. I mean, when I was much younger, I probably said it apologetically, you know, because I felt like I ought to.

I don't mind. I wish people wouldn't assume that that's the case. If they ask, I find it less of a racially oriented pigeonholing assumption than if they assume. It's when they assume. You know, I always have the urge - I mean, and really not with much anger. I mean, it's more funny - the urge to say, you want to watch me tap dance, you know?

GROSS: (Laughter).

WATTS: I mean, you know, it's sort of - I can understand it, of course. It's - you don't really expect - one, the world is not really accustomed to having brown-skinned people playing - sitting at a piano, playing Mozart and Beethoven and Haydn and stuff like that. It makes sense, you know. It's usually those people who are, you know, playing the blues and jazz and stuff like that. I think that's fine. That's great.

But if indeed your senses show you a brown-skinned person playing Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven, I'm not so sure you should automatically assume, well, he also must be a successor to Art Tatum. I'd love to be a successor to Art Tatum. Unfortunately, that's not one of my talents.

GROSS: When you began to be successful in the classical music world, did you become an important symbol to Black audiences?

WATTS: I don't know. I got to ask Black audiences. I mean, I like the idea of the role model business. Beyond that, I don't know. I was never very much of an activist.

I also have never been - I'm probably even perverse and will bend over backwards to resist automatically being for something because it's either white or Black. If there's even - if I even sense that there's a - if I get a scent, a hint of that smell, of that kind of a thing, I probably will react against it even before I really know the complete facts, just because I dislike the idea that, well, you should be approving of this because it is Black-oriented. Why? I don't - that's something I never accept.

Or - I mean, it's as silly to me, frankly, as if somebody said, well, you shouldn't be making any criticisms of that because it's Hungarian, and your mother's Hungarian. So? It's her problem, not mine. You know, I don't have to - so I feel sort of strongly about hitting out on that.

GROSS: Do you think your playing's changed a lot over the years?

WATTS: Yes and no. I've said this so often, but I don't know what else to say. My feelings are always the same when I'm asked this question. I once had a conversation with Gyorgy Sandor, the pianist, and he said, well, look, what really happens is that you learn more, and you get more sophisticated, and your equipment gets better. But in principle, there's a core that you play now exactly the way you did when you were 9 years old.

And I believe him. I think he's right. There is a core that doesn't change. The funny, intimate, real - at the core, at the soul of your being, the funny little predilections remain. You know the whole business about when you play a piece basically is - and these are generalizations. I understand that - but basically is your thrust for the making of the piece in an interior way? In other words, you almost project the piece back inside towards yourself, almost as if you're hiding it from any other listeners. Is that your basic leaning?

You know, we're now talking about personality types, actually, is what we're doing, and it gets reflected in the music. Or is your basic leaning that, wow, you figured out how this piece goes, and you play it, and you kind of want it to blossom out? I mean, it's like handing somebody a bouquet and saying, hey, you want to smell this, you know? Those things I don't think change.

MOSLEY: Classical pianist Andre Watts. He died last week at the age of 77. We've been listening to his 1985 interview with Terry Gross. Here he is playing Franz Liszt, "Six Grande Etudes After Paganini, No. 1 in G Minor." I'm Tonya Mosley, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF ANDRE WATTS PERFORMANCE OF LISZT'S "SIX GRANDE ETUDES AFTER PAGANINI, NO. 1 IN G MINOR")

TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Mosley. The Women's World Cup began this week, and it will be the final World Cup for one of women's soccer's most iconic stars - Megan Rapinoe. She announced recently that she'll retire at the end of this season.

Rapinoe is an icon for being a champion and an activist. In her 17 years with the U.S. Women's National Soccer team, most recently as co-captain, she helped the team win two Women's World Cups in 2015 and 2019 and a gold medal at the 2012 Olympics. For a while, she was the only openly gay player on the U.S. Women's National Soccer team, which put her in the spotlight as an LGBTQ activist. She fought for equal pay in women's soccer, and she was part of a lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. In 2016, a week after Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem, Rapinoe also took a knee in support and faced the consequences.

Terry Gross spoke with Megan Rapinoe in 2020, and she had just written a memoir.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

TERRY GROSS: When you started playing soccer, when you were around 6, there wasn't, like, a girls' team for you to be part of. So you and your twin sister became members of the boys' team. How did it feel for you as a girl to be on the boys' team? Because, you know, another thing you say in your book is that you don't think you ever dominated a team the way you dominated that boys' team when you were a child.

MEGAN RAPINOE: (Laughter).

GROSS: And, you know, I'm also wondering, like, did the boys really appreciate that? Like, she's really great, and she's on our team? Or did they think it was weird or maybe even uncomfortable that a girl was, like, beating them? You know, you were on the same team, but you were better than they were.

RAPINOE: You know, I don't think I ever really, really thought about it probably until, you know, fifth or sixth grade. I think that's when gender lines are drawn more clearly. Because, you know, all growing up, we played with each other. We played with boys. It was - you know, during recess, during, you know, intramural sports or whatever it may be, sort of our town sports. It was just kind of, like, what it was.

And I think from a very early age, my sister Rachel and I were always the best. Like, there was no question. So it wasn't like, you know, we were coming up against these boys and kind of holding our own or kind of not. We were kind of kicking everyone's butt. So I don't think the boys even looked at us like, oh, these are girls, and we're not supposed to lose to girls. It's kind of like, well, yeah, those are the twins, and, like, they're better than everyone.

It was interesting, actually. I think that we were maybe 11 or 12. We played on a boys' team that traveled to Sacramento. So we're from a pretty small town in Northern California called Redding. It's about 2 1/2 hours' drive from Sacramento to a town that - you know, I think because they have so many kids and the sports programs were a lot better, the soccer programs were a lot better, they were split up by boys and girls, I'm sure, a lot earlier. But ours was kind of like, well, let's just get the best, you know, 20 kids that we can find, and we'll just work with that.

But the parents on the other team and even the boys on the other team were really kind of taken aback by it. You know, comments coming from the parents on the sidelines - oh, don't let that girl beat you. Or the boys, you could just tell, on the other team were just uncomfortable with the fact that they were being beaten or being bettered by a girl. But that was kind of the first time I sort of realized like, oh, these parents are not used to this. And clearly this is something that they should look a little deeper into because they seem quite upset.

GROSS: You write that you knew you were never going to be the fastest player or the strongest player, so you had to develop a style rooted in something other than beating people through physical force. Do you think that thinking that you wouldn't be, like, the strongest or the fastest helped you develop your footwork?

RAPINOE: Oh, yeah, definitely. I think it helped me develop not just my footwork, but my awareness in the game. Some people can outrun everyone. Some people are better understanding spatial awareness. I think I was good at that. I think I was understanding, you know, how I could make space for myself in a sort of a strategic way.

I mean, I think I'm athletic enough, obviously, to be able to run fast and do things. But I think I just developed other parts of my game that - no matter how fast you are or how strong you are, you can still be really successful if you're creative with the game, if you have good vision, if you know how to get open, if you know how to pull defenses apart, if you can anticipate all of those kinds of things.

GROSS: So I want to ask you about one of your most spectacular plays, which a lot of us have seen either when it happened or on YouTube because the video went viral. It was in 2011. You kick the ball across the field, a big, amazing cross. And then Abby Wambach headed it in to the goal. So I want you to describe it from your perspective.

RAPINOE: We're in Dresden, Germany. It's 2011. This is my first World Cup. The game is going very strange from the outset. The crowd actually was quite neutral. I think whenever we travel, we generally get a pretty pro-American crowd. There's been very few times where we haven't had that.

But the game was weird. We had gotten a red card in, like, the 60th minute, maybe. So one of our players was ejected. I think we were losing at the time, maybe 2 to 1. And it was - you just felt a weird sort of energy in the crowd. I think around the time that our player got ejected, Brazil - they started, you know, wasting time and using, you know, different tactics. But I think they were just trying to waste time and get to the end of the game.

So we end up tying it up. We end up going into overtime. They score in overtime. And you can kind of feel the crowd turn on them as they start to have more antics and try to waste more time and this and that. So there was some whistling happening.

And we get down to the very final minutes of the game. I mean, we're already past the time. I think it was in the 122nd minute. And I'm really just thinking to myself, like, we're going to lose. Like, oh, my God. Like, we're going to lose. The ball - you know, I'm looking at the clock. It's down in our end. We've just, you know, taken the ball from the Brazilians. And then I'm just like, we're going to be, you know, the U.S. team that goes out the earliest that we've ever had, and it's just, you know, tragic.

We start to dribble up the field. It comes across to the middle. Carli Lloyd gets the ball. And I'm just thinking, like - it seemed like she held onto the ball and dribbled the ball for five hours, but it was probably three seconds. It finally comes over to me. And in all of its sense, it was just a Hail Mary. I didn't see Abby, but I knew she better be there. I was like, I don't know where else you would be, but you better be somewhere around where I'm trying to kick it.

And I just heaved it. I just kicked it literally as hard as I could. And you have this insane sort of last-second goal, which very rarely happens in soccer. I mean, essentially that - the game was over. We went into - you know, we tied it up, went into overtime and won in penalties. But that was sort of the deciding moment. And it was just an exceptional moment of emotion, I think, for everybody to feel at the same time, from the players on the field to the crowd to the people back home. It was just insane.

GROSS: You were one of the first women on the U.S. national women's soccer team to come out, although you say there were plenty of other women who were gay but not out. You say you were one of the only gay players at the time, which is hilarious considering how many gay people were really on the team. So...

RAPINOE: Yes.

GROSS: ...What made you decide, like, you were going to publicly come out?

RAPINOE: You know, I honestly felt like - I mean, even going back to when I first sort of discovered I was gay myself, which happened very shortly after I got to college, I never struggled with that. I was actually thrilled. I thought, OK, this is awesome. I felt like my whole life sort of, like, clicked into place, and it just gave me this whole new sense of myself and just this confidence, I think, kind of bloomed and exploded in me. And it was during - I mean, I think at the time, maybe just before that Prop 8 had been on the ballot in California - I'm from California - you know, generally, I think these cases were coming before the Supreme Court, and it just be - kind of came, like, why am I not out? I didn't really have a lot of, you know, interaction with media where I had to hide it or, you know, nobody was asking. That's not really an appropriate question to ask someone.

But it just became one of those things where I did start to notice myself saying some things and not others. And I just was like, what am I doing? Like, why am I even doing that? And why am I not out, knowing that it could probably have a really positive impact? And so I just kind of made the decision. It was actually on the plane ride home from that 2011 World Cup. I was sitting next to my friend Lori (ph), who's also out and played on the team for a long time. It was just - yeah, it just kind of became, like, why am I not out? This is not feeling right. And so I took, I think, a couple of months to sort of figure out exactly what I wanted to do and then came out before the London Olympics in 2012.

GROSS: And what changed afterwards?

RAPINOE: Publicly, I think a lot changed. I still, to this day, have, you know, people coming up to me or writing to me or whatever it may be, you know, thanking me or saying, you know, I'm the reason they felt OK with themselves or I'm the reason their family was OK or, you know, parents coming up to me who, you know, very clearly have little, budding gay children. And even if it's an unspoken thing, it's - they see themselves in me. They see a future for their children that isn't, you know, just all about the stereotype that you hear, which is how hard life is to be gay. And not to say that life isn't difficult being gay. For a lot of people, it really is. But it's not all bad. It's not all struggle. Whenever I go into a room, like, we don't have to talk about the fact that I'm gay - or an interview or whatever doesn't have to be all about that, but I'm very out and proud and will show that and will live a very out and open life. And I think that that's vital for people to see.

MOSLEY: Soccer player and activist Megan Rapinoe speaking to Terry Gross in 2020. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF AWREEOH SONG, "CAN'T BRING ME DOWN")

MOSLEY: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to Terry's 2020 interview with soccer star and activist Megan Rapinoe. She recently announced that she'll retire at the end of the season after 17 years.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: So, you know, we've talked about your work as an LGBTQ activist. You took a knee in 2016, a week after Colin Kaepernick did. You were 31. You were a veteran of two World Cups and two Olympic Games. And it sounds from your memoir like it was a pretty spontaneous move on your part. Tell us what went through your mind when you did it.

RAPINOE: What I was thinking at the time - so we've gone through, you know, the summer of 2014. We've gone through the Black Lives Matter protests. You know, going through 2015, that's all still happening. 2016 summer was just so tragic - you know, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and, you know, the Dallas police officers shot. I think there was more police officers shot in Louisiana, as well. And just, you know, kind of coming to a head. The WNBA players had staged protests during their season, actually, you know, refusing to talk about anything, but - and so you kind of get to this moment in Colin Kaepernick, where, you know, the first moment that I saw him speak on "SportsCenter" or whatever it was, it was like - it just was very simple to me. Like, this is clearly happening throughout the country.

We've gone through Trayvon Martin. We've gone through Michael Brown. We've gone through, you know, Tamir Rice and Philando Castile and all of these - Sandra Bland and all of these horrible tragedies. And, I mean, of course we're at this moment, and of course what he's saying is true. And it just really struck me. And he sort of put an action to the words that he was saying and the words that I had been reading for so long and the words, you know, of all of these Black Lives Matter protests. And it just was like, OK, this is an action that I can do, that I can help with.

GROSS: So I want to read something that you reprint in your memoir. And this is what U.S. Soccer said in an official statement. And you say it might as well have been headed dear Megan. So the statement was (reading) representing your country is a privilege and honor for any player or coach that is associated with U.S. Soccer's national team. In front of national and often global audiences, the playing of our national anthem is an opportunity for our men's and women's national team players and coaches to reflect upon the liberties and freedom we all appreciate in the country. As part of the privilege to represent your country, we have an expectation that our players and coaches will stand and honor our flag while the national anthem is played.

What was your reaction when you read that statement?

RAPINOE: I couldn't believe it. I think I was truly sort of dumbstruck. It really upset me. The nerve and the audacity to say what they did in that statement - it is an honor and a privilege that we all have in this country? I don't think so. I don't think we do all have that in this country. So it missed the entire point, clearly. And it was just cruel in a way. It was gaslighting, and it was manipulative, and it was cruel. But it also was very - I thought, very intentionally meant to silence me.

GROSS: What are some of the repercussions you faced professionally?

RAPINOE: They're sort of gray repercussions, I'll say. You know, in - like, in terms of sponsorships, I didn't lose any sponsorships, which I think is great. Obviously, Nike's a big sponsor of mine. They have been very supportive. But I certainly didn't get any new sponsorships. And I certainly didn't get any new opportunities sort of in the short term. You know, from U.S. Soccer's perspective, from playing, I really didn't play again until the spring, I think, or even later into the next year.

GROSS: And did you regret kneeling because of that?

RAPINOE: No. No, no. Definitely not. I mean, I think, honestly, the only thing that I regret, maybe, was, when I came back, that I didn't keep kneeling. That's something that I feel like I still struggle with. You know, I didn't want to lose my job. You know, I didn't want to not have a platform to talk on. I didn't want to not, you know, keep playing for the national team.

GROSS: U.S. Soccer did eventually lift the ban. When did they lift it?

RAPINOE: As, you know, the tragic murder of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, as the protests subsequently, you know, swept the nation, I think that they realized that, that policy not only is now - is wrong now, but it always was. And it was the wrong policy, and they came out with a pretty strongly worded statement and rescinded it.

GROSS: So you're very stylish in your streetwear and in red carpet looks. And I forget which trophy that you won, but you wore - it was like a gown with a plunge neckline - very stylish and elegant and very feminine. And you're somebody who used to always dress like a boy (laughter) when you were young. So when - oh, and I should mention, like, during one big game, you dyed your hair platinum, during another, you dyed it pink. So when did that happen, that you became conscious of style?

RAPINOE: You know, I think I've always been conscious of style. I think I'm much more stylish now than I used to be. But I think I've always been - you know, I've always, like, had jewelry or tied little things on my wrist or worn rings or necklaces or whatever. I think that comes from my mom. She's always like - you know, does things for herself. That's, like, her form of self-expression and self-care in a way. And I also believe that everybody should live in their full individuality. It's interesting because we live in a society that values the sort of individual over the greater good, but we require that individual to fit in this tiny box of what we deem as a society acceptable. And, like, nobody really fits into that, right?

And so I think with fashion, and whether that be a red carpet or just what I'm wearing to the grocery store, it's like a way that I express myself in that I speak to myself for myself. It's like, I don't really get dressed for anyone else. Like, sometimes I feel more masculine. Sometimes I feel more feminine. Sometimes I like to wear whatever. But it's all just, like, to sort of feed my own individuality and creativity. And it, like, just makes me feel good.

GROSS: Megan Rapinoe, thank you so much for talking with us.

RAPINOE: Thank you so much for having me on.

MOSLEY: Soccer champion and activist Megan Rapinoe spoke to Terry Gross in 2020. The Women's World Cup began yesterday, and Rapinoe announced it will be her last. She is retiring at the end of the season. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new films "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer." This is FRESH AIR.

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TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. The fact that Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" and Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" are both in theaters today has generated a lot of buzz and memes about the phenomenon known as Barbenheimer. Based on advance ticket sales, thousands of moviegoers have already booked an opening weekend double bill. Our film critic Justin Chang says that whether you watch them back-to-back or on different days, both "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" are well worth a theater-going experience.

JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: Like a lot of people, I chuckled at the Barbenheimer memes that have flooded the internet in recent weeks. Even though counterprogramming is hardly a new thing, it's not every day that an exuberant comedy about a Mattel doll come to life goes head-to-head with a brooding drama about the father of the atomic bomb. Naturally, there was a lot of sexist speculation that men would prefer to see "Oppenheimer" while women would be the dominant audience for "Barbie." But that's the kind of gender stereotype the "Barbie" movie itself seeks to turn on its head. The director, Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote the script with Noah Baumbach, begins her story in Barbie Land, a pink-tastic (ph) paradise that's home to countless walking, talking, life-sized Barbie dolls. They're a diverse group in terms of race and profession. Issa Rae plays President Barbie, Hari Nef plays Doctor Barbie, and Margot Robbie is perfectly cast as our heroine, stereotypical Barbie. They all just call each other Barbie, though, just as almost every man here answers to Ken, including the one played by Robbie's hilariously self-mocking co-star, Ryan Gosling. The Barbies run Barbie Land, and the Kens vie for their love and attention, as in this scene in which Gosling's Ken tries to ingratiate himself with Robbie's Barbie.

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RYAN GOSLING: (As Ken) Hey, Barbie.

MARGOT ROBBIE: (As Barbie) Yeah.

GOSLING: (As Ken) Can I come to your house tonight?

ROBBIE: (As Barbie) Sure. I don't have anything big planned - just a giant blowout party with all the Barbies and planned choreography and a bespoke song. You should stop by.

GOSLING: (As Ken) So cool.

ROBBIE: (As Barbie) Yeah. OK, bye.

GOSLING: (As Ken) Bye.

CHANG: The plot kicks in when Barbie starts feeling not quite herself, and strange thoughts of death intrude on her upbeat day-to-day. She winds up on a mysterious journey to the real world, with Ken stowing away in the backseat of her pink Corvette. Arriving in LA, Barbie befriends a Mattel employee played by a winning America Ferrera and discovers that Barbie dolls are far from unanimously beloved in the real world. She also learns that, unlike in Barbie Land, women here have a much harder time getting the rights and respect they deserve. This comes as a particular revelation to Ken, who becomes a poster boy for the patriarchy overnight in one of the story's slyer twists.

Gerwig brought a terrific energy to her earlier movies, like "Lady Bird," and here she keeps the comedy and the action moving at a speedy clip. Between all the chase scenes and pratfalls, dance numbers and beachfront serenades, the movie tries to have an honest debate about whether Barbie has, in the words of one angry real-world teenager, set the feminist movement back years. Celebrating and critiquing a corporate brand is a tricky needle to thread, and I'm not sure "Barbie" in the end pulls it off. Even so, Robbie's captivating and sincere performance wins you over. She's the center of gravity at the heart of this movie's merry comic tornado.

Beyond their shared release date, "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" both have a level of conceptual ambition we don't always see in Hollywood movies. In "Oppenheimer," which runs a taut and fast-moving three hours, the director, Christopher Nolan, has made a brilliantly unorthodox portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who oversaw the Manhattan Project that led to the creation of the atomic bomb. As usual, Nolan doesn't make things easy, shuttling between time frames and perspectives, shooting in color and black and white and immersing us in a stew of names and government acronyms, plus much talk of quantum physics. But the movie is extraordinarily gripping, and it's remarkable to watch as Oppenheimer, played by a superbly restrained Cillian Murphy, comes into focus.

In adapting Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's Oppenheimer biography, "American Prometheus," Nolan comes at his subject from every angle. We get a sense of Oppenheimer's wide-ranging intellect, his Jewish heritage, his left-wing politics, his marriage, his womanizing and his enigmatic charm. His ability to bring so many things and people together will make him uniquely suited to direct something as logistically daunting as the Manhattan Project, even if he's unprepared for the consequences.

"Oppenheimer" is somehow both an immersive character study and a teeming ensemble piece with vivid work even in small roles from Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh and many others. Matt Damon is gruffly amusing as Colonel Leslie Groves, who hires Oppenheimer for the project, and Emily Blunt is electric as Oppenheimer's fiercely independent-minded wife, Kitty. But the most forceful performance comes from Robert Downey Jr. as former Atomic Energy Commission chair Lewis Strauss, who plays a key role in the 1954 hearings that will strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance and make him a pariah. After the war, Oppenheimer spoke out against nuclear proliferation, though he notably never expressed regret for the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the Oppenheimer we see in Nolan's movie is ravaged by guilt and horror at what he's unleashed. He realizes that the threat of global annihilation, far from having been defeated, may have only been postponed.

MOSLEY: Justin Chang is the film critic for the LA Times. He reviewed "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer," both opening today in theaters. On Monday's show, Colson Whitehead. After writing two Pulitzer Prize-winning novels, "The Underground Railroad" and "The Nickel Boys," he started writing crime novels set in Harlem. His new one, "Crook Manifesto," is an entertaining read about crime at every level, from small-time crooks to revolutionaries, cops, politicians and Harlem's elite. I hope you can join us.

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MOSLEY: To keep up with what's on the show and to get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @NPRFreshAir. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer's Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support from Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Tina Kalakay. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Susan Nyakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. For Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.

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Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.