'Ghosts' Star On Manifesting 'The Whoopi Monologues'

Long before she was commanding CBS’s Thursday night lineup or walking away with an NAACP Image Award, Danielle Pinnock was a self-described “Black Matilda.” She was a teenager navigating New York transit with thick bifocals, a library card, and a dream that felt too large for the rooms she was offered. It was during this time that she first discovered the blueprint of Whoopi Goldberg’s historic 1984 one-woman Broadway show. Watching an uninhibited Black woman torch the rulebook of solo performance, Pinnock would foreshadow her own destiny.

Now, more than two decades later, she has come full circle. Pinnock is stepping directly into the text. Joining a powerhouse ensemble that includes Kerry Washington, Kara Young, Dominique Fishback, and Kecia Lewis, Pinnock is taking her place in the highly anticipated off-Broadway revival of The Whoopi Monologues. Directed by the visionary Whitney White, the production adapts Goldberg’s groundbreaking solo work into a multi-actor masterclass running through the end of August at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.

MadameNoire recently caught up with Danielle to discuss her deeply personal connection to Whoopi Goldberg’s legacy, the art of stepping into a theatrical blueprint, and how her viral success online has fueled her rise to becoming one of the most exciting multi-hyphenates in Hollywood.

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The Audacity of the “Shot”

For Black actresses moving through the classical theater pipeline, the standard curriculum has often relied heavily on Eurocentric giants. For Pinnock, mastery started at the intersection of character work and unapologetic Black storytelling. Goldberg’s work taught her how to build a world from scratch using nothing but voice, posture, and presence.

“Whoopi Goldberg was essentially my first Uta Hagen,” Pinnock shares. “I wanted to study the craft. I wanted to learn her nuances and comedic timing. I wanted to learn when audiences were laughing and what emotional beats she took.”

That meticulous study of character has defined the trajectory of Pinnock’s career. Long before Hollywood caught up to her genius, she was building a massive digital footprint through her social media platform, @BodyCourage. Her sharp wit and ability to capture the specific absurdities of modern life earned her global recognition, most notably her viral Parisian bedbug sketches that caught the attention of Forbes, and her internet character work praised by the likes of Viola Davis and Cynthia Erivo.

Pinnock’s path to The Whoopi Monologues is a perfect example of professional audacity. The actress tracked the production with the precision of a seasoned researcher, keeping tabs on the show for a year. While filming Ghosts last year, she flew in specifically for the opening of Whitney White’s play Saturday Church just to make her ambitions known, telling the director directly, “Hey, I really wanna be in the Whoopi Monologue.”

Despite making that initial trip to plant the seed, Hollywood casting cycles can be notoriously unpredictable. By the last week of May, Pinnock’s team had received no updates after submitting her materials. Rather than letting the opportunity slip away, Pinnock bypassed traditional channels and went straight to the source, DM’ing White on Instagram to ask if the show was fully cast. White initially confirmed it was, but fate intervened the very next day when a cast member dropped out.

What followed was a 48-hour whirlwind that Pinnock can only describe as “divine timing in a really, really amazing way.” She received a three-page audition script on Wednesday, memorized it completely to be off-book by Thursday for a high-stakes Zoom audition from Los Angeles, and received the official offer that Friday. It was a swift, triumphant reminder of what happens when preparation meets an unrelenting belief in one’s own craft.

A Table of Titans

Stepping into the rehearsal room brought Pinnock face-to-face with an ensemble of Black women who represent the vanguard of contemporary acting. Sharing the stage with heavyweights like Kerry Washington, two-time Tony winner Kara Young, Dominique Fishback, and Kecia Lewis is an experience she calls a dream realized. For Pinnock, sharing top billing with Washington carries an especially moving layer of irony, considering where her own Hollywood journey began.

Pinnock recalls watching Scandal and later booking a minor role during the show’s iconic crossover episode with How To Get Away with Murder. She played “Hairdresser Number One,” doing Viola Davis’s hair in a monumental scene alongside Washington. Cutting to the present day, standing on stage as equals feels completely “unreal” to her. She describes Washington as the literal personification of grace and excellence, while praising Kara Young as a transfixing, breathtaking performer, and celebrating both Kecia Lewis and Dominique Fishback for their masterclass-level, nuanced work on stage.

The entire rehearsal process has felt like a transformative return to acting school, but it is also a position Pinnock knows she has earned. “Having 20 years of experience in this industry, I definitely feel like having a seat at this table, it’s time,” she notes. “My career started in theater for many, many years, and so I’ve done off-Broadway, I’ve done regional theater, I’ve done projects overseas. Right now it really does feel like a homecoming for me, because–I’ve been on TV for a really long time, but having a seat at this table is so special…to be able to just learn at the feet of these women, but also to collaborate with them.”

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The Intimacy of Sisterhood and Safe Spaces

The creative energy of the production shifted into high gear when the cast had the opportunity to meet the architect of the piece herself during an appearance on The View. Goldberg shared the intimate, frustrating genesis of why she originally created these monologues decades ago. “She was a single mom, and she was so tired of going into auditions and not being considered because she was unconventional,” Pinnock shares. “You know, she was truly just like an out of the box talent, and people did not know what to do with her. And so she created her own legacy with this piece. And so now to be a part of Whoopi Goldberg’s legacy, I mean, she is—Whoopi Goldberg is a once in a generational talent, you know, and a gift. She has conquered every medium of entertainment,” Pinnock said of the EGOT winner.

That legacy is being carried forward through an intensely collaborative, fiercely protective environment backstage. According to Pinnock, theater possesses an inherent intimacy and trust that sets it completely apart from the isolated nature of television sets. “There is an intimacy there. There is a trust that is there,” she explains. “We are sharing… When we’re working on these characters, we are sharing personal stories and connections, and this is the safest place that I’ve ever been in as an artist, to be surrounded by Black women who are at the top of their game, but who also are just so kind and gracious.”

A Mirror for Every Soul

Now fully immersed in previews, Pinnock notes that having an active audience has made the theater feel completely electric. “Having the audience in the space has just changed everything because now we know where the laughs are,” she says. Rather than a simple collection of sketches, the show functions as a mirror for the collective community. “Each and every one of these characters has a portion of their journey that not only myself, but the audience will resonate with,” Pinnock says. She finds immense, breathtaking humanity across the entire script, marveling at how “Kara Young plays Fontaine, who is a junkie, but she has a PhD from Columbia, and she just lifts this character to the sky,” and how “Dominique Fishback plays a young girl who is looking at a surfer girl and is seeing all this whitewashed media, and it’s what it does to a young Black girl’s image of herself.”

When it comes to her own performance, Pinnock taps directly into her lineage to portray the “Jamaican Lady,” a role that serves as a profound love letter to her family’s roots. “The beautiful part about me being cast is that I am a first-generation Jamaican American, from Jamaica, so it feels special to be able to honor my culture this way on stage and make sure that I do it justice,” she notes. “To tell the story of an immigrant experience and also a love story means everything to me because it’s like, it’s not just a story of characters. It’s the story of my grandmother coming to the United States for the first time, as well as my mother, and what that adventure and misadventure was like for them.”

The production balances these deeply moving reflections with modern pacing. Describing Kerry Washington’s performance as a fast-talking surfer girl, Pinnock laughs, “We all have that friend who is just a fast-talking… You’re like, ‘Girl, why are you always doing something for the plot?’ We all have that friend, but it is such a–God, Kerry will literally take the breath out of your lungs by the time we get to that ending. There are so many women that I know will identify with this and it is just a heartbreaking character.” Combined with Kecia Lewis’s exploration of depression, shifting bodies, and perimenopause, the production leaves no stone unturned. “When I say that there is something for everyone in this piece, there really is,” Pinnock says. “I’ve been changed by this piece, and I just, and I get to see it every single night, so I really can’t wait for audiences to connect with it.”

With the show officially open and running through the end of August, the buzz is growing exponentially. When asked exactly what kind of modern-day word-of-mouth she hopes the production generates once theatergoers leave the theater, Pinnock doesn’t hesitate for a second to draft the perfect text.

“’Girl, come see the show. It is funny AF. But also amazing, and these women are killing it. Praise hand emoji, star emoji.’ That’s what I want them to say.”

Be sure to see Danielle in The Whoopi Monologues, running at the Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater through the end of August.

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