A live interview and PBS-TV Special
Saturday, May 7, 2005

This hour-long, one-on-one interview program provides a rare and insightful look at the life and career of legendary entertainer Diahann Carroll. Taped live in Washington, D.C. at George Washington University’s Jack Morton Auditorium on Saturday, May 7, 2005, this program is the seventh in The HistoryMakers’ An Evening with. . . series. Television journalist, moderator and managing editor of Washington Week, Gwen Ifill interviewed actress and singer Diahann Carroll with Discover Financial Services LLC serving as the event’s title sponsor.

Diahann Carroll is a true legend. She is one of America’s major performing talents with a career on the Broadway stage, as a Las Vegas headliner and as an actress in both motion pictures and on television. In the interview, Carroll tells her life story, shares her experiences working in the entertainment industry and offers her feelings about being a pioneer and inspiring future minority actresses. She talks about her times working on her sitcom Julia, working with Sydney Poitier, her Oscar nomination and working on the 1980s prime-time soap opera, Dynasty and A Different World. Produced by The HistoryMakers, the nation’s largest African American video oral history archive, An Evening With Diahann Carroll is entertaining and engaging.

To order a DVD copy of An Evening With Diahann Carroll, click here.

(Above Left): Diahann Carroll, Colin Powell and Julieanna Richardson. (Above Right) Diahann Carroll and Leon Harris (Bottom Left):Gwen Ifill and Diahann Carroll during interview.  (Bottom Right): Volunteers.

Singer and actress Diahann Carroll was born in the Bronx, New York in 1935, her beauty earning her modeling roles by the time she was a teenager. From there, she went on to roles in Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess. Carroll developed a relationship with Sidney Poitier on the set of Porgy and Bess, which would continue off and on for the next decade. Carroll’s true breakthrough to America came with her being cast in the title role of the television series, Julia, which garnered her an Emmy nomination in its first year on the air and she had the honor of being the first African American to have her own TV series. Carroll continued to appear in films and on stage, both as an actress and singer to rave reviews, and had a starring role in TV’s Dynasty for a number of years. In 1995, Carroll achieved another first, becoming the first African American woman to play the role of Norma Desmond in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, “Sunset Boulevard.” Carroll has extended her influence beyond the scope of the stage and screen, and became the first African American woman to have a signature clothing line, which she unveiled in 1997. Through it all, Diahann Carroll has truly been a pioneer and HistoryMaker.

Gwen Ifill

Pioneering journalist Gwen Ifill was born in Queens, New York in 1955. After earning her B.A. degree in communications from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts in 1977, Ifill was hired by The Boston Herald American in the midst of the city’s notorious busing crisis. Starting out as a food critic, Ifill had her first taste of politics while covering school board meetings in Boston. After joining the Baltimore Evening Sun, where she covered national politics. In 1984, Ifill was hired by The Washington Post, and in 1991, she became the White House correspondent for The New York Times. In 1994, she was named the chief Congressional correspondent for NBC, and in 1999, she became the moderator of PBS’ Washington Week in Review as well as a correspondent for The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. In October of 2004, Ifill became the first African American woman to moderate a vice-presidential debate.

	Herb & Sheran Wilkins		Cathy Hughes