5 Best Moments of Lizzo’s Interview with David Letterman on Netflix

Lizzo may be known for her bubbly, confident on-stage personality, but the singer admitted that she’s suffered from a lot of anxiety over the years. Her favorite coping mechanisms? Acupuncture, meditation (with the help of some crystals, many gifted), and microdosing psilocybin. (To her – and our – surprise, Letterman has never partaken).

“I always, like, microdose. I break off, like, the smallest possible nugget, like a crumb, and then I eat that first, because I don’t wanna just dive in, go down the rabbit hole,” she says. “You get real settled. You get happy. You reject, like artificial things.” Mushrooms also help her to disconnect from technology and get in touch with herself, something she says is much needed these days. Sounds like we could all use a little microdosing.

Listening to Lizzo describe the hustle and how she got to where she is now is certainly one of the highlights of the episode. Lizzo lived in Edina, Minnesota, for about two years, and it was here that she began her music career and played small “hipster” venues all over town, making ends meet by working at a restaurant. “Living in Edina was so bizarre. It’s so rich and so white,” she remembers. “And it’s the type of town where, like, if I have a Afro, they’d be like, ‘oh, your hair looks fun!’. And I’d be like, ‘bitch, what’s so fun about my fucking ‘fro?'”

“I worked at the McCormick & Schmick’s, and I remember – I’m from Detroit, so we say ‘sal-mon’ instead of ‘salmon’… I got corrected so many times by the customers,” she says. “They’d be like, ‘Salmon! Salmon!’. And I was like, ‘I’m being– the oppression!'”

Letterman, who had also once been offered a job in Edina, wonders how she stayed there and weathered the cold winters. Lizzo visibly shivers when she remembers, but calls Minneapolis “magnetic”, a place with an unexpectedly lively music scene. A music scene where she found herself under the wing of Prince himself.

Lizzo’s fans are likely familiar with her knack for the flute, and Letterman admits this was what he was most excited to talk about. After discussing Sir James Galway – also known as The Man with the Golden Flute, or as Lizzo refers to him, a “baller” – Lizzo shows Letterman her flute collection. She proudly displays a flute gifted to her from her father, and gives Letterman a chance to try out his own fluting skills on an instrument she’s named “Blue Ivy” (all while including some quality flute innuendo for good measure).

It’s a delight to watch her play, and even more fun to see her light up when Letterman makes his attempt. “No one can really do this!” she excitedly exclaims. While Letterman’s note is short-lived, he accompanies her flute-playing with an instrument of his own devices (his hands). It’s so much fun to watch them put on a show, and another chance for Lizzo’s unique talent to really shine through.

Letterman was skeptical about Minneapolis being a music scene, but Lizzo had more than a few stories to disprove his theory – particularly about Prince. “I’d never fathomed these types of things,” she says, when asked if she ever thought she’d wind up being mentored by Prince, or even being interviewed by Letterman someday. “That’s the unfathomable.”

“Prince had been doing this thing where he was cultivating young black women who were creatives, and he was supporting them at Paisley Park,” she remembers. “The mysticism is real. It’s true. I’m not gonna argue with it. I’m not gonna… try to force anything.”

When she learned of his death, she flew to Minneapolis that night and sang “The Beautiful Ones” to a crowd on First Avenue. The most emotional part of this segment comes when Lizzo reflects on the end of her time with the music icon – and the impact he made on the world.

“The last time I saw Prince was – I went to Paisley Park, and he played “Purple Rain” on the piano. And he started crying while playing it. It was the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard…” she says. “And his voice was so beautiful. And then he wept, and it was so beautiful. Then he was like… ‘I really gotta work on my set list.’ Because he was like, ‘I can’t put that so early in the set’. “But Purple Rain” moved him so much… There’s nothing better than to just get a true artist, like raw, and in the flesh, and the whole world bleeds for this person. Like, the whole world was purple.”

She loves her body and preaches self-love when she’s on stage, but Lizzo – like any human would be – has been exhausted by the discussion of her body. “It bothered me for a long time that all people could talk about or think about was my size. I didn’t like when people condemned me for it, and it also kind of rubbed me the wrong way when I was praised. Like, ‘you’re so brave!'”

Lizzo’s body is nobody’s business, and she’s quick to shut down comments these days. She also reveals she’s tired of being labeled just because of the way she moves through the world. “I’m sick of being an activist just because I’m fat and Black,” she says. “I want to be an activist because I’m intelligent, because I care about issues, because my music is good, because I wanna help the world.”

Perhaps the most moving moments during her episode are what follow; Lizzo describes how she began protesting, and the changes she’s witnessed over the years, while Letterman wonders how we still haven’t made much progress.

“As a Black citizen of this country, I’ve been heartbroken by the way that we’ve been treated and seen my entire life,” she says, remembering the murder of a young Black man named Jamar Clark in her Minneapolis neighborhood and the protests that followed. Lizzo reveals she was numbed by the reaction to the murder of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. But this year, after the murder of George Floyd, she believes there has been a change.

“Change is painful, and I think you have to sign yourself up for that,” she says. “This time, I saw something different. I saw the sudden allyship of young white people… And I also saw people in the news realize that it’s more than just like a hashtag and a moment, and a movement, and oh, us complaining, and that it’s a real systemic poison. And that got me, for the first time, a little hopeful,” says Lizzo. “I can’t help but to be optimistic and hopeful.”

Her hope is as infectious as the joy she spreads with her performances, and lends something truly special to this installment of Letterman’s series.

Jade Budowski is a freelance writer with a knack for ruining punchlines and harboring dad-aged celebrity crushes. Follow her on Twitter: @jadebudowski.