In 1969, Lew Alcindor, then converting to Islam and becoming Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, proposed to Pam Grier on the condition that she change her religion on the spot. She refused, and he married someone else that same day. This episode follows that same uncompromising spirit through Grier's life, from a childhood split between an Air Force base in England and her grandparents' sugar beet farm in Wyoming to her breakthrough as the first African-American woman to headline an action film.

The conversation covers her start as a switchboard operator at American International Pictures, her discovery by director Jack Hill, the Roger Corman women-in-prison films, and the 1973 release of Coffy that upended the geometry of the action genre. It then moves through her relationships with Freddie Prinze and Richard Pryor, a role cut from a 1988 film over fea ...