12 Questions for Sophia Englesberg
The budding indie actress on the performers she admired while growing up, her relationship with death, her desire to be understood, what audiences tend to project onto actors, and more.
Of Balzac, Stefan Zweig writes: Now that he understood himself he did not want to be misunderstood by others. Once we actualize, we’d like others to know, for if we don’t have an audience to pay witness, how can we be sure of whether or not we’ve changed, or actualized in the first place? Could it all be a cruel form of self-delusion?
I believe that we desire, each and every one of us, to be understood by our family, friends, colleagues, strangers, and often even by strangers more than the former three; it gives us a sense of self, the way passersby come to quickly, effortlessly form an opinion of us; the everyday man’s audience. Some people wish to be understood more profoundly than others, and it occupies their entire life; it becomes their mission. I’m one of those people. A friend’s wife once asked me why it is that I write, and I responded ‘to be understood.’ She laughed in my face and then made a meme that depicted me on the cover of an indistinct, nineties emo album. It never occurred to me how self-serious and easy to mock the concept of being understood might be. And I still, deep down, don’t quite get it.
Many people take the time to do this interview, the long drawn out essay questions, solely with the desire to be understood on their own terms, sans off-the-cuff spontaneity of a recorded podcast discussion. In my guests’ responses I don’t edit a thing, I let them speak, write, build out their own aesthetic without any interruption. I want to understand them within the range of twelve or so questions, and the hope, though distant, is that maybe it’ll help me better understand myself, which is the process and the tension that I attempt, loosely, to depict in these intros about people like Sophia Englesberg, people who sacrifice their lives to create meaning through expression and then eventually, perhaps, end up being understood, or at the very least admired.
A Humbling
More or less, everything in life is a phase. In these periods of time, these phases we have, where perspectives are altered by unexpected events, and new ideas and states of mind find a way to come to light, we drift away and then return to something loosely called ‘The Innermost Form of Self,’ the soul, perhaps, the aspect of our being that forms the basis of the cliche’d yet true aphorism that one is born with all the knowledge and wisdom they’ll ever need; to some degree, our instinct. Losing one’s mind is usually a consequence of never being able to return to this Innermost Form of Self, and growing is the result of enduring experience as well as hardship only to come back richer. Recently, I’ve had the fear of never returning to my sense of equilibrium. Or, in other words, losing my mind.
Several unanticipated circumstances in quick succession led to my Labrador of nearly a decade, Alfie, collapsing out of the blue and dying, quite gruesomely, on the platform of a train station in a foreign country (more on this at a later date). Just a week before, Alfie had been running around in bliss, healthy as can be for a dog of his age, and his death caused an ensuing spiral, which, again, I’ll detail in another piece. But it wasn’t only the sudden death of Alfie that led me to a state of collapse. There were many other factors at play—a terminally ill father, the loss of several important relationships, one after the other, struggles with work, finances—and it turns out that my demanding, energetic dog, the care I’d provided for him on a daily basis, was the only part of my life keeping me together, giving me the strength and routine to maintain a sense of focus. And at once, as with so many people before me, and, I’m sure, not for the first time in my hopefully long, arduous and prosperous life, I wound up brutally humbled by death… unable to continue living as I was, at every moment cautious with premonition, filled with dreadful foreboding and many simultaneous erratic feelings of freedom, the harsh void of freedom that only the most disciplined and experienced can manage with ease. For seven or so weeks it felt, it seemed very likely that I, like Alfie, would drop dead at any moment, and the fear this caused was overwhelming, both mentally and physically (I’d never had an I.C.E. contact on my phone before, now I have eight). And constantly there was the numbing, fatal feeling that all plans are for nothing because, well, there’s the chance of dropping dead at any second, just like Alfie did, how all the plans I had for him had been only an illusion of a future that would, that will, never come to arrive. Falling dead at any given moment; a sinking sensation in the body that has permeated my days, consistently, for two months now; the very opposite of pleasant. It also, though, has had the eerie effect of shocking me into a forced state of change, even perhaps growth.
Through this all, I’ve tried my best to continue. But in what way? For a while it felt like I no longer understood, understand myself. Writing, over the past months, wasn’t an option or panacea; when I tried it was senseless. And immediately after Alfie’s death there was no way I could maintain a steady focus on reading, on the intricate inner-lives of narrativized figures. All went black and I ceased to understand myself, and by corollary my sense in others—fictional or nonfictional—fell, almost at random, into a vat of bleak nothingness. Writing and reading used to be the relief, the activity which gave me the ability to feel as though I was transcending the present, all of my repetitive problems and anxieties, pathologies and concerns, but if there was no concrete self to access, the powerful ascendency toward bliss wasn’t even close to an option. I could not escape my earthly being, nor at any moment reach a height of true self-empowerment. Through this period, all that remained was, and at times is, the absolute emptiness of death itself. In a few week or months time, I’ll be able to begin to accumulate my sporadic, loose notes and document this period with the justice it deserves. I’m not yet out of it. But for now I have to intro the indie theater actor Sophia Englesberg. There has to be an attempt made to persist and, unfortunately, this attempt will be made in public.
Cracks in Postmodernity
I’d started writing Sophia’s intro a few weeks before Alfie passed, before I’d generally broken down. In the spirit of this series, I began by writing an anecdote which had nothing at all to do with Sophia Englesberg the actress but would eventually, hopefully, make its way back to her through some perverse form of logic; I’d done this in previous intros and it has always, at least in my opinion, seemed to work. I reread parts of the initial intro now and find it has the capacity to be amusing but is, actually, just kind of pointless. When I’m in a negative state of mind it’s hard to tell whether or not I’m judging things accurately: do I think something is senseless because I’m depressed, or because it is, actually, a meaningless piece of writing? Instinct is repressed and, therefore, the internal-editor shuts down.
One week before Alfie died I had a long conversation on the phone with Stephen Adubato, the editor of Cracks in Postmodernity, who mentioned, in reference to a recent piece I’d written, the importance of trying to maintain focus on the distinction between the kind of writing that ‘serves’ both me and my readers, and the gratuitous work done out of ego or mischief; he didn’t like a recent piece I’d published, a kind of fictional reflection on some experiences I’d had in autumn, and he felt it was both indulgent and purposeless, and that good, lyrical writing alone wasn’t enough to save it; he didn’t receive the sense of meaning that he’d gotten from some of my other work. At the time I didn’t quite agree with Adubato, and became slightly hurt, offended, because I felt that my more whimsical, meaningless, mischievous writing had its admirers, and I even had some fun doing it, so why not continue? And how could Adubato be so shortsighted and self-serious to not recognize that? I mean have some fun, Stephen, you Catholic curmudgeon you. But now that something happened that’s forever altered my perspective, I reread some of the work Adubato was referencing and can’t help but agree with him; he recognized something that, at the time, I couldn’t have possibly known or been aware of; the gratuitous aspects of my persona and sense of self. In turn, I read some of these pieces again and, bizarrely, don’t even recognize the man who wrote them. Adubato was, lightly, imploring me to shed the gratuitous, the senseless, the useless and petty so that I could focus on writing work that matters, in other words, to stop wasting time, and in other words, to appreciate and pay respect to the limited set of hours we have to live, to somehow conjure up, and fulfill, a sense of purpose that only ‘serves.’
Eventually, I hope the perspective of this current period, as with all periods of immense difficulty, will make me a better writer, which is to say someone who’s more aware, and who better understands themself.
The Pleasure of Consistency
To continue what I was saying, a few weeks before Alfie passed I started writing Sophia’s intro. It began by describing, in detail, the relationship between me and my friend Max De Rosne, some of the trips we’d taken around Europe through our twenties, and how we’re both incredibly, if not obsessively, interested in food. The intro then led to me describing a disagreement Max and I had about a carbonara style pizza at a well-known Neapolitan restaurant in Berlin and how, basically, Max liked it and I didn’t. In the intro I explained why I didn’t like it. I wrote three paragraphs on why I only enjoy pizza that has tomato sauce, and how I can’t come to appreciate pizzas without it, how I wouldn’t even call most of them pizza, but distinct forms of focaccia, flatbread, or bruschetta. I wrote another paragraph on the perfect contrast between wood-fired sourdough and the acidity of San Marzano tomatoes, and then I went on a tangent about how using too much stracciatella, or the wrong kind of processed mozzarella, can easily ruin everything. Another few sentences described Max’s argument in favor of the hefty aforementioned carbonara pizza, which has guanciale, pancetta, three kinds of cheese, a fried egg, and a lot of black pepper. I told Max I couldn’t handle eating it, especially knowing how I’d feel after, how the one time I ordered the carbonara pizza ended in a bout of (literally) nauseous regret. Max responded that there’s nothing wrong with fattening indulgence, now and then. And my rebuttal to Max concerned the pleasure of consistency, how for whatever reason my body’s constitution would allow me to eat a normal red-sauced Neapolitan pizza a few times a week and continue on with my day as if nothing had happened, and that consistency, the knowledge of the forthcoming lightness of feeling combined with immediate pleasure, only made the dining experience that much more rewarding. And what the hell did any of this have to do with the New York City based stage actress Sophia Englesberg? Where was I going? I was going to use this drawn-out anecdote as a lead-in to describe how, at a certain age and time in my life, I’ve come to effortlessly be aware of what I want and prefer. And from there I’d start talking about how difficult it is to tell, to really know, if someone is a good actor or a mediocre one, and how we can only rely on our immediate instincts and emotional responses. I wrote a section that detailed how in the dozen or so plays and readings, some amateur, some professional, that I’d seen Englesberg perform in over the course of eighteen months, she was always, without strain, the strongest actor on stage. And how I felt that and knew that with a certain confidence despite not exactly knowing why, much like my unexplainable but instinctual preferences in food. And I went on to say that all the guests I brought with me to these makeshift theaters sprawled around New York City would always tend to agree that even if the play was mediocre, Sophia stood out. I was sure of my taste; other people affirmed it and therefore made my certainty even stronger: I think white pizzas are bad, red pizzas good, and that Sophia Englesberg is an impressive performer with a natural talent that, like aristocracy, one can only be born with (go look at someone from Long Island acting aristocratic and let me know if it ‘rings true’ for you). It was an arrogant presumption that I was at a stage in my life where I was confident enough to know the truth of any given matter, or understand the truth of my feelings, perspectives, without much effort. And I felt lucky. And then two weeks later something happened. I ended up understanding not more about myself, but about the frightening degree to which life is fleeting and light, to which death is heavy and burdensome, and beyond that the only thing I knew for sure is that I know nothing at all. I have the capacity to love, to love my friends and family, those I hold dear, but that’s about it. I essentially know nothing about writing even though I’ve made the attempt thus far to devote my life to it. The intro about the pizza was, and is, completely ridiculous.
I’ll say it again: the only thing I’m sure of is that I know nothing at all. I can only make inferences based on past experience—and even those inferences are never finite or sealed. Opinions and beliefs can transform or shed with new encounters, affairs, and bouts of information. The word conviction suddenly meant nothing: everything can change in an instant. And yet, on the other hand, with this more holistic certainty of the few things I do know within a sea of confusion and curiosity, the word conviction suddenly meant everything, and I could use it correctly for the very first time.
The irony of that initial intro with the pizza is that for that past six weeks, I’ve hardly been able to eat anything. Due to something called 'mind-gut connection’ my stomach rejects everything that contains even the most remote element of acidity… and the worst thing I can eat? Tomatoes. Just the smallest amount of tomato-anything can make my whole body seem like it’s on fire and a sensation where my heart feels like it’s about to stop. I’m not able to eat pizza, because I can’t handle dairy, but if for whatever reason I were forced to, it’d have be a white one; without hesitation, I’d take the carbonara. This is another good example, however inadvertent, of something called change.
Coincidentally, Unintentionally
Aside from believing Sophia to be a very talented actress, I asked her impulsively one evening in the early autumn if she’d like to do 12 Questions because I felt I had a good intro to write for her that wouldn’t take up too much time. The initial intro I had in mind was going to, essentially, be about the funny way Sophia and I had met and come to know each other. It was going to be about that alone, and nothing else. This will be an easy, quick, straightforward 12 Questions, I said to myself. I’d quickly write up the anecdote, copy and paste her intro, take pleasure in having a new article published, and move on with my life.
Before the impulse to speak at length about pizza and my friendship with Max de Rosne, Sophia’s intro was supposed to start with how I’d met her at a plant shop on Hester Street called Joy Flower Pot, where she was working one evening as the store’s sole attendant. I wanted to begin the intro by detailing how I had recently gotten out of a long, strenuous relationship that ended in me breaking off an engagement, how in September, 2023, I moved back to New York from Montreal and had begun, in the city I grew up in, to rebuild my life. Deciding to furnish my new apartment with plants, as many as it could fit, I walked into the shop and met a charismatic attendant who, while perusing the store, I kept calling Joy. ‘My name’s Sophia,’ she kept saying, ‘no one here is named Joy.’ And a few moments later, asking a question about the size of a beige, ceramic pot, I called her Joy once more and she just responded: ‘Sophia.’ After a long exchange where I asked about a hundred questions in regard to the maintenance and upkeep of almost every plant on offer, I finally settled on three of the biggest ones in the shop: a dracaena, a yellow/green snake, and a tall cactus the size of a building. Their credit card machine wasn’t working so she told me to send the money through some online portal and to contact them when it was sent, and the purchase would be confirmed. I must have been in there for almost two hours with, I should add, an energetic, barking Labrador Retriever at my feet. On my way out of the store, I noticed the presence of flyers promoting a new show called Zoomers, written and directed by Matthew Gasda; funny coincidence, I murmured under my breath as I left the store and wished Joy goodbye.
During the same period of time, I was beginning to figure out and format the structure of this series, the way in which I’d like to approach it; mulling over whether it should be a traditional podcast or something more personal, a way of translating my experience with any given artist’s work and persona, and the effect it would have on me over any given phase of growth and change; what if an interview series contained a profile that wasn’t necessarily about the subject, but the consequence of their presence in my personal life? The question I arrived at was whether it would be possible to combine literary nonfiction with the classic, overdone, interview format; an exploration of one’s self, through others. No matter what, though, I had to go and get out of my own head. While the intros could be longwinded inspections that counterpose my own experience against the subject, there was a need to be social; I had a strong desire to meet other writers and artists in New York, to ingratiate myself once more within a world I’d abandoned in my early twenties to go write and live in a form of solitude I couldn’t find at home. (For some reason, I first went to Berlin, and there that solitude was never exactly achieved, though I did at times feel isolated, which is completely different... when you’re in solitude you’re still connected.)
A few weeks after meeting Sophia Englesberg, my first 12 Questions interview was scheduled. It was to be with the aforementioned modish playwright Mathew Gasda, known throughout the New York art and literary world for staging plays in lofts and living rooms throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn with an attractive cast of young, hungry actors. In some circles, Gasda was even more notorious for a chaotic, hyper-sexual, peculiar personal life that included a variety of quirky, luddite behaviors like not owning a smartphone and consistently preaching the power of raw milk. On top of all this, Gasda had recently achieved his first hit which allowed him a broad sense of popularity, a particularly trendy play he’d written toward the end of Covid, an underground success by the name of Dimes Square. Profiled in the Times, known throughout the art world, there couldn't have been a more fitting, stronger initial subject for my 12 Questions series. And I was delighted when he agreed, and surprised by just how accessible Matthew Gasda was to contact. One thing I’ve learned throughout the course of this series is that nearly all writers are very accessible, astonishingly easy to get in touch with, eager, always, to have the chance to be understood by another writer, another person, no matter how big or small.
Matthew Gasda extended a few tickets to see a production of his new play, Zoomers, at the All St. gallery in lower-Manhattan, and following the performance I began writing his intro, where I detailed my impressions of the show, the scene surrounding it, Gasda’s style as a writer/director, and, most personally, my impression of Gasda himself as a somewhat misunderstood, flawed, yet elegant and kind person. What I didn’t include in that intro, for reasons of superfluity, is that while watching Zoomers I was startled to recognize, at the beginning of the second act, the woman from the plant shop. ‘I think her name is Joy,’ I whispered to my friend, Mai, a Senior Editor at Vogue who attended the performance with me. ‘It’s Sophia,’ Mai said, pointing to the program. And after, as I mentioned before, we both agreed that Sophia was the strongest element of the show. She was what allowed the second act, which carried on at times, to have a certain force and momentum; a pleasant surprise, if you will. As we walked out of the gallery after a short-lived after party, Mai and I were even more surprised to find Matthew Gasda and Sophia Englesberg caressing one another with the lust of newfound romance before starting to make out by the entrance. On a phone call a few days earlier, Matthew Gasda mentioned he was in a serious relationship. Sophia Englesberg looked young, couldn’t have been over twenty-two, so at first I thought my thirty-five year old subject was, somewhat shamelessly, philandering in public. It was only a few days later, when I went to pick up my plants, one by one, over the course of a day, that Sophia mentioned the word boyfriend and playwright in the same sentence; it was just a good-old age gap relationship.
A few months later, Matthew Gasda proposed. There was something out of the ordinary yet refreshing about their dynamic. I guess people, young people, young artistic people with an impetus to create still do have a desire, an ostensibly conservative, religious desire, to make a commitment to wed, to go off and get married; a rare sight, indeed, I thought to myself. I was so deep in thought that as I was walking out, holding the massive, aforementioned cactus, my hands slipped and I accidentally spilled it all over the sidewalk outside Joy Flower Pot. Sophia came rushing out of the shop in a state of anxiety and frustration to help scoop back up the soil off the rat-piss concrete. (She had to spend a good part of the following week repotting the colossal succulent, instead of, I guess, working on her craft, or nurturing her relationship.)
For a reason that at the time I didn’t completely understand, not until I wrote a piece titled Another Dead at Trader Joe’s, the situation between Matthew Gasda and Sophia Englesberg, age gap and all, provided me with a good, sincere dose of hope and social trust; people can commit to each other, build a quasi-religious, devotional bond while simultaneously sacrificing their lives to the realm of artistic expression. I began to project all sorts of things on to their dynamic, namely, how they reminded me of my own parents, the way my parents met while waiting tables during their long, drawn out attempt to become successful writers and artists themselves, how beautiful it was that my parents, and now supposedly Sophia and Matthew, had each other to rely on through the difficult, Sisyphean, multi-decade climb toward artistic success and actualization.
My upbringing gave me the knowledge that it’d have perhaps been better, a lot of the time, if my parents had been alone. But now that they're older I’m happy they have each other. And, now that I myself am a little older and better understand the give and take of long-term companionship, it makes good sense to me that my parents, despite all their issues, chose to stick it out. I wondered, with a very personal sense of curiosity, if, like my parents, Gasda and Sophia would make it to old age. Maybe their relationship would be much stronger, perhaps fulfilling than the bond my parents had so consistently struggled to forge. This is all somewhat normal and universal: through intense and deluded projection one comes to hope that other people can fulfill their own destiny, the future that they alone are actually responsible for.
How to Make God Laugh
About seven months after I’d met them, I was a guest at Sophia and Matthew Gasda’s engagement party; it was a rainy day in May spent in the reserved backyard of a busy wine bar in Brooklyn. Some of the most talented young writers, actors, and directors throughout New York were present to give their congratulations. I was so happy for both of them. And about four months later, around when I asked Sophia if she’d like to do this interview series, a week or so after I’d sent off her questions, I received news, first from Gasda, and then from some other mutual friends, that Englesberg, for a variety of reasons, had broken off their engagement. I decided to leave the questions as they were, and see where Sophia chose to go with them.
For around a week or two, the news sent me into a slump, made no better by the fact that only a few days later, Matthew Gasda’s mentor, the writer David Yaffe, a man I just was getting to know, a middle-aged writer with a vast net of fascinating stories and experiences he loved to share without end, someone wise and funny that I was just starting to spend a good bit of time with, was found dead in his apartment on a cold November night. It was made all the more eerie due to that fact that, at the time, no one was quite sure whether or not the death was a suicide.
At Yaffe’s memorial on a frigid Saturday afternoon in December, Gasda and Sophia stood on opposite sides of an open circle, each, in their own turn, relaying stories of joy, grief, remorse, and loss. I watched on with despair, but remained sturdy myself; my relationship with Yaffe had ended before it had begun. Little did I know my breakdown was looming, that a new relationship I was trying to build with a woman in Tijuana, surely one of, if not the, most beautiful souls I’d ever come across throughout the course my life, was about to fall apart due to my own self-destructive, nonsensical tendencies, and that Alfie, sweet Alfie, my absolute rock and constant companion, had only two months left to live.
More or less, the very initial plan for the intro was supposed to be about meeting Sophia in the plant shop and the funny fact that I was at the same time interviewing her fiancé. It was supposed to be about that, and about that alone.
A Pause in Time Reflects A Change in Form
Several weeks ago, on a chilly March night, I sat with Englesberg outside of a live-music venue on a quiet corner in Park Slope. Much to my surprise, Englesberg was practically chainsmoking cigarettes, one after the other. ‘I never knew you smoked,’ I said. ‘I always have.’ She responded, but I didn’t quite believe her. It was the first time we’d seen each other in months, since Yaffe’s memorial.
Sophia told me about the projects she’d been working on, how she was imminently about to distance herself from Matthew Gasda’s theater company, the Brooklyn Center for Theater Research and go off, for the first time since moving to New York from Pittsburgh, all on her own. She mentioned how startling, scary, and, at the same time, exciting and liberating it all was; almost too much to process. There was a horizon filled with unseen opportunity that she appeared jittery, hesitant, yet delighted to explore; she felt alive, she said.
She asked how I was doing. I began telling her about my heart, stomach issues since Alfie had died, and all the trouble I’d had getting and gaining momentum with writing since he’d passed, how it’s been so hard to continue, to endure, to go on living as things were. From her recent experiences, she of course empathized, and felt the same in a lot of ways. I told her how I’d been working through so many different iterations of her intro and none of them seemed to work, and I apologized for how long it was taking. She asked me if I could tell her a little bit about what I’d written so far. I told her how around four weeks after Alfie’s death I sat down to write for the first time, to have a go again at her intro, and that I ended up writing two thousand words of abstract theory on the nature of being an actor, how everyone to some degree acts all day, on a daily basis, with the desire to fit in and be understood by their peers, followed by another thousand or so words on what exactly distinguishes an actor from an every day samaritan, the way actors train to mimic the quotidian acting of others, the various performative identities of the common man. What I think scares, or deeply unsettles most people about actors is that the best of the bunch are in perfect control of these behavioral changes; acting is a superpower. They’re not behaving naturally, but consciously adapting and code-switching for a sense of approval. I then did a deep dive into all the different schools of acting that matched my observations of Sophia’s relationship with the Meisner technique. I explained this all to Sophia as she sat there, listening with patience, before going on to say how boring I think it all read, and that I’d have to, much like with my life after Alfie, try and start over from the very beginning, to readapt and relearn the most simple of behaviors. I told Sophia that her intro would instead, probably, end up being about how both her and I experienced sudden shocks, sudden changes, at almost the exact same time. I’d juxtapose them to some degree and make the point, loosely, that through persistence we’d both find a way to move on and become excited about the future. Whether or not any of our friends or colleagues would understand our own very particular processes of grief and rebirth would end up becoming something secondary; it’d be an individual process that only I alone, and her alone, could grasp, comprehend, and that would be ok. ‘In general,’ I continued, ‘beyond hobbies, distractions, therapy, and art, how can one find a way to continue with life when all seems hopeless, dreadful, and morbid? I think it’s weird, Sophia, because we have no choice but to look forward, and figure it all out on our own, through trial and error, with effort and grace. We rebuild relationships, we let other ones go, we work on our craft, and, in turn, albeit slowly, things begin to change. There’s so much we can’t see. We make plans for the future, the way we’d like to live our lives, but, somehow, life keeps getting in the way, and that, exactly, is the way it’ll always be.’
‘That’s a far more interesting approach,’ Sophia said as she looked into my eyes, taking a long, drawn drag from her Marlboro cigarette.
GG: Between all the different schools, etc., how would you define your approach to acting, to taking on a new role?
SE: In drama school I trained in the Meisner technique. It’s a pretty intense training process that focuses on (in the early stages but it becomes innate over time) dissecting moments in acting exercises or scenes for deep personal meaning. Acting, for me, isn’t about becoming a different person. It is about being a version of yourself within the circumstances of a script, with the adjustments of a character layered on top. The severity in which those adjustments are made is completely dependent on the writing. When I approach a new role, I am always drawn to the traits or life circumstances of characters that I immediately relate to. And then I fall in love with their traits that are most different from myself. It’s kind of like dating– you connect with someone because you have something in common, but what really engages you about this new person is how they are set apart from you, how they see the world differently. Meisner training taught me to continuously examine, without internal judgment, how I really feel about everything. Then I can dig within myself for the deep meanings that activate my emotions and my impulses – Acting is my output, my form of expression. And if I am not speaking my own words on stage every night, then my job is to make sure those words are truthful. I don’t really write. At least I don't write anything that I feel is good or coherent enough to share with people. Which is partly why I accepted your offer to do an interview. I thought, I should probably start putting my thoughts out into the world. Use my voice, even if I’m still finding it. Rather than just post pictures of myself on instagram and nag people to come see me act in loft plays in Greenpoint.
What actors/actresses did you admire growing up? What actresses do you admire now? Which, between these two categories, remains the same? Who have you become disillusioned by, and why?
There was a viral tweet a bit ago that was like ‘actors who are cinephiles are so much better than actors who aren’t…’ and I was depressed by this tweet because that is me. I’m just now starting to really watch movies and recognize directors and actors’ bodies of work. I grew up doing Theatre (always been a devout theater kid) and admiring the artists who were close to me who had a spark that I could recognize as talent. And I admired every actress I saw on the screen just because they were there and that’s where I wanted to be.
Now I have that same magnetism towards talent, but I can be critical, as artists should be. I don’t think every performance is good, or every script. I see “bad” theater more often than good. But either way, I don’t see enough. Even though I’m doing something theater-related on almost any given night of the week. The dilemma of many working artists.
Out of everything I did see this past year — my favorite new movies were Janet Planet and The Substance. Also at BCTR, we’ve hosted a screening series that Nick Newman curates and that has really helped me expand my knowledge of cinema. We’ve screened a lot of Rohmer movies. Rohmer often casts the same actresses in his films. It’s fascinating to see them playing different roles over the course of their careers. Marie Rivière as a young anxious woman crying on vacation in The Green Ray then grows into Autumn Tale, where she is older, more confident. In some ways, she is still the same character, but her layers are different.
Building off the last question, which of your favorite actors do you think you most closely resemble in technique? Who would you like to resemble but find impossible?
When you’re watching a good actor, you don’t really see technique. You don’t see acting. The best performances are given when an actor is just existing and work is completely lived through. But I’m often told I look like Anne Hathaway… self explanatory top-tier compliment. I would love to be able to reflect a touch of her charm and elegance in my own work.
What do houseplants give us that people or animals can’t?
House plants can’t give us physical affection the way another person or an animal can. You can touch them, but it's a different kind of sensation– one that isn't tied to warm comfort.
There is great joy in being a plant lover though. Plants grow quietly. Slowly. They give you the gift of noticing. Plants are the loved ones who don’t ask us or nudge us to care for them. A plant will not remind you to water it.
I used to work at a little flower and plant shop in dimes square. I don’t regret quitting the job itself but I do miss it a lot. On Sundays I’d be there by myself, tending to the flowers in the fridge and watering the plants. It was romantic. People would always tell me how this seemed like the best job ever and they had no idea how I could leave it…
It’s funny, when I was moving in November I had to decide what plants I could bring from my apartment to my new house. The house belongs to a woman who has two cats. The cats are mischievous, she tells me, they’ll eat any plants or flowers you bring if they’re not placed up high. So I can’t bring any of my ‘toxic’ plants. Most of my favorites are toxic, unfortunately.
Plants are so simple: water weekly, face towards sunlight, repot it every once in a while. Taking care of anything else just gets more complicated after that.
Why do you think it is that people often associate actors/actresses with crazy, emotionally unsettling people? Is this cliche true, or false?
People project things onto actresses (and women in general) – impossible standards of behavior and image – that when we defy them or fail to meet the expectation there has to be some explanation. Usually it’s ‘crazy.’
But when you’re an actor, and you’re constantly offering yourself and performing – you’ll find yourself desperately trying to make a strong impression.
So in a way it’s kind of true? We need to be emotional and chaotic for you to like us. To be unforgettable. Irreplaceable. It’s a very unhealthy way to live, admittedly.
My second answer to this question is just to ask, are you projecting onto me right now? Sorry
Who’s more annoying in general, actors or writers? Which of the two do you tend to get along with more?
Probably actors when they’re in a room with writers. Or writers when they’re in a room with other writers. Everyone is annoying. I think I am most annoying when I’m in a room with myself.
Any healthy, thriving arts scene has rivalries, and I think these rivalries are integral for the production of art that’s any good, any worthwhile. Who are your rivals and why? What would say to this rival if you’d really want to get under their skin? Further, what, in your opinion, makes your work stronger, more vital, more necessary, than the work of your rival?
Growing up in the industry instills a fear of being replaced— you can’t let your “competition,” whoever most resembles you, whoever is next in line, the understudy in the role or whatever, take your place. For a while, and really only for myself, I’ve been climbing this hierarchical ladder of muse-dom… and now…
I’ve stopped caring because in doing that I’m maintaining a sense of myself that is limited to someone else’s vision of me, as an actor, as a person in society.
I don’t have a rival. Comparison is exhausting. Comparison is the thief of joy. If every twentysomething brunette actress/writer type on the scene was my rival, I wouldn’t have any friends.
Why, in 2024, should one bother getting married? Other than the practicalities, what differentiates marriage from a standard relationship?
When I started this interview, this question sat blank for a while. This whole interview has been sitting– unfinished for longer than I’d like to admit– like it's waiting for resolution. I’m revisiting this question again, after calling off my engagement in November.
Marriage, for me (and most people,) was supposed to be definite. The choice, that everlasting commitment that would make sense of my chaotic life and establish my relationship as something other than a moment in time that could end – I craved a sense of permanence that would complete me. And that was an unrealistic expectation, a foundation built on a fault line.
We weren’t engaged, or even together, for very long. But it felt like a lifetime. Because that was the goal. To stay together and grow old together and go through it, together. But sometimes, and I guess I’m learning this in real time, there’s a shift. And you don’t want the same things anymore.
I think the worst thing to do is to avoid that feeling. Love is a spiritual promise that I don’t think ever truly fades, but marriage is a commitment. An extremely important commitment that nobody wants to do more than once.
So I called it off. Because what differentiates marriage from a standard relationship is something binding– a legal contract– and it’s very practical! Relationships build that foundation. And as cliche as it sounds, the foundation I am most concerned with building right now is with myself. So that eventually, a confident person makes that decision not out of any need for completeness or security but out of pure joy, certainty, and love.
I don’t have an answer to this question. But I hope one day I do. I still believe in spiritual union so deeply — deeper than I ever have before. And I look forward to rediscovering it.
How would you define romantic love?
The electric anticipation of your touch, sunshine on my face, a bottle of wine and the fireplace, washing the wine glasses in the sink in the morning while coffee brews on the counter, street lights in the winter. Our secret universe in the company of strangers. The closest we get to dreaming while wide awake.
You’re an actor in a relationship with a director, a lot of people wonder how actors and their partners cope with jealousy, considering the intimacy involved in your work. How do you and your partner cope with this jealousy?
The opposite of jealousy is trust, or maybe it's the antidote.
It's challenging to be a vulnerable, emotional human and to give yourself permission to make art that is unconstrained (in a world that is censored and restricted) and encourage other artists to do the same while always maintaining the specific personal boundaries that everyone has and is entitled to.
There aren’t always clear boundaries in our work when it comes to intimacy… between actors on stage, and even just in the proximity of the actors to the audience. It’s all very personal. There’s no smoke and mirrors.
I’ve kissed a few scene partners in front of many audiences, and in front of my aforementioned director-partner-ex-fianceé. It’s fun, it's a drug, being vulnerable in front of so many people while simultaneously existing in your own private world (the world of the play.) I never felt like I couldn’t enjoy that feeling or that it would negatively affect my relationship. We’re all just doing our jobs. And frankly, I’ve always been more insecure off stage than on – if jealousy comes into play anywhere it's when the mask is off.
With every play you have to adapt. Trust and comfort levels shift and you have to prepare for that always. But what we’ve been able to cultivate at BCTR is a thriving arts community in a positive and rare environment. I’m no stranger to the ‘community’ theater –the ecosystem of artists– it has been my entire life. When you find something like this you want to hold onto it, find your place in it. Because it is scarce. There’s only so much work for actors – and it becomes increasingly competitive and cutthroat the higher you go – but there's also just, not a lot of good writing. Writing that makes you excited to speak the words on the page out loud, in anticipation of how speaking will change the feeling in your body and then the entire room.
I am losing the subject of jealousy though which I think is important because I feel it often and I feel it deeply.
I try to let jealousy pass through me and let it go.
What are the films/books/and plays that have formed you as an artist?
My favorite books to read are memoirs. I love Vivian Gornick the most. I read Odd Woman in the City in the first month when I moved here. Gornick taught me to love walking, New Yorkers, and to observe everything with sensitivity. Memoir keeps me grounded and related to time. It reminds me how long things take, how long and eventful our lives are and will be. How every moment is a chapter in the novel, or maybe just a sentence.
The works of Shakespeare have influenced me from a very young age, and continue to feel like a guide. In every medium, Shakespeare’s plays transcend time and circumstance and just speak to human nature. You can always go back to Shakespeare. Just read read read read read read. And you always find something new. Something in the text will speak to you differently– an answer to philosophical questions, moral challenges, something to scream, something to whisper. Shakespeare’s plays are limitless for the actor. There isn’t a character you cannot play or scenario you can’t daydream into. My dream is to become a real classical actor and play many transcendent Shakespearean roles throughout my life.
What’s your relationship with death? How often do you think about it? How does death define your work? How does death define your approach to life?
Death and tragedy always numbs me. I tend to laugh through certain things, rather than allow myself to really feel them. It's difficult for me to process. If someone I love is going through a tragedy my impulse is usually to just make myself small and cook a lot of food… That being said, I don't think about death very often. It doesn’t really define my work. I am not overly concerned with my legacy. If anything, I find death comforting– but only in the sense that in death, there is equality. Sometimes I genuinely find comfort in imagining a meteor wiping out all of humanity at once– eliminating all of the suffering and hatred in the world. I’m not a very religious person either and I feel bad that I don’t have a religion. Like I wonder maybe if I feared death, or feared God, or truly believed in an afterlife… my work would be different.
But I do think about loss. Because the reality is that we have to exist on this earth while other souls have left, while other souls suffer. I feel that magnitude very deeply.
Do you care about being understood?
Deeply. More than I’d like to admit. Most of the time, in social situations, I still feel like the awkward kid asking to join someone’s lunch table. I’ve always wanted to be accepted, understood, and just generally liked. But I find myself repeatedly making bold decisions that set me apart from other people, and invite judgment, and I try to maintain a sense of mystery and emotional unavailability that fucks me sometimes because those bold impulses often contradict themselves.
Even now as I am poring over my answers I am worried about how I could be perceived. I don’t feel like an established enough artist to document myself at this moment, even for a substack. I worry that I haven’t read enough books, acted in enough plays, or written anything ever – to qualify. My own deep fear of inadequacy has really changed my life. It has held me back at times. But it has also pushed me to prove myself in situations where I am out of place and uncomfortable.
I care about being understood, but not enough to stop my life in its tracks and make sure everyone is still on board. Because then I stop moving. And I stop making myself into a person who has anything to say at all.
Photo Credit: Luke Tava