SPEAKER_00 0:00

Oh my God, there's a fire here with abortion. There's a fire here with trans rights. There's a fire, fire, fire. No, no, no. The fire is in the Constitution. And all this is to keep us just going like, oh my God, oh my God. Oh my God. Hello.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

I'm Lydia Nicole, actor, producer, and acting career coach. And this is Acting Smarter Now. And I want to say thank you for coming. I'm asking you to get something to drink, get a notebook, and pull up a chair, because today we have a very serious episode happening. I don't know if you know this or not, but the ERA, meaning the women's equal rights amendment, has not been passed. It has not been ratified. We have the right to vote, but we don't have equal rights in this nation, which is horrific. And I just found out about it through my friend, actress and activist Kamala Lopez. So I invited her to the show to talk about it because we need to change this. We need to get that bill ratified, ASAP. I've been so upset since she told me about it. So without further ado, I want to go to the interview because I want you to hear what is happening and how you can help get this bill passed. The ERA has never formally been certified as the 28th Amendment. And I was so shocked when I heard you on Michael Cohen talking about this. That, you know, most of us don't even know that. We don't even know that women's rights have not been ratified and we are not protected. So tell us what exactly is going on and why are we not being taken care of?

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Oh my God, that's the $1.7 trillion a year question, I guess, Lydia. Um, first, just to start out, the Equal Rights Amendment is a very basic principle uh stating equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. It's exactly the same statement as we have on race, except the last two words are on sex instead of on race. Um it was written in 1923, it was passed by Congress in 1972, it was signed by Richard Nixon and sent to the states. And we needed three-quarters of the states to ratify the ERA for it to become law. And I'm very proud to say that on January 27th, 2020, Virginia became the 38th and final state necessary to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. But cut to six years later, here we are fighting in the courts because the U.S. government, both administrations, I may add, while Trump was the initial administration to block the ERA, Biden maintained that posture. Even though, despite on all of his campaigns, he and Kamala Harris both insisted that constitutional rights for women were a priority for them, that ERA certification, ratification, and completion was something they agreed with 1 million percent when they got into the White House, it ground to a halt. What they are claiming is that because the Equal Rights Amendment had a deadline placed in the preamble of the amendment that expired seven years after it was first sent to the states, that therefore it is not valid. That is just patently false. The Article 5 of the U.S. Constitution is very, very clear. It says when the majority, in this case, three-fourths of the states have spoken, the amendment becomes law immediately. It doesn't need further action by Congress, it doesn't need further action by the president. Well, suddenly this librarian became the decider for, I don't know, a hundred million women having voted for this and men, by the way, um, and decided that they weren't going to do their mandatory non-discretionary duty of publication until their president ordered them to do so. So equal means equal, my nonprofit, spent years since 2020 trying to urge the president, whoever it may be, to just tell the archivist to publish. They are an employee of the executive branch. And so they all acted like, oh, I can't do anything. It's not up to me. It's up to you. It's up to the lawyers. It's up to the it was a complete crock of bullshit. And essentially, let's boil it down to the real reason that women do not have ERV today. Number one, they underpay us. They underpay us to a huge, massive tune of $1.7 trillion a year. That's what corporations and the government and everybody else can get away with by paying women Latinas 54 cents on the white male dollar, black women 68 cents on the white male dollar, all the way up to 89 cents if you're a college-educated Asian woman, possibly. But nonetheless, every dollar that we lose, in our case, more than 50% is money that they get to keep. Another factor is that women do 100 million hours a year of unpaid labor. That's what keeps the society moving. The society is built on the backs of women that take care of children, the sick, the elderly, that do all the work that is invisible, but allows the system to function, you know? And so that's another factor. A third factor, and this is a little bit more nuanced, is that gendered violence goes without consequence, essentially. 99% of rapists will never see one night in jail. Domestic violence is out of control. And why is this? Is because the punishment, if there ever is one, is so minor. In the case of young women that are trafficked, this is another issue. Let's say you're an 11-year-old child who is trafficked by a pimp, um, and a 45-year-old man picks you up and has uh sex with you, and the police are uh show up. Guess who the criminal is in that picture? The child. The child. Because money was exchanged, even though that child will never see one cent of that money, it goes directly to the pimp, right, who is generally a man. Um, nonetheless, the child will have a criminal record, will be seen as having done commercial sex work. The John, the perpetrator, essentially, will take a three-hour basically traffic school class, a little fine, and goes on his way. So this is why constitutional equality for women is the single most important issue that we can focus on, whether we care about equal pay, pregnancy, discrimination, violence against women, what have you. And also, you know, our families, 75% of our school children have working mothers. A lot of them are single mothers. If they're getting 54 cents on the dollar, how are they supposed to function? And then for the state to come in, open the refrigerator, say you're you're a negligent parent, right? So then the child gets placed in foster care, and then she is trafficked. Uh, you know, there are the statistics. I I highly recommend that anybody that hasn't seen my film, Equal Means Equal, take a look at it. Where can they go see it? Right now, believe it or not, we had Amazon distribution for many years, but our distributor went bankrupt and disappeared. And so I have no idea who to talk to. I try talking to all of these platforms, but they're essentially I'm talking to robots and I can't get anywhere. And then I have a lawyer, but that costs three $3,500 when I want to write a letter to somebody. So obviously that's not a very viable option. But I if you simply type it in, you will find some platforms that have it. And if you don't, you can write to me at Kamala at equal meansequal.org, and I will make sure you get a link to it so you can watch it.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Okay. So first of all, I want the audience to know who you are. You are Kamala Lopez, you are an actor, a very recognizable actor. You've been doing this for over 30 years, maybe more, because we started about this. You might have come a little later than me, but I've been doing this for 45 years, so you're not too far behind me. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

We're the same age, and I think we um I started when I was seven. Okay. My I got my first part on Sesame Street when I was 14. Um I haven't stopped working. Well, I've had some long dry stretches, but I haven't started stopped pursuing my career since then, which is seven is like 53 years. Oh, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

So, as a working actor, somebody who's been doing this for decades, what made you say, hey, I'm interested in the ERA? I'm interested in the fact that women don't have the rights they should have. I mean, you're an actor. Why are you doing this?

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Yeah, no, I didn't have any idea I was gonna do this. When I listened to you on Joel's podcast, my husband's podcast, Lunch Therapy, I recommend everybody go see see Lydia's episode. It was amazing. I realized that so many of us actresses, certainly that worked in the 90s, um, experienced a lot of sex discrimination on top of the you know racial bias that you detailed. And while for men to be outspoken on a set or to have an opinion is, you know, it's not great, but when we speak up, it's a deal breaker, right? And I noticed a lot of things when I was coming up, you know, I'm I'm a Yale graduate, I have a degree, I studied with Sanford Meisner, with Uda Hagen, Herbert Burgoff, on and on and on and on. But there was no respect at the end of the day for actresses. The casting couch was always warm. Hot, hot, my friend, hot, not warm. It was caliente. I would often have to stand up for other actresses on set that were being treated poorly. And I, so this was kind of, and people would say, well, if you didn't want to deal with that, then why'd you go into acting? It's notorious, it's notorious for that. And I sort of internalized that and I was like, you know what? I'm strong, I can do, you know, I can navigate, I'm not gonna get pushed around, blah, blah, blah. And I didn't like seeing it for everybody, but I kind of assumed that's just the way things were. And I think most people, most women believe that sexism is just the air we breathe. It's just a product of our society, not recognizing that underlying laws are keeping that system in place. How I found out about it was that I had made a film as a director called A Single Woman, which was about our first U.S. Congresswoman, Jeanette Rankin. She was elected in 1916 before women had the vote. So she had gone around convincing 80,000 men to vote for her. And I was like, now this lady thought out of the box. She just went around the box, and there she was in the pictures, all men and this lady with the big hat. And I was like, this is fascinating. So my cousin had written a play about it. She was at Nevada Shakespeare Company. Her name is Jean-Marie Simpson, and I adapted her play with a very small grant from Nevada Shakespeare Company into a very small film called A Single Woman. Well, it happened that the Smithsonian Institute was doing an exhibit called Women of Our Time. And Jeanette Rankin was one of the women that they were focused on. And they invited me to present my film at the National Portrait Gallery in this new beautiful theater that they had. And I was feeling really fancy. I was like, damn, my first movie. I'm at some near. I am so hot and cool. And I walked in there with Joel, walked into the lobby of the National Portrait Gallery, which is very impressive, and it had huge pictures of women, you know, throughout history. And across the lobby, I see this woman, and she looks kind of like a ghost. She was dressed in a whole suffrage costume with the hat and everything. And I was like, oh God, that's gonna be me. I'm gonna be doing these jobs where I end up wandering the halls of museums dressed up, whatever I gotta do. I better go talk to this poor actor and pay attention to her because God forbid, you know, I mean, she's an actor, obviously. So I went over and I said, Hi, how are you? And who are you? And this girl was she just stared at me and she goes, I'm Alice Paul, and I'm back to haunt you because you've not done nothing about getting the federal equal rights amendment into the constitution, and women in this country are still not equal under the law. And I was like, What? What are you saying to me? Like, I was so shocked because it was such a disconnect from being at the same zone like a hot shot and then being told, girl, you're not a hotshot. You're not even an equal citizen. You ain't shit in this country. And I honestly like it was like a you know, when it got a glitch in my brain because I was very kind of not cocky, but I was confident. And this made me angry, it made me feel betrayed, lied to. I was raised my whole life to believe women could be whoever, do whatever, have whatever. And if it was our fault, if we didn't get ahead, if we didn't work hard enough, obviously something with us, to find out that really the system is not level. There's no way that you have equal opportunity under a system where you're diminished, you're less, you know, the legal model for slavery was taken from the legal model for wives. Women were chattel. We were owned, we were like a cow. We were owned by our father, and then when we married, we were owned by our husband. The only thing that changed in the constitution was that we got the right to vote, but they didn't change anything else in there, and that's why explicitly saying that women are equal persons to men and deserve the equal protection of our laws will change everything, and the people in power know it. And that is why it's been so difficult to get it done.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

It's been over a hundred years, and I think it's disgusting that here we are 2026, and we're still talking about this. We're still talking about this because people don't know. Just like you didn't know when you went to the Smithsonian, I didn't know before I listened to you talking on Michael Cohen's show. I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, back it up, girl. Back it up. We've been lulled into uh sleeping, you know. It has been everything is good. Why do you want civil rights? Why do you want the ERA? I mean, now they've gutted the civil rights. They've they've taken, they're trying to take back everything that we've made some progress on. So between the civil rights and the ERA, where do you stand right now? Because you were fighting for the ERA. When I saw you on Michael Cohen's show, you were talking about going to Boston because there was something that you were fighting for in front of the was it the Supreme Court?

SPEAKER_00 17:55

The federal court in Boston. We filed multiple lawsuits because we need to enforce the validity of the Equal Rights Amendment, and we're not going to get anywhere until the courts recognize that this is the law. So we have filed against the archivist in 2020, and we went back and forth for many years. Recently, we filed in Massachusetts, and we are now on appeal. Essentially, and this is a very sort of nuanced argument, and I don't want people to get confused. What happened was there were several men's rights groups that filed a case that said, why is it that men must register for the draft? It's called the Selective Service. When they turn 18, they must register, but women are forbidden. That is one of the last remaining cases where you see men must, women cannot, which is clear sex discrimination. A lot of the other smaller laws have been changed so that you don't recognize the underlying inequality. I just want to quickly sidebar that 96% of Americans believe men and women are equal, and close to 85% of them believe they're already equal in the Constitution. So we're dealing with having to dig ourselves out of a well of misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda to get even to the point where I was at the Smithsonian or you were listening to Michael Cohen. It's a shock. You feel like a crime has been perpetrated and everybody's walking around like it's okay. So we filed this suit because we didn't want men's rights groups to be the only ones discussing whether women should be drafted or not. So what we said is yes, women should be equal to men. If men have to sign up for selective service, so should women, but as equal citizens. In other words, you must first recognize our equality if you're going to send us against our will to die on a battlefield. Now, the reason that that case still exists is because up until 2015, women were not permitted to take combat roles in the military. So the Supreme Court justified their position by saying, well, women can't be drafted because what if we need them on the front lines? They're not military ready, we can't send them there. But guess what? We've been on the front lines since 2015. Close to 800 women have died already on the battlefield. A woman just died in the Iran, whatever you want to call it, at one of the bases. So don't tell us that we should fight for our country and provide equal sacrifice for our country and still not have equal protection of our laws. We don't accept that. So we filed that suit. Right now, there are four cases that are all asking the same question, and we're the only ones asking it as women, for women, demanding what's called strict scrutiny, which is the highest level of judicial review that race, national origin, and religion all receive. We want to make sure that sex discrimination is equally viewed by the courts as discrimination that cannot be tolerated.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Wow. Okay. So you had made a comment earlier about how we were treated in the 90s, and I came here in 78. And I started in radio when I was 13. So that was 73 when the women's movement was just starting. And I can tell you from back then to today, it really hasn't changed much. I mean, we got the re the Me Too movement that was making some progress, and then it kind of got stuck, you know. A couple years ago, because they found out some stuff about the leader of the Me Too movement, and then they just that then that's all bullshit.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

It is. This is all part of the propaganda. What happened is men in power were being called out, and they were getting, you know, dismissed, or this and that. And the patriarchy has reasserted itself and put those men back in power. If you go to my Substack, I have a whole article about this. This is the patriarchy saying, oh fuck no. Oh no, no, no. We are not going there. You are not going to get to call us out on rape, sexual assault, none of that. And one of the ways they do that in feminist movements and perhaps in gay rights movements and black rights movements too, is they co-opt and they buy the biggest voices. That's what happened in the Me Too movement, Lydia. Let me be honest with you. The Me Too movement and Times Up raised $65 million, and not one dollar of it was spent helping us get the ERA. It was all scrappy, unpaid, no money, just pushing. And what where did that $65 million go? You know, I I let me just tell you, both the political system in this country is profoundly corrupt. Because everybody, be you Republican, Democrat, or whoever the hell you are, you need money, too much money to run. And so when someone gives you a pile of money, you're suddenly beholden to them. That's the state of the present, what I call pink ribbon establishment feminist movement. They're all bought off by the Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party is also a bunch of white men, a lot of them, right? And also loves the system the way it is. They like to make changes here and there, sort of window dressing changes. But the kind of wholesale changes that would occur if women were equal, if you had to litigate domestic violence and rape and sexual assault and unequal pay, they don't want that. That's a bit too far. So what they do is they buy off the women's groups by giving them money. And then the women's group focus on getting Democrats elected, you know, using the money to say, oh my God, there's a fire here with abortion. There's a fire here with trans rights. There's a fire, fire, fire. No, no, no. The fire is in the constitution. And all this is to keep us just going, like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

So we need to stay focused and say this is what needs to happen. Absolutely. Take care of this first, then we can take care of the other stuff. Because as you were talking, I was thinking the Epstein files, right? That's the new fire that's out there. It's like they're still controlling. Uh, they're still controlling. We we still haven't gotten all the information we're supposed to have. The women who were victimized still haven't gotten their day in court. They haven't been heard. I just saw something in the news a couple of days ago where Trump uh had something go to the court to stop from giving Eging Carroll her money. So it's now on hold. It hasn't been stopped, but the it's on hold right now, which is horrible.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

It's all designed to delay, distract, so that people, people that have to put food on the table, put gas in their car, get their kids to school, they can't hold on to all of these things all the time and be worrying about Eugene Carroll and Epstein and this one and Louisiana and the Virginia, and it's just too effing much. And my point is equality first, all else follows.

SPEAKER_01 26:09

You have been able to do tremendous work aside from being an actor. We're gonna get to being an actor in a minute, but aside from being an actor, you've really been devoting a lot of time into this for those actors out there who are civic-minded, who want to do something, who see that there's a need. It doesn't have to be ERA, it doesn't have to be civil rights, but they see there's a need. What should they start doing right now, even though they're trying to get their care, maybe they're trying to get their career off the ground. But what can they start doing? Because I notice you also have a nonprofit. This is a nonprofit that you're doing everything under, which if I have my information right, it's pretty stringent. You know, having a nonprofit, you got to be on top of your game.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

And you have to have money to keep a nonprofit going. There's a lot of bills. You know, if you're not, it's kind of remember when people would say to you, if you're not burning on fire to be an actor, do something else.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

I would say the same thing about activism. If there's something in your stomach that makes you sick, like if you see what's going on with ice, which is another thing that is really making me ill, you see something like that and you just can't sleep. You're having nightmares, you feel viscerally ripped up, then by all means, follow your heart and do what you have to do. But I'll tell you what, it's not going to help your acting career. It's possibly going to hurt your acting career because they, and you said this in your interview as well, they like to keep us compartmentalized. Look, oh, Lydia, she's the curly haired Latina, she can play blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They don't want to hear about Lydia who cares about um ice. That's that's a problem because who knows who Netflix gets their money, you know, whatever. Right. But if it's because we're artists, we're actors because we care, because we want, because we feel things, and and and we're just very connected emotional beings. So you can't stop us from caring. You can't. And if you're one of those people, then by all means do it. But understand that it will have an impact on your career, and not in a positive way necessarily. Even the biggest stars. Look at Susan Sarandon. Susan Sarandon has suffered her entire career because she is very outspoken about what she believes. She believes that what's going on in Palestine is a crime and she's not going to be quiet about it. But guess what? It has affected her career. Jane Fonda, to some degree, it really affected her. Oh my God, big time. Big time. Thankfully, she's back, you know, working and she keeps speaking out.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

She's the poster child of what not to do as an actor if you have feelings about stuff. Because, you know, her stuff started in the 60s when she came out against Vietnam, against the war, and she was like, you know, we shouldn't be here, we shouldn't be doing this. And to this day, they still try to drag her through the mud with it. But she, being Jane Fonda, is resilient. And her resil, so I just want to add, I want to piggyback to what you said. As an actor, her resiliency has kept her going. Her fire, her fire for her art and her fire for activism has not stopped her one bit. It might have put logs in front of her and made it a little bit more difficult, but she is not stopping. Neither is Meryl Streep. I mean, there are people who are using their voice, their platform to speak out against power, to speak truth to power. You got John Leguizamo who's out there. Mark Ruffalo, Mark Ruffalo, Robert De Niro. I love Robert De Niro. And I mean, that is like they're coming with guns ablazing. Yeah. So what I will say is today it is a little different than what it was when Jane started in the 60s advocating for the end of the war and stuff. In that we have social media, we have our smartphones, we got the internet, we can just keep putting it out there and putting it out there. And that's part of what I why I wanted to talk to you is to rally the troops to say, hey, we need to sound the alarm on the ERA and the civil rights. We need to say this is not acceptable and we need to push past it. You know, it it it is it is imperative that we as artists use our voices and our platforms for good. So I just I just want to add to that because nobody said acting was gonna be easy. So acting's not easy, and if you're gonna be acting, you might as well have something else that you stand for that you can push forward.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

Life is not easy, and somebody wise said to me, in life, if you do what's easy, things get hard, and if you do what's hard, things get easy.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

With your nonprofit, how do you receive money? How how can we support your nonprofit?

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Oh, thank you. You can go to equalmeans equal.org and there's a big donate button, and any money you donate goes directly into the 501c3 is tax deductible, and it will be used to push this forward. You know, I've never received a salary from my work, and many, many times I've had to, you know, my husband's like, how is it that we are paying for the entire Equal Rights Amendment moving when there are 167 million women? Surely there are other women that want to pay for this. And I think that it's because they don't know about it, you know, really. I don't think, but anyway, I would greatly appreciate any and all support and also spreading the word joining us. There's a button that says join us. And then once you join us, you'll get newsletters. It's free, but you'll be kept abreast of what we're doing and what you know, like the thing in Boston. I needed people to show up in the courtroom because the judges are human beings. And if they see, oh my God, we we managed to get over 300 people on the Zoom listening to the thing. And I think that had an effect because he actually ruled that the woman was injured by failing to be able to file for selective service, which gives us an ability to appeal, which is what we're doing now. So, yes, any support is greatly appreciated. Any time that you have that you want to spend volunteering or learning more about this is greatly appreciated.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

So, I want to talk about your career. I want to talk about your longevity, that you've been doing this since you were seven years old. I am so impressed that you have studied with some of our finest acting teachers, starting with Uda Hagen and Herbert Bergdoff. How uh how old were you when you went to HB Studios? 14. Wow. Yeah. And so tell me that process. What was it like for you at 14?

SPEAKER_00 34:09

So I was a very bull-headed, stubborn person, and I had decided that I was gonna be an actor, and I actually convinced my parents to move from Venezuela, where I grew up, to back to New York because I wanted to act. I just that was what I was gonna do. And they were like, oh my God, okay. They said, we'll move here, but we're not helping you. We don't want to think this is the greatest career for you. Um, we want you to go to college, we want you, you could be a lawyer, all of this stuff. But if you want to do it, do it. So I basically did it by myself. Uh, how old were you when you moved to New York? Well, I was born in New York, and then when we were four, the family moved to Venezuela, and then when I was 14, moved back to New York. So I was in Venezuela for my whole childhood. And what did your parents do?

SPEAKER_01 35:05

What were what was their professions?

SPEAKER_00 35:07

My mom was a headmistress of a school. She was a teacher, and she ran a school that's still in Venezuela. It's a private, Montessori-based school, the first and only, I think, one such school in Caracas. And my father was an original madman. You know, he was a creative director, an advertising guy. His office was in the penthouse of the plaza hotel. He ran around with an ascot and an MG, and he was a Playboy, and he was very glamorous. And so he had a lot of friends that were in the business, like the Trump type of modeling world. So he was really not excited about me going into this at all because he knew what was up with the way people were.

SPEAKER_01 35:56

And so you're you're in New York, you're 14. How did you discover HB Studios?

SPEAKER_00 36:05

So the first thing I did was I got Backstage, which used to be a news a newspaper, and I also bought the Ross Reports. At the time, the Ross Reports were this little book that listed all of the agents and managers in the city. I think it's just New York.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

I don't know. And they have one for LA, and they also had all the casting directors, and they listed the shows. Yes, I know it very well.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

So I went, I took my thing, and then, oh, and I did, I told my dad I wanted to get pictures, and he arranged for me to get pictures with a friend of his. My first two headshots, which were taken by a fashion photographer called Memo. And my dad was really worried about that shoot. He was like, make sure my mother was there and all of this. But I sat down with Backstage and the Ross reports, and I just out, you know, crossed all the things, and I had my little black portfolio with my little pictures. And I took the train in from Brooklyn and I get to Manhattan, and I just went to the first place, which was at uh the first one in the list was Mica Mato Agency. And I went into Mica Mato Agency and I was like, Hi, I'm here to show you my pictures, and I'm going to need an agent. I'm an actor. And the receptionist was like, Oh, okay. And she called the one of the people and they opened my book and they're like, Oh no, these are no good. This isn't gonna work, these aren't good at all. And I reached across the desk, grabbed it, and said, Well, thank you. I think they're great. And I walked out, and they chased me to the elevator and signed me immediately. That's amazing. And that was uh who sent me on my audition for Sesame Street, and I booked that. And um, and then what happened was my I did get into college early, and I had always wanted to get go to Yale because Meryl Streep went to Yale, and I had to go where Merrill Streep went. Of course, Meryl Streep did not go to Yale, just FYI. Meryl Streep went to Yale drama school, which I didn't know that there was differences and I just thought, Yale, that's where Meryl Streep is. Well, I'm going there. And so um I only applied to Yale. Well, I applied to Princeton and Harvard and Yale. But I wasn't gonna go to Princeton or Harvard if I got in. I was only gonna go to Yale and my because my dad said that college was for pussies. And my mom was like, no, and my dad was like, Oh, you don't need that shit. You know, my dad was like all his brothers went to MIT, but he didn't go to college, so he was like, you know, you don't need you don't need that garbage. Those people are so full of shit. So, but I was like, But dad, I want to go to Yale because Merrill Street. He's like, Okay, well, I'm not paying a dollar. If you get into anywhere, I'm not paying one cent. You can figure it out. So I did get accepted at Yale early action. I got accepted when I was 16 and I got full scholarship, but also work study. So I had to work three jobs custodial services, dish room, all the jobs that as a Latina going to Yale, you really don't want to be doing. Because the people at that time were not very nice to me. You know what I mean? Like you, you, you can imagine. Oh, absolutely. They were all like, oh, Buffy, are you going sailing next week? We have our house in Rhode Island. And I was just like, what the fuck is wrong with these people? Are they okay? I would be like, pull that stick out of your ass. What's what are you trying to say? Like, because I by then had become super flapush, because that's where I was. I was like, Brooklyn, man, what the hell is wrong with these people? Eventually I found some very nice people, but at the beginning, I was just like, oh no, these people are horrible.

SPEAKER_01 40:19

So, what were some of the the things that you took away from Yale that you actually use today in your acting?

SPEAKER_00 40:26

Creative thinking, problem solving, incredible writing skills, and discipline and demand for excellence. And uh, you know, I'm just so thankfully I'm pretty educated. And being educated is the single most valuable asset that any person can have in life, whether they want to be an actor or a plumber. Um, and being able to to think, to, to think, because everybody's trying to manipulate the masses, right? They're trying to control how you think. But if you're able to think for yourself and analyze for yourself, well, that doesn't make sense, then then no one can fuck with you, really. And so that that's a and I also, you know, what I got from Yale is I really don't care who you are, how much money you have, what you look like, who your parents were. I can be in any room with any person and feel absolutely like I hold my own. I have no insecurities on that score because it in order to survive there, I had to essentially claim ownership of myself and just be fine with whatever, with who I am.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

And that's also part of New York training. Yes. To you know, New Yorkers can be with anybody. I miss New York in New York.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

They'll talk to anybody. The beauty of New York is one minute you're there with the hedge fund guy, the next minute the cab driver, the third minute, uh an immigrant from Ethiopia, and and it's just so beautiful. It's the melting pot of America. I miss New York terribly, horribly. I love New York so much. It's where my heart is, but unfortunately, my pocketbook doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

So, what did you get from HB Studios? Because you that was the first school you went to, first acting school you went to. And when you went, it was one of the best schools to go to.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

And so I sat in on Uda Hagen's class and was like, I was like, what is happening? And then the classes that I was accepted into to train was Edward Morehouse, which was teenagers mostly, and then Steven Strompel. And what I realized was like, because I was very much like, I could do this, like I don't need all this shit. I don't need to be doing like, what was it? The glass menagerie. Oh my god, you couldn't pay me. Like, I couldn't even watch the scenes in class. I'm like, this is boring, this is stupid. HB Studios taught me discipline. They they trained in terms of they I'd be walking from the subway with hefty bags, huge hefty bags of all the things that you'd have to have in your scene to create your environment. Like they were serious. It was not effing around. And I was kind of like very rebellious at the time. Like I was smoked, sit in the back, and smoke. And I was thought I was tough because I was from Brooklyn, you know, and all these people were like these white people from I don't know, from Long Island or who were where the hell they were coming from. But I stuck to it, I stuck to it for years. And I got like a base coat. Got a strong foundation. A strong foundation. So then when I went to Yale and I started in the theater department, which was highly academic, it was a lot of reading plays and uh analysis. You didn't even get to put up a scene for two years. You just had to learn all that shit and Shakespeare and this one and that one. And but I was able to tolerate that from HP. Otherwise, I would have been like, this is nothing to do with anything that I want to do. I'm already, I'm already in SAG, guys. I I'm wasting time. I need to get back out there. What the hell are you people talking about? How did you go from Yale to working to studying with Grotowski? He came to Yale and he um auditioned the entire department. And you know, I was like the black sheep in the department. The people there didn't like me, and also the teachers there didn't like me either. And so at Yale, in order to be a theater major, you have to audition every semester. And they try and get rid of you every semester, and every semester they would kick me out, and every semester I would get around them. I would be like, Oh no, my catness sister, you're my canvas. No way you're gonna get rid of me. I will outlast you like a cockroach. I will be here until you fall down dead. And I just kept going around until I finally the last time they tried to kick me out, they were like, You don't belong here. This is not the career for you. And I was like, Okay, whatever. I went to the dean of women and I was like, excuse me, I came here for this. They're trying to stop me. You need to put them in their place, and they did. Wow, yeah, so that was horrible. But Grotofsky, for some reason, picked me. He picked very few people, but I think you know, I was so weird and out there and doing crazy stuff, and I got picked, and then he brought us out to Irvine. And what Grotofsky was very interesting because a lot of actors love the process, they love rehearsing over and over for hours and hours and months and even years, like Pacino and Salome. I mean, that thing went on for years, not me. I don't like that. I like to go, I like to go, hit it, get it, move on. But that's just my personality. But Grotofsky, there was no result, it was all and only process, and the process and the performance were intertwined. So it was something called beyond beyond the objective drama, beyond the theater. The audience and the performers were all similarly situated. And we would do exercises that would last 12 hours of doing the same thing, the same motions, the same chanting in languages that we didn't understand, where they would teach it to us just by starting to sing it in God knows what like million-year-old language. I still remember all of them, though, by the way. And it would just go on, and it made me crazy and it made me violent. So crazy, violent. I was like on the D train, like, oh no, I can't, I cannot do this anymore. We he would have us out in the desert. We would be like one long snake of a person, and the goal was to move so slowly that other animals wouldn't know that you were there because you were moving so slowly that you became part of the landscape and all the animals would just be coming out. It was intolerable to me. Wow, it was intolerable. I was so frustrated. He would have us dancing till our feet bled. It was in I couldn't, but I you know what I learned from that? I learned that when you're with a teacher, you have to do ex everything that they're telling you to do a hundred percent, a hundred percent in that moment, it'll end, and then you can use your analytical brain and your intellect and your emotions to decide if that's what you want to pursue, if you want to incorporate that in your process or not. But if you don't go a hundred percent, if you don't allow them to teach you what the hell they're trying to teach you, you'll never know if you liked it or you didn't like it. And that helped me because after Grotofsky, I was able to study with Meisner. And if I had been such a little bratty bitch like I was with Grotofsky with Meisner, I wouldn't have had the benefit of working with him for five years and just really loving him and him loving me and all of that. Now you worked with him in New York or in LA? I worked with him in LA and also in Beckwi, which is an island where he had uh a whole system. So you would go there and train there every day and then back here. And then I did his master actors lab and his master directing lab as well. So what did you learn from Meisner? So Meisner was very specific about, you know, everybody knows that Meisner is, you know, acting is not acting, it's reacting, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what he was ultimately was the best bullshit meter you have ever met. He would know immediately when you were not truly present, when you were putting something on, or it had some idea or some conception, and he'd hit you with his cane, too. It would hit you. That's hilarious. What I learned from Meisner was how to just be there immediately. Be, you know, because Hagen, Burgoff, and to some degree Grotofsky are all about finding the process, finding, you know, whether it's sense memory, emotional memory, this thing, that thing. Meisner, no, that's not what it is. You can do that work, but when you're acting, that shit either is in your bones or it goes out the window. And that is much closer to what it's like to be on a set. When you're on a set, there are all these factors that come into play that you may not be able to prepare for. For example, one of the first movies I did, I had this really um intense scene where I was breaking down, horrified, crying, I had been raped, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was super prepared. You know, this was back in the pre-meisner. So I had my notes, my history, my backstory, my this, and then I get to the set and everybody's laughing, everybody's talking really loud, moving shit around and just doing their thing. They don't give a shit about whatever the actor. And I'm like trying to prepare and trying to prepare. And I did the take, and then in between the take, they just start talking and laughing. And I threw a fit like a Christian bale. You're in my I see. Have you seen the Christian bale? Yeah, absolutely. I loved that because that's how I feel sometimes. I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? Why are you moving that right now? I'm in, I'm trying to give you something that's gonna be on film and you want to fucking talk about the light. I'm gonna fucking kill you. So I totally appreciate Christian Bale for doing that. God bless him. But I'll tell you what, don't do that shit because people don't like it. And because it's kind of bratty and get a grip and fucking handle your own area. Okay, that's your area, your preparation. If you can hit it, if you're there when they go action, suddenly 200 people staring at you. Why she doesn't look that into it. It's like, well, if maybe you hadn't been poking me and pulling my hair and pinning me and shoving something in my butt until two seconds ago, maybe I but that's not how it works, right? You gotta come with the goods, you gotta make it like a second.

SPEAKER_01 52:47

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:48

And then guess what? It's over. And you're like, oh, but I could have. We're on, we're on, we're moving, we're moving, right? So that's what Meisner helps with is being able to, whether it's correct or not. If I'm talking to Lydia or I'm talking to the script supervisor, you know, that's that's when Meisner becomes a little bit of a problem, is because sometimes you're not actually acting with the person, you're acting with a dot, you're acting with some lady going, and then he said to go to you're like, oh my god. Right. So right, so you have to have your own will to pull from, right? But if you're on set with that other actor, you have to be there. You can't be reacting to some other thing that's in your head from when you did a character study. Right.

SPEAKER_01 53:45

And you can't go, oh, I got distracted because of the grip. You've got to bring that focus, you gotta bring being present between you and the actor, and you have to be able to turn off the cameramen, the lighting people, all the millions of people that are behind, that are watching, that are looking at you like I could do better, whatever, whatever the bullshit is, you have to be and you have to hit your mark. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 54:13

And you have to find your light, and you can't be looking down, and your eye can't be jiggling because you're looking at both of their eyes. So part of your brain really does have to be able to compartmentalize to very pragmatic, specific things that you have to be able to pull off because you can be having the most incredible emotional response. But if your head is down and your hair is in your face and whatever, no one's ever gonna see it and they're never gonna use it, and they're gonna cut it, and you're gonna watch the movie and go, Oh, well, that scene's gone. So you got to know how to do both things. And I feel like a lot of teachers teach you one thing or they teach you the other thing, they don't teach you both things, so you've got to go find those things.

SPEAKER_01 55:02

Well, I love I love that you brought in different processes, different techniques, and you found your way, you found what works for you. And I think for today's actor, it is important for them to know that you taking an eight-week course or a 12-week course does not make you an actor, and that you need technique. Technique takes a while, and also it never ends, it never ends.

SPEAKER_00 55:27

I'm in class now. I never you don't stop taking class. You can never stop taking class, not because you don't know what you're doing, but because this is an instrument. You can be Mozart, and if you go go live on an island for two years and never play the piano, you're not gonna walk into Carnegie Hall and wow anybody, right? Right, you've got to keep your instrument, you know, trained up. You've got to do your scales, you gotta practice, you've got to find new things, different things, different teachers. Be open, but be disciplined and just keep keep going because that's the life, okay? The life is that, and then occasionally there's the little cherries, which is I'm on set and I'm doing an acting job. But that's not what the acting life is. The acting life is so many other things, and you said in Joel's thing, it's like finding the jobs, approaching the casting people, having the right materials. It's not all, oh, I'll be on set and I'll have a driver, and then I want my egg sandwich, please, with no bacon. You know, that's great. But how did you get there? You were in class, you were prepared, you had representation, or you found a way to get yourself that audition. When the time for the audition came, you weren't out partying the night before, so you looked like hell and you don't know what you're doing, you were on point, you delivered, you delivered an amazing self-tape. That it's like Amy Linden, a teacher that I'm working with now, she says, if you want to be a working actor, it's like being an Olympic athlete. Yes. You you're not gonna get the job because you were pretty damn good. You're gonna get the job because you were so good that they couldn't not give you the job. They couldn't. They were like, holy shit. And to get to that point, you have to have yourself and the technique. So ultimately, ever all the good actors are gonna have the technique, all of the good actors are gonna know their lines, they're gonna have their visuals set, their background, everything, they're gonna be on time, if not early. They're gonna deliver their self-tape a day early. But the person that gets the part is gonna be so themselves on top of that, right? So fully themselves, which is so unique. You can only nobody can be you but you, and when you're fully you, that it just people will like, wow, look at you, you know, I want you, and that's when you get the part. It's a whole life, it's a lifestyle, and you have to choose it, and you have to choose it every day, and it's uh very frustrating a lot, and there are very few opportunities sometimes. Uh but if you love it, you love it, and if it's what you want to do, then that's what you want to do.

SPEAKER_01 58:42

Well, let's go even deeper because you have to need to do it. Uh we can love many things, but we have to need to do it, especially when the rejection comes, especially when there's the dry season, especially when you get people who are trying to knock you out of pocket. You have to love it, love it, love it, love it to the point where you gotta do it again. You gotta do it again, even though you might have gotten heartbroken because you worked so hard to get a certain part and it went to somebody else. And you just knew you were gonna get that job and you didn't. And you gotta pick your face up off the floor and say, I am going to do it. I was sharing with my daughter the other day about doing stand-up. I had started doing stand-up as a way to help me get to the front of the line in acting roles because I I saw there were other people getting in because they had dancing abilities or singing abilities, and I didn't have that. So I I remember doing stand-up many nights and and bombing, and then going home crying and going, I'm I don't want to do this anymore, and then waking up the next morning, okay, okay, what's the next room I'm gonna do? And it was the same feeling that I had with my acting, you know, it's that same thing. You you work hard, you go to that audition, you do it, and you don't get it, and you don't get it. And then how do you come back the next day? You have to bounce back, you have to figure out okay, this is what I'm supposed to do. Maybe that wasn't my job, but this is my career, which is different than that that being your job. A career is something you keep doing for a life or or or a very long time, and so it is important to for you to train um and to find new venues to try things out at and study with different people, not every week, but you know, um if you're feeling like, okay, I've been doing this for a while, and you know, it's been five years, I've been doing this, I think I'm ready to move on to something else, that you honor that in your, you know, that's going on within you and go, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. I I'm gonna go do that. I think I I wanna take this. I I don't know about you, but for me, my thing was every time pilot season started, I made sure that I was in a co-reading class because that was not my thing. So I had to make sure that um as a supplement to my acting classes, I was taking co-reading. That way, when I got into audition, I was ready. There, you know, you couldn't say any. If I didn't book it, it wasn't because I wasn't ready, I wasn't prepared, I didn't know my stuff, and I didn't deliver. It had to do with something else that was out of my control. I'm hearing all these stories of people going to acting classes and just disrespecting the teacher or disrespecting the students. You know, you don't come prepared, you don't have your your stuff memorized, you're not ready to work, you're you're just like, okay, I'm here. No, that's not how it is. You gotta come, you gotta be ready, you gotta respect the teacher. She is not your friend, she is not your parent. Maybe you you disrespect your parent, but don't do that to the teacher. Well, and also the teacher should just get rid of those students. That's what I say, girl. That's what I say. I say I would say thank you very much. Uh, you can leave now. Yeah, you can't leave now. But but uh society has changed in a way that we we don't bring the discipline, you know. So I'm sounding that alarm that you need work ethic, you need to come ready, come prepared. First of all, if you want to be in movies and TV, that's big money business, and they're not gonna mess with you. If you get stupid, you're getting fired. You you want to be able to build a good reputation. So I wanted to talk about getting fired because sometimes you are doing a great job, but they realize that's not what they want, they want something else, and then they let you go. Yeah. And how do you handle that? Because that's a bigger rejection, I think, than just not getting the job.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:09

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, in my case, when I did get fired or let go, it was usually similar to what you described about stand and deliver, where I did not agree with something that was going on. I saw something upsetting, and I wasn't willing to put up with it. I never did nudity and I never was going to do nudity, and yet people kept trying to make me do nudity, and they would try it in very bizarre ways, where suddenly I'd get on set, and it was a simple scene about the husband and wife talking, and they're like, Okay, you're in the shower, and then you step out and talk to, and I was like, What? What do you mean I'm in the shower? Why am I in the shower? And they're like, Well, it's just you know how husbands and wives are in the morning. They're in the one's in the shower, the other one's shaving. I said, Oh, okay, put him in the shower. I'll be brushing my put him in the shower. They're like, No, we don't want him in the shower. And I was like, I guess you don't want me in the show because I'm not getting out of the shower. So that was a recurring theme, because they'd say that it would be okay for me not to do it, and then they'd pressure me on the set. And a lot of people, it's very because everybody's like, oh my god, the actress is being difficult. We have 200 people here, and now she doesn't, nobody gives a shit about your boob. And I'm like, well, if you don't give a shit about my boob, why are you so obsessed with seeing it?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:42

So let me ask you a question. At that time when that was happening to you, did you know that you could call SAG to get them to come on set?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:53

You know, I knew that, but I I that elevated it from my point of view, that would have elevated it to yet a more um untenable level for me as an actor. And it would be like, oh, never hire her again because because I had done that. I did that once when they tried to, similar to something you mentioned on Joel's podcast, they wanted me to work a really, really long day, force my call, not pay me overtime, and not pay me forced call. And so I did call SAG, and that ruined my relationship with these this production company that had been theoretically going to do multiple things with me, but that that was that they wanted me to play ball and just suck it up. And at the time I just thought, well, why you know I have a union that that's why I have a union is so that they can't make me work till five in the morning and bring me in at eight in the morning. I mean, that's what it's for. That's what everybody works so hard to get. So that's another area. And then of course, there is that time where you have all your friends over to watch the pilot, and then it gets to your scene. It's a totally different person there. And you're like, You're cut out.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:18

Yeah. Or there isn't another person there, but they've cut you out of the thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:22

It's like changed your voice completely and revoiced you completely. And I was just like, why don't they have to tell me this? Why don't they have to give me an opportunity to revoice myself if you didn't like because I often I and this may have been, you know, partially my um mistake, is that because I I didn't like to see all the Latinos always talking like this and a kind of and then always put us and then and I didn't like it. I didn't like the way Rosie Bettes talk, Mookie. When are you gonna do you're gonna take me to the body or what? And I didn't want to talk like that, and I don't talk like that. And I and I found it disrespectful. But the the difference is some people do and some people don't. Rosie spoke like that, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:16

So that was for me. Right, that was yes, right, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:20

So the character, so if I'm playing a character that's caught that's in college graduate school, and you want me to talk like Mookie, I'm not gonna fucking do it because that just perpetuates a stereotype that the general population has, is that we can't speak English properly. And I was not gonna do it. So then they would just re-voice me and I'd be like, who is that speaking? And she can't enunciate. And you know, it was very offensive to me. But that said, you know, now that I'm a director uh as well as an actor, it's very important for the actor to try and deliver what the director wants. The director is the captain of the ship, right? And the writer is the arc that built the ship. So if you're not listening, so and in the writer's mind, he had envisioned your character to speak a certain way or do certain things. And the director is fulfilling that, you know, they may have had conversations about changes in the character, but the director's job is to fulfill the writer's vision. And if you're then gonna say, you know what, I think she should be, you know, this, that, and the other thing, it's not, it's not helpful. Right. You have to work as a team together, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:38

And I think I think it's the actor's responsibility at the beginning, before you get booked, when you come into the audition or you do the self-tape to to voice that so that they understand if they're gonna hire you, that's not the way you're going. Because I, as you, uh Latina, I would get that all the time. We need an accent. I go, Well, I do have an accent. No, but you we need an accent. And I said, Oh, yeah, I can't do that. But thank you for giving me the opportunity. But I think you can find somebody better. And I would, I would do that because I wanted to honor that it was their production. It had nothing to do with me. They had a certain look that they were going for. And if it was something that I liked the work, I was like, okay, how can I honor them, give them the accent that they want, but make the character human, not uh stereotype, but really bring the humanity to that character. And so I think it's important for actors to know that, especially actors of color, because we still have everything we're talking about, they still do it today. And so if you want to work in this business, then you have to know to pick your battles. That there are certain things you got to be able up front, not when you get cast, but before the casting happens, to say, hey, I love your project. I would love to do it, but I don't do nudity and I don't do accents. I I don't even come from that area that does accents. I that's not something I do. And just be real honest and filled with love about it instead of getting attitude. Because I remember going in on one job where I was I was on fire back then when you had the auditions and you were going in to, you know, to the waiting room, and then all the actors would start talking. Well, they got us doing accents again, blah, blah, blah. And I remember I was so fired up by the person who was leading the charge. They got us doing these accents, and this is bullshit, and blah, blah. So I went in there, being the empath that we are. I went in there and I was like, I'm not doing an accent. And I just I unloaded on the casting director who actually was a big fan of mine. I left, and that night when I went home, that person who had started the revolt in the lobby was the person who booked it. And so I learned from that. That was early on in my career, and I learned, wait a minute, someone's gonna get that job. So you have to weigh it, you know. Can you take the material as an actor and really make it into something, really make that character authentic and give them a real life? Or is that something you just go, yeah, I'm I I don't want that on my resume. I don't want that type of work. And it's up to the actor. You're you have to decide what works for you and what doesn't, because uh um there have been a lot of actors who have gotten homes uh by doing accents. I don't have anything against accents. I love accents. I do lots of accents and I enjoy it maybe. I know exactly what you're talking about, but that's but that's sometimes the stereotyping that they'll try to do to you as an actor of color. So you have to be very uh mindful and very aware.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:11

I just want everybody to know that doing accents is one of the fun things, but when you are consistently pigeonholed into an area that not only is not true to you, but also is harmful to people that you're representing, then that is different. And I have to say, I have noticed a difference though, because there were not that many roles for us, and now every single show on TV has a Latina series regular. Uh that I I mean they're cops, they're lawyers, they're this thing, they're that thing. Back then we were whores and maids, whores and maids, whores and maids, and junkies junkies and illegal.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:04

I've done them all. I know that, I know that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:08

So, but I think it's improved in that way.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:10

I do too. But also going back to you talking about you started directing, the system has changed in that there are not as many gatekeepers, and because of technology, we can make our own projects. We don't have to wait for someone to give us a job. You didn't wait to do your short, you didn't wait to do your documentary, you did it. You know, you you said, I want to do this, this is what I want to do. I want to talk about this woman who was the first congresswoman. I want to make this kind of stuff. So I I do appreciate that how we've evolved in a way that we as actors can take matters into our own hands. We can do web series, we can do the vertical shorts, we can do plays, we can write our own projects. We I mean the world is open for us in a way that was not necessarily available to us back when we started.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:12

No doubt about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:13

So we have as actors, we have to take advantage of that. Yes, the only caveat is how are you paying for this? Well, having been on the gorilla side of filmmaking for the last so many years, I have learned that if you have the desire to get it made, you will get it made with two dollars and fifty cents. Right, but I'm saying we want to pay our bills too. We do, we do, but sometimes, and I'm I'm gonna play devil's advocate, sometimes you gotta make that one project that you can use as a calling card so that you can get the monies to be able to continue and do what you need to do. Or you can crowdfund, you can find businesses with people who want to be in show business but not in front of the camera, and they're willing to give you funding for your project. That's another way to do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:14

I mean, that's what I've done. Uh, I crowdsourced my documentary, I got close to 3,000 people to give whatever they could and made that's how I got it. Bravo. Bravo. And I also got a grant from Nevada Shakespeare Company, as I mentioned, to do the other. So you're absolutely right. I I think what happens is that at this ripe old age now, I'm just frustrated by how the powers that be want to sort of sit back and go, like, you know, kind of like the emperor, like, bring me your wares and I'll decide. Yes, no, yeah. And the thing is, you know, you've spent years of your life and sacrifice when it costs them a bagel budget, you know, they're on their late latest Marvel movie to finance something that could be quite important, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:06

But it's not our game. So I I just have to say it's not our game. And if we want to make things happen, we have to create our own game. I I hear you, I I understand, but I also know that it's almost going back to how we started this conversation with the ERA, getting it ratified, getting this stuff together. They want to keep us underfoot, right? Yes, I don't like that. And we have to find a way not to be underfoot. I can't demand you to do for me. I have to go, okay, well, you you want you want it this way? That's not gonna work for me. But thank you so much. I'm gonna go figure it out another way. And yes, we are older, but we are also seasoned. We come to the table with so much. I look at it this way: it's putting on my business cap, taking my creative cap off, putting my business cap and going, okay, who do I know? I want to make this project. I'm getting ready to put my one-person show back up. So, my I'm thinking, okay, how do I do a tour, a 15-city tour across the country and then be able to take it overseas and do it in other places? I'm not looking at, oh, this theater is, you know, let me go, let me go see if this theater will bring me in as part of their show. They're not going to bring me in as part of their show. I'm not part of that ecosystem. You know, those are very small communities. So if I want to do something, I have to be the producer. I have to be the one to get it done. So I'm I I'm mad at it. I think as actors, we we we do ourselves a disservice when we say they have to do this, they have to give us this. No. But I am a human being, I do live in America, and I do say they better ratify the ERA bitches, and we need to get civil rights set right because we are not in the 1800s, we are not back in slavery, even though they want to take us there with the corporations and have these big corporations make us do slave work and pay us for 10 people. You know, they pay us to do the work of 10 people, and that is not acceptable. We have to speak out against it, and we have to not spend money in those places that are doing that or with those companies that are doing that. And we have to, as Americans, as women, as people of color, as people who believe in humanity, fund organizations like yours to say, let's push through. It is a travesty that you've been doing this for so long, and this is the first that I've really heard of it. And and it was only because I watch all these Substack shows like Michael Cohen and the Midas Touch and all these people, so I can keep abreast of what's going on in politics, because it is a scary time. So that we have to figure out how do we get the word out regarding equal rights. Equal means equal. How do we put that out there and keep um pounding it? It's not, you know, just a one-off, but to keep doing it on Twitter. There's a guy that keeps putting up uh the day of uh of January 6th. He keeps putting up a clip of January 6th and the insurrection. And he says, you know, keep sharing it. Don't, you know, don't let him stop. And I feel that's what we should be doing with your stuff. That's what we should be doing with the civil rights to say, look, we are in jeopardy, people. It is jeopardy. The white man is uh just losing his mind, trying to control everybody with ice, with with all these horrible things. It's like, man, we're not taking that. We're not, and we're gonna start pushing back in a way that we win. That we win. Even though the Epstein files have not been fully released, because there was such pushback, they had to release stuff, and it's about continuing to push back and say all of it, all of it, all of it. And then equal rights. We need all of it, all of it, all of it. To the Supreme Court, all of it, you bitches, all of it. So I I just, you know, I'm I'm a big believer that we need to know what our game plan is. What what are we doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:56

No, you're absolutely right, Lydia. You're absolutely right. We can't you we can't wait for the anybody to save us, we can't wait for anybody to give us anything. You know, we are the change we want to see. There's just no doubt about it. I I I take your point and I agree with it. And I sometimes I just need to hear that too, even sitting here, you know, a million years later. And you know, one thing about you is you've always been such a positive person, always happy and kind and open. And this business can sometimes make you amarga.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:37

And remember, we two are the business, so we get to decide how we're gonna show up, right? I there's nothing I can do about uh about Boo-Boo, but there's something I can do about me. I um I share this with, I I always share this with with people. It's like when I and I learned this through stand-up. It's funny. I just wanted to be an actor. That's all I want to, I just want to be an actor, but I had to take the route of doing stand-up because I thought that would get me to the door faster. But then when I was doing stand-up, I learned so much to help me as an actor. And one of the things was, you know, you do stand-up, you get on stage, and you want the audience to like you. And as actors, as performers, we want the audience to like us. But what I learned in stand-up is you gotta like you. You have to be the one to give you permission to say, I'm gonna do what I want to do, thank you very much, and get up there. And so one of the exercises that I did for myself early on when I was doing stand-up, because I saw I would come on stage what I call leaking. You know, I I I was wanting them to like me, and I I would repel the audience. I I and and I saw that in certain auditions when I would go in for acting jobs. I wanted it so bad, I would repel the casting people or the or the people that were in the room for the uh final callback, instead of me holding my center and and just bringing what I had, I wanted them to like me. So if it wasn't a character who was tough and didn't give a shit, and I could stand in that character, I would fall apart, wanting, you know, wanting them to like me. But what I learned through doing stand-up was I started walking up Fryman Canyon, and I did this for a whole year. I would go up Fryman Canyon and I would say hello to every single person. And my my only objective was to say hello and not care if they didn't say hello to me or if they did say hello to me. That was not my business. And that really helped me um get out of wanting to be liked, of you know, that thing, that little kid in us that, you know, do you come along? Will you be my friend? Will you be my friend? And you know, even even with kids, they they uh push away other kids who come at them needy. And so we just have to walk in our center, knowing our why. Why do I do this? Why do I act? Because I love it. If I if I had to do it to a paper bag, I'd be doing it to the paper bag. It it is who you are. You're an artist, you're an actor. So you're expressing yourself now through the the um directing, you're expressing yourself now through your nonprofit, but at the end of the day, you are an actress. And and you can't let anybody, you can't let any anything um deter you from that or make you feel less than because you are exercising your creativity and your art. The rest of it is bullshit. I'm sorry, it's like, no, you're not gonna take my joy. I'm gonna go joyful, and I'm and I'm not gonna go into areas where there's not any joy. You know, and I think that's that's how we that's how we own ourselves or take care of ourselves and go, you know what? Let me find that tribe of of artists who want to make good art. And and then we can move forward, right? Then we can do what we need to do. The problem that we have had, and again, uh I'm talking to you as someone, as my peer, who when you came out here, um, there were a lot of clicks, and you weren't allowed to play in some of their clicks. You weren't Mexican, or you weren't this, or you weren't that, or you know, your your hair was curly, it had to be very straight, or it had to be very curly, whatever the nonsense was. And and because of that, I learned wait a minute, you're not gonna stop me from doing what I want to do because you don't let me play in your reindeer games, doesn't mean I can't make my own reindeer games. That's right. You're not we're not taking this, we're not taking this, and I'm not pushing to be, you know, it's that thing of be where you're celebrated, not tolerated. And so, as human beings, we have to demand to be celebrated as women, as people of color. We have to demand to be celebrated. We spent so much time being in areas where we were tolerated, we were disrespected, we were belittled, we were demeaned, we were made to feel like second-class citizens. No, we are not. We are human beings, God sees us all equal. That this whole country was built on the foundation of biblical principles that man came and perverted it. This is not what God, you know. If we're talking God, all these all these Republicans talking about the Bible, none of them have ever opened a Bible. The Bible is about equality, the Bible is about love your fellow men, love one another, love, love. It doesn't say it depends on what color, what race, what uh sex you are. It just says love. Love your neighbor as yourself. Well, I got a lot of women neighbors, I love them, I got men neighbors, I love them, I got gay neighbors, I love them because that's the mandate is love. And part of that love is to love yourself. You gotta love you, you gotta respect you. I have to respect me in order to respect you. You know, you are my fellow sister, you're an artist and you're doing something amazing. How can I not support you? How can I not be there for what do you need? What let's let's get this going. If we have to, if we have to get on a zoom once a month and we have to start banging. That bell and say, Hey, did you did you contribute to this cause? Because we need it right now. Not tomorrow. We need it now. Even if it's a dollar, we need that dollar today. Your dollar makes a difference for us, for all of us, you know. But we we get very selfish. And as actors, I think we we have to be giving. We have to be giving. We have to start the mission. So I didn't mean to go off on that tangent, but you No, I I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:34

It's very helpful for me to hear those things because uh I often feel that way. And I think I guess everybody does, right? I guess it's not unique to feel excluded, but I don't think there's ever been a time where I didn't feel like I was an outsider. And that's why we're actors.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:54

I don't know many actors who felt like they were the shit. I don't know many. There are a few, they're the odd ones. I think most actors feel um, you know, we feel like we were the odd one in our school, in our class, in the playground, you know. That's why we do what we do.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:15

Yeah, that's so interesting because I definitely have felt that way. And I definitely uh felt that way coming in in every place that I got to. So I think you're absolutely right. And I do think it would be uh interesting to have like, and we did this during this COVID, I think the Writers Guild did it, but we should do it as actors where we have a monthly Zoom where we all didn't you mention that you were doing that where you have a monthly Zoom and everybody talks about bringing something to the table, some piece of information.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:49

Yeah, I was talking about the community. I'm getting ready to start for actors that I want to be in that okay, yeah. So that's that's what I'm getting ready to do. It's it's called the acting smarter circle. And so where we support each other, we bring strategy together for everybody, you know. So if you're if you're transitioning from being the sexy woman and now you want to be the intellectual woman, then we help you, or I help you with a strategy to move into that with ease so that when you do it, you know you are supported, that it's not because I think that's a real hard one for actors sometimes. You know, you start outgrowing that persona that you booked a lot for. Now, you know, if you were the ingenue and now you're the older leading woman, how do you transition? You're so used to having been the ingenue, or you're so used to being the quirky kid, and now you're you're not a kid anymore, you're an adult, or you you did the victim. You were the victim, and now you want to be the tough guy. For me, that's what the community is about, to help with strategy, support, and stuff like this to say, hey, let's let's help this group, let's help, you know, Kamala's got this this nonprofit. All of you, if you can contribute any any money, a dollar, ten dollars this month, we could use it. And and that we share with everybody. So it's not just we're just supporting one person, but if somebody's doing a one-person show or somebody's doing a play, can we all show up? How can we do it? I I think as actors, we ne we have not fully understood the power that we bring because we walk broken most of the time. We we walk as uh victims, we walk as that person that nobody wanted in their group and not understanding that hey, we got the power. First of all, we're the ones on the front lines, we're the ones people see when they turn on the TV or they watch a movie. It's us, they see us, they don't see the the grip, they don't see the DP, they they see the actor. So they don't see the writer or the director, but the writer and the director get paid. Yeah, the actor gets prostituted, and that's where the shift has to happen. Because having been part of the writers, the writers guild, they make sure they get taken care of. They're not playing, they they are the strongest union, I think, in our industry, and then the directors' guild, and partly because a lot of the writers, a lot of the directors are also the producers of their project, right? So they stand for principle. We just want a job. So we will FICOR our ass out of the guild so we can get that little two dollar job. Instead of seeing that by doing that FICOR, we're we are really um hurting ourselves. We're not really helping ourselves because we're not gonna get residuals, we're not gonna get pension and welfare, we're not gonna get taken care of. But we are so conditioned to begging for a job that we don't understand our power. And so for me, that's what that community would would be about, is like empowering the actors. Say, no, we we are better than that. We we we deserve better than that, but it only starts when we can walk in our center.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:32

Agree, agree, agree, and I'm looking forward to joining that.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:37

Well, thank you. Well, tell us again how we can support you. Give us uh the website one more time.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:46

Sure. So one thing you can do is you can go to equalmeans equal.org and join us. You just put in your email address and I'll send you newsletters. You can donate, any amount will be tax deductible and much appreciated. You can go to Substack and look for me, Kamala Lopez, and join the Substack. And I I write essays on there, you should read.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:13

And you can be a member of Kamala's Substack as well. So that means you you get a subscription again, you pay a little bit, whatever you can, and and support. Go ahead. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:25

Yes, and then you can also join our social media accounts, um, equal means equal on Instagram, on Facebook, because it really does make a difference to these judges and these politicians when they look at the group and they're like, oh, this is not just, you know, five people under a rock. This is a serious group, uh, number of people that care about this issue. Right now, they're getting away with a lot of what they're doing because they know that nobody knows what's going on. So even just making more awareness is so valuable. It's what I've been ever since I met the ghost of Alice Paul in 2008. I have been attempting to get the level of people that even know that women are still not equal up. If we get it up to 30%, it changes everything. Right now we're just really, really down there.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:25

So, people, we can make this happen. We can make this happen. I just want to say that equal means equal.org. Go there, support Kamala, support, and it's not for Kamala, it's for us. We're not doing it for her, we're doing it for women in this country, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:45

If you and children, and children that have mothers that are underpaid and abused, and for fathers who live with a partner that doesn't bring home her full dollar. So you've got one person, and a black man is not bringing home the same amount as a white man. So if you have uh a Latina woman and a black man with two children, their household is suffering because we don't have the equal rights amendment. It affects everybody.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:17

So we have to do our part. It's time to, you know, take your head out of the sand and let's get to work, let's make this happen. And how can they find you, actor Kamala Lopez or director Kamala Lopez?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:31

Yes, you can go to Camila Lopez Official on Instagram, and uh I post there. And uh you can write to me if you have a comment or a suggestion or you want to know anything more at Kamala K-A-M-A-L-A at equalmeans equal.org.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:53

And something I want to say about your documentary, there's a company called Bitmax, B-I-T-M-A-X. It's an aggregator. And so for a fee, you give them your film and they put it on all the platforms, and then you get money from it, you know, as they are selling, you know, if if you charge three dollars and ninety-nine cents, you will get something from it. They they get a percentage, but you get a percentage too, so that it's not going in the ether and you don't know where it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:26

I haven't gotten any money from it for uh six years. Yeah. Um, I don't know who got the money or where it went to, and I can't find out.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:35

So I believe it, you know, contact Bitmax, and this is for our other filmmakers out there who want to put out their own projects and not wait for any kind of distribution. They're an aggregator. So you give them the project, they run it through to make sure that technically everything is good because Apple and some other companies require the the technical aspect to be of a certain way. But once they approve it and you pass, then it is you being able to collect a check. And then once you know where they're what platforms they're using, then you can start doing little ads or you know, or postings on your social media to let people know, hey, we got this project, come support us. You know, part of this money goes to equal means equal, or maybe not, I don't know, but it allows you to really continue to promote this project on a different level so that you're not waiting to see who's gonna do it. If they get it, then they would pull it from wherever it is so you're not um being taken advantage of.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:49

Oh wow, that would be very helpful.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:51

So again, it's bitmax b-i-t-m-a-x. Um, uh I think it may be uh bitmax.com. Whatever information I have that I can share, you got it. And I know what it is to make a documentary. I've done two of them, and it's hard work. And and documentaries, unlike regular films, be they scripted or comedies or dramas, you know, uh documentaries, you put your heart and soul into it because you believe in it, you believe in the subject matter, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a million dollars. However, if you are the filmmaker, you can run it through an aggregator like Bitmax and you pay them a nominal fee, and then it becomes like a yearly subscription where I think you pay about a hundred bucks a year, and then they take a percentage of you know wherever they get the money from, and they send you, you know, they direct deposit into your account. You know, you still have to keep tabs to make sure you're getting your money, but it's an easier process for the indie filmmaker.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:58

That's fantastic. I'm gonna look into that immediately.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:01

Yes. Well, I am so proud of you, and it's just so lovely. It's so lovely to see that you are still kicking ass in Hollywood, that you are still doing it. It warms my heart. So I just want you to know that you got a support system and whatever you need that we can help you with, you know, even if it's just giving you two dollars, I'm here for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:24

And back at you. If there's anything I can do to help you with your one-woman show or anything at all, don't hesitate to ask.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:34

Thank you so much. Thank you. So I want to know what is one thing you would like to leave actors with to help them in their career as they move forward.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:46

Try not to take things personally. Realize that there are so many factors involved that you know absolutely nothing of, and you are accumulating goodwill with every good audition. The casting director is going to remember you. She's gonna take notes, she or he. And when the right part comes up for you, they're going to call you back in. So nothing you do is wasted. No good audition that you turn in if you don't get the part. It's not wasted, it's a cumulative process. So try not to take it personally. I know it's hard sometimes because you get sad, especially if you put your heart and soul into something. But also look at how beautiful it is that you were able to put your heart and soul into something. Many people don't have a job where they can do that, and you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:40

Kamala has been fighting the good fight, and we need to help her now. That means you need to go to equalmeansequal.org, get the information, reach out to congresspeople, reach out to senators, let them know this amendment needs to be ratified immediately. It is there, it just needs to be signed in by the librarian. We gotta get this done. Do your part, please. Please don't watch this and then go do something else. I need you to take action. I'm taking action. I need you to take action. Let me know in the comments any thoughts you may have. I really do appreciate it. Don't go anywhere. There's another interview coming right up to help you in your career. And thank you for indulging me in this because this was very important for me.