EPISODE 6: KATIE LOWES
KATIE LOWES
On the value of storytelling, the importance of consistency, and how it’s all a mental game.
Actor, producer, director, and podcaster, Katie Lowes has done a ton of TV, but she is best known for her role as Quinn Perkins, in the political drama series Scandal. She’s also very active in the theatre world. She just made her Broadway debut as Dawn in the musical waitress and she is one of the founders and directors of the Los Angeles-based IAMA Theater Company. Her podcast, “Katie’s Crib” can be found on iTunes, Google, and Stitcher.
QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE
18:43 ~ “You know what's crazy is when you get what you want... when you have fought really long and really hard... when you're so driven to get something and you get it and... for a while it was a few years of, 'is this OK? Am I going to get fired? Am I getting found out?... I don't deserve this what's happening. Oh my God I'm buying homes. Oh my God I'm paying for my wedding. Oh my God I'm buying cars. Oh my God I don't have these side jobs, who am I?' And then you start to say, ‘Oh my god acting is insane... You're never, it's never going to be enough.’ ‘Cause you said - we said - I just want my series, right? Well, let me tell you guys, once you get your series then, ‘I want to be the lead of this episode and oh, I've been really dramatic for the last five episodes. I need a more comedic episode. I have not had scenes with that person. Oh, that person got to do Jimmy Kimmel three times and I've only done it twice.’ And then, thank God I'm awake enough in my person... And thank God I was surrounded by very supportive, incredible women who had sort of been through it before me (Kerry Washington, Bellamy Young, Shonda Rhimes) to say, 'oh this singular drive got me scandal, for sure, and helped me fight through some really hard days' So I needed that drive then. But now, it's really different.”
22:18 ~ “Now that I'm in my 30s and a mother and trying to raise a kind human being... I am like, ‘wow did I spend my life like fighting for the most narcissistic... like look at me look at me?’... What's amazing about a Kerry Washington or getting back into an acting class or something and remembering why it is what you do or why it's important (and especially in this day and age when, like I said, I'm considering being a nurse…) Is this act of ‘Am I a storyteller. Is storytelling an important thing to spend your life work doing. And do you think it actually can change/help/support human beings?’... Whenever I get to that place where I'm like, ‘is this not for me anymore?’ I try to remind myself - and I wish I was one of those actors who really felt that in their bones - that acting and storytelling is a fucking noble profession and... it has been going on for thousands and thousands of years. And I'm very lucky that I even got to work in a television medium where the material was important… it literally changed what you see on television. Since scandal happened, we have black women as lead characters on shows.”
32:27 ~ “I can always come back to something to be thankful for, whether if it's just thank you for my breath; thank you for my body; thank you for my brain; thank you for just being healthy right now; thank you for this opportunity; thank you for my mom; thank you for my mom's smile; thank you for my son... and then I start picturing people, and then all of a sudden it gets less and less and less, and then all of a sudden I've been meditating for 30 minutes and I don't even know...”
40:59 ~ “I think you have to really be consistent with your work on yourself. I mean I don't think it's an easy fix... That's what I mean about the mental game... It’s long term... That’s why dieting doesn’t work... I think if you want to be healthy your whole life, it's a complete… life change... I think if... jealousy isn't serving you... I think if a lot of these sort of lesser emotions are taking control of your actions or your thoughts and consuming you then the conscious work you can do is what you need to do for a while and then continue to do.”
44:15 ~ “You can't say I'm never gonna feel jealous again. That's beneath me... But you know I think I've done work for a really long time... If I'm 36 and I started therapy at 25, so like 11 years, and I've been probably meditating on and off since about twenty five... I do admit I have seen massive changes in that jealousies - I don't feel - Of course I do, but nowhere like I used to.”
REFERENCES MADE IN THIS EPISODE
“If the only prayer you ever say in your lifetime is ‘thank you’ that would be enough.”
- Eckhart Tolle