I am working on a bunch of new posts for you Ms. In the Biz readers but stumbled across a post I wrote a while back (which barely saw the light of day) that I wanted to share. It is significant to me — as I think it may be to many of you — as it explores a time when I had just started ‘re-branding’ myself. Into ‘the badass’ Many of you reading this may want to change how the industry perceives you. I know I did. This was the beginning part of my process, understanding the truth behind why it needed it to happen, almost 3 years ago to the day…
EMBRACING THE ALIEN:
I kind of miss wearing a dress. All I ever seem to put on these days are slightly different versions of the same outfit: a black top tank, jeans, boots and a leather jacket. Jeans are sometimes swapped out for military looking cargo pants if I happen to be on a shoot…and then of course the fashion forwardness of the tank and shoes are sometimes amped up depending on the event I’m going to. But regardless, it seems like I finally merged my inner badass with a Lara Croft inspired exterior. My professional actor re-branding mission may just have started to seep into my ‘real life’. Even a friend who I haven’t seen in quite some time commented how different I seemed and how buff I looked. Seriously, he said buff…made me think of weightlifters and Biff from ‘Back to the Future’ but I digress. It was meant as a compliment and I took it as such.
Not too long ago, I was seen as a ‘Charlotte’. For some reason my lack of confidence and eagerness to succeed in this business (along with a subsidized wardrobe) translated into being likened to the ubiquitous HBO persona of an upper East Side princess who dreamed of marriage and babies. Really? This was as far away from my own truth that I can tell you, BUT being told this numerous times (and coaching actors about ‘knowing your type’) I had a headshot taken in a pink Burberry shirt and a headband. I shudder. No, I will never ever show it to you.
What is most singed in my memory of that time period, however, is how at odds I felt with myself. In acting class I would be given scenes where I would have to rip my soul out again and again. There was nothing pretty or cute about the roles I was given, they were all damaged, layered and ugly. And I would feel both empty and fulfilled when I was through with them, as if my dark ‘Fringe’ parallel universe self had paid a visit and then left without saying goodbye. And then I would feel like an alien…sitting in a dilapidated red velvet theatre seat after my scene was over, at odds with what I had just done on stage and who I was sitting there, in my J.Crew cardigan. It was as if two separate Taryn’s existed. And this experience, this sense of disconnect over who I thought I was supposed to be and what I felt, bled over into my auditions. I had countless amazing auditions for heroine type characters but I rarely booked. And then I would feel like I was a failure, that I wasn’t ‘enough’. And I would remember the dark magic that would happen in class and wonder what was wrong with me.
Heroines aren’t supposed to feel that way. Heroines aren’t supposed to be dropped by their managers. So I started writing and started investigating the foreign darkness residing within me. And my very first project was to write about a dark, tortured young woman who loses everything she loves in the world, and then becomes a superhero.
Today, I still feel like an alien…but I embrace and even feed my inner space traveler. It just took hanging around with it long enough to realize that the dark matter spewed in class was just as much or even more a part of me as my privileged and polished exterior. I didn’t yet know that it was ok to have that exist in my real life, as well as on stage. And do you know what? In knowing that, in forcing myself to accept the alien and bring it to the surface to breathe in some oxygen, playing those other ‘types’, those perky, cute, polished, even perfect types has become a whole lot easier. Why? Because I’m just playing a part, I’m not playing the supposed ‘me’ and dealing with the uncomfortable face that I really knew all along…it wasn’t me.
So as we move closer to the start of Comic Con, the Mecca of all things alien, and meeting ground for so many of us people who never felt like they quite fit in and who turned to scifi/fantasy storytelling in order to connect, I continue down the path of Operation B.A.B.E.(definitely more posts to come on that site). It’s not the smoothest of paths, my powers aren’t fully realized yet, but I’m still pushing forward, hacking off branches in my way and breaking new ground. I’m not positive where it is heading, but whenever I hear ‘Alias’ might get a reboot, that there will be two ‘Alien’ prequels, or when another visceral image of a dark female character assaults my storytelling brain and I jot down script notes, I know I’m heading in the right direction. Maybe one day I’ll be all dresses and babies (probably not but you never know), but right now it’s just me, my tank top and jeans, and my inner alien along for the ride.
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That was the beginning of changing my paradigm, the start of Operation BABE and my first attempts at screenwriting. And let me tell you, since then, that alien has birthed some intense, crazy, stories and characters on the page. I’ve been hard core fight training every week and became a badass science nerd. But that Alien prequel? Sucked. And don’t get me started about the sequel they just announced.
But in the same breath, after two years of combat boots, muscle tanks, physics and Liam the fight trainer, I have embraced the feminine again. I don’t feel compelled to craft the tough exterior that reflects my darkness and intensity all the time. Some days I’ll even, Samantha forbid, embrace my inner Charlotte, don my J.Crew cardigan and go for brunch… as she is as much an alien to me as my dark side was that few years ago. And I’ve learned to love my aliens. Except for the face huggers.
What inner alien is it time that you acknowledged and then embraced? How and why would you like to re-brand yourself and is it difficult because of how others see you?
I think this is an important topic and would love to continue the conversation.