Last Airbender Star (Toph) Quit Hollywood for Yale | Michaela Murphy

tough happens after when I was 12. that was like the last professional thing I did before I was like and now I'm focused on school so it's pretty wild because I had this growing career and a lot of people would probably look at this now and be like well that was stupid you may know Michaela Murphy as the voice behind Toph on Avatar I am on top [Music] but what you didn't know is that she basically raised herself my mom had to work and so I started being home alone at six which I is normal for me but then people are like wow that's crazy and I'm like is it I don't know I knew how to make food I know how to clean hanging out no big deal overcame anxiety as an actress so anytime a director in a room would like look at me a certain way uh communicate something a certain way with with a certain tone of voice I would be like oh they hate me or oh I did it wrong or oh they didn't like that whatever and I would get super insecure the worst the worst one I ended up like sitting under a chair to succeed in Hollywood and help financially support her mother and even graduated from Yale I'm Eric co-founder of carrot we help creators with their finances and join us today for 36 questions to fall in love with Michaela Murphy I'm here today with Michaela Murphy AKA Jesse flowers AKA voice actress for Toff from Avatar The Last Airbender also Yale graduate brand new but quickly improving pickleball player and what I hope is the start of a newfound and beautiful friendship how did I do wow that was an incredible introduction I need to bring you around everywhere with me thank you I'm happy just to be your hype man I feel like excuse me please anytime this is me yeah I've got lots of different names Michaela Jessie Toff pickleball extraordinaire yeah you just pick pick from the basket yeah um thank you for teaching me by the way you are the reason why I started pickleball ever you are a very quick read ah thanks yeah we make a great team there we go good we love to hear it yeah so my very first question is I remember you told me that we are at Yale you're actually studying to become a surgeon yes very it didn't last long but yes I was very pre-med uh up up until soft more I guess year of of college so when I was recording Avatar I was a child this was like you know how old were you I was 12 and 13. oh you were legitimate I was legitimately the age of Toff when I was recording talks with these days like the voice actors and actresses are much older it really depends on it kind of just fluctuates so the industry goes through like periods of hiring adults to play younger and then being really focused on hiring authentic children and then they keep going back and forth so it just depends authentic I know as opposed to you know the fake children children it's a real epidemic so I'm glad they got one AI is coming in authentic real ones yeah so you know it just depends on the studio and the project and whatever because a lot of people do want to hire kids as opposed to just doing adults but I was 12 and 13. so my my whole little agenda was that I was going to be an actress and I was quite lofty and I was like I'm gonna get my name on the Walk of Fame by the time I'm 14 and then I'm gonna quit acting I'm just gonna stop cold mic drop mic drop them out out and then uh start on on kind of pre-med start like focusing on biology and math and just doing like pre-med camps over the summer and then my goal at the time was like I'm gonna go to UPenn for some reason I had this obsession with upen I don't know why because then I visited and I didn't really like it so sorry anybody my viewers right now I know I'm so sorry it was fine it was one of my best friends from high school went there but um yeah I was just focused on school I wanted to do the normal like go to high school go to prom go to college thing I wanted to do that checklist I didn't want to like be an actor kid I guess I love that because like yeah you've described two extraordinary events most children would not be considering which by the way these events happen to cancel each other out you're like okay so first I'm going to become a star and then I'm going to stop being a star and become like an award-winning surgeon who also got to have prom at high school I just want to do it all I really think that's that's the Mantra of Michaela it's just like doing it all she wants it she wants it all she wants it all a Sharpay Evans so wonderfully says in um High School Musical yeah a source of wisdom first so yeah I I you know was focused on super I was super math girly I went through and did all the aps my variable calculus some college course my senior year of high school I don't honestly know why Yale accepted me because I was just this strange little ball of like I'm good at math I also sing acapella and I dance and I like wrote lots of quirky things in my essay I was like who says friendships can't last forever Goose Feathers they're forever I was like a very interesting wait wait okay first I think that's self-explanatory I'm glad that Yale saw the let's say it is unique creative potential and you second good many things oh God what a problem Michaela hey what is this Goose Brothers thing Goose Feathers Goose Feathers yes it was like it's like an exclamation like Goose Feathers like that's just your that was like a thing I said at the time yeah and I included it in the essay so you'd be like I am Michaela I think friends can be friends forever drop my Goose Feathers sure kind of I actually I don't know if anybody else does this but sometimes I like reread my common app essays yeah just to be like was this you know representative of me would I change anything now like do I feel like this was my best foot forward and that is one of the most accurate pieces of writing to reflect my character at the time that I really I really do think I sent like my best version of like how to portray me as a person my values things experienced in my life um and that that's like a cool thing I think getting older because I'm 28 now so like that was a decade ago right and being like yeah I wouldn't change this that's pretty cool so anyway I got to Yale Yale was insane very hard very hard I went to a pretty intense high school but you know there's just nothing like being thrown into a pool with a bunch of other really really insanely intelligent talented people and you're like oh I ain't so the first year kind of took me out and dragged me a little bit uh and I realized just lots of lots of things first of all I don't think I had the stamina to keep going on with pre-med um because it's a long long long long journey but also uh I don't know there were there were lots of things in the reality of the pre-med Journey that just don't align I'm kind of a hippie I'm a little Eastern medicine anyway um and there's a lot of research and politics that you have to deal with and I just wanted to be in like the operating room like I liked the idea of pre-med because I wanted to be a surgeon I want to be in the room I want to slice you open I want to fix things put things back together take things out whatever successful yeah and uh and then go on with my day and it just was going to be so much more complicated than that and I think I just hadn't really grasped the full scope until I got to college and then I was very lost for many years and thankfully film found me and I ended up majoring in screenwriting and if it were not for that major I would have been a mess because I ended up really liking it and I was decently good at it apparently according to my professor so Yeehaw we had we got a degree guys we got a degree and we got out so yeah I especially appreciate so I went to Harvard which I will say when we first met this this was a real point of contention there is there is the Rival and similar you know I'm letting it pass for now you seem like a nice amicable person we'll see how it develops that's right TBD and my first year I was massively depressed because yeah you're like yes me too it's a bad depression buddies very bad mental health very bad very bad mental health for me very similar to you I was just like well you know I feel like that I gave up everything in high school to try and get here and now I look around I see these like fabulously seemingly better whole human being yes they had lives they like partied they like yeah I didn't go to single parties okay you were more intense than I was I went to some all right you went to some but I wasn't invited to many sure sure disappeared Fair I actually did that once and it wasn't very chill of me but that's okay I was I thought it was gonna be funnier than it was we were all had our questionable moments in high school but yeah I people had like fully formed lives and personalities and did lots of fun things and they were still there and I was like wait how did you get here but yes continue now that actually makes a really interesting question because you mentioned when you wrote your comment up essay 18 writing clarifies thinking you said it was an excellent encapsulation of who Michaela was at age 18. so who was that what was your essay about who are you how did you think of yourself your identity yeah I did 10 years ago definitely think been a journey I am hypercritical of myself and then tangentially of others and that has been a lesson of time the same standards to others correct right so when people are like oh you're so intense and I'm like right because I'm intense to me uh and consistent right there's a through line I'm not a hypocrite I promise um so you know it's it's been a journey of kind of stepping back from that and how that is not always helpful in every scenario uh it's helpful in some instances but you know not to the level that I was functioning at so I was just burning myself out unbeknownst to me in one sense I was like okay if I'm gonna do it all I have to just do it all so I was a lead in the musical and on student council and doing pre-med club and in multiple APS and running cross-country I was just like an insane person um but when I was then writing my common up essay I feel like I didn't focus on any of that I talked about the first time I baked an apple pie I was seven or eight just kidding I was eight and I was home alone because my mom was working I'm an only child of a single mother from the Midwest we moved out to LA when I was four because my mom actually wanted to be an actress so we came out together and uh my mom had to work and so I started being home alone at six which I is normal for me but then people are like wow that's crazy and I'm like is it I don't know I knew how to make food I know how to clean hanging out no big deal my neighbors knew I was there if anything happened they were my emergency contacts it was fine um yeah I don't know I just didn't think anything of it so I talked about her when I was eight I wanted to make this apple pie I just had a fierce desire so I talked about how I got the tools together to make it happen called my grandma for the rest of me I sent my neighbors to the grocery store where my mom was working to go get the ingredients because I couldn't drive and so I like used my resources because I wanted to make a pie that day and I then just started kind of using that example to expand on how you know my mom and I made things work when they got tough and how my acting money ended up like covering our rent and kind of just you know expanding into like little just details of things that had happened in my life um and at the end where the goose feathers came in it was something about how you know all of this has been cool but the greatest thing about them being in high school because high school was the longest place I'd ever been in one one place uh my mom and I moved a ton so I was there from seventh grade to 12th grade which is six years six years is the longest I was ever in one area I've never been in an apartment or a house longer than four years five years I think um yeah and so at the end it was like and the coolest thing of all this is that you get to make you know some of the best friends that you'll ever meet uh and you know people might say that I'm crazy and that I can't do all these things I say I want to do and I say Goose Feathers like that's where the king soothers came in you know I'm I'm gonna make it work like if I want to make something work I'm gonna make it work and then you know I said some some little jaunt about like it time the time things take being worth it and I think I said it took me about six hours to to finally like make that pie and finish it and you know what it was the best slice I'd ever tasted or something like that and I ended on my little like cheesy wrap it up in a bow and I just I like it I was like wow I covered a lot in this whatever one page that I had to submit so you know just yeah I special moments the meaning behind goose feathers right in some ways no I'm serious I see it as certainly it's an absurd statement but said in reaction to what is also an absurd statement people having the nerve to be like you can't do it all you're just like well that's just ABS dessert as goose feathers yeah yeah exactly it's I silly I can only imagine too I mean describing like you really wanting to make this pie right I think it's the sort of compelling story and anecdote that unfolds and reveals more as we think about it because it's like you're telling me like at age six you learned how to like basically like find food and like Vibe which like hey that's like what kids want which is like cool obviously our parents all have their own circumstances of love us but in a way you basically raised yourself for a little bit in there yeah it was definitely a tag team effort and I understood that my mom had to do what she had to do and I was like all right that's a lot for a kid apparently my therapist has told me recently she's like that's a lot I was like Oh I thought nothing of it it's so funny the things that we just grew up assuming everybody else's lives were like this that's why wouldn't they be and then you realize you talk to people often as a therapist or a significant other or a good friend and you're like oh no that was just like for me so my parents my dad plotted out every single step of my life up until I was gonna be like age 30 like every course every Club I need to succeed in high school every course I was going to take in college wow so I also was pre-med when I was at Harvard not because I had any reason because my dad was like you need to take these courses I was like sure okay sounds good yeah and I remember like talking to my advisor being like I actually really want to take these courses and they're like just don't take them I'm like what what but like sorry process exactly I need to take these right and then you like realize like oh no like this is crazy and so it sounds like you're like oh yeah I just like raised myself this is totally normal everybody went through this and then you're hearing people like oh that's that's really unusual and you're like okay cool what effects did that have on me I don't know hmm interesting thoughts to consider hyper hyper Independence and a lot of stubborn pushback and you mentioned earlier you said hey you're not a hypocrite you're equally holding others to the same high stance you hold your yourself so I'm just picturing yourself right you're alone you're kind of by yourself where do those standards come from I think you know my my mom is a version of your dad in a more creative capacity I guess she very much sat down with me on a semi-regular basis and we would go through like 1 5 10 and 20-year plans but based on things that like I was Finding interesting at the time so if it was the pre-med thing which she definitely supported she was like that's a great idea doctor that's reliable stable money you know consistent whatever good idea uh so she definitely was like sure if you're interested in that keep doing that like as you're helping support rent already with your work as an actor actress yeah I I like the term actor because it just covers everybody right we're all an actor child actor yeah um so she and I would do this of just mapping out days mapping out weeks maybe not just just putting the things together so when I started acting she was like that's fine these are the things that are going to need to happen for this to work like we're gonna have to say no to birthday parties we can't hang out with everybody on the weekends we're gonna have to skip things we're gonna have to show up when we don't want to you know big life lessons which are helpful um to have and I kept you know doing them obviously because I liked it so I got kind of used to this checklist mentality of like you do this and this is the right thing to do and you have to plan and there should be a plan um and then once you do the plan everything works and that doesn't that's not life I mean it helps having a plan is a good idea but but it's probably not all gonna work so so to be ready for the curveballs and that's where we missed out we we didn't know how to prepare and be comfortable with the curveballs and be comfortable with the fact that they are like 100 gonna happen and that failure isn't a bad thing that's that was novel like failure I got my first C in undergrad and I about had a panic attack I was like I am a terrible person I am not smart somehow I dipped my way in here I'm a failure I must I'm gonna die I was just like losing my mind so yeah I um didn't know how to deal with the curveballs because up until that point which I guess is very lucky but up until like my freshman year of college everything did kind of work it did actually follow the plan so anyone who said hey this might not continue to work you say Goose Feathers yeah exactly and here we are I really get that again my father very similar experience just this conception of almost parents seeing the chaos in this world wanting the best for their kids saying let's come up with a plan inadvertently instilling in their kids AKs like as long as you follow the plan it's going to be okay and that gives us the power to be like well okay maybe following this plan sucks you know like not having birthday parties you know I'd like to have birthday parties yeah but you know if it's for the plan that's okay for the plan it's for the plan for the plot it's for the plan the plot the play and then one day you realize God like one was this plan right two it always changes and then like what the am I supposed to do yeah literally what ask so I also got my first C in college computer science intro to computer science what was your course it's it's sad because mine was math which was my strong suit in high school so I was so confused about what was happening that was like I got awards for Math and then I got a C and I was like what is happening I was like have I just been lied to like have I been doing fake math like what's going on I then later realized that you know uh grad students as teachers not ideal because I would go into office hours and get worse so I don't think that's a reflection on me but how am I supposed to know that at the time I'm just terrible I guess but no I would literally go in and then drop an entire letter grade like in my homework after I would go talk to him for an hour so I was like okay the last couple years I was like bro this is not not anybody's faults really I mean he was trying his best I was trying my best but it definitely wasn't my fault like I wasn't I'm not bad at math I'm good at math only imagine how long it's taken for you to realize and repeat that lesson to yourself literally within the last couple years yeah and I totally get it because if you're anything like me there's a part of you being like I'm just dumb and a bigger part you'd be like nope nope there were reasons that are understandable and I don't suck and that's such a weird mentality because we grew up with the conception of well you're following the plan so if it didn't work it's because you stopped because you did it wrong yes you must have messed up somewhere and you didn't plan enough for the curveball which honestly I don't know about your parents and where they went but I think going to college in general is just a shift from high school but if you haven't had a family member go to a super intense it doesn't have to be just ivy league because technically they stand for you Chicago just a very intense academic uh College in in that realm I guess it no one can prepare you for how the ecosystem works there um nobody in my family went to that the level a lot of people stayed local went to Purdue him from Indiana anybody from the Midwest in Indiana what's up two of us here hey Hoosiers um so yeah they went to like Purdue or you know maybe a couple people went to Northwestern so there's some familiarity but I don't know there's something weird about the ivy thing off to New Haven yeah bulldog and then you just get thrown into generational wealth in a way that you never knew existed and you're like oh I'm not hi I can work jillions of hours I could win the lottery and I'm not even gonna hold a flame to like your existence like it's just not gonna happen it was this fascinating combination of like the really try harders oh yeah and then like the like extremely Legacy wealthy people and you like basically it's a social experiment just like throw them together and it's like oh now you're in a group project together and I'm like oh wow cool and like you had to work really hard to get in college in the first place and maybe all those habits are now gonna fall apart because you're on your own now and life's starting curve Falls you're like what is happening yeah and there's winter and I grew up in LA and then there was winter that didn't go well yeah no because they always had the heat jacked way high in all the dorms so it was super dry heat and then we'd have the windows open so it was like icy cold air with dry heat I had strep like four times my freshman so not only like mentally are you discovering things about yourself you were like physically dying yeah and at that point like I don't know I had to you know my high school boyfriend broke up with me he's like we're going to college guess we're gonna break up and I was like oh I wasn't expecting that so that was a fun curveball oh totally I was just like what's going on I was getting a c in math I was just everything was happening it was all everything everywhere all at once I would watch your version of that movie absolutely uh you know I'm trying to get it into a screenplay um you know and and especially my mom's story too because her trajectory is kind of the I mean not to compare but hers is the harder one she had to break away from generations of whatever the heck was happening in Southern Indiana she had to just decide she was like we're just going and figured it figured it out and made it work made it happen successfully and she was a great mom um I have literally zero qualms she did literally the best everything in her power she loved me aggressively she supports me and my creativity she let me be my weird little fun self um I couldn't ask for anything more from a parent but she had to do weird stuff she had to make it all the ends meet and like it was weird out here in 1998 you know we didn't have any of the stuff that we got going on now we would just walk into places that's how I got my first agency we were agent signing whatever we were just walking and be like hello would you like to work with me for commercials no all right let's walk to the next one so you know it's just it's crazy she did um a lot of a lot of hard work and uh I think that her story would be cool to tell but I mean I believe that right both can be true that number one your mom left you aggressively and worked her gosh darn butt off make it all work and two you still went through a lot yourself that probably was a lot to go through yeah but it's I don't know yeah I guess it's a lot but I don't I don't feel heavy about any of it honestly until College yeah because that's where the curveball started to come you're like the real curveballs where it's like oh now it's really tied to just you it's not like a team effort anymore it's not like ah this crappy thing happened to me and then you helped me or I help you it's just all you sitting in your dorm room with your roommate who uses a hair dryer at 7am on Saturday morning in the room she watches us if she knows that you remember I did I was like what is happening good Lord what it is a weekend we have a bathroom why are you using a hair dryer at seven a.m on a weekend I'm sleeping right here terrible anyway can I ask then so I feel like I'm understanding you much more as a person how good you mentioned I know imagine that and you said you know in the earlier days you'd want to go do commercial work you just walk in and say I like to do this so how did tough happen right and how do you think was this something because you literally mentioned I'm gonna become a star and then put that aside so I can become a doctor so like was it you when even you were acting as tough was this something you enjoyed and wanted to or were you more like this is just a step along the master plan it was a step and I think the the nice thing about the checklist or the step mentality is that if you think of everything as a step you take the pressure off of each individual piece a little bit and that's I feel like how any of this acting stuff really happened because I was so sensitive as a child I mean and now but at least I can regulate a little bit more so sensitive so anxious so anytime a director in a room would like look at me a certain way uh communicate something a certain way with with a certain tone of voice I would be like oh they hate me or oh I did it wrong or oh they didn't like that whatever and I would get super insecure the worst the worst one I ended up like sitting under a chair like there was a chair I got really freaked out and had like a little panic attack and had to just like cower under a chair until my mom came and like pulled me up it just I was very sensitive so the reason voice acting kind of clicked in was because I was in my own little booth I was in my own little world in my just audio you know for the most part I didn't usually see the director and if you did you know there's like double pane window things and it's just there's separation and so I feel like there was more room for me to be super quirky and that just worked it also helped that my mom focused so much on reading when I was younger so I could read Scripps cold which is obviously huge when you're six or seven years old they're like can we give you 10 pages can you read them without any issue yes I can uh and my tone of voice at the time it well and now it's pretty clear toned I don't have a lot of texture um which when you're younger is great and for now voicing you know super squeaky characters like this is like really great but if they're like oh we want some rugged like rock star I'm like yeah I can like pretend but like it's not real so my tone of voice and the fact that I could read uh really locked in the the voiceover thing so just I'll give I'll give a little timeline when I was six five five I told my mom hey my friends was in a commercial that seems cool maybe I should try it do you think I could do it and she's like let's just like before we go through all this put you in a musical like a local musical see if you like it whatever she put me in Oliver I was the happiest orphan in Oliver that one has ever seen I was so happy to be on stage loved every second of it loved rehearsal she was like okay cool let's get some headshots let's see so my first headshots were black and white uh the very edge of like what I call like act two of Hollywood I feel like act one is like kind of the first half of the 1900s um that's so weird coming out of my mouth and then from like 1950 to the 90s was kind of the second era of just crazy progression because then you started having color and like Sound audio started coming in um anyway so black and white headshots were the norm and then in like the early 2000s that started to shift and there was this whole big rift of like is color more professionals black and white still professional so funny so we took the black and white headshots um and walked into agencies I went to Bobby ball Abrams cesd um tons tons of agencies and I was signed for commercials and TV and I auditioned for basically everything we saw on Disney Channel I auditioned for tons of times I was so close and I wonder what my life would be like if I would have booked it would have been an alternate universe um but I got called back so much for like Suite Life of Zack and Cody um Jessie's role and then she got her own spin-off uh I guess her name is Debbie in real life and then she got the Jesse spin-off after mixing it all together but anyway which would have been funny if that would have been my spin-off because my stage name was Jesse haha anyway reeling it back in getting scattered so started in commercials and TV and then I went through an awkward growing phase and I was with cesd for voice over and Youth television I think at the time and she was like hey we have this new Youth Department for voice over you should try it um and so I did and so my very first voiceover gig was additional voices in Finding Nemo actually I know TBT so all the little baby turtles and all the little baby fish and they're like let's go swimming like what's over there like all that silly stuff and so it was just a bunch of seven-year-olds running around a room just say and stuff so that was the beginning and I did a lot of additional Voice work for a good three years basically and then I started to do more more characters it just kind of happened naturally I ended up doing um the the voice of Chaka in Kronk's New Groove in The Emperor's New School they're like super squeaky squeaky and then uh Meet the Robinsons I did Young Franny she's like the little frog girl she was honestly probably my spirit animal of any of the characters that I voiced young for any in Meet the Robinsons is my spirit and I'm manifesting this now because they keep doing all these live actions they should do a live action of Meet the Robinsons And I should be cast as the adult version of Franny because that would be so cool but anyway throwing that out there and so then Toff happened after when I was 12. that was like the last professional thing I did before I was like and now I'm focused on school so it's pretty wild because I had this growing career and a lot of people would probably look at this now and be like well that was stupid you literally cut off your flow to focus on school when people would literally like that's what they've been working for people would kill to have these opportunities like all of this like jargon that I hear in my head now of like man maybe I should have stuck with it but no I wanted to go to high school like I wanted that experience and so I did it so you know people might disagree and feel differently but I really just wanted to go to school I get it it was part of the plans part of the plan at Hollywood tough great now Master heart searching at Yale which and then curveballs came yeah and it sounds like you rediscovered an interest actually in screenwriting ironically enough so you kind of circled back to the media side yeah yeah and then coming back into the space you know in the last even two years just because the pandemic was crazy for social media bumps and just you know online presence and Tick Tock and everything but in the last eight years I guess when I was like 2021 it's just been such a different industry people like ask for advice and I give them my two cents but I'm like bro I think we're all trying to figure that out I think Hollywood anybody that I talk to writers directors producers you know line writer whatever just are like it's all in flux nobody knows what's going on we have ai in the mix people are getting hired by the masses and and dropped by the masses there they're hiring influencers to play leads and then they you know they go with people who have no Instagrams it's just there's it's chaos but that's a beautiful thing because in flux is when you can do whatever you want that's you have Elbow Room to be creative you don't have to follow a checklist you don't have to follow the norm because everybody's just rolling I don't love I can see describing as someone who went through something similar growing up with the checklist now learning to embrace more I Like That Elbow Room for creativity like actually it is more interesting and better when there's not the firm plan and I'm gonna figure it out and it's also really exciting to sing but there's feathers these feathers so what's what's the focus these days as you think about you wrote a common app essay at age 18 that nicely encapsulated who you were at the time which was I'm gonna make the best goddamn apple pie ever and this in a way whether intend or not it's a symbolic story of you put your mind to things and you get them done you follow the recipe you know how to do it and to those who again your awake as feathers and so say you would write the Common App essay of now 28 year old Michaela what does that look like you know that's actually a great question phrased that way because I think a lot of people just say like oh what's next but nobody's articulated it like that yeah because nobody gets to have such a fun conversation with you like I do I know it's a magical moment this is this is just it's magic for posterior Magic um you know I should probably sit down and just try to write a version write my own 28 year old coming up essay because I don't know and I think that's the most honest answer I can give and there have been plenty of you know filler answers along the way but the true answer is that I don't know um I do know that I like being in a creative space I do know that I also love the business side of things as well so being purely a creative of just creating content whether that be an actor a writer creating content for social media whatever uh that's not the only thing that makes me happy I need more than that so it's kind of a year and it's nice because I've been afforded the the flexibility this year to just roll with what sounds interesting and so that's been a lot of the last few months meeting you finding people online who I'm just kind of like kind of vibe let's just let's let's see what the vibe is like let's see what they're up to learning more about them going to pickleball and learning how to play um so it's kind of funny because I feel like where I'm at now it's almost what a lot of people did in in college kind of or something I mean everybody has different timelines right but uh I'm in a I'm in another era of just figuring out what the next step is um the pandemic obviously was a reason for part of that beforehand I was in New York um I was auditioning for musical theater I was singing with a cover band I worked for like a handbag company for a little while and I was tutoring for the SAT like I had this little flow going and everything just went and they put Avatar on Netflix during covid and that all this Toff love Came bubbling back into the present which has been super cool um and I you know downloaded Tick Tock and just was like sure let's try to integrate this into things and I do like social media and I also love modeling I love photo shoots I got new headshots taken last week so much fun I love photos oh my gosh so I just I like what do you love most about creative spaces I don't know I can't tell because it's not fully like a vanity thing of like I just love looking at myself being pretty like it there's something I don't know why it maybe it's just the expressive nature of it I kind of see it it's like seeing different characters you know yeah also yeah analogy in a way like just like you read your previous Old Common App essay which was just like a flash shot of you at age 18 like a good headshot that is yeah a capture that is a moment of you that is a certain way and that happened and I think uh one of the things that I love about New York is you can walk out of your front door every day like a completely different version of yourself and basically every version of yourself that you could even think of is is accepted New York anybody can be pretty much and I guess La is similar in a sense but for some reason it just feels more supported there yeah there's just yeah you can be like you know what I'm gonna wear a belt around my neck today uh and I'm gonna use it as a scarf and I'm going to wear this tube top as a skirt and these weird boots and you know what today my my name is Victoria and I'm gonna go get a bacon egg and cheese and it's just there's you know yeah and you roll with it and it's like oh I want to document this moment so maybe that's maybe it's the documentation like appreciating the snapshot in time of a photo shoot and even if it's for uh you know for a brand or for a product or for fashion it's still like a moment a character in that moment of that day in time yeah so I love photo shoots I love singing I love performing live I love dance and like a kind of performative aspect like tied in with the singing expression yes um writing writing narrative writing songs uh shopping food I love we slowly get to breathing and sleeping breathing meditating my dog is doing good too it's like we're going basically like mastles hierarchy we're like going downwards you start from like just fulfillment and yeah they need to be an animal or purple um yeah I like horses yeah more things I saw on your website not only like horses you make a mean impression for Velociraptor oh no yeah so at the bottom of of your resume they recommend that you throw in a couple fun facts because sometimes when people yeah when they read they're just like oh I see that you're I don't know a jewelry designer what is that like um I don't know why the director's voice is that every every stranger that enters your life automatically just has a British accent that's some weird voice of course um yeah so Velociraptor I don't want to blow this out but I just I used to to run around and have like a little dinosaur run and Velociraptor was my favorite dinosaur from like Jurassic Park and whatever so just like you know I'm gonna that was soft that was soft because I don't want to you know we have to protect the sure but you know we get screechy and so impressed in a room I can get really loud and I feel like I've I've been asked a couple times to do it and it's a little jarring and they're like oh cool you're like all right like I'm glad I asked I love you see the little finger claws just to get into them yeah that's adorable I also really appreciate the answer re hey like what's that 28 year old common FSA answer look like and you just said I don't know there's something beautiful about after having gone through a lifetime of always trying to make sure everything is perfect to finally have the courage to sit down and be like I don't know and that's precisely gonna put me in that mindset of abundance I don't need to have the backup plans figured out I can see what comes and be in a mental state to take advantage of it yeah and develop into something more I'm you know with the I don't know comes a sense of peace and I'm pretty happy I mean happy is a weird word I feel like joyful or being in like a state of Joy because that is tied to I feel like a general mentality of just being positive about whatever's happening I feel like happiness is specifically like I'm in a good mood and joy is like oh something bad could have happened today but I'm still in kind of a joyful mentality if that makes sense um yeah it's very peaceful like I'm in flux I do not know really what's happening next I gotta like it's a smattering of kind of some suggestions of you know things that are happening but there's no plan there's not a checklist that's what I find that's what I admire so much as someone who also similarly relied on planning so much it's it's like oh you gotta be able to just like go a little yeah yeah or a lot sometimes or a lot a lot after you know two and a half Decades of holding on aggressively sometimes you just I actually love even how we met right yeah for those you don't know Michaela saw a story of me playing pickleball with one of your friends yeah Ryan yeah Ryan and we didn't know each other but I saw just followed a bunch of people I was like yeah I was like I'm in a similar mentality I've really appreciate it over the past couple years having more freedom I feel like you know like I don't have a purpose if I just think this person seems interesting cool like I'd love to get to know them better and I love how you totally just reciprocated that energy and you're like yeah I'm down to come hang I'm like all right we're having a good time okay well I make Velociraptor noises it's a wild Saturday night in Hollywood guys yeah yeah la boom that's why the shades are drawn because there's so much revelry there's a party out there he's going outside we can't wait we have to stay inside and make Velociraptor noise that sounds like the description of my life so what I like to do now yes tell me I am not only a you know of course clearly creative and charismatic because I'm also a punctual one okay and for those who don't know I know we're gonna get you out at 9 20. you're fine we're good we're good I'm ready yeah so 920 is currently now six so we have a good 15 20 minutes okay so we're gonna we're gonna get into it we're gonna play it's based off 36 questions to fall in love yes your time so we're gonna fall in love that's the plan are you ready oh you're gonna you're gonna watch it live you're gonna see anxiety implode on anxiety upon itself it's going to be yeah well the dating scene in La is pretty much that so yeah yeah it sounds about right so it's pretty accurate too far off so for those of you who don't know I love you just like throwing little Jabs at La we're like hahaha that's great here romance is dead and in L.A but not in my heart a romantic so the New York Times wrote an article about this where they took these random selected pairs of people and they ran them through questions all around vulnerability I'm gonna share something real and Russia please please stop it you know if I were a voice actress like you I would have said that in a British accent because that's what we use for strangers apparently we just jump in jump straight into a British accent anytime we want to so powerful thank you I don't have training I don't know if it's actually good or not a naturally talented creative I have to that's very kind of you nothing else you've done tough I don't care free pims for you thank you thank you these British accents though that's that's how I know she's she's really good London if you'll take me if you'll take me I'll go I'll move I don't mind no no but when you move to London you're just like everybody else you want to be a British person here yeah but I also love London okay well that's that's a whole other thing at the end of these questions many of these various people became good friends and yeah one pair did in fact end of Danny each other getting married there you go okay so we're gonna we're gonna go through 15 minutes of this okay speed around all 36 questions so yeah all 36 boom boom boom so here's how it starts okay I believe in quality versus it's the journey it's not no we're always start this with eye contact we're gonna look deeply into each other this is very intimate yeah it's very intimate you know I've been looking everywhere except that for the past you know whatever time of course and the first person to look away first or blink they're gonna pull the first question okay good because I was like level one I'm pretty good at maintaining eye contact so go with intimacy okay well you know I'd probably look away first anyway so one way or another this game ends and then I'll take one from level two and then level three are we ready okay I'm ready okay three two one I mean you blinked already so I feel like I also have contacts wait let me try to talk to really big games if you have contacts in it you all know it's hard okay let's try it again and also are we supposed to not talk I mean we can talk you just you just don't want to believe immediately started talking and blinking at the exact same time okay drink your water you did it's not working drink more water and while we're at it heartset 920 or is it 9 30 okay what oh yeah that's fine yeah we can okay 9 30 okay but not 9 40. no okay 9 30. for those of you watching we're setting boundaries and that is important okay try again countdown all right three two one go okay okay I'm gonna try my best you know most people don't usually talk while they do this because it's very hard for me at the same time we literally blinked it that was terrible wavelength that's never happened before how about you choose a level one question please do level one [Music] okay you're afraid oh wow we just did we don't do wild cards oh great because I was like we just said you pull the question you can do a different question it's not it's not a plan we have to follow yeah you know jostle oh here we go okay great well this is fitting for kind of what we were talking about well although we did Cover lots of topics uh what character would I play in a movie really that's what you're gonna come throw me I know I think rather than try and assign you to a role I'm gonna say if I were to watch you in a movie I'd experience you as you've been creative from the start and I think in a way you've gone through years of that creativity being harnessed for purpose for planning and now you're at a point where maybe that creativity just gets to be creative by itself and that and it's that by itself will lead to good things yeah and what type of role or character that be in a movie somebody that I don't know but I want to watch and I want to continue being friends with you and seeing and finding out incredible well I did give that as my answer of what's next so that's only fitting that you don't know um if I I feel like I've had a very close parallel to Rory Gilmore in Gilmore Girls like she and her mom and me and my mom scary accuracies for lots of timeline moments in their life and then the Yale thing and then like the estranged grandparents but then like I get along with them crazy crazy do you am I supposed to answer this about you too you can but I was going to ask how does Rory Gilmore as someone I confess I actually have not deeply watched Gilmore Girls so what happens to Rory Gilmore how does their story end I actually don't know if I've seen all the way through the end of season seven and I'm just now realizing that um I think I watched through like season five and there's just you know boys and then figuring out family and like she and her mom are kind of like sisters and they they move kind of away from their family and she's just super into school and she loves reading and she you know lots of lots of things but I'm I don't want to be a journalist I don't think I don't know okay so that's a key difference but yeah that's a big thing she like wants to be a journalist that sort of thing so that's different never never surgeon Never actor she just quite didn't have your ambition yeah I know you can answer for me yeah I'm curious Okay so just right off the bat there's a little bit of just uh I'm I'm gonna pretend you know or I guess use this a little bit like a psychic I'm just gonna say things that come to mind sure so um entrepreneur Silicon Valley Wolf of Wall Street just thing is that like you feel like you could exist in the real men but you have a little bit more articulation you're a little more gentle so you wouldn't be like a a harsh protagonist um but you could be like a coder who's like on a mission to do something secretive but like you know there ends up being a love interest of the person that you're trying to like get information from and then you do successfully get information but then you also fall in love and you have to Grapple with the dichotomy of that I don't know I love this I'm like hey any story that ends with me not dying alone sounds like one that I would watch no my my insides are love always through through the many you know ups and downs of relationships and love in my life the flame of love has indeed stayed flickering although it has gotten dangerously low a couple points in there but it's still going still going ever present it's still going just believe and we're still reaching for the the flex of Mr Darcy's hand in real life we are indeed okay all right Mr Darcy oh gosh well you know they took quite a while to hit it off too so listen I I'm patient I've got time for those of you watching so if you're like you know Mr Darcy but real modern modern Los Angeles yeah you know Mr Darcy you know we're from England because like I said about England so that's I will move there yeah it's easily helpful all right let's do another one okay you pick from two or you pick from one I'll pick another one for me okay okay do I remind you of anyone oh yes yes uh one of my good friends from earlier on I guess in my college friendships one of my friends named George um he yeah similarly was just very pleasantly present uh I feel like you're very easy to communicate with and he was like a joy to be around like the the Cadence of your speaking voice flattering me indirectly I'm all fear for it the Cadence of your speaking voice is similar to his um there's somebody else that's like pinging around on my brain but I can't place I can't place it it might be my friend Kim actually beautiful I'm like their love child yeah yeah you're a strange love child of like Kim and George there you go that you don't know what that means but I don't know oh great it sounds lovely Kim and George wherever you are my I reach out to you in this world and say it's an honor to be compared to you I thought I'm just really happy she was in like you're like yeah you do and you're like yeah this like uh this this weird kid in second grade who ate glue in the corner I think his name was also Eric that's funny so we'll take that as doing I think um you oh actually I don't think I've met someone quite like you before and that's a good thing that's the real compliment yeah yeah I'm very much enjoying listening to your story wow that's very sweet of you I feel like sometimes people would probably go to I just realized go to celebrities like do I remind you of like a notable figure and I didn't even go there I went with straight to personal connections yeah I far prefer let's do level two this time you're gonna pull it okay level two level two I love how the little sing tones become more optimistic and well okay yeah we're not doing wild cards you dropped it like it was on fire okay Earth Nation Earth Kingdom oh my gosh Fire Nation is is blocked okay uh what has been your earliest recollection of happiness I feel very grateful because I feel like my brain has been pretty plugged in for most of my life I have very very early memories that uh are yes um there are a couple flickering ones I was two or three and I loved driving from an early age which is fitting being in the driver's seat baby she loves being in control so I would always ask my mom to drive the car into the driveway when I was two and three years old I was like I want to like drive the car so she let me like steer into the drive level she did like the pedals um so like little flickers of that and then like flickers of just like ice cream in a kitchen and swinging on a swing set in my backyard wow yeah I love that also can we just talk about like as a two-year-old you want to drive SUVs yeah I was like get me on that tractor get me in a car like you're way more interesting than Rory Gilmore like this is sort of thing like ladies and gentlemen truth is Stranger Than Fiction I'm like you're two years old and you're like yeah I want to drive Uber that sounds fun and then and then more recently you know growing up I was like you know driving a motorcycle riding a motorcycle would be cool one day and my mom always thought so too so we took like the Motorcycle drivers class together and got our licenses together a few summers ago we have yet to own a bike because in L.A it's kind of a matter of like yeah like life when not if you're gonna get hurt but like I I would love to have a bike just for side street purposes you know totally see you on a motorcycle it's kind of a little like it's varsity jacket but it could be it's like kind of giving me like we got a little change like Riverdale Riverdale realness are you on a motorcycle with like your varsity jacket and your hair is reddish which is like I think yeah I guess a little bit Cheryl Cheryl yeah Cheryl except Cheryl's like crazy like I'd be following Riverdale like it gets there's like demons and magic and stuff yeah I feel like it's taken a bit of a turn from the original story what about you what's your earliest recollection of happiness ah I remember when I was really really young my mom bought me like a little stuffed monkey like it was like a beanie baby but too cheap to be a real being maybe he's like a fake Beanie Baby I don't know yeah and I just like was so happy because I didn't get like tons of gifts from my parents yeah we also like grew up poor and all that stuff and so yeah yeah whatever so what makes us great it's fine it's fine we've totally internalized processed and moved on from me no big deal easy so that monkey was like very special for me and I guess what's a little bit funny is like because I just like had that around a lot I think other people just like assumed I just like loved monkeys and that's not really true it's more like I loved the experience and moment of getting that monkey as a gift more than I like really love to collect monkeys so there's a period of time where like my friends were like oh like what should we give Eric and I just like get this collection of these random stuffed monkeys and I'm like I don't really okay like the monkeys as much but you know the symbolic meaning behind them I appreciate that I'm the real friendship mine was a little blonde uh like golden retriever-esque dog Mr Peanut Butter from BoJack Horseman yeah kind of ish yeah his name was fudgy fudgy but he's yellow right over that um that was my let's do another level too all right two oh we don't have to do this one but I'll read it out to you and you can choose what's your father's name and tell me one thing about him oh we're getting deep on a Saturday night okay I don't know why I go into singing as well singing in accents it's quite lovely makes life more interesting my biological father is not really around I know who he is we've met I have three half Brothers we all know each other I went to the youngest one's wedding it's all like fine right it's not amazing but it's fine um his name is Dave he's from Kentucky uh I guess that's one thing about him but um one more interesting thing about him uh yeah see I guess oh I guess it doesn't have to be interesting it just can be a general thing one thing about him he's not great at taking responsibility that sounds really not great yeah especially when you've got kids yeah but I'm appreciative for that because I don't think yeah you know so many people have to go through their parents getting divorced and that is tough especially if you're young if you're super super young maybe not so much but Middle High School like it's just so many of my friends had to deal with that um and various levels of like tumult because of it and so I'm just glad that he kind of wasn't ever because then my mom and I just got to get you know closer and stronger because of that and I feel like I would rather have absence than violent presence so that is a quotable court right there absence can be better than violet violent presence yeah I kind of love that and appreciate you sharing yeah and I really love the framing where in a way it helped you and your mom build a very real and meaningful relationship yeah would not change that for the world so well let me frame that tell me something that you really find beautiful about your mother oh her name is Yvette I think in kind of contrast to how she was raised as many of us do is just so fiercely supportive of whatever makes me happy like truly yeah um and even if she has a hard time grappling if I if I came to her tomorrow I was like Mom I love tattoos I'm just obsessed I want to open my own tattoo parlor and cover my body right she she would have a moment she'd be like oh this is permanent and like your face is so pretty and I don't want to blah blah blah but like she knows if she can really see like the authentic happiness emulating out of me she will support me um on anything so I think that that is I don't know kind of Priceless from a parent that level of knowing she's got yours she's got me she's got me yeah what about you I thought her mother both either neither I'll mention I'll mention my one beautiful thing about my mother Okay so I think most of so what did I get from my dad is a brain that okay when I put it like that it's a brain that like well now it works I know works like fairly well well enough to do what I need to do and probably like stubbornness which can be good and bad depending on the situation what I got from my mom was learning how to talk to human beings that's good we need that in this world I grew up experiencing my dad like being very smart but it was like having no idea how to function like society and talking to people I literally don't know if he has friends I think a lot of people feel that way about their dad well that's fun oh yay hooray we've just discovered something about The Human Condition yeah maybe peculiar yeah I it's not like an exaggeration I think he actually does it but my mom my mom's step she just like gets along with everybody and she knows how to connect and how to talk and I think I grew up singing like oh let's see how people treat my mom versus how people treat my dad like I I want to be treated like how people treat my mom and so I think there's a little bit of that Justin Aqua I can't pronounce French but you know it is that sort of indescribable yeah yeah see wow see she's so good that's what she went to Yale day 112 on French Duolingo guys we're very very impressive that's sort of ineffable and describable like just lovely and fun to be around so like you take like that the brain and is there a termination for my dad and my mom's smart to be clear but that people skills like Dash it all in with like anxiety and following the master plan it's all falling apart and then like you basically get me so you know and then here you are do we have time for do we have time around level three level three let's do it feel free to choose what is that pick the ones you like level three reflection that was a laugh one of my most qualified to give advice about moving I know how to pack a U-Haul I know how to drive a U-Haul I know how to pack a box I know how to how to how to break up a room how to prioritize what to pack first um how to drive carefully and I'm a good character read for for movers for people who are going to move your stuff and drive it's like you're going to be careful with stuff you're not um yeah because we've moved about 26 six times over the course of my life there you go that was like the easiest one of the whole batch that's like more times than like the average age of most influencers in LA that was so specific yeah yeah you're correct it's a lot of moving a lot of moving a lot of storage units a lot of boxes so I'm going to reframe that from I'm really good at masking tape and putting it on boxes to you know how to deal and grapple with change coming from do I though or maybe now maybe maybe now maybe now or maybe from a meta level learning how to change from somebody who is not as comfortable with change to somebody who's becoming more comfortable with it and giving advice on that process I feel you are very qualified to talk about the growth of a human being it's very kind of you say I don't know if I am but I definitely have lots of opinions on the matter so you know well we'll see well what wait do you don't get to answer are we just doing I want to do different ones oh oh I see okay what would make you feel closer to me on well getting better at pickleball first of course but on on a bigger level um I I feel like learning more about the passion behind your business venture because I feel like that's such a key component I gave you like the Venture Capital pitch you did which I appreciate and I love to hear but like the reason why we all are here uh in in my head anyway like the I say the purpose of you know existence is life death and love right and so everything has to be tied to that and most things that invoke interest are tied to love so there has to be something passionate in you to create something so discovering what that is would would make me feel I really love that and to what I'll say is I think you're pretty darn cool and I would love to continue being friends with you please thank you respectively learning more about each other and that's something I can go into more the spark notes I'll give is I have always from a young age wanted to be creative and in fact life usually sucked enough with my dad telling me exactly what to do I found Escape yeah in reading and books and imagining creative worlds that like hey what if I instead of me in Indiana with my dad telling me be better at math is step two of my 52 Life Plan like what if like I was a wizard and I'm have magical powers and I'm special and I'm different and what that looks like and yeah I think I still appreciate all those little bits of creativity it's giving me little moments of release that there's always this is yearning in me to like want to share and feel understood and express that back and pass it on and so I think deep down part of what sparked me to leave the corporate world and work with creators is because I wanted to be one myself and I think it's so cool I got to work with people who are figuring out and supporting them and even more fulfilling that I get to do I get to do a little a little like what we're doing now we're creating moments right just like right your essay or these photographs this podcast will serve as a point in time of us getting to sit down and talk with each other for the first time that is a moment of co-creation and that that I feel special about I enjoy it it's the present becoming history as it is we'll do we'll do one more question okay now it's all on you I want to go I wanna I want I want right in here oh now I'm not really sure how to answer this or how we answer it what do I need to hear right now I think do I answer that for me or I guess that would make sense I'll take a shot I'm not going to be pretentious is enough to believe I really know what you want to hear right now but one thing I would like to express to you is you are working so hard and I'm like so honored impressed by knowing similarly the mindset you went through before to begin trying to change and shift into something where you're like I don't know what I'm gonna do next but I'm gonna give myself to space to explore is really cool and hard and you're doing it and I feel honored by that that's very sweet um yeah definitely definitely a appreciated uh yeah I guess my version of that is like it's all gonna be okay yeah yeah you know the daily matchups it's like the biggest unlocked right when you believe it's all going to be okay it can take a little bit more risk and you can explore more the hard part is actually believing that but saying it helps and I'm the same way and there are times where honestly I am afraid it's not going to be okay and I am scared and I'm like this is stupid and everything sucks and it's not gonna be okay and what helps is when I get to spend time with people like you and be like well she's going through her own journey and saying despite it all it's going to be okay so maybe I get to say that too yeah and I guess you know what we what we preach is often what we think to ourselves but kind of right back at you I mean you had to you had to step out of the checklist and now you're here in Los Angeles doing what you want to do more of and I will say if maybe I don't know if you need to hear it but I think you're fantastic at cultivating Community thank you and making everybody feel welcome um last week and when I met you for the first time you specifically went out of your way to make sure that people were being introduced to each other that people who didn't know how to play Pickleball learned how to play Pickleball uh things that are small but but huge you know I'm just trying to be helpful in ways that when I was growing up I didn't feel like I always got so you're succeeding so there you go okay we are we are right at time so yeah thank you so much and we we did it we made it we were we were at times it was 9 31. that is pretty much see creative people can be conscientious as well take that as your final Point viewers oh my gosh it's all gonna be okay it is all going to be okay goose feathers ah because feathers were out

Channel: Karat

Views: 152,647

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Id: eiKEf3cHwiM

Length: 66min 10sec (3970 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 07 2023