I've learned so much about myself through acting
that I think I always knew like, that's my way through.
And if I find that, I find me
and like I can break all of these spells
and all of this darkness that's trying to overcome me
because I'm still fucking powerful.
I feel a little overwhelmed
by all of a sudden working again
after stay at home orders and not seeing people
and now work and everything is happening again.
And it just makes me tired.
I definitely have to like hide away and be alone
in order to have energy, to give other people energy.
So eight months of that was good for me.
I'm Always wearing things that remind me of myself.
So like my rings are my great-grandma's
my overalls are my grandpas.
I have a stack of bracelets that I usually wear
that all represent the most important people to me
my dog, my partner, and my sisters.
I guess my style actually then represents
the people that I love, who make me me.
What does it say about me?
That I like attention?
I like attention, 'cause it reminds me that I'm alive
and I exist and it feels validating to be seen.
No this is the first time
that I've known what my hair looks like
when it just grows out of my scalp.
How is that I know what my pubes
look like more than the hair on my head.
When I was younger, my mom took really good care of my hair.
She learned how to do my hair.
Our hair textures are not the same.
Even my mom tending to my hair and that in itself,
that action acknowledges that my hair is beautiful
and worthy and I still was somehow brainwashed
into believing otherwise.
But that might also have been
because my mom's side of the family is white.
No one on my dad's side was wearing their hair natural
and it was wigs or weaves.
And that's why when I grew up to take care of my hair,
I assumed that's what I'm supposed to do with this.
I'm supposed to like tuck it away.
During stay at home is definitely
is when I became more familiar
with my hair because it grew so much.
And I had so much time to walk around
with hair masks and learn to braid my hair and play with it.
And so this is the first time that I know
what my hair looks like.
Not just big and curly, but like what my curl pattern is.
I experienced a lot of assumptions
that one would make about an actor.
Like even the attention thing and me liking attention.
Is like, of course you do, you're an actor.
That's why act to get attention.
And it's like, no, I act the same reason
I like attention, which is to feel alive and to be seen
as a fully fleshed human.
But for the most part, what I have gotten
from social media is everyone thinks that I'm smoking pot
all the time and that I just don't give a fuck and--
I overthink everything. (laughs)
I'm pretty neurotic and that kind of, it all goes
together.
I think that's how I ended up in that place
of being perceived that way, because I care so much that
I have to at some point be like, Okay let it all go.
I think that over the last eight months,
I did a lot of falling apart and coming back together again.
In the last few years of my life have been really hard.
I was struggling with illness that I wasn't aware of.
And it makes you just hate yourself.
Like, Oh my God, my body's attacking itself.
And my cortisol levels were through the roof
and I had chronic migraines.
It was interfering with work.
My body was swollen.
I think naturally if you deal with an illness
or like your body is not doing what it's meant to be doing,
you naturally will hate the way that it also looks.
And so I just hated myself inside out.
And so I zoom met with all of my doctors
and I just couldn't find out what was happening.
I slipped into a psychosis,
which has happened to me before.
I had accepted that I had bipolar disorder
and I got a new psychiatrist.
And as soon as I started taking my medication,
all of those things went away.
Well, first of all,
bipolar disorder can look like a number of things.
And for it to be diagnosed, there's a certain amount
of time that you have to be in a stage called hypomania.
I was first diagnosed five years ago,
but since then I've been diagnosed on medication,
got rid of my medication.
You crash eventually.
Of course, as one does I fell into the trap of,
I can cure this with like the power of my mind.
I got meditated way.
The worst thing for me was like this rampant wellness
culture that we have of like, you can fix everything.
If you're a vegan and you go to yoga and you get reiki.
And all of those things do work for me,
but they're complimenting my medication
and seeing my therapist and having a team of doctors.
I think it wasn't really until I was completely alone
that I could even acknowledge
that I was experiencing such high highs and such low lows.
But then the high highs looked really freaky.
And this change was so swift that it was like I would come
out of being in a high high or a low low.
And it was like, Oh my God
I was just like blacked out for however many months.
I wouldn't sleep for days.
And I also found out at the time that someone
I was seeing had cheated on me
while I was in this psychosis.
It's interesting because you can be experiencing a psychosis
and then a heartbreak happens and you're still like
the heartbreak is more painful.
I think I seeked out help because of the heartbreak.
When I was telling the psychiatrist
what was going on is when he made me backtrack
and go, "Hold on, hold on, hold on.
So you were on a spending spree
and you were doing this and you were cutting off who
and you were going where and you thought that God did, huh?
And you're here because of a heart break?
Other things are happening."
Then the doctor prescribed me medication
and then I went off and filmed and felt liberated
and single and good.
And of course that's when you're like,
I don't need medication.
I just need to be happy. Duh.
The past eight months, I obviously had a moment.
I watched a lot of people
in my life struggle in ways that maybe normally we don't,
we're not aware of each other in that way
because we're distracted by everything else.
And I think that also gave me the confidence
to not only accept my diagnosis, but also just say it.
'Cause I was still embarrassed and thinking like,
Oh people aren't going to think that I can like keep
up with work and all actors are have this or that.
I also made the decision to get a Black therapist.
It's been so nice to talk
to someone who's like, "No, no, no.
Don't avoid how that affected you.
Let's talk about how the environment
and how Black Lives Matter is actually affecting you."
Whereas the white therapist was not doing that.
In my mind, everything is because I'm Black
or because I'm gay.
And so it's really nice to have a therapist who can say
"Well, this happened because you're Black.
And because of all of these other things,"
whereas my white therapist would just be like,
"It's not because you're Black.
It's 'cause of this stuff.
And I've learned so much about myself
through acting that I think I always knew like,
that's my way through.
And if I find that I find me and like
I can break all of these spells and all of this darkness
that's trying to overcome me
because I'm so fucking powerful.
Like I feel like I am made up of magic.
And I think a lot of us are,
and that's why
this movement is going the way that it's going.
And it's because it's a lot of folks who are tapped
into themselves and it's broken a lot of curses.
I think just in the ways that I try to make sense
of characters and relate to them
that I ended up making sense
of myself because I asked myself questions of like,
why wouldn't I do this thing that they're doing?
Or why would I?
Acting can make me discover myself and ask questions
I've never asked that can be very validating
and make me feel beautiful and cool
and the bees fucking knees
or it can do the complete opposite
and make me feel like a trash bag full of shit.
Whether it's come from like the director's son
or the director themselves,
like I've been told,
"Make her hair bigger.
I hired her 'cause of her hair."
And I'm like, cool.
Or director's son once was on set and said to me that,
"Yeah, they needed a Black girl.
And my dad asked me who was a cool Black girl.
And I said, you, so I'm how you got the job."
If we're still casting people based on what they look like,
we're still not casting by the person who services
the character, the best or the story, the best.
If you read the script and it says
like her hair blows in the wind
and she's effortlessly beautiful,
you envision a certain type of person.
If she has great work ethic and she's on top of her game
in her job, you want to cast someone who's also really fit
because work ethic and size go hand in hand,
apparently like according to media.
And then I've also shown up on set as like the lead
of something where in the script, she is written as like
Oh, something silly, like pretty it doesn't know it.
And then I'll get there.
And literally everyone will be like,
"I'm sorry, who are you on the call sheet?
And like their faces when I say that I'm the lead
of the movie it could make me cry.
'Cause I'm just like, literally one you read this
and like then you didn't even look up who I was.
So you're not prepared to do my hair. (laughs)
You're not prepared to do anything that has been regards
to me 'cause in your mind
you know what that person looks like, and it's not me.
Yeah.
It coincides with like releasing shame around my sexuality
and my body and this time it was just like
I am so relieved to know why now these things are happening.
And like how necessary a diagnosis is,
because now I can make sense of myself.
And it allows me to love my myself.
And I find that I will speak
to people who have borderline personality disorder
or people who are on the spectrum
or people who have adult ADHD.
And I'm like, "Oh, you operate on the same way like that
I'm operating on."
You're not like completely on the outside.
In fact, I have now a community
and I don't feel like an outsider on the inside I'm there.
Oh, just whenever someone looks at me in the eyes.
Yeah. That makes me feel vulnerable.
I think the thing that I want to do before I die.
So I would say that's my biggest hope is that
I inspire people to find their magic the way
that people have inspired me to do that.
I felt really beautiful over the summer
with my pod and we were all just being each
other's safe haven during a time that's really scary,
being witnessed nude
and witnessing others nude to just bask
in nature together and like all of its glory.
That's when I feel most beautiful.
Everything aligns and makes sense to me.
And even if I don't like my body or my mind,
and like maybe the thoughts that I'm thinking
or the way that my heart is tugging,
I still always feel like everything about me
makes sense to me.
So making sense of the world doesn't matter.
I wouldn't change anything about myself,
even things that may make my experience
a little bit more difficult.
The difficulty makes me more of a knowledgeable
and cooler. (laughs)
[Elisa] Magic.
Magic, yeah.
Literally when you have magic,
all of those other things don't matter.
You're like, I don't want anything to be moved
because that's all,
it's like buzzing.
Oh my God, thank you.
I feel because I'm already vulnerable,
I'm supposed to tell you that I'm like,
I don't believe you. (laughs)
Hi, we're Elisa and Lily,
the mother and daughter creators of "StyleLikeU."
Thank you for tuning into this week's episode
of the "What's Underneath Project"
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