i definitely always was a performer
my
family has like a running joke of
calling me havana the musical because
i sort of was dancing and singing and
putting on little one-woman productions
by myself ever since i was born hi i'm
havana rose lou and this is on the rise
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i still have a hard time calling myself
an actress
i think partially because i'm so new to
the craft and i had never sort of
aspired to have this be my career
i don't know i think i have too much
imposter syndrome about sort of um
feeling like i can't lay claim to the
title of what it is to
be an actress and sort of i don't know
all of what that means what the label
means so i sort of don't
call myself that but i act
i have a very supportive family in terms
of following creative endeavors i feel
really lucky to be able to say that and
i think especially during this past um
sort of like seven months i've been in a
limbo of not really having any of the
projects i worked on out in the world i
have a sunday family dinner with my
extended family that lives in new york
they have been very patient with me and
kind
um
with all of my sort of like insecurities
and in the waiting period so i
have nothing but sort of thanks for them
i don't think
i ever
really like aspired to be an actor in
any capacity
but i do feel as though sort of
everything i have
studied up until this point has sort of
perfectly
um folded into the dough of being an
actor i started doing visual arts
primarily and that taught me a lot about
the visual medium and i think
composition and
symbolism and then dance also taught me
performing in a different way also stage
presence and sort of like also honestly
emotion
so i think in some way like i i never
knew i wanted to act but
all of those different things and
having some level of
deep interest and training in those
things has sort of been a perfect
through line into now realizing that
acting is what i want to do if i want to
do all those things in one my
relationship to acting is sort of
kind of like if you would imagine like a
romantic relationship is the best
metaphor i could give for it which is
that like we went on a few dates over
the past like three years and i felt
like
i don't know maybe i was like playing
kind of hard to get and now i'm like at
that phase where you like kind of can't
ignore the elephant in the room but like
maybe you're in love with somebody and
that's kind of how i feel with acting at
this point
no exit is a
fast
flashing i'm getting like stressed
thinking about it but it's about a young
woman named darby who i play
and she um is on route to a family
emergency when she gets caught in a
blizzard
and have to stop in a sort of rest stop
i think i had the most interesting
february because the skies everywhere
came out and
no exit came out all within the same
month and they're two such polar
opposite roles the sky is everywhere i
play a young woman named bailey
who
it's not a spoiler
it dies pretty early on in the film
and
she
is essentially like the embodiment of i
think
light and bravery whereas i think darby
is colored by
maybe more blues grays greens and
purples you know the contrast between
those two films has been like just
created a very polar
um
month with such you know vast highs and
fast lows
i i definitely don't think of myself as
having
made it i literally just don't even know
what that even means i think
like make what you know what is it also
i've made
things i've made some movies i've made
some pieces of art but like
i don't know
making it i hope to make more things i
think for me i've had
so many beautiful highs in my career
thus far i feel really lucky to be able
to say that one particular moment that
was really powerful was when i
had the premiere for no exit and it was
the first time i had been able to do
anything in person for any of this job
and it felt like sort of
this odd shift of having
this
world i had been living in or this sort
of
experience i'd been having had been sort
of this internal
dialogue with myself and this well-kept
secret and then it felt like the first
time where i was you know looking in
other people's eyes and they were
looking at me and
we had the same narrative over what my
life had been in
the past three years and i think that
that was a very odd shift of
feeling reality come and meet this sort
of
magical
ever tumultuous world of filmmaking that
i had been a part of
i think honestly one of my
biggest role models is
like
i have a number of them but really one
of them is my grandma on my chinese side
i am
consistently very touched and um
taken aback by how open and supportive
and
um
really just like open-minded i think she
is and
i think she had such an extreme sense of
bravery and um
immigrating to this country and
um i think that that level of bravery is
something that i try to pull from she's
also kind of an opera singer and i think
like her embracing of the arts and of
just sort of every aspect of my life my
queerness my
um choices my i mean she sat through
this bloody film and and you know didn't
cover her eyes the whole time
it's just moments like that that i think
is she really stands out to me as
somebody to
um aspire to be like in some way so i'd
say that she's a role model for me
i think my first celebrity crushes were
like animated because i was young
um
but i think probably
uh i think
spinelli from recess
um
i think i thought
she was like just really cool at the
time i was like that's like a cool
person i want to be like that person and
then realized later like i was probably
queer and then probably danny phantom as
well
um
because he was so cool but they're
animated people so
i don't know if that counts
i'm currently in a phase of watching a
lot of documentaries i love films that
do something to sort of warp reality in
some way and so i think
for me
sometimes i can get a little um
ungrounded in being in filmmaking
sometimes and so for me documentaries
also like are
the real human kernels that we're really
building off of is a true human story at
least that's how i
perceive the work and so for me it's
been really nice to ground down into
some of those but i have been
re-watching shit's creek with my little
brother it's been so fun i that show
i know it's a comedy and i laugh a lot
but i also like really
watching
there's something so touching about the
way that they all
grow
and i don't know i just find myself like
laughing and then like pouring tears and
so it's been fun to watch my little
brother because he thinks i'm
a little bit kooky
i think any time anybody has any kind of
platform
i think that there is like a
conscious responsibility that
one needs to have about how to use it
and how to sort of
consider what that means
i think for me right now that
specifically has to do with the last
three years we've had
and
my community of asian americans really
suffering some of the power of media
really is that we have found that
representation in media does change
people's perceptions of
a whole group of people i think it's
sort of like
should be a part of like
being a human to have consciousness over
other human beings and
the impact that you have and for me like
that responsibility extends outwards so
every time i do a role i donate a
portion of the proceeds
of like from that role to an
organization that
directly relates to
let's say an issue in the film or an
issue that my character faces filmmaking
is such a communal act and
in many ways like that community
and collaboration doesn't just exist on
set or sort of within the confines of
you know who's involved directly with
the script but also the communities that
are actually living out those stories
that you're telling
if you had told me three years ago that
i would be here i would have
like probably you
know cowered and like giggled and like
run away i don't think i would have been
able to conceptualize this for myself at
all you know i just don't think that um
it makes sense for me personally to ever
put um a secure image of who i think i
want to be or or sort of what i want my
life to look like and hope that the
universe takes me to good places
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you