ladies and gentlemen boys and girls can you believe it i have her peyton ashbrook
you guys know her as jenny sullivan the lady the toughest prosecutor in all the
tv phantoms she has come here to sit down on my electronic couch mr ashbrook how are you
doing today i'm doing great thank you so much for having me i'm excited to be here
well i am glad to have you and whenever we have the mega celebrity superstars you know i've got
to give you the hollywood clap this is for you for coming to spend time can't wait i can't wait okay
wow thank you so much
it's been a long journey y'all like thank you appreciate it yes yes and that's some of the
reasons why we have her here my audience um if you're finding me for the first time please
subscribe to the channel links is in description she also has a wonderful ig and a twitter
her links are in the description as well and when we're done about an hour from now i will
put her episode on the podcast life games podcast is down there as well peyton peyton payton we've
some of us have met and fallen in love with you from power book 2. but i don't know every every
actor and actress has an origin story so what was it that got you into acting and when did you
figure out that this was a craft that you could grab and be a super talented oh this question i
i like struggled with how to answer this question for a very long time because it has been a long
winding road i both sides of my family are actors and i grew up in los angeles so i've been
on a some kind of film set or theater my whole life like constantly so growing up watching it
admiring my mom you know do do her thing on tv and and theater in la and um and i think for a while
i was i was kind of shy as a kid or i felt shy so yeah i didn't i didn't gravitate toward it
i don't know i was like shy and then i was performing and then i was shy again and i just
didn't know what was going on so i did like visual arts and i thought maybe singing would be the
thing and um and then i ended up going to a high school for the performing arts called laksa in la
and um i i auditioned for the singing the voice department first and that was like a little bit
of a traumatic experience and so the guy uh it's one of the administrative people there was like
we'll have her audition for theater she does she acts too so she i was like okay i guess i'll
i can do that i know how to do that so i ended up going there and i thought i might be a director or
filmmaker and it wasn't until like senior year of high school when i really got the first chance to
be the lead of a show um called dear charlotte and it was this lovely like really minimalist
beautiful play and um and i was like oh i think i am an actor like every school i applied to after
high school was i only applied to every school was for acting and i only got into two of them
um and and i got into all the film schools i applied to but i like still i was i guess i
just something clicked in that play for me and i just kept pursuing acting relentlessly after that
while doing a lot of other weird like i i worked as crew on film sets and i've been in the service
industry and i've taught fitness you know i've done a lot of different chara like child care um
but i've always been acting at the same time since high school gotcha now
from what you've said you also have some golden pipes am i to hear that you've got a little
golden pipe down do you care to give us a bar of the star spangled banner or something oh man
let's go
me me um actually it's so funny you asked me that because i literally sang the star spangled banner
for the first time and i don't know how long yesterday when i was watching the all-star game
i was inspired um yeah i know uh sure
no way i'm not gonna sing for you guys right now it's oh 7 p.m all we want from you is one
bar you don't got to sing the whole song we just want to see the gravity okay um my god
if i had to do one i would do a johnny mitchell song so that that's what i picked oh um so let me
find out you can go and make you an album on top of all this acting you doing let me find out so
do you still love music while we're talking about yours so are you doing anything with music along
with your acting you know i'm not really i i sing because it brings me joy these days i play ukulele
a little bit i play guitar a little bit and it's a it's a big um helpful release for me emotionally i
work through stuff when i sing so it's become more of a personal thing i would of course
love to like have some kind of gig um where i get to really dive back into that because
i miss it i've done you know musicals i'm a theater person like i just i love singing
so hopefully one day soon but mostly over the past few years it's been just for me
okay well maybe one of these days we'll see you doing some broadway plays where you can kind of
exercise your acting plus the singing as well and you never know we're going to keep up we're going
to keep an eye on you miss payton we're going to keep an eye on you as far as that's concerned
there's some other things that attracted me to you as an actress as i was start following your
journey on social media you are not afraid to tackle some of the social issues of the day you
are a supporter of black lives matters and the issues that minorities and women endure talk to
me about what has given you the courage to put that on your sleeve when a lot of entertainers
are a little nervous about doing that because they don't want the blow back black backlash or
whatever you want to call it but you have been out front out forward on what is equitable for
everybody in humankind talk a little bit about that i just don't see any other version of my
life where i don't do that you know i painted that and if you did that yeah i mean i really
i just there's no version of my life living authentically where that's not you know
brought to the forefront i think social justice is incredibly important it's we're all connected to
each other um and we have to all have each other's backs and support each other and
um yeah i mean i have just always kind of been that way i don't know and i i just i understand
how people can be nervous about you know being so upfront about their political views but
i just never connected in that way like i don't even think of it as a political thing
like it's a human thing to me so yeah i just i i honestly just don't see any other version
being possible for me it's just who i am and i try to be as authentic as i can on social
media because i think sometimes it's easy these days to um like instagram especially i think
there's a whole different world and things that people want to project to people that
isn't necessarily like true to to their day-to-day life and and i think it's important as an example
to like show that being authentically who you are and supporting what you support and you're
and being open with your ideas um if you feel safe to do so i think it's really important to do that
considering i'm someone who has to deal with some of the issues you're supporting i just
want to say thank you um i'm proud of you and it made this this interview even more fruitful for
me that you are willing to stand for some issues that if you decided you didn't want to deal with
you could completely not deal with it and just turn the blind eye it wouldn't even affect you
as much but because you believe in humans as you just mentioned i'm very grateful to have you and
ladies and gentlemen her social media her ig is down and she did paint this this is right there
on her social media page on instagram go check her out and now as we're riding down this road
of learning miss payton you've been credited since 2008 with some somewhere over 34 different acting
um jobs and shorts and all kinds of things and it started way back when you did a show
called do not feed tell me what that was like yeah oh yeah i told you i do homework now
we're going way back yeah so so there was a period of time after i i went to my first
acting conservatory uh right out of high school in new york and it was two years and i had another
year basically in new york where i kind of gave myself my own version of film school in a way
like acting for film and i did 25 short films in a year and i just like was constantly doing it just
to learn and to get better and and i loved it i really really love how collaborative filmmaking is
um i find it really exciting and so do not feed i believe was a short horror film
which was shot in new jersey and had to camp out in the woods overnight in the rain and i remember
um this is such a silly story but i remember like the tent i was in um there was some light
outside in the middle of the night and it was just pouring rain and i saw these giant
centipedes that were like no joke like this big and like the fattest hairiest legs and they were
all their silhouettes were like all over my tent and i found out later that they had gotten under
some people's pillows and like almost bit people yeah it was a it was an interesting experience i
have quite a few interesting short film stories some things that i've done situations i've been
in but i enjoyed the film i got to improvise a lot um the cast was really fun we had a great time it
was it was like and i was with people who were my age we were all like in our early 20s just like
figuring it out or late teens on my on my part but um just figuring out this whole thing so yeah
that's that wasn't that takes me back because that i think we shot that in 2007 actually
um have you seen it no way i do homework when i do oh my god i get it but that's not all i've
seen that you've done i've got something else i want the people to see that you did in 2009
if you want to see uh a younger peyton in 2009 take a look at this clip oh my god what is hello
yes i hate to bring you this news but we have the body of your father
you are the only registered family
yeah that was a dark one that was a dark movie about a dad who abused his daughter
and um and her basically through her dream and psychology was able to kind of go back and stop
him from doing it to her inner child basically so that was a doozy yeah i was right in that time wow
i mean you done invented the the multiverse before the marvel mcu came up with it going through
dreams and getting things fixed up and i highly recommend that you guys go and check that out
along with the other one that we showed earlier she's got some hits and now we'll fast forward
you a little bit you've played in two shows that i watched one of them i really really dearly love
you've been in house of cards you've been a madam secretary but more importantly which should tell
you which one i'm favoring you've been in the good fight and um my favorite show and and and the
reason that i love this show is because this is a spin-off of the good wife which i watched weekly
ran into it loved it and i was upset when they didn't um go forth with more of it but then when i
heard it it was coming out with the good the good um fight i loved it and i caught you in there see
i remember you this was my first time seeing you before we got to know you as jenny sullivan so
talk about your experience working with that crew oh they were so great i mean and that's one of my
favorite shows i think that might be my fa other than ghost my favorite show on television right
now because um they're just they're such risk takers and they they're like they're interested
in new forms of what a tv show should or could be and what a tv show can and cannot say they really
like push the envelope with that stuff and so i i really admire the kings in that way and working
with those actors was just like i didn't get to meet christine but kush was like delightful she
is a dream and i really we just hit it off she's so great i hope i get to work with her again too
very soon um but i had a ton of fun it was like three days upstate i think we were upstate yeah
got to play republican you know be pro pro life i think getting to like arguments about for life
i should say anti-abortion probably but um yeah that was that was really fun it was nice to be
kind of i feel like my casting a lot has been sort of in that vein where it's like a professional or
like maybe a woman with kind of a stick up her butt a little bit um or a grieving like a mom
who's just like lost her child or like her child is sick like there's no it's kind of the two
that i get cast in a lot so it's very fun it's a wide you know speaking of your casting how do you
how do you select roles like what what is the the mindset or the process you go through when roles
come your way and you decide whether or not you're going to take them yeah that's a good question i
mean i'm lucky that i get a lot um forwarded to me because my reps really understand me
and who i am and what the kind of work i want to do so it's pretty rare these days when i
pass on things the only things i tend to pass on are when i just feel like the female character is
pretty one-dimensional um or is just there to be a device to the male character in the story
um or you know there's still the occasional um you know role that calls for maybe some gratuitous
violence that happens and i'm not really down for that unless it's like i don't know it's got to be
it's got to be absolutely necessary to the store storyline i really gotta get something from it
um it has to serve a greater purpose than just like this is how we're going to make this female
character be uh sympathetic to people you know so i i prefer like well-rounded three-dimensional
women to play um which is why jenny sullivan is so fun because she is like she's very very
complicated and not perfect at all like she's a mess and she's also like really smart she's a lot
smarter than me and a lot dumber than me in some ways too so it's a nice way to stretch you know