We recently connected with Tara Platt and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Tara, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
Great question. From an early age I just knew that I wanted to be an actor. I had a strong desire to bring characters to life on stage and in film. Then as I grew and worked as a professional actor, I tried to distill this passion and gain clarity on my specific brand and discovered the common thread was that I wanted to work on vivid characters in highly aesthetic fantastical worlds. I started working in television, animation and video games and started my own production company. But then, once again as I grew more into myself and matured, I realized that this passion boiled down to telling stories in many genres and taking people on adventures into fantastical worlds using not only my acting, but my writing and producing. I added screenwriter and author to my credits and began a publishing company.
I have been so fortunate to have been able to pursue this passion for much of my life, and to carve a career for myself. It is an ever-evolving process, and I am sure to explore new things down the road that I can’t even fathom at the moment. But as I have gotten older and had more time to turn inwards and really delve into what makes me tick, I am realizing that this idea that we only have one purpose and we need to “find” it and jump on it like it is a train you might miss, is erroneous. We are magical creatures, humans, and we have many layers and many shades, which means we need different things at different times, and also, we can offer the world different things at unique times throughout our lives, which is pretty cool to think about.
So, I guess to answer your question in a roundabout way, my evolving purpose is just to lean into authentically expressing myself by being a multi-disciplinary storyteller.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Since I have a lot of passions, I wear a lot of hats, so it is hard to distill exactly what I do. When I am expressing myself as an actor, a writer and a producer, I quickly learned that I needed to have a business mind to manage my focus for all the various projects and schedules at any given time. Then my husband, Yuri Lowenthal (also an actor/writer/producer in his own right), and I decided to branch out almost twenty years ago and open both a production company, Monkey Kingdom Productions, and publishing company, Bug Bot Press, to be able to realize our various ideas. We basically turned ourselves into entrepreneurs, which melded really well with my personality and determination. I like having a lot of different pies in the oven at any given time, but I also want to be clear and driven for each so that I’m not spread too thin. I want to be able to give my acting work as much attention as running our companies and my writing work as much as our family. It is all a balance, and it fluctuates as certain areas take a backseat while others are more active. Every once in a while, everything converges and it is wildly exciting but also it can be overwhelming. The rest of the time, there is always something cooking behind the scenes. When people look for us online, we can be found individually or at our over-arching Monkey Mayhem Hub, where we have info on our productions, our various books and things we are up to. And I think that is part of what makes us special: we have been married almost 22 years, we have a kiddo, we have individually successful careers in the entertainment business for our writing and acting, and we also have two thriving creative companies in publishing and production. People think of us as a duo and our individual successes fuel our shared successes. It is thrilling to have built this all together, and to still really like each other at the same time.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Ooooh. I believe that each skill or quality we possess has an equal and opposite side, much like a coin. For me, I guess I have a relentlessness which helps me to stay focused and driven towards my goals and allows me to finish what I start – and can I say, I think finishing ANYTHING is one of the biggest strengths that anyone can have. Anyone can start something but to complete a task is where the work is. But that relentless drive and focus often limits my ability to see opportunity that might not look like what I picture, so it can hinder my ability to be open to options. For my second attribute, I would like to believe I have both natural talent and learned skills in accessing my emotions and these help me tap into my humanity to reflect the human condition in crafting characters and bringing stories to life. I believe in my skills as an actor, on screen, on stage or behind the mic, and that allows me to have confidence while I pursue my passions. At the same time, having such a facile ability to engage my emotions also means I am more emotional, and I can become overwhelmed with big feelings, which can hinder my ability to move forward when I am overcome.
The last quality that has been invaluable to me is my willingness to take action. I am not saying I never procrastinate, but I do hard things regularly. I do necessary things, even when I don’t like them and don’t want to, when I know they need to happen. This means that I have become more willing to sit in the discomfort than I used to and that it wildly helpful as an entrepreneur but also as a human. The flip-side of course, is that I sometimes push myself to take action before it is time, and a softer touch might be better, rather than forcing it to unfold. Once again everything in balance.
As for advice, that’s tricky. I love that because each person has their own unique mix of attributes that combines to make their individual recipe, no one will have the same path to what they want or have the same things to offer. But that makes advice-giving difficult, because what worked for me might not work for another, and vice versa. But I do believe that learning to sit in the discomfort, finishing things and being open emotionally are just good skills regardless of your profession and will help you in all the human-ing things in life as well.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
Actually, we happen to be in the midst of a project where for the first time in our producing career we are looking for outside collaboration in the form of financiers. Our next feature film, heart-felt musical comedy, WHATTA LARK, is the biggest budget production we will have undertaken to date. We produced the award-winning web-series of the same name where we first created and explored these characters, but we fell so in love with them that we needed to take them on a larger story and delve into deeper themes of identity, grief, and relationship by going on the journey in the feature musical. We are excited to have all original songs and a funny and touching script. We have a stellar director attached and the budget as it stands now, with all the glorious song & dance numbers, and various locations, indicates that the film will likely be in the 3-4 million range. For reference, the log-line is: when Jason, AKA fab drag star Whatta Lark, learns of his mother’s death, he must return home to the Deep South for the funeral. Jason brings his best friend, type-A new-mom Megan, along for emotional support, but they’re both in over their heads. A tale of love, loss, friendship, and sparkly boots.
Anyone interested in connecting with us about financier opportunities is welcome to reach out via Monkey Kingdom Productions. And anyone interested in learning more about me and my work, our production company Monkey Kingdom Productions, or our publishing company Bug Bot Press can find us easily online:
MonkeyMayhemHub.com
MonkeyKingdomProductions.com
BugBotPress.com
TaraPlatt.com
YuriLowenthal.com
I am currently in the middle of writing the sequel to my YA novel Prep School for Serial Killers, which was an Amazon Best-Seller for new release in its category when it came out, which was exciting. In acting, I just returned to the Marvel Spider-Man video game franchise with my character Yuri Watanabe, who explores her vigilante side, in this fastest selling PlayStation game of all time. And personally, in addition to mom’ing it up for our son, I continue to make appearances at conventions around the world, and I will be presenting at the Golden Joystick Awards in London with Yuri in November.
Contact Info:
- Website:TaraPlatt.com, MonkeyMayhemHub.com, MonkeyKingdomProductions.com, BugBotPress.com, YuriLowenthal.com
- Instagram: @taraplatt
- Twitter: @taraplatt
- Youtube: @KingdomOfTheMonkey
Image Credits
Michael Garcia (main shot in pink and black&white star sweater shot) Mikel Healey (for the shot of Yuri & I hugging)
