Meet Sabrina Lassegue

We recently connected with Sabrina Lassegue and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sabrina, 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?
At fifteen years old I was raped by 3 boys in my hometown and a victim of an attempted murder, then my childhood friend was trafficked and murdered in 2019. That taught me how to deploy empathy because only a handful of people knew what I was going through, yet how cruel people can be. It made me realize everyone is fighting battles we don’t know about and there are millions of survivors all over the world. It made me want to provide a voice to the unheard and help raise awareness on the subject through storytelling. I knew I would eventually get involved in legislation and wanted to open a non profit of pro bono lawyers, but film is my happy place. Whether I’m directing or acting, I love creating worlds where I get to see diverse powerful stories unfold that help others. I think I knew if I stayed focus on staying true to who I am and what I felt called to because of my experience, I would be able to move forward and use such a negative experience to shed light. I’ve turned my pain into purpose and I don’t think I went through all I did to not use my voice to find solutions and bring change.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I am a multi-faceted creative. I grew up in Bethesda, MD, which I represented in the Miss USA Organization as Miss Bethesda. I have always had an interest in the entertainment industry. I started as a print model and dancer. By the ages of 5 and 6, I knew I wanted to make movies and be in them, so my parents put me in acting classes and bought me cameras and software to edit. I am self taught in film, I went to college for acting, not film. In 2020 I started sharing my journey as a young black woman in film. I shared behind the scenes of my sets, information I learned from my mentors, my losses and mistakes, as well as my frustrations in the industry and pieces of my personal story and my work. In real time, people followed my journey and in 2022 I got signed two a signatory agency as a director. The Jackson Agency felt like home because Tiauna Jackson was a no BS person and a black woman who just got it. I had met with many larger agencies and it felt like everyone was talking at me. She kept it real and made me do the work. She’s been more than what I could ask for in an agent and gotten me some amazing opportunities, that I am excited to see flourish later this year and once the strike is over. She’s a girls girl and she understands the kinds of stories I want to tell and why.

I spent the past couple of years doing work for survivors of sexual assault and trafficking with organizations like Thorn, RAINN and Rise Now. Last year I began the process of introducing my own bill, without an organization. This Act would allow survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and trafficking to testify via closed circuits in court rooms, to limit ptsd and offer them safety. I was so lucky, because I reached out to Senator Susan Lee’s office in MD, who is now the Secretary of State and I met Michael Lore who worked with her. He was so helpful and both jumped to help make my idea a reality. I testified before members of congress and I was so nervous no one would take me seriously because I was only 21 at the time. While all that was going on, I had been indicted into the Rise Justice Lab, which was a teary eyed day for me. Amanda Nguyen is a survivor I’ve always looked up to with the work she’s done with the survivor bill of rights. I learned so much in the justice lab from Amanda herself and Flannery Houston. Then earlier this year, after providing testimony to congress, we passed SB615 into a law. It protects rape kits from being destroyed and creates a solid way to track them, which was near to my heart because I was someone who’s rape kit was destroyed.

I’m still in the process of getting my other bill off the ground, which I plan to introduce to next year’s congressional session. I am now a part of the RAINN Speakers Bureau and that was a dream come true. I shared my personal story on Tik Tok and was surprised to see how well received it was. All that has been happening while I’ve been in pre production to direct my first feature film, which is a beautiful film written by Jared Becker. I was ecstatic to be chosen to direct and it’s been such a tedious process. I’ve been running my production company Yellow Rain Productions, which has been growing over the past year because of socials and people seeing our work. We launched additional branches, including People You Know(PYK), which throws networking parties and screens the work and reels oof directors and actors in LA. We bring people together to help them get work and the proceeds go to the underrepresented film fund at my company, so we can help support underrepresented filmmakers who have films they want to make. I’m premiering my short film in a movie theatre at the Gardena Cinema on July 15th, which I am ecstatic about. I’m also doing a lot more acting and print work, which has been incredible, because acting has always been my first love.

I’m still making short films on subject matters I care about through all of this, because I love filmmaking.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
I’m lucky to be stubborn. It’s a blessing more than a curse, because it forces me to commit to what I set out to do and pursue all means until I get something done. I am not afraid to be seen trying. I’ve documented my journey in real time and went from making a crappy film in my bathtub to being approached by Atlantic records, to sitting at the DGA, to being attached to direct a major feature. A lot of that was through me cold calling and emailing or putting myself out there. I strongly agree with the saying, “Closed mouths don’t get fed”. I think so many people are afraid to ask to take meetings with professionals and pick their brains, but the worst they can say is no. In the pandemic I hit up almost everyone at Warner, at the time I lived by there. I would ask them to jump on a zoom or do lunch down the street at Lemonade. I was losing money buying all these people lunch, just for 30 minutes of their time, but the knowledge I gained is what led me to being able to be a full-time director.

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?
Lately I find I have so many titles, it’s hard for people to know where I fit and my worlds overlapping online can be difficult to navigate when they contradict each other in the eyes of the public. Being a pageant girl and print swim model and actor are all seen as negative when presenting myself to congress or as a survivor and advocate. Being a survivor is such a taboo subject in those worlds and as a filmmaker. Then being on Tik Tok, some people want to categorize me as an influencer, but I just utilize the app to share what I am already doing as a filmmaker and change maker. There are so many different niche’s I fall into, but they are not who I am, but rather what I do. I have other loves, like boxing, painting(even though I’m terrible at it, poetry/spoken word, surfing, and dance. There are so many layers to me and I never want to be boxed into anything. People think they know everything about me because of what they see online, but I am not the girl in the post. I am scared and flawed and still learning, I am a daughter and a sister, I am someone who values my friends and I am still learning about myself.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
– Kathlyn Almeida -Tallulah Bowman -Kane Borchert -Alamy -Belle Doyle

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