Meet Che Johnson

 

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Che Johnson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Che, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

I think about this a lot. When I was about 15 and just beginning my acting Journey. I announced to the living room that I was going to go learn lines in my bedroom. I went to my bedroom and about 10 minutes passed and I gave up completely. I was pretty frustrated with myself and thought I had tried really hard but nothing would sink in. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t remember anything past 3 lines of dialogue and I had about 2 and a half pages to learn. So I gave up. Went back to my computer and started watching my favourite TV show at the time “Arrow”.

About 20 minutes later my Dad came into the bedroom to check up on how the line learning was going. I told him I couldn’t be bothered to learn lines for tomorrows class and that it was too hard and that none of the lines would sink in. My Dad sat on the edge of my bed and told me that, well I can’t remember his exact word but it was something like this.

“It’s not supposed to be easy. Nothing good is easy and learning lines especially lots of them is really hard. But if you can do something that’s really hard there’s no limit to what you can do”

He then gave me examples of things in his life that had been hard and had be so worth doing.

This fired up something inside of me and my Dad left the room moments later. I spent the next 3 hours or so learning 2 and a half pages of dialogue which would probably now take me 20 minutes.

I take those words of wisdom my father gave me wherever I go and believe that those words he told me on that day are a huge factor into why I have such a strong work ethic. Especially when it comes to work I love.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

What fuels me the most is making work that can evoke an emotional response to an audience and hopefully have them leave feeling inspired and motivated. I love making people that come watch my work laugh, I get immense joy out of comedy and strongly believe the world needs more laughter.

Since graduating from an acting programme in Los Angeles in 2022 I’ve been fortunate enough to have booked quite a few jobs. My favourite being a theatre piece I did in Sydney, Australia which was for the show Extra(ordinary) Un(usual) produced by Jean Riki and the production company Silver Pillow Productions. My piece was directed by Nick Bradshaw and written by Pete Malicki. I played a guy in his thirties who was recently married and doing everything in his power to get out of having kids with his wife. The character found himself in all kinds of absurd situations and I had the best time playing him.

Shortly after that show I moved to Vancouver, Canada. It took a little while for me to get planted on my feet here but I’m glad to say after about three and a half months I shot a commercial this week and I’ve booked another 2 jobs shooting next week which I’m super excited about. And all without an agent, which I feel is important to mention.

But what I’m most proud of is the TikTok and Youtube mini series I’m writing called ‘The Worlds Greatest Trucker’. It’s a comedy about a twenty two year old trucker who finds himself in all kinds of “tricky situations” and the episodes range between five and ten minutes long. I can’t wait for people to watch it and have a good old laugh.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The three most important things I’ve learned on my journey so far would be:

1. Work hard.
I believe whatever you’re going to do, whether it’s a labouring/landscaping job or if you’re lucky enough to be working on the stage or on a film set work at it your absolute hardest. I learned this funnily enough about a year ago from a character I auditioned for. The character was an extremely hard worker and it’s not that I wasn’t before but, I believe it’s important to work hard for many reasons. The main one is that if you work hard and with maximum effort the work will be good. And good work gets other good work.

2. Take every opportunity seriously and always have a reason for doing something.
In the acting scene I’ve found a lot of things come through on the acting profiles that may not be the biggest gigs or the most exciting or even they don’t pay that great, sometimes not at all. They can be low budget short films with little or sometimes no pay or commercial where you’re not that stoked about the product your advertising. But what I’ve learned to understand over the years is that these things may (and in my case has been more likely than not). Is that they can led to something else. If you understand that while this isn’t the coolest gig. I may be able to use this on my demo reel or I may meet someone who may have other projects that they want to collaborate on. Then I’ve found benefit in those things I haven’t been initially thrilled about. That said Of course don’t do things you’re uncomfortable with or are against your morals.

3. Learn to forget about auditions.
For the sake of an actors mental health I’ve found this to be the best thing I’ve learned to do as far as my career goes. So you get an audition. And it’s due in three days. Do the absolute maximum work you can do with the time you have. Submit it. And then forget about it entirely. You may really, really want this role. You may think you’re perfect for it. But after you submit it, you thinking about it isn’t going to do anything. So forget about it and go straight into working on your next acting thing (Class scene, something your writing or a scene your working on with a friend, etc). And if you get an email or a phone call saying you got the gig, FANTASTIC!!! And if you never get that call or email, well they may have cast the wrong actor.

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?

I am one thousand percent looking for people to collaborate with, especially in the city of Vancouver. I’d love to work with people who also love making people laugh. If we could make comedy together. That would be tremendous.

They can message me on instagram: chejohnson002
Or feel free to send me a message on email: chejohnson99@gmail.com

If they would like to see some of my work my IMDB and Vimeo links are below:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm11234328/

https://vimeo.com/chejohnson

Contact Info:

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