We recently connected with Samia Mounts and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Samia, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
The last five years have been really hard on most of us. I’ve faced existential struggles within my marriage, social life, and career path, and there were times when I wanted to give up. What was the point in striving when everything I’d worked so hard to build could be destroyed by forces completely outside of my control? When the whole world can shut down because of a microscopic virus, when whole industries can be decimated, when core relationships can end in betrayal and estrangement…how does one go on in the face of all that?
It was the power of storytelling that saved me. I looked at the characters I admired in books, films, and TV shows, and the way they never stopped fighting for what they believed in, no matter what. And I realized that, even if I literally die trying, I want to be that kind of human. The kind of human who perseveres when the going gets toughest. The kind who always looks for the silver lining, who always has a back-up plan, and when that fails, who delights in improvising in the moment. I would so much rather live this life with the optimism of Ted Lasso, the passion and pluck of Bradley Jackson, the humor and vulnerability of Rebecca Bunch, and the sweetness and determination of Charlie Gordon. The striving is what makes life worth living. The struggle, the journey, the hard times – they are what make the story a good one. And I love a good story.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Like so many others in the entertainment industry, I’m a multi-hyphenate creative professional. I’ve been a working voice actor and session singer since I was a young teenager, a career that has sustained me and given me great joy and fulfillment throughout my life. I’ve also worked as a theatre and on-camera actor, a singer for live bands, a writer, and a voice producer/director. I’ve voiced commercial campaigns for Infiniti, Bud Light, and Kayak.com, as well as dozens of single spots for numerous major brands. I’ve also voiced characters in video games, animated productions, and podcasts, and I’m currently working as a performance capture actor for a major upcoming video game.
I produced and hosted a podcast in 2017 and 2018 called Make America Relate Again, where I had compassionate, respectful political conversations with Trump voters with the intention of mutual understanding, and I’m working on my second podcast now. Closet/ed is a show featuring anonymous guests who seem totally normal on the outside, but who are secretly the opposite of what we think of as “normal.” That golden couple with the perfect kids across the street? They have an open marriage. That sweet, happily married woman who is always available for a hug or a pep talk? She does sex work on the side when money is tight. That distinguished church leader with a career in politics? He and his wife are polyamorous. The truth is that there is no normal, and everyone has things they keep hidden from public view to stay safe from societal stigma. Closet/ed will start releasing episodes in late summer 2024.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Number One: Foster flexibility and flow. For me, learning how to flow with major changes that are outside of my control – how to improvise when everything is crazy, how to accept the reality of whatever is happening to me and immediately adjust my approach if needed – has been essential to navigating my life and career. The ability to bend helps you not to break.
Number Two: Always be learning. It’s been incredibly useful to consume a lot of high quality fiction and non-fiction content, in order to learn from the wisdom and experiences of others. I am constantly reading books and essays, listening to podcasts and audiobooks, and taking classes to learn from people who are further along in their journey.
Number Three: Develop your own system of values. In this world, we are force-fed a value system that our culture and society has cultivated over the course of all human history, and those values are often deeply flawed and can be incredibly toxic. We have a responsibility to question the values that are passed down to us, to find out if we actually agree with them or not. My personal value system has allowed me to look at the injustices in the world and see the potential for solutions, and it has given me a sense of personal empowerment. I believe all human experiences matter, that we are all inherently valuable, and that there is enough for everyone to thrive. These values, and the others I’ve cultivated over the course of my life, have helped keep me sane in an insane world.
As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?
I just finished reading On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good, by Elise Loehnen, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a dazzling, devastating exploration of the ways our cultural ideas of morality have been unfairly wielded against women to keep them small and subservient in a patriarchal society. I saw myself in every page, and it’s helped me to see my own path to expansion, empowerment, and fulfillment more clearly. It also made me mad as hell! But in a good way. In a way that is pushing me to take up more space, to fill the world with my ideas, and to recognize that every single life that is positively affected by my work makes all of the effort to overcome my own social programming and internal blocks worth it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.samiamounts.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samia.mounts
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/samia.mounts.actor/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samia-mounts-52039913b/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBkJT8ttJYCyIS8ig6gZ7pA
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@samia.mounts
Image Credits
Photo Credits: Cameron Radice, Evan Wiley, Jeremy Rill, Pavel Antonov.
