Sarah Ramos
⤏ IN CONVERSATION WITH TAVI GEVINSON
⤏ PHOTOS BY SOPHIE HART | HAIR BY EDDIE COOK | MAKE-UP BY AUÐUR JÓNSDÓTTIR | SET DESIGN + GRAPHIC DESIGN BY SOPHIE HART | TEXT BY SARAH RAMOS
⤏ ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2019
Little delights me more than seeing Sarah Ramos’ name light up my phone. We met when I played her girlfriend on an episode of Parenthood, and became friends when I saw that talking to her everyday made life far more manageable. Sarah has an antenna for the absurd; a sixth sense for the humanity and pain lurking behind the performances of normalcy that make up so much of our workplace of choice — the entertainment industry. These instincts — along with her writing, acting, and directing talents — have guided her to create projects about Hollywood and fame that I feel are essential to this bizarre cultural moment, and, I’m sure, to the many that await.
There was the web series City Girl, based on a rom-com script Sarah wrote when she was 12, and her short films The Arm and Fluffy. There was the irreverent celebrity news podcast This Week Had Me Like, and now there is the video project A Different Direction, in which she edits her audition tapes into movies that didn’t cast her. I was excited to interview Sarah about all of the above, but we talked about rejection and disappointment, too, because being friends with her has taught me that those things are more interesting than I previously thought.
While her subject matter is often cynical, her point-of-view is not; her work is ultimately, I think, about enthusiasm.
TAVI: How was it last night? Can you describe the project and what it was like to share it with people?
SARAH: I’ve been working on a video series for the last year and a half where I edit my actual auditions into the movies and TV shows that I did not get cast in. Last night I got to be part of an LA-themed group art show curated by Soft Core LA. That was my first art show ever. My whole life I’ve been an actress, but this was my first time stepping into the art world.
T: How was it sharing it with people? Did anyone have a reaction that you hadn’t considered before?
S: It was exciting to see people watching the videos at all and trying to figure out what was going on. A lot of people would stay and watch instead of immediately throwing the headphones down. An interesting take was — it’s going to sound like I’m bragging . . .
T: Go on.
S: The piece actually became bigger than the project that I’d auditioned for. The whole video series is called A Different Direction, taken from the euphemism that casting directors and agents use to tell you you’re not getting a job. They say, “They loved you, but they’re going in a different direction.”
T: It’s a term of endearment, really.
“[B]ecause of the pressure to advertise the big wins — to only share your experience once the system has validated you — it feels like the conversation about what’s really happening is taboo.”
S: Yes. A nonsense, nothing term that leaves you wondering “Did they even watch my audition?” But making this video series has helped me look at the audition process in a different direction myself.
I showed three of these videos last night, but I’ve made fifteen of them. By editing all of these auditions into the stuff I wasn’t cast in, I’ve spent more time watching my auditions than I ever had in my life. One of the things I’ve learned is that a lot of these projects — which at the time felt like the be all end all of my career — are not that great. Like the Steve Jobs movie. I don’t know anybody who still talks about that movie.
T: Well, as someone who also did not get that job, I think I’ve become more aware of when I’m drawn to a job because of those auspices versus actually loving something. It’s hard to separate the two because prestige isn’t totally meaningless, but I try to notice if I perk up just because of the assumption that some project will really kill.
S: It’s confusing, the difference between merit and power. Prestige is a fancy way of saying wealthy, powerful, famous. It’s not entirely about quality because something can be high quality and never be considered prestigious. There’s that quote, “Prestige is the enemy of passion,” which is I think what you’re talking about. Going on auditions for stuff that you’re like, “Oh, well so and so’s directing, I’ve gotta be in it.” Like, “I’ve gotta play this rape victim who gets tossed into a river,” which is an actual audition I’ve been sent.
I hope this project is starting a conversation about auditioning. Like, I have 15 of these audition videos, right? For every one of me, there’s however many other women who went through the same experience. Most of us are auditioning all the time, but because of the pressure to advertise the big wins — to only share your experience once the system has validated you — it feels like the conversation about what’s really happening is taboo. When I didn’t get a job, I felt like I failed, it was a waste of time, I suck. This project showed me that this is the process of being an actor. We only hear about it from people who have already graduated out of the auditioning process because they’re the ones being interviewed, but I don’t want to wait for that.
T: And by “graduating out” you mean they get to a level where they’re just offered parts?
S: Yeah. By that point it’s because you have that level of prestige, it’s about money and power. A lot of these people are really talented, but it is not just about merit. It’s more complicated than a pure meritocracy.
T: Auditioning, and specifically not getting work, is a really big part of being a working actor, of what makes up your actual time.
S: I grew up obsessed with pop culture and Hollywood. Being in a movie and talking in a magazine about being in that movie felt like the epitome of success and glamour to me. And the longer I’ve been in the industry, the more that doesn’t feel true. The more that feels like work in and of itself. There’s a huge element of luck involved. There’s a lot of chaos in this system.
T: Chaos as well as actual prejudice and really fucked up ideas around who’s allowed to tell a story and who embodies a likable character and who can sell tickets and get people to see something. All of that is somewhat obscured by the myth of meritocracy.
S: It makes me feel like if I’m not winning an award, being on the cover of Vogue, or whatever horrible machinations they have for determining people’s influence now, then I guess my life has no meaning, and what I’m doing has no value. I can get so obsessed with the external validation and the label and the fancy packaging. It’s important for me to remember that whatever I’m doing has to have value beyond that, it has to have value even if no one sees it.
T: I think everyone has a coming of age thing, like either “I’ve been obsessed with grades my whole life and now I’m learning that grades aren’t worth killing myself over” or “I don’t believe in my family’s religion anymore.” Everyone has those moments and I wonder if you can identify any moments when you started to feel that way about the value system we’re talking about.
S: To give some context, when I was ten-years-old, I went on a Mary-Kate and Ashley cruise that the Olsen twins were on. There were paid photo opportunities, and we would go to the beach with them and have dance nights with them. Like 150 young girls doing this. And I was fucking mesmerized. After that I started acting. Once I started acting, I got invited to the Blue Crush premiere, and it was the best night of my life. Somebody told me I could hire a publicist if I wanted to go to more premieres, so my mom did that, and I went to a bunch. At these premieres, my entire goal was just to take pictures with celebrities. So I have ones with like Colin Farrell, Hilary Duff, Aaron Carter, Raven Simone, a true range of people. These pictures were status symbols to me.
T: And when did it shift?
S: I think as a coping mechanism I turned to celebrities as people to look up to. I needed to feel like they were better than me. I still have to remind myself that. Because, again, I can look at a magazine and see somebody wearing a $10,000 dress splashed across the front page with the headline like, “She’s got it!” and I’m like, “Wow, I guess she’s got it.” But it’s become more complex to me to think about all these parties that I’ve been to where all the actors who took photos on the red carpet had to wait in line to take those photos, one behind the other. It’s contradictory and false and before that, you spent like two hours in hair and makeup, and there’s so much effort behind it that it’s just gotten boring to me to pretend it isn’t happening. Boring and a little grotesque.
T: Definitely. I think anything that pulls back the curtain a little bit is perceived as ungrateful, so it can be tricky territory. If you can make a living being an actor that is a nice, really privileged position.
S: It goes back to what you were saying before that: acting is a great job. Being on TV is a far easier job than so many jobs. But it is a job. It is work. And all of the PR, and the posturing about how amazing it is, makes it seem like it’s not a job, like it’s this secret key to letting go of the dark side of your humanity. Always being metaphorically camera ready and perfect.
T: Yes, and I don’t think it’s necessarily generous to pretend it’s not a job. Doing Rookie, I got to interview a lot of people I idolized. Looking back, I really don’t think I was like, “Please don’t shatter the illusion of Hollywood.” I think I really appreciated it when people were transparent about it.
“I can look at a magazine and see somebody wearing a $10,000 dress splashed across the front page with the headline like, ‘She’s got it!’ and I’m like, ‘Wow, I guess she’s got it.’”
S: Most of my projects are meant to harness the joy that made me do this in the first place. In thinking about the darker side of the reality of making entertainment, I’ve since gone back and rewatched the movies that I grew up watching, like Charlie’s Angels and Legally Blonde.When I was a kid, they were an incredible escape that I truly loved. I think there’s beauty in that. This art is a response to the fact that a lot of an industry that’s set up to harness joy and focus on the emotional vulnerability of human experience is so clinical, harsh, and uncaring. These projects are a way to get back to the original reason of why I started doing this. To the part of us before we had any sense of prestige, when we were just like, “I like that, I want that, I’m doing it.”
T: It’s a really interesting time to be examining all of that and the era you grew up in especially. It feels like we’re in the middle of a reckoning. It’s not just realizing how much exploitation and corruption has gone into a lot of the things that we love, but being like, well, how do I reconcile that with the fact that this is also what made me?
S: I will say the conversation around #MeToo was the first time that I thought, “Wow, people care about the less powerful person’s experience.” A Different Direction is not about horrific abuse, it’s not a takedown of the industry, but it is about the experience of what it’s like to do work in this industry as an actor, and in a way that I feel has been really shamed and silenced by — implicitly, not explicitly — what we give our attention to.
T: Yes.
S: As in, PR has a very specific focus and picture of success. As you told me, you are what you eat, so I think I have to stop reading so much celebrity news.
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⤏ TAVI GEVINSON (SHE/HER) IS AN AMERICAN WRITER, MAGAZINE EDITOR, AND ACTRESS. SHE CAME TO PUBLIC ATTENTION AT THE AGE OF 12 DUE TO HER FASHION BLOG STYLE ROOKIE. BY THE AGE OF 15, SHE HAD SHIFTED HER FOCUS TO POP CULTURE AND FEMINIST DISCUSSION AS FOUNDER OF ROOKIE MAGAZINE.