Robia Scott – Leap of Faith
Written By: Michael D. McClellan |
Robia Scott was the quintessential ‘80s girl, from the shoulder pads and leg warmers to the big hair and a love of all things MTV. She bought a ticket to see Flashdance and emerged from the theater transformed, the next steps in her adolescence forged by the movie whose lead protagonist is a steel mill worker by day and exotic dancer by night. Yes, every prodigy needs her very own Ginger Rogers or Josephine Baker – i.e., a mentor and model – and Jennifer Beals was exactly that, inspiring Scott to dance her way into scores of music videos, land on the cover of Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls LP, and take the stage with The Purple One during his European tour promoting the album. The twenty-two year-old beauty walked away from dancing following that tour, embarking on an acting career that would include Beverly Hills, 90210 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, before coming full circle in 2019 with the release of Unplanned, a true story about a Planned Parenthood director turned avid Pro-Life activist. Stepping in front of the camera for the first time since 2005, Scott plays the role of Cheryl, the clinic’s executive and the film’s chief antagonist.
“Cheryl is a Cruella de Vil type of character,” Scott says with a laugh. “She’s definitely a character the audience loves to hate. I was a little nervous about the role, but after reading the script and getting to know more about Abby Johnson, I found myself becoming a lot more comfortable with the idea of acting again.”
Scott – born Robia LaMorte – spent her early childhood with a nomadic, free-spirited mother who never stayed anywhere long enough to lay down roots. After bouncing from Queens to Ocean City to the Florida Keys, a stability-starved LaMorte moved in with her Connecticut-based father. She was hooked on dance by then, twelve years old and full of big dreams. It didn’t hurt that she was built like a dancer and possessed a magnetic, effervescent personality – qualities that would later turn Prince’s head and endear her to the camera – or that she was brimming with ambition. Her father’s eventual move to Los Angeles led Robia to the famed Dupree Dance Academy, attended through the years by the likes of Cher, Drew Barrymore, Kirk Douglas, and Burt Lancaster. That experience, coupled with her proximity to Hollywood and the explosion of MTV, put LaMorte at the epicenter of the music video universe, the right person in the right place at the right time. Dancing alongside Debbie Gibson in her Shake Your Love video, LaMorte used the performance as a springboard to dozens of other music videos.
“I hired an agent and stayed busy,” reflects Scott. “I danced for big names and obscure artists, it didn’t matter. I was young and having fun.”
While the work was steady, none of the videos were ripe to produce dancing’s next “It Girl.” All of that changed when her agent called with an audition she couldn’t refuse: The opportunity to dance with Prince.
“I was nineteen at the time,” she says. “Prince was a superstar. Maybe it was because I was so young, but I wasn’t intimidated by him or overwhelmed by the moment. I just went about it like any other audition. Looking back now, it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
Cast as the character Pearl alongside her “twin” Diamond, LaMorte appeared in the videos for Cream and Gett Off, hit songs from Prince’s thirteenth studio album, Diamonds and Pearls. Released in 1991, Diamonds and Pearls remains one of Prince’s most enigmatic works: Anti-materialist yet strangely attracted to bling, decadent but with striking moments of purity, flirting with multiple sexualities while insisting that a ″woman be a woman and a man be a man.”
“I wasn’t supposed to be Prince’s muse,” Scott says. “He always liked to find a female muse for every season of his work, and for the album Diamonds and Pearls the word was that he was looking for a set of identical twins. I’m not a twin, so that didn’t seem on the cards for me. I went to audition as a back-up dancer for the Cream video. It just so happened that another dancer who auditioned, Lori Werner, looked a bit like me. When Prince saw us together he decided that we could work as the twins. That one-week job became the next two years of my life.”
Recorded at a time when a pop star′s sexual netherworld could seem wildly glamorous – we wanted glimpses of the carnivalesque life behind the curtains – the idea of a sexual empire carried a lot of currency. The video for Gett Off is set in this type of dream-world, a realm of writhing bodies and sizzling guitar riffs. Gett Off juggles a number of moods: Leering innuendo, refined courtship, dream-like repetitions. Introducing the twins to the comforts of his home, he then taunts one of them for the tightness of her dress (“I heard the rip when U sat down”), triggering the same shriek which opens the track. Robia, for her part, was right at home inside Prince’s lustrous imagination.
“Prince was Prince,” she says. “He’s known for this provocatively sexual persona, but he was nothing but a professional and a gentleman. He made everyone feel comfortable, which helped bring out the best in all of the dancers. And the set was amazing!”
The song Cream is an immense work of restraint – breathtakingly clean and concise, introducing each element with cut-out precision, as if to say: “Here’s your basic beat, here′s the classic riff, here’s where you boogie down.” There is lush imagery, but it is lyrically sparse (″Cream / Get on top / Cream / You will cop″). The supremely stylistic video provided the perfect counterpoint to the song’s streamlined workout.
“Everything about that video was big,” Scott says. “He had hair stylists and makeup artists flown in from New York, and some of the most creative people working to put it together.”
Prince would soon launch a European stadium tour to promote the album, with LaMorte and Werner dancing onstage with him nightly. When the tour was over, so was LaMorte’s dancing career.
“I was still very young, but I’d accomplished everything I wanted as a dancer. After dancing in front of 60,000 fans with Prince, it’s hard to imagine doing anything else. I decided it was time to walk away and try something else.”
Robia’s next career move was into acting. She got her start in commercials, snagged the role of Jason Priestley’s girlfriend Jill Fleming on Beverly Hills, 90210 in two episodes, and played the female lead in the live action video game Fox Hunt. From there she landed her first regular role, playing high school teacher and techno-pagan Jenny Calendar on the first two seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
“The writers of Buffy took their job very seriously,” Scott says. “When they were doing the witchcraft scenes, they didn’t just make things up. They did their research. They would recreate actual spells, and you could feel the environment shift.”
At a point in her life when she was already wrestling with the concept of God, Robia found herself conflicted and searching for a sign.
Scott laughs at the memory. “When you’re driving down the highway and praying for a sign, and your car is suddenly surrounded by a Jesus biker gang, I’d say that’s a pretty clear indication of His hand at work.”
Robia continued to act after her character in Buffy was killed off, but by then a transformation was underway. Obsessed with weight and body image issues, and by now a chronic chain smoker, she decided to put her faith in Christianity.
“God spoke to me and wanted me to start a ministry,” Scott says. “I continued to act over the next few years, but the more I went on auditions, the more I found myself saying ‘no’ because so much of the content didn’t align with my faith. By 2001 I had given up the theatrical side entirely. I stayed in the commercial side for a while longer, because I had always done really well with commercials. They were a bit more wholesome and clean, and I kept doing that because that was also a good way for me to keep earning a living while staying in the industry. But honestly, even that got to be where it felt like a little bit of a compromise.”
Her faith-based ministry – focused to help others experience the freedom, fun, and fullness of life that God created everyone to enjoy – has touched thousands in the years since. Through her book, Counterfeit Comforts, Robia shares her journey of overcoming her own counterfeits, including the chain smoking and body image issues that plagued her as a dancer and actor. She provides online mentoring, is a sought-after speaker, and is once again in front of the camera with the release of Unplanned.
“I love what I’m doing,” Scott says, smiling. “Now that I am a Christian, people often ask me if I have any regrets from my former life. I loved what I was doing back then – I was able to work with a genius in Prince, and I got to dance in front of thousands of people, which was my dream growing up. I walked away from a thriving career in Hollywood and into full-time ministry where I get to share my faith with others. It doesn’t matter which part of my life I look back on. God has been right there with me the whole time.”
Take me back to the beginning. What are some of your childhood memories from the 1970s?
My parents divorced when I was two and then I lived with my mom, who was a bit of a gypsy. She loved to move a lot, so I had many different homes when I was younger. I was born in Queens, but I also lived in Colorado, Maryland, and the Florida Keys, which is what I remember the most about my upbringing. The Keys was an interesting place to grow up. It’s not as built up as the rest of the country. You have your cutoffs on and a pair of flip-flops, and you wear that the school. Then, after school you go fishing. It was a very different upbringing. I loved it very much, but I eventually wanted to have a bit more of a stable lifestyle. So, at the age of twelve I went to live with my dad in Westport, Connecticut.
Was moving from the Florida Keys to New England a huge culture shock?
It was very different in terms of the schooling and the environment, so it was a bit of an adjustment. It’s also where I started dancing seriously. I had a girlfriend who was taking dance classes after school, and I ended up taking a class with her. She became my best friend. We went to see the movie Flashdance, and from that point on I was hooked. I would dance as many days a week as I possibly could, until we moved to Los Angeles, and then I really started pursuing it.
to emulate everything about Jennifer Beals, including the perm.
You attended the prestigious Dupree Dance Academy in Hollywood.
I got a scholarship to attend Dupree so I went to school there, and then after school I would dance until about 10 o’clock at night. At age sixteen I got an agent and started working professionally.
Did you ever suffer from burnout?
At that age dancing never felt like an arduous commitment. I loved it. Dupree was where I wanted to be. Dancing never felt like it might for an Olympic athlete, where you have to say “no” to so much because you are completely focused on your sport. I didn’t feel as though I was sacrificing the teen years of my life. Don’t get me wrong, you do have to make a commitment to dance professionally, but I wanted to dance all day. That’s what I did.
What was your favorite style of dance?
My favorite style was contemporary jazz, similar to what you might see on the show So You Think You Can Dance. But at Dupree, you were required to do everything. You had to do ballet to get a good foundation. I knew I wasn’t going to be a ballerina – I didn’t desire to be a ballerina – but I took a lot of ballet because that’s your core as a dancer. You need to have that technique. I did a lot of ballet, I did a lot of tap, and did a little bit of ballroom, but my heart was in jazz.
You were sixteen when you landed a spot in the Debbie Gibson video Shake Your Love. What was that experience like for you?
Well, it was really cool to actually get my first job after all of that training! It was also fun to be on my first set. Paula Abdul was the choreographer – she was a Laker Girl at the time, where she also did all of their choreography. I remember Debbie Gibson complaining afterwards because I had so much screen time in the video. They actually went back and they edited me out a little bit [laughs]. From there, my dance career just took off. MTV was on the rise at this time, and every artist – people you’ve never heard of – did a music video. That was my bread-and-butter at that time. I did video-after-video-after-video until Prince. It was a blast.
Who were some of the other artists you worked with?
I was in a video for the band Guy. I did a videos with acts like Donny Osmond, Joe Cocker, and Yanni. I remember doing a video with a guy named Tommy Page, who sadly committed suicide a few years ago. I also performed in videos for a lot of bands that didn’t really go too far.
Were you still going to school at this time?
No, by this point I had actually gotten my GED and I was working as a full-time professional dancer. In addition to the music videos, and I toured with the Pet Shop Boys in Europe. That was incredible. I think I was 18 at the time. I did all sorts of sports industrials for companies like Reebok, and they would fly you all over the world. I remember flying to Reebok’s headquarters in Germany a couple of times a years to do these big dance shows for them.
Tell me about getting the call to audition for Prince.
I was about 19 years old when I auditioned for Prince. With the first call it wasn’t a huge deal – to me it was just another music video, even though Prince is Prince. I wasn’t sure what the job would entail. I figured I would just be one of many dancers in a big group of dancers, and that was pretty much how the audition went. Then I got a call back. They explained that Prince was looking for twins, and that he couldn’t find identical twins who looked the part and who could dance the way he wanted. They said Prince really liked my dancing, that there was another girl who looked a lot like me, and that they wanted to bring us in to audition for the twin part. The two of us dressed alike that day, and he ended up hiring us. Lori Werner was cast as Diamond, and I was cast as Pearl.
Most twins have great chemistry, finishing each other’s sentences and things like that. What was your chemistry like with Diamond?
The dance world is pretty small, so it turned out that Lori Werner and I knew each other. She went by the stage name Lori Elle at the time. We had great chemistry. We got together on the phone, and the more we talked the less convinced we became about doing the twins part. In our minds, the twins probably weren’t going to get as much coverage as the dancers. We imagined that there would be this big dance number, and that the camera would pan over to a couple of twins sitting at a table drinking a coffee or something. So we went to the audition and tried to sabotage it – we didn’t dress alike even though they had asked us to, but we got the twin part anyway [laughs].
What was it like to meet Prince for the first time?
I remember going to the dance studio to rehearse. It was just me, Lori, and the choreographer. Prince had not named us Diamond and Pearl at that point, we were just two dancers rehearsing and trying to learn our roles. I remember warming up on the floor, and looking in the mirror and seeing Prince, who was at the back of the room, standing in the doorway. That was the moment that it hit me – Prince was actually in the studio! He just stood there in a designer outfit, taking it all in and looking like a rock star, larger-than-life. When he finally walked into the room you could feel his presence.
Were you nervous?
We said our hellos and I tried to appear calm, but I was still a little bit nervous. I had watched the movie Purple Rain like everyone else, so I was secretly like, “Oh my gosh, it’s Prince!” But before you know it, we were all dancing together and doing all of these routines, and it was apparent that the three of us had a good chemistry with each other.
It was during that rehearsal that Prince had an epiphany. He said that we were more than just a couple of dancers that he wanted in the video, that he was going to name us Diamond and Pearl, and that we would become the muses for the album. It was from there that Prince laid the foundation for the videos, as well as for the idea of the album cover and the world tour. Altogether, we spent about two years with Prince.
Tell me about rehearsing for the videos Cream and Gett Off.
Oh my gosh, that was so long ago! Cream required a lot of rehearsal because it was such a huge production. We had a large group of dancers involved, and then we had our little section, so Cream was not your normal, run-of-the-mill music video. I think it required a couple of weeks of rehearsal time, and then two or three days of shooting.
When it came to Gett off, we didn’t even have rehearsals. Prince would just decide to shoot. He was very impromptu in that regard. Our agents were usually the ones to call us, but sometimes Prince would call us himself and get us on the phone. We became friends over time, so we would talk quite a bit. He would say, “Hey I’m going to do a video, can you guys come to Paisley Park?” Of course we would say yes, and then we would hang up and frantically pack. Two hours later we would be on a plane headed to Minneapolis. That’s what happened with Gett Off. We got there and saw the set – it was incredible – and met Sean Cheeseman, who was the choreographer. He would put some things together for us, and we would step onto the set and just do it. To this day Sean is an amazing talent, and he has had an amazing career. It was very special to work with him.
Did you have any input into the choreography?
Prince liked to free flow, that’s really how he worked creatively, so we were always able to throw some things in. We could pitch ideas, work with the choreographer, or sometimes we would just do our own thing. That’s the way it was with the house mix version of Gett Off. That video was completely impromptu. We didn’t have a choreographer, we didn’t have anything planned or scripted. We were just playing around in front of the camera, and out of this came the video. That’s how Prince worked. He would get inspired and make it happen.
Were any of the videos more demanding than the others?
I don’t remember feeling like any of them more demanding. They were just a blast, because we were working with incredible people and the sets were phenomenal. Prince is Prince, so the music was genius and he spared no expense. We had the best hair and makeup people the business, and the costumes were amazing, so needless to say we looked incredible.
When you’re shooting a video like Cream, you’re working twelve-to-sixteen hour days, so it can be exhausting – but it’s also so exciting. I don’t remember feeling like, “Oh my gosh, this is too much.” It wasn’t like that at all. I loved every minute of it. We were flying all around the world with him, and flying to Paisley Park at the drop of a hat. Being twenty I had the stamina for all of that, so it really was the perfect time in my life to experience Prince.
You appeared on the cover of Diamonds and Pearls. Please tell me what that means to you now.
It’s incredible to be a part of history, and to be associated with such a legendary performer. I was so young at the time that I don’t think I truly appreciated it as much as I should have. Looking back now, I’ve come to understand how vast his talents really were, and how lucky I was to have been a small part of it. Being on the album cover is still a thrill.
What was it like to tour with Prince?
It was fantastic. I’d had some experience touring Europe with the Pet Shop Boys when I was seventeen, so I knew what it was like to be overseas and far from home for an extended period of time. The Pet Shop Boys were awesome, but Prince was on another level. He was beyond rock star…he was a rock god! I remember being on stage, and the lights would come up and you would look out, and there were people as far as you can see. And for me, dancing in front of 60,000 people was extraordinary. It was as good as it gets, and a lot of fun!
Did it ever become a chore?
Never. The ironic thing is that, here I was, performing in sold-out stadiums every night, and yet I’d never gone to a concert in my life. My first concert experience was being on stage with Prince. And then later when I actually went to a concert, I remember thinking to myself, “This doesn’t even compare. This isn’t a concert. They’re just standing there on the stage and singing [laughs].” So yes, I was a bit spoiled to be thrown in at that level with him. To perform with Prince and to travel with him to places like Australia, Scotland, Ireland, and Hong Kong…to travel with him and experience all of these cultures…to be able to bring his music to life, and to see how much the fans loved him…it doesn’t get much better than that. So it was never a chore. Prince is in a small, select group in terms of musicians. He is one of the all-time greats. He was incredible every single show. He was just an extraordinary performer and musician. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
After touring with Prince you walked away from dance and appeared in a slew of commercials. How did you score those gigs?
It was very similar to my start in dance. I hired a commercial agent who knocked on doors and made phone calls, and because of that I was able to audition on a regular basis. I landed commercial spots with companies like Mitsubishi, The GAP, GE, and Oil of Olay. It was steady work.
You eventually made the leap to TV, landing on the popular and critically-acclaimed series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. How so?
Interestingly enough, it was similar to my experience with Prince, which was supposed to be one music video but turned into almost two years with him and included multiple videos, doing the album cover, and touring the world. With Buffy, it was supposed to be just one guest starring role in one episode, but it turned into a recurring role on a great show.
Tell me about auditioning for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
I remember going in to audition, and then being called back to meet with the producers, which also included Joss Whedon. Joss created Buffy and has gone on to do great things like The Avengers, but at the time I was not familiar with who he was. My scene that day was with the fictional character Rupert Giles, but, for whatever reason, I didn’t put it together that Giles was a schoolteacher. I played Jenny Calendar, the computer teacher at Sunnydale High School. I thought Rupert was actually one of my students. Based on that, I had this whole take on how I was going to read the scene, and I decided to use an authoritative, almost derogatory type of tone with him, as if I were talking down to my student a bit.
When I walked in the room there was Anthony Stewart Head, who is this seasoned actor, and he was reading the part of Rupert Giles. We started the scene, but I still didn’t know why Anthony was there, who he was, or why he was reading the character with me. So I went ahead and read it in a very snarky way, and I talked down to him a little bit. The producers love it [laughs]. They thought that our banter really helped the chemistry, and that was actually why they decided to hire me for the part.
When did you realize that Buffy was going to be a big hit?
I remember reading the script and thinking that it was really good. The show hadn’t been on the air yet, but after I saw how well-cast it was I knew that they had something special. I did my one episode and they called me back, and they just kept calling me back. That’s how I ended up doing a couple of seasons of Buffy.
As I understand it, you became a Christian three months into the show.
I had always believed in God, and I had always been a seeker of spiritual things. I was into the New Age movement at the time, which was prevalent in Southern California, and there were some areas in my life where I was really struggling. I was a chain smoker, for example, and I really felt a bondage to cigarettes. I was also dealing with food issues, and body image issues…being a woman, I think these issues are a universal issue for women, but being a dancer and an actress just escalated them. You might not have known it by looking at me, because I have always been in shape, but I felt the constant pressure of having to be thin. It tormented me emotionally. So, all of these things were driving me for answers. I desperately wanted to find out how to break free from those things and be at peace.
What happened next?
I started seeking God. There were some people who talked to me about being born again, and about Jesus being the only way to God. I just wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Then one day I said, “God, you know I believe in you. I don’t really get the whole born again thing, and I don’t get Jesus being the only way, but if that is really the case please show me something. Give me a sign, speak to me, anything.”
What happened next is one of the stories that is so prevalent in my testimony. I am driving in my car one afternoon and I’m again praying for a sign. As I’m driving, I am suddenly encompassed by a biker gang of Hells Angels. I just remember thinking, “How ironic, here I am praying, and I’ve got Hells Angels all around my car.” There were probably ten bikes in total. I’ve got them in front of me, I’ve got them on either side, I’ve got them behind me. I look a little more closely, and I notice that the two bikers in front of me are wearing leather jackets, and on the backs of their jackets are big crosses, and over the crosses were the words “We ride for Jesus.” They weren’t Hells Angels – they were some sort of Jesus biker gang. I started cracking up and laughing harder by the minute. I’m asking for a sign from God, and I have Jesus bikers surrounding my car!
That was one of the things that God did, in a series of events, that led me to a church where I learned more about what it meant to be a Christian. Very soon after that, I came into my walk with Christ. So as I moved forward with my career in Buffy, I started to feel very conflicted. Buffy was a fantastic show. It was well-written and super intelligent, but I definitely started to feel the pull of all of the occult and the witchcraft. That was really the antithesis of where I was going in terms of my spiritual walk. Eventually my character on the show was killed off, which I saw as another sign from God.
You walked away from acting altogether in the early 2000s and went full time into your ministry.
Pretty early on in my walk with God I felt an affinity for the things of God. When I prayed, I felt a power and an authority inside of me. When I read the Bible, I felt a connection very quickly. It didn’t take long until I sensed that my time in Hollywood – as well as my 20-year career in the entertainment industry – was winding down. I felt that God wanted me to use those same gifts – expression and communication – for His kingdom through teaching. So I walked away and jumped into a full-time ministry when I did not have a ministry anywhere in sight.
You took a leap of faith.
Yes, which fits with my personality because I am sort of an all-or-nothing kind of gal. It takes time to develop a ministry, to build something like that from the ground up. But it was a season of transition, a faith walk, and I really learned to depend on God to provide for me. He did some supernatural things during that time, things that were just extraordinary.
Give me an example.
Walking away from your career with no income is hard. It got to the point where I really had no money and no job. I spent a lot of time praying and seeking God. I put all of my faith in Him and kept pushing forward, even though my financial situation had become dire. Then one day I got a phone call from my agent. He said that they were going to bring back a commercial that I had done ten years prior, which is unheard of. They never do that. They basically brought it out of the trash and put it back on the air, and they wound up sending me a big check. So, God did all sorts of things to sustain me during that time. And then, little-by-little, doors started opening. Now I have platforms for me to share my testimony. I do a lot of traveling and speaking. And I’ve written a book, Counterfeit Comforts, so I speak a lot on that topic while I’m on the road.
One of the counterfeit comforts that you talk about is busyness, whether that is in your home life or professional life.
There is a fine line, because I do believe that God is into excellence. So throwing yourself into your work is a wonderful thing, especially if you are striving to be excellent and your whole heart is involved. But I do think that, just like the Scripture talks about in the parable of the sower, the cares of the world are things that all of us have to deal with, because we’re all busy with things like making dinner, going to the grocery store, cleaning the house, going to work, and taking care of the kids. And in today’s world, you have the additional distractions that come with social media. We need hours every day just to scroll through our social media [laughs]. Seriously, I think it’s so easy to get caught up with life. All of these things can be distractions, so I think that it’s important to be aware, and to not let the cares of the world dictate and take all of our time. In that regard, busyness can for sure be a counterfeit.
In today’s world, social media and smartphones have become a huge distraction.
Social media can be a real, attention-stealing trap. The danger is that when you become consumed with social media, then you’re not really dealing with where you are internally. It’s so easy these days to become consumed with the superficial, and to be externally focused, especially with social media. You have to walk that line very carefully. Without realizing it, you can find yourself looking outward so much that you are rarely looking inward to find out where you really are in your walk with God.
Do you see a parallel between drugs and social media, in that both can become an addiction?
Very much so. So many people today are unable to be still and quiet. I was reading an article recently, and it was talking about how we just don’t allow ourselves to be bored anymore. We don’t know how to sit in a room and just wait for 10 minutes. We have to be looking at our phones. What a detriment that is for our creativity, and our mind, when we can’t be present with ourselves and actually have any kind of a reflective moment because of social media. We have that phone, and we have easy access to any and everything, which makes it so hard to put down. In many respects, it’s the ultimate counterfeit comfort.
In your ministry, you often speak about the concept of positioning.
Positioning is achieved through a combination of things. It comes through revelation and teaching, and also through prayer, and by shifting spiritual things for a person to get them into a place with God where they are not just learning about God, but they are also interacting with Him. I think that we get into this realm where we study God as if He were a subject in school instead of really engaging with Him in a personal way. Positioning is getting to a place where the Bible is alive for you, and where God is activated in your life. At that point God is not just an idea. We are suddenly in a position where what we read about in the Word is actually happening in our lives. That is accomplished through different variables – teaching, training, and equipping.
You also talk about becoming “unstuck.”
In Hosea 4:6, the scripture speaks of people who are destroyed for lack of knowledge. There are many wonderful people who love God but are not living anywhere close to the freedom that’s available to us in God. A lot of that comes from a lack of knowledge, as well as a lack of understanding certain spiritual principles in the Word. I’ve found that spiritual warfare is not taught very in-depth in today’s mainstream church, nor are the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit. To get someone unstuck, they have to understand the spirit realm. They have to understand that there are very real demonic forces at work, and that there is real power in the Holy Spirit. Those things shift people out of a church routine and into a more engaged place of love.
After a 13-year retirement from acting, you return to play the role of Cheryl, the head of a Planned Parenthood clinic, in the movie Unplanned.
This project came out of nowhere. I had no intentions of ever going back to acting. I did have people over the last few years say that they could sense that God wasn’t done with me in the entertainment industry. so I said, “We’ll have to see. He will have to bring it to me, because I’m definitely not going to pursue it.” And God did.
What moved you the most about this project?
Through a random series of events I wound up meeting Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon, who wrote the screenplay for Unplanned, and who also wrote the film God’s Not Dead. I had a coffee with them, and they told me about Abby Johnson, a young gal who was recruited from her college campus by Planned Parenthood. She starts out as an intern before working her way up the ranks to become the clinic director, eventually overseeing close to 22,000 abortions. She then has a life-changing experience when she’s called in to assist in an ultrasound-guided abortion. As Chuck and Cary told me more about the movie, I was instantly intrigued. I loved the idea of being able to reveal a whole other side of this industry, which is really not told through the media, and to let people see the truth up on the screen so that they can be more informed about their decision.
Your character is very much at odds with your stance on abortion.
There was some internal conflict for sure. They ended up sending me some material about my character, as well as a couple of scenes to read. I was initially hesitant about taking on the role because the scenes in the movie are so intense. My character is also very intense, and I thought, “Oh my gosh really, now that I’m a Christian and I am going back to acting, can’t I play the minister who is praying for people? I have to say these lines? Do I have to really play this woman [laughs]?” I just didn’t know if I was supposed to do that, but I very quickly got a sense that yes, this was the perfect time for this movie, and that God had prepared me to play this role. So, I auditioned for the first time in 15 years. I was rusty, but I somehow got the role.
Your character has been compared to Cruella de Vil, the film’s love-to-hate character.
I am the love-to-hate character [laughs]. What I love about the movie is that it really is not a cliché. They show many of the pro-choice women in the clinic as wonderful women who have a heart for people, and believe that they are doing a good service. They show some people on the pro-life side as radical and a little bit over the top, in addition to some of the pro-life people being wonderful and compassionate. So there’s really a genuine attempt to show all viewpoints. But yes, my character is the no-nonsense character, so I am what you would expect. I definitely am the villain in the movie.
Did you get a chance to meet the real Abby Johnson?
She and her husband were on the set with their kids for a couple of days, so I did get to meet her, and since the release I’ve been able to visit with her at several different events. She is a force of nature, and just an extraordinary person. She’s also incredible speaker. She’s so knowledgeable about the topic because she was on the inside. She really knows all of the ins-and-outs of Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry. It’s been incredible to be a part of telling her story.
What’s going on with your ministry today?
Right now I’m very busy traveling and speaking. I’m either speaking at pro-life events, or I’m speaking at churches. I enjoy sharing my message, which is all about emotional healing, freedom from counterfeits, operating in the supernatural, all of those kinds of things. Looking ahead, we’ll see what happens. I’m not sure what the future holds. I definitely go with the flow of the Holy Spirit, so my life is constantly changing direction and changing form. I’m not someone who has a five-year plan. I just try to stay connected to where the Spirit is leading me, which makes it exciting and different at the same time.
Final Question – If you had one piece of advice to offer someone, what would that be? Each person really has a specific calling and contribution, a purpose which God puts in each one of us. My advice is that the more time you spend seeking God, the more He will reveal your calling. Whether that calling is to create music like Prince did, or to simply be a good parent, He will reveal your gift by knowing Him.
- Tim Russ – Star Trek: Voyager - July 25, 2021
- Maeve Press – Everything’s Gonna Be Okay - May 23, 2021
- Jonathan Lynn – Star Man - May 16, 2021
