Picture this: Even in a crowded Instagram universe teeming with bombshell influencers, Claudia Maree Mailer stands out. The England-born, New Zealand-raised, New York-based actor is a revelation, and not because every waking moment is a carefully choreographed photo shoot, the resulting content served up for the voyeuristic consumption of an ever-expanding follower base. Sure, there are OOTD photos that reflect her refreshingly keen sense of style, just as there exist jet set shots from places like Los Angeles, Paris, and Queenstown, but there’s much more to Mailer than the same ol’ selfie shtick. There is no niche, per se, when it comes to Mailer’s feed (you’re just as apt to stumble across a post of her French Bulldog, Peggy Beatrix, as you are a glammed up rooftop shot), nor are her photos uploaded with the same unrelenting frequency of a Natalie Roser, the Australian model with more followers than the population of Chicago. The hook that makes her stand out? Mailer is an actor standing on the precipice of stardom. What she shares on social media is part of that ever-evolving mosaic, taking us on her journey rather than spinning our wheels in the mud of Instagram monotony. We not only witness her metamorphosis, we level up right along with her, instinctively getting that Claudia Maree Mailer isn’t the next interchangeable blonde ingenue. Hell no. She’s a whip-smart talent with an old-school work ethic and acting chops well beyond her 25 years. Claudia Maree Mailer is going places.
Ironic then that Mailer, in her first lead role, plays Marie Clark, who is using her influencer status to pay for her Master’s Degree in Comparative Religion, while moving on from an abusive past. Marie’s life finally appears to be on the right track, but everything changes when an obsessive fan steals her diary. As if having her privacy violated wasn’t enough, the unknown antagonist sends Marie a series of twisted love letters, promising to kill anyone who is a danger to her.
Claudia Maree Mailer in “DieRy” Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
The film, DieRy, written by John Buffalo Mailer and superbly imagined by Director Jennifer Gelfer, is available on VOD August 25th. DieRy also stars Thomas Q. Jones (Straight Outta Compton, Luke Cage), Keisha Castle-Hughes (Star Wars: Episode 4, Game of Thrones), and Brendan Robinson (Pretty Little Liars), and includes a brilliant performance by Northern Ireland-born builder-turned-actor Ciaran Byrne, who portrays Angus McCoughlin, hired to track down Marie’s mysterious stalker. Together, Mailer and Byrne power this thriller along every twist and turn.
“There are plenty of both,” Mailer says on the first day of promotional interviews. “This is a film that doesn’t reveal too much. It definitely keeps you guessing. Even her closest friends suddenly can’t be trusted, which certainly heightens the tension.”
That Mailer breathes such authenticity into her character comes as no surprise to Gelfer, who hired her to work on the set of the 2017 film Blind, starring Alec Baldwin, Demi Moore, and Dylan McDermott. While an uncredited appearance as a college student went mostly unnoticed, the same can’t be said for Mailer’s tireless work as the Director’s Assistant. She was so good, in fact, that Gelfer later hired her to be her assistant. For the next two years, Mailer kept Gelfer’s world organized with military-like precision, while never once mentioning that she herself was an actor. Only when Gelfer stumbled onto a Facebook clip of Mailer doing a monologue did she discover the talent hidden in plain sight.
Thomas Q. Jones and Claudia Maree Mailer in “DieRy” Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
“Claudia was magical,” Gelfer recalls of watching the clip. “I’m a teacher, and I sat there for a moment, spellbound, before I said to myself, ‘Oh my God, that girl does everything I teach. And she’s my assistant!’”
The resulting epiphany led Gelfer to cast Claudia as Max’s Mother in The Second Sun, a romance set in 1953 Manhattan, with the Holocaust serving as a backdrop. Her character is revealed in a series of flashbacks, appears on screen only a few minutes, and has very little in the way of dialogue. Doesn’t matter. Mailer (then Claudia Peters) not only delivers a skillful performance, she captivates in a way that the camera can’t ignore.
“Claudia was incandescent,” says Gelfer. “You couldn’t take your eyes off of her. You could tell that she’s a star on the precipice. All she needs is an opportunity to show the world that she is like no one else.”
Claudia Maree Mailer in “DieRy” Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
Which brings us full circle to DieRy. The film keeps you off balance from the jump, beginning with Marie being photographed on a rooftop by Kevin, a scummy Instagram photographer, played by Brendan Robinson. We soon learn that there are several other questionable characters in Marie’s orbit, as well as her psychologist (Brighton, played by James Sutorious) and Comparative Religion professor (Harris, played by Thomas Q. Jones), both with ulterior motives. Add Marie’s two best friends to the mix (the wealthy Richard, played by Philip Alexander, and her Instagram-obsessed girlfriend, Sarah, played by Samantha Strelitz), throw a party at her fashionable Los Angeles apartment, and the conditions are ripe for what happens next.
“Marie comes home one afternoon and finds a letter under the door,” Mailer says. “She learns that her diary has been stolen, the direct consequence of putting so much online. In that moment, everything changes.”
Ciaran Byrne in “DieRy” Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
Mailer gives Marie Clark sharp edges beneath a smooth, lacquered exterior; she is not only fantastic-looking, but also canny and self-protective. The rest of the film sets up the untangling of Marie’s abusive past, all while a killer goes on a murder spree.
“When I wrote my mission statement, a big part of wanting to do this film was because of Claudia,” says Gelfer. “Her command of the scenes, her presence in front of the camera…Claudia plays her part beautifully.”
DieRy is remarkably assured, deeply engaging, and works on several levels: as a thriller, a cautionary tale in the cloud-connected Age of Instagramification, and something else entirely, the perfect vehicle for an emerging artist to strut her stuff. Gelfer’s deft touch, combined with the symbiotic relationship between director and star, brings John Buffalo Mailer’s script to life and gives Claudia room to maneuver. She takes over from there, delivering a measured performance that brings her sexuality ever so close to the surface, where she sustains it, just out of reach, fueling Marie’s effect on the film’s collective male libido. Then the letters start showing up and the bodies start piling up. Hiring Angus heightens the tension and deepens the plot, cleverly taking an iGeneration whodunit and giving it the feel of a Forties noir.
The fact that Claudia Maree Mailer is even in New York, making movies like this, is a testament to her drive and ambition. The bucolic New Zealand life offered plenty, and it was there that she got her start, performing in Grease, Chicago, and Into the Woods as part of the Nelson Youth Theatre. At 17 she was accepted to Team New Zealand, and in 2012 traveled to Los Angeles to compete in the World Championship of Performing Arts. By then Mailer was all in on an acting career. Then, in 2013, she made the ballsy decision to attend the New York Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, moving cross-country to follow her dream. In the spirit of the conservatory’s founder, Joan See, she earned her Associate Degree in Film/TV Performance, graduating in 2015 and cutting her teeth in modeling, commercials, and small roles in film and television. All of it building to her star turn in DieRy.
“I was very fortunate to have Jen as my director,” Mailer says. “I’ve basically known her my whole New York life. Jen’s been like a surrogate mother to me. She took me under her wing and looked after me in a way that I never expected. It really helped when it came to doing this film.”
Claudia Maree Mailer in “DieRy” Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
Watching DieRy, it’s readily apparent that the pair’s real-life chemistry translates to what’s happening on the screen.
“Jen could literally give me a look after a take, and I would know what she needed from it. I would say, ‘How was that?’ and without a word I understood what I needed to do the next time. It just became so effortless.”
“I didn’t really have to direct her,” adds Gelfer. “And that’s a director’s dream. Brian De Palma once said that film is 90% about casting. With Claudia, the first day I was blown away because I didn’t have to do much. She just got it. I’d switch the scene around, or I’d change the dialog for another actor, and two minutes later Claudia would have the whole scene in her head, and instinctively knew how to play it. It was unbelievable. She could go with anything that you threw at her.”
That doesn’t mean that Mailer, blessed with a photographic memory, didn’t encounter challenges along the way.
“This is my first lead, so I knew that I was in the majority of the scenes,” Mailer says. “The challenge was to create a compelling character arc where you wanted to follow her…you liked her, you were on her side, you went through all of the struggles with her, and you wanted her to come out okay at the end. The hardest part was not revealing too much about her past. In order to accomplish that, Jen advised me to go against what was on the page. In other words, try not to give away anything, so that the reveal at the end is something that is rewarding for everyone.”
When you realize just how bad things are in Hollywood right now – how stifling and airless and cautious the atmosphere is, how little nourishment or encouragement a good new idea receives, and how devoid of ambition the horizon currently appears – it’s refreshing to cast your gaze toward companies like Mailer Tuchman Media, where creative risks and daring scripts are the rule, rather than the exception.
If the company name resonates, it’s because Mailer is John Buffalo Mailer, MTM’s Creative Director and the son of the late Norman Mailer, the legendary American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Norman Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least one in each of the seven decades after World War II – more than any other post-war American writer – and won two Pulitzer Prizes along the way.
John Buffalo Mailer in “DieRy” Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
His father’s is a long shadow cast by any measure, but John Buffalo Mailer has bravely charted his own course, embracing the Mailer legacy while doing the rest on his own steam. In October of 2000 he founded Back House Productions, which developed several plays, including the 2008 Tony Award Winner for Best Musical, In The Heights, by Lin-Manuel Miranda. He has been published in three books of collected essays, has published two plays, has had four feature screenplays produced, and has been an editor for four national magazines.
As an actor, he cut his teeth at The Actors Studio at the age of twelve and went on to perform in a dozen plays in New York City throughout the 2000s. As a screen actor, Buffalo has appeared opposite Shia LaBeouf in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Paul Giamatti and Ellen Burstyn in Matthew Barney’s River Of Fundament, Tony Sirico in Friends And Romans, Alec Baldwin, Demi Moore, and Dylan McDermott in Blind (which he also wrote), Sienna Miller in Private Life Of A Modern Woman, as well as MTM’s The Second Sun.
Now, Mailer can add DieRy to his resumé. The multi-hyphenate not only wrote and produced this taut thriller, he also plays the role of Tres, the ax-wielding groundskeeper who looks after Richard’s gated estate. In another delicious twist, he also happens to be married to the star.
Ciaran Byrne, Claudia Maree Mailer, and John Buffalo Mailer
“Buffalo and I met on the set of Blind,” Claudia Marie Mailer says. “I remember that I was doing a coffee run, and Buffalo was sitting on the steps alone, smoking a cigarette. I don’t know what it was, but something in me clicked and I bolted up to him. I put my hand out and introduced myself, and I said, ‘Hi, I’m Claudia, nice to meet you.’ And if you know me, that is not what I do. I am so shy, and I do not go up to anyone. Interactions like that usually don’t happen, unless people come up to me. But there was just something – a force – that took over, and I still can’t explain it to this day.”
One look at them together, and you can tell that attraction is mutual.
“Buffalo and I are 100% soulmates,” Mailer says, smiling. “We were both in relationships at the time, so we were just really good friends, but from the first moment we got along famously. Then it came to a summer where we both found ourselves single, so it was like kismet. I remember telling Jen, and she was like, ‘Finally.’ [Laughs]. No one was shocked when we told them – even my dad, who had not met him yet. His attitude was, ‘Okay, cool. It’s about time.’”
Claudia Maree Mailer and John Buffalo Mailer
While some might wonder if working on a feature film together might stress the newlywed’s relationship, Mailer laughs at the thought.
“Buffalo is incredible,” she says quickly. “We are like two peas in a pod, and we get along so well, so there wasn’t any conflict at all. With COVID-19 and the quarantine, we have been together nonstop since the outbreak. That hasn’t been hard on either of us: We enjoy each other so much that I might go for a 20-minute walk by myself and end up with separation anxiety. So, working together on a film like DieRy was a blessing. What we have is amazing. He is amazing. Okay, now I’m blushing [laughs].”
Funny thing about those OOTD photos on Claudia Maree Mailer’s Instagram feed: They cleverly serve two purposes. First, they are part of the journey that her followers get to take with her, moments big and small, images of ordinary life mixed with her professional journey as an actor. Then there are the hidden Easter eggs with a direct tie-in to DieRy – snapshots that not only reflect a day-in-the-life of Claudia Maree Mailer, but that also serve as hooks to her character in the film, Marie Clark. It’s an intelligent bit of blending, the real world fused with the imaginary, life imitating art.
“My generation was the last to grow up and have social media enter our lives, as opposed to it already being there,” Mailer says. “It completely takes over. You completely blur the lines between what’s real and what’s not, what’s for public consumption and what’s private. It was definitely interesting to put it into a movie and show a direct consequence of putting so much of your life online.”
Claudia Marie Mailer is going places.
Maybe not now, with COVID raging, but then again we’re not speaking literally. DieRy is one helluva debut for an actor on the precipice, and certain to juice her Q-Rating. She’s busy doing the PR work now, a victory lap after the grind of getting this film made. She has two more films in the works, Inside Me and The Best Friend. She’s leveling up with each role, turning heads, kicking ass.
The best part?
We get to go on this amazing ride with her.
https://www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/the_claudia_maree_mailer_interview2.png400600Michael McClellanhttps://www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/FifteenMinutesWith_NewLogoPrototype.pngMichael McClellan2020-08-17 01:41:382020-08-23 22:38:02Claudia Maree Mailer – Rising Star
Written By: Michael D. McClellan | Vince Gill wasn’t born with a guitar in his hands, but the country music legend damn sure didn’t waste much time getting acquainted with one. Gill, who’s racked up 21 Grammy Awards (and counting), more than any other male performer in the history of country music, began plucking around on an old parlor guitar at the age of two, an act as autonomic as breathing. His fascination with the instrument fueled childhood dreams of being part of a band, an important distinction because Gill has always been most comfortable fitting in – something he did recently when he joined the Eagles on tour, filling in for the late Glenn Frey. The Oklahoma native is just wired that way. He’s never been driven by fame or adulation, or by a hunger to see his name up in lights, happily working as a session musician long before breaking it big. In fact, Gill still finds great joy in playing on other artist’s records, something he has done more than 500 times over his career. His well-deserved celebrity – Gill has been named the Country Music Association’s Male Vocalist of the Year five times, and its Entertainer of the Year twice – may allow him the freedom to call his own shots, but it sure as hell hasn’t gone to his head.
“I’ve been in bands before. I’ve been a sideman,” Gill says. “I kind of know how to act in whatever role, and I think that goes back to the way we were raised. You’re not going to be a showoff. You’re not going to be an arrogant kid. For me, it has always been about the music.”
Like rings of a tree, the stages of Gill’s musical journey can be marked by a guitar of some sort. There’s the Gibson ES-335, which was given to him by his parents at age 10 as a Christmas gift. He bought his first acoustic, the Martin D-41, while attending Northwest Classen High School. The 1942 Martin D-28 with the signature herringbone pattern? He scored that prize in the mid-1970s, while he was on tour with Bluegrass Alliance. The man selling it wanted $2,500, a price way beyond Gill’s means at the time, so he negotiated a trade, giving the man his D-41 and writing a check for $1,600.
For Christmas 1967, Vince Gill’s parents gave him his first professional instrument, a Gibson ES-335 electric guitar. He still has it. (Courtesy of Vince Gill)
“I emptied out my bank account,” Gill says, “so I was dead broke, but I had that 1942 D-28.”
While the Vince Gill backstory is populated with myriad guitars and a deep love of bluegrass, country music, and rock & roll, it’s relatively tame when compared to the lives of other legends, guys like the dark-starred George Jones, who spent a good part of his career drinking himself into a straitjacket, or Johnny Cash, who for years battled drug addiction. Even Gill’s idol, Merle Haggard, spent time in San Quentin State Prison before turning his life around to sing and play a complex, loose-shackled, intensely durable brand of country music.
Gill has no such turbulence in his past. A plainspoken, no-nonsense, straight shooter, Vince Gill was raised by parents with old school sensibilities, the kind who expected their son to live according to the principles that come from generations of working the farm. The rules were simple: Toe the line, and all was right with the world. Do or say something that didn’t make sense, and prepare to suffer the wrath.
“My dad was pretty gruff, but he was fair,” Gill says. “There was no messing around much. If I wanted to keep playing my guitar, then I knew not to step out of line.”
His father, a lawyer and administrative law judge, was a lover of country music who played guitar and banjo with friends at parties and dances. He taught his son the rudimentary chords and encouraged his interest in music, much of which Gill picked up on his own. (The piano and violin lessons he suffered through in grade school, along with playing in the school orchestras, almost guaranteed that Gill would be self-taught when it came to the guitar.) By his teenage years, Gill had given guitar lessons a try, only to abandon them in favor of his other passion, golf. He was happier playing by ear.
Vince Gill began his career as a teenager, playing with bluegrass bands in Oklahoma City and the surrounding area. (Courtesy of Vince Gill)
“I took some guitar lessons in junior high school, but as I look back, I don’t think they were really informative,” Gill says. “It was something to do at the time. My teacher was a neat old guy, and I enjoyed him. But I just basically learned songs. That was something I was already doing on my own.”
By high school, Gill’s talents were becoming harder to ignore. He played with a series of local bluegrass bands, performing in Oklahoma City bars with the local favorite Mountain Smoke. One night, they opened for the country rock band Pure Prairie League, a group that would play a substantial role in Gill’s future. His parents greenlit these late night shows on the condition that he keep up his grades, and by graduation it was clear that he would pursue music full-time. He packed everything into a van and headed off to Louisville, Kentucky, to join the band Bluegrass Alliance. The year was 1975. Gill was barely eighteen. He toured with the group for several months before jumping to Ricky Skaggs’ Boone Creek Band, a brief stop that would yield a lifelong friendship (and frequent collaborating partner). A few months later, a 19-year-old Vince Gill moved to Los Angeles, where he started working as a session guitarist and harmony vocalist for other artists.
“Southern California was a great time,” he says. “I moved there to play bluegrass music and be in this great band [Sundance]. The music scene there was unbelievable.”
Sundance, a bluegrass group fronted by fiddler Byron Berline, ended up scoring a gig at the famed Troubadour nightclub in West Hollywood. The star-studded audience included country music heavyweights Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell.
“It was surreal, seeing all of these people I’d idolized. I was awestruck for a minute, and then I introduced myself and made some friends. I guess you could call it networking – whatever it was, I jumped in with both feet.”
Like a Wharton Business School graduate, the opportunistic Gill was eager to climb the ladder, never really content, always on the lookout for a better caliber of musician. In 1979, only four years after leaving home, he was hired as lead vocalist for Pure Prairie League. His transition from acoustic bluegrass to electric country rock was seamless. He toured extensively with the band and recorded three albums. A single, Let Me Love You Tonight, featuring Gill on lead vocals and David Sanborn on saxophone, cracked the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
While playing with the band, Gill met singer Janis Oliver, of the country music duo Sweethearts of the Rodeo. They married in 1980 and had a daughter two years later, a storybook beginning to a decade that saw him jump at the chance to join The Cherry Bombs, led by Rodney Crowell. Gill occupied the revolving guitar chair, filling in when Albert Lee was touring with Eric Clapton and Richard Bennett with Neil Diamond. It also connected him with keyboardist Tony Brown, who was just starting in A&R for RCA Records. Brown felt that Gill was not only a great guitar player but a great singer, and convinced him to make the move from Los Angeles to Nashville.
Singer and songwriter Rodney Crowell. Vince Gill played in Crowell’s band, The Cherry Bombs, in the 1980s
Gill signed a three-record deal with RCA, but his career there was marked with fits and starts: Two Top 10 singles and a 1984 Academy of Country Music Award as Top New Male Vocalist were the highlights, both swallowed whole by mediocre sales for albums that were unimaginatively produced.
To complicate matters, Sweethearts of the Rodeo was having substantial chart success, with six Top 10 country singles between 1986 and 1989. Gill forged ahead as a much-in-demand session guitarist and singer, most notably for Roseanne Cash, but a lot of country music fans knew him only as Janis Gill’s husband. Existing in the shadow of his famous wife, and with his own solo career stalled, finding an audience continued to be a struggle. If Vince Gill doubted himself through any of this, he never let it show.
“There was plenty of support from people in the industry that I respected,” he explains. “I was still making music. It didn’t matter if it was on one of Emmy’s [Emmylou Harris’] records, or Conway Twitty’s records, or one of my own. I was still a part of the process and doing something that I loved. I didn’t have to be the center of attention. It didn’t have to be about me. Besides, the people I respected the most all said the same thing: ‘You sing good, you play good, you write neat songs, you just haven’t had the right record yet.’”
Tony Brown helped find the right record.
Pissed that he couldn’t produce the acts that he’d signed to RCA, Brown moved on to become the president of MCA Nashville. He knew that Gill was greatly undervalued as an artist, in large part because RCA didn’t understand exactly what they had in the straight-shooting Oklahoman – an underrated songwriter with world class guitar skills and a voice tailor made for ballads. How could RCA hope to make Vince Gill a star if they couldn’t make the most of his strengths?
Gill, for his part, was facing another pivotal career choice – Dire Straits wanted him to join the band as a second guitarist. It was a tempting offer for someone still struggling to find his identity. Gill thought long and hard about making the jump, but ended up turning down Mark Knopfler’s offer, instead continuing to chase his country music dream. Into the void stepped Brown, convincing Gill to make the jump from RCA to MCA. Brown then went to work producing Gill’s first album for MCA, When I Call Your Name. The title song exploded, reaching Number 2 on the country charts and earning Gill his first Grammy, for 1990 Best Male Vocal Country Performance. The album was certified platinum for selling over a million copies and established Vince Gill as a bona fide country music star.
Vince Gill and Reba McEntire (Photo by KMazur/WireImage)
From there, Vince Gill simply dominated the 1990s. He was asked to host the 1992 Country Music Awards broadcast, bringing a warmth, sincerity, and humor that was an immediate hit with television audiences. He hosted the show for 12 consecutive seasons, a record for hosting a television awards show. Fourteen of his 21 Grammys came during the decade, with Brown producing virtually all of his work. In ’91 he was named the CMA Male Vocalist of the Year for the first time, an award he would go on to win in five consecutive years. Throw in Seven Grammys for Best Male Country Performance, two Grammys for Best Country Song, back-to-back CMA Song of the Year awards, and a CMA for Album of the Year, and that’s just scratching the surface of what Vince Gill accomplished during the 1990s. He was Michael Jordan with a pick, Tiger Woods with a guitar, Wayne Gretzky with a microphone.
Not bad for a guy content simply fitting in.
For Vince Gill, the 1990s weren’t entirely paved with gold. His father passed away in 1997, and the following year, his marriage to Janis came to an end. His 1998 album, The Key, marked a return to a traditional country sound. It was the bestselling country album of the year, with the Grammy-winning hit, If You Have Forever in Mind, and a duet with Patty Loveless, My Kind of Woman, My Kind of Man. He stepped outside of the country music mainstream to sing a duet with Barbara Streisand. He was arguably as popular as ever, but there was a problem: Everyday Vince Gill wasn’t nearly as happy as Vince Gill the Entertainer appeared to be onstage.
Gill’s 2000 marriage to the contemporary Christian/pop crossover artist was a game-changer, fulfilling him in ways that his superstar status never could. They had been in each other’s orbit since 1993, when they met to record a video for House of Love, their duet from and the title track of Grant’s 1994 record. It was, essentially, love at first sight. Fast forward to the end of the millennium. With Gill single and Grant divorced from Christian singer Gary Chapman, the two reconnected and began dating. They were married on March 10, 2000, on a rainy hillside outside Nashville, with Grant barefoot and bagpipes in the background – forming Nashville’s newest power couple. While it took time for their blended family to coalesce – Grant and Chapman had three children during their 15-year marriage – the birth of Gill and Grant’s daughter, Corrina, proved to be the missing ingredient.
“She’s the glue of this whole family,” Gill says. “She came along and bonded us all in a way that nothing else could.”
The rest of the 2000s have been a star-crossed blur. Seven albums have followed, along with seven more Grammys, induction in the Country Music Hall of Fame, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His most recent album, Okie, is Vince Gill at his straight-shooting best, tackling such weighty issues as sexual abuse, teenage pregnancy, and race, and doing so with the Oklahoma sensibilities that make him who he is today.
No doubt his father is looking down proudly at the man Vince Gill has become.
Take me back to your Oklahoma roots.
I was born in Norman, Oklahoma, a small college town just south of Oklahoma City. It’s a great town. We moved up to Oklahoma City when I was four, so I really grew up there. Both of my parents were farm people in that they grew up on a farm and had a great sense of the earth. They knew about hard times, and they knew what it was like to work for everything that they had.
My father was a lawyer, and my mom was a stay-at-home mom for most of my life. My father was quite a character. I like to say that he was a lawyer by trade, but a redneck by birth. He’d go to work in a suit and tie, his hair slicked back and his sunglasses on, and then he’d come home, put on overalls, no shirt and a ball cap. He was a very imposing man – six foot three and over 300 pounds. It was like having John Wayne, Patton and Clint Eastwood all rolled up into one guy.
Vince Gill as a schoolboy in Oklahoma, City. (Courtesy of Vince Gill)
Were your parents musicians?
My mom played the harmonica a little bit. My dad played the banjo and the guitar. He and some friends had a little band that would occasionally play at outdoor events, which was just for fun. I always got to play along, and just being around musicians was a thrill.
What was your childhood like?
I was a Beaver Cleaver kid. I was pretty normal. I liked reading and still do, and I liked reading books about the Civil War. I also loved biographies of sports people that I admired, so if there was a book on Willie Mays or Hank Aaron, or whoever the great baseball player of that era was, I was going to read it. I also played all the sports. I was a decent golfer. I played on the high school golf team, and I played a lot through high school.
You knew very early on that you were born to play music. Were your parents supportive of your dream?
My folks never forced me to follow a blueprint, never said that I had to get an education before I jumped into music. They knew from the time I was seven years old what music did to me. I invested my whole life in it, and they didn’t throw up any roadblocks or try to talk me out of it.
Vince Gill and his father, Jay Stanley Gill, an administrative law judge and country music enthusiast who gave Vince his first guitar lessons. (Courtesy of Vince Gill)
When did you start playing guitar?
I can’t remember the exact age, but I’ve seen pictures of me when I was one or two, and I’ve got this small parlor guitar that I’m dragging around. It was broken and didn’t have all of its strings, but I beat around on that thing every waking moment. My father had two guitars of his own, and I played them as I got a little older. I learned the rudimentary chords from my dad. At one point he got me a tenor guitar, which only has the first four strings, and I tuned it like the first four strings of a regular guitar. I played at the show-and-tell during second and third grade.
When did you get your first “serious” guitar?
I was 10 years old. I can still remember finding that gift under the Christmas tree. My folks scrimped and saved, and they took that old tenor guitar of mine and traded it in on this new electric Gibson ES-335. It was the best Christmas gift ever, a great instrument – in fact, I still have that guitar today. It’s an instrument that I would have sought as a grown, matured player – there are a lot of great guitar players that play the 335 today. I might not have fully appreciated how great that guitar was at the time, but it was inspiring to have something that great to start learning on.
What kind of music did you grow up on?
I grew up with Western swing. Bob Wills was king, so the basis of their sound is in my blood. It was the music of dance halls all over Oklahoma and Texas, partly because it was such a perfect way for rural towns to get people together. There wasn’t much to do in those small towns, but people would come together for a night of swing. I was later able to join the Time Jumpers, which gave me an avenue to play that kind of music.
I loved listening to records and trying to emulate what I was hearing. I’m self-taught and all by ear, and just by hearing the music come through the speakers. I’d ask, “How do they do that?” and just sit and practice and mess around until I made the same sounds. I also had my favorite records. I loved Chet Atkins, and I loved the Beatles. Merle Haggard was my biggest inspiration. The way he led a band, the way he played, the way he sang, the way he wrote songs…what gave him the greatness that he had was that he went to prison and knew what it felt like to have his freedom taken away. He sang with an angst and a hope that was different than most people. Merle was the pinnacle on every level to me. Nobody equals Merle in my eyes.
LAS VEGAS – Musician Vince Gill performs onstage during the 42nd Annual Academy Of Country Music Awards held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on May 15, 2007 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
When did you start playing in front of people?
My parents were not real strict. They let me go play in bars while I was in high school in different bands. They said, “You keep your grades up and don’t give us any reason to not let you.” That’s all I needed to hear. All through high school I was out playing gigs and traveling around with bands, sometimes out of state. Then somebody called me – I was 18 – and said, “Hey, do you want to come be in this band in Kentucky?” So I packed up everything and I moved there.
When was the first time you heard yourself on the radio?
The first time I ever heard myself on the radio was in Oklahoma City, on I-40. It was the first record I ever made, and I was 17 years old. I can’t even begin to tell you what that meant. It gave me this amazing sense of hope that I could make a career out of doing what I love.
You moved from Oklahoma City to Louisville right out of high school. That’s a big jump, especially at such a young age.
The opportunity was too good to pass up. There was a band called Bluegrass Alliance, which was one of the really well-known bands in bluegrass during the ‘70s. A lot of great musicians went through that band. My folks supported my decision even though I was young and didn’t know anything. I had all the stuff that I owned in my van – a guitar, a few t-shirts, my golf clubs, and whatever else I had – and I went off to Kentucky to play in this band. I found a little place to live. My rent was $15 a month. I stayed in an attic in this old house in Cherokee Park, with a house full of musicians that all loved bluegrass music. It was a great experience. It gave me a chance to travel around the United States a lot and play at different kinds of festivals. It was a really fun, innocent period in my life.
Vince Gill
Were you prepared for life on your own?
One of my favorite memories of those days was when I ran out of clean clothes. Obviously my mom wasn’t around, and she’d always washed my jeans and my t-shirts. I had this pile of dirty laundry, and I said, “Now what do I do?” So I went to a laundromat and I started watching people, and that’s how I figured out how to wash and dry my clothes.
I remember finishing my first load of laundry and trying to fold everything. A woman was there at the time and saw me struggling. She was laughing her head off. She said, “You don’t know how to fold your clothes, do you?” I said, “No, ma’am, I’ve never done my laundry before.” She showed me how to fold my shirts, and it’s something that I still do to this day.
Your next move was to Southern California. You were a 19-year-old-kid.
I moved to Los Angeles to play bluegrass music and be in this great band. It was a great time in Southern California. The music scene there was unbelievable. I got some session work playing and singing on other people’s records.
You weren’t there long before your talent was noticed by the likes of Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell.
The first real gig that I did with a band that I’d joined was a gig at the Troubadour in L.A. It’s one of the most iconic music clubs in history. We opened for Guy Clark, who was a great singer-songwriter from Texas. I couldn’t believe who was there that night – people like Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell. I think Linda Ronstadt was also there that night. I couldn’t believe it. Here were all these people that I’d seen on the backs of records and studied my whole life, and suddenly I’m performing in the same world as them.
That performance led you to join Pure Prairie League.
I trusted my instincts – I made friends and networked. Back then it was about jumping in the water and see how deep it was. Joining Pure Prairie League was a big step because they had a major label record deal. That was an exciting period in my life. I was part of three records over three years with them. I remember they asked me if I had any songs, and I wound up getting five songs on the first album I did with them. That shocked me because I had only been writing for about a year. Overall, I wrote about half of the songs on the three albums I did with them.
What came after Pure Prairie League?
I started playing with Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash. Rosanne was having big hits, and I was her guitar player, which was great because her music featured the guitar a lot. It was flattering because she had worked with people like James Burton and Albert Lee, arguably two of the greatest guitar players that ever lived. James played with Elvis for years, so I was occupying a pretty heavy seat for a guitar player. One of the guys in the band was a guy named Tony Brown, who also used to play with Elvis. He was a piano player, and he was also an A&R guy – a talent scout – for RCA Records in Nashville. He said, “Man, you need to start making country records!” And so he played a major role in RCA signing me in 1983.
Let’s talk about this period in your life. While you achieved some success with singles like If It Weren’t for Him, Oklahoma Borderline, and Cinderella, stardom wasn’t immediate.
I made my first record and not much happened. The same thing with my second and third records. Then I moved over to MCA Records a few years later and got another opportunity. Looking back, I am really grateful for the years of struggle. It was a humbling experience. There were times when I felt like I was beating my head against the wall and saying, “Why isn’t this working?” Then at some point you realize that maybe there’s another way. Maybe it’s better if you go around the wall instead of trying to run through it. So I found a way to go around the wall.
Did the fear of failure ever enter your mind?
No, because I was young and I didn’t know any better. There’s some beauty in that. The best part was I didn’t need much back then. When you don’t have much, you don’t need much. That felt good to me. Progress was more important than success. It wasn’t about how much money I could make, it was about how much better I could be. Was I improving as a guitar player? Was I playing with better musicians? Every step felt like I was making progress, even though it might not have looked like it financially. I was satisfied with that.
Vince Gill
Why couldn’t you break through during those early days with RCA?
Who knows why. I can say that my name’s on those records, so it’s on me that they didn’t work and I’m okay with that. I left RCA on good terms. They believed in me as a singer and as a musician, but I knew that they didn’t believe in me as a songwriter. That was important to me, so I decided to move on.
What did people like Tony Brown and Emory Gordy teach you about songwriting?
Tony and Emory knew the value of a good song. That’s why they both wound up being great producers and having successful careers. They produced the majority of my records. Emory produced the first two, and Tony produced all the ones I made in the ‘90s. They believed in me as a songwriter, which was really a great gift.
If I learned anything, it’s that songwriting is about being a good communicator. Songwriters are like painters. They paint pictures with their words and in their songs. Hank Williams used to write songs that were simple, but there’s a real genius in not cluttering up a song. There’s an undeniable beauty in the simpleness of a Hank Williams song.
You were also a prolific session musician in Nashville during the 1980s.
I sang on so many records during that stretch. It’s how I made a living. It meant something that people thought enough of what I did as a supporting cast member to be a part of those records. And in all honesty, I would have been fine had that been my career, because I didn’t have to be at the center of it to have it matter. I just had to be a part of it. I still work on a ton of people’s records.
The ’80s may have been a struggle, but Gill scored 14 of his record 21 (and counting) Grammy Awards during the 1990s
What did you learn from being a session musician?
Being part of the supporting cast teaches you to know your place. You come in and you do the work that they want you to do, that you’re hired to do. You don’t get to just do what you want and play what you want to play. You’re a small part of something bigger. You have to make something work, you have to make something fit, you have to be a chameleon.
In 1990, you were adding background vocals to Dire Straits’ On Every Street album. What happened as a result of that?
I was invited by [lead singer and guitarist] Mark Knopfler to join Dire Straits. It was at a time when I was broke and struggling. I had had a record deal for several years, but couldn’t turn that into hit records, and couldn’t turn that into a big career, even though I was trying. This would have been a very lucrative move, and musically it would have been a great move, but I turned it down.
You bet on yourself.
I had just changed record companies and I had invested a lot of my life in country music. I didn’t want to bail on it and then wonder years later what might have been. But it was a tempting offer. It was as if the golden egg was being dangled in front of me. Looking back, it was the right decision. My next record completely turned my life around.
Singer Vince Gill in Press Room at Academy of Country Music Awards. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/DMI/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
That record was When I Call Your Name. Why do you think it was such a massive hit?
I think it’s as simple as having the right record at the right time, and having the right song at the right time. I moved from RCA to MCA, had seven years of struggles, and had a few records that landed on the charts, but I never had that out-of-the-box home run, that real career record. I’d made my first record for MCA, and we released two singles but not much happened, so the pattern wasn’t any different. Then here comes the right song at the right time, and that was When I Call Your Name. There was just something about it that struck a chord. After all of those years it was fun to go, “So that’s what having a hit record feels like.”
What are you most proud about with this song?
One thing is that it is a traditional country record. I really like a deep-rooted, hardcore, twangy kind of country music. The old school stuff, like those great old records of the ‘50s and ‘60s that I grew up on. To me, that’s country music. There’s a lonesome piano intro on that song, and as soon as it happens you know what record it is. The piano player was a guy named Barry Beckett. He came in late one night and played the intro to When I Call Your Name. It was perfect. That’s why I love making records, because you just never know when that special moment is going to come. In this case, the piano gave the song its definition and identity. You knew exactly what song it was as soon as it started.
Patty Loveless sang backing vocals on When I Call Your Name.
We had this great intro, we had everything else done, and we wanted to put harmony on it. Patty Loveless had become a dear friend. She has this beautiful, aching voice that is pure Kentucky. I had sung on her records for years and thought we sounded really good together, so I called and asked her if she’d come sing on one of mine. When she sang that first line of harmony I looked at Tony and he looked at me…we both got chills on our arms.
Vince Gill and Patty Loveless sang together on numerous recordings, beginning in the 1980s. Here they attend a charity gala in Los Angeles, 1993. (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd/WireImage)
After years of struggle, Vince Gill is suddenly a star.
I’m grateful for the years of struggle. People would say, “I can’t understand why you’re not producing hit records. You sing beautifully, you play beautifully, you play with great musicians. You’re writing songs with great songwriters.” For whatever reason it hadn’t happened. Then that song came along and changed everything. All it takes is that door opening. Then you have the opportunity of longevity, and you have the opportunity of making a difference and being heard. I was beyond grateful because it changed a lot of things, but it never changed my focus on what I loved and what I wanted to do.
How did you handle the fame?
Fame was interesting for me in that your anonymity was gone. Be careful what you wish for – there’s an element of that that is great, and there’s an element of it that’s not so pleasant. In some respects, those years of struggle helped prepare me for the fame, because I watched people react to success – I felt that some reacted favorably and handled it well, and some reacted poorly and didn’t. I saw enough of it to go, “I know I don’t want to act like that.”
Country music legends Merle Haggard and Vince Gill share a moment. Gill considers the late singer his Number 1 music inspiration.
In the late ‘90s, the country music being played on the radio changed. Suddenly, artists like Shania Twain were playing what was referred to as “Country Pop.” You stayed true to your roots and released The Key, an album with a hardcore country sound.
My dad died in ‘97, and I went through a divorce and all that, so that period of time was very trying. Those things certainly influenced me, but what drew me to want to make a country record – a real, traditional country record – is I saw that type of music waning in terms of how much was being recorded and getting played on the radio. I missed that style of music. My father’s passing triggered memories of all of those records I’d heard as a little boy. Songs that my mom and dad would play in my house, artists like Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Johnny Cash, and Webb Pierce. So the rebel in me wanted to make this record to prove a point, which was that radio had moved on from traditional country music. I was right – they didn’t play that record very much!
The public’s taste may have changed, but you still had street cred where it mattered most – your peers. Tell me about Eric Clapton.
I was fortunate, because having the hit records opened up a whole new world of collaboration. I loved the fact that the phone would ring and you would never know who would be on the other end. Eric Clapton called one time and I answered the phone. He goes, “Vince, it’s Eric Clapton. I’m having a guitar festival down in Dallas, and I’m only inviting players I admire. I’d like you to be there.” This was the 2004 timeframe when I’d sort of fallen out of favor with radio. I couldn’t say ‘yes’ fast enough.
Vince Gill and Eric Clapton – Nashville 2-27-10, photo by Reed Galin
That was Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival.
I can’t tell you what that experience did for me. At the time, I had been struggling with my place in the music world, but that one phone call reinvented me. It inspired me to turn my guitar up and let it fly, just to see what came out. I went into the studio with some really creative people, and with no deadlines to meet. Suddenly, all these songs started coming out of me – and they weren’t all country songs. I kept recording with no agenda, other than to see how these songs would turn out. We stayed in the studio for five or six weeks. By the time we came up for air I had recorded 31 songs.
Speaking of peers, the Eagles thought so highly of you that they asked you to join the band. How did that come about?
I’ve known those guys for quite a while – I think I first met them in 1980. After the band broke up, Glenn [Frey] and I became friends through our mutual manager, a man named Larry Fitzgerald, and his partner, Mark Hartley. They managed Glenn during his solo years. Glenn and I crossed paths quite often. He would come to some of my early gigs, and then he became obsessed with golf, like me. Sometimes I’d go along to a Lakers game with him. So we had some things in common.
There were other connections. I recorded I Can’t Tell You Why for an Eagles tribute album that they put together. Later, Joe [Walsh] and I became friends. I also worked with Don [Henley] on his Cass Country album, and we later performed a duet on an Elton John project. There were so many times our lives converged, so after a while I think everybody sort of said, “Well, this might be possible…”
Was it hard to put your solo career on hold?
Being in the Eagles was a different animal from my solo career, but it was special because I got to honor my pal Glenn. I think he’d be okay with me doing my best to sing and play his songs. As far as my solo career, it probably pales in comparison to my career as a sideman. The Eagles gig was like that. I just looked at it as helping friends out. I was thrilled that they wanted me to be a part of it.
Vince Gill and Don Henley perform together with the Eagles at the Classic West concert in L.A. Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
As a guitarist, what was it like playing with Joe Walsh?
Joe plays with a great brevity and restraint; there’s always so much thought he puts into each note. That’s what I like about him – his patience. It’s not about whittling a bunch of notes and trying to impress you. It’s the way he’ll bend a note, the time and care he’ll put into it. I’m just in awe of him.
You’ve won 21 Grammy Awards and have been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, but you seem very down-to-earth.
I’ve watched plenty of people be the opposite of humble. My folks would have kicked my ass if I had acted any other way. That’s the way we were raised. You’re not going to be a showoff. You’re not going to be an arrogant kid. Being humble is natural to me. It’s not put on.
Do you enjoy the limelight that comes with winning all of those Grammys?
I don’t enjoy a lot of attention. I’m a little bit shy. I don’t have a problem putting a guitar on and playing and singing in front of 15,000 people, but in front of two or three I might be a little more uncomfortable. At the end of the day, I really like people. If somebody wants a picture, or somebody wants an autograph, that’s no big deal. That doesn’t bother me. It never has. I didn’t want to be a recluse, I didn’t want to run from anything, I didn’t want to all of a sudden be thinking I was something that I wasn’t.
Amy Grant, Vince Gill, Jenny Gill at the Vince Gill Hollywood Walk Of Fame Ceremony, Hollywood, CA 09-06-12
Your wife is a superstar in her own right.
I’m lucky in that I married a woman that is the same, and that’s been a great gift. She could care less how successful she’s been. I try to be that way, too. We’ve both done okay, but we don’t jump up and down.
You’ve described your 2019 album Okie as a songwriter’s record. What do you mean?
I didn’t go into this project thinking any of the songs were going to be hits. My intent was to never get in the way of the song. I don’t play any electric guitar on this record. I only played a couple of solos on the entire record. The rest of it is just kind of moody, ethereal, all of us playing together, and nobody trying to stand out above the rest. I think the point of it was, hopefully, that nothing ever got in the way of the song.
To Vince Gill, what does it mean to be an Okie?
Oklahomans are very salt-of-the-earth-type people. We have a common sense that I like. I think what I took most from Oklahoma was common sense. It’s that matter-of-fact, no blowing smoke way of seeing the world, talking and working. I am proud of Oklahomans, and I’m very proud to be one. I try to bring that same focus to my songwriting, to say the most with the least words and to be genuine about it.
Okie has references to your wife, Amy Grant, on Honest Man and When My Amy Prays. Tell me about that.
It’s a running gag between us – you know you live in Nashville when you write your girl a love song and she tells you the third verse could use a little work [laughs]. It’s really great to have a friend that tells you what’s right and what’s not, and what’s good and what isn’t. It’s easy to be inspired by her because she’s so gracious with people. She’s the most welcoming person I’ve ever seen in my whole life. It’s easy to write songs about her.
Vince Gill and Amy Grant
What goes through your mind when you perform live?
I’ve done every conceivable kind of gig there is, so there’s nothing that’s going to surprise me anymore. I’ve been the opening act, I’ve been the middle act, I’ve been the headliner. I’ve been the act that nobody’s ever heard of. I got booked in a gig one time at a college during spring break, and nobody came. You have to have tolerance. If you have enough savvy, you know what kind of crowd you’re playing to.
You’re a longtime member of the Grand Ole Opry.
Until the 1950s, radio was the only way you ever heard country music, and it was the end-all to end-all if you were on the Grand Ole Opry. It’s not that way today, obviously, because of the changes in our country and culture and technology and all that. To me, the Grand Ole Opry has such a beautiful reverence that I’m out there playing probably a lot more than any of my contemporaries that are also members. I love the fact that they’re still playing bluegrass out there on the stage. It’s a place where you can hear all different kinds of music as far back as the 1920s, and you can hear it all in a single night.
Final Question: If you had one piece of life advice for others, what would that be?
Written By: Michael D. McClellan | Joseph Poliquin didn’t so much kick open the door to an acting career as he maneuvered his way through it, as if a willing participant dropped into one of those escape rooms, the kind that rewards instinct and improvisation rather than sheer force of will. It helps that the Louisiana native has a creative streak a mile wide and plenty of guts, not to mention the kind of work ethic that it takes to stand out in a crowd. How else do you explain Poliquin’s role alongside Tom Hanks in Greyhound, the thrilling WWII film based on the 1955 novel The Good Shepherd, by C. S. Forester. Poliquin, whose character helms the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Keeling, code-named Greyhound, was chosen over hundreds of other actors in large part due to a military-like preparedness in knowing his lines. Where other auditionees stumbled, Poliquin nailed his reading and soon found himself on a big-budget set with one of the greatest actors of our generation. It’s an all-in dedication to his craft that has Poliquin’s fledgling career on an upward trajectory, with upcoming roles in Project Power, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jamie Foxx, and All My Life, starring Harry Shum Jr. (Crazy Rich Asians), on his resumé. Not bad for a guy with virtually no formal acting experience and no real connections in show business when he made the leap.
“Money should never be a barrier,” Poliquin says of learning to act. “There are so many options available today. Some of it you have to pay for, like MasterClass, but there are so many other resources online that don’t cost anything…YouTube videos and other free content. You really don’t have an excuse. If you’re passionate about acting and you’re committed to becoming an actor, then the only limitation is what you place on yourself.”
Greyhound, directed by Aaron Schneider, is available for streaming on Apple TV+.
If Poliquin were starstruck in the presence of Hanks, who possesses two Academy Awards for Best Actor, it certainly didn’t show. Instead, he treated the experience as if he’d been transported into his very own MasterClass, absorbing every nuance of a legend still at the top of his game.
“It was something that ranks as the best experience of my life so far,” he says. “Playing opposite of Tom Hanks was a dream come true. Just being around him, and getting to see how someone like that approaches his profession, it really helped reinforce the importance of being prepared. In three months, Tom Hanks taught me more than I learned in any acting class I ever went to.”
Appearing in Greyhound is the start of a busy 2020 for Poliquin, who, despite the challenges brought on by COVID-19, will appear in two more films. He plays the role of Indo, a comical pothead, in the sci-fi thriller Project Power, which is slated for an August 14 release on Netflix. Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the action film is based on a drug that imbues the taker with a superhuman ability for five minutes. When the pill escalates crime within the city too dangerous levels, a local cop (Gordon-Levitt) teams with a teenage dealer (Dominique Fishback) and a former soldier fueled by a secret vendetta (Jamie Foxx), fighting power with power by taking the pill in order to track down and stop the group responsible for creating it.
“It was so awesome to a part of this film,” Poliquin says. “The same casting director from Greyhound also chose me to play in Project Power. It’s intense and action-packed, but it also has some lighter moments. I have some really funny lines in it.”
Poliquin also portrays Brian in the romantic drama All My Life, which will be released later year on Universal. The movie stars Harry Schum Jr. and Jessica Rothe, and is based on the true story of Solomon Chau and Jennifer Carter, who were planning to be married on August 21, 2015. Instead, that ended up being the day of Chau’s funeral.
“Without giving away anything, I think people will find that the movie has a Notebook vibe to it. The movie is based on a true story about Jenn Carter’s life. It’s directed by Marc Meyers, who also directed My Friend Dahmer. Jenn Carter told me that my character is one of her favorite characters in the film, and that means a lot coming from her.”
Actor Joseph Poliquin
Poliquin, from Baton Rouge, got his creative start in front of a piano, something that he often used as a tool to diffuse tension between his mother and stepfather. The sessions also triggered a passion to perform, as Poliquin dreamed of playing in a band from an early age. Making it as a musician dominated his childhood, building to a crescendo when he begged for – and received – his first guitar as a sixteenth birthday present. Like moth to flame, Poliquin plunged headlong into learning how to play, eventually forming the rock group Henry the Fifth and hitting the road.
“Music is still important to me,” he says, “and it’s something I’ll always do. Music also led me to acting, which is my primary focus right now. The really cool thing is that performing live music is a lot like theatre, because you have one take and it’s over. Playing live music also helped me get over stage fright, which television and film actors can struggle with, especially when it comes to auditions.”
Poliquin’s first big break was working as a featured background player on the TV series American Horror Story, where he was encouraged to pursue acting by a pair of highly-regarded actors, Evan Peters and Kathy Bates.
“They were both really cool, very down-to-earth,” he says. “I was on American Horror Story for seven months, and I had a lot of good face time that got cut. The important thing is that I learned a lot. Evan became a friend of mine through our time on the set. He encouraged me to keep going after it, and said that he started out the same way that I did. Kathy Bates is an absolute legend. She was also very positive and supportive.”
Poliquin made his feature starring debut in #FollowFriday, where he played a college nerd that develops a website for amateur local detectives, becoming one himself on the track of a serial killer. He has also written, produced, and directed two independent feature films. But scoring the role of Forbrick, the Lee helmsman in Greyhound, is his biggest opportunity so far.
“It’s definitely helped open doors,” Poliquin says. “My music is getting more attention thanks to the trailer, and now I’m finding more opportunities as an actor. I’m looking forward to what’s ahead.”
To learn more about actor Joseph Poliquin, check out his IMDb page, and follow him on Instagram.
The award-winning actor is also an awarded poet who also happens to make socially significant (and award-winning) documentary films, her creative energy an amalgamation of Seimetz, Sappho, and the incomparable Barbara Kopple. With coronavirus raging and masks a political hot-button, Hampton is unwavering in her support of women’s truths and resolute in evangelizing Black Lives Matter, raising a powerful voice in one arena and lending an eager ear in another. And make no mistake: While the camera clearly loves Meissa Hampton, the multi-hyphenate filmmaker is just as comfortable behind the lens as she is in front of it. A Social Cure, now streaming on Amazon Prime, tells the stories of five unique individuals as their lives intersect with the HIV epidemic in South Africa. Hampton wrote, directed, and produced this exceptional documentary film, refocusing attention on an issue that was cause célèbre in the United States during the 1980s, but which has been largely forgotten about in the decades since, due, in large part, to those keeping their HIV infection under control through effective treatment. But the global HIV pandemic persists, despite our deviated interest. Especially in South Africa, the epicenter of the HIV pandemic. Hampton skillfully reminds us that HIV remains a very real threat to millions of people, all while offering hope that we can slow the spread of this devastating disease – and promote positive behaviors – through social media.
The result is a film that spits science and speaks from the heart, connecting with audiences and critics alike. A Social Cure is a 2020 Official Selection at both the International New York Film Festival and the Vienna Independent Film Festival, the latter also recognizing Hampton with a coveted Best Director Nomination. While the attention is welcomed (A Social Cure also received Vienna’s Best Documentary Film Nomination), accolades aren’t why Hampton embarked on a journey that began nearly a decade ago. A Social Cure is all about educating the masses and saving lives, and doing so with outside-the-box thinking. Ironic then that a film about a pandemic would be released during a pandemic, with COVID-19 wreaking havoc on festival dates and sparking a global, social media debate about slowing the spread until science can engineer a cure. One can only wonder what Ryan White would make of matter, and how different the world might be today had smartphones been ubiquitous when the AIDS crisis was raging in America. Back then, Human Immunodeficiency Virus was considered by certain groups to be a plague on the gay community exacerbated by homophobia, much like the deaths of George Floyd and others today have been portrayed by large swaths of Americans as the heinous acts of a few bad apples, and not for what it is – the consequence of systemic racism passed down for generations. HIV, like many other social ills, disproportionately affects marginalized communities.
Meissa Hampton
Into this fray steps Meissa Hampton, no stranger to a creative world that still discriminates against women, and which still sees abusive, abhorrent, and criminal behavior by men in positions of power. You need look no further than Harvey Weinstein for proof positive that, while much has changed, the casting-couch culture is still very much alive and well in Hollywood, and that female actors are far too often objectified instead of respected for the intellectual capital they bring to the table. Hampton is doing her part to change that, too. The powerhouse filmmaker is a unicorn in a field that remains predominantly male driven, birthing A Social Cure in the face of long odds and then seeing it through, from inception to completion to distribution.
Which begs the question: How does an independent filmmaker swim upstream and get something so ambitious greenlit, much less streamed into our homes on demand? For Hampton, the juice comes from within – a place where, as beautifully stated in her own poetry, she finds her power, her courage, her wit…her spirit, her warrior, her faith.
A Resident Artist at MIT, Hampton exudes a confidence that comes from tapping into that hidden reservoir. She’s tasted rejection. She’s experienced all manner of roadblocks. There have been moments of doubt, when she questioned whether this film would ever see the light of day. Through it all she’s persevered, leaning into the adversity and leaning onto the things that have gotten her this far.
The things that make her Meissa Hampton.
To understand how A Social Cure got made is to first understand the woman at the throttle. And to do that, you need to try walking in her shoes. It’s easy for some to take the cynical view and vulgarly dismiss Meissa Hampton as a feminist, emphasizing the word as if it were akin to child predator or concentration camp Nazi. There are those who throw shade on her outspokenness over women’s issues, but that kind of rhetoric was Neanderthal way before she ever appeared on the scene. Today, it’s just fucked up. Hampton has a voice and isn’t afraid to use it, and you’d be surprised at how many people – in the United States of America…in the year of our Lord 2020 – still consider a strong, intelligent, opinionated woman to be off-putting at best, and something closer to a rabid, hormone-fueled monster with ovaries in the eyes of just about everyone else. But if you truly open your mind and walk in Meissa Hampton’s shoes – and frame it against the backdrop of her chosen profession – then you start to see the world in an entirely different light. Regardless of your willingness to go there, the fact is this: When it comes to the workplace, men have had it far better than their female counterparts for far too long, and inequities in pay still exist. It’s an ugly truth that rears its head time and again, either in the news or off the radar, depending on the Q Rating of the person involved.
“In some respects, the union has made great progress with respect to pay,” Hampton says. “But, like so many other issues, there remains much work to be done.”
Before you dismiss Hollywood’s gender pay gap as fake news, consider the kerfuffle over the pay disparity in Ridley Scott’s 2017 film, All the Money in the World.
To recap: Nine days of reshoots were needed to recreate Kevin Spacey’s scenes after the actor was accused of sexual misconduct and replaced with Christopher Plummer. With the cast and crew in the midst of reshoots in Rome and London, The Washington Post ran an article about pay disparities among the cast, specifically between Mark Wahlberg, the male lead, and Michelle Williams, his female co-star. Turns out that Wahlberg, who in August 2017 was named the highest-paid actor of the year by Forbes, with annual earnings of $68 million, was being paid $1.5 million. Williams, on the other hand, who has been nominated for four Oscars, five Golden Globes (winning two), a Primetime Emmy Award (winning for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie), a Screen Actors Guild Award (wining for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie) and a Tony, was paid an $80 per diem, which amounted to less than $1,000 total.
Oh, and like everyone else, she read it in the paper.
That’s just one high-profile example of the world in which Meissa Hampton walks. And that’s just pay inequity. Layer in the sexual harassment and sexual abuse that runs rampant in the film industry, and you begin to appreciate her outspokenness for what it is – Meissa Hampton exercising our most important freedom to effect change.
“Speaking out on women’s issues is near and dear to my heart,” she says. “Regardless of the consequence – and there have been professional ramifications – I am compelled to make my voice heard.”
Meissa Hampton
A Social Cure benefits from Hampton’s outspokenness. South Africa hosts the largest HIV epidemic in the world, a country where 19% of the South African adult population is living with a disease that disproportionately targets underprivileged and minority communities. Her film points out that, while as little as 11% of the population own home computers, cell phones have an astounding rate of penetration, putting connective technology in everyone’s hands. A Social Cure attempts to raise the profile of this pervasive connectivity, leveraging it to not only encourage HIV testing, but to de-stigmatize the disease.
“In exploring the amazing culture and landscape of South Africa, I found a resilient and radiant country facing the worst HIV epidemic in the world,” Hampton explains. “I also encountered emerging research on the use of social networks to affect positive social and behavioral change. When I saw how this research and a few dedicated people were changing their communities with the same tools we have at our disposal every day, I knew that this was an important story to share. I feel that it’s one not just relevant in South Africa, but its relevance extends around the world.”
Meissa Hampton was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, approximately 8,000 miles from South Africa, but her childhood helped set the course for her career as a creative. Active as an adolescent, she immersed herself in myriad sports, everything from swimming to skiing to fencing. She was on the basketball and softball teams. She biked. She hiked. She rock climbed. And, of course, she found the relentless gravitational pull to the performing arts impossible to ignore.
“I was very active, with a lot of interests,” Hampton says. “I was in a pre-Olympic camp for competitive swimming. I had a brief adolescent ambition to swim in the Summer Olympics and downhill ski in the Winter Games. I started classical piano and dance when I was six years old. I think that being well-rounded really helped me as an actor. When it comes to creating a character, I think it’s essential to have rounded life experience to draw upon.”
Meissa Hampton
With more than thirty-five independent film credits on her résumé, the creative foundation laid during Hampton’s youth has served her well. The darling of indie cinema, she most recently played the lead role of Babe in Marcia Haufrecht’s Full Moon & High Tide in the Ladies Room, taking home the Best Actress Award at both the 2019 Festival of Cinema NYC and the 2019 Austin Independent Film Festival. This film was of special significance to Hampton.
“Marcia is a very close friend of mine, and someone I admire greatly,” she says. “Marcia is one of the greatest actors that I have ever known, as well as one of the greatest acting coaches. She’s a phenomenal artist in every sense, and an extraordinary person with an extraordinary heart. This was her first time directing – she was 80-years-old at the time – and it was based on the script that she had written in the early 1970s.”
The premise of Full Moon & High Tide is as relevant today as it was back then. Babe, a waitress in the Village, gets pregnant. Her boyfriend, Hal gets scared. Two years into Roe v. Wade, homeless Babe must make a decision: Have the baby? Don’t have the baby?
“It is a film about abortion at a time when it was still very controversial,” Hampton says. “Women had new rights, but the focus wasn’t only on the political controversy in the wake of Roe v. Wade. At its heart, the film is about the deeply personal human experience of having to make that decision. The script has stood the test of time, and the current controversy feels as fresh and challenging as it did then.”
For Hampton, acting in Full Moon & High Tide was a thrill on multiple levels.
“That Marcia finally got to make it, and to make her directorial debut with it, was just a wonder to see. The fact that she asked me to play the lead character in this film, which she had cultivated for decades, was such an honor. It started out as an idea that Marcia had work-shopped at The Actor’s Studio, where it became a stage play that Shelley Winters directed, and so many great actors had played this role onstage. Marcia is so respected that she could have gotten anyone to play Babe when she finally got to make the film, but she asked me. I can’t tell you what an honor that is, that Marcia put her trust in me to lead this film. That was enough. The awards are definitely the beautiful, red maraschino cherries on top.”
Meissa Hampton
Hampton also knows how to keep things in perspective.
“When you win an award, that only happens because you are given a great role, with a great script, and you are working with a wonderful director and you have a great cast around you,” she says without hesitation. “That is the only way it happens. I can’t attribute any award that I’ve ever gotten to myself.”
Still, winning Best Actress at The Festival of Cinema NYC holds a special significance.
“That festival was really special. Some festivals have a way of really welcoming artists and showing them warmth, and providing a really beautiful showcase for their work in a supportive environment. That is the Festival of Cinema. It’s among my very favorite film festivals, and it was very gratifying to be recognized. And while it provides a measure of validation for what I’ve put into a performance, it also helps in other ways. Actors are in a perpetual state of searching for the next role. We endure a tremendous amount of rejection, which means there is so much uncertainty around our work schedule, so anything that can help open a door can make a difference.”
The elephant in the room: Meissa Hampton is a beautiful woman.
She is an accomplished model, with gigs ranging from Ralph Lauren to Tory Burch to L’Oreal, not to mention hosting turns on QVC and ShopNBC. Her eyes are hypnotic – good luck trying to look away. She doesn’t go out of her way to ‘be’ beautiful, that’s just part and parcel of the Meissa Hampton experience. At first blush, paying her a compliment can seem like dangerous business, like trying to tiptoe across a minefield without losing your legs, but Hampton appreciates the flattery. It’s all the other stuff that gets under her gorgeous skin. It’s also where she eagerly lends her voice, regardless of the consequence.
Meissa Hampton
“It’s obvious that women’s issues are very important to me, and I have been an advocate in that space for some time now,” Hampton says. “Shortly after we last spoke in 2015, I offered a petition to the Screen Actors Guild to address gender inequities that were fueling sexual harassment and assault against performers and members of the union. That was a difficult process for me. It had some negative ramifications on my career, and the union was not as responsive as I had hoped. I spent years continuing to beat on that door.”
The #MeToo and Time’s Up movements have made a significant impact in the areas of sexual harassment and assault, but Hampton wants more. She sees a broken system that needs fixing, and she has put her career on the line to make it so.
“I had started to be vocal in the industry years before #MeToo and Time’s Up,” Hampton says, “and I had already seen it hurt my career. I accepted that, because I knew that I was not comfortable playing by the rules that had been laid out before me at that point. Rules that include our sexualization on screen and advances from employers as a rite of passage. Oftentimes we’re not really even clear on those rules until we are well into our careers, having invested in our educations and career development and we don’t have a lot of options at that point – which is part of why we are so vulnerable. Play the game or forego your career – your dream. We’re freelancers. We don’t have a human resources department behind us. We don’t have any job security whatsoever, and we’re in a very competitive business. We are highly replaceable. We have no one to tell, except our union, whose purpose is to protect its members. They’ve done a wonderful job with wages, but they are missing the mark on this issue.”
Hampton pauses.
“When I initially opened up that petition, I asked specifically that a special committee be formed to begin to address these issues, but at that time there was no response. Several years later, the Weinstein story broke. I called back and said, ‘How about now?’ To my surprise, I’ve become even more of an issue for them, because this is something that I had brought to them years before and they had not addressed it at that time. So I was even more of a stain, and something that they needed to brush under the carpet, so to speak.”
Meissa Hampton
If Hampton is being blacklisted, she doesn’t flinch.
“It has been very detrimental to my career, but I am not sorry for one second,” she says. “It’s only made that issue closer to my heart, and more important to me. It’s also made me understand just how important it is that we use our voices, and that we speak to these issues. That’s why I wrote an article that was featured in The Guardian. I had made some powerful enemies up to that point, but that article made me a few powerful friends. I will continue to raise awareness about those issues and try to turn the tide. It’s not just about changing policies and laws, which are an essential first step. More fundamentally, it’s so often about changing our culture.”
Despite the uphill battle, Hampton sees progress. And hope.
“It’s so important how we are portraying women, but what goes on behind the camera in this industry is reflected on the camera. You can see this in the statistics about female nudity. More and more attention has been coming to that in the past couple of years, and it just swells my heart. It’s wonderful to see. But we do have to keep going. There is still the issue of not enough women at the helm of films, telling our stories in our way. I will continue to advocate for that. I’m really excited to see all of the changes underway in our industry. There’s still a long way to go, so I’m going to keep using my voice to raise awareness.”
Meissa Hampton was a struggling young artist before she scraped together the funds to study at Brooklyn College, where she received a Ford Scholarship and graduated with honors. Her next stop was the prestigious Stella Adler Studio of Acting, eventually continuing studies at Harvard and MIT. She studied voice and movement at studios and privately in NYC, and seems most affectionate about her studies of Comedy and Improv with the Upright Citizens Brigade. She seems to be known for having a light touch with serious issues and an ability to bridge drama and comedy seamlessly. While a career in front of the lens seemed predestined, she was fascinated by the filmmaking process.
“I initially got into acting as a film student,” Hampton says. “But I also learned that film school is very expensive [laughs]. It takes a lot of money to make the film just to get into film school, let alone pay for film school. Acting was more immediately accessible, and not only did I find I adored the work, the process of giving voice to my characters, it allowed me to gain valuable experience as a filmmaker, just from a different perspective. Every time I was on a set I did my very best to understand everyone’s role and their contributions. If there was an opportunity to help someone – working with sound or light, for example – then I would jump in and learn more about that person’s contribution to the process.”
Meissa Hampton
Which brings us back to A Social Cure.
“I started my production company, OPoS [One Pair of Shoes], with the intention of focusing on meaningful projects. There are so many issues that I would love to be able to tackle in my lifetime, but the reality is that I’ll probably only get the chance to deal with a few of them. I felt that HIV/AIDS was starting to lose focus at the most crucial point in its history, because we are so close to a future free of this terrible disease. We’re really starting to harness the capability of ARVs (Antiretroviral medications), which not only helps facilitate long, healthy lives in people who suffer from HIV/AIDS, but also reduces the likelihood of transmission of the disease. The goal is to normalize the HIV healthcare, especially testing and pursuant treatment, stripping it of stigma and approaching it like any other healthcare issue, like diabetes or hear disease. If diagnose and you take your medication daily, you can live a normal life with average longevity, but most importantly – ARV medications can lower the levels of HI Virus in your system to where they are undetectable and you can no longer transmit the disease. Normalizing testing and treatment can help us realize a future free from HIV – one of modern history’s deadliest pandemics.
“Part of accomplishing this is eliminating the stigma surrounding HIV in all cultures. The stigma prevents us from getting tested, because we don’t want to be the one with HIV. We don’t want to be the one who’s perceived as being immoral, or dirty, or whatever the case might be. Homophobia has also perpetuated this despite the fact that globally, HIV is overwhelmingly a heterosexual disease. And this is where media comes into play. It has an extraordinary way of changing our minds about issues. There is a connection that occurs between the audience and the individuals onscreen, and it creates heroes. We see the person on the screen differently than if we’d passed them on the street.”
As Hampton speaks, the passion in her voice is impossible to ignore. She expresses the need to make medication available to those who can’t afford it, and she is convinced that this film, coupled with the use of existing technology, can become a medium for change.
Meissa Hampton
“HIV/AIDS remains the one of history’s most lethal pandemics,” Hampton says. “And Africa remains the epicenter of the disease, where as many as one in five people – twenty percent – are infected with HIV. And if you go into some of the low-income communities, it’s as much as half of the population. That’s an extraordinary amount of people living with HIV. Continent-wide, that translates into an estimated 23 million people who are currently HIV-positive.”
Which begs the question: Was tackling such heavy subject matter difficult to keep in the proper perspective?
“When I set out to make this film, I wanted to make sure that it had an uplifting message and that it didn’t wallow in despair. A lot of documentaries have a way of making you feel horrible, because you see these great tragedies but not a lot of hope. You finish watching, and you’re just wrenched inside. I wanted this film to be different. I wanted to look at a community that has this incredible problem and focus on their resilience.
“During my time in South Africa, I discovered a cultural and social response to the epidemic that I believe can serve as an example to the rest of the world. I was privileged to get to connect with some of the most heroic and buoyant people I’ve ever known. They were courageous and generous enough to share their most personal and optimistic stories of living with HIV, stories that normalize and humanize the HIV pandemic.”
So much has changed since the start of 2020. The coronavirus pandemic rages on. Social distancing is forever a part of the lexicon. Masks are a political hot button. Bad cops continue to kill people of color. The U.S. seems to be anything but united, and on the verge of ripping apart at the seams. In the eyes of many, Hampton included, President Trump is enjoying every minute of it, starring in his own made-for-TV role: The Divider in Chief.
“Our president has had us a tailspin for three years,” she says. “It’s like a bad dream, and we’re just now starting to rub the sleep out of our eyes. It’s a difficult time in our country’s history. What are we going to do, and how are we going to move forward? Who are we now? Who are we going to become? I don’t know how you can be a woman, and have any self-respect, and not be disgusted by Trump and his behavior. That’s my opinion.”
Meissa Hampton
Hampton has watched the Democratic primary season with great interest.
“We’re were mocking the Republicans four years ago,” she says. “A friend joked with me during the previous election that we were watching the Republican Party implode. It seems that the election in fact fortified it, and it’s been the Democratic Party that appears to be imploding. At best we’ll look forward to reform and new politics.”
Like many on both sides, Hampton can feel the divide growing wider, and the anger growing more intense.
“Politics have polarized us so much,” she says. “The anger and disgust that I felt during the last election was so palpable to me. I was glued to my TV for two years, and then I had to shut off and deal with my own personal life. I had to figure out how would I engage with this new world socially, culturally, and politically. We have to be realistic, and we have to learn to look at things from other people’s perspectives. I do know that to be absolutely true.”
Hampton sees blame on both sides.
“We’ve gone too far in alienating people whose opinions are different than ours. I think this is something that we really need to work on. We need to understand how other people can feel disenfranchised, even if we think that they don’t have anything to be upset or angry about. We have to start listening more and talking less. So in that way, I’m trying to not alienate people by what I say. I think, sometimes, we as people with more liberal ideas, we have a way of sounding – and even feeling – a little superior.”
Is she happy with the Democratic nominee for president?
“I was hoping that Elizabeth Warren would have gotten the Democratic nomination, because I think that she is the real thing,” Hampton says. “We are desperate for the truth. It’s just gotten so clouded that I don’t think any of us know for sure. I feel like that we need someone who we can inherently trust, and someone that is genuine. I really felt like Elizabeth Warren was that candidate. I appreciated her tenacity her intelligence and her experience, and I felt like she could step in to the role of president and really get things done. I do feel that Joe Biden is our best hope of getting Trump out of office, so hopefully we have a candidate that will swing the election in the Democrats favor in November.”
Meissa Hampton has an amazing new gig since the last time we talked.
“Motherhood,” she says with a smile. “My son is the light of my life. He’s the reason for everything. It’s definitely complicated being a working mother, especially in this industry, where you are required to be available for 12 hour days on short notice. Unless you are at a certain level of clout where you can make certain demands, It’s difficult in that way. It’s definitely a delicate balance, but I wouldn’t trade a moment of it. You cherish the time that you do have with your child.
Meissa Hampton
“I think my continued interest in advocating for gender equality across the board is now motivated by my son. I think the future is complicated for young men, especially when it comes to navigating new roles. On the flip-side of that, I also think that it’s going to be easier for young people to enter a new world in which they understand equality from its roots, and hopefully won’t have to unbind themselves from any sort of instilled cultural ideals that existed previously.”
A Social Cure continues to stream on Amazon Prime, and Meissa Hampton couldn’t be more proud. It’s been a long journey, and one that has consumed years of her life. It’s a time investment she would make all over again.
“The film is doing really well. It’s completion took longer than I thought it would. Having a child in the mix had something to do with it. Then there were the other projects that came up along the way. Also, when you are doing a social issue project, money is always an issue. I’ve had to take side jobs in order to fund that project, which affected part of the scheduling. “Because so much time elapsed from start to finish, we had to work on keeping the content relevant. Over time, the target moves a bit as we change and evolve socially. Different messages become more critical, more urgent, more timely, and other ones sort of fade into the background. The important thing about this film is that the message about HIV needed to come to the forefront of our minds again. It’s time had passed with respect to it being the disease du jour, and it had become somewhat passé. We needed to bring it back into focus. I think we’ve done that.”
Meissa Hampton – Web and Socials
https://www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/the_meissa_hampton_interview2.png400600Michael McClellanhttps://www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/FifteenMinutesWith_NewLogoPrototype.pngMichael McClellan2020-07-20 21:32:432020-07-27 16:57:25Meissa Hampton – Principled Actor
