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

Caroline, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

I grew up watching movies since i was 3-4 years old. I would go to the movie theatre every week with my grandmother or my mom. Initially i thought the characters were real, but then someone told me they were actually actors. I was so happy, i knew that’s what i wanted to be too.
But then i went to school and for a minute i would say i wanted to be a doctor, it felt like an important thing to do in life. In second grade i was in a school show. It was a school play about numbers, i was playing number 7. I loved it and i got good feedback, i got an award or something. In middle school i started dancing in a program for children and teenagers so since then i’ve always been on stage one way or another. I think it’s important to mention my primary and middle school was a school of music. I studied piano for 7 years, i didn’t like it. I learned to read music from a very young age though, which proved a gift later in life.
The moment i knew for sure i will be an actress happened in high school. It was a boring day at school, like they all were. Until we were called to the auditorium where there was an actor from the local theatre who came to “test” all of us to see who could be an actor. By that time i had fully grasped i was a Black girl in a white country. There were no Black actors, so i completely forgot about my initial dream.
So i sat in the back of the auditorium waiting for the event to be over. The actor gave us a comedic scene from a famous play. In the scene the scorned woman confronted her cheating lover and threatened to burn his face with vitriol. I watched for a very long time my colleagues doing that scene and i got more and more annoyed with what i saw. I felt the frustration of the character growing in me, like she was whispering in my ear “Nah, that’s not how it was”. It also annoyed me that no one was really paying attention or engaging, they were waiting for their turn so they can get over with it.
Eventually my turn came. I took the scene and did what i felt was right, i chased my colleague who played the lover like there was no tomorrow. The auditorium started laughing and applauding, suddenly no one was bored, suddenly everyone was cheering for one of us – the boys for him, the girls for me. It felt amazing, it felt right. When the event was over the actor approached me and said “You should be an actress”. I smiled and said “Yeah, sure”. In my head i said “And how am i gonna do that here?!”. But what i felt doing that scene, the feeling i had from the audience’s reaction and the confirmation from the actor stayed with me.
So in our last year of high school when our main teacher asked the class what do we want to do after we graduate, i said i wanted to be an actress. The whole class laughed. The teacher then said something that changed my life: “Caroline, don’t mind them, you are a fighter. If you want to be an actress, you will be an actress.”
And indeed i became the first Black actress in Romania. And the first Black actress employed by The National Theatre of Romania. And later i got a scholarship in the US and then became the first Black Romanian actress member of the Equity Union (AEA) for a while.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started my career working as a dancer in the musical theatre in my home town. I was working with a great director who in one show gave me a “part”. I was crossing the stage during an acting scene and i had to react at one line from one of the actors. And every show i was impressed with the big reaction the audience had at my moment.
The musical theatre was often invited to The National TV Network to film for some entertainment shows. A casting director saw me there and invited me to audition for a French movie shooting in Romania (Natures Mortes). I booked a part. After the shoot the director wanted to have a conversation with me and asked me if i want to be an actress and why am i not going to the acting school if i do. I told him it was too late, i was already a dancer (a model and singer sometimes). He laughed and said “Late? It’s never too late, but for you this is just the beginning. And everything else you’re doing is only going to help.”
I took that conversation seriously and with the money i made from the film i started to take acting lessons with a very good actor and teacher. The next year i got into the National University of Theatre and Film of Romania (UNATC). I was the first Black student they ever had.
The day after my graduation one of my classmates called me and demanded i would go to an audition at The National Theatre of Romania. After i auditioned i found out the show was “Chicago” and it was produced by a Spanish company. I booked it and the theatre hired me. It was a real opportunity as there were no other Black actresses in Romania and the production definitely wanted diversity in the cast. There were also very few actresses who could professionally sing and dance. I stayed in the show for its entire 3 years run while doing film, TV, commercials and voice over work, but also working in many other theatre projects.
The moment of my early career i am most proud of was when after 4 years of steady work i realized that was not enough for me, i wanted more. Being the first Black actress in the country gave me a lot of opportunities, but it also reduced me to a certain type of parts. I felt like i was stereotyped into the “special”, “exotic” category. I realized i didn’t even know if i was good or not, i felt like i was always the eccentricity of one director or another to see how would the project look if a certain character was Black. Except Tituba in “The Crucible” i only played characters originally wrote as white.
So while working in “The Crucible” with an American director i learned about a chance to audition for a program that offered scholarships for grad school in the US, URTA. I went to the audition in New York, immediately fell deeply in love with the city, had a great audition, got 7 offers and chose the one that seemed the best at the moment.
After i graduated i moved to NYC and started working in theatre, film and TV. A few years after i started teaching too. I don’t know if teaching acting for film at NYFA or my old love for film made me start writing film. But i did start and many failed scripts after i went to film school and learned i really love every aspect of making a movie. My graduation short film “Special Needs” was written, directed, edited and produced by me in some very challenging conditions with most people telling me i won’t be able to do what i ended up doing.
Now i am again at the beginning of a new journey. I have several scripts i am working on, one is already in pre-production waiting for that/a financing to come through, others are in development looking for that funding or development grant to allow me to fully focus on them.
In my American acting career the moments i am most proud of are being (at that moment) one of the few actresses playing Sophie in “Ruined”, being one of the few Black actresses to play Petra Von Kant in “The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant” and playing an astronaut (Pleskun) in the Nickelodeon TV series “Alien Dawn”. There are so very few Black women astronauts characters in films or TV, it felt important and an honor to be able to portray one.
But my most proud and surprising moment recently is becoming an activist in 2020 and developing a connection between art and activism. In 2022 i organized a full day event for Black women by Black women on “International Women’s Day”, It brought together Black women artists (photographers, painters, dancers, actors) and activists in a celebration of Black life and culture. At the end of the day i directed a staged reading created as an multimedia installation on texts from well known books by Black women writers, performed by Black actresses and activists. It was a special day and a turning point in my career.
Also in 2022 i was part of an online conference for a university in Italy which became part of a published book “Human Rights: interdisciplinary dialogues” which turned me into a published author.
Writing is something i always knew i will do at some point in my life. When i was in high school, frustrated with the many books we were supposed to read, i used to tell my colleagues, as a joke “One day i’m gonna write a book so people will have to read me for class.” But deep inside i knew it was more than a joke. And these days my work on my first book as a sole author has begun.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I want to tell beautiful stories of magical human encounters in our journey toward our common goal: building a world that is good for all of us. I am fascinated how people seem to randomly enter and exit each other’s life at the exact right time when it’s needed for our journey in order to move forward. How the moment you take the first step towards the goal or mission that is actually your life, the reason you are here, every single person or thing falls rights into place.
I want to create visual experiences that bring back catharsis in our lives, the moment that moves you so deeply and profoundly that you have no chance but to be enlightened. And i want to do that by using as many multimedia elements as possible in unexpected and visionary ways.
I want my movies to be a social event, a memorable interactive experience that creates change and inspires innovation and growth. I want my books to be empowering stories of resilience and joy, told in an unique, personal way that allows the readers to see through my eyes, through my lived experience.
My mission is a constant reminder of the resilience of life, the triumph of love and joy and light over darkness, the phenomenal energy of life that connects all of us even if we are taught to ignore it. “In the end there is light in the darkness” or “post tenebras lux” are quotes i read after i built my life on these inner beliefs and i was glad to find confirmation in them.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

The “5 year plan” or any specific step by step plan ahead. In my experience i took one step and then i let things happen organically. I allowed myself to arrive creatively where i am right now without pushing myself to move forward. I lived every artistic experience fully until it triggered the next one, i waited until i organically felt what i was doing was not enough anymore and then looked in front of me where the next step was patiently waiting for me. I think in the non creative fields a structured plan is mandatory. I worked some non creative jobs and i learned how important planning ahead is in that type of work.
But that’s what i love about creative work: the goal, the mission builds the plan and then it changes it and adapts it to its needs. In film you have to create the entire film in detail before you even start pitching it, you have an entire picture before you start editing it and still everything changes, develops, evolves, transforms while you’re working on it. It becomes its own entity. Whenever i am writing something there is a moment when the story takes over, when it magically becomes its own thing, everything falls right into place. It literally feels like it doesn’t belong to me anymore, like it has a life of its own.
I guess the challenge of creative work is to trust the creative moment, to allow inspiration to flow organically, to trust that a strong or truthful or clear goal or mission is gonna build the best plan possible, I think our work is more connected to faith than we are taught in schools.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://carolinegombe.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolinegombe/
• Facebook: @CarolineGombé
• Linkedin: Caroline Gombé
• Youtube: @carolinegombe1
• Other: IG group: @blackwomxnsmarch

Image Credits

Main photo: Laura Brett
Additional photos: Cornel Lazia, Sean Waltrous, Edmar Flores