We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Samia Mounts. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Samia below.

Samia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

I took a huge risk, both professionally and personally, by moving to LA in the fall of 2022. It’s both the greatest thing I’ve ever done for myself and the scariest.

By 2019, I had spent over a decade grinding it out as an actor and singer in New York City, which left me broke, exhausted, and very ready for more access to nature and a higher quality of life. So I moved to Colorado with my husband for his job as an army musician. (He shreds for Uncle Sam. Yes, I’m very proud of him.) My plan was to build a bicoastal professional life from my home base in Colorado Springs, but of course, the pandemic came along with a baseball bat and knocked that dream clear out of the stadium.

I gotta say, Colorado is a fabulous place to ride out a global plague – lots of fresh, mountain air and hiking trails galore. I was very grateful to be there, and even more grateful for my husband’s stable military salary. As an actor and a musician, we were in two of the most vulnerable groups during that time, and my husband’s service girded us against the worst of the economic impacts on our industry.

Our original plan was for him to complete one four-year army contract, and then we would move to LA together. I had wanted to move here since 2013, and after two and a half years cooped up in Colorado, I was ready to compete in a major market again. But my husband had grown to love the security and stability of his army gig. He wanted to re-enlist. For another six years.

It was a really hard time for both of us. I wanted badly to stay near him, but I knew the kind of sacrifice being a military spouse required. My mom followed my dad around the world for his Air Force career, and her own career was permanently stunted as a result. She started as a teacher, and she had the ambition, skill, and smarts to become a school district superintendent. Instead, she retired as an assistant principal.

I didn’t want that for myself. I wanted the Big Time Career. I always have.

In the summer of 2022, I made the difficult decision to move to LA on my own…away from my husband, who I love dearly, and the ease and security of our life together. I traded in a much lower cost of living for the lavishness of Los Angeles – all on the wild belief that I had the talent and experience to find reps and book work in the largest actor market in the world. It was scary as hell, and an emotional roller coaster.

Thankfully, so far, it’s been a smart risk. I was able to put together an amazing team of reps right off the bat, thanks to my years of hustling in New York, and I’ve already begun booking some very exciting video game and animation work – nothing I can talk about yet, but stay tuned! With the strikes happening now, my on-camera ambitions are stalled, along with everyone else’s, but most voice acting work is not part of the contract we are striking over.

My husband and I went through some very dark months. For a while, neither of us thought we were going to make it. But we eventually found our way to compassion and forgiveness for each other – and in the end, we were able to strengthen the deep love we share. We will have to be long distance for a while, which is tough – we miss each other so much. But he is so proud of me for following my dreams, and I’m proud of him for using his talent to serve our country while providing a stable foundation for our future. It’s amazing to have a partner who supports me so profoundly, and now that I’m pursuing my dreams full tilt again, I feel more alive than I have in years.

Samia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My career is pretty multifaceted, but I’m predominantly an actor, singer and writer. I have a background in musical theatre and voice acting, and in addition to recording voice-over and session singing from my home studio, I do performance capture for video games, as well as stage acting and on-camera acting. I also produce and direct vocals for children’s content projects, and I occasional cast both voice-over and on-camera commercial projects. As a writer, I’ve published a young adult novel called Frunk the Skunk, and I’ve written personal essays about dating and relationships for Refinery29, the Huffington Post, and OpenLove101. When you work in entertainment, diversifying your skill sets is the key to stability – and longevity.

I do a lot, but voice acting is my bread and butter. I got my start in voice-over as a teenager growing up on a military base in Seoul, Korea. I’m very aware of how unusual that sounds, haha, you can pause and take a moment to let it sink in. :)

I had always performed in school and community plays and musicals, and at age 13, I was scouted to provide singing voices for on-camera talent in a couple of children’s TV shows. From there, I started working with an agent named Harry Lim – he’s still in business today as the top talent agent for foreign actors in Seoul. Back then, he was a one-man operation, and he pretty much worked out of his car. That dude was a hustler and a half! He would pick me up at the gate to the military base every day after school and chauffeur me around to different studios, where I would record all kinds of voice-over and singing projects. I was extremely fortunate to get this kind of on-the-job training so young. It’s a rare and wonderful opportunity, for which I’m deeply grateful.

I returned to Seoul to work many times as an adult, and by the time I moved to New York to pursue a career in musical theatre in 2008, I definitely had my 10,000 hours logged in recording studios. Through all of the ups and downs of my career in the arts, voice acting has kept me housed and relatively stable, and it’s all because of my time in Korea. I have tremendous love for the people of Korea, and for the city of Seoul. It’s the closest thing this military brat has to a hometown. I owe Korea so much.

Because I grew up as a queer/genderqueer mixed-race kid in a foreign country – a true third culture kid if ever there was one – I have an unconventional perspective on the world and on our culture, and I think that allows me to show up in my career and my communities in a more wholehearted way, with more empathy and a wider perspective than your average American. I’m really proud of that. I’m also very determined to help other people widen their capacity for compassion and non-judgement.

To that end, I’m currently developing a podcast called closet/ed, in which people who look “normal” on the outside, but are privately living in very unconventional ways, are given a safe space to tell their stories. Everyone is more than meets the eye, and too many people feel they have to hide their truth in order to survive in this society. My feeling is, if everyone came out of their various closets all at once, we’d collectively discover that pretty much everyone is a freak – and that that is the true normal.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

We are currently in the middle of the Great Double Hollywood Strike of 2023, so the idea of how society can better support artists and creatives has been top of mind for me lately.

There’s this newer idea in our society that music and storytelling should be free or cheap, with whole worlds of music, film and television shows accessible with a small monthly subscription fee to a streaming service. I’m here to tell you this is not sustainable, and it is not fair to artists. It allows corporations and tech companies to grow rich while exploiting the artistic content that gives them a product to sell, and every artist, across all arts industries, is suffering as result.

Musicians can no longer make money off of their recorded music, thanks to streaming. The only way to make money as a musician anymore is to tour endlessly, and that’s partly why you see legendary artists like Frankie Valli touring well into their 80s. If you’ve never been on tour, it’s not nearly as glamorous as it looks from the outside. It’s a hard life, especially for the work-a-day musicians who make up A-list artists’ backing bands. You can be like Lisa Fischer, performing for years with acts like the Rolling Stones and Tina Turner, and still not have any kind of financial stability when the gigs dry up.

Actors and writers are in the same boat. We used to be able to live off of residuals during lean times, but streaming platforms have skated by with contracts that don’t reflect their current dominance in the television and film markets. You can be a series regular on a hit show like Orange is the New Black and actually lose money on the gig because of how exploitative these contracts are. Writers have seen their job opportunities shrink from 26-episode seasons that came back year after to year, to 6-8 episode limited series that barely provide enough to pay rent for a couple of months.

We are treated as if we are expendable and easily replaced, even though we are literally the secret ingredient that makes audiences keep coming back for more.

The audiences that love our work can help by actually buying music, especially if you can buy it directly from the artist. My music, for example, can be streamed on Spotify, or you can purchase the tracks directly from me on my music website, www.samiaxi.com. Most indie bands have a way for fans to directly purchase their records, either digitally or on vinyl.

Audiences can support actors and writers by letting the studios and streamers know that they won’t stand for the exploitation of creative talent. Share information about the strikes. Send emails to the companies and post on social media.

And here’s a big thing everyone can do – write your elected representatives asking them to support legislation making it illegal for companies to use AI-generated content that uses our past work, voices, and likenesses as source material without our consent or any financial compensation. Art cannot be created by computers. Art can only be generated by AI by literally stealing and repurposing pieces of existing work by real, human artists.

I know that audiences care about the welfare of artists, and collectively, our voices have the power to change these industries for the better.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I’d known about the wonderfully warm, welcoming voice-over community that I’ve found since moving to LA. Voice-over is a lonely vocation. We spend most of our time at home in our booths, talking to ourselves. Sometimes, we get the treat of recording in a studio, and very, very rarely, we get to actually work with other actors.

But where there are people, there are community-builders and leaders, like Carin Gilfry and Tim Friedlander of NAVA (navavoices.org) and J. Michael Collins and Anna Collins, who own and run VO Atlanta and the OneVoice Conference. I wish I’d known about these dope conferences that I could’ve been attending this whole time, meeting friends and colleagues and creating lasting bonds. I wish I’d gotten more involved with the community earlier in my career, instead of being such an obstinate little lone wolf!

We need each other to stay sane in this business and in this world. If you feel isolated, whatever your industry or you passion, I promise you there is a loving community waiting for you to show up at an event. Find one and go!

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.samiamounts.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/samia.mounts
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/samia.mounts.actor/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samia-mounts-52039913b/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/samiamounts
• Other: Original Music: https://www.samiaxi.com

Image Credits
Cameron Radicé Pavel Antonov Manuela Rana Robert Evans