We’re excited to introduce you to a young married couple in the world of film and entertainment, Phillip Abraham and Leah Bateman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with them below.
Thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One of the things we most admire about independent filmmakers is their ability to diverge from the industry standard. Is there something that you differs from the industry standard?
PHILLIP: Leah and I started working together when the pandemic hit and we had nothing to do but pull the trigger on that feature film idea I’d been tossing around for a while. She’s a brilliant singer, we’re both actors, and I’m kind of a Swiss Army knife of film production skills. So we decided to just make this film – a musical drama called WHERE WERE YOU – ourselves.
Most actors in Hollywood work tirelessly to set themselves apart as individuals, but Leah and I found that, after we got married, our niche was “that young married couple”. Our relationship stood out. As we started writing this film, which is inspired by our own lives, the scenes came from continued improvisation as we ran the lines, writing them on paper after they’d already been performed a dozen times.
LEAH: Something that we do differently on set, is we like to cook homemade meals for people. We host a lot in general, and so when we were making our movie, we wanted for people to feel loved and cared for.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
PHILLIP: I think we got really lucky. Two pure artists are often discouraged from marrying each other because, well, someone has to pay the bills, right? When we got married, I didn’t have a dollar to my name (the wedding expenses were the camel that broke the straws’s back). But God provided through friends and mentors who came out of the wood works, offering me several jobs that got us through the first year of marriage AND the pandemic.
And as it turns out, there are major benefits to a couple of passionate creatives marrying each other.
Film and TV productions are often hard-pressed to find a well-rounded writer who can write women and men, physical conflict and social drama, and plot and character while actually saying something meaningful. That’s why producers will often run their script through two, three, five, seven different writers before going into production. But that approach makes a script feel more like seven different kingdoms (or queendoms), one conquering another until time runs out and the director has to figure out how to make something out of all these conflicting voices.
For that reason, I think Leah’s and my collaborative nature as husband and wife has really seemed to open a lot of doors for us. Hiring a couple with very different perspectives and yet a mutual respect for each other and the creative process is a big need in the writer’s room that we didn’t even realize was there until we did our own stuff and started drawing attention. Our work has bled into other productions; we’ve recently finished our work as a writing team on a new series for Angel Studios, which goes into production this Fall.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
LEAH: I want to make people feel understood and less alone – to be comfortable talking about the sad things. Entertainment can get caught up in fairytales a lot, but I want to create stuff that feels authentic. Art is supposed to make people feel seen, and that’s not pretty all the time. I think that’s why I’m passionate about writing songs about mental health, addiction or toxic relationships because that’s something you don’t often lead with.
PHILLIP: Our musical, WHERE WERE YOU, has become a very good flagship project for us because it’s ultimately about what brought us together and (spoiler) what kept us together. You don’t know how things will work out when you commit to someone. At worst, when things start to hurt, or you have to give up a part of yourself you didn’t think you ever would, that begins to teach you about what truly matters.
But there’s also a chance that, when you choose marriage and family over career, wealth, and fame, you’ll be better off both personally and professionally. That’s been true for us, and it has become our message: You don’t have to choose between the person you love and the thing you love to do.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
PHILLIP: I don’t think there is such a thing as a non-creative person – just a person whose creativity has not been fostered.
When we say, “you don’t have to choose between the person you love and the thing you love to do”, that implies that you know what you love to do. In Hollywood, so many artists laser-focus in on a grand vision of success that ends up taking far more than it gives. But other people – those “non-creatives” – made a choice a long time ago to abandon their artistic side and choose that which is practical.
I think the sweet spot is to find a way for your creativity to fuel the opportunities in front of you. You may not get exactly what you aimed for (Leah and I both had other plans than screenwriting) but you will find far more fulfillment than believing the lie that your creativity doesn’t deserve to be fostered. The truth is that your creative inclinations are a HUGE part of who you are, and if you don’t know who you are as an artists, you might not know who you are at all.
LEAH: I have a lot of friends who have discouraged me from continuing down this path. From the outside, my husband’s and my decisions look foolish. But I resent the notion that maturing or growing up is giving up on the things you care about. Something that really stuck with me is a quote by Jim Carey, who said something like, “You can fail at the things you don’t love, so you might as well pursue your passion.” Over the pandemic, I actually went to school for coding and UX design, and I realized fairly quickly that giving up the things I loved felt like a much higher price than I initially thought.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.PhillipAbraham.com
- Instagram: leah_angelica and phillip_abraham
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/phillip-abraham-03525714/
Image Credits
Photo credit: Phillip Abraham (portrait in front of grey sheet, white background, Leah elf, Leah in mirror), Justin Little (P&L looking down at sunset, Phillip looking up with smirk), Joshua Bailey (by the cemetery) Joe Genuino (w/ the electric piano)