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

Abby, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

So many come to mind but the one that sticks out the most is the short film that I wrote during a very difficult time. It’s called Trying. It’s about pregnancy and infertility. I was healing from a loss and the script came to me in the middle of the night. I just needed to purge. As an actor, art seems to be the place where I can grieve and heal. Once I had it on paper, I asked my brilliant friend Emily Alpren if she would direct it. We are doing the festival circuit now and the conversations, tears, stories, vulnerability that this movie has created has really taken my breath away. It is also the first movie I have written and actually filmed. The community that came together to help bring this project to life still makes my heart flutter.

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.

I am an actor and most recently I have been focusing more on writing. I’ve been blessed with an exciting and varied career. I’ve gotten to work on award winning tv shows, brilliant feature films and really great short films. Sometimes I have to pinch myself when I think that this little sick kid from rural Kentucky actually got to make it happen in acting. I grew up between Kentucky and Ohio always knowing that I wanted a career in the arts. But, when I turned 11 I was injured playing soccer. It seemed minor at first but the pain wouldn’t go away and the injury just kept getting worse rather than healing. After visiting countless doctors and months of tests I finally received a diagnosis of RSD. The minor injury had triggered a chronic and incurable nerve pain disease. I spent a major portion of the next 8 years in children’s hospitals. Movies, imagination, painting, and writing are what really kept me alive during those very dark years. I don’t talk about that experience much because of the strain it put on my family, but I do think that that experience gave me the courage to eventually pursue acting with all my heart. When I was 19 my disease went into remission and I finally felt strong enough to make the move to New York City and pursue my dreams of acting. It was the best move of my life; I swear I had angels in that city. After years in NYC I moved to LA for a pilot season and fell in love with the weather and the new opportunities. LA was a very different city to break into but I just couldn’t leave. I didn’t work for over a year after moving. But I kept showing up and doing the work and going to classes and auditioning. This career is mostly full of slow burns and close calls. I just know for me, I have to be an actor. I have to be in motion of acting. I believe it’s my calling. There’s never been anything else I’ve wanted to do. Moving forward I’m excited about writing stories and finding brilliant teams to create movies with.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think this is a perfectly timed question. It is important for a society to support the arts and to ensure that its children are introduced to the arts at a young age . Unfortunately there just isn’t enough funding for school art programs today, and the programs that do exist are always the first to go when the money gets tight. Art is the outlet for children that don’t resonate with athletics or academics and it is vitally important for a rich and meaningful culture . Those art classes, music rooms and drama clubs are where certain children thrive. Where they find their people and often times their purpose. I am a firm believer that the arts are just as important as SAT scores, GPA’s and standardized testing designations and they should be invested in accordingly. The writers in Hollywood have finally gotten a fair contract after five months of refusing to work without being paid fairly for it. I am hoping that by the time this article comes out, SAG/Aftra will also have a fair contract in place for it’s actors! I think in the past five months we’ve all seen a tremendously inspiring solidarity amongst actors, writers, crew and the appreciators of art. This strike has been so hard on all of us, but has really proven how our community of artists and people in the creative fields support one another. We need each other. And the arts are worth investing in and our artists are worth treating fairly for the beauty they produce. It is art that helps us make sense of a world that too often doesn’t make sense.These things are worth investing money in and they are certainly worth encouraging our children to get involved in.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to create. To be fortunate enough to create for the rest of my life.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: AbbyWathen
• Facebook: AbbyWathen

Image Credits
Amanda Rowan