We recently connected with Ashanti Harris and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ashanti, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on is Tough Love: Atlanta. Reason being is because it’s all about love and relationships and I am most definitely a lover girl. This show navigates millennial relationships through life and love. The different kinds of relationships and how these different men and women go about love in their life. As I stated, I am a lover girl so it meant a lot to me to work on a project that shows the real depths of the differences in relationships. The ups, the downs, the hurt, the happiness, the disappointments, the assumptions, everything. It resonates because I feel that at some point in my life I have been every one of the characters. I’ve definitely had my share of heartbreaks and sometimes I’ve been the heartbreaker. Watching Tough Love from the start in New York, to Tough Love: LA, and now Tough Love: Atlanta will absolutely have you looking inward at yourself and questioning yourself, your motives, how you move, how you think, why you think a certain way in love and it can lead to growth. You may find yourself saying, “Wow, I don’t like Iesha!”, then realize you see yourself in Iesha and now you need to force yourself to grow out of whatever it is that you don’t like about her. Now I know what I want and learning how to say no to things I don’t want and standing firm on what I deserve and shows like Tough Love have a lot to do with that growth.

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?

Well let’s see. I started out as a dancer and always wanted to see myself on the big shows and music videos as a dancer thinking to myself “I can do that!”. Once I got to college, I learned that you could actually be an extra on big movie sets and I was intrigued! As soon as I graduated in 2017, I immediately moved to Atlanta and started submitting as background. I started getting booked and fell in love with watching the actors work! I told myself this is exactly where I need to be. From there I did ALOT of research on how to get started, what do I need, how to submit and everything started working in my favor since then. Through starting out in acting I still continued to dance and network on that side as well and made great connections which led me to dancing principal on American Soul on BET Season 1 and 2, Coming 2 America, Wild N’ Out, and multiple music videos. Fast forward and now you can see me on Tubi and Amazon in Intimate Confessions, The Love Coach, Clout and more! More recently, thanks to networking and Alexander Johnson, I am now a stunt performer as well. That happened genuinely because I was on set, talking and networking, and said I always wanted to be a female vigilante and beat people up. AJ looked at me and said if you’re serious, I got you. In a few months, BOOM, here I am on set beating people up and training doing stunt work! I say that to say, networking and speaking on your wants and desires does wonders. Closed mouths don’t get fed. I want everyone to know that when it comes to me and my work, I am dedicated. I will find a way to get the job done and deliver on my role. I take criticism and direction very well and with that, talent, and drive, I know I will get to where I want to be.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding part unequivocally, seeing the final masterpiece! I love, love, love to see what the final product is. I get to see the entire story come to life. To see the parts of the story I wasn’t in and now I’m just as shocked at some parts as somebody watching it for the first time too. I get to critique myself and see what I need or feel like I should work on when it comes to my craft. It is seeing the hard work and time you put in, be put out for the world to see!

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.

We need grace. For those who don’t understand it, it is not as fast as a process as it seems or you want it to be. Being a creative is really a hurry up and wait game. We create, keep creating, do more creating… and then wait. Wait for it to air, wait for the views to come, wait for somebody to notice you. Even though you may not see anything happening right then and there, please trust us that we are doing work behind the scenes to get better, whether it be classes, networking events, reading books, we are working. It’s not always something we want to explain because we may be frustrated at times too, that a certain project hasn’t aired or we feel like we may not be doing enough, so grace and patience is what we need.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://m.imdb.com/name/nm9617963
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/theashantiharris
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ashanti.harris1