We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Daphne O’Neal a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Daphne, thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
Well, just this week, I shot my first role in a European TV series. I had done a string of TV movies and was really looking forward to moving into series in 2023. I could not have anticipated the extraordinary events of this year. But I still felt strongly that I would book something before the year ended.
The show is a political thriller called Conflict and is being produced for Finnish television. I play a talking head on a CNN-style news program. The showrunner wrote and directed the Netflix hit series Rebellion. Conflict will air sometime in 2024 and may appear on one of the major streamers as well.
It’s meaningful because even before kindergarten, I thought it was so cool that there were people who lived so far away they spoke a whole different language. I enjoyed studying foreign languages in high school and in college. I felt fortunate to learn a few Finnish pronunciation rules on set, especially as regards family names.
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.
My performing arts life started early on. At two years old, I asked my parents for a piano. They excitedly brought me a toy piano. I explained that I wanted a real piano. My mother set about doing the research, and when I was five, took me for an aptitude test at the Music School Settlement (now The Music Settlement) in Cleveland. I passed, but there was one obstacle: They advised that students wait until age 6 to begin their studies. I still remember being on tenterhooks as my mother negotiated with them on the phone. I wanted so badly to get started. In the end, she prevailed. At age 9, I began ballet classes at the same school.
Later on, I performed in the local Nutcracker nearly every year. In high school musicals, I danced and sang in the chorus. I did one straight play in which I had the smallest part. I was pretty soft-spoken at the time, but my character got a laugh. I remember thinking, “Hmmm…”
The only other moment this career might have occurred to me was when my college best friend declared, “You should be a film actor. Everything you’re thinking shows on your face.” I was flabbergasted. I would never have considered an acting career at the time.
Several years later, I was living in Chicago and made a panel appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show. I had never done so much speaking in front of an audience. I so enjoyed it that when I returned to Boston, I began auditioning for plays. My first role was a walk-on in The Sound of Music at Wheelock Family Theatre.
The following year, I snagged the female lead of Silvia in Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona. It was my first speaking role. At the end of the next summer, I moved to San Francisco where I began working in commercials, industrials and independent films right away. In 2007, I did a national commercial for a nonprofit. That’s when it hit me: “Maybe I can really do this acting thing.”
In 2017, I answered a casting notice for an “educated, elegant, cultivated” mom character. I sent in my newly updated reel, and a few days later, as I was driving to a corporate video shoot, I got the call that I’d been cast as Marcus Cole’s mom on the hit show 13 Reasons Why. When season 2 was released in May 2018, I realized I could not move forward as an actor in San Francisco and relocated to Los Angeles.
My brand aligns with the 2017 character description. I typically play intelligent, cultivated, high-empathy characters: Mother figures, doctors, judges, government officials, etc.
I seem always to feel at home working in the classical, in music, dance and theater. Moreover, even as a second grader, I enjoyed visiting museums and going to the symphony (although I really didn’t learn to enjoy opera until my 20s.) I think the kind of formality that derives from studying the classical sometimes informs the characters I portray. On the other hand, I so enjoy the whimsy of comedy,
The arts have been both framework and throughline in my life. And I luxuriate every day in the freedom that the craft of acting allows.
I also feel that having started acting as an adult is a bonus in some ways. I have not developed any cynicism. For me, every aspect of working in TV and film is fresh. I still harbor enormous enthusiasm for every audition and every job that comes my way.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I think, living in Los Angeles, it’s the chance to share space and creative energy with others, from fellow actors to writers and directors to costume designers and photographers.
It’s also exciting to be recognized as an artist. For years, I camouflaged myself as something else, concealing my artistic activities to protect myself. These days, on social media, I’m realizing there are people who only experience me as an on-camera actor. That’s thrilling!!
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
When I was little, I thought life was about getting it right. I think I may be forgiven. I was studying classical piano and ballet, both of which are very exacting. I also loved math, which has, at that level, rigid rules. But I see now that life is about becoming the best expression of yourself, learning and growing all the time. It may be that I wouldn’t have arrived here if I hadn’t survived the discipline of my early life. but it feels so good to live full out.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://m.imdb.com/
name/nm1830036/# - Instagram: https://instagram.
com/thedaphneoneal - Linkedin: https://linkedin.
com/in/daphneoneal - Twitter: https://twitter.com/
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