We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Emilie Doering a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Emilie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I think almost every actor grapples with the question, “should I have started sooner?” If only I had… gone to LA/NY instead of going to college, or gone to a Conservatory and made connections, if only I had started as a kid, if only my parents had been actors! Take your pick, and insert the alternate reality [here]. Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly self-critical, I think about the years I “wasted” pursuing Opera as a career instead of going straight to on-camera work. Or the years I pursued degrees in Statistics and Political Science instead of moving straight to LA and getting started building my network and getting representation. Or, or, or.
But if you get reeaaaallly honest about this question, it usually stems from pain. The pain that comes with facing a career that often feels completely out of our control, and sometimes a misguided attempt to take back control by blaming ourselves for where we are in our careers. What finally forced me to tackle this question head on was my burgeoning witchcraft practice. Long story short, I’d been raised in a witchy household where the creative and unseen were treated as very real, where intuition was a regular part of decision-making, and where the mundane was understood to be magical. I took it for granted for many years, but when life threw some particularly deep losses my way, I found myself returning to metaphysics and spirituality with renewed respect and discipline.
Fascinatingly enough, this really improved my performing (don’t even get me started on how Improv is a masterclass in co-creation and manifestation, and how energy-reading lends itself perfectly to on-camera acting!). But one thing I struggled to reconcile was a core belief that the Universe places us exactly where we need to be, so we can become who we are meant to become, with what I perceived as middling success in the entertainment industry at best. Was the Universe trying to tell me this was the best I could do? That felt depressing.
Then I stumbled on an intense article about Hollywood in crisis (you know the ones). How the industry’s financing model was outdated and failing the current times, and what Hollywood really needed was minds who understood both data analytics and the unique elements of the entertainment industry to do a critical review and overhaul of the current financial model. My brain went ‘ping!’ like a little bell going off. What if those “wasted” years studying statistics and data analytics, and working for various financial institutions – what if I was being molded into someone who understood both the creative worker’s mindset and the financial models? Who was just wacky enough to want to work with others to innovate financial structures that can help this industry stay strong into the future?
Around the same time I landed an audition that was completely in German. Why did I feel comfortable acting in German? From the “wasted” years I was aggressively studying Opera, which meant I studied abroad there for several months, along with years of language study (convinced German lieder would be my specialty). From a now ex-husband who spoke fluently. I didn’t book that role, but they loved my audition so much they offered me another (arguably larger) role in the same project that suited me perfectly.
And around the same time, I saw an interview with an older celebrity speaking of her younger days and how much of those late-night show interviews were so PR coached that she never felt like she was being herself on those couches, but rather the curated version of herself she was told to sell in order to sell tickets. This, too, made a great impact on me. As much as I have wanted to be a young starlet on those couches, I also know I was a classic perfectionist, people-pleaser in my 20s. Despite the outspoken political advocacy I was engaged in in my personal life, if I am honest with myself, had I succeeded too young, I likely would’ve have fallen for doing what I was told rather than speaking up for what I believed in.
I don’t think it was a coincidence these things happened all around the same time in my life. Because they all painted one increasingly clear picture – there had been no “wasted” time. Every single thing I had ever studied, pursued, or developed proved vital to what kind of success I was looking for. It was like I’d been crafting myself into some piece of art the whole time, only I didn’t know it while it was happening. Even the most disparate things that seemed to have no connection at all are critically connected. In fact, those diverse parts are often the best clues to what unique path you’re meant to take.
And besides, who can even say when the career really starts? According to my aunt, I was singing and dancing for her (into my bottle, on the coffee table) before I could speak complete sentences. I sang my first stage solo in elementary school, had my first paid theatre contract sophomore year of high school… but is that late? Is that early? Some people have agents at that age. In my case, those early years also contributed to burn out and fears I had about pursuing the career full-time. I’d told my family and friends that I was “quitting” acting at least twice before I was 24. Does that restart the clock? Or did it never truly stop?
Especially with on-camera work, where a huge part of the craft is just being authentic, so much of the work you need to do is on yourself as a human, beyond the actor. The more multi-faceted I am as a person, the more I can portray on camera in a very grounded and real way. That kind of development takes time and life experiences, in addition to the training that teaches you to bring that real experience to set and communicate it on camera.
At the end of the day, the only thing I wish I’d done sooner is get honest with myself about accepting that my journey has its own timeline that I don’t always understand, but serves me. I still do “check-ins” with myself where I focus on (1) what specifics of success are meaningful to me, and (2) how the vastly divergent aspects of myself combine to make me stand-out & perfectly fit what I want. Maybe it’s cheesy, but I think of myself as a perfectly built weapon, specialized for the task I want to achieve. And when I remind myself of what that task is for me specifically, I realize I am right on time.

Emilie, 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?

I am a longtime actress, singer, activist, and nerd who more recently has been branching into writing, producing, tarot reading, and content-creation. Like so many fellow creatives in the entertainment industry, my products and services have been adapting to fit a changing economic landscape. But I’ve found one consistent thread that helps me focus my ever-changing work – whatever I create, or whatever service I provide, has to help others find their power.
The most ambitious project I’ve tackled along these lines is a female-led Sci-fi action/adventure feature film that’s going to be financed using a profit-sharing model that’s adapted from a worker’s co-op structure. The inspiration started when a close friend was diagnosed with cancer and during treatment, started losing her hair. She didn’t want to wait her life for her treatments, she wanted to still be launching her own projects and set a personal goal to make a budget feature within the year. So we got to work on a collaborative script, we brought in creative professionals who were likewise tired of waiting for opportunities and wanted to start carving them out for themselves and we started building the creative community who wanted to work on this. We organized a table read event, filmed interviews with a few cast members we locked down early, began a work-trade arrangement to train stunt/fight skills in exchange for yoga classes. And because we wanted to put our money where our mouth is, we spent long weeks designing a financing model we thought could address some of the greatest inequities we’ve seen in the industry, and could result in real, meaningful wealth-building for artists in the longterm. We also wanted to develop investment tiers that increased the accessibility of entering the world of film financing for more people, whether it be more middle- and working-class investors, or first-time investors, or non-entertainment industry professionals who want to bridge into the world. Whether it’s in the world, or behind-the-scenes, every decision for this project focuses on empowering people.
And yes, this guiding principle fits perfectly for everything from tarot readings to smut novel writing! At core, romance novels outline flawed people who have to face their own inner demons to be able to manage and maintain a healthy relationship… but with a spoonful of sex to help the medicine go down. When I write romance novels, I try to focus on interesting, authentic characters who find their voice and power alongside finding their partners. When I read tarot, I focus on reading a person’s natural intuitive abilities, and suggesting ways to build those skills and confidence up until each person realizes just how magical they actually are.
The kind of empowerment that is sustainable is the kind that comes from figuring out what makes you YOU, and then being freaking proud of it. From learning to trust yourself, and value yourself, with or without the validation of others. And we know fiction–both its content and its performance–can nourish those seeds of self-love in readers and viewers and audience members. Or it can be developed more first-hand with interpersonal work like teaching, tarot reading, or even a good conversation with a trusted friend over tea. So that’s what I do.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

This kind of question is the meat-and-potatoes of artists helping artists. When I was teaching high school theatre, we made sure to have a unit on the financial day-to-day realities for creatives. For instance, not everyone knows that you need at least 2 years of tax history as a self-employed artist for a financial institution to even consider your artist income for something like a mortgage. For me, this meant declaring income from acting and other forms of self-employment on tax returns alongside W-2 income from more traditional “day job” employment, so that when the time came to leave a day job for an acting contract, I still had a consistent tax history of self-employment income as a creative without having to wait two more years. Most general information about budgeting stems from monthly budgets based on monthly or bi-monthly paychecks. Whereas, I often joke artists have “feast-or-famine” budgeting, where we will have a windfall contract at one point, and then nothing for months. However, most bills are still designed to be charged monthly. So to successfully navigate sudden large influxes of cash, paired with uncertain dry spells, you often have to calculate an estimated “monthly average” of what that large contract affords you to spend each month, and how soon after a contract you may need to revitalize an additional income stream in another field.
I wish I could list specific grants or fiscal education courses that I could guarantee are worth it. However, those resources are always changing, and truly dependent upon each individual. I loved using QuickBook’s Self-Employed and Mint budgeting app for years, but then their services changed and I don’t know that I can recommend them anymore (so please don’t consider this an endorsement!). But there’s always another program that does something similar (mileage trackers for audition & set-work commuting, budgeting softwares that link to your bank & credit card accounts to automatically track all transactions, place them in categories, and generate reports on your spending!). And consistently, the best resources I found to help along the way almost always came from referrals. My best advice is if something is important to you, just ask. When I couldn’t afford yoga classes at my local studio, I found out about their work-trade program where I cleaned the studio once a week in exchange for free classes. When my friend lost one of her day jobs and wasn’t sure how she could keep up her voice lessons, she wound up offering to work part-time as an administrative assistant for the voice studio in exchange for free lessons. People often want to help each other, and what we might lack in fiscal resources we more than make up for in creative problem-solving.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

My mother was a writer and entrepreneur (I think she started at least three businesses, a non-profit, and a local political campaign?) and my father a mechanical engineer. I had a front-row seat to the clashes possible between a creative initiator and an analytical stabilizer. But ironically enough, it’s taught me that the “divide” between creatives and non-creatives is largely bad marketing!
Don’t get me wrong, there were some very substantial differences in the way my parents’ brains worked and what sort of environment and stimuli they needed to thrive. But terms borrowed from vocabulary of neurodivergence proved a lot more useful in bridging any gaps in understanding than ambiguously waving off the one as “creative” and the other as “corporate.” They were both creative, but in vastly different ways.
That being said, here are the most common misunderstandings I saw between two people who fit the stereotypes of quirky, creative entrepreneur, and stoic, serious, science-type:
– Confusing repetition with stability. For some brains, routine that repeats over and over feels like safety. For other brains, it feels like prison. Instead, freedom and autonomy feel like safety. Both brains are seeking safety, they just find it in vastly different ways. This goes hand-in-hand with novelty-seeking behavior and fear of the unknown.
– Learning in a straight line vs. learning over-under-sideways. Some brains like to learn things by starting at point A and going straight and consistently to point B. Upon arrival, ta-da! They understand the concept. Other brains will sprint from A-B but aren’t done yet. What happens if you turn B on its head? Circle around it and approach it from the bottom? Turn it into a song? Their way of getting entirely comfortable with a concept is to mess around with it like it’s Play-doh, until they’ve explored every possible expression or facet of that topic.
– Digging deep vs. big picture. Some brains are motivated by the opportunity to get into the weeds. Everything interesting is like a mystery to them, and they won’t stop ’til they get to the very bottom. Other people want just enough information to move onto the next decision or action-item with maximum efficiency. Still others are motivated by the weaving together of interdisciplinary ideals from a more theoretical or big-picture viewpoint. And some brains like to do all of these things at different times and places, good luck figuring out which one & when!
– Balance like a pendulum or balance like a scale. Some brains need to be allowed to swing! To spend hours hyper-fixated on a new project, and then hours in “off” mode doing the bare minimum. Balance is achieved overall, by allowing natural fluctuations in rhythm, energy, and schedule. Others need the “weight” of life to be evenly distributed in any given moment.
Ok, I need to stop because otherwise I’ll go on forever! But when you start to break it down along these lines, you begin to notice that many “non-creatives” actually share at least some brain-traits with creative professionals, and vice versa. And many of us are all seeking the same things – purpose, motivation, security, and freedom – though we may go about them in different ways.
The other glaring difference between “types” is societal, and has very little to do with our actual minds. Society often picks and chooses which brain-traits it wants to validate and reward, and which ones it wants to disparage. Typically, those whose need for novelty, autonomy, and interdisciplinary thinking (which tend to be the so-called creative ones) can be simultaneously romanticized and devalued. They’re geniuses! But unpaid. In contrast, those who tend to be more routine-, consistency-, and single-focus-oriented are validated as useful workhorses to society, but stereotyped as dull or stubborn. It seems to me like nobody wins by societal standards.
I can honestly say every time my father struggled to understand my mother, it started because he felt misunderstood or under-valued. But of course, this only served to make my mother feel misunderstood, who naturally responded by trying to explain. “This is why I am the way I am!” she’d try to communicate, “it’s a good way to be, so let me be this way!” But since he operated differently, how could he admit that the way she operated was good without also admitting the different way he operated was therefore bad? They loved each other like no other, but love is funny in how it can make us dig in our heels to prove our worthiness to our partner, even when it involves hurting them to do so. The only way they could break free of the argument cycle was to put down the self-defense for a moment, and remind the other that their differing brain was seen and valued. And when they did, whoo, were they an unstoppable power couple.
So if you, or someone you know, is in love with a creative type, don’t be afraid to shower each other with the validation society often withholds from us both. Don’t be afraid to ask for a reminder that you are seen and accepted as-is. And don’t forget that 9 times out of 10, whatever triggered you to feel unappreciated and undervalued probably came from societal bullshit, and not from the people who love you.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://filmthespring.wixsite.com/the-spring-film
• Instagram: @emiliedoering
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuJvcbTK0AbbK5M0As08ntg
• Other: http://emiliedoering.com/
  TikTok: @emiliedoering

Image Credits

Dana Patrick
Hannah Carter