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

Hi Jon, thanks for joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

My journey as a creative has been one full of stops and starts, and almosts. Growing up, I only ever wanted to be a professional basketball player. That was my passion, my obsession, really. I would do Pete Maravich drills on the back porch like it was my religion. I practiced my shot for literally hours a day. But I lacked the mental fortitude to ever be that cold-blooded competitor that was my hero, in Michael Jordan. I always felt bad for besting other players, and I dimmed my light so they wouldn’t feel badly, and in that way, I sabotaged myself before I ever got on the court.

Acting was one of those things that just found me, and once it did, it wasn’t too keen on giving me up.

I got started in acting because I had a crush on a girl in the drama club. Rehearsals were on the stage that also house the “B-gym,” which is where I played basketball every morning from 6-7am before school started. So I was already comfortable in the space. I still don’t know why, but the teacher who headed the drama club, and subsequently directed all the shows, allowed me to sit in on rehearsals. They were staging the play, “Up the Down Staircase,” by Christopher Sergel, based on the novel by, Bel Kaufman.

There was a kid who had all these incredible jokes, but he had absolutely no timing, and it ruined every joke. So I sat there, day after day, watching these rehearsals, and I kept getting angrier and angrier about this kid’s performance. I kept thinking, “I can do that better.” It was the next semester when I auditioned for, and got the lead in the latest play, “Welcome to the Monkey House,” again by, Christopher Sergel, based on the Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. story. And I was hooked. But, I still loved basketball, and that was still my dream.

Fortunately for me, (although I didn’t see it this way at the time) my basketball coach cut me from the team my senior year. I was devastated. He didn’t appreciate my split focus between basketball and theatre, and that was that. I suppose in hindsight, I owe Coach Smith a debt of gratitude because I’m certainly where I’m meant to be, but I can also still shoot the rock.

Jon, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I grew up in a religious cult. So the fact that I’m here, in Los Angeles, getting to create in the way I love and dream, is nothing short of a miracle to me. In that culture, I suffered many abuses and atrocities that no child should ever have to face. I was fortunate enough to have a mental fortitude that allowed me to walk (or run) away from the cult, my family, and my entire known community the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. As you might imagine, that wasn’t an easy journey, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world either. It’s made me who I am. My voice, my perspective, and my experiences color all of my work — sometimes in subtle ways, but also not so subtle sometimes too, as I take it head on in the different iterations of my solo show work.

Acting and writing are the energy, the life force that keep my creative juices flowing. But I love being able to speak to others about growing up the way that I did, in the culture that I did.

The very first time I did my first solo show, it was a wild ride. It was at a college in Southern California that mandated that the entirety of the athletic department attend. I tell stories of some pretty harrowing stuff, including being a victim of sexual assault by a male babysitter. Let’s just say that calling it a hostile audience wouldn’t be out of bounds. Football players loudly commenting, “ewww!” or “you did what?” were the mildest of things I heard on that stage that night. I felt beat up after that show.

I sat there on the stage afterwards, wrestling with my own demons. “Oh, I missed that story.” or “I messed up this line and that line.” even to the point of thinking, “Why the hell am I doing this? Who am I to tell these stories?”

And as I was berating myself in my mind, I saw a young man approach the stage. Almost everyone else was long gone by this point, and he couldn’t have possibly had any idea about the storm raging in my mind at that moment. But I saw him, and we made eye contact. Something about his physicality, and the look in his eyes said he was looking for permission to approach me. I immediately waved him over.

When he reached me, he stuck out his hand to shake, and we did. Then he said words that I will never forget, words that changed me forever.

He said, “The things that you talked about tonight happened to me too. I didn’t know we could talk about them until I heard you tonight.”

That was almost 10 years ago now, and I still get chills thinking about the courage it took for him to come say that to me. But more than that, I wish I could find that man today because what I couldn’t articulate in that moment was that I needed that young man’s words as much, if not more so, as he needed mine. It’s because of that young man that I knew I would never stop telling my story. In a room of 200 people, if he was the only one who I helped and reached, it was well worth the time and effort.

I love my work! I truly do. I love being an actor. I love writing, even though writing and I do seem to have a love/hate relationship sometimes. But in everything I do, my underlying hope is that I get to reach more people, and allow people to reach me in the same magical way that this young man and I connected after that show. All the creative works is amazing, and fun, but it means nothing to me if I’m not finding a path within it to help other folks know that they’re not alone.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I hid out for the first 15 years I was in Los Angeles. I never tried to get an agent, or a manager. I never took a class. I did little plays here and there, short films when people knew me, but that was it. In fact, when I first moved here, I lived in an apartment building at Crescent Heights and FountainIn. My entire game plan at that time as an actor was to go up to Sunset Blvd., and walk up and down until someone “discovered” me. That’s not a joke. Just an embarrassing admission.

In retrospect, it’s easy for me to now say that I was terrified of failing, or of finding out that I really wasn’t very good at this acting thing after all. So, rather than put myself out there, I retreated to the canyons of Sierra Madre, and I lived a quiet, mountain man kind of life. At least that’s what I told myself to feel better. But the truth was that I was hiding.

My father died unexpectedly in 2011. It was a difficult loss for me. He and I had somehow managed to heal our relationship after all the experiences in the cult. His death was a bit of a wake up call for me because he was only 57, and was smacked in the face with self-imposed questions of what I was actually doing in my own life. That led me to doing my first solo show, but even with that sudden change, it still took me another 5 years to figure out my acting career.

Finally in 2017, I asked a friend of mine, who was and still is a steadily working actor, if I could take him to lunch. At that lunch, I asked him if he would mentor me. He laughed, but I was serious. I asked him if he had another job outside of acting, to which he replied, “no.” I told him that I knew I could do what he was doing, but I didn’t know how. He asked if it would help to put me in touch with a casting director that we both knew, but with whom he had a much deeper relationship. I enthusiastically accepted the offer.

By the end of that same day, I had an email from the casting director telling me to come into the office. I did. We talked. I basically begged to be able to be around that office. I offered to sweep floors, file papers, clean toilets, I didn’t care. I just wanted to be around because I knew I was terrified of the business. The casting director told me that they should get a pilot in the next few weeks and that I should come be the reader. A reader, for those who might not know, is a person who will read the other side of the scene for the roles that the other actors are there to audition for. I eagerly accepted the opportunity.

For six weeks, I was the reader for every actor’s audition, from the one-liners, all the way up to the series regular auditions at the studios. For six weeks, I was given a crash course in acting and more specifically, the audition process. It truly blew my mind. I went in every day like it was my job. And at the end of the six weeks, the director of the show asked me what role I was playing. I looked at him like a deer in headlights. He asked the casting directors what role I would be playing. They told him there weren’t any roles that felt right for me. He looked around the room, exclaimed, “bullshit!” Then he hit me on the shoulder with the script and said, “we’ll figure something out,” and then walked out of the room. True to his word, I was cast in the show, had to join SAG-AFTRA, and I was on my way. I haven’t looked back since.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I read constantly. I set aside 30 minutes a day to do what I call “stretch reading.” For me, that just means reading. books that challenge me in various ways. It could be in the way that I think, improving my memory, meditation, even math. I’m a nerd like that.

“Deep Work,” by Cal Newport is essential for me. We are so distracted today with tiny computers in our pockets, and access to social media, and YouTube videos, that our attention spans have dropped significantly. “Deep Work” gave me a context by which to understand the issue, and then also to course correct. Now I use an app blocker on my phone, because I’m human, and I want to know what’s happening on Twitter and Instagram like anyone else, but it kills my creativity and productivity. I also set aside 90-minute blocks of no distractions to get my work done. I still struggle to keep to these parameters, but I’m getting better at it all the time, and it’s now an essential for me.

“The Untethered Soul,” by Michael Singer is another huge book for me. I’m a (mostly) daily meditator. I started off with ten minutes a day, accompanied by an app to facilitate, and after a couple of years of that, I decided to try it on my own. Now, I’m increasing my meditation time by 5 minutes every month in total silence. Or, at least the silence that living in a city provides. And while “The Untethered Soul” isn’t really a book about mediation, I have found that it goes hand-in-hand with my approach to meditation. It’s just a different way of looking at life, and letting go, and trusting that I have found to be invaluable.

I could go on and on about books all day, but I think I’ll leave you with those two. I feel like they complement one another very well.

Contact Info:

• Website: thejonsnow.com
• Instagram: @the_jon_snow
• Twitter: @the_jon_snow

Image Credits
Chris Hall Theo & Juliet