We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Paul-Mikél Williams. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Paul-Mikél below.

Paul-Mikél, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I think that a particularly important story comes from my first Acting Class. It was on Thursdays at South Coast Conservatory in Orange County. I was the only male in a group of girls that were significantly older than me, and given a one-person scene from “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” as my script. I broke into tears during the climax of the scene because the girls laughed at me. After a while, I grew to learn that they weren’t laughing at me, but rather my performance, and it was that defining moment that made me realize what I was capable of, and it taught me that I enjoyed making people laugh, even if they were laughing directly at me and not at a scene. That experience taught me to be free in who I was and pay attention to the happiness I instilled in others rather than the embarrassment that I instilled in myself.

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.

So, I’m an actor that’s worked with a few major productions and celebrities, including DreamWorks, Netflix, Clint Eastwood, Mike Epps and Kim Fields. I got into the business through a print (modeling) agency called “Shamon Freitas Modeling & Talent” in San Diego, and then began looking for a commercial agent before ending up with “Youth Talent Connection” in Orange County. They would start sending me to auditions for theatrical projects, which led me to change agencies again to “Abrams Artist Agency”, now known as A3 Talent.

My most notable V.O. roles are “Darius” in “Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous” and “Jurassic World: Chaos Theory.” Some of my on-camera roles include Ned in “Sydney to the Max” and Wyatt Darcy in “Raven’s Home.”

I’d say that something I am most proud of is my optimism and willingness to help others. I’ve been in the business for a while now, and it’s not easy for everyone to get their foot in the door like I have done. I want people to know that being in a position does not mean it was easy to get there. It takes hard work, effort, dedication, and persistence. We may have a different amount of steps to take to reach our end goal, but that doesn’t mean our steps should be any lighter than those who have a longer walk than we do.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding part of being an artist, for me, is seeing the final product and how the audience reacts to it. A lot of hard work goes into what I do not just from me, but from every single department that’s working on that set right alongside me. They make sure the lighting is right, they make sure I have the right script – everything is perfect because of the combined effort of everyone on set, and it’s the most rewarding to see all of that effort in its final stages, presented to people who are eager to experience it.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A HUGE lesson that I had to unlearn was being perfect as an artist. I am a perfectionist at heart when it comes to my craft, and for a majority of my acting career, I was convinced that every aspect of my talent needed to be perfected before it was presented. A lesson that is even still hard for me to grasp is collaboration, and it ties into perfectionism because my idea of perfection may be different from someone else’s. Over time, I’ve learned to be more open to suggestion and allow myself to not have everything figured out as soon as it’s able to be. I think that that is a very crucial part of the creative/artist process, because we need to allow our craft to be molded into something that others can understand and grasp the concept of just as well as we can.

Contact Info:

• Website: paulmikelwilliams.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulmikelwilliams/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paulmikelwilliams/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/pmikey3

Image Credits
Credit: Paul-Mikél Williams & Victoria Brown