We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sam Cole a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Sam, thanks for joining us today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?
I feel artistically your not going to please everyone and I’ve always been cool with it, I never really cared about that. For me being able to express episodes of life through music and providing something for people to enjoy or identify with was always the reason for me being an artist and it’s the same with acting, I enjoy playing characters, when people meet me in person who know me for my work, I often feel like there’s sometimes a perception there of what they think I’m like and that’s okay but it’s just not the case.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I started out writing initially in my teens and it just went from there, performing, learning lines and writing music was just so natural to me and was pretty much the only thing I was good at. I wasn’t like a lot of my peers from the inner city, I didn’t follow the crowd or have a lot of friends and pretty much kept to myself. I think that’s where going to the studio years ago helped me speak on things that were happening in my life. From a musical standpoint I’m somewhere between Indie, R&B and dark Pop I don’t think I have a genre really. Some songs I sing are vulgar, some are heartbreaking and some are upbeat fun but that’s my life, full of glimmering highs and severe lows. Why should I hide what so many of us go through and pretend to be something I’m not, it’s just not who I am.
My acting was another thing that I found so much solace in, I was always cast as a troubled drug dealing bad kid and to be honest it was like I was playing myself early on, I knew I needed to change, I was lucky enough to catch the eye of regional directors and an agent in my home city who had seen me performing on a local show and they believed I could make it all the way. A lot of that is because I feel delivering scenes of raw emotion and vulnerability is easy for me because I’ve lived that life, I can make you believe anything when I’m performing because I become totally immersed in my character.
Things were not great in the UK though and I never really seemed to get any support or momentum, I felt like I needed to go.
So I went to the US and wanted to make a run of things, eventually after doing some short films I got an agent in New York whilst living in Atlanta performing open mic shows at night and hitting the studio with artists in the day, it was great and I really felt like things were picking up both in music and acting, auditions were coming in and I was having meetings with managers and A&R reps from all kinds of places, then everything just crumbled. I lost my agent in the pandemic, with cuts to the international roster, never heard back from label meetings and ended up going home, I was back to square one, but it taught me so many lessons and I retuned with a matured perspective.
In my mind I’m the best to do it, I’ll outwork everyone and conquer whatever I want, I want to be the best, I’m obsessed with success, I want to create generational wealth for my family and their children and print a legacy that will last, I will be the first ever to do it in my family lineage. That may seem like an extremely arrogant statement but that’s the mindset that has kept me going in the darkest moments when I’ve had nothing to my name and enabled me to attain things in my life that would have seemed impossible a few years ago. I’ve achieved some good things, but I have a long long way to go.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I firmly believe it’s having a vision and seeing that vision become a reality and that can provide people with entertainment, joy, sadness, or emotion.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
Absolutely, I love Napoleon Hill and Earl Nightingale they are both two people I look up to with profound gratitude and appreciation for their teachings, all of their books offer life changing value and help direct the mind in the right direction.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scundercover/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064305302991
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-cole-456a31103/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/sc_undercover?lang=en-GB
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCV8mAO2RKM
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6f1eBNEpnEcDe0kscaNsy4?si=ldrQtNr8SXmE57NCQFhENA https://mediaviewer.spotlight.com/artist/showreels?artistRef=M195722
Image Credits
1st picture in black and white- please credit Michael Torres https://www.instagram.com/soymichaeltorres/?hl=en For leather in colour pictures please credit Adrian Nucelaar https://www.instagram.com/adrian_nucelaar/?hl=en