We recently connected with Shelby Mayes and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Shelby, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

I chose this topic because I feel like my answer encompasses the answers to a few of the prompts that I felt drawn to. “Risk” is a little broad of a term and can be a little subjective but I’ll do my best to explain my story and how I ended up where I am. I was raised in a small conservative town outside of Houston, TX to a conservative family that liked to hunt and fish and drive big trucks and held some relatively conservative family values. As a kid, I felt like I didn’t entirely understand the people around me so, to me, the biggest risk I ever took was choosing myself and the things that made me happy as opposed to the “safe” or “predictable” life that, not only was I familiar with, but, to some extent, would have helped me blend in and fit in better with my family – something I grew up chasing and was definitely desperate for. I didn’t really grow up with “risk takers.” Growing up, everyone in my family lived within a 2 mile radius of one another; they grew up, went to school, and settled down in the same town; and no one really valued the arts above Friday night football. Not that my parents weren’t supportive as I got older, but their support was born out of necessity, I think, rather that faith. There’s a running joke with my parents that I end up doing “whatever I want anyway” which has actually turned into quite the earnest “I can do whatever I put my mind to,” which, I can’t lie, I take with pride. I can do whatever I put my mind to. It may take me a while, but my journey has led me through the hills and valleys of There’s Nothing Left County. I spent four years in college trying to build what I thought would be a “practical” future. So, I graduated with a degree in Psychology and had plans of becoming a therapist – fully believing that becoming an actress was so far outside of the realm of possibility that I really thought I could actually be happy doing something else. I quickly found out that that was not the case. After working at a treatment facility my senior year, my hopes of working in the mental health field blew up quite dramatically. After I graduated, I worked a series of office jobs in numerous fields, all the while grinding against this deep seeded awareness that sitting at a desk behind a computer for nine hours a day was something that would actually kill me. I grew up watching my dad suffer through the chemical plant job he worked for 35 years. Everyday, he would come home, sit on the couch, and melt into the leather. He always seemed miserable, exhausted, stagnant, unmotivated, and that image of him sort of wasting away became my biggest fear. I didn’t want to live my life miserably. I just didn’t know how to marry what I thought was possible and what I really wanted to do. Writing/acting seemed so unobtainable, I felt ridiculous for thinking I could even do it, let alone professionally, let alone be good at it. It wasn’t until I read a pdf copy of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho inside the cubicle of my 9-5 job, that I realized my worst nightmare would come true if I don’t just take a chance. Not only were the pieces finally allowed to click into place in terms of identifying what I wanted to do with my life, but I realized that if I didn’t at least try, I would, undoubtedly, regret it. I was so incredibly unhappy, unfulfilled, lonely, lost, and staring down the barrel of the rest of my life, that I had to do something. The only other option, to be honest, was to end it. Life became very clear in these moments: either I would continue living, pursuing actual happiness, or not live. Writing that, it feels so extreme but I just can’t justify living my life and not doing everything I can to live the life I want. Even when things are slow, even when life doesn’t look the way I think it should, or it leads to things that I didn’t expect, I can check in with myself and know that I’m where I belong. So I started making small changes: getting back into acting classes, signing with the agency I was with before I went to college, booking local commercials, and eventually booking my first feature film, ‘Run, Hide, Fight.’ My experience working on the film was incredible. I finally got to see, in real time, what the life I wanted looked like: people on set running around blowing up thousands of balloons for a single scene, watching the director work out and decide on a shot, lights going up, props flying in. It was so amazing just seeing everything come together. I knew that that was what I wanted everyday to look like. Practically everyone on the project was from LA, even though we filmed in TX, so I moved to LA. At this point, my life felt so stagnant and the film felt like such an affirmation that I didn’t care what happened, I had to make a change. I wanted to trust in something. So I did. I took the risk. I moved to LA. Two months later, the pandemic hit. Two years later, I signed with my first agent in LA. Two and half years later, I started going to the Strasberg Institute. Three years later, I made my first short film. And now I have two shorts in post production, I write and direct, and I booked a recurring role on a new CBS show that just got renewed for a second season. It’s slow going, I feel like an anxious fake almost all of the time, I have no idea whether or not I’ll get brought back for the second season, and the voices in my head tell me that a good number of people are probably wondering what the f*** I think I’m doing, but I don’t need it to be quick. I don’t need my face to be everywhere. I just want to keep doing it.

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.

I’m an actor, writer, and director who focuses on female stories and points of view. Sometimes, it’s through the context of being a plus size woman, sometimes it’s through the context of mental illness, and sometimes it’s a little bit of both. I initially moved to LA for acting but during the pandemic, I started streaming a screenwriting class by a UCLA professor and rediscovered my love of writing and story telling. It was like tapping into some suppressed side of me and through my classes at Strasberg, I developed my second short film, ‘Hippolyta,’ which is a comedy about a plus size woman in the dating world and all the little micro-aggressive fat phobic things that women like me have to deal with everyday. I really want to humanize and normalize plus size people – whether the story is specifically about plus size experiences or it’s an innocuous story told through plus size actors. There are so many stereotypes that exist in society that have obviously translated into typecasting plus size people in film and TV. My biggest pet peeve is seeing the fat-girl-comic-relief with zero back story who may or may not be in a relationship, which you’ll never learn about, because the story is never about her, that only serves to further the plot for the “conventionally attractive” lead with quips and laughs and obscure anecdotes that, again, are never explained…because the story isn’t about her. I make stories that are only ever about her.

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

There’s a part in ‘The Alchemist’ by Paolo Coelho where the main character, Santiago, ends up spending years at a tea shop in a little town he was only supposed to be passing through on his way to where he thought destiny was leading him. Even though Santiago has a very clear idea of what his journey is supposed to look like, circumstance pushes him to explore and discover other worlds and relationships. He was only supposed to work at this tea shop just long enough to raise money to continue his journey, but he stays for years, helping the shop owner, evolving himself, and forming relationships with the customers that came and went everyday. For all intense and purposes, he builds a life for himself outside of his supposed destiny and outside of what was expected of him before his journey inevitably continues. ‘The Alchemist’ is full of little moments like this that are so beautiful and full of trust and faith in dreams. Santiago is given a direction and a promise, and without trust in that dream, he never would have left the life that was making him unhappy, he never would have journeyed across the world, met the love of his life, found purpose in the everyday, discovered new passions, and learned about himself and the people around him. For me, acting brought me to LA, but that was only the starting point. Through trust in myself and faith in a dream, I rediscovered my love of writing and fell into directing and started making films from start to finish. This book not only allowed me to figure out what direction I wanted to go, but that faith in the dream can allow you to be flexible and open up wide enough to discover everything else along the way. I realized that I don’t have to reach my destination tomorrow, this year, ten years from now in order to be exactly where I’m supposed to be. I trust myself and I have faith in what I want for myself. And Santiago did continue down his path. He discovered that his destiny was the journey. His destiny was to grow, to be along for the ride, to learn from everything around him and to trust that the universe was looking out for him.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I think the most rewarding part of being a filmmaker, an actor, a writer, and, especially, a director is finding different ways of doing things. I love the experimentation and problem solving aspect and spitballing with the team. Everyone around me is so creative and brilliant and it’s so amazing to be surrounded by people who speak the same language. Even when I don’t know exactly what I’m saying or how to say it, someone, somewhere, can pick up the thread and finish the thought and realize the idea. The most rewarding moment are those little sparks of understanding.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @mayeby_so

Image Credits
Cezara Gureu, Zoey Kriegmont, Rose Hough, Cameron Ley, Christina Oti, Eliza Gill, Shelby Mayes