The Definition of Perseverance
The Definition of Perseverance: Ciera
Payton Interview
by Evan Jackson
You may have seen actress Ciera Payton in such shows as The
Mentalist, The Closer, and NCIS: Los Angeles or in Spike Lee’s 2013 film Old
Boy. I noticed Ciera Payton on the hit USA show Graceland. I realized every one
of her performances she brought the character to life, not simply reciting
lines but, fleshing out her roles so the audience can relate to them. I
wondered how she had developed a depth in these characters. When I finally met
her I got my answer. See as an actor Ciera pulls that depth from her own well that
is her life. Ciera is the living embodiment of perseverance, when the avenues
were closed off to her early in her acting career, she made her own lane
creating her one woman production Michael's Daughter. In the production she chronicles the letters
from her father who was in jail, the advice he imparted to her and the history
he was eager to share with her. Ciera made the organization of the same name to
help kids of incarcerated parents have an outlet to express themselves, holding
a play that was performed to the city. In midst of her journey as an actor she wrote
the book Things To Do While on Unemployment: An Unemployed Actress’s Snapshot Guide To Life. In the book she highlights her tales as an actress finding work in
Hollywood with tips for people in similar situations. Ciera allows herself to be vulnerable which
helps her truly connect with any role she takes on; from there that is how her
strength is defined. As far as her perseverance that is defined by the empowerment
she derives from her own story. With creativity that naturally flows and an unstoppable
will Ciera Payton is someone you’ll definitely want to know going forward.
You grew up in New
Orleans, what impact do you think the city and the culture have had on your
life?
A lot of people don’t realize this about New Orleans, but it
is a city that prides itself on the arts. Once kids get to the age where they
are walking they are expected to play horns and trumpets or you’re encouraged
to paint or to draw. New Orleans is a musical city with the Jazz Festival,
where we also have Mardi Gras. I think growing up in New Orleans you can’t help
but to be influenced by the culture and the arts culture there. It’s
everywhere- it’s in the food, the art galleries, the murals, and the music.
Acting wasn’t a huge thing in New Orleans, but you had a lot of Community
Theater and that’s how I got involved initially.
What led you to become an actor?
It was a couple things, when I was growing up in New Orleans
with my dad, grandmother, and aunts they definitely nurtured me in an artistic
way always encouraging me to express myself. The household was so
dysfunctional, with the drugs and stuff like that. As a kid, I wrote plays to
get my mind off of all that stuff that was going on. I gravitated towards
acting a lot. When I was in 6th grade I played the clarinet and took
visual arts classes. When I finally entered 8th grade I decided to
try acting because the school that I switched to didn’t have music or a visual
arts program, they had a drama program. I did that and stuck with it. There was
something always in me to express myself, to be a different character, and to
perform. I think it came out of a survival instinct as a kid so I took acting
seriously when I was in the 8th grade.
Would you say that
early desire for acting was a coping mechanism?
Yeah, that’s definitely what it was and I didn’t know this
as a kid. I just knew my dad was smoking crack in the next room and I was like,
well let me not pay attention to that and let me make this world over here.
When it comes to your
one woman production Michael’s Daughter why did you choose the subject matter
of your own life?
It initially started out when my dad was in prison and I was
going over his prison letters, he had a lot of history, he was telling me about
his life and I thought it was really intriguing. Stories on how he came to be-
like my white grandmother was married to a white man, but had an affair with a
black man and that’s how my dad came out. It was in the 60s and in the south;
all of those things were fascinating to me. I started really taking that
journey of writing it and make it about his life. It developed into this thing
on how all this history affected me as a woman as oppose to just making his
story because through the letters he was talking to me. I feel like the
audience wanted to see who this Ciera was through those letters. When I started
writing it, I had just moved out here to Los Angeles. I was dealing with the
same challenges I think all actors go through with getting a job and gaining
confidence in your work. I think I was trying to find a lot of answers within
myself. I wanted to analyze what it means to me having a father that’s in
prison or growing up with drugs and addiction and how has that impacted me and
how can I heal and cope with all of that. It was weird because I said let me
just put this all out on the table and look at it from a different
perspective and then try to heal and
grow from it. It still keeps developing because I’m still developing as a human
being and a woman. When I perform it now, I find myself trying to change things
or make this part better, highlight this, or take something out. I think now
I’m itching to write a new piece because my dad is out of prison now. Him and I
are starting to write a book now and I think that will be the next journey but
we’ll see. It didn’t initially start off about me but it morphed into that.
In one of your
YouTube videos you said “All I have is my heart, my creativity, and my talent”.
What allows you to be so honest with your truth and able to channel that
vulnerability into your performances?
I have spent a lot of my time in performing arts school. I
was at a magnet school in middle school, I was in a performing arts school in
high school and I did it as well in college. I spend a lot of my time
developing my craft. One thing that I learned from developing my craft was you
can’t just go up there and start reciting lines because it won’t be interesting.
There are some people that can do that and they look beautiful doing it and
they look handsome doing it, they can flex their muscles and smile and people
will swoon over it. But I knew when I was going into the field of the arts it
was initially was because of a survival mechanism, it was springing from my
truth. So I can’t cheat myself and get up there and fabricate some mumbo jumbo.
As an artist in general, you have to be open and you have to be a vessel for
the character that you’re playing. If you’re going to eventually venture off
into writing your own work you have to be a vessel for your family and for your
ancestors. I think that is the only way to be, is to be truthful because you
cheat yourself by not being that way if you call yourself and artist or an
actor. I feel like me being open about my life, and not in a reality show way,
but about being open and honest about my life that’s just really who I am.
That’s how I was raised with my family not holding anything back and there’s no
subject that’s too taboo to talk about. I have a portal, with the internet or
my writing and I’m not going to go up there and say some BS, I’m going to tell
the truth because ultimately we all have the same issue.
Was it difficult
reliving some of those experiences through your performance?
When I was working with my director Faythallegra Claude I
had a lot of moments when I stopped and started to cry. For me it was about
coping and healing. It was me just cleaning out some stuff in my life and I had
to address a lot of the issues to understand how they affected me and embracing
all of that. It was difficult, there’s a part in the play where I go visit my
dad in prison for the first time and those tears really do come from living
that. Doing those things was hard and it was even harder when I had to leave
whenever I visited him. It was a challenge and it makes me excited every time I’m
doing it. After my performances I felt stronger and more vibrant.
What inspired you to
begin your organization Michael’s Daughter Project?
It’s still in the very beginning stages. I’m still on the
fence if I want to do a 501C3 or if I want to do a foundation. When I was
sixteen years old in high school I was working with this summer program called
What Girls Know in New Orleans started by Brenda Currin. She has this amazing
platform working with inner city teenage girls having them write and create
their own productions. I had been working with that for years. When I moved out
here to LA I wasn’t able to be as involved. I would volunteer around LA at
organizations that were similar. Whenever I would show or perform my one woman production
I would have young adults come up to me afterwards and say they had someone
that was in prison. I realized I wanted to figure out a way to combine
education with the performing arts. I heard about a grant that the department
of cultural affairs of the Los Angeles Department was giving out to bring more
arts education to different areas in the community that are underserved. I
applied for the grant and the pitch was on how I was going to use Michael’s
Daughter and the experience I had working with kids to have them create their
own work. I got the grant last summer and started the program which was a huge
success. It was held at Casa Esperanza (a non-profit community center serving
the Blythe Street Community) in Panorama City. We had about 24 students. For
about five weeks we worked on creating material to perform for the city. I had
a good time working on it. So this year I’m hoping to do it at the same place
and try something a little different this time. It’s one of those things where
kids need that outlet to express themselves and tell their stories because they don’t
get that, especially with the arts being taken out of schools left and right.
It’s a way for me to give them the same outlet that I had and keep them off the
streets. I really want to cater to kids who have parents that are incarcerated
and a lot of the kids I worked with last summer they did, it kind of happened
that way. I was initially going for that, but it was such a challenge finding a
community organization that had that specifically. When I ended up at that
community center, a lot of kids were telling me that their parents were in jail
or deported. We wrote about it, put it in a play, and the community loved it.
The community center Casa Eperanaza loved it too, and wants to keep the program
going.
When did you decide
to write your book Things To Do While Unemployment: An Unemployed Actress’sSnapchat Guide?
It started in 2013. I tend to journal a lot, what’s on my
mind and what’s going on. In the midst of all the dramatic stuff going on in my
life, I would write that stuff down. Then I realized, it was hilarious,
thinking only this would happen to me. Like when my car broke down, my driver’s
license has expired, and I couldn’t get a rental car because my license was
expired. Just stuff like that and sometimes I have to take a look back and say that
my life sometimes it’s like a sitcom. I was reading back in my journal and as I
was writing them, I thought they were so sad and stressful, but then reading
those entries later on, I thought those things were hilarious. And all of those
things were a direct link to being an unemployed actor. I started to take those
entries from my journal and began putting them on my computer. Then thinking to
myself, I should write a book about this. And really more so I wanted to write
something that had advice to it because I would get people who would hit me up
out the clear blue and ask me how to do this or do that. People who knew I was
on unemployment asked for my advice when they got denied unemployment. I would
say I did this and it worked for me. So I decided to put it in a book and I got
a really good response from it. I’ve had people actually hit me up and say hey,
I read your book and it helped me find a job. I wanted to take the challenge of
writing a book and write something that was funny. I also wanted to teach
myself how to self-publish.
What roles do you
like playing the most?
For a moment I was auditioning a lot for dramatic roles and
it’s always been a lot easier for me to tap into that type of stuff. But this
pilot season I auditioned for a lot of sitcoms and usually comedy scares me
because it is more technical. There is a certain way you have to deliver the
lines to punch up the joke and it’s really intimidating. I got called back for
a lot of things and had fun. I want to play characters that are true to life,
whether they are wacky or funny or whether they are serious, stern, or sexy. I
like it all and I’d like to keep doing that. I definitely would like to do more
comedic roles because I have a lot of fun with them and I find myself being
silly at times.
What is your dream
role?
On my vision board I have Angela Davis, Lena Horne,
Cleopatra, and Pam Grier. I think all these women’s lives are amazing and these
are the parts I have in mind for myself. I guess the through line with all of
them is that they were very powerful women who were sophisticated, strong, and
sexy. I feel like I’m drawn to those types of woman roles. If there were a
character created in that, not necessarily those women, I would love to play
that. But also I’d love to portray the women mentioned in a biopic. That would
be awesome! I think if there was a character that embodied that being tough,
sexy, and powerful ultimately that’s the type of roles I want to play.
Do you think you’re
drawn to those types of women and type of characters you would like to play
because you see those qualities in yourself?
Yeah I think so. In college my classmates would say I was a
strong black woman, I was the only black girl in the class, and I use to get so
mad at them for saying that because I thought it was such a cliché saying. And
I was like what the hell does that even mean? I cry, I fall, and I really
didn’t understand why they were saying that all the time. Then I started to own
that. I am strong, I am black, and I am a woman. I’ll take it however I
interpret it. Strength is defined in so many different ways. My strength comes
from my faith in God and having the ability to get up every morning and go out
to pursue my dreams. That’s how I define strength and I think it’s more so perseverance.
Just keep going, going and going and not letting those doors slammed in your
face determine your destiny. I see that in characters and in other women and
that’s what I’m drawn to because I can relate to that.
What are your future
aspirations?
Within to two to three years I really see myself continuing
to be an actor and becoming one of those actors who are not only among the
elite but is considered one of the elite. An A list actor. I’ve always had that
entrepreneurial spirit about me and have this passion to start a business.
Honestly, I don’t know what it would be but I know I’m a creative person. I
want to use that in the sense that I want to sell and develop goods for people.
So I’m trying to sit down and hone in exactly what are my creative talents and
how can I put that into a business. I would love to in the next couple years
develop an app, learn how to marry content and technology together for actors
and content creators. I want to continue writing my books and one day be a New
York Times Best Seller. I want to do more movies, TV, and plays and still be
able to self-generate my work and get paid for it. I also want to help out kids
who have that passion in wanting to create and express themselves given their
circumstances.
Where can people
reach you?
People can reach me on cierapayton.com
Twitter: @cierapayton
Instagram: @callmecece
Future Projects:
The Runner starring
Nicolas Cage and costarring Ciera Payton, will be in theaters fall 2015
The Real Husbands of
Hollywood starring Kevin Hart, Ciera will we seen in an episode on the 4th
season premiering fall 2015.
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