LA BREA’S VERONICA ST CLAIR ON PERSEVERANCE, TRUSTING THE PROCESS, AND HAIKUS

BY IRVIN RIVERA

VERONICA ST CLAIR plays Riley Velez in the NBC hit show LA BREA, which was renewed for Season 2.

PHOTOGRAPHER: IRVIN RIVERA
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Veronica’s character, together with a group of people, fell in the La Brea sinkhole in Los Angeles and was mysteriously transported to prehistoric Los Angeles. Although they survived the fall, they now face a vast set of challenges to face- surviving the prehistoric wild, figuring out a way to go back to their time, and answering all the questions that keep piling up as they explore their new world.

In this exclusive interview, St Clair spoke about her seemingly long road to success as an actress, the challenges she faced and how she overcame them, the importance of letting go and trusting the process, and her love for Haiku.

FASHION STYLING: ANDREW PHILIP NGUYEN, MAKE-UP: AGOSTINA LOMBARDO, HAIR: VINCENT PELLETIER
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How have you been since you wrapped filming La Brea? How's that like?

It's been a very surreal period of time. We spent six months shooting this thing, kind of anonymously. We're in Australia, and it's a new show and we're just like, playing around in the mud in front of the cameras with everybody and then jumping straight into being in Los Angeles, where we're talking about the show and promoting it and doing all the press and seeing all the billboards everywhere and on the buses. It was a totally different experience from what the experience was of shooting the show. And so it's been a wild ride. Like truly, it's been so quick, so fast paced. It's starting to slow down a little bit now. And I think I'm finally starting to process. I think I was chasing this dream of being an actor for so long.

How long has it been?

I actually have a funny story about this. Do you know IMDb? The international movie database, of course you know it. I got an email from them what, maybe in 2014 saying congratulations, you've been a member of IMDb for 10 years and I was like oh that's so great. And then when I did the math, I realized that I was nine years old, nine or 10 years old when I made an IMDb account. I mean the internet was still so new even in 2004, the internet barely even existed and I as a nine or 10 year old was sitting there creating an IMDb account for myself. So I always, as long as I can remember, as long as I can cognizantly remember, I wanted to be an actor. But it wasn't until I was 18 honestly that I was like actually this could be a viable career path. Or rather what I thought was if I'm going to be here on Earth, and I only have so much time here on Earth, I might as well be doing something that I love to be doing. You know?

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So this is like a first choice for you then, since you've been wanting to be an actor since you were young.

Oh, and that's what I mean- is that I have been chasing this dream for so long and it felt like a pipe dream too. I didn't even feel like it was a sustainable or a viable thing for so long. And then all of a sudden, it seemed like it happened really quickly. And then the pandemic happened. And then I went straight from being isolated for a year to being on the other side of the world with all new people, shooting a TV show living out this dream that I've had for so many years, that I didn't have time to process it. And I feel like now things tend to slow down a little bit. And like I said, we're coming into autumn now in a real way, and the shadows are getting longer. I'm starting to really process my reality. It's like, oh, I can't believe I'm living the life that I had been trying to manifest and desperately journaling about for years and years and years and years. I mean, you know, you're an artist as well. And it's like...

Absolutely. It's a process.

It's a process. It's a process and you dream, but you don't know if it'll actually pan out, if you can actually do it, you know? You hope. But yes, I mean, it's really wonderful to be here now. It's really wonderful to be here now and I hope I can hold on to it.

You will, you will. I mean you're a star already.

Oh thanks.

So don't fear, it's just going to take off from here. You know what I mean? You got it, and you've been manifesting it. So it's just going to go higher from here.

I hope that's true. I hope that's true.

Yes, for sure.

Now, going back to the show. Let's talk about Riley's evolution throughout this whole season? How would you characterize her development throughout the show?

Yes. We find Riley... Before falling into the sinkhole, Riley is somebody that has planned everything to a "T" and could follow that path in a very linear fashion. She always knew what she wanted, and she could always get what she wanted and she can always manipulate any situation to be in her favor. And she was very much in her own power and a go-getter. Falls into the sinkhole and both figuratively and literally, everything kind of just gets ripped out from underneath her and now she's forced into a space where she needs to refigure it all out. Who am I? Who am I if I don't have my intended path? Who am I if I don't have clothes that I normally cling on to? She's kind of like a resident fashionista in her own right. And now she's left with only the clothes that she fell into the hole with, she's having to kind of really look at herself and now, what is my identity now that I don't have all these other things that I'm used to leaning on? Which is really interesting because I feel like so many of us felt that way during the pandemic.

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I was just going to say, it's very relatable in that way because it provided the reset. Much like when the characters fell into the sinkhole, it's a reset for them.

Yes, exactly. Exactly that. So I think she's incredibly intelligent, and perceptive and precocious. And we kind of watch her fumble and fail and have to try new things. And her evolution is in the vulnerability, her evolution is in her ability and her need to pick everything back up again and start anew. And so I'm saying these things, and it's so funny, because it is just exactly like what we were all going through during the pandemic. It's like, who are we without these pillars of our personality that we lean on so much, right? I had so much structure and routine in my life that I was really leaning on before the pandemic. The pandemic happened and it was like, Oh my God. It was like, wow, I couldn't tell if I was feeling depressed because there were things that were being removed, or if the removal of those things was shedding light on the fact that I had been depressed and was maybe distracting myself. You know what I mean?

That's so true and also really interesting that you pointed that out because there's so many layers to these things. And you're right, if you're put into a situation like that, the pandemic or let's just hope not, like you literally fall into a sinkhole, into another dimension, then it puts you in that place of reflection. That's really what it does to you. Talk to us about the highs and the challenges that you've experienced throughout this whole process.

Oh, God. I wouldn't even know where to start. I mean, I think that being an actor is being in a really vulnerable place, I think. It’s also a very noble profession. I mean, it's like I found the only career paths in which I can get rejected every single day of my life. I found a single career path in which somebody could tell me "no" every day. And that's a really vulnerable place to be in. And because there isn't a linear path to follow, and because you don't know when your big breaks, or your small breaks are going to be or where they're going to come from, or who's going to say yes to you. Because you don't know any of that, you're really left to your own devices, you're really left with yourself all the time. All the time. And there isn't structure in the same way that you might find in a different job. So, there's so many challenges to this career.

Let's get there to that point where you were saying something about the uncertainty of things? How are you able to navigate that since it's nonlinear, there's no direction whatsoever? There's no specific way to get to the path that you wanted? How do you create your own sense of direction? How are you able to do that? Because you still need to have some sort of direction, right?

Oh, entirely, entirely. And it's so funny that you say that too, because it's like, that is the question. I think that we're all like, how do we find our purpose? How do we find our sense of direction? I mean job aside, in this lifetime, what is the direction? What is the path? I think, honestly, I like the way that I have looked at this career, which has made it so much more manageable by making it more like a numbers game. It was like, for so many years, I was just begging for an opportunity to be told no. I just wanted to be in the rooms. And it was like, I just want to get in the room. I just want to be told no and move on to the next one, and move on to the next opportunity. I just want to meet the people... It was just like baby steps, essentially, baby steps. I had these little post-it notes up in my bedroom at the time and every audition I went on, the only goal that I honestly had was one, not to bomb it, not to have it be an awful audition. But beyond that to get a tally mark on that post-it note.

Because I was like, I had some arbitrary number. It was like by the time I have 200 tally marks, which would equate to 200 auditions, someone must have told me at one point in those 200 tally marks, and my goal was just to get as many tally marks on that post-it as possible. I think I went to 183 auditions before I booked La Brea.

You really counted that. Wow.

Yes, I did. I counted it. Because that was what kind of made me feel like I had any kind of semblance of control. There isn't any. And I think that's the lesson of life.

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That makes sense. You created your own sense of control- you did the tally marks for you to kind of control your path. You're paving your own road, that's literally what happened there. In line with this career, what do you think is the proudest moment so far?

This is kind of maybe an answer that you might not expect but I actually had pretty severe stage fright. And I mean obviously just to put it on the table, obviously being a part of a show like La Brea with the people that are a part of that show is such a proud-- I'm so proud to be a part of a project like this. Obviously that's number one. It's so exciting to be a part of a show that I get to be in every episode and I get to work, and I get to meet these people and move across the world to live in Australia for six months. And to live on my own and to work on the craft and obviously, that I'm proud of that. Of course, I'm excited about that. But honestly, the first thing I thought of when you said that is I really struggled with stage fright. I've been on the stage my entire life. I did show choir, I danced a lot as a kid. But I think that I cared so much about acting and it seemed like it was such a pipe dream, something that could never actually happen. And my care for it and my care to be good made me so nervous that I would shake and forget all my lines all the time. And I didn't even know that I had that kind of stage fright until I got to undergrad, until I got to college. And I had a lip tremor, my top limb would shake uncontrollably, which is also like the worst thing for an actor to have, is a physical tremor like that.

How did you overcome that?

Like overcoming any fear that I have- with exposure therapy. When I first started auditioning more regularly, I knew that I would have to be driving into Hollywood a lot. I knew that I would get really anxious behind the wheel when I was driving in Hollywood. I just would, because just the amount of people that were on the road and everybody always had somewhere to go, it just made me really anxious. And so I was like, alright, if this is the path that I want to be and if this is where all the auditions are going to be, then I need to be driving and learning how to drive in Hollywood. So I would get in my car like every day and go drive to Hollywood until it wasn't scary anymore. And in that same way, it was like okay, alright, if I'm going to be this nervous in front of the camera all the time, if I'm going to have this lip tremor, I guess I just got to do more. There was a period of time where I was taking three acting classes at a time and one of them was in San Diego. I was driving down to San Diego every Monday. I took the day off from work on Mondays, and I would drive down there two hours, two hours back every day to take a class, to take a Meisner class.

Wow.

Which is an acting technique, the Sanford Meisner technique. And then I took another class on Wednesdays and another class on Sundays. And it was exposure therapy. It was just like doing it, doing it in front of strangers, doing it in front of people that I knew and doing it in front of people who I cared about their opinion. Putting myself on camera all the time, I would go home and look up scenes and with my friends, we would just put ourselves on camera and look at it, watch it back and do it and just practice an exposure therapy. But I was really nervous actually going into the shooting of La Brea because I was worried because it was such a huge production. And it's still obviously a huge production with so many people working on it, I was afraid that like the pressure of being on a show that big would give me stage fright. And I'm very happy to report that I really... Well first of all, of course, all that practice and rehearsal, but I think I felt very, I guess proud. I felt very proud to have been given the opportunity and to be this small part in a very big machine. And I had confidence in that. I had confidence in my ability to do that. And I think that the fact that so many people said yes to me. In order for me to book this job, a lot of people had to say "yes". That gave me confidence that I was like, okay, if they believe that I can do this, then I believe that I can do this too. And I didn't have... I mean, of course there were days that I was nervous. But I wasn't experiencing stage fright in that very big way that I had before. And I'm very proud of that. Of course, there's always more work to be done and rehearsal and practice to do but I'm really proud that I've been able to overcome that. It was like years of that, was years of that.

You should be very proud. I mean, number one, you're here already. Number two, again like what you said, you're part of this amazing huge production. And I feel like all these years of training, they're just paying off right now. So you know, you should be proud of yourself. Pat yourself on the back. You're amazing.

Thank you.

And your dedication to the craft shows. It really shows.

Thanks for saying that.

Yes, and I feel like at some point, you just got to like... I feel like when you just kind of let go of whatever it is that you're feeling, that's when you're going to fly more. Like jumping off a cliff, and then your wings will just spread.

That is so true though. Again, it's so funny like how art imitates life. Every lesson that I've learned in the art is also a life lesson, you know? And that is such a huge lesson, what you're talking about. It's the lesson of just being able to surrender, just to let go. Just let go. Nothing is that important?

Life is not that serious if you think about it.

It's not that serious.

Okay, if you were a book, what book would you be and why?

Oh, that's fun. Okay, great. Well, actually, the first book I thought of actually was The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Milan Kundera.

Yes. Yes. I adore it. Have you read that book?

Uh huh.

Isn't it incredible? It made me sob. And it's so funny too, because I actually don't even remember that much of the plot. I don't even remember that much of the plot but I remember how it made me feel.

Same. I read it years ago, but it's stayed with me that's why I always remember that book. It's the feelings you remember.

The feelings. I mean, we can't even sit here and talk about the summary or the plot or what happens. But like the feeling of it, I just remember being completely flat..., it knocked me flat on my back. I remember and it made me sob, and I don't remember why. But I really do love philosophical fiction. I love things like that, like Albert Camus. I love Albert Camus. I love a mystery. But actually, if it's an open question, I would love to be a book of Haiku.

Oh... Very short, but deep.

Short but deep. I would love to be. That's me. That's me, I'm short and deep.

Haiku! Haiku... I love that. I actually really like that. I love writing haiku and I love reading haiku so much. So much. During the pandemic, actually, I wrote so many haiku that I am actually considering publishing at some point. I would need to go through and continue writing.

I love haiku. And I love the freedom of haiku. I know that there's like structure, but there's such freedom in that form. It can be so playful or it could be something that's darker, or something that's more enigmatic and mysterious. And I just, I really love reading haiku. And they're easy. Like, with your short attention span these days, you know what I mean? It's just, they're so easy and they can tell such a wonderful full written story in like three lines. And I also like the idea that you can also buck the tradition and buck the form and you can do whatever you want. It just has to be a short poem.

Absolutely.