Shantel VanSanten On Overcoming Self-Doubt, The Power of Being Present and The New Season of 'The Boys' and 'For All Mankind'
In our soulful conversation, actress Shantel VanSanten, who you can catch in The Boys and For All Mankind, talks about overcoming self-doubt, the power of staying present and the newest seasons of her two hit shows.
Shantel was interviewed and virtually photographed in Los Angeles by Alison Engstrom
Hi Shantel! Thank you so much for getting creative and letting me photograph you at home. I know We chatted a bit, but How are you doing during this time period?
It’s interesting, I look back on the time and it feels like it’s been in chapters. We had the first chapter, where so many of us felt like we were given this mini-break and vacation. We didn’t know how long that was going to be, so we were able to be present and enjoy. As an actor, we have time like that, after we wrap a job, we don’t always have things lined up, so you are able to come back into your life, whether it’s getting errands done or stuff done around the house. It was a lot of that and catching up on movies and feeling like it was temporary so make the most of it, you know, have a drink in the middle of the day or watch the show you wanted to binge. As the understanding of the virus grew obviously and going into lockdown, it shifted focus. I think for me, I had to find different ways to still be creative. There was so much energy happening within me, I think anxiousness for what has been transpiring in our world from the pandemic to the election year. So whether it was playing the piano again to drawing, it was all about finding respite in my day. We got really fortunate that they found a way for us to go back and complete season two of For All Mankind. We just wrapped and everyone was healthy; no one got sick during filming. It felt like this glimmer of hope that even though our industry will be different that we are still going to be able to entertain people and to make shows; it’s just going to take us growing, evolving and shifting to something different.
I like how you referred to this period in different chapters verus one big moment in time. Have you ever experienced another chapter in your life where you had to take a step back and reevaluate?
Absolutely, yes, I feel as through the last eleven or so years, my life was always defined around the chapter of whatever job I had. There was one particular chapter, about a year and a half, that wasn’t defined by jobs. I went on 94 auditions and I didn’t book anything; I came so close and it just was not happening. I didn’t know a world where I wasn’t working, not necessarily as an actress, I had always had three or four jobs at a time and that was what defined me and made me feel fulfilled. I remember that time was the biggest for personal growth. When I look back on this there are tons of chapters even from the silliest of The Tiger King phase that we all went though, but truly, if we take it in and are able to gain any attention to what we learned—for me, it is being present within myself and not being defined by a job and allowing myself to fill up and heal certain things where normally I would just find a new job and move on. Instead, it forced everyone to slow down, which is very uncomfortable. We instantly had a lot of fears come up and we had to really sit with those feelings. I am fortunate to have an incredible therapist. I have been in therapy for thirteen years, so it’s a constant assessment of where I am at and what I am going through. I am a perpetual overthinker, so it’s good for me to have someone who knows my journey.
I would say that this time kind of replicates that time—I was 25 or 26 years old when I went through that period of not working. I am really grateful for it because I think it forced me to get uncomfortable and to grow. There are still parts of me that looks back and realizes the benefit of that, so as hard as this time has been to be unemployed across all sorts of jobs and places I don’t know another time, as a world, where we could relate to one another in this way, whether you live in another country in a different side of the world and believe in a different religion, you could still connect to the exact feeling of floundering and thinking, what is happening? I don’t know a collective time when we could be as united in the world. I could only hope it shifts our consciousness a little, we gain a bit more knowledge and hopefully do things differently when things resume back.
I wish people would talk more about that commonality. We are all going through this together and it isn’t easy.
What’s interesting is that we don’t ever have certainty. We have a lot of things that make us feel like we have certainty—like I am going to wake up tomorrow, go to work until five, come home, it’s Wednesday so we eat spaghetti—but what we don’t realize is that we create these structures to make us feel like we have certainty, when we don’t. I know that I am not the only person who struggles with the struggle of surrendering and not having any control over anything.
I don’t know if you ever feel this way being an actor, but running ROSE & IVY, nothing is ever guaranteed. I live in the stage of limbo a lot! Do you ever feel like you can deal with uncertainty a bit more because of that?
Of course, I remember asking, what are the things I want most in life? It’s security and stability and oh cool, you picked a job that was the opposite of that (laughs). It’s interesting to challenge where you want those things, you have to find it for yourself, you have to get comfortable with getting uncomfortable. I think that requires being present, not looking into the past or to the future and realizing that today, right where I am, I am going to stay present.
You have had so many great roles so far in your career. Was there one opportunity that served as a pivotal turning point for you?
I am really grateful that I haven’t had one thing that was a revolutionary moment. I always like to think of it as slow evolution and that each job brings you a little bit closer to attaining a part of your overall goal. It’s not like one job is going to have it all, whether it was a lesson or working with a certain type of director, ensemble or a type of character that I really wanted to tune into, each one has presented challenges and growth in its own way. I felt like I was climbing a ladder slowly, one step and one hand at a time. I feel grateful for that because it didn’t thrust me to fail or throw me off a mountain and splatter on my face. It feels like I can fall back a step and then just keep going—that process is better for me. I am able to learn from it and see the growth. Obviously One Tree Hill was the space where I entered into TV. I had mainly been doing independent films before that, but I was given one of the leads in an ensemble show. I learned multitudes on it. We had an incredible ensemble on this CW show where I was number one on the call sheet and I remember what that meant and what it meant to be a leader. I remember the first time I was ever killed off as a series regular and that was a really hard lesson. It felt like a rejection versus the fact that I was there to service the story.
I will say that when I signed on to do For All Mankind, it all happened very quickly. Apple TV was going to be this brand new network, it was Ron Moore, outer space and at first I felt like someone had taken me out of high school varsity basketball and threw me into the NBA (laughs). I remember driving to work the first day and thinking, I am not worthy, I don’t know what I am doing, I haven’t earned this, they are going to figure out I am a fraud, all of those negative, fearful based things that sabotage us. I remember finishing the first season and being like, this is where I belonged and how incredible that as fearful as I really felt—I’d drive to work and think they are asking too much of me, I am going to suck—and facing that fear and really leaning in it taught me that I could grow to that place. Sorry to be crass but it scared the living shit out of me; I didn’t think I knew how to do it. I have been telling the universe-who is ever listening-creator to just give me something that terrifies me, allows me to grow and show that I am capable and it showed up in that way.
That’s Wonderful. How do you counteract that negative thinking? We so often see ourselves in this very limiting way.
It’s so much self-talk, it’s also grace for being a human—I am not perfect. I am going to fail at some point, at something, at some time and being okay with it because even within that failure, I am going to learn. It’s funny, we can allow so much grace for other people to fail and embrace their humanness and comfort them in their failures, but when it comes to ourselves, we have no grace for it. I also do many different affirmations that maybe I write it on a Post-It Note, or write it inside my binder. One episode of this season on For All Mankind just terrified me. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, if my emotions would come out and portray what I needed to. I was so scared and I remember writing at the top of my page: just be truthful. So in that scene and in that moment, I can’t judge my truth because that is my truth and that is what I can show up with. I also have a great group of girlfriends, it’s really great to have a support system on those days when you super-doubt yourself.
To switch gears now to talk about your work, you have two series that you are starring in this fall that are in their second season The Boys and For All Mankind two very different projects! Did you film them close to each other?
They were not filmed back to back, they overlapped a lot and to be honest, that part was tricky. It was really tricky to navigate playing a mother in two different time periods and in two very different universe worlds because one was fictional. I have this great photo to remind me, not that it was only a blessing, but just to remind me of what a whirlwind it was, all four of the scripts I was shooting in my hotel bed. I had two scripts of The Boys and two scripts of For All Mankind. I remember sitting there and thinking how do I use a different character brain and what world am I now?
What is your process for getting into character?
I create journals for each of my characters. I have memories that I created that are not on paper and things that reground me back in them. I filmed two of the most difficult scenes for both shows and I had been filming four days inside of a hospital for a death that happens in For All Mankind. I flew out on a red eye and landed slept in my trailer on set for three hours and then filmed a hard labor and a rape that happened. It was pretty tough. I remember after that week I had to do a lot of self-love and finding a way back into my body now.
Let’s first talk about The Boys, which has been a runaway hit. Can you talk more about what viewers can expect from your character Becca this season. I love how episodes are released at different time and not all at once.
It is such a fun show. Some people don’t like that they have to wait but good television you can’t digest all at once. You can only retain like 33%, or some study that was done, because there are so many good Easter eggs that happen, they want you to talk about it and go and rewatch. Season two, I always knew I would have a bigger role, but I didn’t know to what extent. With each script that came, I understood the fierce fight that existed within Becca. I would say that she’s the best of us, as mortal human beings, the way that she has been so selfless and sacrificed so much in the face of complete atrocities that have happened to her and her world. She was totally spun upside down at the end of last season and the beginning of this season. I don’t want to reveal too much but the relationship between her and her son and her and Billy is really the challenge between what she wants selfishly and what’s best for the world as a whole.
And now For All of Mankind, this season your character Karen Baldwin experiences the tremendous loss of a child. How do you prepare for something like that?
I commend, one of our writers, Nicole, it’s actually her mother’s story and her brother’s story, his name was Shane. There was an extra added layer of wanting to do justice to the story that she so bravely told. I love when we are able, as creatives, to bravely show up and share our experiences to connect with other people. I was terrified and it was a tough week. I felt like I was being tortured, as it should; those were the days I would drive to work and think, I am just going to go home and quit. Those are the days that I would write, just be truthful. I know immense loss and sometimes to dig that back up is pretty hard and painful.
You have used your platform to raise awareness about a lot of different issues, including voting, Black Lives Matter, suicide prevention and the initiative with the American Lung Association’s called “Lung Force” that you support. I was surprised to learn that most people who are diagnosed have never smoked a day in their life. Can you share more about that and your mission?
When my grandmother was diagnosed, we felt the same way. The question was, she never smoked, so what are you talking about? No one in their house smoked. As we educated ourselves to learn more about it, we realized there are a multitude of different causes, one being radon, which is odorless, you can’t see it or smell it. It’s basically the gas in the breaking down of uranium. They had a leak in the foundation of their home that came through the basement—it’s what poisoned her and is highly toxic. After being exposed to it for period of time, you end up developing lung cancer. She passed within six months of her diagnosis. I get to carry on her legacy by educating other people. The American Lung Association has set up so many ways to help people get scans and information about radon, pollution and all of the different causes. Lung Force is an initiative, I found it after they started it, and felt like it was the space where I could keep telling my grandmother’s story and to hopefully save lives. Check your basements, do you live in an area where radon is high you can find it on the internet, you can get a radon test kit for $10, some places have them for free. Since she doesn’t get to have a voice, and in order to save lives, I feel like I channel her strength and her energy. We do walks every year and we raise money for research and patients. It can be prevented, like carbon monoxide. She was my biggest influence and she helped raise me. It’s the only way I can survive in this world without her.
i didn’t know any of that, i am so sorry for your loss and thank yoU for sharing. Can you share any details about what’s next for you?
I feel open and ready and I know that fingers crossed, we get to have a third season on For All Mankind because we still have stories to tell and planets to visit. I feel excited for what is next; even though it might feel scary just leaning into it and taking the dive into the next character or the next world that I feel connects with my soul.
Follow Shantel on Instagram
Tune Into ‘For All ManKind’ on Apple TV+
Tune Into ‘The Boys’ on Prime Video
Makeup by Jess Anderson Crocker