Appears in Heroine Magazine Issue 13 (Print)
Is an embrace still an embrace if my arms are around you but my heart keeps its distance? Myha’la Herrold looks in the mirror and sees two versions of herself speaking as she answers this question. There is Myha’la the actor, the open, outstretched palm, reaching and there is Myha’la the person, the rippled reflection, pure but obfuscated, vulnerable but unattainable. As a native Californian of humble beginnings and a recent graduate of Carnegie Mellon, Myha’la is navigating the in-between as a multiplicity of transitions unfold as she learns to build bridges instead of walls. Having debuted on Broadway at the age of 21 in The Book of Mormon as Nabulungi, Myha’la trades singing and dancing for the fast-paced world of finance in Lena Dunham’s newest series, Industry, releasing on BBC/HBO in November. Playing the character of Harper Stern, a cagey, amicable but intractable twenty-something year old vying for a role at a London-banking company, Myha’la steps into her own skin while embodying someone else. The empathetic exchange becomes a dynamic that rewrites her personal definition of resilience as she holds us captive but doesn’t let us get too close. All we want from Myha’la is more.
Lindsey: What was it like meeting the character of Harper on the page for the first time?
Myha'la Herrold: When I met Harper on the page, I didn’t have to figure out how to justify what she was doing. What's exciting about Industry and why I imagine that we'll have a wide audience is that anyone who's ever been a young person transitioning into the workforce will understand what it feels like to be suddenly expected to act like an adult. I happened to be in that very spot in my life, which was relatively true for the other young people in the cast too. We had all been auditioning, done some small projects here and there and suddenly now we are principal characters, leading a show on HBO. We're being expected to handle it like we've been handling it for years. I swear to God, I don't even really remember what happened on the first day. I might've blacked out because I was so overcome with anxiety. Over the series, Harper becomes more comfortable in the world because she's already come with the skill, the know-how in practice and instinct -- which are all the things I think I came with too but we both lacked the practice, the experience. So as she became more comfortable, I became more comfortable as an actor. She’s constantly questioning whether or not she belongs in the room and deals with a severe case of imposter syndrome while trying to prove herself. I definitely have felt that a lot in my life too, as a young person, as a woman of color, as a queer person, I'm always like, do I belong in this room? And then I have to remind myself like, miss, remember, who you are, of course you belong in this room. Getting to know a character is just about humanity.
Lindsey: There is also this phenomenon of a loss of innocence that is written into the transition into adulthood. We ascribe so much value to our jobs, they are who we are, right? You’ve always known what you wanted to do but so many people graduate with lingering ambiguity but feel the pressure for “progress” even if it’s by definitions that aren’t their own.
Myha'la Herrold: I think for me always knowing what I wanted to do was attached to what I liked to do. A lot of people would say to my mom like, “oh, that's really great that she's going to do theater, but does she have a plan B? Does she have a backup plan?” I was always like, why do people want me to have a plan B already? Are they expecting me to fail? I can appreciate the sense of caution because this is a tricky business, it often comes down to right place, right time, right phase, right script, it's luck of the draw for the most part. It was like throwing myself to the wolves but because I didn't come from a lot of money, it was not on my brain. I just wanted to do what was going to make me happy, which is hilarious because the second you really get into it, you're like, is this making me happy? Have I forgotten why this makes me happy? Because in actuality, I was being rejected so fiercely every day. I went to a really prestigious program at Carnegie Mellon with alumni who have done very well. There was this assumption that you're going to graduate and be famous right away which was not the reality.
Lindsey: Right, so what colored the reality of leaving school? That too is such a transitory chapter in our lives that we don’t talk about often enough.
Myha'la Herrold: When you leave school, you're no longer in this community of people that you've grown with in a really integral period of your life. You're meant to make your own schedule, you have to find your own source of income, and more likely than not, you will audition a bazillion times and your only feedback will be radio silence. You have to reconcile that. I remember that there was one particular occasion where I was testing for something and was told by the director they really wanted the part to be me. I thought I was going to be in this place, coming into the first significant amount of money in my life, more than I'd ever dreamed about, and I started making plans. I was then told that it didn’t go my way. It was not necessarily that when I heard the, “no,”, that I was like, oh, I'm not, I'm not good enough -- because I know I'm good enough. But there had to be something else about the situation, about me, that was not right. At the time and throughout school, I was bald, and when they announced who had been cast, I saw that they had picked a really beautiful girl, darker skinned than me and with lots of hair. This has happened to me a couple times where I wasn’t chosen because someone looks more feminine than me, and in my perspective, clearly looks more palatable. That was the first time where I thought, okay, this me “doing my own thing” is probably great in theory, but I have to understand that I'm entering a world of archetypes and palatability. I had a breakdown and I was like, I have to grow my hair out, I have to look more feminine. I realized I had to play this game a little bit.
Lindsey: Did you feel like you were like sacrificing a bit of yourself when you opted to play the game?
Myha'la Herrold: I absolutely did. My whole life I was told like, “do you, be true to who you are and the rest will follow,” and that sacrificing yourself for something or someone else is most likely going to go wrong in all the ways you can imagine. It was just me and my mom my whole life and when I moved out, all I really had was me. I had my friends, but I had me. After work you go home, you shut the door and you have to be with yourself. I felt like I built a really strong relationship with myself and then in that moment, I had to ask if I could play without losing a bit of myself? Would I feel guilty for betraying my own self? And so I started to let my hair grow out and that's literally when Industry came across my desk. As soon as I got cast, I was like, ha! The universe is always right.
Lindsey: And it's just hard to know that though. When you're in those moments, having doubts about what you're doing and the path you're on, it’s hard to keep the faith. My grandma used to tell me, to thine own self, be true and thou cannot be false to any other man, it’s her favorite line from Hamlet. Thinking about this idea of resilience, what happens when all the things you’ve been taught your whole life are challenged?
Myha'la Herrold: After seven months of auditioning, getting very close and being rejected and having just left college and being like, do I like this person now? How do I make friends? So at that time I was battling a serious bout of loneliness and insecurity. Then Industry came along and it was a huge reminder where things that my mom always used to say to me like, “the universe never says no,” came back into play. What that means is that if you want something to happen for you, to you, in you, you manifest it. If you're like, I feel shit and I'm shit, I'm never going to work, the universe is like, yeah bet. You know what I mean? It gives you this sense of agency and responsibility for yourself and also a serious amount of faith. I think my test of resilience was mostly when I got to London at first because it was my first time out of the country, and I was by myself essentially quarantined in Wales with a huge amount of culture shock. I had to tell myself that I am meant to be here because I had a very serious bout of imposter syndrome because I was suddenly number one on the call sheet, I just was like, am I Meryl Streep now? Obviously not, but I felt bad because I'm young, I’m new and didn’t know how to ask for things? I felt super guilty asking for anything. A couple of times it bit me in the ass because I was too afraid to ask and I knew I couldn’t allow that fear of being afraid of someone else's opinion to get in the way of my work. That's what matters most to me, my artistic integrity, I will protect it at all costs.
Lindsey: As you are taking on these different roles, in different head spaces, in now a totally different country, how do you truly maintain or define your artistic integrity? Does the role always have to be someone that you personally align with? Or to what extent do you exist as yourself in one realm and then as yourself as the artist, in another?
Myha'la Herrold: When I think of artistic integrity, I think of maintaining the integrity of the art, which of course is aligned with me because as an actor, I'm the vessel. But taking Industry for example, we have a fair share of sex and intimate moments in the show. So going into that, I was like, great, sex is a huge part of my life, of everyone's life, of our existence, but what I'm not going to do is to objectify or glorify sex that doesn't feel like real sex to me or is there for shock value. All of us got really lucky because the writers are brilliant and nothing in the show is there for shock value, intimacy was there to further the story other than to reify the fact that sex sells. As far as aligning myself, I'm happy to play most things that I think have some kind of purpose, even if that purpose is purely entertainment. I'm excited that many important conversations about our human existence are really prevalent in entertainment today and there is responsibility being taken. But I also love entertainment for entertainment's sake.
Lindsey: Where do you draw the line between those though?
Myha'la Herrold: That's a really good question. Personally, I auditioned for something that was sort of a period piece where I was to play a black character who was pregnant. The character stumbles upon a white town and they seem super nice, but by the end of it, they get totally brutalized. You know, I don't want to watch that. It hurts my feelings and I'm not learning anything new. I didn’t want to put myself through that personal trauma. I think there are so many more crucial, exciting and important conversations to have around race that aren’t necessarily synonymous with reliving slavery again. If I'm not learning something new as the actor or the viewer, getting new information or being exposed to a new kind of commentary, I'm like, why? I don’t judge any person for taking any role ever, I just know I can't handle taking on those kinds of parts, but I also appreciate and understand that that work is being made and that some people do need to see those things. Unfortunately, there are lots of people who still don't understand the plight of queer folks, the plight of black folks, the plight of women. And that is just a serious issue of lack of exposure, if the content is being made, someone out there is looking for it.
Lindsey: It sounds like your definition of success involves having your audience be able to see themselves represented in and by you. To what extent is visibility at the forefront of your mind?
Myha'la Herrold: It's been one of my greatest honors and a privilege to play this part because on the page, you wouldn't necessarily know that Harper was black. But with Industry, this is not a story about a Black woman working in a bank. This is a story about this girl who comes from humble beginnings, fighting to make her place in a world and prove her worth. What you get to watch is these experiences happening by and to a person of color but it's not about just that. It's about everything that makes them who they are and race is just a part of that. As an actor, those are the most exciting scripts to get my hands on because I'm like, here's a story that I get to fill with everything that I am. I don't want someone to ask me, what is it like being a Black blah-blah-blah, why don't you just ask me what it's like being an actor? You don't have to ask me about my Black experience because that's the only one I know.
Success is an interesting thing to me because I'm like, what the fuck is success really? What I do is subjective and the only thing that I know is that I did justice to the work I was asked to do. If other people see me being successful that is also important to me but in a different way because when I think of what I do and what most artists do, I like to think of it as a service. A lot of people think acting is selfish and I never really understood that because I was like, how would I be doing this if there wasn't an audience? The idea that something that I did can bring someone else some kind of joy or engagement, is how I know I've been successful.
Lindsey: Right and the concept of service and justice are interesting as we emerge from quarantine where we’ve had for introspection and a reassessment of values when it comes to collective empathy. Yet at the same time, as a generation we deal with a silent kind of oppression that manifests through anxiety and an underlying sense of pervasive toxicity. You appear to be someone who is so self-assured, but what anxieties do you deal with?
Myha'la Herrold: The more you talk about this shit, the less taboo it becomes. During quarantine I’ve had huge personal growth because I realize I’ve been way too trusting. Because I am so generous of spirit especially in personal relationships, that shit gets abused so quickly and it’s mostly in the form of not accepting or maintaining boundaries. I don't think I understood that I had to create my own personal boundaries for someone else to know that they exist. To maintain boundaries is actually better for both of us because I can’t be a good friend to them, if I'm not taking care of myself and of the relationship I have with myself. I feel really grateful for those difficult experiences because now I understand that to be of service to people, to take care of them, to bring them joy, I have to maintain my personal sanity and my wellness. It’s okay to say that you need a minute and to ask for help, why is that the hardest thing that I've ever done?
Lindsey: Everyone has different capacities and it’s knowing how to build a bridge between your needs and theirs while turning vulnerability into trust. But what about heartbreak? We’ve been pushed to our limits this year but heartbreak is a timeless experience through which we often become different people.
Myha'la Herrold: I definitely feel that you get to a place, particularly in this past year, where you have to actively fight off apathy. There were some moments where I just knew I had no capacity. I couldn’t even be surprised. I couldn’t be hurt. I couldn’t cry. My coping mechanisms are so strong because the last time my heart really broke, I was very young and it was like nothing I had ever experienced in my life. I remember sitting in my mom's bed after I had just ended things with my first boyfriend ever. I was wailing and saying I wanted to die at the top of my lungs for hours and I'm usually not that person. But since then when I think of my heart, I don't know if I allow myself to fully be vulnerable enough to get there again.
Lindsey: But yet, you trust people easily?
Myha'la Herrold: Actually best friend, Lena, gets on me for this. So often I'm like, let's get vulnerable, let's get into it! I am here for you a hundred percent. And she's like, well, what about you? What's up with you? And I'm like, yeah, nothing. She's like, how come I never see you like a wreck? How come you never cry? And I'm like, I do but you just don't see it. I'm not addressing it. Every four months, enough things have built up so I call my mom and I'm in tears. I'm really pretty afraid of sharing that bit of myself with other people. In fact, I didn't expect to ever talk about this in an interview, but, I am desperately afraid to actually share a hundred percent of myself with someone else because of the fear that they're going to hurt me,or they're not going to stick around, but yet I'm fully available for someone else.
Lindsey: Right but you've dealt with rejection in other ways, obviously actively working in the industry. So how do you separate those two types of rejection?
Myha'la Herrold: I think I've become really good at being like, well, they're not rejecting me when it comes to work. I know that what I brought into the room was fabulous and fantastic and I work hard enough to be confident in the work. But if it's about me just a person, not as an artist, that scares the shit out of me. The other night I was like, I wonder if I'll ever be in love again? I'm not sure but I know that I'm the only person getting in the way of that. It's going to take, I imagine years upon years and enough experiences for me to ever really trust somebody like that.
Lindsey: Right and I think sometimes we have all these ideal versions of who you want to be in other people’s eyes in our personal lives. But when you’re an actor, and you have all these roles you play and people you’re supposed to become, do you ever find taking on a role to kind of be like a character study that becomes applicable to your own life?
Myha'la Herrold: Even though I think that I have compartmentalized my personal life from who I am as an actor, when I step into work, nothing gets in the way of me doing my job well and to put my personal ass self in those shoes, I could certainly learn a lot from that. People meet me as an actor, and they see what I wish I saw in my personal self. They see a working person who maintains their artistry, has boundaries out of respect for themselves and others, is vulnerable, available and who will give as much as they allow to receive. They have to be a collaborator. They have to trust the others to put in the amount of work that they’re putting in. I think my personal self knows already that I'm not being a collaborator and all those things with my friends. I have an unbelievable standard that I am meant to be this idealized version of myself for them when really, what they want from me is to be more available in another way. I think I'm so concerned about maintaining this ideal sense of self and I don't want to fail you or I don't want you to fail me. I know that's wrong, I trust my friends, I believe in my friends and without that exchange it really isn't like a completely reciprocal relationship.
Lindsey: For the show I know you lived in London but it seems quite obvious that home for you is with your mom. For you to go and have your career and manifested sense of resilience away from the home you knew, I can imagine that London now holds a very special place in your heart because of that.
Myha'la Herrold: It really does. I completely forgot about this but when I was like a teenager, I would go on YouTube and watch these compilation videos of all these backyard musicians doing acoustic versions of their music. And I was like, oh my God, they're so cool, I belong in London. I completely forgot about all this and I was on the plane looking out the window, down at the greenest place I'd ever seen in my fucking life, I was like, wow, I finally made it! I'm not just here visiting, I'm here to work, I'm here to be among these artists that I was so obsessed with when I was young. I fell in love with it exactly like I thought I would. A goal of mine now is to buy a home in the countryside, somewhere that has an observatory so my mom can garden and we can live together.