Leven Rambin Won't Let Her Moment Pass Her By
Leven Rambin had already appeared in television series like All My Children, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Grey's Anatomy, CSI: Miami, and a little movie called The Hunger Games when she decided to go to acting school at New York's Playhouse West. "I just felt unfulfilled," she says. "I wanted to develop myself, push myself, grow and dig into my talent, evolve as an artist. So I went back to school to try and do that. It was the best thing I ever did." It was during that program that she landed a role in the second season of HBO's True Detective, and began flying back and forth between the show's California set and classes.
It was also around this time that she first read the script for Lost Child, a psychological thriller (out now) that jumped out at her in more ways than one. "Right around a month after I started saying that I only wanted roles that would challenge me," says Rambin, "I read the script for Lost Child, and I thought, This is it." The story follows an army veteran (Rambin) who returns to her hometown in the Ozarks while grappling with PTSD. There, she finds a young boy lost in the woods behind her house and takes him in-but soon after, she's stricken with a mysterious ailment. Searching for answers, she learns about a local folktale concerning malevolent spirits who appear in the form of lost children and zap the life force from their victims.
The slow-burning tension of the script drew Rambin to the project, and soon, she was auditioning for the role via FaceTime, promising the director that once she was transported from the confines of her Brooklyn home into the graying forest brush of the Ozarks, she could really show them something. "Thank God I convinced them," she says.
The movie was directed by Ramaa Mosley, who also co-wrote the script with Tim Macy, a Missouri native familiar with the tone and spirit of the area. Mosley, who began her directing career as a teenager, is "a huge advocate for female filmmakers and young filmmakers," says Rambin. Mosley, Rambin, and producer Gina Resnick midwifed the project for four years until it finally came to the screen. Rambin credits the scrappy tenacity of their women-led indie production for getting their passion project out into the world.
That process inspired Rambin to embark on her own projects. She's currently shopping around a series, co-written with her former All My Children co-star Ambyr Childers, based on their mutual experiences with divorce. Here, Rambin tells BAZAAR.com about the lessons she's learned from working with fellow women in Hollywood, how she's motivating herself (and others) to create their own dream projects, and how it feels to be prepping a pitch to Sarah Jessica Parker.
The experience of working on Lost Child changed her perspective on the kinds of roles she's willing to take.
"You just don't see roles like this for young women, that are so well-written and so complex, written by a woman, directed by a woman. So I fought for it. I thought, I don't care if this movie's being made for $25, I don’t care if I have to help pay for the damn thing. I collaborated with Ramaa [Mosely, the director], and she was very nurturing. She let me go as deep into the character as I wanted to go. So I did. It’s a psychological thriller, but it’s also a grounded, character-driven drama. And because it was an independent production, no one was telling us how to do things. We had the control and the time to push ourselves, and it was so rewarding. I thought, if a project doesn’t offer that level of creativity in the production, in the script, and in the character, then I don't really want to do it anymore."
But it wasn't easy getting Lost Child off the ground.
"The movie had a really small budget, and it made with the sheer willpower of the director. It was really personal for her, and I felt that the movie was special. It took some time, but we weren’t going to let it just wither on the vine. I started doing other things, and she started writing other things, but we kept coming back to it. Ramaa and Gina Resnick, the producer, and I never gave up on it. We took it to festivals, I won best actress at the Taormina Film Festival in Italy, and we started picking up steam. It could have died so many times, like so many independent films do. But in the indie space, it's a team effort. If you believe in it, it's pretty much up to you to make it. You don't have a studio giving you money, telling you where to show up or what to do. You make it happen on your own. This movie was made from the sheer willpower and passion of three women."
Observing and studying female directors and showrunners inspired Rambin to create her own projects with one simple mantra: Why not me too?
"As an actor, you jump through a bunch of hoops to try and get a role that maybe doesn't even excite you. It's just what's available at that moment. But I’m at a point where if I'm going to spend all my time and effort trying to work, it should be on something that I adore. Why would I jump through those hoops for somebody else's project, if I don’t even believe in it? So I'm spending my energies writing, making my own stuff. As women right now, we have to keep taking and making our own opportunities. If Ramaa can direct a movie, and Frankie Shaw can make a show on Showtime [SMILF] based off of a short film, why not another girl? Why not me too?
When I first started telling people I wanted to write my own project, they were kind of like, "Good luck, sweetheart." Because I'm sure every actor says they want to write or direct at some point. But I want to do it right. I’m working with producers and other writers to learn and cultivate my skill as a writer, not just assuming that it's something that I can just do. I think you have respect the difficulty of the craft."
Rambin and her fellow actors are motivating each other to finally get their long-gestating projects off the ground by raising the stakes.
"I’ve talked to a lot of other actors who say they have an idea for a script that they’ve been holding onto, and I tell them to just start! You think that you have to have somebody give you permission to start, or that you have to have some perfect, fully-formed idea before you can set it down to paper. But some of the shit that I've filmed, that’s had a lot of money behind it, was worse than the last email you wrote. So just start.
"Me and my friend Nicholas Braun [who plays Cousin Greg on Succession], we just shot a movie called London Calling, and he told me about an idea he had for a script. So we made a bet: he had to have the first draft to me by September 1, or he owed me $2,000. And I had a pitch document that I was working on that I had to have to him by September 1, or I owed him $2,000. We held each other accountable, and we both finished."
Rambin and her former All My Children co-star Ambyr Childers began developing a project together as a means of working through the trauma of divorce.
"We were both on All My Children together about 10 years ago. We’ve been friends ever since, but we kind of lost touch. She got married, she had two kids. I got married, I moved back to New York. We didn’t really reconnect until later, when we started exchanging notes over our divorces. She had gone through it before I did, and we started talking. I got advice from her, I listened to her experience, and we formed a whole new bond. Then one day we decided that we should write about it. So we did."
Rambing, who's pitching her show to the likes of Sarah Jessica Parker, is specifically pursuing female production-partners to tell a "female story."
"We're looking at production companies run by women, because it's a female story. One of our producers is a male, and he’s really passionate about the project, but he understands that it should be run by a female showrunner and producer. I feel like it's really important to have a women-led production to make the show that I'm trying to make."
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
('You Might Also Like',)
