Life & Work with Lesette Maxwell of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lesette Maxwell.

Hi Lesette, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
As long as I can remember, my heart has been set on writing, acting, and filmmaking.

In the beginning, my love was writing plays. I would spend hours at my grandpa’s large bubbly computer writing. Then I’d round up cousins, neighbors and friends to join me in putting on a show for the very patient audience that was our family.

This passion soon evolved into filmmaking when my mom gifted me one of those old Flip video cameras in the sixth grade. Suddenly, I was a director.

With plays, it was so special to perform and let it be what it was in that moment. But my imagination absolutely soared when I realized that with a camera, I could truly play with sharing a moment however I’d like it to be shared. To get to pick and choose what people see, how they see it, and when they see it… and create feeling through that, just absolutely blew my mind.

In high school, my focus ended up shifting to friends, social circles, crushes, etc. All things film took the back burner. I just got way too caught up in worrying about whether or not people would think I was cool. Not that I ended being cool anyway, but I just really wanted to fit in. I thought that ignoring being creative or silly would have made being a lost teenager easier for me. But in retrospect, being creative and silly was probably exactly what I needed the most. It’s what we all need!

That being said, my creative rebirth of sorts didn’t happen until my second year of college, where I met the most incredible people and launched myself on this fresh journey of figuring out what I have to say and how I want to say it…

I knew I missed acting, but I didn’t have any roles right in front of me in that moment, so I wrote them for myself. Then the scripts got bigger and needed more characters, and I recruited my college friends and hometown to act with me. Then I didn’t have a director, so my friends and I would all take turns. And, of course, with no money at all, we didn’t have a producer, so I produced.

It all sort of built itself on the fact that I wanted to make things happen with stories I was eager to sink my teeth into at the time, yet I wasn’t really at a place where I knew how to get started in “the real world.” So we all created our own little safe haven of ultra, ultra low-budget and ultra embarrassing projects where we just got to try, fail, learn, grow, and have so much fun.

This all magically snowballed into my career now.

Acting in student films led to long-term creative collaborations for indie short-form and feature length films. The more I acted, the more refined I got as a writer. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to produce, direct, and perform. It all fuels each other!

My career ended up picking up the most speed as a producer – my brain is one big spreadsheet, so I did well in this rather quickly. I ended up in-house at a boutique production company where I got my days to join IATSE Local 871 as a production coordinator. From that point, I was coordinating union commercials freelance, which allowed me more time to nurture writing, acting, and my own side projects.

My career has been mainly producing, with a side of writing, for the last two-three years which has been the most incredible chapter of growth professionally and personally that I am so thankful for.

But with some recent big shifts in my world this year, I got my fire back for all of it again – in front of and behind camera. I’ve spent my summer diving back into acting, and writing. And have some very fun projects coming up that I am so excited to direct.

I feel like I am at this beautiful point in life, just exploring the art of starting over without feeling like I am necessarily starting from scratch. I am so excited. I feel like a little kid again with my video camera and anything is possible.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Oh, definitely not a smooth road and definitely not linear. I’ve been pursuing this for ten years now, and I am just now starting to feel at ease with the bumps and the detours, and enjoy what it could look like to just roll with them.

I figure it’s all just experience that I can choose to use for my art – even if the experience itself doesn’t necessarily feel like it’s valuable or related whatsoever to my progress as a filmmaker or actress.
Life is art too- I’m working hard to make sure I don’t forget that.

But the bumps have been significant, to say the least. Some personal, and some external.

Trying to get your career rolling in your early twenties at the same time as a global pandemic, followed by several strikes, is not the easiest thing.

This has impacted us all.

And I look forward to the day where this industry feels recovered as a collective, because we all need each other. That’s one of the many reasons I love filmmaking, is the group effort it takes to make some magic. I believe in healing, and it’s been a slow process, but I’m choosing hope here.

Personally, there are so many bumps in the creative process. My goodness. Especially if you’re an overly self-critical person like myself. I am often my own bump and I’ve had to have several conversations with myself to cut it out and just play.

“The first draft doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to exist.”

This has been a theme I am holding onto dearly right now. Just trust. Just start. Mastery will never come from something that remains stuck in your head because you’re too afraid of not mastering it.
Also, mastery isn’t the point anymore. Fun is!

I think everything shifted for me when I redefined success as something more playful, free, and weird.
And committing to myself. Demonstrating consistency to my own self also feels successful.

The fact that I am still here, still trying, and still having the hell of a time with it feels pretty successful to me especially knowing that I almost gave up several times.

For a while there, I was close to giving up on acting. I had created these standards for myself that were pretty harsh. I remember being so convinced that I need to be able to do a role like x, y, or z in order to be considered a good actress.

I thought that I needed to keep putting myself in these really traumatic or intense scenes, whether in class or on screen, that I just wasn’t healed enough as a person to be able to handle correctly. And I’d put myself through hell trying to prep, and then exhaust myself in prep to the point where my performance was always trash and I was always in my head by the time I had to report to set or to class.

This was a vicious cycle that kept me thinking that I would never be good enough for these very serious roles that I convinced myself were the only ones that mattered.

So I took a break. I took like a three year break. Gosh, it was much needed. In that time, I embarked on my journey as a young producer, too, so it worked out to still feel like I was growing – just not as an actress. But then I realized that growing as a person IS growing as an actress, because our human experience is the toolkit we pull from when we are acting.

This idea was reassuring, and I decided to give it another try this year. Without the pressure. I don’t need to be putting myself in damaging roles all the time. I am allowed to have fun. And when an intense role does come around, I know that I am better equipped to handle my prep and nurture myself through that process.

I think a smaller, and more curious and fun challenge I am facing right now is just re-introducing myself to myself as an actress. The roles I was interested in three years ago or what my cast-type was before is so not what I am interested in now. I am learning to have fun with the fact that I have changed, and how to find ways to access and honor all the different versions of myself and my life that I’d like to play with at this time.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
My work jumps around between acting, writing, directing, and producing. Sometimes it’s all mixed together, but other times it’s just one or two of those things – which is fun!

Each of those jobs serves as a different outlet for myself, so it’s nice to mix and match.

For this specific chapter of life though, I am writing, directing and producing short and long form stories that belong in a Gothic Americana universe.

I’m exploring both beautiful and horrific things that are often hidden in plain sight, and the ways that our communities can be brought together or torn apart with issues happening in our own small, unnamed backyards.

For the last five years or so, I’ve been in awe of spaces that can host grit and gentleness, and how people choose to use these spaces. This really came to be when I was living full-time in Joshua Tree during the pandemic. It was such a dark and unknown time where light and darkness; healing and devastation; and isolation and community simultaneously existed.

The life I lived while out in the desert with the themes of the world really allowed me to get curious about how different people handle fear, knowledge, faith, and so on, while also growing more and more fascinated by just how FULL the desert felt even though I used to think it was so empty — leading to the American Southwest becoming my new favorite stage.

Translating these curiosities into fun, gritty stories has been my focus as a writer and director.
Light and darkness – how they work together and how they work against each other. This is what I am specializing in right now.

And the roles I am interested in at this time are actually characters who would exist in a similar world. I’d love to play with roles like the a spunky little pistol with no fear and no filter, or a very grounded, calculated person in a larger game of chess.

I am proud of my ideas and the way they are becoming more and more tangible every day. I am proud and excited to be feeling such wonderful growth across the board as a creative. I feel like what I am most proud of is not necessarily any one project, but that I am still here and still trying and still as excited as can be.

What sets me apart? I really don’t know, yet. I’m trying not to approach work anymore thinking about what’s going to be different or fun or what the audience will think. I am just trying to make movies that I want to see. And that I want to make! The rest will be the rest, I guess. It’ll be fun to see in a few years if there’s actually an answer to what sets me apart. Time will tell!

What does success mean to you?
YES! I briefly spoke about this earlier. I’m so glad this came up again!

I have recently re-defined success for myself and it’s been such a breath of fresh air.

I didn’t really sit down and prompt myself to re-define anything. I just kind of kept catching myself thinking about the old definitions that I had, and realized, “Oh, wait. That’s evolved a bit!”

I think the main difference I have realized is that my GOALS can be different from what SUCCESS is to me. Though many things will overlap in those categories, there’s actually a lot that I realized were their own little entities.

What success used to be to me was kind of more in the realm of being rich and famous:

I wanted a lot of money so that I could pour it into my loved ones and support humanitarian efforts that are close to my heart. I wanted the dream house and dream property with lots of animals. I wanted control over my schedule, and not have to report to the same place at the same time every day forever and ever. I wanted my work to be valued and recognized with awards. And I wanted to be enough of a “name,” to be a role model for young creatives. Success was that I would never have to worry about money again. I wanted to be a vessel of blessings for others, but for my money and resources to be obtained through filmmaking, storytelling and spending my time creating.

And yes, all of this is still true for me but they’re considered goals now.

Success has shifted to be more about my approach as I work towards these goals.

Success has become a bit more about my day to day life now, (which is NOT settling or making oneself small by the way). It has allowed me to feel accomplished and successful even in the in-betweens, even on this wild ride – so that I don’t always feel like I am overwhelmed by chasing something. Success is right here and now. And the more I allow myself to feel successful presently, the more it will magnetize as I succeed in reaching my goals one by one.

Success now is playfulness, it’s love. It is safety and trust. It is surrounding myself with people who believe in me wholeheartedly. It is the luxury of being able to make mistakes and try again. It is loving what I do – even if it’s not widely recognized. The act of doing what I love with my free time is successful. Having a job that pays for the roof over my head and the food in my fridge is success. Success is family time and laughter and not having to wake up to an alarm clock on Sunday mornings. It is the ability to move my body and nurture myself and use free will to make my time here as beautiful and weird and whimsical and creative as I possibly can.

I believe that we deserve to feel successful. It shouldn’t be this far off thing that we are chasing and never allow ourselves to feel until we check x, y, and z off our professional to-do lists. Our goals may take years to accomplish! Which is okay!

This journey is a full one, with detours and scenic routes, and bumps and all of the things. We shouldn’t keep pushing off a feeling as beautiful as success (and the quiet confidence and inspiration that comes with it) until some unknown future date. I hope we all find genuine ways to allow ourselves to feel successful in the here and now.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lesettemaxwell

Image Credits
N/A – headshot was a self portrait