Check Out Virginia Newcomb’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Virginia Newcomb.

Hi Virginia, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My origins are of the shy and peculiar, nascent artist variety, navigating small town southern life in Alabaster, Alabama. Making art began in private for me, playing and painting alone in my room, but I grew very curious of the outward expression of performance. Drawn to acting more instinctively, through lurching nerves and stutters. First time I was ever on stage the blinding lights ran me off into my mama’s arms, tried again a few years later and passed out during a choir performance. I fought through years of headaches and body resistance to break open. It would’ve made more sense to my family that I’d crawl inside something like writing or painting. I think about the choice now as necessary for my personal strength as much as desire. One that set the stage for making hard, scary choices over and over. Purpose can be a bear to wrestle sometimes, or maybe it just wants to be a hugged (confession, it’s a real dream of mine to hug a bear). I oscillate between these spaces constantly now. I need to be alone in creativity as intensely as I need to be in company.

A similar push and pull has shaped my experiences thus far, a trajectory of slingshotting between the Southeast and West Coast mostly, with a few layovers everywhere else. I fled to Hollywood at barely 20, on a scholarship to The Lee Strasberg Institute. Dove head first into figuring it all out, and I did, for the most part. I figured and worked and played in LA for 12 years. Found myself in sound stage fever dreams on iconic tv shows, weekends I’d turn into mermaids and clowns at kids’ parties from the Palisades to Compton. Always searching to entertain live stages, I did my share of theatre around town. Then, the pulling came again. Opportunities started lifting my eyes out of LA. A rare Chekhov play, Platonov, that started at La Jolla, extended to The Kitchen in New York. The indie features started collecting, my first lead took me to Indiana (Reparation), one that would take another decade to complete (Abductee), then a string of films that ultimately encouraged a move back South.

I started producing, or playing cupid to artists, and discovered a deeply supportive and curious film community. I imbedded myself in the indie festival circuit with an eclectic mix of formats and mediums. When I started to bridge intentionality of movie making with career making is when my most meaningful opportunities came, duh right. Colliding with fellow Bama weirdo, Dan Scheinert put me on the frontlines of an A24 movie. I had a crash course in producing with indie legend, Lynn Shelton. Ended up back in LA alongside fellow industry destroyers, Vanishing Angle and Jim Cummings on The Beta Test. The last few years I’ve really come full form in my Octopian nature. Falling in love with a Belgian cinematographer on a Florida film during the early whispers of a pandemic pulled my heart further into the stretch. It’s where I find myself again today, looking at the next phase of my career involves a similar expansion, another moment of accepting homestead as cyclonic. I’m circling back to those early private practices, wherever in the world I find myself, writing more with the intention to direct. Searching for new ways to bring visions up and out.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I think this question comes to me at the edge of one the roughest terrains. That love story I eluded to has held me up tight and art continues to heal, but I’m swimming out of a bucket of stacked loss. I recently finished the play, Alabaster by Audrey Cefaly at the Fountain Theatre. Yes, the same Alabaster of my early days. I’d worked at The Fountain before; a later Tennessee Williams play, A House Not Meant To Stand and a newer work by Ken LaZebnik, On The Spectrum. I was invited back for this incredible new play with the knowing of my southern roots, but how relevant the location was came as a surprise to everyone. The story is about June, the only human survivor after a tornado rips through her family home. A top NY photographer visits to capture her story. It’s about healing and art and women. It’s a complex, surreal, dark southern tragedy scattered with poignance and levity from talking goats. It wasn’t an easy decision given all the change I was experiencing personally, but it felt necessary. It was made substantially more challenging by the fires. We had a magical first table read and that night the fires began. Artists experience this unruly life imitation constantly, but it’s the first time I almost abandoned the project because of it. We all leaned into the themes of the play and the maturity of our power as a collective of all women and did the damn thing. I’m honestly still processing it all, but I can say it reminded of what I”m capable of. The harder this life gets, the more I have to meet my art with a proportional amount of cracked open, fully throated love and faith.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I recently heard the phrase “Portfolio Career” and I suppose that’s one way to describe how I’ve run this clown show. A collection of sometimes conflicting styles, genres, roles, and types. There were a lot of early guides that tried to push me toward something more definable. I can’t say I always assertively rebelled it, but more intrinsically just couldn’t do anything but. Some themes have surfaced in my acting, I tend to play the heart of a chaotic story, roles that could be described as “emotional anchors” or a flip on the Everyman. I started seeing the value in playing for polarity. I get now how it’s all an expression of these deep parts of myself – that thing I fought so hard for as a kid. We tend to associate success with a “big break”, something that comes to us, but breaking through is so very personal. That stretchiness I mentioned definitely extends to my reputation. I’ve questioned it, was it sometimes inspired, sure. Was it sometimes self sabotage, probably. It’s mine, though, and I’m happy with that. Of course, southern women of all sorts are baked into my art, scars and tattoos seem to be trending of late.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Oh sure, tons! Aside from those entire communities I hop around to, I love shouting out a special few. Susan McCain is a dogged forager of truth who mentored my path early enough for me to realize I needed to get the hell out of town. A vibrant actor herself, we’ve played together now in a few projects and our friendship and mutual musings will certainly continue. I had a few advocates who made the Alabama A24 movie possible, but Melodie Sisk deserves mentioning as a top shelf example of how to enthusiastically and confidently champion other women. Emily Best, CEO of Seed&Spark and fellow LA to ATL hopper, is not only an inspiring bullhorn for reshaping the industry, but we share a fierce passion for the stories and creators coming out of the Southeast as crucial to the greater change we want to see in American cinema (and America period, movies = movements). I would be remiss not to mention the collective of host goblins who’ve given me shelter over the years, the list too long to quantify, but it is vast and multicultural and I am probably alive only because of them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/virginianewcomb
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/virginianewcomb/
• Youtube: https://vimeo.com/virginianewcomb

Image Credits
1) Photographers: Kaliisa Conlon,

2) The Beta Test with Jim Cummings

3) The Death of Dick Long at Sundance with Daniel Scheinert

4) Photographer: Audrey Reid

5) On the set of Fated To Repeat

6) Wasteland in Belgium, Cinematographer: Yann De Moerloose

7) On the set of Union

8) Zack DeZon at Tribeca