Today we’d like to introduce you to Kim Griffin
Hi Kim, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I grew up in Oklahoma. First in Oklahoma City, then Norman where the University of Oklahoma is, and not much else when I was growing up. I wanted to leave as soon as I knew you could, which was when my baddie older cousin came through town with the international tour of Peter Pan, playing Wendy, and I realized you could go to work and tour the world, and fly for a living. I was always that over-exhuberant theater girl and graduated early to escape to my dream: NYU. Except I didn’t get into NYU! I ended up touring and falling in love with the School for Theatre at Boston University, where I got a BFA in Acting. Even though it was definitely a cutthroat environment, it was also deeply artistic and committed to teaching us ensemble, so it was the perfect place for me. Anyway, who knows if I would have even survived NYC as a wild 17 year-old?
After BU, I booked work in several D.C. theaters, like Ford’s, Round House, and Olney Theatre Center, and lived in different areas around the District before moving to NYC, where I worked as a paralegal for a few months before deciding to go to grad school for theater. My dad is an attorney, so I worked in firms as a way to sustain myself in my early life. In San Diego I worked at an IP firm, before I spent 26 straight months in grad school at the University of San Diego/The Old Globe Theater, and came out way more confused about who I was, but with a ton of incredible credits. Although I auditioned for, and was accepted into the Groundlings and planned to move to LA, I got an agent in NYC through my school’s professional showcase, and fell in love with the guy who would become my husband, who happened to live in Brooklyn.
That guy (Brendan Griffin) was also an actor. We were set up on a blind date by the casting director (who was a close friend) at the theater, where we were both working. She texted him to ask if he would be my date to a gala where I was modeling some obscenely expensive diamond earrings for the theater, and because he had seen my solo performance piece, in which I pole danced, he said yes! After that, we sort of never left each other’s side.
These days, things are slower, and everything is more focused on our family. I did some standup when I got out here, started a podcast, and am doing a lot more writing and developing my own stuff. Since 2022 I’ve been the voice of Nordstrom Rack for all ads in the US & Canada, which has been delightful work with great people. I’m finalizing my outline and query for my first book, and have several scripts I’m constantly tinkering with. It’s interesting to watch things happening with the industry when you’ve already been sidelined in a sense for some time. I feel less freaked out about what’s going to happen to the industry, mostly because it hasn’t been reliable or sustainable for so long. I stopped counting on Hollywood long ago.
But art? I’m not about to count out art. And there’s a lot of art here in LA! This month I saw two fantastic plays (neither of which were even reviewed by the LA Times – ahem!), but there is honestly so much to see that I miss most of it. Basically, because of the pandemic lockdown I feel kind of like I am just settling in and getting to know the place, so I am enjoying a new phase of feeling like I know what the hell is going. And that’s a relief.
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?
My husband and I lived in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn together for a few years before we got married and I had our son, which ended up being a pretty traumatic experience that changed our lives in a lot of ways we definitely couldn’t have anticipated. I don’t want to trigger readers too much, but it was very scary, we both almost died, and we spent 11 days in the NICU. After our son came home, and we adjusted to life with PTSD from all that we’d been through, I just couldn’t handle New York anymore. The stress, the rush, the anger seemingly everywhere. I wanted to move to LA, but at the time my partner wasn’t ready. So, we ended up moving to Pittsburgh instead, where he grew up.
Pittsburgh ended up being a great city for us. I spent several years as Teaching Artist-in-Residence and head of Voice & Movement at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as teaching Shakespeare at the Conservatory of Performing Arts at Point Park University. I got to work at a few wonderful theaters there, and co-produced my first podcast. It was a really fruitful time in so many ways, but also the hardest time in my life. Our daughter was born about a year after we moved, and although she’s obviously the light of our lives, she has a genetic syndrome which we learned when she was born, and which has dramatically reshaped our lives.
Prader Willi Syndrome is the result of a genetic mutation of the 15th chromosome. It is present in roughy 1 in 15,000 -20,000 births per year globally, and impacts people of all backgrounds. Those with PWS develop what’s called hyperphagia, which is the medical term for insatiable hunger…or, the feeling of constant starvation. PWS is a spectrum disorder, but those with it are impacted for life, and typically cannot live independently.
When my teaching residency was ending at Pitt, I was ready to live somewhere warm, where we would be able to get the kids outside for exercise all year long, and I wouldn’t be clobbered by seasonal depression half the year. Pittsburgh is gray AF. We also needed to live somewhere where no one would blink when we had never-ending special requests and adjustments to food and diet, as we knew our daughter’s health would require. Suddenly, LA was just what we needed for totally new reasons.
We moved from Pittsburgh to LA in the summer of 2017, and absolutely love it.
A lot of my time is spent advocating for, and learning about my children’s medical needs, obtaining necessary medications and insurance clearances, and attending therapies. Fortunately, the state of California has programs and services to support families and individuals with disabilities and long term care needs.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m an actor, writer, producer, and teacher/coach/educator.
Right now, I have a project making the rounds at various film festivals that I am in deep, passionate love with, called “Dick Bunny.” It’s a six-episode comedy series that I developed, co-Executive Produced and star in, that we filmed in LA during 2022 and 2023. It started out as an idea with another mom (Susie Mendoza) about how weird, and hard and alienating it is to be a mom, and turned into this incredible story full of heart and bizzaro moments and puppets. “Dick Bunny” made its premiere at the Austin Film Festival last fall, and has since screened at SeriesFest, where the divine Katie Locke O’Brien won for Best Director, and I was honored with the award for Best Performer in a Digital Series. Last month, we had our West Coast premiere at Dances With Films Festival, which was phenomenal because so many cast and crew were able to be there! I’m excited and hopeful to see where the show goes, and still reeling from the insanely talented crop of humans we pulled together to make it. We plan to release the complete series online after we screen at Hollyshorts Film Festival in LA in August, because we made it as a love letter to other weirdo humans who feel overwhelmed and insecure and out-of-place, even in their own lives. It’s been amazing to see it screen at festivals, because the more people get to see it, the more I know we totally nailed it.
Although I wouldn’t say I’m *known* for acting, living in a town where people are on billboards and have IMDb rap sheets a mile long, I do think I am known among my clients, students, and some peers, as the coach that really “gets” them, and that means everything to me. I coach and teach (mostly) actors many ways these days, through workshops at places like IAMA Theatre Company, UCSD and Pomona College, but mostly online, individually, to help people with performance-based challenges. I have experience working with TEDx speakers, as a dialect coach for shows on networks like HULU, and with corporate presentations.
My teaching and directing are focused on creating a path to performance that is safe and easy to replicate, and that the actor can replicate themselves once they get to set. As a lifelong performer and someone who did a bunch of actor training and deep technique work, I believe in more of a straightforward approach, and I don’t think actors need to hurt themselves to commit to a role. My aim is to support those I work with to feel empowered to do their best work, and to have the tools to do it. A lot of acting coaches and teachers are very strict about their approach, or method, or “road map” or whatever, and will claim all sorts of bs to get your money. I can’t promise that working with me will increase your bookings (neither can anyone else, legitimately!) but in a world full of folks trying to be The Special-est Specialist, I’ve come to love being a General Specialist. I can honestly help with almost any performance or speech-related issue, (probably because I have faced it myself!) and that’s the whole point of teaching: to help someone learn how to succeed on their own terms.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
If it’s not fun, it’s funny.
Sure, this is a trauma response, and maybe maladaptive in some ways, but so much has gone so very wrong that I’ve had to adopt a serious ability to laugh it off. I could make you laugh while telling you about diagnosing myself with skin cancer on my face, and the subsequent 75 stitches that made me look like something out of a horror film, or the time I was worried about how scary I looked to my neighbors while being wheeled down my front steps on a stretcher after I almost died giving birth, and hoping I didn’t ruin their day as the ambulance sped away. It does not have to be funny in the moment for me to find the humor. I even have a podcast where I share about traumatic events through a lens of comedy!
Things will go wrong.
You will experience great loss.
That’s all part of it.
What matters is how we get through it.
And what’s important to me is sharing the realities of the hard stuff, as well as the things and people that have helped me get through it.
Because maybe then, someone else won’t have to deal with the exact same bullshit.
I used to have a joke about how much I hated the phrase “I don’t know how you do it.”
What kind of a back-handed compliment is that?!?!
Especially since it’s always dished out to overwrought moms. Almost like a pacifier.
A preemptive compliment to stem the tide of questions and complaints.
You don’t know how do we do it?
We do it because we have to, dummies! There is no one else.
We have no choice. We do it sick, we do it late, we do it dead, but we do it.
It’s not fun very often, but it’s always pretty damn funny.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thekimgriffin.com
- Instagram: @thekimgriffin
- Other: @dickbunny_official
Image Credits
Ericka Kruetz Photography
Marie Buck Photography
Mariscela Mendez – Dick Bunny Production Still, featured with Drew Droege
