Today we’d like to introduce you to Corinne DeCost.
Hi Corinne, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’ve been onstage since I was in utero. My parents met at Seacoast Repertory Theatre in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during a production of Oliver – my mom was dance captain, and my dad couldn’t dance.
I started dance classes at age three, started dance competition a couple years later – tap, ballet, jazz. I became used to performing and traveling between venues – with my dance troupe, I danced at Disney World, Universal Studios Orlando, Hershey Park, and various local and national competitions. I wasn’t the best dancer in my class, but even if I had the footing wrong, I would sell it with my face. While I loved dancing, what I really loved was being onstage – and I realized that after my first musical.
I became a valley player at the Amesbury Playhouse Dinner Theatre over in Massachusetts by the time I was 9. I performed several times a year for weeks-long show runs of musicals and straight plays, but I also spent a lot of time backstage. If there wasn’t a role for me onstage, I was keen to do anything that kept me close to a production. I stage managed, helped run pyrotechnics, ran spotlight, ran entire light boards, ran sound. I also had several great roles onstage – Anne in Diary of Anne Frank, Sharpay in High School Musical, Hodel in Fiddler on the Roof, Mina in Dracula, Sister Mary Leo in Nunsense, Luisa in The Fantastiks. I occasionally performed elsewhere – at a haunt in Maudsley State Park and my high school’s production of Chicago as Roxie. Eventually I started choreographing at the Playhouse, and I wasn’t even out of high school. It was sometimes tough to get the adult actors to take me seriously, but the right ones did. My professionalism and “wisdom beyond my years” led me to choreographing and performing in Burlesque by the age of 15 and through the age of 17. I loved what I did, but it led me to some situations I should not have been in at that age. The Amesbury Playhouse closed the month after I graduated high school.
I went to college at Suffolk University as an honors student and was named College of Arts & Sciences Student of the Year my senior year. I founded the only sketch comedy troupe on campus – still running after 12 years – and I directed shows that we self-produced around Boston and at venues like Improv Boston. I ran lights and sound for shows and briefly acted as secretary for the Techie’s Union. I hosted shows onstage like Welcome Week, Suffolk Idol and the Student Government Awards. I sang “Wrecking Ball” at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for their 20 Somerset building. I did a lot of shows – I performed roles like Puck in Shakespeare in Hollywood and Topanga in the immersive dinner theatre production knockoff of Boy Meets World called Boy Meets Murder.
After graduating, I managed to direct another show at Improv Boston and become a regular guest star on a New England-produced web series, “Paragods.” With members of the now-defunct Amesbury Playhouse in new venues, I performed in productions of Steel Magnolias as Annelle and reprised my role as Mina in Dracula. I joined a rock band, The Floating Lighthouse, and recorded an album. I started teaching theatre classes in conjunction with my marketing day job at Yamaha Music School of Boston.
Right as the pandemic hit, I had moved to San Francisco. Then, my partner was diagnosed with cancer in May 2020. While he underwent chemo, we were basically forced into super-quarantine – I was the only one of the two of us allowed out of the house to run errands. I started doing remote marketing work for Multiverse Concert Series – a nonprofit set up by a colleague of mine from Yamaha. I did a little influencing – I landed a spot in ThirdLove’s social media marketing campaign. I also started attending a lot of Zoom audiences for daytime shows – I had a lot of time to kill! Didn’t we all? One day at the Wendy Williams Show, producers picked me out because they liked my energy. They asked to have me back and play a game with Wendy for a segment on an upcoming show. Because of the pandemic, it was totally remote, so it was perfect for my situation. I ended up making three remote appearances on the Wendy Williams Show – once as Eye Candy of the Day. That led to the producers of the Nick Cannon Show reaching out for me to appear on their show live in New York – it was October 2021, and my partner was about a year out of chemo, so it was safe for me to fly out. They put me up in a hotel and everything – and I had my own green room with my name on the door – it was such an incredible experience.
One day scrolling Facebook, I found another audition that would change my life. Netflix’s Stranger Things Experience was holding an open casting call in San Francisco. I went in not expecting much – it was my first major casting call. When I arrived, the casting director asked me to pull down my mask. She pulled me aside and told me she knew immediately that the director would ask me to read for a specific role. Unprepared, I did just that, and the director said, “Bring her to Jonelle”. Jonelle was the customer – I was fit for my wardrobe then and there. I performed for six months in San Francisco, doing fight choreography and stunts against a 3D screen. When the show was packing up to tour to the next location – Los Angeles – I was not ready to say goodbye. I traveled to LA to audition for another six months of the production and was chosen. I filmed for several commercials and TV spots during the LA run, and I performed for over 900 live audiences in that year.
Landing in LA was intimidating. How could I possibly follow up that production? I started teaching theatre again with Upstage Theatre Schools. Then, less than two months after Stranger Things Experience ended, I was cast as the lead in my first indie feature film – Party of Darkness. I star alongside horror movie legends like Glenn Plummer and Felissa Rose. And I was then cast at Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights in The Last of Us as Ellie Williams – chosen by gaming company Naughtydog to represent their IP to tens of thousands of guests every night, many celebrities, and to millions online on IGN, Good Mythical Morning, and on various socials.
Every step of the way, I’ve worried that the project I’m doing will be my last – but they’ve all led me to such incredible things.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
A life in the arts is never a smooth road. I also haven’t been dealt the easiest cards. In the last few years, I’ve dealt with supporting my partner through cancer, miscarriage, the deaths of some important people to me, and other traumas. I choose to use these things to better inform the depth of my characters. The best acting class is a life lived fully.
I haven’t always had a good support system and often dealt with loneliness or feeling like a black sheep. I hoped that would go away as I cleared a path for myself, but success can also be isolating. In Chicago, I sang that “I am my own best friend”, and I’ve learned I have to be. No one can support me if I cannot support myself.
Of course, we deal with a lot of rejection. I only book about 26% of what I audition for, and I treat auditioning like a part-time job. You’re often left wondering why you weren’t good enough or sad that you got so close to a role that ends up going to someone else. You just have to treat it like water off a duck’s back, decide it wasn’t the right role for you right now, and move on. Somehow, the right thing always comes.
You also can’t let your ego ride on the things that you do. Being picked feels great, and as actors, we are trained to crave that feeling. It’s something worth celebrating, but even if I never work again a day in my life – I still have value. I hold value just in being myself.
I struggle a lot with seeing my value and feeling worthy of the things that have come my way. Why me? Why not the next person in line? Talent isn’t something that can be measured or quantified – you just have to believe in it. It’s also something no one can ever take from you. “You can lose everything else, but you can’t lose your talent,” said Baby Jane Hudson. I tell myself that there is a reason I’ve been chosen so many times, a reason I’ve been brought to this place now. Every one of us brings something special to the table. I’m just lucky that anyone has believed in me and what I bring.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m living a life that incorporates everything I love in arts, culture, education, and discovery. I was just named one of Suffolk University’s 10 Under 10, which celebrates 10 alumni from the last 10 years who have made major contributions to their fields and communities.
I still run marketing & promotions for the Boston-based 501c3 nonprofit organization Multiverse Concert Series. Multiverse holds events that incorporate arts and science, making topics more accessible to us all. We’ll take a topic like DNA, Mars, polymers, and climate change and present the topic with top speakers from places like MIT or Harvard – interspersed with art and performance inspired by the topic. We’ve had visual artists, dancers, musicians, DJs, and full symphonies to help us explore possible worlds through immersive music, evocative discussion, and mind-bending art in a cohesive multimedia experience. We premiered our fully Kickstarter-funded Black Hole Symphony at the Museum of Science in Boston, an electrosymphonic score performed live under animated visuals at the Charles Hayden Planetarium, with pause for discussions with NASA scientists. We’ve been featured in many publications – Boston Globe, New Scientist. Our musical work was credited in Forbes by Dr. Clara Sousa-Silva of Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as helping her re-examine her own work which allowed her to discover the possibility of life on Venus.
Around this time last year, I finished my year-long Californian tour of Netflix’s Stranger Things Experience, and that’s perhaps the role I’m the most proud of. Performing as such a beloved character, looking out into the audience to see kids dressed AS my character, nothing beats that. Laying on my stunt mat and hearing their applause, that was my happy place.
Now, I’m awaiting the release of my first feature – Party of Darkness. As someone who wrote/directed/starred in a Sleepaway Camp parody sequel in high school – it’s insane to me that I’m in a movie with Felissa Rose [the star of Sleepaway Camp]. I’m nervous and excited to share the project with the world, and I’m so honored to have been chosen to be a part of it.
I’ve done a lot of work in immersive theatre – from performing as Bluey & Bingo at the Bluey Experience to operating butterfly puppetry at Insomniac Entertainment’s Beyond Wonderland Festival.
I’ve been asked many times what kinds of projects I’d like to do in the future. I’m open to it all. Some of my favorite roles have been over-the-top dramatic (I recently knocked off a bucket list item by filming a death scene in a horror short, and that was a LOT of fun). I love immersive theatre, audience interaction, the horror genre as a whole, but I could never write anything off. I want to take every chance I’ve got. We’ve only got one life to live, and I can’t wait to say that – honey, I’ve seen it all.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
Everything I do, I do for love.
Contact Info:
Image Credits
Arthur Marroquin
Cameron Rice
Micah Brown
Universal Studios
Cally Nguyen
Serj Reina
