Actors aren't supposed to be cool ft. Reina Hardesty

Ep. 2 -- electric blue: the podcast

PHOTOGRAPHY: @LAURENWITHROW

I know she looks really, really cool in this photo, but don’t let it distract you, Reina Hardesty does not believe actors should be “cool”. Cool in the way of being distant, over-trendy, and detached. She believes real coolness is aliveness. Being raw, real, emotional, experimental, and taking risks.

For episode 2 of the Electric Blue Podcast, I invited my close friend Reina because she makes me feel so brave. We met in acting class many years ago where I would simply ogle at her on stage. I couldn’t believe a person could be so vulnerable, so magnetic, and so alive. She swished on stage filled with fears and emotions and it was in those moments I decided that to be a real artist, you have to be afraid. Because the point of your art is to experience overcoming that fear. It is what will make your audience feel brave.

Reina, just simply in life, does that for me, and now I want to share her magic with you. She’s in a really exciting point in her life right now. She just finished filming a new major Amazon show titled Butterfly which she stars in alongside Daniel Dae Kim (release date tbd!). Plus, she’s also a lead in the new Netflix horror It’s What’s Inside.

She is a star on the rise. But for this episode we are simply laying in the grass enjoying the golden hour sun in Barnsdall Art Park in Los Angeles.

Enjoy.

---

---

Here’s a gallery of Reina’s standout quotes from our convo:

---

To unlock a bonus segment, where Reina and I discuss how she up-leveled her acting technique working on set alongside Daniel Dae Kim and how she goes to ballet as a humiliation ritual (lol) — listen below.