#kat lazo

Joe Rodriguez: What does courage mean to you?

Kat Lazo: So right away I associate it with strength and then I realize (and this is where my unlearning still happens.) So I associate courage with strength and I associate strength with how much you can bear and tolerate. Looking back though, now I would associate courage with unconditional acts of love for myself and others.

JR: So if your life fell apart, having the courage to get back up is translated into unconditional love?

KL: I think when you go through anything horrible like a breakup, having the courage to believe in, fall in love and not allow that circumstance to affect you negatively, is rooted in love, which is courage.

JR: Do you think people are courageous enough?

KL: I don’t know if we are courageous enough. I think we could be more courageous than we are now.

JR: Do you ever see people in bad friendships, relationships, situations where they should get out and they don’t? What do you think holds them back?

KL: I think a lot of that is rooted in our love of stability. Right now in particular like a job: Some people stay in a job they hate for the stability and they might not have other means to make money. But there are also other people who stay in a job because they’re scared. They’re scared of failing in their dreams. There are also people who do that in relationships, they stay, but there’s always something that’s missing in the relationship. Getting out of that comfort zone is really hard for a lot of people.

JR: You’re brewing a drink called courage, what are the ingredients?

KL: One would be love. Whether that’s love for others or yourself, the act of love. Then I would say at least for me, being uninhibited. With certain acts of courage whether for you or someone else, you have to not think and act. If we say that an ingredient of courage is love, it’s not the brain, it’s your heart. So you have to turn off your brain. At least for myself, I’m a logical person and in this year, I’ve realized that I don’t always have to maneuver in that manner, that I can and should listen to my heart.

JR: Do you think your latinidad informs your courageousness?

KL: So the way that I had to find courage, which is how much can you tolerate, withstand, hold on your plate, is very much defined by my household and in particular, the women in my life. How much my grandmother tolerated of her husband, of people taking advantage of her, how much my mom can withstand, emotional turmoil, that is the measurement of what a great woman you are. You’re so courageous because you put up with him or this and you take care of your kids and are so tired. I have a tattoo on my arm that says Berraca and it’s something my grandmother always says. It has this layer of you have to put up with all this shit and push through the pain. But I’m undoing that, because I see its benefits, but not as a constant. So what I’ve realized is that definition of courage is a survival definition. And these women who have passed that down to me have had to survive and I don’t have to operate in a mode of survival for everything. If anything, there are certain events where I can relinquish that and use a different definition of what courage is because using the example that I’ve been brought up to believe like how much you can tolerate, using that for every scenario in my life is not beneficial and can be harmful.

JR: Is courage the absence of fear or the acknowledgment of it and going forward anyway?

KL: It’s acknowledging it and going forward anyway. To say that there isn’t any fear, who are you lying to? Everyone has fear. Even people who come off as confident have insecurities and fears. It’s like jumping off a cliff into water: You acknowledge the fear that it’s high, but you jump anyway.

JR: How do you learn how to trust yourself with your creative work?

KL: I used to not trust myself and would change everything in my work. Now I catch myself doubting myself and I remind myself the last time I trusted someone else’s creative vision and it went wrong. So it gets easier to hear the thought, decipher if it's valid or not, and then follow what you want. That came from exposure of working with mediocre white men. Because off of impostor syndrome which so many of us have, there have been so many times where you think they know more than you because they’re in the field, they went to film school, this and that and then when I start working with these people, I see their flaws or lack of knowledge or are figuring it out as they go along. But they have the privilege of people thinking they’re the expert or qualified and I see the illusion of, “Oh they know everything.” is gone. I take a moment to remind myself of what the landscape is with white men and their mediocrity and I think about the logistics, what’s factual, I’m here and I’ve done so much without the validation of a film school or this and that. I’ve done that on your own.

JR: What are some of your own personal strategies to help you tackle any fear you encounter?

KL: Taking a beat, but also my girlfriends. Group chats are essential. There are so many moments that my girlfriend will reach out to the group chat and say, “Hey, I want to apply for this job, but I don’t think I’m qualified.” And we say, “Girl! What the fuck! Apply!” I know recently I had a moment where someone forwarded me a job opportunity to work on a series and you needed a director and producer title for film. And I only have an associate producer credit for one doc, everything else was digital. I don’t think I should apply. And my friends told me, “Don’t eliminate yourself before they eliminate you. Think of all the mediocre men who are going to submit their stuff half ass who don’t have the qualification. What do you have to lose submitting your stuff?”

JR: Fill in the blank: Courage is ________

KL: Love

JR: How do you recognize your own courage?

KL: I would say the first step would be to do some deep self reflection. So realizing what it is that you fear and why you fear it. I don’t think you can be courageous without knowing what it is that is or might be holding you back. Once you self reflect, I think you either have to jump off the cliff yourself and become uninhibited or have a collective group of people who know you the best who are going to push you off the cliff. Sometimes we can’t, sometimes we have so much baggage and trauma that we’re gonna hold ourselves back. So sometimes you do need the help of others to push you off there. From there, just keep swimming and moving on to the next thing.

JR: What does courage feel like?

KL: Liberating. Because if I’m describing courage as acting from my heart and letting go of my brain, logic, and reasoning, then it feels liberating to now tap into this new facet of who I am.

1. Would you describe yourself as a millennial? Why? Yeah, why not? I fit into the category and I know there are negative connotations but I don’t carry them with me. 

2. Talk about a person or an experience that has helped shape you into the person you are today? The first experience I think about is casting rooms I was in when I was younger. For me, that was experiencing sexism and colorism all at once at such a young age realizing that I’m going on auditions, the roles that I was going for were for a “Spicy Latina” was very typecasted. But also, these directors and casting directors preferred me because of how light I am in contrast to my Afro-Latina counterparts or indigenous actresses in the room. I realized that slowly but surely, every callback, the room got lighter and lighter and I found myself in those rooms because they probably thought, “oh she’s ethnic enough but not too ethnic.”

3. What’s your relationship with social media like? I think I’ve come to have a healthy relationship with social media. I think it scares me how much validation I see other people seeking through social media. So because of that, it’s put me on alert to relax. I have fun with it, but it can’t be everything, I can’t live through social media. But also, there are real fundamental relationships that have come out of social media. When people ask me how I’ve met some friends, I say that we met through the internet. So at the same time, I’ve formed some real relationships online that have been translated to real life.

4. Selfies: Thoughts? I love ‘em! Why not? I think for many people, it’s super empowering. It’s taking back a lot of power from folks who have been told that they’re worthless. So it’s you claiming your space on your Instagram or Snapchat and giving yourself love that others aren’t giving you so I’m all for it.

5.  Who or what is your biggest motivator in life? Unfortunately, it’s my anxiety. I think a lot about if I didn’t have my anxiety, I wouldn’t be where I am today or succeeded the things that I’ve done. Because as driven as I am, without my anxiety, maybe I’d be the total opposite, maybe I wouldn’t be as fueled. 

6. Do you believe in love? I do believe in love, yes! Love is what motivates us to do many things. Even the work that I do is because of love. I love people and community and I have faith that there’s enough love in us to grow to have compassion for one another and to learn. 

7. What’s something you think people assume of you based on your internet persona? I think people think I’m super confident 24/7. I think when I tell people I have anxiety that they think it’s cute.  I think most people think I’m so confident that I don’t have insecure thoughts. There’s many times where I don’t want to do things because I’m scared of who’s going to listen, what’s going to happen, what are people going to say, I'm not the right person, I’m not equipped, I didn’t go to school for this, who am I joking, someone is going to reveal that I’m a fraud. I think most people don’t see that side of me. 

8. Fill in the blank: “Happiness is _______” Connection

9. Do you think the American Dream is still alive?  I think the American Dream was bullshit to begin with and I think it’s a lie for many people, and because more people are opening their eyes that the American Dream is bullshit, it’s scaring those people who still wanna hold this idea of the American Dream to be true. We’re complicating this notion of what the American Dream was because we’re being more authentic and true to our own identity. The American Dream didn’t include LGBTQ folk, black folks, multiracial people, women. So The American Dream is bullshit and now we’re creating our own American Dream, whatever that means. 

10. Is college overrated?

My gut answer is to say college is overrated, but I also acknowledge that within that answer is a privileged mindset because I was able, encouraged, and expected to go to college. I say it’s overrated in the sense that even throughout the years, I feel like we’ve gotten to the point where a college degree isn’t as appealing as it used to be. I almost feel like a college degree is equal to a high school degree to some employers. I also say it’s overrated because the internet has really in some ways, leveled out the playing field. We’re making our own resumes and portfolios online. If you don’t know something, you can learn it, and demonstrate it online through whatever platform, you can market yourself. I wish that people weren’t held to a standard where they needed a degree and put themselves in debt in order to just be seen by an employer.

11. What’s the title of the current chapter of your life? The Crossroads

12. What do you hope will change in your lifetime? I just want people to be more compassionate.

13. Who is someone you consider to be a voice of our generation? The first person that comes to mind is Franchesca Ramsey. Not just her voice, but her moves and career path is indicative of what our generation is doing. She went from YouTube creating her own content, creating her own platforms and now mainstream media has looked to her to ask, “How are you cultivating this community?” Now she’s gone from YouTube to MTV Digital, to writing and producing her own pilot, and is someone who is speaking truth and educating folks through comedy. 

14. What are qualities that you value? Vulnerability, loyalty, actively seeking truth, actively inquisitive. 

15. Fill in the blanks: “_______ is my favorite season because _______” Summer because it’s pure happiness. Summer in New York is no other, it’s so beautiful because you gather more because everyone’s outside. I also don’t have the creativity to do this layer thing. 

16. What do you hope 30 will look like? I hope 30 will look like me being more secure in who I am. A mixture of secure of who I am with a bit of vibrance, full throttle, confident, and assertive. I just want to soar in my 30s and not care about people’s perception about who I am. I hope that I don’t seek validation from the outside world. 

17. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far? To conserve your energy, and I don’t mean physical energy, I mean your spiritual energy. That not everyone is worthy of your energy and to conserve it in terms of being very mindful of when you go out, who you go out with, who you share what with and being mindful of that. 

18. Do you think there's a certain pressure to live a certain life online? Yeah, absolutely. There’s an absolute pressure for people to live a false narrative, a false sense of happiness, a false sense of perfection. That comparison is the thief of joy. Who were we before phones, we didn’t have that comparison of what you’re doing vs. what I’m doing on a Saturday night. We didn’t have that instant comparison, social media just a multitude of feeds of comparing yourself. 

19. What are you scared of? Change