You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Girl. Welcome back to I Choose Me. We talk about the choices we make in life and where they lead us. I'm so incredibly excited about today's conversation. My guest is an actress you have loved and cried with for years, probably especially on one of the most culturally dominant shows of our time. But what you might not know is that she's also a director, a producer, a pastor's daughter, and someone who makes profound choices every single day to live
a life aligned with her purpose. Please welcome the brilliant, wonderful, and deeply real Sarah Drew. I have so much to talk to you about. You've been so brave in your career and all the choices you've made. You work NonStop, so many credits, I couldn't keep scrolling through them all.
It's been what.
I feel, so lucky and so blessed, and I you know, I don't. I just I love where I love to work, and I love that there have been opportunities to keep working, and and then I started writing, so then I started making my own work and I love them. It's it's yeah, it's a lot but it's and it's a lot to juggle with kids and everything.
It really is it? Really speaking of kids, something you said really resonated with me. I think you said before you had your kids that you were terrified of becoming a mom, because that's it. I mean, I mean, that's the one of the biggest I choose me moments. You can make that choice to become a mother. What what were you so terrified of? And now that you have what a tween and a teen? Yeah, are you so terrified or are you more terrified?
It's it's it's gosh, it's just all of the ever thing, right. I think I was really afraid of failing like a as a mom. Just I knew that becoming a mother would require a lot of sacrifice, and I was really content to be pretty self absorbed. Actually, wait, and I think that there was a real fear that I would not be able to rise to the occasion. And I
remember writing to my dad. My dad's a pastor, retired pastor, but he is like just a founta of wisdom always for me and I when I was pregnant, it's like I'm not sleeping it. Also, it also took me a while to feel ready to even start the process of trying to get pregnant, like a bunch of my friends
had had babies before me. I remember hiding it, like with an anxiety attack in a side room at a baby shower, just because there's so much joy happening in the room, and I'm like, I'm just not ready for this. I don't. I want. I want all these things in life, and I want everything to be all set up. I want the table set, you know, before I embark on this thing that feels so huge. And the reality is that the table is never set in life. You are
constantly clearing dishes and resetting the table. That's a good add it just it's if you're waiting for the table to be set for anything, you will never move forward.
So true, right, like universal.
Yes, absolutely, And I think that knowing that I had to get comfortable in the surrender of it all, in the reality of like, yeah, I'm totally going to fail at times. As long as I can get comfortable with messing up and repairing and taking responsibility and learning from those mistakes, then the sky is the limits in terms of how you can grow and how you can parent and how you can be a partner and you know how you can be an artist the world. You just have to keep throwing shit at the wall.
I mean for sure.
No, it's it's like that fear.
Though of the unknown. It can stop so many of us from taking action.
Absolutely, absolutely, it was very I remember my dad when I emailed him just to be like, I'm not sleeping at night. I'm so scared of this child coming and then me just like ruining their life or just not enjoying anything any part of it. Like everything about it is so scary. He gave me a bunch of like lovely Bible verses to meditate on, and then one of the things that really sustayed with me was he said,
I want you to start habit of aggressive gratitude. I was like, what he said, when you are in a practice, and he called it aggressive because it's like you got to work at it. You got to be on the gratitude.
You got to keep choosing. You had to.
Keep choosing it over and over and over again. Because it doesn't us fly at your face. I mean it does in like heightened moments of bliss and whatever, but in real life, it's more it's easier to find the
faults and of course imperfections, yes, of course. So like, fine, look deciding I'm waking up in the morning and I'm choosing to be grateful for this and this and this, And he said, it's going to feel weird at first, but once you get going with it, you'll start to see things in your world that just make you go, oh, I was looking for it because I was already in gratitude this morning, and there's something else to be grateful for, something else. And he said, you can't just tell yourself
to stop fearing. You have to replace it with something else. So replacing it with this active, aggressive gratitude, it ends up kind of dispelling that stuff that usually never comes to pass, because that's what fear is, you know, it's not substantive, it's not real, it's it's just a thought.
It's thoughts, and ninety eight percent of the things we freak ourselves out about don't come to pass, right, So yeah, So I started a practice of doing that, and it really, yeah, it really transformed like just my heart and my heart space and just sort of preparing the way for this child to come and change my life.
Oh my gosh. And that's what happens when you become a mother. What would you say now to your younger self who was so scared in that moment, or if somebody's listening now that maybe's having their first baby.
Yeah, oh, I would just say, first of all, you got to want to be a mom a parent, Like, don't just fly into it because everybody else says that this is a thing you should do. I think the desire needs to be there, and I think maybe a lot of people walk into it kind of going because this is what we're supposed to do, right, We're just supposed to have babies.
In the I'm a mom and I take care of family.
It's exactly like, I think there needs to be a real desire there. But if that desire is there, the leap is terrifying. But the adventure is so beyond your wildest dreams. And I don't mean that it's full of bliss all the time. It is hard, and it is oh so painful at times hilariously funny. You know, when they get to the age where they start cracking jokes and they start becoming company instead of work. It's like this magical transformation where you're like, you are funny and I'm enjoying you.
What is it like with the tweeney and the teeny? How is it in your house right now?
It's really fun and really vibrant. Homework has gotten harder, and so there are many tears involved with homework.
What is this thing with homework?
The homework load is really intense, The managing schedules is really intense. The relational drama has like picked up, and so there's real things that are happening in the kids' hearts and stuff. But also my kids are like musical theater kids, and there's a lot of singing in our house. They're like belting at the top of our lungs. Like my daughter will start singing a song from Dear Evan Hanson.
Then my son will pick it up in his room, and then they'll just be singing across the house in harmonies.
Oh, that's so interesting.
So you live in a musical. I live in a musical. Yeah. There are times when my husband and are like and I are like, if we could just turn the volume down, just like a tiny bit, it would feel better on our nervous systems. But of course, no, don't ever say that.
Oh, let them sing, No, let them sing Yeah, is so true, because there will be a day in their development. Hopefully it'll be quick when they'll Yeah, I don't want them to be quiet. Maybe you won't, maybe they won't ever be quiet.
But I don't no, I will say all of the really deep conversations, like when they really need to talk about something, begin at ten fifteen at night.
That kind of passed my prime.
Yeah, I'm already asleep. My face mask is on my head, ready to be shoved over my eyeballs. Oh my god, mommy, I need to tell you about something.
It's the worst.
You're like, okay, yep, here we go, Here we go another hour.
God bless the fact that they're coming and talking to you.
I would not trade it for anything. And my son right now is doing a production of a Christmas Carol and it's like it's a noise within which is a professional theater in East Pasadena. So he's got eight shows a week. He's just had a student matinee today. You know, he is working, working, and also applying for high schools, and so we've been immersed in just time management, which is those conversations are so agonizingly unfun. Not fun.
I mean, it's a lot to juggle. I feel like I always said, like I would take back the diaper years in a heartbeat. Those were so much more easy, so.
Much easier, so much easy, so much more, so much less emotional weight was there. Yeah, it was just about taking care of something, keeping it a lot, just keep it alive, just keep it, just both.
Called it it.
You know it, it's crying. What does it need? There are four things it could need?
So okay, I want to talk about the cultural giant that was your home for nine seasons. So for those of you listening that don't know, maybe you lived under a rock. You played April Kepner on The Great Gray's Anatomy. What an honor. It really shaped your career?
Oh yeah, absolutely transformed my life.
Yeah, really really, I want to know how. But I also think, like you know, when you're a part of a big crew like that, it's very easy to kind of find your rhythm and your and things and you kind of your purpose. You know, when you step away, things change. Oh yeah, it's a big transition. We'll talk about that in a second. But how to being a part of that world shape who you are as a person on a personal level? I mean in so many ways.
I think one of the biggest ways for me was actually learning how to use my voice on a set in an environment where that was welcome and encouraged. I Sandra oh Is I just love her so much. I have so much respect for her, and she's so talented, incredible, She's so incredible. But what I got to witness with the way that she engaged with the writers, it was
such a beautiful thing to see. She would advocate so passionately for her character and her character's storylines, and the writers loved it because it was it was done with such respect and such collaboration, and it was like they
were on this journey together. And I was like, oh, man, if Sandra oh can do that, is she can use her voice and advocate for because you sign on to a show and you have no idea where the writers are going to take you, right, and it's so it's every every week is a new episode going, oh, I guess that's who I am? Is that who I am?
Oh?
Okay? You very much like.
Life, very much like life exactly. You're adjusting and recalibrating and and but then as you get to know your character and you start to inhabit your character for a long time, then things start to feel like, well, I'm not sure she would actually go down that road, or maybe she would go down that road in this kind of a different way. And now that I've been living in her skin for a couple of years, like, I, what about if we do it like this?
Had you been in environments previously where you didn't have a voice, I didn't.
I didn't know that I was allowed to have a voice. I think I think in my previous like, I've always been vocal in terms of like blocking, you know, when we're on set, in terms of oh, oh, is that how the scene is going to go? Oh? Because I was thinking about it from this perspective, but oh, let's try it this way, you know, in that kind of collaboration. But in terms of getting the script and then going is that the trajectory of my character? I don't know.
But what about what we did in the scene two episodes ago and when she said this thing? How is that connecting to this? Help me understand? Or is there another way that we can say this that feels more in line with who she was two episodes ago? You know, I just had never I had never known that I could speak into that piece of the collaborative process.
Do you think that affected you in your personal life as well? Did that kind of spill into you finding a new sort of.
I think it's more that I've always expressed my opinion in life, but I didn't bring it to my work. So it was more about allowing more of like who Sarah is to come into play in the work environment. I mean, I'm an actor but also a people pleaser by nature and an achiever by nature. And so I think I spent a lot of my life just wanting
to keep everybody happy, you know. And even if I was like, I'm not sure about that, I'm often will I would often take responsibility for something I didn't I didn't have responsibility for just to avoid the conflict, just
to make everybody okay, you know. And so I think in allowing myself to speak but also learn how to navigate in the relationships so that I wasn't stepping on toes and nobody was getting a And it was really about let's craft something gorgeous together, and look at what you're bringing to the table, and look at what I'm also bringing to the table, and how can we find the best idea together. You know, it's kind of hard.
To shift from you know, your those years where you're creating the autonomy and figuring yourself out and then finding your stride, and then you meet somebody and you're in a relationship. Yeah, and then that's like screech, tire screech.
The funny thing is I've been with my husband for like twenty six years. So we met, I know, we met when I was so, so, so young. And what's very interesting about that is, I feel like you change and grow so much in your twenties and thirties, it's bananas. I feel like we met, we've reacquainted each other with a new version of ourselves every seven months.
How old were you.
When you met him?
Eighteen?
Wow? Okay, yeah, it's good.
Yeah, So we were babies and we got married. I was twenty one. I was like a month out of college, and so I think I was finding myself while I was already in a relationship. And I'm so grateful that I met him as young as I did. It didn't come without its challenges, for sure, but he's not in the industry, and he is he and he knew me before I had I had found any kind of success. I was a college kid, you know, nothing had happened in micro I was just Sarah, and so we got
to kind of take this journey of discovery together. Yeah.
I love that. Yeah, because it can be a lonely journey, especially for a woman.
Yes, I imagine it is. I mean, I don't know, I don't know, I don't I was just thinking about it today because I mean, so much stuff with with what our kids are going through and my son entering into high school at Applying Price, there's a lot that we're sort of spinning around in our heads and a lot of things we're thinking about. And my husband is so grounded and so level headed, and he he thinks about things from nineteen thousand different perspectives and does research on
every single possible thing. Oh, I'm much more so helpful. I'm much more impulsive, much more like, this is my gut, let's just do this, you know. And it's and I'm so grateful to him because he has been I've been in and out of town so much so he's really been the grounded force in our family life. And I was just I was just driving in my car, going thank God that I have Peter. Thank God that I met him when I did, Thank God that he is the father of my children and my partner in life.
Like it was just there's that aggressive gratitude.
Yes, you can keep practicing, Just keep practicing.
Absolutely. So. Your character went through quite a lot on grays Havy.
I so much trauma, Yeah.
So much trauma, drama, all the things, emotions. I know from experience how that can kind of put you in a certain head space, especially when you're at work doing really I mean, your character was saving lives or not, yeah, and dealing with all of that. How did you turn that off? As your kids were younger? You would go to work I'm assuming twelve hours a day at least at least yeah, and then you would come home and switch gears to being a mom and have to shed all of what you just were.
I mean not always successfully, right. I had a really I mean a couple crazy stories, one of which is I played this really traumatic pregnancy storyline while I was pregnant with my daughter. Yeah, I was eight months pregnant with her when when I played this horrible labor delivery and death scene where the baby dies in my arms and I'm Okay, actually that's pregnant. Yeah, And I got
home and ten hours later went into premature labor. And she came a month early and was in the nick you for two weeks, like.
That's not gonna happen to me.
Yeah, she was like, I'm getting out of here. You started it apparently on set, pretending. So here we go. We're in labor now, you know. So, because your body, when you're going through trauma, you're and you're really entering into the imaginary space in that way of the character of the character, you don't your body doesn't know the difference.
Your body's like, oh, yeah, we're adrenaline spiking now, and our cortisol levels are through the roof and you're panicking now, and you're hyperventilating now, and so our heart is racing, and so we don't we don't know that this isn't real. There's a lion that's really chasing us, you know. And so coming out of that was really hard. I do remember when my character was going through a divorce. It
was such a dark, sad storyline. And it was so sad too because my friend Jesse Williams, who played my main acting partner on the show. We both loved working together and loved being in this in this on Green relationship. It was so we had we told so many beautiful stories. We had such a fun, delightful friendship, and we were both sad then they were just like splashing pieces, you know, And and I would come home and be like so
sad about just how sad April and Jackson were. And I remember my husband being like, you have two living children and you are in a happy marriage. Can I talk to Sarah and not April now, Like, can you let the trauma from your fake life? Just like relax in the corner.
Very helpful to like it here.
Let's just say I just need to come back to meet Sarah, Like you're too much in April's pain, Because she was in pain every day. I would have to go for like twelve hours and just be in agony.
That sounds like so much fun.
I mean, weirdly, I'm a bit of a glutton for punishment when it comes to any kind of big emotion. I mean, otherwise why would I.
Be an actor?
You know, I think emotions are so underrated. Yeah, people just try to hide them. People tell you they're bad, You're too emotional.
No, you let a fly. I say this to my son all the time because he he cries, and from the earliest years of his life, I'm like, apps, get that cry out, you express it. Don't ever think this is a weakness. Crying is so good. It feels so good. And whenever he has like a big cry about something, I'm like, yes, yes, let's exercise all of this, get it all out of your systems. Feel so good.
I love that.
That's a good mom right there, that's a good mom. So Shonda Rhimes, who created the show, famously has.
A no jerks policy. Did you ever feel as a female actress, or even just an actor, did you ever feel pitted against other actors or actresses for more?
Never?
Nothing, Oh my gosh, never.
No. I felt so supported and so cared for. And I even remember after my daughter Hannah was born, I had started I'd had some postpartum that I was struggling with, and I was I was finding that whenever I would work second half of Fridays, it always turned into friturday and then I'd get home at four in the morning and my baby would be up at six and I
didn't have childcare on the weekends. And then I just couldn't catch up on sleep and I went to her after a couple weeks of doing this, I was like, I'm kind of falling apart, like I can't remember my lines, and I just I need some support. I need some help. If there's any way that I can just like be
off of the rotation for second half of Fridays. I could do any other day knowing that I have support coming and helping, and I could sleep, you know, but on Friday nights and She's like done, this is a matriarchy. For the rest of the season, You're never working se have a Friday's Like it was so easy to just she was so supportive, and everybody that comes onto a Shonda show was like, if you want to have babies, do it now to show and do it now because
it's like the sweetest environment. Everybody would go on the shows and just have the babies.
Oh my gosh, it's a fertile ground.
It's fertile ground.
Yes, Oh my gosh. You lived inside April Kaepner for a very long time, and she went so through so many ups and downs. Such a very relatable character because we all go through those highs and those lows. What part of her still is in you today? Oh, that's great question, because playing a character for that long, Oh, she's like always.
Going to be a part of me. I mean there were pieces of me that kind of led into her and became her, as well as pieces of her that that all take with me forever. What I what I take from April A couple things. It's really so sweet. Whenever I meet fans who just love April, often there are like shaking in tears. And it's almost always not because they're like, oh it's Sarah Drew. It's because April has gone. April has been on their iPad or on their phone or in their living room or whatever for
years and years and years. They've watched the seasons many many times, and they have witnessed this young woman who was mocked and ridiculed when she came on to the show, and the audience hated her too. I mean, it was injured. Wasn't just the other characters made fun of the audience. Oh, she was kind of grating and a bit annoying and a little insecure, and like there just was like she I was only supposed to be there for two episodes. Lately, oh yeah, and then they brought me back and it
was this yeah, it's crazy. She then became this other. She blossomed into this whole other, you know, nine years later a person. But what I think so many people connect to is that April felt really lonely. She was really lonely, and then she found her tribe in this hospital. She kind of came into her own. She has this whole episode where she's like her sisters called her an ugly duckling forever, but she's like, I'm not an ugly
duckling anymore. I'm a swan. And not just because she had a glow up and looks pretty or whatever, but because she she came into her own in terms of confidence.
She works her butt off.
To be excellent, an excellent surgeon. She has empathy for her for her patients. That and she has this faith that she has like lived by and is sort of the true north of her life. That I mean. She gets divorced, she loses a baby, she almost dies on the table having another baby, She goes she gets fired
twice on the show. You know there. She goes through so much and she has this massive crisis where she loses her faith and goes into this dark space in my final year on the show, and then relentlessly comes back into joy and comes back into life and.
Won't give up.
She doesn't give up on herself, she doesn't give up on the people that matter to her. She's just relentlessly in pursuit of goodness and joy and hope. And I think so many people who feel lonely or who have been beat up by life a bit, they watch April and they go, if April can do it, I can't do If she can make it through losing a child, then maybe I can get through the miscarriage I just had,
you know. If she can get through the pain of losing the love of her life and then come out the other side and go through this twisty turny journey to then find her happiness and her purpose, maybe I can too, you know.
So I.
That's what I will always take from her. Oh she's such a fighter. She's a warrior, you know, but like an emotional warrior who's relentlessly trying her best to be good, you know, Like not there are warriors that are just like, ah, I'm just gonna win, you know what I mean. But she just is like no, I just want to do the right thing, you know, I don't know. I just I love and respect her.
So that is so so good. So leaving a show like that, yeah, can be a big emotional and personal shift.
Oh big time.
Yeah, what was that like for you?
Yeah, it was a very big grief because I didn't see it. I didn't know it was coming. It wasn't my decision, and so it was a very big, like wow, shock to the system for sure. I had no idea, and I it was a really interesting journey. And I've spoken to so many of my friends who've gone through losing jobs. There's a weird grief that comes from a job loss that you almost feel embarrassed that you grieve
something like a job so deeply. It's like it's not a person, it's not you haven't lost like nobody's lost my life.
Yeah, but but you.
But there's so many aspects of being in a community, in a work community, doing your life's work with this specific group of people who know you, know your name, you know them, you know you've been on this road for almost a decade and having that and not to mention the identity stuff that goes with it, Like I remember in those early days, right after being written off, I was just like, I've been that girl that's on that show.
For so long?
Right, who am if I'm not that girl that's on that show? You know, Like Gray's put me into a household name. It gave me notoriety that I had never previously had, and then all of a sudden, I'm not there and they're continuing on without me. You know it is it's a big thief. Yeah, it's a big grief, and I had to kind of give my self permission to feel all the feelings that are associated with it.
And sometimes I would, you know, I would, I would say something in an interview, and then somebody would grab a I think somebody grabbed Sarah Likin's getting written off the show to attending her own funeral, which is of course. I was saying it in the context of when you leave something that nobody was expecting you to leave, the love that pours out is so epic. It's like you're
listening to yourself being eulogized. It's just just but I know exactly well, and then of course everybody mocks oh yeah, okay, it was like a funeral, like get over yourself. It's so stupid, Sarah. But for me, it's just like in our lives, we don't often tell people how much we love them and why we love them just on a
random Wednesday. You know. It usually takes something big for someone to express all of those things, And so the bigness of the moment of being written off ended up bringing all these lovely thoughts and words from people to the surface. So it was so tender and beautiful and gorgeous and like something I never would have experienced if I had just left of my own accord, or if I you know.
So it's it took me.
Yeah, it took me a minute. I've totally lost my train of thought, just went of fun.
It was about just getting settling into the fact that you're no longer yes that girl from that show.
Yeah, so it took me. It took me a minute. I it was hard to keep watching the show just because I said, oh, that's my family going on. That's a set I haven't.
What was the time between like the end of that role and your next role? Do you did it was a lady? Yeah quick?
Or it was pretty quick.
I did.
I went. I did a Christmas movie for Lifetime, I think a couple months later. So yeah, I was oh, actually no, there there was an immediate thing because I was told that I wasn't going to be on the show anymore on a Tuesday, and then my team, you know, reached duiler. Are there any pilots that are still casting? Back when we had a pilot season, are there any pilots that are still casting? And so I wound up testing and getting cast as a lead in a pilot
for Cagney and Lacey. So I actually was shooting it literally day one of shooting that pilot was exactly the next Tuesday, like one week later. There's some medicine for your grief. Yeah it was. That was a a lovely little god hug. For sure, it didn't get picked up, but it didn't matter. It was a very sweet moment of feeling like, oh, I'm gonna be okay, Okay.
People still want me, like, oh my gosh, it's so true. Oh my gosh, okay you grew up a pastor's daughter. Yes, that can have you know, you're very proud of it, which is wonderful. That can have a rep you know, Oh yeah, it's got a stigma. My best friend when I was a teenager, was a pastor's daughter, and we got into some trouble. Let me tell you. When I was hanging out for Rohnda Ronda if your little Mironda Ronda and Rex, her brother, we we got in trouble and the pastor would always catch us.
Oh that's so funny.
Did you ever get into trouble as a past.
I was such a goody two shoe I have my I just wanted to do the right thing all the time. So, oh, hi, April Kepner, she is April Keptainer. Yeah and April are so similar. I maybe I wish I'd gotten into a little bit more trouble.
Be fun.
It would have been fun, but I didn't want to. I was also so driven and so focused. So, like you know, I was acting, and acting was the greatest love of my life, and so and I wasn't I wasn't allowed to do the shows unless I was keeping up with my work, and I didn't have time to get into trouble. If I'm being perfectly honest. My high school was so rigorous that I had to use every
twenty minutes. I had to get my homework done so that I could then go to required sports and then scarf some food down my mouth and then go to rehearsal for three hours every night. You know, so I didn't Yeah, I didn't have time to get into trouble.
Do you see that repeating with your own kids like that drive? Yes, what do you like? Do you think that's a good thing? Or would you now knowing because you went through it and now and you've come all the way on to the other side of it, Like do you want that for them? Or do you want them?
I don't want the stress and anxiety that I remember feeling, and my son is feeling it right now and I and I it's and it's challenging. And also he's like, it's all worth it because I want to do this show so badly. The show is like bring is bringing me so much joy. I feel so alive. I feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing, and I know I have to get my work done, so this is just what we have to do. We just have to do it.
The apple did not find I know what.
I just what I don't want what. I want my children to not get caught up in which I think I spent a long time in my life untangling from is if you're not excellent at everything, you're somehow failing. So you know, for instance, math is challenging from my son right now. And he is so brilliant and so special and so incredible, but just his his math is is harder.
It's just harder.
It's harder for both my kids. In fact, that's where all of the drama from school lies. It's all math for both of them. And oh and he's been practicing for this this this test that is for one of the schools he's applying to for high school. You're require to do this test. And it's been so discouraging and so frustrating, and everything in me just wants to scream it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, you know. And I could shout it till I'm blue in the face. And
he is still deciding that he's failing, you know. And I do that. I do that to my I did that to myself growing up to My parents never demanded that excellent, that excellence from me. They never did, but I did it to myself. And I can see him do that to himself, and my daughter does it to herself, and we don't. We do not demand that they get all a's or anything like that. We just ask that they do their best. That's the only thing that we ask. But I yeah, I can. I can already feel that
perfectionism creeping in. I'm not quite sure how to combat it because I'm still trying to figure it out.
Yeah, you said you've been unraveling that.
Yeah, I think it's been with me. I know. I know this that you're going to ask me the question about what did I do? What have I done for my That's just me choosing me and this relates to what my answer for that is going to be. But it's very, very very difficult for me to do anything in life that isn't achieving something in some way.
Okay, so break it down.
No, I love this vulnerability. This is very real.
People can relate. I can relate.
Oh, it's so hard. Even if I'm enjoying time with my friends, I'm like, this is so good because we are forming community that matters and lasts, you.
Know what I mean.
There's something productive about being in relationship. You know, I can't like cooking release I hate well, you have to eat, it's not fun.
Are you perfect at it? Are you perfectionist?
When it comes to like, no, I'm not a perfectionist at that. My husband mostly cooks and I do the cleanup usually, But I don't have to be perfect at everything, although I do demand very high quality for my work and stuff, for sure. But my issue is that I've like people have asked me if I have a hobby. I don't have a hobby. I've never had a hobby
in my life. My hobby when I was growing up was acting, and then it became my career, and then I remember for many years having seasons of like deep boredom, like waiting for the phone to ring, of when am I going to get the next audition or get the next job or whatever. Now, with my life very full, with both work and children and everything, I don't really have very much time to breathe most of the time. But even if I did, it's very hard for me
to do something that isn't even reading a book. Even reading a book is like, Okay, what am I going to learn? How will I expand if I read this book? How will I grow? An empathy? And so growing an empathy is purposeful, so like there's no just just do it because it's fun.
M h Okay, I'm going to need you to come back after the kids leave the nest. Yes, and you're in a different phase.
I'm going to tell you about all my hobbies. Oh, I'm going to learn how to basket.
We please, Okay.
Being a pastor's daughter, I do want to know, though, do you think that shaped you? You said your parents didn't demand that anything from you. They just wanted you to do you and do your best, just like you're parenting your kids. But do you think being a pastor's daughter it defined you or shaped you in other people's eyes or in your own.
I think what I'm eternally there's two sides of a coin. I'm eternally grateful for the faith that they gave me I have. I have a true north that doesn't shake it. I mean it shakes at times, but it isn't. There's never a moment when I don't, like know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am beloved by the creator of the universe, and that my life is purposeful, and that i'm you know, I'm here for a reason and everything. When something that's hard happens, it becomes what
is the what is the lesson? Here? And where? How do I move forward and where do I find the gold in this like that was given to me one by my parents' faith and the way that they live their lives and the way they parented me. There is also on the other side of it, there is a I think, a perfectionism that I that I put on myself in a way my brother didn't, And I think that might be a female versus male thing maybe, But I I took some of the lessons of my faith
and they became I'm I'm only lovable. I am loved, but I'm only lovable because I'm really working my ass off to be acceptable to God. My brother didn't get this. Again, it's not it wasn't just that wasn't what was spoken in the household. It's just the way that I received
and metabolized what the what I was taught. And so I think for me, that understanding of being loved because you're loved because you're loved, period and full stop, was something I learned in probably my thirties, and I mostly learned it because of walking through a dark season with my husband where we needed to go to counseling and we had to figure some stuff out, and one of the biggest lessons I learned in that was that I felt kind of like I remember sitting in one of
my our therapy sessions and saying, I feel like an invalid wife, and the therapist is like, what do you mean by that? I said, well, I feel like Peter didn't know what he was getting himself into when he married me, and now that he really knows me, like really knows me, really sees me, he's so disappointed, but he's too good of Amana walk away. And my husband was like, I don't understand why she thinks this. I
don't believe that. I don't feel this way. I love her so much like I And the therapist was like, Sarah, you got a liar living in you. It was just trying to steal your joy at every single turn, trying to tell you you don't deserve love, trying to tell you that God doesn't love you, trying to tell you that your husband doesn't love you, that nobody out in the world loves you unless you're achieving this, this, this, and this. You got to tell the liar to shut the fuck up.
Yes, And that was.
One of the biggest, most explosive moments of release in my life being able to name that it wasn't actually me that was creating It was just not a voice in my head, but it was. It was, well, the voice I don't know, the voice of culture. Yes it was. It was a voice that I gave way too much credence to and couldn't imagine a world where that voice wasn't true.
That voice can be so strong and so loud, and so many of us are minds. I know, I've had that same struggle, and it's very very hard to sort of take the bull by the horns when it comes to that voice, because if it's inside your head and it's very loud, it's constant, it's very dependable messages. You're like, well, then I should it's true, it must be true. Yeah. It keeps saying the same thing, and that.
Voice in some way enables you to have some kind of control because if you're if the voice is saying you'll be loved if you do this, this and this, then you can go, okay, I'll just do that, that and that right, and then I'll be loved as long as I'm doing that, that and that, you know, and when you release that and go, I don't need you to give me control of what I really need to do is just surrender to the reality that I I am just I am a loved being. I am a
created being, and I am loved full stop. It's but then you go, but why, why what did I do?
When you say, I felt like, well what now?
I know?
Well what do I do? I what do I think? Exactly?
It was for me. It was a few days after that. I remember that session so clearly, and I reached out to my community of like faith sisters and my parents and whatever, and I was like, can you guys just pray for me because I don't know how to shut up a liar in my head, Like I don't know how to stop this joy stealing from joy stealer from stealing my joy. I don't know how to do it,
and I need help. And I do believe there was some kind of supernatural intervention because I remember a couple days later, I'm sitting at the table and my husband walks into the room and he just looks at me. It's the morning. He's like, I love you, honey, and I swear to you. I felt like chills from my toe. It was all the way up my It was like heat all the way up my whole body, off the top of my head, chills everywhere. And I just looked
at him and I was like, I believe you. I have never fully believed you when you have said that to me, And for the first time in my life, I believe you. I'm somebody's favorite person. I'm your favorite person and that's real and that's true and that just is period. And I just burst into tears and there was something that just broke and released and let me go in that moment, and it, yeah, it transformed. That's so much.
That's so good, almost crying because I feel like that, I feel that moment for you, Like how profound that must have been. What a breakthrough just in this internal like prison that you were in, you know. Yeah, And what after that happened? How did you stay the course? Because that joy sucker didn't leave forever.
No, and it does crop back up now and again, But I swear to you, from that moment it had, it did not have a choke hold on me anymore. You were able to say I couldn't see what it was. I could say, I don't believe you. You're lying, you're a liar, You're a liar. You're not being honest. I'm sorry, but you're not. My husband is always his wife was like, he's just so wonderful. But I remember early in our relationship I wanted him. My parents would always express their
love through verbal affirmation. In many they express their love in lots of different ways, but my parents would always be like, I love you because of this, because of this, because I look, you did this, and we're so proud of you. Because because because right and with my husband, he wouldn't give me the laundry list ever, I mean ever, he just was always just I just love you. I just love being with you, I just love being around you. I just I think you're so awesome. I just love you.
Sometimes you're like.
But why why, I know? Tell me? Can you just tell me why? What is it that you look about me?
Tell me why? And I remember asking him once, why don't you tell me why you love me? And he said, because I don't want you to ever feel that my love is going to ever go away if for some reason you stop being able to do one of those things or one of those things that I say, this
is why I love you. And then what happens if I say I love you because I love dancing with you, and then you know, you break a leg or you can't dance anymore, your hip goes out or whatever, like I don't want you to ever have in the back of your head. There was a condition to this, and it was because he's like, I just want you to always know that I love you, so period.
What that's that's a really I'm so happy for you because that I can know. I know how tortures that negative liar brain can mind can can control.
Yeah, it's I mean, it's still there, but it is not. It does not it does not have the choke hold, right, Yeah, and I feel I used to feel like, oh God loves me, but you know he had his son had to die because I suck so bad. It's like kind of correct. Yeah, you know that doesn't exist. That thought doesn't exist in my head anymore. That used to be the thought that I had both prior to so interesting.
Because I was going to ask you like your faith as a younger girl and what you learn from your parents and then becoming your own person, your own adult which you've said didn't have until your thirties, where you actually chose to believe what you chose to believe instead of what they chose for you. Even though it was similar or yes, maybe even the same.
It's not it's not exactly the same. I mean, I I feel like the biggest transformation for me. I think I was in a bit of a really protective bubble, and so everything in the world felt pretty black and white, like this is correct, and this is incorrect, and and I because I just and I was surrounded by people of faith all growing up, so I didn't really have exposure to other perspectives. And then I enter into Hollywood
and my whole world of angels into color. I don't know why they call it the angels.
I really don't. Well, they're circling, for sure, circling.
But they're circling. They're working hard, They're working very hard over time. But I do I think that for me engaging with a communities of people from every different background, every different belief system. I definitely walked into Hollywood feeling like I'm here to teach everybody about Jesus. You know, that was that was what I thought I was supposed to do.
And they lined up around the corner.
Oh yeah, they really wanted to hear What was amazing is that, like right off the bat in my first couple of jobs, I was just very clearly sat down, not by anyone, because I usually had some semblance attacked, but I was sat down emotionally by witnessing. I have
this one really lovely encounter. I was doing a play and I was having an anxiety attack, and I was feeling really overwhelmed in this woman who had a very different background, had very different like partying habits and things like that that I would have, you know, found totally scandalous at the time. And I'm like, oh, yes, she needs to be saved, you know. She she sat me down.
She's like, all right, darling, I'm just going to take you through a little meditation right now, and I want you to close your eyes and I want you to breathe deeply. And she walked me through this beautiful meditation that involved getting in a boat. They're no oars, you put your hands in the boat, you breathe in. You know that the river is going to take you where the river needs to go. And it's like she was speaking truth, God's truth to me in a different language language.
And I had this It was a total revelatory moment where I was like, Oh, I'm here to sit down and learn and listen. I'm not here to stand up and preach on a box. This is what life is. This is the expression of my faith is sitting and engaging with a community and learning and seeing God in every person's face. That's what I'm supposed to be. It's beautiful.
That's beautiful. I want to ask you. There's a couple of things I want to ask you. You and your husband have adopted or established a no sarcasm rule. Oh yes, in your house, and you choose not to speak unkindly to one another, so it's a no meanness rule. Yeah, but sarcasm as well.
Yeah, I mean it's funny because now my son and I are pretty sarcastic with its fun. It's fun. It was a It was kind of one of these little nugget like gift nuggets from my husband's mentor who just said one of the one of the things that can, especially in a long term relationship, that can start to dig with It starts as fun and then it can start to get more cutting because the the kind of humor it is is a little bit cutting to begin with,
and then as like resentments build that sarcasm. I keep thinking about the movie, the about the emotions.
Oh, inside out, inside out.
Too, they show sarcasm. It's just this giant crater with one person on this side and one person on this side, and someone tries to say something and then it turns into something else by the time it reaches the other person. This is such a great image for how sarcasm can kind of get in there and create a giant divide. And so we just we were goofy and silly. That's how we express our humor with each other in the household. But just we don't my husband, I don't use sarcasm
with one another. We just we were like, that's a great idea. I think we'll I think we'll go by that.
I want to talk about another one of your great choices, and that is doing your back on Hallmark for a very fun, cozy, but twisty, mysterious Mistletoe Murders. I have to talk about this because I want to know what made you choose to play Emily Lane.
It's such a fun show.
I've heard, yes, I haven't seen it yet.
Oh, it's so fun. You're going into season we just we just aired season two. We're waiting to see if we get a pickup for season three. Okay, knocking on all.
The does it only play around the holidays like it came.
Out on Hallmark Plus last year the first season did, and then they aired season one and season two back to back this year on the main home.
Jill so good.
Yes, it's a really fun I've never done a murder mystery. I've never played a sleuth before, so that was really cool. The script was really amazing when it came across my desk. Was really really, really fantastically crafted mystery. But the thing that really made me want to do this is that Emily has the secret past life and so she there's this duality to her where she's we don't know if she's hiding from someone or running from something, or we don't know if she was good, we don't know if
she was missed it. That's the thing. So you have every two episodes, there's one murder mystery that gets solved, and then there's a really delicious romance with her and it.
Was always a handsome detective Okay, yes.
And then the greater overarching mystery over the course of both seasons so far has been who is Emily Lane? What her backstory? So we play in these flashbacks and we get to, especially in season two, kind of tease out more of her as a high schooler. And then I got to play I got to do like the twenty five year old version of Emily.
That's so fun.
So it's like it has some alias vibes and soon Kamaras vibes. It's really Oh what a really fun like fe role like fetal, yeah, strong woman.
I love that. Does the audience get to kind of try to figure out who Emily is? Oh?
Yeah, who Emily is? And also who the killer is for the episode? My kids love the show. They're completely obsessed with it. Yeah, and they'll like the whole way through they'll be like, I think it's him. Oh no, I think it's her. Wow, Actually, hang on, what is she doing here?
Yeah?
It's really fun.
I know our listeners love to hear like the inside tips of the biz. When you step into a new role and you have the handsome detective relationship that you have to now create this connection and tension and like the chemistry has to be right.
How do you?
How do you do that? Just such a great question, because I for a while I've said I can have chemistry with a doorknob. Yeah, if I want to, Yeah, you feel the same way.
I feel exactly the same. Good I really do feel exactly the same way. No, I think what I I am always on the hunt for loveliness. That is just kind of who I am in the world. And if I have to create chemistry really quickly with somebody, I kind of have this like, like what is lovely and delightful about you? So even if they're difficult, or if they're not whatever, even if they're things that aren't delightful across the board, I can in that moment put the
blinders on and just focus. I remember, I have a very this is a good kind of story about chemistry. My first professional show was playing Juliette and Romeo and Juliette at this theater outside of New York, Macarter Theater, and I remember going into New York to do the callback.
So I read like balcony scenes with the two different Romeos that they had, and I remember getting on the subway and I was so kind of high on the romance of the scene of like just the heightens the ultimate romance ultimate romantic scene right that I got on the train and I saw this like old probably seventy five year old bearded guy across the way, and I was like, if I had to, I could fall in love with that guy right now. Like I could do it.
I could do it because when you when you allow your imagination to go fully into this is my real set of circumstances, and I truly really am in love with this person. When you let your imagination take you there, you could You could have chemistry with a trash can.
You really could you? Just because it's just.
It's just it's an imagine, it's an imagination exercise, right, and then some coasters are just delightfully easy to play with, and then others take a little more tiding.
Yes, we both dealt with that, I'm sure well. Before I let you go, Sarah Drew, what was your last I Choose me moment?
Last year, I burned myself out a little bit with work writing, producing while also starring on a show, and I was so exhausted that by the time November hit, I decided to start reading Romanticy.
What I did not see this Kiming.
Yes, I got so into Romanticy I basically was supposed to be writing all spring all winter and did not. I read forty six books. I had to give it up for lent, Like I was like, I just need to pause because this has taken over my life. But I will say I was saying earlier, it's very difficult for me to do something that is just just brings me joy and delight, that is not accomplishing anything. And reading fantasy and romanticy is like such a delightful traps
into another world. I'm not trying to option anything, turn anything into a movie. I'm not trying to grow and expand I'm just trying to find delight. And I I would say that that was a nice moment of choosing me. I love that perfect Thank you so much for being with us.
I love Debbie here