Chaley Rose
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Interview by Nolwen Cifuentes
Photography by Nikk Rich
Makeup by Danielle Haxton
Photo Assisting by Linh Tang
Tell me a bit about your background. What brought you to LA and to acting?
I’m from Columbus, Indiana, it’s a small city. It’s a conservative city. It has a Friday night lights feel to it — on Fridays. We’d go to the football game, and then we went to Applebee’s afterward. I was a cheerleader. But I always had this desire to be an actor. My mother really did discourage me when I was younger, so I decided maybe being a singer would be more palatable. But I ultimately found myself in Los Angeles, and shortly after moving here, I booked an acting gig, playing a singer. It was like the universe really had my back.
What kinds of challenges have you faced career-wise?
I would say that initially, starting out, I had a lot of — I don’t know if I believe in luck — but what one would call beginner luck. I booked a Jack-in-the-Box commercial and several industrial commercials. A year and a half into being in LA, I booked a role in [ABC’s] Nashville, and I did 28 episodes of that show. I feel like I’d been paying my dues on the backend. I really had to learn how to audition. I had to learn the mechanism of the business. I went 23 months without a job, and that was really painful but really valuable. I had to learn that my value didn’t lie and whether or not I was on a TV show. There have been times when I got to the last few dollars of my bank account, and then some job would come along and save me, and I’d make it another six months. There’s been a lot of that just being scrappy and surviving and knowing that another job is going to come. I think this has been one of the hardest years in my career. I decided to attempt to shift the kind of roles that I am going out for, and it’s kind of like starting from the beginning of your career. Which I don’t regret. Add the strike to a very slow year, and I find myself with multiple part-time jobs for the first time in 12 years.
What kinds of part-time jobs are you having to take right now?
Since February, I’ve had four jobs. Personal assisting teaching, gymnastics at a preschool, working at a summer camp, and now I just got a job at an elementary school helping with recess and after-school recreational aid. I’ll do that job and the gymnastics teaching job throughout the school year. I’m not complaining about having jobs. I’m happy to work I love working with kids it’s just something I didn’t see myself ever having to do again to make ends meet.
What are some of your bigger concerns around AMPTP contracts and the strikes?
My concerns right now with the strike are residual pay, auditions, health insurance, and AI. I have a lot of episodes of TV and movies that are streaming, and I don’t see a lot of money from that. I also have lost my health insurance for the second time since being a working actor. I’m on Medi-Cal. One thing that has been really hard for me and for a lot of my peers is losing the casting office. It’s really painful to be an actor or and artist of any kind and feel like no one is seeing your work. There was something satisfying about knowing that at least you were being seen by the people who were making the choices about casting. But for the last few years, I have felt like I’ve been sending tapes into the void, and that’s something I would like to see change.
What has your experience picketing been like?
I started picketing with the writers, which was fun, and I had a lot more time on my hands then. I went out a lot and would go by myself and just say, I'm just going to go for this many hours just to show support. Now I'm working more, so I'm not out as often. I try to go once a week. It's fun. It's also really hot, but it is nice to see your friends and see people because it's a thing that we would do at auditions. We'd run into each other. It's been fun to be out there. I would rather we weren't, but it's been pretty cool, and it does feel historic.
What do you want folks outside the industry to know about the strike?
I want people outside the industry to understand that we are not all wealthy. There’s some release, I guess, in people knowing that most of us are not making tons and tons of money. A lot of us are the faces that fill out an ensemble around two or three people who are making tons of money. We’re not just a bunch of people who are greedy and just want more and more money. We want to be able to live while streamers are making millions and millions of dollars re-running shows with our faces in them. I want to see a fair cut from the shows and movies that I’m in that re-run over and over that are helping to make the streamers extremely successful.
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