Spirit & Strength
With
Sasha Lane
Six years after being plucked from obscurity to star in the indie hit American Honey, SASHA LANE has carved out a Hollywood career that’s entirely her own. Now playing the complex antihero Bobbi in the adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends, the actor talks to ZEBA BLAY about navigating motherhood, managing her mental health, and making every moment count
Sasha Lane is seeking balance, like the true Libra that she is. “[I’ve been in] a weird place of confusion for the past couple of weeks,” the 26-year-old actor tells me when we meet in a Lower East Side restaurant on a spring New York morning. “I feel like I keep having these little bouts of… it’s not just depression, because I’ve definitely been depressed, but just very low. But then I also feel really good. I feel confused because I don’t know what I actually am. I can’t really pinpoint anything [that’s] wrong, besides maybe overthinking and exhaustion.”
As she settles into the booth, Lane admits she’s never really been “the happy-go-lucky camper”. She’s dealt with depression and anxiety; in the past, she’s heard voices (a symptom of schizoaffective disorder, which she was diagnosed with in college); and in the early days of her career, she admits there was a certain recklessness in her approach to life. “I was in my own world, and I didn’t care what happened to me. It just didn’t matter.” But this current feeling is different. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, she became a mother – a life change that instilled in her a piercing sense of focus; an impetus to reevaluate how much she can give to her work whilst still being able to pour back into herself, and her daughter.
“I think I’m at a place where I wanna love what I’m doing – and I do mostly love what I’m doing – but I also have to balance,” Lane explains. “I get anxious now with my schedules and all that. They’re like, ‘Just get on a plane.’ I’m like, ‘I can’t just get on a plane – my life doesn’t work like that now.’”
It became clear that she would need to draw lines when she was filming the show Utopia while pregnant. A deeply empathetic actor, Lane realized that becoming completely consumed by a role and project was no longer sustainable. “I started learning that I have to differentiate the work from myself. Because I couldn’t put that into [my daughter]. That’s not fair. It’s also not fair on myself – it’s not worth it to me in that sense anymore.”
She pauses. “It feels really good to actually be able to say this out loud. It makes me feel less guilty because that is my truth. I love what my job brings, but I’m not willing to… sacrifice.” There are myriad things Lane refuses to sacrifice: time with the people she loves, her mental health, her autonomy, her principles, her freedom, her boundaries – motherhood included. Since her daughter was born, she’s become militant about carving out time for herself to just be.
“I have to make myself happy or be good with where I am at, which means I’m constantly working and thinking through my thoughts and feelings… So, when I’m with [my daughter], all she sees from me is fucking love and smiles and craziness.”
“Every time I’ve trusted my GUT, it’s done AMAZING things. Anytime I’ve gone AGAINST it, I’ve ended up in a sh*tstorm”
Hollywood loves a good origin story, and Lane’s is a particularly evocative one, having been discovered on a Florida beach by American Honey director Andrea Arnold when she was 19 and whisked into her first starring role. It’s a picturesque tableau, but one that risks flattening her experience and complexity as an artist – the implication being that when one is ‘discovered’, they are, in a sense, also being invented by others, and craft becomes mistaken for effortless luck.
“It might be effortless, but that’s because I have years of trauma riding on my back,” Lane says. “That’s how I know what [a character] is feeling and thinking… I have to tap into something. People watched American Honey and they just thought I was like this firecracker of energy, and then they’d see me in person and be like, ‘Oh.’ I am not a robot. I have to go somewhere.”
Characters she has played since American Honey include a gay teenager sent to a conversion-therapy camp, a dominatrix, an artist who becomes the target of a demonic spirit, a powerful medium, and a young woman on the run from a mysterious organization. Soon, she’ll be working alongside Tom Holland and Amanda Seyfried in the anthology series The Crowded Room. Each new role is a kind of exploration – Lane is an adventurer when it comes to acting, choosing projects that teach her something about her craft and herself. It’s a kind of therapy. “I don’t take roles that I don’t have a connection with. It’s not worth it; it’s literally not worth it.”
She has an especially strong connection with her character in Hulu’s new Sally Rooney adaptation of Conversations With Friends, in which she stars alongside Joe Alwyn, Jemima Kirke and Alison Oliver. The limited series follows a young Irish woman named Frances as she navigates complicated entanglements with her best friend and former lover Bobbi (Lane), and an artsy, older married couple. At first glance, cool-girl Bobbi seems like an archetype – flippant, overly blunt, aloof, entitled. But Lane was keen to uncover the layers.
“It’s so easy to read the book and go, ‘Ugh, that Bobbi, she’s such a bitch, she’s so rude; everyone’s gonna hate this character,’ but I’m like, ‘That’s exactly what you’re not paying attention to’ – [I’m interested in] the human behind it,” she says.
“I have to make myself HAPPY… So, when I’m with [my daughter], all she sees from me is fu**ing LOVE and smiles and CRAZINESS”
Filming Conversations with Friends was a turning point in many ways for Lane. It marked the first time she brought her daughter to set, establishing a new cadence to how she works. “She became like everyone’s child, basically. It was amazing.” Lane also heard during production that her father had passed away. She was surprised to find that she did not completely fall apart, instead focusing on being strong for her family, particularly her brother. If becoming a parent has provided clarity, I wonder what losing a parent has illuminated for her?
“Me and my dad were way more spiritual than we were physically connected. I can hear him louder and clearer, you know? I think that’s helped me with grief. He is meant to be an angel, giving me this strength now. I know my gut is going to get stronger because that’s where my angels are.”
And it seems that deeper connection to her gut, to her intuition, has also helped her eliminate guilt around setting the boundaries that are so integral to who she is. “I realized that I take on a lot of fucking shit. I think it’s helped me eliminate a lot of guilt.”
Recently, Lane cut her waist-length locks to her shoulders in preparation for her role in The Crowded Room, a monumental shift not only physically, but spiritually, too. In the past, there have been arguments with directors and exits from projects because she was asked to cut her hair and she felt it was not worth it. This time, her intuition told her differently.
“Every time I’ve trusted my gut, it’s done amazing things. Anytime I’ve gone against it, I’ve ended up in a shitstorm,” she says, adding that the team behind the show gave her time to think. The decision was made after speaking with the writer, who explained that because she is so known for her hair, cutting it would be a way to differentiate this character. “Basically, taking off my security blanket and having to rebuild – that’s what it feels like. I just removed my safety blanket and I have to find out if I still love myself without my hair.”
She finally decided to cut “about seven years’ worth of hair and weight and demons and voices and confusion and anxiety”. And pain. “A part of my confusion is I do feel lighter, but I’m also like, I just lost a part of the weight I’ve been carrying.”
The change is also in line with Lane’s playful flexibility when it comes to her look. One moment she is on a red carpet rocking a fringed Monse skirt, a silk slip by The Row or sparkling in a Bottega Veneta mini dress. Another, she’s posting on Instagram wearing a fleece jacket and New Balance slides, or an oversized T-shirt and baggy jeans.
“I love fashion because, for a person who’s moody as shit, it helps me. If I find a hoodie or crewneck that I like, you won't see me out of that for a good couple of months. Luckily, I just got a house, so I finally have all my clothes and things together. And the partner I’m with now, he’s only seen me live out of suitcases. He’s never seen my accumulation of things and, you know, those other little fairy parts about me. So, when I unpacked them all, he was like, ‘Whoa, who are you right now?’ she laughs. “It’s hilarious. And it’s a beautiful thing for me to watch because there are these different little parts of me that I didn’t get to have for a while. I’m like, ‘Look at all this fucking glitter!’”
I’m curious about little Sasha Lane – before motherhood, before Hollywood. What she was like when she was young? “Until maybe, like, six, I was so sassy. Full of energy. And then I just dropped. I became really quiet. I just really craved love. And I think that made me get smaller and smaller. I think I just stopped talking. I wanted to be as small as possible, but it wasn’t necessarily because I felt horrible – it was because I didn’t want to consume anyone else’s space.”
She’s come a long way: 20 years later, Lane is taking up space and poised to take up more without apology or questioning. “I’m very good at saying no now when it comes to projects,” she says. Money and accolades are one thing – “I’ve never been big on money, but I’ve always been big on my worth” – but the impact she’s really hoping to make is incremental and individual.
“I’m very good at SAYING no now when it comes to projects. I’ve never been big on MONEY, but I’ve always been big on my WORTH”
“I wanna get to a more true place of less anxiety,” she says. “My dream is to just be able to enjoy a little bit more of the present moment and precious time that is now. I’ve learnt that with my dad.”
Outside, the spring snowfall has begun to crescendo into an opaque whiteness and Lane starts bundling up for a walk. I ask what she is finding inspiring right now.
“I feel like it’s very evident in my life that something, someone, the universe, is happy with me. When you trust your gut and stop worrying so much and just give in and remind yourself that God is on your side, the universe is on your side, you cannot deny that. I would be lying to myself if I said everything’s out to get me. That inspires me to just keep going, even if I feel really confused and depressed. There really is a balance to letting go while also waking up.”
‘Conversations With Friends’ will air on Hulu and BBC Three from May 15
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