Katie Lowes On How One Opportunity Can Lead to the Next, Her Inspiring Take On Being Resilient, and the Hit Netflix series, ‘Inventing Anna’
Katie was virtually photographed in Los Angeles by Alison Engstrom; hair by Clariss Rubenstein; makeup by Kindra Mann; styling by Nicole Chavez
Hi Katie! Thank you so much for taking the time to do the virtual shoot for ROSE & IVY. I’m excited to talk to you more about your career and learning what makes you tick. How would you summarize the road to where you are now? Has there been a moment in your career that was a game changer and shifted your course?
Slow, steady, and full of hard work. I had every side job you could imagine starting off in my career—waitressing, babysitting, catering, personal assisting—and simultaneously was lucky enough to book one line, then two lines and then three lines, then a scene, then a recurring arc, then a pilot that didn’t go, all the way until I finally booked Scandal and that was the huge game-changer that shifted my course. Meeting Shonda Rhimes and getting cast as Quinn Perkins in Scandal was the moment my entire life and career changed.
What would you say has guided your career over the years, is there a feeling or guidepost that helps guide your decisions?
It’s been my personal relationships. I have found so many friends and collaborators on every set I am on and it’s usually through that they recommend me to auditions for a role that is available. Or, I do a good job on one thing and they throw my name in the hat for another project. So it’s been about personal relationships, proving myself, working really hard, and showing up with my best foot forward that I think has people continuously fighting for me and offering me opportunities.
Since the industry, as with life, comes with ups and downs. What has it taught you about yourself and your own resilience?
It’s taught me how important mental health is, I’m a huge advocate of therapy, downtime, and self-care, which has always been such a huge help, especially therapy. Since I have been working for the past fifteen or sixteen years professionally, I have been through ups, downs, and in-betweens, and they all pass. The ups fade, the downs fade, and the in-betweens fade, so I try to look at everything as a phase and an experience, whether good or bad, that I am lucky enough to have. This isn’t my practice life, so I try to enjoy all of it, and again, I find an important key to being an actor is your support network of friends and professional relationships that are around you. I am lucky to have incredibly supportive parents, a very supportive husband, and a wonderful artistic team around me.
Now to turn to Inventing Anna, it’s addicting and fascinating. I was definitely intrigued by the story of Anna Sorokin as it was unfolding in real time. You have to think, how did she do it? You play Rachel the friend of Anna, who went on to write the book My Friend Anna. Since you have worked in the Shondaland universe before, what was your initial reaction when you read the script? Can you talk more about your got into Rachel’s headspace and her arc in the series?
When I first read the Inventing Anna script, I was floored, jaw-dropping, couldn’t turn the pages fast enough, couldn’t ingest the story fast enough. I was such a fan from just reading the script. The biggest and most important element to getting into Rachel’s headspace was we got to shoot in Morocco where Anna Delvey conned her out of $60,000—she had her pay for the hotel bill and we actually stayed in that location. It was so easy, at that point to just step into Rachel’s shoes. I have so much empathy for Rachel, I was able to use my imagination and put myself into her situation. Being in Morocco helped so much, to be at this fancy, elite, completely extravagant hotel and be scared out of your mind being a girl in a foreign country—where you don’t speak the language—and you are being threatened that you will be taken to a Moroccan jail. I could feel Rachel’s fear and it upped the stakes for me.
Since the role is based on a real-person, do you find that more intimidating or complex than if it was a fictional character?
I definitely had more pressure on myself since I was playing a real person, which I had never done before. But at the same time, I only used the real-life Rachel Williams as a starting off point. I created the character that Shonda had written and created on the page more than anything else.
In addition to acting you also host the podcast called Katie's Crib! Was this the type of guide/advice you were looking for when you were on the road to becoming a mom?
Katie’s Crib is exactly what I wished had existed when I was pregnant with my first child. It’s raw, it’s vulnerable; it’s real moms, real talk, real tired giving real advice and just making moms feel less alone. It’s the opposite of the really polished Instagram moms you may see.
What’s the best piece of advice you have learned about being a parent since you started?
You don’t mold your child, you unfold your child.
Are you working on anything else that we should know about?
I’m currently working on a CBS sitcom called How We Roll, that comes out March 31st. Please tune in!