NATACHA KARAM

"Anything worth anything to me happens in the space between me and another person."

Our shoot with Irish-Lebanese actress Natacha Karam spanned three locations across three city blocks. No matter where we walked, we were accompanied by the pleasant, happy padded feet of Cleopatra, Natacha’s dog.

Far from a London Tipton/Ivana vanity dog situation, Natacha had turned her tmrw shoot into a weekend vacation of sorts for her, her boyfriend John, and (of course) Cleo. For me, bringing her favorite people along with her elevated this from a day of work to a charming day out with new friends.

For Natacha, it was a much needed break after the series finale of 9-1-1: Lone Star, where she played firefighter Marjan Marwani for five seasons. Even though the major labor of production had wrapped months before, finales are always a flurry of excitement, nostalgia, social media, and questions from the press. Natacha and John seemed genuinely happy to be out cutting loose and exploring somewhere new. That enthusiasm was contagious: Natacha’s shoot concluded with a round of applause from the tmrw crew. 

After saying goodbye to the majority of the team, Natacha, John, and Cleo walked with me back to June Audio Recording Studios, where we sat upstairs in our cluttered little production office as the overwhelming sound of washy, post-rock guitars leaked into the room from a completely unrelated recording session next door. Engineers at the studio had been building new bass traps, so planks of wood and an unopened package of fiberglass insulation were crowding the space. Between the aural congestion and physical clutter, it was a touch claustrophobic and not at all how things usually are during my 9 to 5. 

Given how elegant Natacha had been in her emerald sequined dress in Velour Live Music Gallery’s Enchanted Chamber only minutes before, I found this new setting humorous and completely unbefitting of Natacha and John. If Cleo didn’t immediately make it feel like home, I would’ve been embarrassed. But Natacha and John are both endlessly charismatic and kind. I could’ve taken them to the DMV and I’m sure they would’ve made it fun. 

On first glance, you would assume humility and grace are defining characteristics of Natacha Karam. Sure, she’s graceful. Yeah, she’s down to earth. But Natacha Karam doesn’t condescend. She didn’t take pity on my humble, cluttered, noisy office and grant me compassion for the sake of a good interview. No – Natacha Karam took it all in, rolled up her sleeves, and acclimated. She’s a quick learner. She’s quick on her feet. And she’s got the ability to roll with the punches (quite literally – but more on that later). 

The real word that defines Natacha Karam is resilience. 

For example, one of the first things we discussed is her career after Lone Star. When I asked her what she wished the general public understood about the life of a working actor, she was frank. “I wish they knew a little bit more about what the process of getting a job can be – how varied it can be and how difficult it can be,” she said after some deep thought. “A lot of the time people will send me a message and be like, ‘You should be on this show or that show.’ And really, it's not that simple. You may see someone on your screen and think that that means they've, in a sense, made it because you're watching TV and they're in your living room. But some days I don't really feel any further along than I did 10 years ago. And I've made probably nearing 100 episodes of TV in my life. It’s not necessarily a linear industry.”

She explained that you can be the lead in a major project and then not work again. You can slowly work your way up, doing smaller roles and turning them into big roles over time. Some people land huge roles out of nowhere. “I think the process of auditioning and taking meetings and oftentimes how little control we as actors have is something I wish people understood,” she added. “You can say yes or no to the opportunity once it arrives to you, whether that's the audition or the actual offer. But I can't materialize a role out of thin air for myself. And very, very few people can.”

Natacha Karam has a relentless work ethic and is immensely grateful for opportunities when they come her way. She has fond memories of her time on the BBC crime drama television series Silent Witness, which has run for 28 series. “Nothing will beat that feeling,” she laughed. “I did one episode of Silent Witness, which is kind of like CSI. It’s, you know, like a rite of passage for an actor. There's just so many episodes that statistically and historically a working actor would have done at least one at some point."

She laughed aloud at the memory. “I had a trailer! For half a day or two days or whatever it was. I had a set. I had a call sheet. I didn't even know how to read call sheets!” She had to ask a friend – the only other working actor she knew – how to read a call sheet. “I'm like, ‘My name isn't on it anywhere!’ And he's like, ‘Because your name is a number and you have to look for the number on the call sheet.’ I was so far away from this world that I didn’t even know what time I had to be there. And he had to explain it all to me. That, for me, felt like a portal into a new universe: the first time I actually stepped foot on a set as an actor in a costume with a call sheet, with a trailer for three scenes or something. But I loved it.”

Shooting her first pilot season in LA was also a “pinch me moment,” she said. Walking around, looking at palm trees, and discovering that Hollywood's industry didn’t work the same as London's – and having to learn how to navigate it all. “I think it requires a lot of resilience in order to make a living in the entertainment industry,” Natacha said. 

We talked for a while longer, and I pointed out that she mentioned resilience several times. She beamed. “I have a tiny tattoo on my arm that says ‘resilience.’ I think it's like one of the fundamental core traits of who I am. I've endured a lot in my life and I’ve overcome a lot.”

Natacha moved a ton growing up. Born in Saudi Arabia to a Northern Irish mother and a Lebanese-French father, change was a constant for her. In her lifetime she's lived in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Dubai, the UK, and now the US. “Moving from country to country was like starting over, over and over and over again.” 

Starting over was always difficult for Natacha. When she was younger, one of her legs was shorter than the other. “I had a lot of surgeries,” she recalled. “Some of them were planned, other ones weren't. I'm missing certain parts of my leg. It just sort of became a series of unfortunate events. Every time I’d have my leg stretched, I'd go through this very tenuous nine-month surgery thing, and then fall downstairs and break it, and end up in a hospital bed. It was just a sort of on-and-off journey with my physicality. It feels so far removed from my reality now, but I had a lot of surgeries. I was in and out of hospitals a lot. So again – progress wasn't always linear.”

Having these constant setbacks and these constant changes in environment forced Natacha to learn how to embrace pain and disappointment with a solution-focused mindset. “Sometimes I would have a surgery on my leg and then things would seem like they were doing well and then I would fall and break my leg and have to start all over again. In some ways it’s similar to the career that I have, where it's like you feel like you're getting ahead, you almost book something, you test for something. It doesn't go your way. The next thing you test for is a way smaller role or the next thing you do feels like 10 steps backwards instead of 100 steps forward, which was sort of the carrot that was being dangled right in front of your eyes. So I think that sort of resilience has translated.”

Not only has her upbringing helped her navigate the industry, but it’s also helped her with her craft. “I also don't think it's possible to divorce yourself and your life experiences from your craft as an actor,” she explained. “What you live through and what you've experienced and who you are and how you emote and the things that move you are the very thing that you're being asked to do. So if you're disconnected from that, it's borderline impossible to do what I do or what we do as actors. Because you have to tap into a well of emotion.”

One of the most transformative experiences for Natacha was picking up boxing when she was 22 years old. Initially, she got into boxing to help her shape her visual aesthetic in Hollywood. “Our industry is so, um… what’s the word I’m looking for?” she stammered nervously. “Aesthetic? Visual? Superficial. That’s it.”

John laughed. 

She mentioned the stereotypical muscly guy physique required to play a superhero or action role. “It's very superficial, it's very dumbed down sometimes, but it is the entry point. So I felt like I didn't externally match the thing that I felt internally, and in this arena it was something that I was able to take action about. So I went straight in for what felt like the hardest thing I could do. I'm gonna get punched in the face.” 

So she went all in on boxing. She trained hard and learned how to be an athlete – all to get the aesthetic she needed in order to land the roles she truly wanted. “Physically I just look like someone who is capable,” she said. “I have sort of broad shoulders and muscular arms. They’re things that I'm proud of, that I worked for. And in the roles that I play I look like someone who is capable of picking up the heavy thing, or punching said person, or doing that fight sequence, or climbing a big ladder. Any of those things.”

But the experience did more than alter her physically. “Actually more than anything it did for me physically, it was an internal experience,” Natacha reflected seriously. “Standing a little bit taller, feeling more deeply rooted and capable. It changed my whole energy. My self-belief, my tenacity, my resilience.” 

Natacha also noticed an interesting pattern in the world of boxing. “All the gyms I've found over the years, all the ones I've been in and out of, are full of very resilient people and people who are either fighting for or against something.” 

I found that striking, so I asked: “Are you somebody who fights for something? Or against something?”

She paused for a long time. “You know? I ran out of ‘fighting against,’” she said with a deep breath. “Boxing started from a place of: Fuck you! Watch me! Essentially about all the things I was told I couldn't do, or would never do, especially with my leg. I was never meant to be an action hero.”

Boxing was a very deliberate choice.

Let it be noted that this was not a lame statement. “I was dealt a bad hand, so I picked up more cards” is objectively badass, and this is my petition to have this bit of dialogue included in an action movie at some point in the future. But I digress.

“I decided to just pick up some new cards and do something different,” she continued. “So for a long time I think I was just screaming, Fuck you! Watch me! to all the naysayers. But then eventually I got there, and it sort of silenced all the negative voices in my mind. And then the fuel ran out, because you can't run on that forever.”

It was then that Natacha stopped caring so much about what others thought and suddenly had to confront the bigger demon – what she thought about herself. “When I was sat at home alone, or when I put my head on the pillow at night, I was like, ‘What do I want? What's going to motivate me to get up tomorrow?’”

That’s when a massive shift in her mentality occurred. “Now, I'm fighting for little me,” she said earnestly. 

In the same breath, Natacha warned of the very negative and very real consequences of misrepresentation. “I'm fighting for better representation; better, more authentic storylines; and I’m fighting for a life full of love, and connection, and experiences, and art, and collaboration. Anything worth anything to me happens in the space between me and another person. That's my truth, to be connected to other people. I'm fighting for hope, and to inspire the people around me to believe in the possibility of their dreams.”

Pausing again, she looked down at Cleopatra in her lap and gave her some loving scratches. She looked back at me.

Going forward, Natacha hopes to land roles that leverage her specific skillsets. She’d love to play a boxer – to get paid to do the two things she loves to do: box and act. She also wants to be in a spy film in order to merge her physical skills with her knack dialect work. “I’d just have fun and be really badass and have an arc,” she laughed. “I would like to be a spy.”

Our interview concluded shortly after that comment, but not really. We packed up and John and Natacha came to dinner with my wife and I. The meaningful conversations continued at Black Sheep Cafe and beyond. I was struck by the way Natacha and John interacted, and treated each other with respect and care. The way they listened patiently and genuinely to my wife, a huge Lone Star fan. How they treated the waitress. How worried they were when someone left their wallet and keys on the front counter. How goodnatured their humor was.

Natacha Karam’s resilience didn’t just make her a great actor. It’s made her a great person.

Make sure to follow Natacha Karam on Instagram. You can catch her on 5 seasons of 9-1-1: Lone Star on Hulu, as well as NBC's The Brave.