Stories of Us: Samaire Armstrong | Stories of Us

My advice to those in Hollywood who are silent right now, we have to break the silence before it's too late. My name is Samira Armstrong, and this is my story. I was born in Japan, in Tokyo, Japan, because my father is in a study of anthropology that studies combative behavior. And because in Japan, the samurais begin their training at the age of five, when I turned five, it was my turn to participate. We'd wake up before school, like six in the morning in second grade, and go jogging out in the cold, and then go to school, and then come home, and train, and sword fight, and that was a daily activity. My parents consciously made the decision to raise a warrior, and that all the training that I was going through, while possibly a little bit brutal, was in the name of developing my character, and my capability as a human being, so that I would be able to go wherever I wanted, and feel confident to exist in that space. But the one thing that always spoke to me was storytelling and acting. So I came out to Los Angeles when I was 18, turning 19, and I eventually, not very long after, got Anna on the OC. She wasn't the girl next door. She was authentic to herself, and she inserted confidence into people that required it, and she showed the mirror other peoples who needed to take a look at themselves and reflect. And that was awesome to me. Over the last six years, I've heard nonstop, they're not looking for white. It's going to diverse. They liked you, but you're white. And I kept that to myself in silence, because on the one hand, it's like, hooray, great, diversity's finally here. Oscars were so white for decades, you know? But the pendulum has swung so far. I think nowadays it's different for the sake of being different, because it's politically correct. You know, like, we're gonna fit this transgender character in here now that we're PC. Natural organic stories stopped being told, and you had to make a checklist of what was acceptable. You know, all the nuances of art disappeared, and shouldn't it be about talent? Shouldn't it be about merit or capability or effective storytelling or emotional presence? You gotta wonder, what's the point of acting school and putting this time into developing the craft if that doesn't matter anymore? We aren't able to be authentic. We're not allowed to question anything or converse about things. We're literally forced to be silenced. If you don't emulate what they expect you to, you are a racist, a bigot, you have privilege so you'll never understand. We're talking about this authoritarian dictatorship of how things should operate, and we're existing within that in Hollywood. It's like, these quotas need to be met, and that's a story, that's acceptable. We can't be canceled. But the reality is, you're cutting people off left and right and there is no actual life and natural creation in this story at all. What are we feeding our society when we're creating narratives like this? But there's this expectation that you're supposed to show up to these places and get in sync and in line with these people and this left agenda, or you're the enemy. So during COVID, I noticed that everyone's primal fears were being triggered. And I started on social media seeing this story of persecution of Black people in our country. And I was like, how did I miss this? Like, this was supposed to be existing this whole time. Was I not listening? And I was reactive. And I think my primal fear was tapped into feeling like I missed something, right? I wanna help, I wanna be a part of, I wanna support. It is true, there's not a lot of Black people in my industry. Why is that? Is it because of systemic racism? And you start sort of questioning things through a narrative that's being thrown at you through social media. And you become on this hamster wheel, right? And it's post the Black square, don't post the Black square. You should have posted with this. You use this hashtag, don't use this hashtag. And you're like, I just wanna do the right thing, and you get into this mania of showing up at the march and then, wait, we shouldn't be there because of COVID. But you don't care, you're supposed to be silent. As a white person, you don't say anything. You just listen. And there was this moment where I signed my name onto a change.org petition to get someone out of prison who had no idea what they had done. I didn't know the evidence. I didn't look into any of his history or story. And I wrote my name to get him out. And I was like, this is not right. There's no thinking going on. And none of it made sense. But it was enough for me to question the narrative. And once I started looking outside and seeing the destruction, and now this whole defund the police movement, like the people that are hurting the most are the same people that you pretend to be caring for. Black communities, minority communities, they're the ones who are now getting the police men and women ripped out of there by cutting the funding of their departments. Like the crime is going up. Do you actually care what's going on? Our streets are on fire. Why isn't anyone saying anything? And I kept looking around, waiting for someone to be like, hey, this is weird guys, let's just take a moment. And no one was. And I felt like I had to do it. I kept calling my dad and saying, this is wrong. Like what's happening is wrong. I really feel compelled to say something. And as you know, my dad's raised me since I was five years old to be this warrior. And I had to speak out and he encouraged me to do just that. And my only regret through all of this is not having done it sooner. The night that I came out and put a video up, that evening it was all the way in the UK and it immediately went around like a wildfire on the internet and was on every sort of like rag mag platform, Peretz Hilton and every other one saying that I was, you know, a white out of touch privilege has been whatever. All these things that I knew were gonna be coming at me. Interestingly, my inbox was filled from messages of agents thanking me for speaking out and that they could never do that and that they wish they could. I think that we don't have to agree politically, but I believe truly that we should all be able to agree upon coexisting, whether you're on the left, whether you're on the right, and not to have to fear not having a job because of a difference in political beliefs. I think that the most important thing is there's a voice within us that helps us navigate right from wrong. And right now we're being forced to listen to voices outside of us. So what your manager says or what your agent says or what your fear says about if you were to speak out what would happen. But inside you know what's right and what's true and it's not because a bunch of people agreed upon it being right or true. And I think more than anything, that's the voice that we have to start listening to and allowing to come out of you. You probably feel like you're the only one. You probably feel like you're in isolation. I felt that way for years. I thought I was the only conservative in Hollywood. And having spoken out, I've got this amazing group of people around me now who share my values and beliefs and think the same way. And I'm not alone. I'm not alone in the slightest. My advice to those in Hollywood who are silent right now, we have to break the silence before it's too late. Thank you for watching this video. To keep PragerU videos free, please consider making a tax-deductible donation.