WHOOP Podcast - Actress Lina Esco talks mindfulness, meditation, and overcoming rejection.

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

Actress Lina Esco, the co-star of the CBS drama SWAT, joins the WHOOP Podcast to talk about mindfulness, meditation, and finding success in Hollywood. Lina shares why learning those skills have made a tremendous difference in her life, and also explains why connecting with your subconscious is critical for everyone. She candidly details how she overcame a tough childhood and drug addiction to get where she is today. Lina discusses becoming an actress (2:15), her early struggles (3:26), dealing with rejection (5:54), meditation (11:31), breathing techniques and HRV (15:36), using WHOOP (23:56), exercise and memorization (28:17), channeling nerves (35:41), doing her own stunts (37:52), Netflix's impact on entertainment (45:23). Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

what's up folks welcome back to the whoop podcast i'm your host will ovid founder and CEO of whoop or we are on a mission to unlock human performance we got father's day right around the corner and whoop is here to help you celebrate the important fathers in your life that's right give your dad husband or coach the gift of whoop and get one month added to your own membership for free. That's right. This is a special promotion for WOOP members. You can head to the WOOP app, tap GiftWOOP,

and follow the instructions for the father in your life. Your free month will be added to the end of your current membership date, and you can learn more in the WOOP app. All right. Now, if you're not on WOOP, good news. You can use the code Will Ahmed, W-I-L-H-M-E-D to get 15% off a W-WP membership. Membership, of course, comes with hardware and software and analytics to help you perform at a higher level, help you improve your health. This week's guest is the talented actress Lena Esco, the co-star of the CBS drama SWAT.

I think you'll find Lena to mean extremely honest and forthcoming guest. Finding success in Hollywood is certainly not easy, and she details a lot of her early struggles in life and in the business. She's very forthcoming about drug abuse, being a drug addict for four years, getting rejected for more roles than you can imagine. And I think for anyone who's looking for a bit of inspiration, this is a terrific podcast. Lena also goes deep on mindfulness, meditation, and breathing techniques and how those have played a huge role in helping her find success and helping her overcome addiction. We also discussed the subconscious and how to connect with it, channeling nerves into a

positive, what inspired her to pursue acting, why she chooses to do her own stunts, and how she uses Whoop in her life, and why she considers it her best tool while training. Without further ado, here is Lena Esco. Lina, welcome to the Whoop podcast. Thank you, Will. So you left home 15 years old to become an actress, and it worked out. Well, it's not that easy. It sounds easy, but no, it was all kinds of struggles, ups and downs, grew up really poor. I just had to go, everything around me reminded me of dreams are not true. Like anything you dream about, it's not ever going to happen. So I had to leave. I had to be around the energy of people that believed in what I believed in. How did you know that at such a young age? Like who, who did you look up to at that point that made you feel that

way? I don't think I had any great role models. I think I just wanted to be everything, a complete opposite of my father. I know that sounds terrible. We don't talk, but he was just everything I never wanted to be. And so I just knew that I love watching movies and diving myself into like this whole reality. And I just wanted to be a filmmaker.

I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to be a producer. I wanted to be an activist. I wanted to get out. I just knew that I couldn't be there around my family. And so you leave home, you head out to Hollywood. What from there?

Like, what's the starter kit from there? I mean, a lot happened. I was a drug addict for a long time. I mean, like four years, I was doing all kinds of things from opiates to heroin to, you name it, anything I can get my hands off. Wow. Hands on. Yep. So, yeah.

That was at a young age as well. Yeah, like 17 to 19, 2021. I mean, it was just, I lived in L.A. when I was a kid with my family. I was born in Miami. I lived in L.A. for like a few years. and then we moved back, and then when I was 15, I came back here. You know, you're just trying to get through to wherever you can to survive. You know, you're not, you don't really have like an actual destination in mind.

You know there's a particular feeling you want to feel and achieve certain things and be fed as an artist. And so I was just going in that direction and trying to feel that. And, you know, I had kind of a revelation is that why do I, why do I want to come back here? is that when I was a kid and we came here, we were staying with our cousins or my mom's sisters and they were doing so much better in life. So when I was in their home, I felt safe. In their home, I felt like we weren't worry about, we were not going to worry about the rent. In their home, I felt like I can sit down like a kid for the first time, eat cereal and watch, you know,

anything that was interesting, like from TV land watching Gilligan's Island to, you know, cartoons or Disney. So I associated L.A. at a very young age as a place to feel safe. And so I just, you know, that was a lot of therapy to come into terms like with that whole connection. My therapist connected that and I was like, holy shit, that's what it is. So I always wanted to be here and I've been here since. So that gave you the courage to really make a home in L.A. But obviously it didn't get off on the right foot if you found yourself kind of down this rabbit hole of drugs. Drugs, going to Europe, jumping.

and on any situation I could to keep moving, you know, staying still in one place was a lot of anxiety. You know, we're always, we're just trying to survive. And I guess I had a lot of anxiety inside me. And what were you doing professionally during that time frame? Like, were you able to get roles and whatnot? Were there signs at that point that? I mean, there was just so many doors closing in your face. So many auditions that are just, you're not right for it. You're too raw. You're to this, you know, at the time, it was all about the blonde, blue-eyed girl, you know, that was, that's where I was at. There was no, so there, you're just constantly questioning yourself, you know, it's those doors closing in your face really get to you. You start questioning,

like, what, what's wrong with me? What, what don't I have? And so what really helped to pay the bills because I'm like, I don't want to be, I don't want to end up waitressing and doing that for the rest of my life because I'm, I'm not going to settle. So I started just going out on, TV commercial auditions. And that's what paid the bills and help, you know, get me through paying gigs. But that's a long road. It's a long road.

Well, you strike me as someone that has a lot of courage. And I wonder how much of that you, how much, like when you think about your childhood in that period of like 15 to 22, which sounds like it was a tough time, do you look back on that gratefully or with gratitude? Or do you look back on that as like, something that you wish was very different.

Yeah, it's weird because sometimes I'm like, why didn't I have it a little bit easier? Why did I have to do all these things to feel high and to feel in a way alive to erase all these things that happen at home that I don't really want to talk about, you know? But I don't regret anything. I don't want to try to erase anything either. I feel like all of that has molded me into who I am today.

So I feel like the best thing to do is when I've done therapy, I've been able to to connect those dots. But for many years, you know, we disconnect that so much and that hard drive that's constantly running our lives tends to show us things. And we're like, why did I just react to that? And then you go and you do some work and you realize, holy shit, that's what happened to me when I was 15 or 14 or 18 because you tend to erase a lot of it because we don't want to live it again. And so that's definitely revealed itself, and I've tried to talk about it with myself. You talk about therapy. Is that something that you recommend for people? What makes someone ready to go into therapy?

I think everybody needs therapy. I don't care how happy you are. How, you know, we have, we're like a sponge, you know, the moment we're born, we're absorbing everything. When a baby's two days old and you're fighting in front of the baby, The baby is reacting. It doesn't know what it is yet, but it's reacting. And the child can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy up until the age of eight. So they're absorbing everything.

If you have the TV on in front of them with violence going on, they're absorbing all of that. And so they're carrying that with themselves all day long. And so that hard drive runs our life. You can tell yourself here and your conscious self all day long, I am this person. I am this person. But if your subconscious isn't believe it, because of your history, you grew up poor or whatever you know you have to really do the work and and i love hypnosis i love hypnotherapy because i believe that therapy is good you can talk to somebody but sometimes it goes

out the other ear but when you're doing hypnotherapy you have you have somebody talking to your subconscious and that's where everything's at so your therapy is primarily hypnotherapy i love hypnotherapy and i also have just a therapist that i talk to once a month and those are Those are two different people. Yeah. How does hypnotherapy work? I'm very interested in that. Hypnotherapy is you sit down, you talk to somebody you actually trust.

You know, you do a couple sessions with a hypnotherapist and then see if you feel safe with that person because it's all about feeling safe. It's not really going so under that you're just like, oh, make me go and do something. No, you're just in a very deep state. I don't know how many hurts. but in a point where like the more you do it, the deeper you go. So this particular person that I see, I feel very safe with her. So I sit down, I talk to her for 20 minutes, what's happening with me? And she's like, okay, let's work on that and that and that.

And then I sit in the chair. She puts a little blanket and I lay down and she starts the hypnosis. She'll start talking, breathing, focus on your breathing, focus on that, focus on that. And because her voice is already safe to me, it's soothing to me, I relax. So while I'm in that hypnosis state is when she starts putting the little hints of things to help with either anxiety, to help with either past trauma or whatever it is, and you do that. And then she'll give you the recording and you can do it once a week in your own home or whatever. I don't see her all the time. I tend to see her every three, four, five months.

Well, breathing has become a bit of an obsession for me because I got into Transcendental Meditation about six years. years ago at a point of real crisis in running a company. I raised millions of dollars. I felt like the business was failing. I felt like I was failing as a CEO. I was, you know, 24 years old or so at the time. And so just learning through my own personal experience of how much breathing can control everything in your world is, is pretty mind-blowing. And so whenever people talk about these different types of breathing states, I get very interested in it. And mind you, I haven't actually experimented that far beyond what I do today. But I am super curious about it. And it sounds like this is something where breathing actually can take you into a different state where you can be

influenced by someone else, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, totally. I mean, TM, I've been doing it for 15 years. Really? Yeah, I learned it right off the bat when I was going through all this stuff from this guy named Tom Bell who apparently taught Johnny Cash and Michael Jackson and all these people. But that's the thing. TM is a beautiful, simple, effortless technique for anybody. And sometimes I do it twice a day, but I try not to go a day without it. I do it every morning before I turn my phone on or anything. Yeah. It's been amazing in my life. I can imagine how it's been amazing in your life. I'm curious as an actress when you do TM, do you find that when you're, when you're wandering off of your mantra, you're thinking about your character? Because I find that when

my mind wanders off of my, my mantra, I'm thinking, like, it'll wander to something very specific within whoop or within a relationship that I need to, like, you know, optimize. And I'm curious where, like, I remember listening to Kobe Bryant talk about his meditations. And he realized that the moment he should quit, quit basketball was when he stopped, was when he would meditate and all of a sudden he realized he was no longer thinking about basketball and it was after like some 20 years of his career there's something so powerful with meditation because you're unplugging from earth where everyone's basically going to recycle ideas of everyone all of a sudden you're plugging into the ether and this is what's the beauty about

meditating and plugging into that ether and getting access to you know shit from out there and that's what it becomes super exciting because you're it's basically when you meditate it's like taking showers of the brain. When your brain is freaking clean the way you physically shower, there's room for good stuff to come in. And so TM, as you know, gets you to the source of where all thoughts come from. And it builds that muscle for you to control from anything that comes out of there. Like, I'm sure you're trained enough that you can look at a tree and not have one thought pop in your head because you have built that muscle of TM. But there is that thing where it's that awareness, right? You're not your thoughts. You're the awareness of your

thoughts and when you start to meditate you start becoming aware of that you're like before that you are reacting and getting and having these thoughts run your life totally and these thoughts are feeding off to others and all of a sudden you find yourself for the next you know five hours you've been entertaining bullshit in your head so it's that awareness that it's so important and it's and it's that awareness inside me that goes hey go deeper go do some hypnotherapy or go do some sensory deprivation I'm all into that kind of stuff. Like, how can I become a superhero as fast as I can inside in this video game? You know what I mean?

Yeah, I mean, 100%. And your point about, I mean, it's really being able to see yourself in the third person from time to time. I feel like life before TM, I was just reacting to things. And then, you know, you say something or you realize you've reached an emotional state. And it's like you're recognizing what happened after the fact. Whereas now I actually feel in my life. I almost hear a voice in my head say like, oh, Will's about to get angry or, you know, Will's about to say something rude.

Or it's like, you know, it's like this little check. It's like looking above at me. And it's so helpful, I have to say. That awareness is amazing. Like before that, exactly like, oh, I'm about to jump in on this. And I'm about, no, Lena, what are you doing? You're about to get reactionary. Why are you doing that?

You're so impulsive. Chill out. Yeah. Oh, when I don't meditate. I'm just reacting, like you said. The other thing that's interesting at meditation is it feels like ironically, the people who are least likely to gravitate to it are the people that need it the most. I can't believe how many successful people I've met who have confessed that they meditate.

And I always, for whatever reason, when I meet like these hard driving people in the back of my mind, I assume they don't meditate. And they always end up being people who meditate. But it's almost like meditation needs a bit of, rebrand because it sounds a little woo-woo and it's really not it's really about just like organizing this understanding of yourself absolutely i mean it's it's essential maybe you can be that person that can well we'll see i i will say though that breathing is becoming a big theme for whoop because we've learned all these different ways how breathing can affect things like your heart rate variability

it can affect the way that you sleep it can affect your your stress levels throughout the day We've been able to do studies, Lena, that show that if even just three to five minutes of mindfulness, you know, a couple times throughout the day where you're just doing breathing to yourself, not even meditating, but just like basic breathing exercises, we've been able to show that people who do that versus who don't have much higher heart rate variabilities, sleep much better. It's fascinating to me that something that you do in the morning could then affect how you sleep, you know, 16 hours later. It's just like the connectedness of your life and your body and your breathing is really fascinating. And so, indeed, it's something that we're investing and we're going to put more into the Woop product around. Yeah, what's the name of the book, the Wim Hof? Yeah, Wimhoff's fascinating. Wimhoff.

So we were doing, we're doing these Zoom group like this, my, okay, so this girl, Francesca, does these, based on all Wimhoff breathing techniques, it's 20 minutes of that breathing fast into your stomach, into your chest, and out. And you're doing pretty much five songs. That's about 20, 20 minutes. Do you go breathe? And you do that for 20 minutes.

And what that does is I just started doing it like maybe a year ago, and we just started doing it through Zoom. Are you doing the actual Wimhoff method? it's she's influenced by him it's a variation so i've tried that and it's a bit of a cop-out but i just found i didn't like the way i felt when i was doing it however wimhoff did completely get me into the cold i'm a big believer in the cold i take cold showers at least twice a day i'm obsessed with the cold i know i love the cold i want to get a cold plunge i found this japanese uh company that there's like these coal plunges, so I might just get one here because I'm all about it,

because I run a lot. But going back to the breathing, it's funny you said that because I do feel a certain way and I'm like, oh, like I can't let go sometimes, but I've been breathing and doing it for 20 minutes. I get a little impatient. Some people have all these physical reactions like their hands start to cramp because it's releasing wherever there's stored energy, right? But what it does, it does get into my pineal gland and release that DMT because I'm telling you, after I stopped breathing for 20 minutes and she's like just lay there, everything becomes colorful, like everything that you felt if you've ever done DMT, diethylotryptophan, everything, it's definitely heightened.

So I've had some interesting, I haven't really grasped it all the way, but these breathing things have been like opening up, opening up my pineal gland and definitely giving me some DMT natural state of mine. Now, you're referencing hallucinogens as well. Are those things that you'll still do today? I haven't done DMT in many years, even though I have the molecule tattooed into my ribcage. Wow. So you're a hardcore believer if you've got the rib.

Yeah, I started doing like 10 years ago. Look at that. Awesome. But I stopped because I just, and then I started smoking my friends out. I was like their little like shaman. But yeah, we were like, oh my God, DMT. I just watched the DMT, the Spirit Molecule documentary. and I got really into it.

So explain to people what is DMT? DMT is dimethyl tryptophen. It's basically in every living organism. So people either can smoke it out of a bufah toad little liquid that comes out of their backs or the bark tree. And so what happens when you smoke it, it releases that same chemical that's already in your pineal gland that happens when you're born and when you die. So when you do have this experience, you kind of get to see what happens. when you're born and when you die.

You go through that tunnel very fast and all of a sudden you're in the eternal space of there's no time. And you see, I know this sounds crazy, but everyone sees these floating beings who are obviously said to be light years ahead of us. And when you do DMT and you do it again like in three weeks, you start off where you finished off. You never see the same journey. And it's about 10 minutes.

And they say it's 10 years of therapy in 10 minutes. So when you do do it, you should have an intention, you should be sober for a week, and really kind of center in and what is it that you want downloads from, and you do it. And you have somebody be there for you because, not because it's, it's because it's overwhelming in a way where you feel very bliss out because it's, it's, once you get past, once you take the big head, so you're not in between worlds, you will, you will go through this like tunnel very fast like very fast and all of a sudden you're in the space and then you just have to keep breathing that's why you want somebody there because you get so exciting you're like oh my god and you want to

keep your eyes closed because if you open your eyes you're kind of out of the trip and so you try to just stay in it and i've had a lot of different journeys but it's really interesting because once you stop that whole week you're just remembering so much information that happened in that little time and there's a lot of growth that happens i mean it's the main ingredient in iowasca and it's interesting to see how these drugs, medicine, whatever people like to call them, over the last, I don't know, 20 years have really evolved. Whereas now you're seeing like psilocybin, you know, being approved for, you know, various forms of depression. And so it's just interesting to see these things get turned on their head. It'll be interesting to see how, how it plays out.

You know, as someone yourself who has used these products, do you see a potential for them around treating depression around treating anxiety? Do you think that they're risky in that regard? Well, the reason why I wanted to do DMT is because of my fear of death. I just cannot snap out of it, you know, like the fear of dying. You really don't want to die. No. I really don't want to die either, actually. I'm definitely in that camp, although I don't know if that makes me think about death all that much. I just know that I would prefer not to die for a very, very long time. Yeah. And I, and I've tried to, like, DMT will show you, you know, that it never really ends. You know, you get to get a grasp of like the scary part is that it never ends, you know, the mutation of energy mutating and transmutating forever and ever and ever. And there's never been a beginning and it'll never be an end, you know. And if you get into like that science of energy just is world, reality of it. But I mean, I really want to do ayahuasca, but I'm afraid of it because I'm a control freak in that way and going. off for eight hours, it scares me. But people that I know that come back from my Oscar trips,

they say that their fear of death is gone. And so I get, I got increments of that through DMT. So I'm ready. So it didn't quite cure you of this fear, but you feel like it actually helped you. It helped because I haven't done DMT in like five years. I've just kind of stopped. But I do want to do it again because I'm, I just, I don't know. It's that reality of, of, I remember as a kid walking past a cemetery with my dad and my dad. And I was like, what is that? And he said to me, oh, that's where we end up. I think I was like seven or six or five.

I don't remember. And that literally, when I grasp the reality of what he said, that it all ends, I remember that impact inside me as a child. And it's still like haunts me. Like when people say, oh, you know, you get existentialism, you know, after you're 30 and you start everything starts going by fast I'm like things have been going fast for me since I was 15 so this is something I really want to tap into so when this whole thing is gone I really want to go and do some ayahuasca in Brazil or somewhere in Hawaii

fascinating now now tell me how did you how did you come across whoop and how long you've been on it okay so I've been on it since last September 2019 okay uh the steady cam operator for my show Tim Dolan, he was an athlete in school, and he wears his Apple Watch and this thing, this black thing. And I'm like, what is that? And he goes, oh, this is the best. All the top athletes wear it. I'm like, okay, what is it? And he goes, well, it's the best recovery strap I've ever come across. And he's always, by the way, he's always carrying the steady cam off or putting the camera over him, which is, it's a red camera. It's pretty heavy. And he's constantly doing all the work. We usually have four cameras, four cameramen, but he's camera A. He's the main

guy. And he's super athletic. And obviously he needs to make sure he's recovering right. And he's working all day long. And this is on SWAT. Yeah. And he was like, he's like, it's the best. I'm like, well, I'm ordering it. And I did. And at the beginning, I was like, what is this? And then I, he goes, don't take it off for a week. Just don't touch it. And I'm like, all right. And sure enough, started getting to know me and showing me who I was in my recovery and my sleep and everything and that's when it became to a point where like it's crazy my girlfriend goes every morning you wake up all you're looking at is that damn phone for the whoop app I'm like yeah I just want to know how I did she goes you don't even talk to me I'm like I know just one second I have to check how much

I slept how many minutes how many this how many that and she's like you're obsessed I'm like I am I'm completely obsessed well that's awesome so obsessed and and what you learned about yourself from using the product? You strike me as someone who's actually really, really self-aware. So I'm interested in this. I realize that when I don't eat, maybe when I, okay, when I stop eating at 5.36 p.m. I sleep like a baby. My HRV is higher and my REM is higher. If I'm eating a little bit later, that starts to affect it completely, right? I'm the same way, and this is one of those things that is personal. Like, generally speaking, the more you can, the further from bedtime you can eat, the better.

But it's interesting. Some people can eat two hours before bed, even an hour before bed, and it doesn't affect them that much. I've noticed in my data personally, similar to what you described, the more time, the better. Yeah. And, okay, so the exercise aspect of it, I love it because I've become a really good runner. I mean, an okay runner in terms of long distance. running so once we went on lockdown i had nowhere else i couldn't go to a gym i couldn't go anywhere so i started running outside and now i just i run every other day or sometimes every day eight miles

seven miles and whoop is is the best buddy to to be next to me throughout this whole thing and and challenging myself i'm like oh i did this yesterday oh i was i was doing this and that oh my god what here what happened right here i slept better here i didn't recover here and it's it's been like it's been my partner in crime through COVID my trainer also has whoop because of me and he loves it I mean we have our own little group there I'm like be like oh you worked out more than me I mean it's just so I mean I have so many friends on it that it's it's it's fun I mean that's we talk whoop dial wood language well it's amazing to hear that and I'm so glad you've gotten you've gotten value out of out of the product what what is a what does a routine look like for you on a day that

you're shooting. Have you already memorized all of your lines like the night before, weeks before? Are you just reading through it that morning and you just can immediately remember them? I'm curious how that works. We shoot episodes every nine days. They give us the scripts usually a few weeks before. So if I have thick like paragraphs and stuff like that, I'll need three days, not three days just to sleep on them. I can literally go for a run and just have that whole monologue memorized like in an hour like just like that I have to be moving so you'll that's really interesting so you'll read the thing and then you'll you'll exercise and you'll be playing it back in your head while you're doing that yes I have to learn lines moving I have a treadmill in my mini gym

in my garage not because I like running on it it's because if I have a lot of dialogue the quickest way for my body to absorb it instantly because as we we all know we have brain cells all over our body, the physicalization of that creates all these memories around you. And I can memorize very quickly, like super fast. Like, if you give me a monologue, a whole page monologue, I just go in that treadmill for or go on a run for about 45 minutes to an hour and I'm memorized. If I'm sitting here, I can't. So you're not actually looking at it though while you're memorizing it.

You just read it once and then it's kind of playing while you're exercising or you'll be on the treadmill reading it while you're running. Yeah. So I'll read the first two sentences. couple times and then I'll put it away and I'll just start running with those two sentences until I have that. And then I add another sentence and another and all of a sudden I know the entire monologue. And did anyone teach you any of that or you just learned it? I learned it because in school it was the same thing. I couldn't retain somebody that makes me

sit down and learn. I can't retain. My brain goes somewhere else. I was diagnosed with ADHD at a very young age. And then it just, it was like a friend of mine told me, I think he was high on acid when he said this to me. He goes, nowadays, if you don't have, nowadays, if you don't have ADD or ADHD, you're not paying attention. There's so much coming at us. You have to have that in order to keep up with technology and the world that we're living in today. And so that's what it was. Like, I realized I can't sit down and learn my lines. I can't retain anything. But if I'm moving, if I'm physicalizing myself and doing stuff, I can retain like crazy. It's so. crazy. So I realized I wish somebody taught me school like that. That's a really interesting

insight. And it sounds like you don't ever memorize through the act of meditating. Well, my memory is really good because of meditation, for sure. Meditation. And also, what I do take, these are like little things. I take Elphi Annine the night before, every night before I have long dialogue scenes. Because when you're, you know, you're acting. And so what is that? Elthianine. Yeah. It's kind of like it's a natural, you know, pills that you can get at Whole Foods or anything. It basically slows down in a way, obsessive thinking. So it won't knock you out to sleep as you can do it before you, you can take it during the day and you feel your brain relax. It doesn't make you tired. It just

relaxes your brain from obsessive thinking. And so I like to take Elthianite the night before. I take like two of them because the next day, I find myself and I have, tested my brain many times. I love cognitive and all kinds of things. And so I tested my brain and I realized I work better the next day because when there's so much dialogue and you're going back and forth between actors, sometimes you can get in your head about your lines. Sometimes you cannot just relax in that moment and let them say what they're saying without you wanting to say something back because you've memorized it so many times. It allows for you to listen and really listen and just take your time and saying it back without saying,

oh, I got to say this line out right now, or I'm going to forget it. Yeah, that's so true, right? I can only imagine you have to have that flow state to do it properly. How have you tested yourself cognitively? I mean, I love taking all kinds of things. I take NADH, which I love. I take that before working out. I love taking NAC, NAC, the glutathion one.

Cognitively, I've taken a lot of paracetam, which connects all your neurotransmitters in your left and your right side of the brain. I just love when your brain just is your bitch, not all the way around. But you never got into the drugs for ADHD, Adderall, et cetera. Well, I think because I was so speedy back then and so out of place is why I did heroin at such a young age and opiads and weed and everything. I think that's what it was. I wanted that slowness. I wanted to slow down.

I didn't know how to. You know, if I slow down, it meant not. nothing in my life was ever going to happen. Right. I came from wanting to be everything, the opposite of what my father was, I guess. Now, you strike me as a creative light bulb on a set. Are you someone who finds you have to kind of, like, restrain from all your opinions as this thing unfold? Yeah.

I'm picturing someone saying, like, Lena, you're going to come in there and you're like, well, what if I came in from over there? I mean, I could come in this way. Absolutely. I'm like, that doesn't make sense. And usually, not usually, like, a lot of the times they'll be like, okay, because they don't, they haven't put that much thought into the characters as much as we are. We live and breathe these characters every day, you know, just because you wrote it or just because you're directing it and you're a new director coming in here. It doesn't mean, like, I don't think I would do that.

Or like, I would be like, wait, am I, are you lighting me right here? They're like, yeah, yeah, we got you. We got you. I'm like, I don't feel that. So I'll look and I'm like, no, I'm obsessed with lighting. So, you know, that's where I get very, very talkative about lighting with me because I'm the one that has to look at myself out there. It's not them. And so I'm very particular about that. And will you give other actors feedback or encourage them to give you feedback or do you just typically let that come from the director?

Yeah, I don't get involved. I mean, usually if something moves me, I'm going to be like, holy shit, that was amazing. That was beautiful. Or like, wow. You'll say like, wow, nice job there. Yeah, like if something moves me for sure. And if I see somebody struggling, I will do everything in my power to make it easier for them. If it's a guest star coming in for the day or somebody new that doesn't feel safe, it's always so important to be so warm and open and try to make it easier because I've been there so many times going and being a guest star in some show or being like, you know, two-day actor and some movie.

And, you know, it's like everyone has their own family and their own thing. And it's just the worst feeling like, you know, you're already nervous. You don't want to fuck up, you know. And like, so you always want to be warm with everybody. And yeah. At this point, are you so used to having a camera on you that like the, the whoop strain, so to speak, of, you know, playing your characters the same as you being on this podcast right now, is the same as you sitting on a dining room table?

Or do you feel like, will you feel yourself a little amped up when you're playing your character? Like, do you still feel sort of the nerves of it? Sometimes, I mean, if I have emotional scenes, I'm definitely very vulnerable. So I usually ask them to keep the set quiet because I'm kind of hanging by a thread in terms of like feeling a certain way. And I know that if I hang on to that and like I'll be able to deliver in that scene. But if people are joking around and while I'm like in a very different state that I have to go and cry in a scene, then yeah, I ask for that. space and I'm definitely nervous and I'm definitely feeling all kinds of things but kind of like the day-to-day thing that we're doing um definitely if there's some stunts where I'm doing stunts I'm

definitely nervous but that that that's what gets me excited that fear like but then I out like you know when you're nervous you're you go I don't know about you but like when I'm nervous in meetings and stuff like that actually helps me pulls me out I've talked to a ton of performers from athletes to executives to people like you who who often cite that if you're not nervous it doesn't matter in some ways you know it feels like the nerves can actually focus you totally and obviously too nervous is bad but just the right amount of nervous makes you a little sharper I think actually absolutely what are the hardest scenes the is it is it the emotional ones where you're crying? Is it like the intimate ones where you have to, you know, hook up with someone

on set? What is it that you find the most nerve-wracking? I mean, I think they're all nerve-wracking. I did a show called Kingdom that's now on Netflix about MMA fighting. And I had a lot of sex scenes with Jonathan Tucker. He's amazing in this show. And we had to do a lot of sex scenes. And it was, yeah, it's, but it made it, it was so much easier when you connect. with somebody and that person makes you feel safe and you guys have a chemistry and it just we're in it together we're all going to look so goofy him walking around with you know a sock in his dick or like you know what I mean like me wearing like a like a pad down here like and everything else looks like I'm naked it's just like weird but you you make fun of it and you have a good time like

I don't know if you saw that movie love actually yeah I did the the stand-ins for the sex scene in that. Yeah, yeah, that's a great scene. Yeah, you just joke about it. He's asking her out while he's like meeting her first time while he's holding her boobs or something. Exactly. And that's how it is. I would be like, I remember telling Jonathan because he was like so called fucking me. I mean, can we curse in this? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you're fine. And my boobs were just kept going on like that. I'm like, Mike, just kept going up and down. I'm like, that's not going to look good on camera. I need you to hold him. He goes, okay. Like that's how it becomes. We start talking like that. It just becomes. like just normal and that's what but you're still nervous now what made you want to do your own stunts is that just your personality from day one or did you kind of ease your way into that I love it I've been boxing for 10 years and I'm not the best boxer I won't get in the ring and really get hit but I love training and and sparring but I think the challenge I want to be able to do as many as my sons as possible. I want to be able to make it as real

as possible. I want to be able to feel like I can do any of it. Obviously, you're always going to have a stunt double. And these people are heroes. They're incredible. So you would shoot your take, your way of, you train,

you rehearse a lot, these fight sequences. I've done a few. And your stunt doubles there with you, you know, making sure you look good and the things that are super risky that for example sony won't cover like if i get hurt they'll do um what would be an example of something like that that's like too risky like they had a thing where i was having this whole fight at the top of the stairs and then i

then i get punched and i rolled down the stairs that rolling down the stairs they would never let me do that um and so the stunt double would do that uh and also like jumping jumping off a building. There's certain things that they won't allow me to do. Do you think it's crazy that a guy like Tom Cruise is doing a lot of these stunts? Do you think that's overplayed? Or like I remember seeing a video and I don't know if this is just great PR, but I saw a video of him for Mission Impossible like jumping from one building to another and he like apparently broke his ankle or something doing that. Is that crazy? Is that all made up? Like how should I react to that? I've heard that he does he does a lot of his stunts.

but not all his stunts. And he makes it seem like he does all of his stunts. That's what I've heard in the whole stunt world. I think for him, he just wants to feel proud of himself. I feel like he wants to be part of every aspect of it. I think that's what I feel from him because I can feel when there's a stunt happening. I get super excited.

I'm like, well, why can we make it longer? Why can I? I just want to be challenged. There's nothing better than being challenged and look and just do these fight sequences flawless. and you want to rehearse for hours and hours until you get it. And you don't care if the best part about shooting fight sequences the next day,

I don't know what it is. I'm bruised up. I can barely walk. Wow. My whole body sore, but I love it. It's just an adrenaline. You know how it is. Just love it.

I don't know why you like being banged up. But it's a dance. You know, you make eye contact with the other person to avoid any accidents, any wrong moves. And you're dancing together. and you're getting through it together and it's quite incredible, especially when you're working with incredible stunt teams. Do you think you represent like a braver new wave of actresses?

You know, to your point about what Hollywood looked like 15 years ago, I'm trying to think of what the analog is of what you're described. Like who would have been women doing things that you're describing 20 years ago that enjoyed waking up bruised from a, you know, a stunt scene where they're also the co-lead on the show. Like, does that seem like something that's maybe more prevalent now than it was, I don't know, two decades ago? I don't know. I'm sure there's been women.

No, I think I'm sure there's been women from then feeling and being the way I feel, but they just didn't have the stage for that. You know, movies were focusing on different female stories. Shows were focusing on different female stories. So I feel like now it's, now it's a little bit more. open it's more welcomed i guess or giving women roles that are the same as they would give to men so um it's definitely changed but i feel like there's been women out there doing cooler shit than me and set better things than me but they just didn't have the platform so uh what's next for you we've launched a campaign the human campaign a couple years ago with my partner joanna masca who

was the bipartisan campaign she was the uh director press advance of president Obama. And so we've been trying to get the Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution. It's just an amendment that's been trying to get into the Constitution since 1923 by Alice Paul. So we're trying to bring it in to light. It tried to pass in 72, but it died in 82. Just all this story behind it. So we're trying to bring it into the Constitution. So that's one thing. And then I'm writing a couple of things, two shows, and trying to knock on doors again and put myself out there. be okay with 100 million nose. I've already got him 20 nos on this project that I'm working on right now.

They're like, this will never get through with the Me Too movement. I'm like, whatever. I can't tell you what it is, but I'm like, whatever. I'm a woman. You know, George Lucas's Star Wars got rejected like 152 times, I read. Well, there you go. That makes me feel so good because when something great comes out, everyone's like, oh my god but then like where are these idiots that said no and they're like this will never

get made what are you crazy like shut up you guys are blockers shut up like you want incredible shit but the people that are doing good stuff and they're putting it in front of you you think they're crazy do you worry about the the future of of smaller budget independent films you know I've been reading a lot about sort of the shifting landscape of Hollywood in general and sort of this need for big blockbuster hits and these big studio hits and and sort of like this gap that's emerging of a sort of mid-level budget or lower budget films. Well, there was that whole talk maybe 10, 15 years ago when Marvel and DC Comics started coming up and the whole micro budget sector of films started kind of dying, you know,

and you had all these three, four hundred million dollar movies, 200 million dollar movies becoming the center of everything. And then you would get small amount of movies that were in the 2, 5, 15, 20 million range for the academies, you know, for the nomination times, you know, like in November, December, you know, that kind of stuff. But I feel like now post-COVID, that whole world of DC and Marvel is great.

It brings happiness into people and that's awesome. But now because of COVID, you can make all these little movies anywhere. And it's safer for a lot of people to go, oh, here, I have this story. Okay, this is a beautiful story. It's better to go and send out a crew, a smaller crew to go and shoot this movie, you know, for five weeks, you know, in Palm Springs or, you know, somewhere. And people are hungry for these stories, these connecting stories. And so I feel like maybe before COVID, we were kind of losing that.

But I feel like it's now they want to be having these little movies that are still having. have a whole lot of heart that people need right now. They need hope. That's great. And by the way, I don't think there's ever been a better time to be an actor, an actress, it seems like. I mean, there's so many different studios and Netflix, whatever, competing for content. Isn't that right?

Yeah, it's a wonderful time to be an actor. I mean, it's, if there's so many outlets, there's so much good stuff out there. I mean, we used to make fun of Netflix, like, whoa, they have so much. They keep putting so much out. It's so much saturation. But guess what? They've been ahead of the curve, putting stuff out throughout this because we're eating it all up so quickly

that the only outlet that is keeping up with our appetite is Netflix. Now, you know, you have to have all these other outlets and understand like, holy shit, we can't stop. We can't just get so select. Like there's so much incredible untouched talent out there. So many great writers and filmmakers. I mean, this is the time to, yes, maybe take risk with smaller budget stuff. But there's so much, I mean, look at Netflix.

Every week, I'm like, how do they have time for this? You know why? Because they were constantly saying green lighting, great stuff. Go, go, go, shoot, shoot, shoot. I mean, every week I'm like finding out new stuff on Netflix, other places. I'm like, oh, same thing. Yeah, it's Netflix is an amazing story. Mark Randolph, one of the co-founders, is actually an investor in Woop and a friend.

It's been on the Wood podcast, too. And so I've gotten to hear a little bit of the behind the scenes on that company. It's amazing what they've built. And again, a lot of it goes back to that kind of contrarian mindset of doing things at a time when other people thought they were crazy. I mean, I remember getting that DVD in my home back in the days, you know, look how far they've come. Well, it's been a pleasure spending time with you, Lena, and I hope we get to meet in person

someday. And thank you. Thank you so much. I hope so, too. Take care. Be safe. Thank you to Lena for. coming on the WOOP podcast. You can check out SWAT on CBS. A reminder, you can use the code

Will Ahmed, W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D to get 15% off a W-W-M membership. Check us out on social at W-W-A-W-A-W-A-M-E. And stay healthy, folks. Stay in the green. You know,