At The Core

Interview: Karen Sours

We still have interviews on the way for By the Dawn’s Early Light. Today, we hear from the lovely Karen Sours, who plays the role of Angie, the pregnant girlfriend of a soon-to-be-deployed marine, in “Midnight Mass.”

How did you end up in New York City?

When I was 5 years old, I told my mom I wanted to be an actress. My mom smiled, thinking this would be a passing thing, and said: “Claro que si mi amor, lo que tu quieras.”

When I was 9, I started acting in plays in Mexico City. When I was 13, I told my mom I wanted to study acting in NY. Again she smiled, and said: “Si corazon.” I continued to pursue acting in Mexico making my parents drive me around the city for casting calls. Oh, they hated it! Let’s face it: it sucks — being stuck in traffic to go sit at a casting office for hours to get seen for 5 minutes… who wants to do that? I did, and my parents without knowing what they were getting into, agreed to take me.

When it was time to look into colleges, again I told my mom I wanted to study acting in New York. This time she didn’t smile… nor did she frown. She just had that look people have when we realize that something is for real, that that something is actually happening… the look a parent has when they find out their child is moving miles away from home at age 18.

University of Texas, Austin This time she said (in Spanish), “You really want to move to the U.S.?” I said: “Oh, yes. To New York City!” So we started looking at schools in New York. Schools in New York were insanely expensive, especially for international students. My cousin had gone to Texas State University which is right outside of Austin; she studied theater there, and loved it. Texas has a program in which Mexican students can study in Texas and pay tuition as Texan residents. Awesome! I visited the school, loved it, and the next year I was moving to the US. NY was still in my agenda though.

I graduated college, and immediately after, packed my things and moved to New York. There was never any doubt in my mind that New York was the right place for me. I was back in a big city, thank God! Moving from the giant Mexico City to a college town outside of Austin is a little hard, okay, really hard, but New York and Mexico City are much more alike; it feels closer to home. Plus, there are a ton of Mexicans here! And we have REAL Mexican food here, not that Tex-Mex stuff.

I love New York. You can get a taste of every culture here — I don’t know anywhere else in the world where this happens.

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