Breaking Barriers: Patricia Rae's Passionate Pursuit of Latinx Visibility in Entertainment
Patricia Rae has been a professional actor for the past 35 years. An outspoken activist for racial and gender equality, she's struggled to make Latinas visible in a positive light in television and film. Her big break came in an Oscar nominated film where she portrayed a Colombian immigrant living in New York City.
Listen to the full episode HERE.
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ON THIS EPISODE
[01:54] Patricia Rae on what she's most passionate about
[04:49] Patricia Rae on when she first created with her creativity
[06:28] Patricia Rae on when she decided to pursue acting
[16:10] Patricia Rae on moving to Los Angeles
[21:05] Patricia Rae on her acting process
[24:15] Patricia Rae on why she likes to be a producer
[34:31] Patricia Rae on how we can support diversity in the media
[35:49] Patricia Rae on her other creative projects
[48:45] Patricia Rae on her dream for women
TRANSCRIPT
Passionistas: The following episode of The Passionistas Project was recorded during the Screen Actors Strike of 2023. Certain project names are permitted to be in accordance with SAG rules.
Hi, we're sisters, Amy and Nancy Harrington, the Founders of The Passionistas Project. We've created an inclusive sisterhood where passion driven women come to get support, find their purpose and feel empowered to transform their lives and change the world. On every episode, we discuss the unique ways in which each woman is following her passions, talk about how she defines success, and explore her path to breaking down the barriers that women too often face.
Today, we're talking with Patricia Rae, a professional actor for the past 35 years, an outspoken activist for racial and gender equality, she's struggled to make Latinas visible in a positive light in television and film. Her big break came in an Oscar nominated film where she portrayed a Colombian immigrant living in New York City.
She's also a fine artist, Iraqi healer, and now she can add podcaster to her resumé with the inception of the lively podcast. Believe This, where she and co-host Chris Crimm have created a safe space to hash out good faith arguments on hot topics and social issues from their different perspectives while still remaining friends. So please welcome Patricia Rae.
Patricia: Hello, everyone. Hello, ladies. And you. You resemble each other so much, but you have different, like, energy, so it's just. Super cool.
Passionistas: That's very true. That's very true. Thanks for picking up on that. We're happy to have you here today. We're really excited to talk to you about everything that's going on in your life and beyond. And but we always like to start every podcast with the same question, which is what are you most passionate about?
Patricia: Creativity. I was born a creative being. I think we're all born creative beings as children. That's what we do. We create, we invent, we like, we let our mind and our spirit explore and be bigger. And it allows us to think bigger and dream and and project manifest what we could be in the future. And then as adults, we start to edit these thoughts.
You know, people start to tell you, you know, you shouldn't do that. You look silly or you shouldn't sing your voices and pretty enough for you. You shouldn't act like that or dress like that. And my mother, fortunately, she did have reservations, but I was just unstoppable. There was no curbing my enthusiasm for creativity. So I was like, whatever they used to call me Patti La Loca, which is Patti, the crazy one, Which they still call me.
That said, I'm the only like, artist really, in my family. My sister, my middle sister's a nurse, I'm the oldest and my little sister is actually a sheriff in Ventura County. But they're both creative people and all of their children are creative. They paint, they write. Whenever they would come to my house, I always broke out the watercolors.
So they've been just condition to have that as a part of their life. The universe, you know, a voice I found. I find that creativity is is our voice. And then another dimension and another color. It allows us to use all of our hues. You know, when I'm healing people because I'm a regular, my Reiki master, and I've been therapeutic like a Yoga practitioner and teacher for more than ten years. I always tell my clients, Use all your colors. Don't paint with one color. God gave us everything. He gave us the rainbow. Use it all because when we are creating, we are raising our vibration. We are connecting to the universe. At the same we're meeting the universe as vibration. And that's such a therapeutic healing modality that people are almost ashamed to use as adults.
They they always say, Well, I can't draw, I can't sing, I can't dance. The only one the only thing that you can't do is, you know what you tell your mind you can't do. Maybe you don't do it the best, but you can get better at anything.
Passionistas: So what was that little girl like? When did you first start tapping into that creativity, or was it something that you always connected to?
Patricia: I can even tell you if I remember a time when I wasn't singing or dancing or drawing or doing something, you know, making my dolls be like the hosts of a show. And I was the actress or I just I think it's my father was a really funny person and he had an enormous personality. Everybody loved him. He was like a light. And I was just born with my light on. Some people have to find their light and some people just gravitate to the light.
They're already like intuitively turned on. And that doesn't mean that you can't find your light or your voice or your vehicle for for creativity. It's just some people don't connect with it right away. They have to kind of search for it. But I was just born like I probably came out of my mother's womb, like singing and dancing.
And, you know, I just like to make people laugh. So I don't remember a time when I didn't want to do something that engaged people and made them smile.
Passionistas: That's excellent. So when was the moment that you realized that you wanted to focus on acting and what did that path look like?
Patricia: Well, from when I was watching Sesame Street on TV and I Love Lucy and The Carol Burnett Show and The Electric Company, I already knew that I wanted to do that. How did they do that? I had to learn English in school, so I came from a Spanish speaking home. So it was very hard for my mom to kind of connect to the fact that I saw a different life for myself, you know, that I saw myself, that I had immersed myself in a different language and that I never dream in Spanish. I don't automatically think in English.
So once I started learning English, I would come home and say, Don't talk to me in Spanish. Because I'm American. Just like my mother was like, great, a body la loca. Now she doesn't want to speak Spanish.
But so right away, as soon as I got to kindergarten, they were doing this like little parade in the courtyard where they had Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And I was one of the dwarfs. And I just was like.
I want to be this. I want to be this all the time. I want to get dressed up. I want to. And that was it. Then I just every time I went, I moved around a lot from when I was young because my mother remarried quite often. We won't say how many times, but five.
So I came from a, you know, a broken home. So everywhere I moved, I kind of had to reinvent myself. So that added to my and also my meet, my need to kind of fit in with people's life. I lived in an Italian neighborhood. I wanted to be an Italian. If I lived in a, you know, Spanish neighborhood, I wanted to be Spanish, and I lived in a Jewish ah, my best friend was Jewish growing up. I thought everybody ate matzo balls soup. You know, I didn't want I didn't want to be Colombian, you know, I didn't want to eat Colombian food. I wanted to integrate myself into America and be American. So then once I got to school, I and I realized that you could perform in in scripted things. It just never stopped. I went on and then in high school, I was in the theater club. And and then when I got to college and said, okay, I seriously I'm going to major in theater. But when I got to college, I went to Flagler College in Saint Augustine, Florida, which is the oldest city in the United States.
And I got into the theater program. That was the first time I really besides high school, I started to kind of get a hint of it, But where I really started to see racism and colored casting, you know, because I would audition for the plays and I never got any of the speaking roles, I would be, you know, if they were doing a great play, I'd be in the Greek chorus. So I took as like English interpretation kind of writing speaking class. And I did a I performed a play. Gosh, not a play. Sorry, a poet, a poem by that the guy who created the show Cats...
Anyways, so I performed this poem out loud in the auditorium. And after that performance, mind you, it's just a poem. I was just reading it out loud, but I enacted all the characters and all the cats and everything. My drama teacher came up to me and she said, You know what? I really I'm going to ask for your forgiveness.
I really did not give you the roles that you should have gotten, and it's a shame because you're a really talented young woman. And I dropped the ball basically. That's what she said.
So after that semester, after I realized that, you know, if I was going to encounter this kind of already casting kind of. I don't know what you would call it, racism, for lack of a better word, I said, I'm just going to go out into the world and and start plugging away because I'm in college. I have to do this and I had to pay for it. I'm just going to go to an acting school in New York and just start trying to work.
So I dropped out of Flagler College. I enrolled myself in the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in New York because my favorite actress in the world went there, Marilyn Monroe. Of course, I didn't really understand that there was different styles of acting and different methods I didn't make, so I ended up stunning Stanislavski method, which is very, very intense, kind of acting modality your system and I, in class, I realized that there were what I called like the lifetime student, the student that studied and studied. How long have you been here? I've been here for four years, 40 years. Jesus, Why are you still here? Why are you out there working? You know, because that was always my goal. Go out and work, you know? And once I finished my program, which was like an 18 month program, but took me about two and a half, three years to finish it, because I would stop and go home, because at that time, I, my family lives in Florida, even though we were originally from New York.
So I was really in New York by myself. I didn't have a support system, so I got really lonely. So I'd go home and then I'd come back. And then once I left school, I started working immediately. So at 19, I was cast in a really, really popular eighties TV show, which we can't mention, obviously because of the strike. But and I went literally from having absolutely no credits to getting a guest star role on a hugely popular TV show and joined SAG. So that's how my journey really started. But you would think, you know, my goodness that I was discovered. No. Then it took me years and years and maybe almost a decade to just start working on television steadily, you know?
I think a couple of factors contributed to that. Number one, I virtually stepped into a role that I could play, but then I didn't realize I didn't know how to harness that opportunity. I was too young. It's the first I didn't even have a head shots at that point. So that happened then. And I was living in actually in Miami when I booked that role because I went to the set as an extra and I asked the casting director if I could read for the role of they were casting on the set that day and I booked them.
So when I went back to New York, the only connection I had to like a big casting director was in Florida. She couldn't even help me anymore. So I kind of had to start all over again, almost like if I had no credits. So that's what happened. And then I had to kind of break into Spanish commercials once I because I needed an agent. So the easiest way to get an agent for actors is to get a commercial agent. You don't really need a resume to get to start in commercials. You just have to have a look. So and I spoke Spanish, so that was how I got my first agent. And she happened to do theatrical and television casting.
So she sent me and to that so one of those franchise series that have about, you know, crime that have been going on forever and ever. That's when I, I started to that I used as my springboard to to jump into my career again or the next phase of my career.
Passionistas: So then you're still in New York at this point. So when did you make the move to L.A.? What prompted that?
Patricia: Well, I was on every show I could be in at that point in New York, all the New York shows, all. And at that time, film was kind of, you know, starting to develop and expand. And but I always had my mind on L.A., you know, L.A., I'm going to go to L.A., you know, I'm going to get discovered in L.A. So it took me a very long time to get to L.A. because I had a daughter when I was 23. So and then so not only did I start my career again after the big thing that happened to me at 19, then I had a baby. So then I had to be a mom and a and a struggling actress. So that that's why it maybe it took me ten years to get to L.A. at that point, because I was struggling to to to kind of piece money together.
I was a waitress. I was a bartender. My ex-husband owns a restaurant. I learned how to bartend and I tried to gain some skills that I can use out out west. And when I finally got out here, my daughter was around maybe like 13 or 14, and then 911 happened. So that set my career back again because nobody wanted to come to California because, you know, New York was a big target city.
And my parents kept saying, well, you're going to move from one target city to another and you're crazy. So they put that down in my head and I. I was like, You're right. What am I doing? Because I was going to leave my daughter with her father. Her birth father? Yeah. Not her birth father. The sperm donor I used to call him. I'll never listen to this anyway. Though he did turn out to be a great dad. But we did not stay together. He. She was going to go live with him because she never lived with him. I raised her. He was a weekend dad, so I was like, Well, I'm not. I can't leave her with her father and move to California. That's very selfish of me, you know, to go chase my dreams. How dare I? So then my daughter said to me, Mom, what are you doing? And I was like, What do you mean? She goes, Why aren't you going to California? And I said, Well, honey, because, you know, it's just not a good time. She she looked at me and I'll never, ever forget this moment.
She said, Are you kidding me? If you don't go to California, I'll kill you. Get the hell out of here. And she gave me the permission to go.
Passionistas: That's amazing.
Patricia: That's why my nieces are like, are singers and dancers and creatives, and they're all in college, but they're pursuing careers not just in the arts, but also, like, active ism and things like, you know, that really push their feminine point of view forward and their voices. They were both raised in San Francisco and they really contributed a lot of that journey to me because they said, Well, you always taught us to be brave and follow our dreams and we see your struggle, you know?
I mean, it's not easy to be a young mom and an actress and single and working a, you know, a restaurant job, a service job. But I never gave up, you know?
I mean, I'm like here I am on a straight line now in my fifties. And I just don't I don't believe that you have to kill your dreams in order to satisfy a financial need, you know, you can if you have to be a bartender because you want to be a musician, well, that's what you have to do. And you know, you if you want to be a painter, then be a painter, you know, be if you want a net net, who we are, we just squash our light.
Passionistas: What is your process you studied took very serious methodology. So talk us through kind of your creative process.
Patricia: I used to be like a really strict kind of method actress, you know, really delve into my emotions and recreating my traumas so I could live them through this. And then I spent 20 years crying on television.
As a Latina actress, I've played a lot of victims. So my child gets, you know, falls down an elevator shaft, gets shot. I drive by, my husband gets kidnaped and tortured. You can imagine. So I realized that I didn't I don't want to do that. I don't want to have to drag my past with me every time I do a crime scene, because I could be crying for hours, especially in a movie.
You know, we're doing the take after take after take after take and doing the different sizes, the Y, then the clothes are and clothes are the two shot the over. So I started to learn how to save my emotion till I was on camera. When what? Tell me when the money is I'll give you the money tears. Then I would be like, okay, so how can I arrive at this without having to torture myself every time you know I need to cry.
So I kind of just started to substitute my emotions with the real my real emotion is with emotions that I've felt before, but emotions that I could kind of connect to that were part of this character. And not just they weren't mine, you know, that was my trauma. It was me living this character's trauma so I could drop it, you know, when I was when they say cut, I'm not I'm not reliving my my childhood.
I'm reliving this woman's trauma, which I can connect to because I've had a lot of trauma in my life. But I don't have to stay in it all day. I don't have to be, like, immersed in it. Then I you know, and then you come across a lot of actors who have studied different met. That's Meisner. And so my husband, Matteo Roboto, he's a filmmaker and he studied with Erin Speiser.
And they I really like the method that they use, you know, just really like using your reality, being in the room, connecting moment to moment, talking and listening. So I kind of do like an amalgamation, different things, whatever I feel is appropriate for them for the moment. So I always use a different recipe. It doesn't have to be the same anymore, you know, because I trust my instrument now love that.
Passionistas: So you've also done done some producing. So what do you like about working behind the camera as opposed to in front of the camera?
Patricia: I can be proactive, it allows me the opportunity to create.
I don't have to sit at home waiting for somebody to tell me you're talented, you can write, you can act, you can know I can and I will. That's it. You're not going to go produce a show, a play, a one woman show, Go read some plays. T.S. Eliot plays. You know, go get into a class, sign up for a theater company, do a podcast, write a book, write a journal, add to a blog.
I've done everything you know. I don't I don't I, I don't need people's permission to be creative. I don't need you to allow me to be creative. I am creative. I don't express my creativity. I get sad, I get anxious, I get frustrated, I get angry as a healer. This is one of the reasons why I got into yoga is because because of the method acting and all of that stuff, you start to like really carry around around a lot of your childhood trauma because you're immersing yourself into it all the time.
And so I was trying to find a way to release it, to not have to experience it in my body, because I was really it was getting into myself and my organs. I felt like I was it was becoming part of my DNA. So I started to really connect to yoga because it was a way to turn my light on to go back and to connect to things that that help you heal, that help you remember, that you're bigger, that you're bigger than just your self, your body.
You're part of a universe, that we're all connected, that we're all spiritual, be beings. That led me to I wanted to teach it because I thought it was such a beautiful way to journey through life, you know, to be able to touch people and to be connected, to be a part of something too. I'm not religious, but I'm very spiritual.
And my grandmother was a super, super religious Catholic woman, and I was raised very, very Catholic, had to pray for everything if anything went wrong in my life. She's like my body. She to be the savior. Maria, Rachel, Rosario. Everything was about the rosary and go and pray. And and I was like, I can't live like that.
Because for me, the Catholicism is very judgmental and I don't believe there's room for judgment and spirituality. There is no room for judgment. We all make mistakes. We're all human. We're all supposedly born in Christ's likeness or whatever religion that you believe in. And he he didn't judge you. Now. So why is why is the church judging so that really sent me on a new path, a new journey.
And through that, I was able to really expand my my acting, my craft because I was allowing myself to fail, allowing myself to not not feel guilty because I had a traumatic past. I was allowing myself to heal, to forgive, because when you're using your past in your work, you have to hold on to that anger if someone's wronged you, right.
So doesn't allow you to forgive it. So as an adult, you get you have all this clogged energy, all of this crisis that's constantly you're reliving to use it to be like your tools. And I just didn't think that was a great way for me to live. And it made me very bitter and very angry and very sad. So, yes, that's why I produce going back to the question.
I produce because because you like, look at you ladies. You were you were in another career and then you felt you had a voice. You had something to say, something you wanted to engage with. You wanted to highlight people who had like minded passions, and you did something about that because you didn't allow people to tell you. You could only be one thing you can't. You can be so many things and so many creations and you reincarnate. You're so, so many times in life, if if you fail at something, that's okay, because it will help you learn in the next phase of your life. Nothing is a failure. So my husband is exactly like that. He started off as an actor and he's not a very tall person, beautiful, very handsome, beautiful teeth. But he just never it didn't work, you know, Hollywood just didn't didn't give him the opportunity. So he said, I'm going to take the opportunity. He put his first short film on a credit card and then he just became a filmmaker. He said, I'm going to write my stories. I have something to say. I don't need you to tell me that I. I don't have a story. I don't need it, you know, to hire me to tell the story. I'm going to do it myself. And so once I, I met him on a film and we stayed friends and then we collaborated on some of his scripts that he was writing. And then I was like, well, I want to I want to you, you know, you're such a passionate person.
I want to help you make these projects. I want to be I want to make things. I want to create. I want this to be another branch of my journey. So I started producing with him. So we've produced, you know, several films together and he's working right now in the backyard on a director's cut of a film that has already been released that I helped him produce.
I play a character in it, but he wreaks the film, you know, because you learn, you know, and as you learn, you learn how to edit and not just like physical editing. Like an avid, but edit as a storyteller. And I think he this journey really, when he came to the end of it, he realized that he could tell that story better and he went back and he cut the film and he got another opportunity to put it back out on VOD and streaming because he kind of dropped the ball on their end and they were like, Well, we're going to allow you to put it the director's cut up without charging you for it, because we we messed up. So it's coming out. I can't tell you the name of it, but I play a clairvoyant in it right now.
Then I have my my show that's coming back that I've been on for three seasons finally announced it's coming back in the fall, but I can't tell you which show it is. But I play a judge. Which. Which you can figure it out. But even that journey took me 35 years, you know, to be able to play a Latina on television that was educated, that had, you know, that brings something to society that encourages other young people marginalized women, to reach, you know, dream big, to go out there to get an education, to strive to better their lives.
So rarely do you see that on television. Still, it's just remarkable. I mean, it's just and then I only in my striking for our rights as performers and as actors, but also as marginalized people, because there's still. So much racism, so much ageism. Like I, I can't believe that in other countries, women of mature women who have so much to give, so to offer so much knowledge, they're not featured in movies. They're not featured in series in in, in, in Ireland. And all of these shows where the the the lead is a female, you know, of, you know, higher age not in America. And if she is, then she has to have like a costar that's younger.
Passionistas: To talk about that more though you know as a little girl you you talked about the shows that really spoke to you and one of them was Electric Company. So I'm assuming potentially that Rita moreno may have been somebody at least that you could see on television. But there's one person...
Patricia: Yeah.
Passionistas: So you are fighting for the rights of marginalized people to have more opportunities. How do we make it better? What can people outside of the industry do to show that the studios are not much, that we want more of that we want more diversity in the storytelling?
Patricia: We have to watch the product that is put out there by, you know, bipoc artists. We have to champion it and we have to instill it to programs that encourage them to create, to write, to become, you know, part of the above, below the line, you know, to become executives, people that make decisions, you know, people that can greenlight projects.
That's the only way you have to keep encouraging young people of color to write and create and go out there and have their voices heard. And then people of color need to greenlight these projects. So they have to have there has to be like a mentorship programs where these people can get in position, where they can make change.
Passionistas: Absolutely. Absolutely. So switching gears a little bit, I want to talk about another creative project, your book.
Patricia: Like I said, when I am not creating, I'm sad. I feel like I'm a flower with no sun. And I had a friend. I have a friend actually. Marlene Forte, that you've had on your podcast, Wonderful, wonderful actress, very good friend of mine. I've known her for over 35 years. Her husband is a playwright and a creative writing professor at USC, and he wanted to write a book, a children's book about his dog because they lived on campus, they lived on the USC campus for many years, I think 14 years.
So he grew up on campus from when he was a puppy dog. Now, though, and he wanted to write a book about a dog who lives on campus because everybody loved him. Everybody needs a dog now. They would wait. They he was such a popular and with the ladies very popular. And he was looking for someone to to draw the story for him.
So he had gotten in touch with somebody else. And she never came through. You know, she said, I'd love to. I mean, she's an artist as well, this woman. But she just didn't she didn't follow through. So Marlene said to Oliver, you know, Patti draws, you know, she's an artist. Why don't you ask her? And he said, yeah. And I said, you know, don't ask Oliver to ask me. I'll just draw him something. And that's what I did. I said, What would? John and I started sketching and drawing and drawing. And let me tell you.
Something, ladies. It was awful. It was like I was drawing with my feet. It was the ugliest dog I'd ever seen. But my husband said, Don't you dare throw those drawings away because I want you to keep drawing and see your see your journey because going to inspire you.
I was like, I hate when you write. So I didn't throw them away. And I kept trying and trying and trying. I like to have set goals for myself, you know? And then one day I might because to me, drawing is seeing, right? You can't draw what you don't see. So I kept saying, I'm just not seeing, I'm not seeing him. I have to keep drawing him some my hand sees or my eyes see. I found him, my hand found him.
And then one day I, I It wasn't the best, but it was better. So. So much better. I could see Donald doing it now, you know? And I painted it and I sent it to Oliver at did maybe like one or two paintings because I wanted it to really have this, like, very classic kind of watercolor vintage look.
I thought that's what I was going for. I didn't want it to look a I generated digital cartoony. I wanted it to look like it had flaws, like someone really drew it and sent it to Oliver, and.
He was like, my God. This is amazing. And we just started collaborating and and three books later, you know. I didn't give up and that I tell that story a lot when we read the book to kids and in schools.
And I tell them, you know, you want to do something new in a way you're going to be you're not going to be that good in the beginning, but you're going to get better and don't ever give up. If there's something in your heart that you want to do, you have to keep doing because you always get better. But I did. This is a long journey. And it's a really long journey.
Several years ago I wanted to branch my healing practice out.
And I started toying with doing a podcast. So my pragmatic husband was like, Well, listen to podcasts. You know, you don't know what it's, you know, what's out there. Start listening. And I did. I started listening to all these healing podcasts and I was like, I got really discouraged. It did the opposite and encouraged me. It discouraged me. I was like, my God, there's so many healing gathered. Nobody wants to know what I have to offer, you know? So after toiling within and kind of doing an opening and then trying to get up, you know, how would I do it? What platform? I'm not good with computers and how do I recorded? I just let it intimidate me and I kind of put it to rest.
But I had reached out to a friend of mine that I knew through Twitter, Chris Crimm. He had a podcast. His Podcast was called Come and Get Some and it was based he interviewed a lot of people who had been victims of Scientology, but he was a big fan of mine from, a TV show that I was on, which I can't mention, but it was about a young, goofy guy who was in love with a bald blond bombshell.
And and I played his best friend's mom. Well, so, I reached out to Chris because, you know, we were not I never met him in person, believe it or not. But, you know, you know, people when people are genuine, there's people that you're like, this guy's crazy. I mean, especially when you meet people on social media, you don't know what they're really thinking. I could tell he was a genuine person. He always was like, You're so great. I hope you do Well, he was always, like, encouraging. So I reached out to him. I sent him a private message on Twitter and I said, Hey, Chris, I'm thinking about doing a podcast on healing. Can you just give me some pointers because I know you already did it because I had encouraged him to do it.
He said, I don't know if I could do it. And I kept saying, You could do it. It's just a matter of it's not good, but you know, you'll get better. So he did it because, you know, he had that support. He had someone telling him, don't worry about it, you know. So I asked him for advice and he told me what kind of mike to get and what to do and blah, blah, blah.
But like I said, I didn't follow through. So then about six months, maybe six months, eight months, a year ago, he put a post up on Twitter saying, Hey, I really want to do a new podcast, anybody game.
So this is a funny story. So I said, Yeah, I'm game. I want to do a podcast. I've been dying to do a podcast. I have things to say. But honestly, I thought he meant a one off, like to go on with him and like, you know, be as a guest, you know? So we set up a time and I gave him my phone number. He'd never had my phone number at that point. I gave him my phone number and I said, okay, let's talk about what is this podcast going to be about? So it starts rattling all the stuff off, you know, But I've had this about that, and then I start to it starts to dawn on me he means he wants us to be a podcast. I don't know.
If I, I don't know if I'm ready for that. I don't know. What did I do? my God. I stuck my foot in my mouth. Am I doing? And then I said to myself, Don't talk yourself out of it. You wanted to do a podcast. You've been afraid to do it by yourself. Here's somebody who can help you, who is encouraging you to try it if it doesn't work out.
I give him the same I gave myself advice I had given him. If it sucks, you know. Well, you try now. The thing that we really needed to like focus in on what was this podcast going to be about, right? I said him, Listen, I don't want this to be an acting podcast. I'm sick to death about talking about acting. You know, nobody cares. Nobody cares. I've been on a TV show. I don't care. You know.
I wanted to I want to speak. I want to be able to speak. I want to be able to voice my opinion in a safe place where you can say what you want and I can say what I want. And we don't have to agree. But we can debate we can debate a topic because I like that. I think I like that I said so we can take like a current event or something that it's really hot topic, hot button issue.
And he lives in Florida. Ron DeSantis land. boy and I live in an L.A. So actually funny thing is, is he's super liberal and I'm a little bit more independent, a little bit more conservative. I'm a you know, I'm not left wing right wing. I'm just a person, you know, I just like I want to be able to think what I want. I want to be able to say what I want.
And I don't want you to say, well, I don't want to be your friend anymore. I'm going to cancel you. You know, don't be my friend on Facebook. I'm like, what happens to people's points of view? America, America, please.
You know, I'm not an expert in anything, but I have opinions. And I'll let you voice yours. I'm going to give you my point of view. We can have a fun, lively discussion about it, and look at it from everyone's point of view. You know,
I don't this kind of whitewashing of like everybody has to be forced to think a certain way. So I thought that would be a great podcast. And so it's called Believe This, you know, because there's so many things out there that you're like, can you believe what's going on out there.
And just hash it out and be able to voice your opinion and then at the end say, okay, you know, give us your opinion. You know, email us, tell us what you think. Did you like it? Did you hate it? You know, what was it informative. And from there, spring this really safe place to go out there. I mean, remember debate team, we used to be able to debate things for you. You both didn't debate the same side. I mean, that's not a debate, but and you had to make a case for it. You So that's that's that's the podcast in a nutshell.
So yeah. And I've really enjoyed it and Chris has been a little bit kind of down because we haven't had like a super lot of listeners. But I said, you know what? First of all, we're doing something, we're creating, we're being active, we're giving social issues a platform and they'll will come. Because if you put out a light that that light emits energy, right? And so it takes time. Everything takes I said, don't worry about it. Worry about it being truthful, worried about, worry about being your being, your authentic self. That's it. That's all you. If we ever monetize it, if we ever get hundreds in the that's not the goal.
That was never the goal for me. The goal for me was to have a place where I could voice my opinion and say, Hey, you know what? I am not going to bash people because they have a different mindset. I love to look at things from everyone's perspective and really kind of engage the the thought.
Passionistas: What's your dream for women?
Patricia: My dream for my daughter and my nieces is to go out there and chase your dreams. Don't let anybody tell you that you need somebody and you have you needs a support system. Absolutely. And you need to align yourself with the people that believe that you are the star and the moon and the sun. But have to know in your heart that you are the star and the moon and the sun, and that we were all put here to shine.
Passionistas: Beautiful. That was amazing. Well, thank you so much for your time today. We really love talking with you.
Patricia: Now, thank you for having me. Thank you for giving me a platform. Like I said, I really I love connecting with people. It's just a part of my journey.
Passionistas: Thanks for listening to The Passionistas Project, and our interview with Patricia Rae. To learn more about her upcoming projects and to believe this podcast, follow her on Instagram at the Patricia Rae.
And be sure to visit ThePassionistasProject.com. To sign up for our mailing list, find all the ways you can follow us on social media and join our world wide Sisterhood of Women uniting to get support, find their purpose and feel empowered to transform their lives and change the world.
We'll be back next week with another passionate star who is defining success on her own terms and breaking down the barriers for herself and women everywhere.
Until then, stay well and stay passionate.
