Photo: Callum Walker Hutchinson
To say that Larry Owens is a scene stealer is an understatement. While many recognize Owens from Abbott Elementary as Zach, Jacob Hill’s (Chris Perfetti) ex-boyfriend, Owens has been attracting the spotlight for a while now. From roles in Search Party and Modern Love to his award-winning Off-Broadway run in A Strange Loop, Owens can’t help but take center stage.
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But don’t put Owens in a box. The multi-hyphenate creative performs standup comedy, acts, sings, writes, and directs. Thanks to Indeed’s Rising Voices program, in 2023, Owens flexed his musical muscles alongside his filmmaking vision with his debut film, The Gag. Blending influences from talk shows and theater, Owens created a musical thriller that is perfect for the chronically-online social media scroller and drama kid alike.
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Owens isn’t the only filmmaker to receive a launchpad like this. In its fifth iteration, Indeed’s Rising Voices program provides BIPOC filmmakers with opportunities to bring their storytelling to life on film and leave their mark within the industry.
INTO chatted with Owens about his Rising Voices experience, where he pulls his creative inspiration from, and why his debut film will leave you gagging,
Many people recognize you from TV’s Abbott Elementary, but your work spans both screen and stage, with roles in High Maintenance, Life & Beth, and award-winning turn in Michael R. Jackson’s play A Strange Loop. That being said, what has been the most rewarding and challenging parts of your acting career?
The most rewarding part has been the access to it, to be able to create and play roles that just never existed before. There was no actor I could point to as a kid and say, “I want to do exactly that” in terms of being at the center of stories or having nuanced characterizations as a person of color, size, as a queer person. Each and every role has been offered with a ton of dignity and with an arc. That is a privilege that not all actors get. That’s also been the challenge of it, laying that path that I also have to walk on. Pioneering takes more time than being on set.
Acting aside, you’re a multi-hyphenate creative who writes, directs, and sings the house down. Where do you find your creative inspiration for these different artistic mediums?
It’s one source. I studied with the Steppenwolf Ensemble in Chicago. That’s where I received my formal training from the ensemble members there, and they deal in a handedness of art. The same ensemble members who write a play also can star in a huge movie or HBO series. You’re expected to be generative as well as carry it out with the tools of composition. Those tools of composition, those tenets of human life, are pervasive because they’re true.
That’s all art is, a representation of human life. There’s a quote by Stephen Sondheim, “Content dictates form.“ So once you figure out what you’re trying to say, then you can put it into any form, whether it be on-screen, on-stage, through music, you figure out what the best way is, and then you just use tools and techniques. I’m a very technical artist. The trick of it is to then give it to the people in a way that looks like complete abandon. So the audience has a completely different experience of the work than I do inside of it, but that’s the give and take.
There’s another quote by Stephen Sondheim, “Anything you do, let it come from you.” To marry that with the Steppenwolf training, the only thing they can see on stage of me is actually me. The Indeed Rising Voices program, my season was about the future of work. Two of those characters, Arnold in High Maintenance and the Usher in A Strange Loop, are completely ruled by their professional environments. Being a 20-something in New York, I take that seat of my life and figure out how it becomes a seat of truth for all of the people who would then participate in the story.
Speaking of the Indeed Rising Voices program, how did you come to find the program and what was that experience like?
I had sold several scripts on the Hollywood studio and network side, and those were years-long processes of collaborating with large entities with whom I never met the head honcho. I’d meet the president of the network, but then I would never meet the person who would approve the work. With Indeed Rising Voices, working with Hillman Grad, and Chris Hyams, the CEO of Indeed. This is his mission born of his own passion, his own story. Indeed is looking out for people, making sure that they have a chance.
And that’s exactly what Rising Voices was for me. It was an intersection at a time where I just needed to have the work. I could pitch all the livelong day. I write beautifully, but to have and to hold something, Lena Waithe knows the importance of that. And through acquaintanceship, being Black and queer in Hollywood, we met, and I was just excited to throw my hat into the ring. I applied like everyone else, was adjudicated, and vetted by 271 Films, the amazing team that helps bring about the production side.
There was no actor I could point to as a kid and say, “I want to do exactly that” in terms of being at the center of stories or having nuanced characterizations as a person of color, size, as a queer person.
Larry Owens
It’s just been a rolling train of success, from meeting the other directors of my cohort to receiving the dedicated mentorship from all the experts that they bring in to help us make sure that our debut into the film world at this beautiful level is so well taken care of. I just want to tell everyone reading that it is possible to experience care. It is possible to produce a beautiful piece of art right now. This is the opportunity to do it. Everyone in my cohort and everyone that I know who is an alum of Indeed Rising Voices is proud of the work that they did, which can be rare when you work in the higher levels of Hollywood. I don’t underestimate that as well.
Even as an alum, I’m here to sing the praises of the program. Even as someone who got my end of the deal, I have this beautiful film that I can press play on, that can play at festivals, that I show often in my live work as a part of my extension of my live performance. I’ll just press play on the movie and do my own little screenings. That autonomy in the community is a gift as well.
Why not press play on your film whenever you want to?
Yeah, it gags the girls every time. LOL, word play.
Speaking of The Gag, after I watched it, I was like, “Wow, we’re pulling from the Wendy Williams Show, specifically from her Keke Palmer interview.
There are more talk show hosts. Yeah, you can name them. Don’t get me caught up now. Who else?
Let’s go down the list. The Gag was channeling the Tyra Banks Show, the Wendy Williams Show, and Oprah.
And Ellen. Never forget.
Can’t forget the Ellen DeGeneres Show. What was the impetus behind merging talk shows and musicals to create The Gag?
I was really interested in the moral space of being a cog in the industry machine. I keep referencing Hollywood. I’m very much on the theatrical side of my career focus this year. So I’ve been able to honestly relinquish a lot of that tension. But working inside of that system and seeing how much capital can be gained from the destruction and perception of a person who is willing to do that for their own capital gain, and then my overall artistic impetus of humanity, how does this playground, the talk show set, the daytime talk show microcosm, the network microcosm, the studio microcosm, how does that end up having or not having a moral effect on the populace at large?
I just want to tell everyone reading that it is possible to experience care. It is possible to produce a beautiful piece of art right now.
Larry Owens
How do we connect what we consume to who we are? You are what you eat, no? And so The Gag is, it’s a thriller. It’s a musical thriller. And then the larger piece, which the 15-minute version represents, we really come to grapple with that Faustian question in an entertaining way. I don’t want to do my liturgical thesis and have no one watch it. No, I want you to lean in. I want you recognizing it.
I want you applying it to your life. I want you counting the references. And that is, I believe, the fun that we have with The Gag. I believe that’s my artistic mission inside of it, which makes producing a film worth it. When all of a sudden, when they sing “Morning Comes Again,” when the daytime writer’s room is restored in a place of darkness and desolation, but the hope lives inside of the people who, at the beginning, identified as workers, but at the end of what they go through, perhaps identify as a community.
How do you find your artistic vision being enhanced from the Indeed Rising Voices program, not just within filmmaking, but in other aspects of your work as well?
It’s been completely informative of this current year of my career development where, like I said, I’m on a theatrical focus as lead producer, playwright, leading actor, and also director of my first musical and first play. The play is slated for production in January 2025. We just had a reading in New York, directed by myself, starring LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Moses Ingram, Olivia Washington, AnnaSophia Robb, Bianca Leigh from the cast of Oh, Mary!, and just Jasmine Ceephus Jones from Hamilton. It’s called Five Sisters and the Black women play my family.
Directing The Gag showed me that I did not need to pass off my work for the stage to someone else, that I was ready to be the director because I understood the vision of it from its conception. Rising Voices completely empowered me to take the helm of my theatrical projects and trust myself in a way that expanded the vision of my horizons.
There’s so much Black queer talent on-screen and behind the screen. For a lot of folks witnessing this, it’s like we’re just now arriving at this point. In reality, the work has been put in by Black queer talent for decades. Recognizing this, what else do you think it’s going to take to ensure that we can get more of our Black queer talent in “the room where it happens?”
I think we’ve worked hard enough. I think we did it. I can’t fix it, child. It’s not me, it’s Jesus. Everybody needs to pray. Everybody pray. Everybody go to church on Sunday and pray. Jesus will do it.
Jesus will do it and you know what? So will the Indeed Rising Voices program.
Let Him use you! Chris Hyams, Lena Waithe, Costanza and Doménica [Castro] from 271 Films. Yes, absolutely. They are totally being led with the spirit of generosity. They’re being led with the spirit of access that we really, really do need.
The idea that each year, 10 films by artists of color are introduced into the world is a miracle in itself. To have the work just be so gorgeous helps it to be additive, helps for it to be received, and for my cohort of love to be plugged in to all the channels of success. Like [director] Jackie! Zhou from my cohort is the director of Chappell Roan’s music video. Everyone is playing festivals all over the world. Every day, there’s a new update about one of my friends’ films.
The fact that we all made them at the same time in such a rapid manner, honestly, it just illuminated so much about who I could be as a producer, who I could be as a director, who I could be as a writer. It’s exactly what the world needs. I’m so excited for people all around the country, and whatever accessible territories, to submit their films and for there to be such gorgeous work.♦
*This interview was condensed for time and clarity.
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