Tony-nominated actress, singer and women’s rights activist Laura Bell Bundy joins Paul Cardall’s “All Heart” podcast to chat all things Bundy and women-related including her own personal career path, being a new mother and the long history of women’s oppression.
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Getting her start on the soap opera “Guiding Light” Bundy explains how she eventually dropped out of NYU to pursue a career as an actress and singer seriously.
“I had done theater some film as a young kid before I graduated high school. And then I think that “Guiding Light” decision was really a crossroads for me because I think as a child actor, I’d always said, ‘Hey, I’ll grow up one day and be a doctor,’ and then I was like, ‘Wait, I’m actually choosing acting now.’ At the time that I did “Guiding Light” I also had a band and it was with a friend of mine from Kentucky, and we were singing country music in New York City. So we were definitely in the wrong place for it, but we would have these gigs at like The Bitter End or CBGB’s, and we weren’t old enough to even get into the places that we were doing gigs at.”
After “Guiding Light” Bundy was off on a bustling career that would lead her to roles on Broadway like Elle on “Legally Blonde,” or landing TV roles like with the show “Anger Management” or even signing with Mercury Records in Nashville among other artistic feats.
Through years in different creative fields, Bundy is able to recognize a moment of clear creative inspiration which she calls a “God shot.”
“When I create, I’m just an offshoot or the offspring of the Creator. I think that’s what keeps me going. When I’m in a rehearsal room, and an idea hits, or a connection is made, or the audience is there, and I get a laugh I never got before, because I tried a different choice, the choices that I’m making are being guided by a higher source. Whether that be while I’m writing a song, or directing or something like that, that’s what I’m addicted to,” she says.
In this way, Bundy is very intuitive with her craft, yet, her passions run deeper than just acting and music. She is also a big advocate for women’s rights and has become even more impassioned about the subject of women’s roles after becoming a mother.
“I used to make a joke, when people were like, ‘How do you do all these things?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t have kids.’ I never realized how right I was about that. Because there’s so much more on my mind, there’s so much less space in my brain, there’s so many more things to think about, and to plan ahead. You’re completely responsible for another human being and all of their needs. So clearly, you just have a little bit less time … Then there’s this other element of like, feeling this massive amount of love and understanding for other women that I never understood.”
She goes on to explain the years of oppressive thought patterns that have been weaved into the fabric of society that we are now working to unravel and leaves listeners with an inspiring call to action.
“We have to examine the history and ask ourselves, ‘Why is it acceptable for a man to talk over? To be a bully? To try to control a woman?’ And that’s because it’s been pervasive throughout our history and our subconscious thinking, and our collective thinking, but we have to overturn those thoughts. We have to teach as mothers. We as women need to be responsible, when we are teaching our children how to respect women and how to speak to women. Like you said, women have the power, we birth the human race, we raise the human race, we can do a better job at setting a standard for how to treat women than what we’ve done so far. And so that’s how I’m going to say how this whole thing is going to be adjusted is how we communicate. How we tell history, not leaving women out of it, that kind of thing. But when you’re coming up against a bully it’s in the wrong way of thinking, unfortunately, you’re gonna have to get loud.”
