Ask A Muse: Chris Pratt
Questions about making work as a multi-hyphenate artist warrant many perspectives — and this is where you’ll find a few. Welcome to “Ask A Muse.”
The Muse: Chris Pratt
Actor and founder of Indivisible Productions, Chris Pratt is a “Blockbuster movie star. Beloved coworker. Stand-up dad and all-around good hang” (Men’s Health). You can see him on big screens and small in fan-favorites like Parks and Recreation, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Terminal List, and the Jurassic World trilogy. The Nine Muses Lab had the pleasure of speaking with Chris about creating unique career paths and making your mark as a collaborator.
The Question: What advice would you give to emerging artists today?
Click play to listen to Chris Pratt’s full response; full transcript also available below
“Understand what makes you an outsider... [and] hold onto it because it’s a point of view that will become increasingly rare the longer you spend time in any kind of system of art or industry emerging.”
CHRIS PRATT: One thing that has served me well, and I think could serve anybody well is: understand what makes you an outsider. And hold on to it. Hold onto it because you’re gonna be put into systems – and even in school right now, you may be already in a system – that’s gonna tend to homogenize your thinking. It’s gonna kind of shave off any edge of you that is outside of what a lot of people around you are thinking.
We’re never anything more than an amalgam of the five people closest to us in our life. And human beings, we’re malleable, constantly changing. So I would say, think of what made you an outsider when you decided to do this. Not what’s become – what you’ve changed into in these young moments in your life, but what at the start of your life, in your earliest memories, what about you was different? What made you an outsider? And hold onto it. Make sure you hold onto that no matter what it is – good, bad, ugly, doesn’t matter. Hold onto it because it’s a point of view that will become increasingly rare the longer you spend time in any kind of system of art or industry emerging. Or if you're in New York or L.A., I feel like everyone turns into the same person.
So, I would say be mindful of the city you’re in. Don’t ever let your city define you because ultimately if you’re in the market of creating entertainment for people, you’re not trying to only entertain people in New York and only trying to entertain people in L.A. There’s an entire people – all the people around the world. There are a ton of outsiders who identify with that thing that you identify with as well, so don’t sand it off. Keep it. Hold onto it. Keep it close to you, keep it personal, keep it secret if you need to. But always honor it. Honor that thing. No matter what it is. Because you can guarantee there’s a lot of people out there who will feel that way and they’ll identify with you. And then, when you’ve remained authentic to who you were at that point, if your circle does somehow get smaller, at least you’ll feel pretty good about it. You know what I mean? You’ll feel like you honored that and that you’ve given a voice to someone who might otherwise be voiceless.
Excerpt from Chris Pratt’s Q&A with Bryce Dallas Howard and the Nine Muses Lab
