What happened to Sasha Lane isn’t supposed to happen anymore. Minding her own business in Panama City, FL during Spring Break 2015, the Texas college student was approached by director Andrea Arnold about starring in her upcoming film, “American Honey.” Only a few weeks later the 19-year-old would find herself acting opposite well known stars such as Shia Labeouf and Riley Keogh. ‘Honey’ went on to debut at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and is one of the more acclaimed films of the year. Over the course of 18 months Lane went from unenthusiastically studying for a psychology and social work undergrad degree to spending the past year living in Los Angeles meeting about future acting roles in Hollywood productions.
Again, these sort of “A Star is Born” stories aren’t supposed to happen anymore.
“I think it’s scary like just as a mental thing. You come from a certain place. You come from a certain mental state. To be switched to something else and there are new opportunities? It’s like your box has been opened,” Lane says. “And it’s almost like I’m so ecstatic about that and I think it’s wonderful, but that box was very comforting. It’s what I knew and what I had been surrounded by for 19 years and then to be ‘No Sasha, everyone is enjoying it and they enjoy you personally and you can do these things’ it’s like, ‘Great, but holy f—k!’”
‘Honey’ follows the almost vagabond journey of Star (Lane), a young woman who joins up with a magazine sales crew that travels across the country hoping to get money by selling useless magazine subscriptions. The seven week shoot was unconventional even for indie standards with the mostly non-actor cast (LaBeouf, Keogh and McCaul Lombardi are really the only actors with substantial professional experience in the main cast) living and traveling together as an actual mag crew would. That meant shitty hotel rooms, crowded vans and lots of partying. Arnold, who is best known for “Fish Tank” and the Academy Award winning short “Wasp,” also kept the script from the entire cast providing sides often just the night before a day’s shoot. That would have been petrifying for even the most veteran of actors, but Lane, who had never acted in any capacity previously, had other concerns.
“The scariest part was that I was going to disappoint her and not be what she wanted. That would have just crushed me,” Lane says. “I trusted her and loved her so much from the beginning. And I knew she had such a vision. I knew there was someone chosen before me and it did’t work out so I was just very insecure as far as ‘I just want to please you so bad and I just want to be what you want so bad’ that it was kind of scary and hard.”
No matter what your opinion of ‘Honey’ what Lane pulls off with so little experience is nothing short of remarkable. You might assume Lane is simply playing herself, but meeting her in person proves that simply isn’t the case (full disclosure: not only did I interview Lane a few weeks ago, but moderated an extended Q&A this past weekend). Whatever internal pain she conveys as Star is a far cry from the bubbly, friendly and somewhat open book Lane projects face to face.
Finding that dark and intensely angry side of Star wasn’t always easy for Lane to pull off. She recalls, “I do remember that sequence where I had to get mad and I couldn’t. Shia pissed me off on purpose and I remember thinking, ‘Ah, O.K. Sasha. Do what it takes to get you there and feed off of that person’s energy.’ That’s what I do naturally, but in that moment I didn’t even think about it. It was like, ‘No, it’s OK. Do it. Use that. Use that and bounce of it and work with it.’”
Perhaps most telling of Lane’s ‘Honey’ experience so far is that her most intense memories of the experience aren’t from filming the movie itself, but the reactions of those who approach her after just seeing it.
“I remember there was someone who told me she’d watched the film and she wanted to come and talk to me after, but she had taken it so personally and so hard that she had to leave. And I was like, ‘Wow. Yes. Amazing.’ So that really registered,” Lane says. “It’s like, ‘Wow, all this energy and what we tried to create and everything we worked so hard on is really getting to people which is the most beautiful thing.”
Lane just celebrated her 21st birthday and her perspective on what she’ll do next is shockingly level headed for someone thrust into the movie industry machine.
“I just think right now I’m just embracing this moment and taking this and feel like I can fulfill my purpose through and continues this,” Lane says. “School isn’t really my thing and it’s always there. This isn’t always here.”
“American Honey” is now playing in New York and Los Angeles. It will expand across the country over the next few weeks.
For more movie industry and Oscar insight follow Gregory Ellwood on twitter @TheGregoryE.