Today we’d like to introduce you to Samuel-Taylor Augustin.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Samuel-Taylor. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
When I was 13, I saw my middle school’s production of “Peter Pan” in the cafeteria. That was my first time watching live theatre, and my best friends were in it, so I wanted to support them. I was absolutely blown away by the performance. Objectively, it wasn’t anything special, but I was in awe of how free my friends were. Like, they were really into this fairy tale story, and I believed it. That performance was the reason that I was even curious about acting. I played football, and honestly, I had never considered acting as an option until Peter Pan convinced me, hahaha. One of my best friends encouraged me to audition for the department the following year, and that was the start of my journey as an actor. From then on, I’ve been chasing the magic of play, just like Peter Pan.
During my first year in high school, I felt like Troy Bolton. I was juggling theatre and football at the same time, and sometimes the schedules for both would overlap. I often chose theatre rehearsal over football practice, and that got me in trouble sometimes. It was at the beginning of my sophomore year when I had to decide which one to take seriously. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t football. I remember when I quit football, a lot of the guys on my team were roasting me dry. You know how high schoolers can be, hahaha. But it was fine because I knew that there was nothing else that I felt so confident about. I feel lucky to have gotten my calling as an artist at such a pivotal point in my adolescence.
I signed with my first ATL talent agency in my junior year of high school, and have been with them ever since. It was also around that time that I really started to appreciate Donald Glover as an artist. I really aligned with the way that he looked at the world, and he became a huge inspiration of mine. One of the main reasons that I decided to go to NYU Tisch was because I wanted to follow in his footsteps. A black kid from Atlanta who’s dominating the industry by making his own shit? And it’s fire? Of course, I’m gonna look up to that.
So, yeah, now I’m in my last year at NYU, and I’ve learned a lot about myself as a person and a creator. But who knows what’s next? All I know is that I’m excited for where I take my career, and for where my career takes me.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Well, no, because something called a pandemic decided to show up and destroy everything. I honestly was at some of my lowest points during this pandemic, and it got scary. I had a lot of doubt. I had a lot of fears and anxieties that I didn’t even know how to deal with. I felt really out of it, and there were moments where I didn’t feel like myself at all. But I allowed myself to just exist, and I feel so much fresher now.
Before that, though, I really struggled with vulnerability. Like, up until my second year of college, I was super closed off. The way that I grew up, especially as a black man, I was taught not to be emotional. Well, as a kid, the way I understood that was to just try to turn off my emotions. And now, I have to actively work against that. The career path that I’ve chosen has really saved me from being completely emotionally unavailable. And I still feel like I haven’t pried the lid completely off yet, but it’s definitely open. I think that the more I discover myself as a person and artist, the more I can tease that lid off. And I could go on about all of the built-in obstacles and challenges of being black in this industry, but we know this.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
I’m particularly interested in how people interact and connect with each other. Every relationship between two people is so unique, and being an actor allows me to experience those unique human to human connections a thousand-fold. Like, I can be whoever the fuck I want to be. I can make connections as an entire person outside of myself, but at the end of the day, those connections that I’m making as a character are still real connections that I’m experiencing as myself. We’re only in this world for a relatively short amount of time, and we technically only have one life. But acting is dope because I can live through and experience as many lives as I want to. I almost drowned when I was four. Like, I really was almost dead. And now that I’ve been given another chance at life, I want to live as many as I possibly can.
I consider myself an actor, writer, producer, musician, cinematographer, and director. Most of the screenplays that I’ve written have been about humanity as it pertains to racism and the dichotomy between living freely and surviving. For reference, you can find my latest project that I wrote, exec produced, and acted in on my IGTV on instagram. I also just booked my first big-boy acting gig for a TV series, so follow me for updates on that, too!
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I’m told that I have really good luck. I think that it’s a mixture of luck, manifestation, and hard work that has granted me several great opportunities and encounters that I’ve had. For instance, the night that Donald Glover dropped “This is America” and performed it on SNL, my friend and I were there. My friend kept saying that we weren’t going to meet him, but I just had a feeling that we’d run into him. And we did. That may have been luck, but I’d also dreamed about what I would say if I ever met him. So, when I met Donald Glover, I told him that we’d work together one day, and he said, “I believe you. I said the same thing to Pharrell.”
The impact that that encounter had on my career was a crazy ripple effect. I went back home to ATL the day after and got to work. I wrote my first screenplay, and it ended up becoming a short film that’s been accepted into several film festivals. I had the honor of working on this project in a very selective film production class that Bryce Dallas Howard teaches at NYU.
Then COVID hit, and everything went upside down. But, luckily, I had this short film to add to my reel. During quarantine, I auditioned for a TV series over Zoom, then casting asked for some additional footage (and since I had great footage from my own short film in my reel, maybe that gave me a leg up) and I booked it! In short, if I hadn’t been lucky enough to meet Donald Glover when I did, I don’t know when I would’ve ended up writing the screenplay that became the short film that reflects and serves me so well as an artist. But, luck, shmuck, right? As long as you’re putting good vibrations out, they’ll return right back to you.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: instagram.com/samuelaugustin_
Image Credit:
Brigitte Norton
Tommy Chan
Suggest a story: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
