Today we’d like to introduce you to Bethany Watson.
Bethany, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I grew up doing theatre and improv and, unsurprisingly, majored in Theatre Arts at the University of Minnesota. But as life often does, things didn’t go perfectly as planned! Instead of being able to dive into auditioning post-college, I sustained a back injury and wasn’t able to keep my flexible-hours service industry job at Starbucks. Instead, I ended up working a corporate job at a bank in downtown Minneapolis where I was able to sit all day but (as anyone working a corporate job knows) schedule flexibility isn’t their forte.
After two years at the bank, I was miserable. I knew I was a performer but I couldn’t get the time to perform. But again, as life often does, there was a perfectly-timed curveball headed my way. My favorite morning radio show was The Dave Ryan in the Morning Show on 101.3 KDWB. I’d listened to Dave since moving to Minneapolis for college and he felt like a friend I already knew!
The morning show was looking for a new female co-host and I took the chance. I didn’t have any radio experience and had even missed the “here’s what a radio job looks like” day in my Career Prep class at the U of M. But I sent in my headshot and acting resume along with a note: Give me one shot and I’ll show you I can do this. And they did! I ended up working on the morning show for 4 years under the name “Lena Svenson” (a joking nod to my 100% Norwegian heritage). My time at KDWB and the chemistry I had with Dave, Steve LaTart, “Intern” John Cerrito, and Crisco was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced since, and I look back on it like it was magic.
I then worked in New York at the famed Z100 radio for another morning show hosted by the legendary Elvis Duran. Their producer, David Brody, had let me know they were looking for a new co-host and I’m so grateful he encouraged me to apply because I thought I was done with radio. I’ve never felt more like a small fish in a big pond than when I started working there. I will never stop being the naive girl from Wisconsin and I felt like this huge world was swirling around me as I stared at it all with huge saucer eyes and just tried to keep up. But Elvis let me lean into being the “Holy cow, New York is crazy and I used the subway for the first time today and it’s so weird that you guys fold your pizza” person on the show, which immediately gave me a comfortable place in the cast dynamics.
After five years at Z100, I felt like I’d been putting my goals on the back burner for long enough and I needed to take the big, scary jump. I left the morning show to pursue my original dreams of acting and creating film and tv projects. But once again, life did its thing: after getting back into auditioning and getting great feedback from casting directors, Covid hit. The entire entertainment industry shut down and any progress I’d made was pushed back as shows halted production. That’s when my boyfriend and I decided to do what we could with just the two of us.
My boyfriend, Dennis Cahlo, is a filmmaker and photographer. He has an entire production company in our home, so we’ve been able to produce short films with either a small crew (our horror-comedy short “Lonely Hearts”) or no crew except the two of us (the horror short “Doors,” our Covid film). And now that things are moving again – and we moved to Upstate New York where we have space – we’re full speed ahead on pitching shows, writing films, and collaborating with other artists to get our work made.
We just shot a project helmed by our friends Scarlet Moreno, Daniel Degnan, and Josh Stifter called “Little Lucha and the Big Deal” in St. Paul and St. Cloud, and we plan on collaborating with them again on a vampire project hopefully next year. If Covid taught us anything, it’s that you have to be self-reliant when it comes to creating work. If you can work with other people or you get hired for someone else’s job, amazing! That’s the goal! But I’m no longer waiting for permission to do what I love.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
One of my biggest struggles has been learning to manage my health. I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety since I was little, and it took me far too long to understand how carefully you have to manage your brain when life gets busy. My jobs at KDWB and Z100 were both busy and fast-paced, and I ended up having major mental health crashes during both of them. I was able to keep working but I wasn’t at my best, and I never learned how to do the fast-paced lifestyle while also finding ways to carve out space for my mental health support. It’s something I still struggle with.
Covid was another huge hurdle. Agents and managers weren’t taking on new clients because they couldn’t find work for their existing clients, and not knowing how long quarantine would last was scary. We all have our own Covid + work stories. It was an incredibly stressful time for everyone, obviously, and I feel like we’re only now starting to come out of it.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m an actor, producer, and podcaster. When it comes to my stuff, I now mostly work in the horror genre because I’ve always been a bit of a spooky kid at heart. (In 2nd grade, I wrote a story about a girl who is playing a game in a cemetery and gets murdered by a group of ghosts. My teacher gave me an A).
Looking back, I’m the most proud of “Lonely Hearts.” Dennis and I poured our hearts into it (no pun intended) and infused it with so many of our favorite influences. My character Celeste is a Hitchcock blonde, there are homages to David Bowie and Italian Giallo films, and my two beloved cats are even in it!
I got to play a woman who is incredibly weird and isolated, but there’s a moment in the movie where she just puts her heart and fears out in the open and holds her breath to see how it’s received, and that was such a fun moment to play. I think so many of us have experienced that feeling of “terrified but hopeful” and I love how it turned out. Plus the film has so many funny moments; I just really love that little movie.
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
I mean, the most basic lesson I learned was to wash my hands way more than I was!
But this was the first moment in my life where I realized that I didn’t have full control over how my life would go.
Sometimes the outside world puts a giant roadblock in your life that no amount of positive thinking can get around: it’s very real and very solid, and all you can do is learn to live with it. It’s a terrifying moment that I think every generation experiences in one way or another. Covid-19 was mine.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bethanywatson.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msbethanywatson/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethanywatsonactress/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/RadioBethany
Image Credits
Dennis Cahlo (2023)
