I Left Acting for a Decade—Here's Why I Came Back

Erika sits back down with actress and writer Samantha Shea — and from the first minute, it's clear this is a conversation that's been a long time coming.Samantha first caught the acting bug through her mom's storytelling and early theater experiences, finding in performance something that built real confidence and gave her a way to process the world. She trained and worked through her teens and early twenties — and then, like so many creatives, life intervened. A decade passed.Now she's back. And she's not pretending it was easy.In this episode, Samantha gets honest about what returning actually felt like — the doubt, the imposter syndrome, the question of whether she still belonged. She talks about rediscovering the magic of being on set, the found-family energy that makes film work unlike anything else, and how working on projects like the horror short The Locked Room, the trauma drama Broken Redemption, and the raw, unscripted Circle of Stories has helped her redefine what this career means to her.