FROM THE MOMENT WE BOOKED AN INTERVIEW with Cassidy Freeman within five minutes, we found ourselves hunting down a ‘66 Pontiac Convertible for the cover shoot.
Because that’s what happens when you encounter someone with this much raw wattage — you start thinking about cliffs and open roads and all the beautiful trouble that comes before the drop.
At the shoot, she wore a t-shirt that said keep going like a dare. She hung a dream catcher from the rearview like a talisman against the ordinary and floored it in front of Nambe Badlands with the kind of conviction that makes you believe in movie stars again.
Because that’s what she is, even if Hollywood’s still catching up to what Santa Fe already knows: this woman’s got Dame written all over her, capital D, the Rita Hayworth kind that could make a room hold its breath and a camera fall in love.
She’s a mother, a wife, a local who’s somehow more than local — the kind of presence that reminds you stardom isn’t about geography, it’s about having that ineffable it thing, that Sarandon-before-the-canyon fearlessness.
We need more women like this, women who understand that guts and grace aren’t opposites, they’re dance partners.
Cassidy Freeman knows the steps, and she’s ready to show us all that we need to hit the gas when the director yells action, and somehow we’ll channel the next right thing. — MF
You’ve been on stage as a musician and an actor. What’s good about both and what’s bad about both?
Being on stage as a musician is very different than being on stage as an actor. As a musician, you’re on stage as yourself. There’s not as many veils. And when you’re on stage as an actor, there’s, I wouldn’t say something to hide behind, but there’s something to inhabit. You have a character, you know, you can’t be held accountable in quite the same way. And it’s not quite as vulnerable.
When you’re on stage singing, I mean, your own music or even someone else’s music, you’re out there. You’re naked and afraid. It is like, every time I do it, even to this day, it makes me want to throw up. But I do it because of that. You really are at stake, right? Without judging everything.
You grew up with music.
Yeah, I grew up playing the saxophone. Alto. My late mother was an incredible piano player, one of those people that would be like, Oh, I can’t really play. And then you’d put Chopin in front of her and she would just sight-read almost to perfection. She played the piano every day of my childhood. I knew her emotions by what she was playing. She learned all my favorite Disney songs and taught me how to sing. She was pretty hard on me about not singing flat.
My dad was obsessed with opera, still is. We always went to the opening at the Lyric. I got to be in multiple operas as a kid, so music was everywhere, right? We were surrounded by music.
After I graduated from Middlebury, I went to L.A. with my brother, and he said we need a keyboard player and you need to sing backup. And I was like, I am so very much in. So many of my days in Los Angeles early on were spent in a very small room, amidst all the weird industrial buildings on the west side of L.A., and we would just wail and play and write and sing, and it was a really cool experience.
But I don’t play sax anymore — it burned in a fire. We had a fire in Montana at one of our homes. I do play the guitar. I play the piano poorly. And sometimes I go to open mic nights here in town and play.
Have you had experiences where the music isn’t working? Nobody likes it? You’re not connecting?
Oh, God. I hope I haven’t laid eggs. But yeah, yes, of course. I’ve played gigs where there’s not enough people in the audience and it feels like you could hear a pin drop. But you do it because, you know, you’re having that experience.
What do you love about the stage?
It’s the greatest exchange of energy. It is such a thrill. It’s like you’re getting on a ride. I make that joke that the train leaves the station. But you’re getting on a ride and you get to exercise these things that you’ve been rehearsing, these skills that you’ve been crafting, maybe for decades of your life, and you get to touch on parts of your emotional self and your emotional body in front of a live audience. There’s nothing like that.
Are you that person when you’re on stage?
I don’t think you ever fully leave yourself, and I don’t know that that’s a goal. I don’t think that’s real acting. I think that’s caricature. We go and see the same plays over and over again because we want to see how that actor, what that actor brings to the role. And I think that an actor makes that role interesting because it’s them playing it. So there has to be an element of who they are.
In film, how do you maintain emotional continuity when they ask you to do scenes over and over?
Getting there isn’t usually hard for me. But it’s maintaining it. It’s maintaining it and knowing sort of when to “blow your load,” or when to have your emotion, you know, because you are on a wave of emotion, right? And this is particularly poignant for moments of high emotion. Whether it’s to keep the joy and the fun and the laughter of something or whether it’s an emotionally sad moment, you know, you can’t stay there forever. So it’s a little dance between you and the director and the camera as to capturing the peak of that. And sometimes you do, and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you miss it. Bummer. Total bummer. Sometimes you don’t get there. But I’ll tell you this: the more you rehearse, the more comfortable you are with something, I think the easier it is to find that peak and capture it.
So you grew up in Montana, or in Chicago?
I was born in Chicago. My parents, before I was born, bought a ranch in Montana. And so for my entire childhood, I spent every summer out there ranching, and I would go to school in Chicago. When I left Chicago to go to college, my parents moved to Montana full time.
Do you ride?
I grew up training. When I was eight, we hired a guy named Buck Brannaman, who went on to become one of the most famous horse trainers ever. And he was just like a 20-year-old kid when he came to our ranch. We had just gotten four new Paso Finos, which are South American horses, and he helped us break all four of them and taught me at eight years old — with a cast on my leg because I broke my foot at summer camp — how to ride, how to really, really ride.
Did you know you were going to be an actor when you grew up?
Yeah, I did. I started dancing when I was three. My mom lied and said I was five, because when I was three I was huge. And I loved being on stage. I started in Lyric Opera Chicago when I was seven or eight. I played the little kids in operas, I loved spending my time doing that. I had an agent when I was eleven. My mom and dad thought I was crazy for wanting that, but I was pretty clear.
And I tried to get away from acting in college. I went to Bolivia and lived there to study culture and language, and I ended up writing my own one-woman play in Spanish and performing it for my final project.
So you made a stab at not being an actor and failed?
Miserably failed. I surrender. I concluded it was my destiny.
What is it about acting?
For me, acting is a sense of belonging. Acting is a family. It gave me a place where you couldn’t do wrong. You didn’t do wrong if you felt deeply. You didn’t do wrong if you got emotional. You couldn’t get an F in acting. The only way you could get an F in acting is if you didn’t show up.
It was people that accepted each other for whoever they were and cheered each other on and were in the world of creativity and acceptance. I don’t think there’s a lot of other professions that have that kind of familial feeling.
You grew up as the youngest of three kids, you had a happy family, but you were kind of alone in your family?
Yeah, I mean, my family was very particular, though. My family was a well-oiled machine. Both my parents were very hardworking professional corporate litigators. My brothers were five and ten years older than I, so we were like a force to be reckoned with. But that day-to-day camaraderie, I found more in the world of acting than I did at home.
You just finished a film with the director Kristin Goodman, who we’ll be talking to soon. Should we call her and ask what question she would ask you if she were conducting this interview?
[Phone rings]
SFM: Hello, Kristen? Hi, I’m sitting here with Cassidy. This is your opportunity to ask your friend something you’d like to know the answer to.
Kristen: God, I’m on the spot. Here’s a good question: As an actress, you’re so versatile — you do comedy, drama, horror, dark comedy. Because you’re so versatile, what would be an ideal role for you in the future?
Cassidy: Kristen, I’ve always wanted to play Rita Hayworth in a biopic of Rita Hayworth, because I think she’s so fucking fascinating. The idea to play an iconic human like that, to really carry the weight of a true story would be, I think, a really cool experience. And one I haven’t really done.
Kristen: You’d be great at that just because she was so funny and so beautiful and dramatic — she could do all the things that you can do.
Cassidy: Yeah, I read her biography, and it just totally took me over. And I couldn’t believe that no one’s made that movie yet. And that she was really the first celebrity, you know, the women of her time always knew what they wanted to be and they were like Marlene Dietrich, they held this weight to them off the bat. And she was sort of this scared daughter who was forced into dancing with her dad to raise money for her family. She was made to look and seem more Caucasian and more American, whatever that means. And she became the symbol, but she was made a star through press. And no one had done that yet. And now that’s all we do. You know, it’s how many followers do you have?
Kristen: Well, you should get the rights to her book and get to work.
Cassidy: I know, right? Let’s do it. So it began here with your cameo question?
Kristen: Yes. Well, you guys have a good conversation. I’ll call you soon. Bye.
[Hangs up]
Cassidy: There she goes. I love cameos.
Do you consider Santa Fe your home?
I do.
And what constitutes home for you in that way?
It’s where I feel at peace, where I feel like I’ve returned to. I don’t have such a sense of longing when I’m here. I feel like I’ve arrived. And it’s also where I have a community and, more recently, where my kid is.
When I first came here, I did not like it. I thought it was very dry and stark. I had just finished doing a show in Vancouver, British Columbia for three years. When I shot the pilot here, I was like, ugh, but I was only here for like three days. You can’t really acclimate in three days. So when I came back to shoot Longmire, I fell in love with it immediately. And it felt like a place I couldn’t believe people were allowed to live. I kept going like, Am I really allowed to live here? It just feels magical here.
And I like living in a place where I can do a lot of things in one day. Like, I can go snowboarding and come down for lunch and then pick up my kid from school and then go get ice cream and then, you know, go for a bike ride and then go to the grocery store and go home. In L.A., you can only do two things in a day, you know, and you’re in your car.
You said something somewhere about New Mexico being more subtle than people think.
Yeah, no big acts are coming through Santa Fe, but there’s a lot of magic that gets planted and grown here, and I think a lot of people don’t see that because they don’t look past the red or green chile or the turquoise. And that’s totally fine. This is a great place to visit. It’s a great place to live, but it has to call to you.
So I’m from Chicago, right? And Chicago was a great city to grow up in. Good people. I was close to a lot of things I could do. The earth does not speak to me there. It’s flat, it’s harsh. It just doesn’t do it. It doesn’t say, “Cassidy, come, spend time in me.”
You go to Montana, and I spend half my life in Montana. That fully speaks to me, but it’s quite isolated. And there’s not a lot of opportunity for growth outside of ranching, or you have to be sort of established and wealthy and have your second home there.
I still have my place in L.A. I love going back there. I live right by the beach. It does not feel like the hustle of L.A. But L.A. is a city of people looking for something. They’re searching for something. They’re trying to make something happen. That’s an energy. There’s a yearning there. It’s really kind of cool. It’s a tsunami that you’re swept up in.
It seems like you’ve worked consistently throughout your career. Do you feel lucky?
I was raised to always be trying to do better, which I’m not sure is totally healthy, but, you know, never to really sit in the satisfaction of what is and just keep reaching. And at any moment, I know this could end. There’s no guarantee to this. And I think a really important part is just liking your life. One of the reasons I live here is liking your life outside of whether or not you book the role or whether or not the show gets received well or whether or not it’s a hit — because you don’t know when it’s going to be your last.
At any moment, too, something could just go sideways. You could run over someone’s cat. I mean, it’s just such a fickle, weird, fast-moving thing. I’m only as good as what I did yesterday. And it’s very transitory.
But I also do feel very lucky as well. I feel fortunate. I also feel like I’ve dedicated a lot of time and tried to stay open to whatever. I’ve tried to just stay open.
Do you love the work itself?
I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like I work a lot because there’s so much time, I think, between what I do and when it comes out that what people are seeing is always like a year behind of what I’m living. Which is a funny thing.
And I think, look, I’m not in a place in my career where I’m turning down offers left and right, but I do value my time working. It ignites me in a way that still feels the same as when I was 20 years old.
From the outside, your life looks smooth and successful. Is that accurate?
No, I lost my mom when I was 30, and that was really, really hard. And I took care of her when she was sick, along with my brother and my sister-in-law and my dad, and it was — you know, I think I had, at the time, what were considered older parents, because I was the youngest. I know people lose their parents at every age, but it’s more common to lose your parents when you’re older. That was really hard.
You know, I think all of us have had love and lost love, and those make little scars on our heart in certain ways and make us a certain way. I think from the outside, things can look one way or another, but everyone struggles, everyone grieves. And grief doesn’t end.
I also think there’s this idea of looking for problems to solve before they happen. Does my kid have the right clothing for ballet class on Wednesday? Because it’s Monday and I just have to make sure. I’m scanning the room, that’s my constant struggle.
Someone might call that anxiety.
Someone could. I think it’s partly biology, you know, and I think some of it is the roles that we’ve been modeled and told to play in society. I mean, we are really not that far from hunter-gatherers. Men’s job was to go out and kill that mammoth and bring the thing home, because they were stronger, period. That was their job, okay?
And the survival of the species was in the hands of women who had to take care of the food, the children, the elders, the homes… everything. As a result, women are better at it. I think we’re born with different abilities, and overfunctioning is a result of women feeling like they have to do more things at once.
This seems like a good time in your life. Are you happy?
Yes. I mean, are you happy? I think motherhood changes you inexplicably sometimes, because it’s such a unique experience. And I don’t think you have to birth a child to be a mother. My partner had a kid when I met him, and I got the chance to be her stepmom for years. And then to have my own biological child is like, absolutely fucking bonkers. Like, it just rips you apart. And I think half of motherhood is how are you able to sew yourself back together again? Literally and metaphorically.
I’m not a supporter of the bounce back and the get back to who you are. You will never be the same. And frankly, I don’t want to be. I love the person I was before I had a kid. I love her, I cherish her, I cheer her on. She had many years to live a beautiful life, and now I’m interested in who this person is.
My kid’s only three, so I’m still in the all-consuming phase. And when I work, it’s like fire when I get to work. It’s so much fun. And I’m not sitting on set going, I miss my kid, or I wish I was somewhere else. I don’t. I’m so glad I’m there, and I’m so grateful that I have a support system who’s having fun with my kid while I’m there. And also, I love the days when I just get to go — we have no plans. And I get to hang out with my kid all day. It’s such a beauty. I feel very abundant. I am happy. I’m in a place of abundance right now. It’s rad.
You know, when I’m actually acting — when they’ve said action or the play has begun — it almost feels like channeling. That sounds weird, but it just feels like I’m not even really in control. It’s like the greatest surrender. It’s the coolest thing. It’s flow, right?
That moment when everything works, when every fucking thing works. And everybody knows it’s working. The air changes. And everybody knows when you’re on — it’s this moment that’s like this trip you take people on. It’s like drugs. At the end, you say, Well, did we do that?