Ariana DeBose is grateful for her “moment in the sun” in 2022, including an Oscar win for West Side Story. But her life-changing year came with a new set of challenges — and “no handbook.”
In the new horror-thriller House of Spoils, DeBose plays an ambitious chef who has to overcome crushing insecurities — and a haunting spirit — to open her dream restaurant on a remote estate in New York. The actress said she relates to her character in the sense that she, too, has had to battle self-doubts to live her dream. (Minus the threatening ghost.)
“There’ve been many times that I haven’t felt seen. I would say that that would’ve been applicable before my moment in the sun that I’m very grateful for,” DeBose told Yahoo Entertainment. “But even post all that, striving to be seen for more than just the girl who won awards for West Side Story. That’s had its own challenges.”
DeBose won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 2022 for her role in Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of the musical. She essentially swept the awards season that year, taking home a Golden Globe and a SAG Award, among others in the same category.
“Sometimes I do have moments of self-doubt where I’m like, ‘God, can I act without these other two elements? Do I have value?’ And I think sometimes the industry is very good at making you question [that] for various reasons,” she continued. “But at the end of the day … this is still the thing that makes me happy. It’s the thing that I feel like I do best in all of its facets and forms. And I’m going to keep pushing through to be able to do that for as long as it makes me happy and brings me joy. The day that ends is the day that I will not do it anymore.”
DeBose said it’s taken two-and-a-half years for her to be comfortable with everything that came with her big win.
“I’m really grateful. I’m really grateful. But also, let’s not confuse gratitude with hard work,” she said. “That moment did not come without hard work. And while I think that was sort of my introduction, especially critically to the entertainment industry in film, I had worked for 10 years in a different facet of the entertainment industry. So to have that moment, I remain very grateful for it. But I also can acknowledge that there was no handbook for how to deal or process it.”
DeBose continued, “Some people say, ‘You must be a really good actress because you seem very confident and totally fine.’ It’s my job to still go out into the world and promote the projects that I’m very grateful to have been a part of, but that does not mean that it’s always easy. Let’s just be real, it’s not always easy.”
DeBose believes, as with pop star Chappell Roan, that it’s important to prioritize self-care amid the pressures of fame.
“Again, I love what I do and I work really hard to be able to continue to do it. And that means you’ve got to take care of yourself and sometimes you’ve got to sit down and rest or not leave your house. Sometimes you have to say no,” she said. “So my focus now is how do I move forward intentionally and doing what I love my way.”
Right now, DeBose is choosing projects that make her happy, like House of Spoils, even though she’s “not a horror devotee.”
“I was not looking for this. It was not necessarily a bucket list genre, but man, I’m really glad I did it. I learned a lot from this experience,” she explained. “There’s a real technique to how you build suspense and anticipation and it takes some thought. To be perfectly frank, I hadn’t really put two and two together. So I had a real learning curve in the making of this film in more ways than one.”
House of Spoils premieres on Prime Video Oct. 3
