VISUAL TALES: Hi Motell. Thanks for doing our shoot and this interview. How did the love of acting came to you?
MOTELL FOSTER: The thing that prompted my deep desire for acting is Barney. Like, the purple dinosaur. Around kindergarten, I got expelled from school. Don’t ask why, I'm a changed man now. Anyways, I ended up watching a lot of PBS. So, a lot of Barney and Sesame Street. I remember being so drawn to the idea that all these people on this screen — kids my age — had sort of collectively agreed that this plush purple dinosaur man and his equally odd plush friends were all real. I remember thinking: “they know there’s like just an adult man in that suit…” — but for some reason they didn’t care, they wanted to believe in possibility of it. It made me want to believe. It made me want to jump in the screen and buy into the myth with them. I've always loved the act of agreeing to collectively believe in something beautiful and move towards it, even if we’re maybe just fooling ourselves. Even if it's just momentary fantasy. I guess that's when I started to think about acting. That's the kernel that this career has grown from. 

VT: Do you recall the moment you realized “Acting and Performing” is what you want to do? 
MF: Hmmmm. Maybe it was church. I'm agnostic now, but I spent elementary school going to a poor black southern church, the kind off of a red dirt road. I remember how enraptured, pun intended, I was with the preachers retelling of biblical stories. How he would cry while retelling Job’s story. How we saw Job in him. Although it wasn't a full scaled portrayal, It keyed me into the power of assuming someone else’s experience in front of a crowd. I saw glimpses of what can happen when you truly try to speak and feel from another’s perspective. The time in that church was a subconscious nudge that was furthered when I started to actually watch live action content things and read more. I think I knew for certain that I wanted to do it after watching Titanic or Star Wars and maybe reading Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. 

VT: For our viewers who might not know how an actor lands a role in a given project, share with us what the process is like? How do you mentally prepare yourself? Is there a specific audition you distinctly remember?
MF: Oh, the process is truly role / content dependent. Sometimes you already have everything you need either because your channel is open or because it's just such a great fit, in that case the trick is just getting out of your own way and doing the proper scene analysis. Sometimes you do your analysis and realize you have to find ways to catalyze yourself to discover moment by moment honesty in the scenes. I tend to lean on my imagination and curiosity. In an audition context you usually don't have a lot of time, so I tend to jump in as soon as I can intentionally do so. Honestly, it's a lot of fumbling in the dark for a light switch…and even then, it only turns on a very small segment of the character. In an audition, my goal is usually to have a few lights turned on inside the house of the character. As I said before, sometimes they are already on. I had an audition for this film La Cocina and it was a 10 minute monologue. This is HIGHLY unusual. HIGHLY!! Even more unusual, they gave me a day to prep it. A FUCKING DAY!!! But, somehow, I was already in an emotional / physical / spiritual place akin to the character so there wasn't much work to do beyond taking in the text. Many of the lights were already on. Got the role! 

VT: What’s the easiest and hardest part of being an actor?
MF: Easiest: In some ways, I will never have to grow up. My job is to play. It may look challenging at times, but at the end of the day it’s just play. Hardest: The uncertainty that, despite your love and sacrifices, you'll ever make a living. 

VT: We will get to your latest film project you mentioned momentarily. What do you look for in a role? Of all the past roles you have the opportunity to play, which one is your personal favorite and most memorable?
MF: Although I left Drama School in 2017, I truly feel like I'm just getting started. Especially with all the industry pauses these past few years. With that being said, and saving the latest project for later, the role I look back on most fondly is maybe a role I played in Drama school. A non-professional one. It was Herald Loomis from Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson. Herald Loomis is a displaced man recently released from the snares of the deeply racist convict leasing system, during the 1910’s. He's searching for his wife who's moved on during the seven years he was locked up. He's also searching for his voice. I saw my family, my father, in him. I grew up separated from my family so I tend to view any characters that remind me of them, especially my father, as opportunities to understand them better…to maybe learn who they were. To feel them. Or, at least, a chance to capture little fragments of their personhood. August Wilson always does this for me. In some ways, I feel reunified with my family when I'm in one of his universes. I guess, more generally speaking, that’s a core element that draws me to roles — if it makes me feel unified with human experience. If it makes me, or someone, feel less isolated. Additionally, I like extremes.  

VT: You recently made a trip to BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL to promote your latest film project, Alonso Ruizpalacios’ directed film, LA COCINA. What was that trip and making the movie like? The character you portray is Nonz. Tell us about him.
MF: Ohhhh, yay! I love talking about Alonso and La Cocina. First off, Berlinale was unlike anything I’ve experienced before. So fancy. It was beautiful to watch the film with so many of the artists involved and to see an audience take it in. I felt like we were celebrating the birth of our child. I've had things at festivals before but this was the first time I felt strongly inclined to go. It's because of Alonso and the experience we all had making it. I spent 3 and a half months on the film in Mexico city. The first 4 weeks were spent doing culinary school during the day and long form improvs — talking 6 HOURS — from afternoon into late evening. We didn't really rehearse. They built a wooden replica of the set, a kitchen, on a theater stage and we'd come in as our costumed characters and begin our “work shift”. I don't want to reveal Alonso’s secret techniques, but all that improv time together created a space where the relationships organically formed. By the time we began actually filming in the studio, we were already deeply in flow with one another. Alliances had formed. Culture had formed. Nonz is the pastry chef. He's sort of the bass note of the story. It’s a massively frenetic and unnerving film, Nonz serves as maybe one of the only grounding presences in the world of the story. He doesn't speak unless it improves upon silence. He had moments in the film that I'm so deeply honored to have facilitated. Moments I’ve dreamed of having as an actor. The film itself looks at how the American dream does, or doesn't, exist in the kitchen of your typical fast paced slightly high class tourist trap restaurant. It looks specifically at the staff, mostly immigrants. It's a blistering piece about a workforce that often is invisible.