Stop Lying to Yourself: Grounding, Mustard, and the Power of I Don’t Know

This one is an episode of Mornings with Matt with Arizona actress and model Connor Malone, and the title is a loaded statement on purpose: you have to stop lying to yourself. It applies to actors in a very specific way, and it applies to everyone else in a way that’s harder to see. Let’s dig in.

What grounding means in acting

We talk about grounding constantly at the studio. It means being rooted, as yourself, before you try to be rooted as anyone else. There’s a connection that only happens when an actor is standing fully in their own body first; it’s what lets them find the roots of a character, instead of a costume for one.

Here’s a trick I use. When I’m building a character, I start with the shoes. What is this person standing on? What roots them to the floor? How does their history come up through their feet and into how they carry themselves? Start at the ground and the rest of the person tends to arrive.

Showing instead of being

On the acting side, lying to yourself has a look, and our coaches have a couple of phrases for it that came down from me: “putting mustard on it,” and playing “on top of the scene.” It’s the actor who is showing you the emotion instead of having it. Gestures that aren’t justified. Movement that’s too big. A delivery that’s a performance of a feeling rather than the feeling. The audience can always tell, even when they can’t say why. When we overact for the camera, we’re lying to ourselves about what’s happening, and we hand the character qualities that were never theirs.

Is anyone doing this on purpose? Almost never. It’s trained into us that acting means putting on a show, full of drama. But audiences want the truth, told in a way they recognize from their own lives. The best thing a scene can do for someone watching is let them make a discovery about themselves. You can’t do that with mustard.

Calling yourself out

Off the stage, we’ve all lied. Big or small, we’ve all convinced ourselves in the moment that something we know isn’t true, is. No judgment here; I have my own list. But take a minute and be willing to call yourself out on your own stuff. Some of those lies are so old, so tied to family history or circumstance, that they’ve become part of who we think we are. Finding the truth buried under them is a lot of what we coach, and it’s the same work as finding the truth in a scene.

Are you really present?

This is the big one. Raise your hand if you’ve ever been in a conversation and checked your phone or your watch in the middle of it. You didn’t mean to be rude. But you were gone, and the person across from you knew it. Somehow we’ve decided that’s acceptable. Here’s a challenge: the next meaningful conversation you have, give the other person one hundred percent of your attention. Notice how you feel afterward. And notice something else. You’ll start to see other people doing it to you.

I don’t know

The episode ends on Epictetus: “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” Say it out loud a few times and see what it means to you. To me it comes down to three words. I don’t know. There’s real power in being willing to say them, and the reason we don’t is that we want so badly to be right. Pride puts a shadow over the willingness to learn, and over the willingness to tell ourselves the truth. Push the ego aside, ask the question, and growth follows. It always does.