Sue Ann Pien has not only taken Hollywood by storm but has also used her platform to raise awareness and advocate for a greater understanding of autism and LGBTQ rights. From receiving awards and nominations for her mesmerizing performance in the groundbreaking series “As We See It” to directing “Down By the Water” by The Secret Things, she continuously demonstrates her ability to transcend the boundaries of storytelling. Beyond the screen, Sue Ann Pien has actively partnered with various organizations, directing the spotlight toward crucial topics such as sexual assault and environmental concerns. To learn more about this dazzling actress, continue reading.

Where are you based?
Los Angeles

What inspired you to pursue acting?
I started acting at a young age to “mask” my autism - something women on the spectrum are now known to do. I learned to watch and mimic the “alpha” females in school, or on TV and movies — copying their mannerisms to a tee. This tactic allowed me to stay under the radar in social settings where if I wasn’t actively acting or “masking”, I would get bullied. Girls used to talk about me as if I didn’t exist when I was in grade school, and I didn’t understand why they saw me as “non-human”, or just steal my new Hello Kitty items in bad trades where I got some piece of trash and they just took my new stuff. I felt like there must’ve been something wrong with me, that people treated me so awfully, and sometimes that misunderstanding happened within my family so I didn’t have any more safe people or places to turn to besides hiding who I really am from the world. Acting was a shield to the outside that gave me safety, access, and a sense of “belonging”, even when superficial since I was very different when I didn’t actively put on a portrayal for society’s sake - happy to stay mute for long periods of times, having intensive interests I knew would be seen as “not cool” or abnormal, or behaviors that made others feel awkward (listening to the same song on repeat for many hours at a time as a calming tool). Acting was also very fun, cause I saw how it changed the way other people reacted to me and suddenly I had power over the world around me. I learned the right behaviors, physicality, speech intonations, and dress would open up social worlds that would otherwise be inaccessible for someone like myself, and it became a primary obsessions to “nail the persona” I needed for whatever experience in life I wanted to have!

Your portrayal of your role in “As We See It” has been widely praised. How did you approach the character and was there a specific technique you used to get into character?
In deference to my union and the WGA strike, I can only respond about my own process as an actor and what’s been exciting in it. Much of the deeper emotional places I get to with my characters come from at times a mix of highly imaginative “what ifs” to my own personal experiences, or what the other actor is giving me — there is no go to in acting because what can work for one day, may not be useful in another scene, but it’s still the actor’s job to find the most realistic expression given their tools and surroundings (their own body, voice, movement, thoughts, and emotions, and the outside set, other actors, dialogue, action around them).

Can you share with us some of the emotions and thoughts that ran through your mind when you first learned about your nomination?
My dreams have come true in so many ways as an actor, and I really have the incredible history of actors who came before me, and specifically my union to thank for where I am today — from my first SAG job in 2004, to everything that’s happened in the last years of my career, it was the bread and butter of residuals that got me through the lean times, health insurance that paid for my autism specialist therapist for years to overcome significant mental health challenges of navigating the world without any support in my younger years for my neurodiversity, and a pension plan that’s waiting for me when I am ready to retire. Without the previous strikes I would have none of these benefits that nurtured my growth as a union actress and I am proud to stand alongside other actors to provide a better future for the next generation coming decades down the line like I got to benefit from the 60s and 80s strikes.

LGBTQ representation has been a topic of discussion in Hollywood. How do you think your nomination can contribute to greater visibility and understanding of LGBTQ individuals in the entertainment industry?
Media has the ability to influence what the world finds acceptable, humanize marginalized groups, and bring empathy towards people we don’t normally feel compassionately towards. I think my humanity needs to be seen as first and foremost deserving of respect, kindness, and safety, and then the other features of what I am (autistic, Asian, LGBTQ-identifying) are just different colors of what type of human I am — no more, no less, and no different. Do we look at a Chihuahua as less deserving of love, comfort, and food, than a German Shepherd just because its traits, behaviors, and external qualities are so different? No, we don’t. Humans are humans, no matter how we choose to dress, express, or show our sexuality towards, and if society has an issue with this, I would say it’s a societal problem to not be expansive and inclusive enough to cover basic respect for ALL of our human variations and differences or disabilities, etc.

You also do the voice for June Chen on The Ghost and Molly McGee. What is it like working on this super cute show?
I LOVE DISNEY. I’ve been specifically told by my union I am allowed to speak on the non-struck Disney show, “The Ghost and Molly McGee” and I have to say it’s freaking amazing to be a Disney character because I watched Disney cartoons on repeat, memorizing all of the dialogue and songs from a young age. I go to Disneyland religiously, and hope I’m not breaking strike rules saying that. The creators are beautiful humans who really care about the characters they’ve made, and “June Chen” was one they really wanted to nail as the third autistic character in Disney canon — she’s a young ghost-hunting neighbor to Molly and her adventures with her ghost-hunting family are super hilarious and fun to watch and of course, to voice!

We love how you utilize your platform to advocate and work with various organizations. Autism is a very important issue for you. Can you tell us a bit about your work with Easterseals, Ed Asner Family Center, Zeno Mountain Farm, and The Miracle Project? Why are these organizations so important to you?
I’m so lucky to have an incredibly wide network of caring people and communities who look after me now — something I didn’t even know I was missing. It’s a true sense of belonging and fitting in without needing to try so hard, and It’s been really fun just being included in all the events and social activities that serve a wonderful cause!

Easterseals has been an incredible powerhouse including me in their SXSW panel, nominating me for Film Independent’s New Wave Artists, and bringing me on as a presenter for their Disabilities Film Festival — they’re also partnering up with us on my directorial debut on my very first short film based on a young autistic actress’ life in Hollywood (written and starring Bella Zoe Martinez). I do lots of fun fundraising events with Ed Asner Family Center (including a table read for “It’s A Wonderful Life” with Brendan Fraser, Jean Smart, J.K. Simmons, Christina Applegate, Ken Jeong, and more — there were like, over 70 awards won from the cast only at that table read) and the Poker Tournament.

Zeno Mountain Farm was my first experience joining a community of people with and without disabilities, because my best friend Vanessa Nigro Halby brought me into that family when she married Will Halby in our 20s. I loved being part of a greater social group where everyone was treated with equal care and nobody’s abilities or disabilities made them “different” or unable to participate in life in a way they wanted to (Actors Camp, Sports Camp, etc.). And finally, The Miracle Project is such a beautiful creation of my good friend Elaine Hall’s love for not only her own son on the spectrum (read her book “Now I See the Moon: A Mother, A Son, A Miracle” based on Neal, her adopted autistic son) but for all the children and adults she’s dreamed of working with to nurture, guide, and champion in the fullest way possible using what she loves to do best — acting!

Can you tell us a bit about your fascination with space and what drew you to work with some non-profits like Mars One?
My dad was an aerospace engineer, and his uncle was a chief rocket design consultant, so I was born into a family of space nerds. From a young age, my rocket scientist dad discussed the implications of black holes, time and gravity anomalies, and deep space exploration while watching Star Trek and the like religiously. I was born with his love of space in me because from as young as I could remember, I didn’t understand why the world would use all of our technical capabilities to pursue war and destruction amongst ourselves, rather than unite and explore the great vast beyond above us — this was such a logical next step for humanity’s expansion. So, when I first heard about Mars One, the non-profit endeavor to create the first human colony on Mars with a one-way trip, that fit was a no-brainer to my own obsession with space.

Can you tell us about your environmental initiative, TheLivingLibraryProject.com?
Many people think the environment and space exploration are mutually exclusive fields and can even become antagonistic, insisting on putting all of our resources into just one or the other. I see a collaborative path between preservation of our planet’s ecological beauty and the simultaneous cultivation of ourselves as an off-planet civilization. The Living Library Project was the environmental vision I dreamt of to move side-by-side my Mars One candidacy because of my special love for animals and nature — that we can leave the entire Earth as a preserve, or a “living library” of never before and probably never will be seen life forms for our off-planet generations to visit and enjoy as we move beyond our home planet, or our “blue origin”. Yes, I know what I just referenced on purpose.

Recently you have been speaking at schools trying to prevent sexual assault through The Representation Project. Can you tell us a little bit about this and what the response has been like?
I was speaking at schools through my friend Kim O’ Hara who has published books like “No Longer Denying Sexual Abuse” detailing how she has healed and moved through her own dark journey as an incest survivor to hold the hands of other sexual abuse survivors bring their own abuses into the light. Along with the work that The Representation Project does to actively speak about rape, change rape culture on campuses, and make laws friendlier for sexual assault survivors to put repeat predators and rapists away, which is spearheaded by Dr. Caroline Heldman and founded by Jennifer Siebel Newsom (both of whom are sexual assault survivors themselves).

As a survivor myself, I know there was a lot of pressure to keep silent about what I experienced as a child, which led to more sexual trauma as an adult — especially as a young woman on the autism spectrum and the naivety I had navigating a world where nobody cared about my best interests. There is so much we can do to empower young men and women and let them know they are not alone, do not need to hide their abuses, and that there is fellowship and community that can help them overcome the isolating effects of sexual assault that lead many down paths of addiction or destruction. It is not only women who experience this burden of silence, but so many men have come out to me needing a true friend to hear and care for them as they revealed their own traumatic, and sometimes violent rapes. It’s an epidemic of sorts that our generation can finally heal from, and show the world that we don’t have to just silently suffer or turn away from in the way the older generations did. We can change the world and make it safer and more revealed by opening up discussion about this in public spaces, like schools.

LGBTQ+ right is also a very important topic for you. You actually collaborated with It Gets Better by directing “Down By the Water” by The Secret Things. What was it like directing and working on this project?
This was such a vibrant and fun experience — one where every piece just made sense and came together in wonderful orchestration from some power greater than myself. Directing and filmmaking is a vehicle of social change, and at the time, there were no safeties in place for transgendered people yet. I was deeply moved and saddened seeing a young transgender woman badly beaten in a restroom, and always wanted to do something to make the world safer for this community. We were lucky to have renowned street artist Shepard Fairey donate prints to auction for It Gets Better and various non-profits that protected trans people as well as have my friend Emmy Olea who acted in and directed the “transformation” moment in the music video lending her own experiences to what it was like and how comfortable it felt when she first put lipstick on as a trans woman!

Finally, you work with a traveling theater group for kids called, We Tell Stories. Can you tell us a bit about this organization and your work with them?
I love veteran actors who have stayed pure and joyful in their craft, no matter what success comes or goes, and Carl Weintraub, the founder of We Tell Stories non-profit is one of those actors. I first saw him perform onstage at the Odyssey in a Sam Shepard play, and just knew, no matter what he was doing, I wanted a chance to act with him! When a mutual friend of ours, Armando Ortega, had a stroke and took him out of performing any more We Tell Stories shows, I leapt at the chance and have been doing it ever since. It’s been a beautiful way for me to jump on stage, play with kids, do what I love to do with people I respect and admire, and be part of a traveling troupe which has always been a dream of mine without worrying about the other less fun parts of acting as a business with all its egos and challenges of navigating Hollywood politics — just act, goddamn it! And you better be entertaining, because kids will let you know if you suck.

What advice do you have for other LGBTQ individuals with autism who may be pursuing a career in the entertainment industry?
People should know neurodiversity is a driving factor in being LGBTQ-identified (especially in transgendered people), so whatever biological reasons that causes these variations in gender expression or sexual diversity, or if it’s simply unveiling that gender is a social construct and not a biological imperative (something autistic people would definitely be less able or careful about adhering to, because social cues are where the ball gets dropped with many people on the spectrum), that art and filmmaking is a space to let the world know you exist, your specific worldview based on your own lived experiences matters, and when you create something others in the world can relate to, feel less lonely after watching, or even question themselves and their own worldview about, then entertainment is where you belong. It really is a weapon of mass construction, as one of my favorite documentary filmmakers said (Louie Psyhoyos). Just make what you love and care about, and the right people will come knocking on your doors. Your people will find you and will be so excited to create amazing films and works of art with you, but don’t be afraid to broadcast out who you are and what you’re driven by!

The film industry is often seen as a platform for raising awareness and promoting understanding. Do you have any hopes for the future of the industry?
I love films and television and the world of visual imageries come alive — of people and characters, and dramas, and comedies. I learn so much about the world by watching the art we make, and now I get a chance to make the art that the world is watching. I get to affect the world with my viewpoints and ideas, and mirror back what I think finally, when for years I was taking it in to understand what kind of world am I living in, who are these people I share my life with, and what do they care about, dream about, fear — so in a way, I am speaking back to them now, in visuals. I think the industry will be fine, it will grow, adjust, change, and get back to what it does best — which is showing the world what future is possible, what futures we don’t want, what our past was, how it could all be different, and how much more we have left to dream for ourselves.

How do you think the rise of AI will impact representation in the entertainment industry?
It’s a deeper question for me that questions the capitalist system we still operate in. Is it still viable, suitable, and ideal, especially as we venture off-planet. Can you imagine needing money on Mars — that makes no sense in a colony of 12. What type of society would be able to withstand off-planet colonization and space travel — that is what I have used my Mars One candidacy to really speak about, because people can’t suspend their attachment to the status quo long enough to imagine a different, much better civilization unless you say it’s just a fiction (like a movie or series), or you lead them there by asking why would money be necessary on a colony on Mars, the Moon, or Europa and be more important than the human resources creating the social structure? It’s like we turned everything backwards here, when we forgot, we created everything to serve us, but now, we’re serving a system that no longer serves our greatest needs yet we keep doing what we’re used to for its own sake — a bit insane, to be honest. Which is why you need autistic minds to tell you — “Hey, stop. This is now useless. Can we try something new that works better instead?”

Then they can start questioning the socioeconomic structure that isn’t working for the vast majority of people, the environment, the animals going extinct — this structure we’re still operating out of created in the 1700s when people sailed around on wooden ships, and vast resources of woodlands were still available before the Industrial Revolution. We have the technology today to create a higher standard of living for every single human being better than the wealthiest person alive has today, yet we are not incentivized to do so, because… it’s not profitable to provide free healthcare. To create objects that don’t break every year (planned obsolescence) so you have to buy a new one that creates excess plastic and waste in an already overtaxed population where some of us have more than we can ever need or want and waste, while others have not enough and starve to death. It’s clear and obvious to me what is not working and where we have misplaced our values and allegiance, but to challenge these established structures can be daunting, and so the one place I can freely go into this is either the fiction filmmaking world, or through my Mars One candidacy without immediately creating pushback because my goal is not to be right, or force what I see on others, or fight the system, or whatever, my goal is to create the greatest good that will serve the whole and there are ways to do so that does not have to push against an old system that no longer works for the world we live in.

AI needs to be and will be used, but in ways that will be above and beyond our wildest dreams and I’m not talking about its application in the entertainment industry to replace actors or writers — you can never replace lived, human, experience, no matter how much you try: we have soul, we have love, we have grief. Tears. No robot will know what that feels like. To give birth, to love a child, to lose a parent. No machine will ever come close to replacing the humanity that drives our industry. But it can replace the menial jobs, bring us into space, dive into depths to explore, to facilitate the creation of a new world beyond capitalism (like Jacque Fresco’s The Venus Project). This may be easier explained in a film or documentary down the road, where we show the practical application of AI to change our world for the better and not to disenfranchise already struggling workers in an outdated system who are barely fighting for their share of enough resources to survive, like the animals and other plant life on our planet are trying to do.

You have worked in various films. What was the most essential lesson you learned on set?
Teamwork makes the dream work! There’s no lone player — it is so collaborative, and so essential that all moving elements come together that when everyone adds their unique talents and skills to serve the final vision, that is what makes everything come alive. Without words, the actors would have nothing to say. Without lighting and cameras, the audience would have nothing to watch. Without directors, there would be no one holding the vision and guiding every moving part to stay true to that final vision. Without producers, how can all the parts come together and stay organized? Makeup, Hair, Assistants, etc. every little bee has a place in the hive that keeps us all alive!

Are there any upcoming projects you would like to share?
In a way, I’ve been fortunate there’s a strike because this directing opportunity has come along. Most of the people working on this short film we’re shooting in the beginning of October would not be available otherwise! “Once More, Like Rain Man” is being produced by Oscar-nominated The Florida Project’s producer Darren Dean and the President of Beacon Pictures Suzann Ellis (a personal project as an individual), and the mentorship and guidance I’ve had directing my first short film is like getting a crash course in filmmaking with the best of the best in the industry! We have a ton of crew from the last show I worked on who are bringing their decades of expertise onboard and I’m learning how to work with department heads, run a set, go through casting with my producers, and just translate what I’ve been doing for years on my own into a bona fide film that will speak to audiences everywhere and especially in our industry…

It has been a crazy past few years, how have you been staying positive?
I have a solid work-life balance, a spiritual and meditative practice that is necessary, and lots of good people around me to remind me of what matters most. Hiking with Dogs. Traveling with my wife, Cynthia. Cooking something yummy. Rock climbing — a lot. And taking it all a day at a time.

What is your motto in life?
If something’s meant to happen, it will. And if it’s not, nothing I do can make it any different. Acceptance of life on life’s terms is the answer.

To learn more about Sue Ann Pien, please follow the links below:
“Once More, Like Rain Man”
Instagram: @sueannpien

Team Credits:
Photographer: John M. Williams
Stylist: Ton Aguilar
Hair Stylist: Sophia Porter
Make up Artist: Aaron Barry
Location: @thewherehousela

COVER - Sue Ann Pien - Seeing Through The Veil