Inspirational Women In Hollywood: How Kira Reed Lorsch of RHL Group Is Helping To Shake Up The Entertainment Industry
An Interview With Elana Cohen
Do what you love with passion and perseverance. Enjoy the journey. Have patience. Your timing may not align with the big picture of how your success is meant to unfold. Don’t be too focused on end results. It’s good to have goals and celebrate when you reach them. However, it’s not a straight line to the top. Often, we don’t get the part, don’t get the accolade or award, don’t have the career that we envisioned for ourselves. But if you are afraid to start, to put yourself out there, one foot in front of another, you will never even have a chance of success. Just go for it!
As a part of our series about Inspirational Women In Hollywood, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Kira Reed Lorsch.
Kira Reed Lorsch is an actress, Emmy® winner and PGA producer who has worked in front of and behind the camera for over twenty years. After graduating UCLA’s School of Theatre, Film and Television, she has enjoyed a prolific on-camera career including acting in feature films and network television, reporting and producing cable news magazine shows, and executive producing indie film and TV. She stars on the The Bay as vixen “Jo Connors”, now streaming on Peacock, for which she received a Daytime Emmy acting nomination. Her new drama series Rumors has won Kira multiple “Best Actress” awards for her portrayal of acting teacher “Ellen”. Kira’s latest feature films are Acts of Desperation, Beckman (Universal/Pure Flix/RHL), Amityville Witches, and Love on the Rock (Sony/Pinnacle Peak) filmed in Malta during the pandemic. Kira spends her time giving back to numerous charitable organizations through the Robert H. Lorsch Foundation. Her best-selling book SCORE: How to Win the Girl of Your Dreams is available in bookstores, Amazon and Kindle. Kira is President of the production company The RHL Group, Inc. and is a member of SAG-AFTRA, AEA, PGA, ATAS, NATAS, WIF and WIFTA. She has served on the Board of Trustees of California Science Center and as President of The Thalians Hollywood for Mental Health. Kira is Los Angeles, CA and Atlanta, GA based.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?
I grew up in Northern California. At the age of four, I remember asking my mom, “How do I get inside the television?” I wanted to be on Romper Room a children’s series I watched on TV. My mother made my dreams a reality when she got me an audition for the show I was cast as a featured kid. After that, when my family moved to Louisville KY, I went to the Youth Performing Arts School and I did their plays, local catalog modeling, TV commercials, and whatever was available, before landing a scholarship to UCLA School of Theatre Film and Television as my ticket back to California and a shot at Hollywood.
Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?
While attending UCLA I started getting small TV and film roles. One of the castings I went on was for Playboy where I was hired my first major role in a movie called Maui Heat as the make-up artist to the swimsuit models. The editor of that film showed my footage to Zalman King who cast me in his Red Shoe Diaries series. Playboy reached out and cast me in several of their Mystique Films’ erotic thrillers including Secrets of a Chambermaid, Losing Control and The Price of Desire. I went from college co-ed to sexy starlet in what seemed like overnight. “The Bunny” launched my career and kept me working in front of and then behind the camera as I began my venture on a ten-year run as a reporter and producer for Playboy TV. By the ealy 2000’s I had graduated from reporting for Sexcetera to writing my own segments and producing for other reporters. I became a writer, segment producer, casting producer, supervising producer, and ultimately show runner at Playboy which led to producing jobs at other networks like E!, Travel Channel, and Associated Television International. My career as a news magazine and television producer was born as I continued to act when the right opportunity came my way.
Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
I always find it fascinating when the universe conspires to surprise me with unexpected blessings. In 2020 I was asked to join the film Love on The Rock coming off a year of pandemic. It was such a gift to go on a grand adventure in a far-off land. The producer, David A.R. White, who I previously worked with on the action/thriller Beckman called asking me if I wanted to come to Malta and shoot a movie starting in three days.” After not working all year, of course I said “yes please — sign me up! “It was a whirlwind blur coming out of lockdown, but COVID couldn’t stop us from making a movie. I was in a dark place and kind of a mess coming out of this terrible time, for the whole world, but it reminded me to not over think and just step into the flow of what comes to me. I couldn’t have planned it any better. Love on the Rock premiered on my birthday 2021. It was an amazing trip to a gorgeous country. I got to make a movie the most beautiful locations I have ever experienced, meet new friends, and re-unite with old friends, like actor Steven Bauer, and enjoy a premiere party complete with birthday cake. Some things are just magically meant to be.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Don’t budge the truth and say you are proficient at something that you are not on your resume or audition. Just because you’ve been on a few trail rides and had a pony when you were a kid doesn’t make you an expert equestrian. Firing a weapon for target practice a couple times does not make you a firearms expert. I had quite the humbling experience being cast in an apocalyptic action film as a horseback riding, machinegun toting sidekick to bad-ass Vernon Wells of Road Warrior fame. Though they didn’t fire me, the production swapped some of my scenes with someone else in the cast that had better riding skills. The good news: I still got to fire a semi-automatic standing up, strapped to a moving tank in Warriors of the Apocalypse…and no one got hurt.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I am grateful for the many teachers and cheerleaders I have had along the way. Most importantly my mother who instilled in me that I was loved, smart, talented, and could do whatever I wanted to do and be whoever I wanted to be.
You have been blessed with great success in a career path that can be challenging. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path, but seem daunted by the prospect of failure?
Do what you love with passion and perseverance. Enjoy the journey. Have patience. Your timing may not align with the big picture of how your success is meant to unfold. Don’t be too focused on end results. It’s good to have goals and celebrate when you reach them. However, it’s not a straight line to the top. Often, we don’t get the part, don’t get the accolade or award, don’t have the career that we envisioned for ourselves. But if you are afraid to start, to put yourself out there, one foot in front of another, you will never even have a chance of success. Just go for it!
Every industry iterates and seeks improvement. What changes would you like to see in the industry going forward?
For many years, an actress over 40 was limited to very few available roles. Entertainment is moving in the right direction as we have more female centric, female driven, female focused stories being told in a wider range of ages. Times are a changing slowly but surely and more women can have longer lasting lives as leading ladies. Look at this past year’s awards darlings Jennifer Coolidge and Michelle Yeoh. I think the entertainment industry can keep this up and not just have it be a fluke because it has been proven successful. We need more female creators writing full blown juicy characters for women over 40. Of course, I want that — that’s me! That’s who I want to watch, who I relate to, and who I am cast as.
You have such impressive work. What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? Where do you see yourself heading from here?
I love being bi-coastal with homes in Los Angeles, CA and Atlanta, GA. It gives me the opportunity to live and work as a local in two production meccas. I just wrapped shooting a 5-episode arc on Odd Man Out, alongside creator/star Ronnel Richardo Parham in Atlanta, airing 2023 on Peacock. I now head to New Orleans to the Overlook Film Festival for the premiere of We Kill for Love, Anthony Penta’s documentary featuring me, about the lost genre of the erotic thriller. Then I return to L.A. to present at the Indie Series Awards, where my series Rumors won last year, including Best Ensemble and me as Best Supporting actress, before commencing work on another feature film: Jax Malcolm’s The Listening with Kash Hovey, Samantha Bailey, Lance Alexander and Gloria Garayua. I am open to whatever is the next right good thing. I am going to keep on keeping on making movies and TV shows. That’s what I do.
We are very interested in looking at diversity in the entertainment industry. Can you share three reasons with our readers why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in film and television? How can that potentially affect our culture and our youth growing up today?
Everyone should be able to see themselves represented on screen. I play a lot of roles which were originally written for men. I appreciate that characters are becoming less gender specifically male. Power boss women are more prevalent in films and television because they are more prevalent in real life. Art should reflect life. That includes age, color, gender, sexual identify, handicap, impairment, shape, size, ect.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.
- You are enough — just as you are
- Don’t take things personally — it’s not all about you
- What is meant for you will be yours — there is no competition
- Do your best — leave the rest to God
- It’s ok to make mistake — we fall so we can learn to get back up
Can you share with our readers any self-care routines, practices or treatments that you do to help your body, mind or heart to thrive? Please share a story for each one if you can.
I find it necessary to balance Hollywood work life with recharging self-care so I don’t burn my candle at both ends. I hike with my dog, enjoy yoga, and go on spa and fitness retreats to take care of myself body, mind and spirit. If you want to know more, I write all about my health and wellness adventures on my lifestyle and travel blog.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“After all, tomorrow is another day” — Scarlett O’Hara, Gone with the Wind. I’ve learned over the years, when things are going wrong, emotions are running high, and challenging situations seem like life and death, to take a deep breath, pause and pray, and know that the moment is not going to last forever. This too shall pass. Tomorrow comes and things work out. When to going gets tough I take it one day at a time.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I would like to inspire a “Be Nice Movement”. Kindness is simple and free. Let’s all try to be a little nicer to each other. We never know what someone is really going through on the insides from looking at their outsides. Most people, including me, are hanging by a thread some days. A little niceness goes a long way.
Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why? Maybe we can tag them and see what happens!
Yes. Brad Pitt. Why? He’s Brad Pitt. Please tag him. Hi Brad. Let’s do lunch.
Are you on social media? How can our readers follow you online?
Keep up with me everywhere on socials @kirareedlorsch and my website www.kirareedlorsch.com
This was so informative, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!
Photos by Bella Saville
