This week I got to talk to one of the kindest soul, Cerina Vincent! You might recognize her from Power Rangers, Cabin Fever, and Disney’s Stuck in the Middle. Beyond being an actor, she is an amazing mom to the sweetest little boy, a writer, and a true friend. I met Cerina when I was fifteen and she quickly became someone that I looked up to. She has an ability to make those around her feel truly seen and loved. I hope that through this interview, you get an inside perspective the person that she is beyond the roles that you may know her from!
I wanted to start off by jumping right into people’s assumptions! Almost every single one talked about actors being extremely social and extroverted. That you need to be the center of attention and you feed off of. What’s your response to that?
Wow. That’s such an amazing, interesting jumping off point. I call myself an introverted extrovert. Going way back in time, when I was a child, I was painfully shy. But then, I could be on stage and be in a play and be fine. When I first got into the business, I was going to red carpet events and I would be messed up for a week before trying to get the courage to feel comfortable. I don’t think I ever really would really relax. I’d be excited to go home and take off all the hair and makeup and just be in my sweatpants and be done. I think that all my best friends would say that I’m good at pretending I’m an extrovert and rallying to get through whatever social situation I need to get through but in my heart, I just want to be in my own cocoon with my own friends and family. That said, now that I’m older and wiser—I do cherish events like this. And I’m grateful to be invited. It’s always fun to dress up and connect with people. I still get excited to be home and snuggled up, but I enjoy these things differently now. I work hard at being in the moment, and not missing moments. Life’s too short—we have to have gratitude, and we have to have FUN!
What do you think shifted in making you feel more comfortable being at the center of attention in social situations that caused you anxiety at the beginning on your career?
It sounds like such a lame answer, but really just age and time and perspective. I had a lot of body insecurities when I was younger and eating disorders. I went through a lot of things that most women go through, even if they’re not in the public eye. I think that that was at the core of my insecurity. So, when I happened to be booking these roles where I got attention for the way I looked, that wasn’t comfortable for me because I didn’t see myself that way. I felt uncomfortable in my skin and there is a lot of judgment that came along with roles that I played as an actor and different things that I had to, like nudity. There was a part of me that felt like I had to apologize for taking those kinds of roles and for doing the nudity and different things. I wasn’t emotionally intelligent enough to sift through all of those things and I wasn’t prepared for that kind of attention because I came into this with body insecurities. In my late 20s, it was like a light bulb went off where I was like, “wow, I’m totally missing my life.” I was like, screw this. I’m going to soak up as much fun as I can have and I’m not going to miss my life anymore.
Absolutely and that’s something that even if you’re not in the entertainment industry, just being in your twenties is a really relatable concept
And especially now, I can’t imagine going through that time and having social media. We had the beauty of going to school and then we’d go home, and we wouldn’t see any of those people over the weekend. It was so blissful. Now, all day, every day we can stalk anyone we want. And it’s dangerous.
So if someone were to go stalk you on social media, how much of your life do you feel like they would actually see?
I struggle with my relationship with social media. Part of me absolutely hates it because it’s such a time suck and I don’t want social media to be taking up any time that I should be parenting. It is also a creative energy suck. But it’s this necessary evil now where your agents and managers are saying, “get on social media, get on Twitter, why haven’t you been active on Twitter lately? Why haven’t you post more things?” I would just say you see about 20 percent of filtered pictures of my life and then there’s a whole bunch no one knows what’s going on.
Are there certain boundaries you have for yourself that you say, I’m not going to do this or I’m not going to ever post this?
I get apprehensive about posting things from my past. I have like a lot of kid followers from Stuck In The Middle but then I also have a lot of horror fans. The age range is massive. If I post a throwback of a sexy picture of me in a magazine that can piss off a lot of parents. 
You do have such a wide range of an audience because you have the horror films, but you also have the Disney Channel fanbase. How do you separate yourself from those two worlds?
I am woman, a wife, a mother, and a human first. And then I am an actor who plays all these different roles. I really just feel gratitude for the wide range of different kinds of roles and genres that I have gotten to play. I don’t really connect the two, I just feel like these are all the roles that I played. I hope I continue to play a wide range of roles- I really want to do another really cool horror film and I also want to be back on the kids comedy.
I knew you from playing a mom on TV and even before you were a real mom, you were everyone’s mom on set. I always felt you had that maternal energy so to hear you had a tough time breaking into that type of role is interesting.
Absolutely, it plays into the assumptions people had about me. I had played all these other types of roles, like the mistress or the stripper and the entertainment industry had pigeonholed me. Everybody is typecast and I was typecast as being ethnically ambiguous and given more daring, racier kinds of roles. Casting wouldn’t call me in for anything else and it was a bummer because I was fighting to play a lawyer or a mother because I knew I had that in me. Anybody watching my movies or anybody in the business doesn’t know that about me, but my best friends know that I’m maternal and take care of everyone and cook for everyone. That’s who I am at my core, but nobody else knew that.
That’s a great point that people see a person play a role on screen and they think that they’re that character in real life. Like you said, you are an actor, but you are a human first. How do you navigate separating yourself from those roles?
I try to do things like this! If there’s an opportunity to show people who I really am I take it because I hate assumptions. In the past, I was really insecure and there was a lot of judgment around some of the roles that I played. I really felt like I wanted to speak out and be like, please don’t judge me. I still run into assumptions, even with my family. They just think that if you’re on TV or you act that you’re just filthy rich, that is not the case. I just try to break it down because this is a tough business and it’s a hustle every single day. I am not my job and in order to live with the highs and lows of it and not let it take you down, I have to make the other parts of my life as full as I possibly can. I put my family first, I put my child first, I put planning holidays first. When I get an audition, I pour my heart and soul and my everything into it but nine times out of ten, you don’t get it. I focus on putting my family and I separate things for my mental health so I don’t let the rejection take me down.
You touched on the instability of the entertainment industry, has motherhood shifted how you navigate the industry and how you navigate life in general?
One thing that Mike [her Fiancé] and I just realized the other day is we’re going to be those parents where some Christmases are great and some aren’t because it really is feast or famine. You have great years and then you have years where there’s nothing and it’s terrifying. If an independent horror movie came in that shot in Thailand for a month for not that much money, as a single person I would have been like, “screw it, I’m going to Thailand. It’ll be fun.” But now, I’m not going to leave my child for a month and if I took him with me, then I have to take someone with me to watch him. Those are different decisions to make
What values or principal that are most important to you in the way you lead your life do you hope your son inherits or reflects?
That’s beautiful, you are going to make me cry. I really do see the good in people and I love hard. I love fiercely. I care deeply. And that is a blessing and a curse. I think that it’s a powerful quality and it gives you the ability to connect with a lot of different people because I genuinely care and feel a lot. But there have been times in my life where that doesn’t serve me. I stayed in a very unhealthy marriage for longer than I should have because I felt sorry for him. I cared about him; I felt his pain. I put him his feelings over my own because I cared so deeply and loved so fiercely. In general, though, I love that quality about myself and I love it when I see other people have that quality too. I hope that my son has that and that he sees the beauty and the love in everyone. But I hope that he will have stronger boundaries
I like to close every conversation by asking when you leave a room, or you leave a conversation what do you want someone to say about you?
Wow, no one’s ever asked me that before. I just want people to feel better. There are people that are energy giving and energy sucking. I hate it when I’m in a conversation with someone and they walk away, and I feel gross. I hope that I leave that person making them feel better in some way and feel like I was energy giving.
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