Filmmaker Serena DC: “I would love to see filmmakers and content creators create content not…

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Filmmaker Serena DC: “I would love to see filmmakers and content creators create content not dictated by money but because they want to inspire people to live better lives and enhance people’s lives”

…I see what’s happening in the world right now, and there are so many things that I find troubling and scary. People worldwide have lost their sense of self trying to figure out who they are in this new world riddled with masks and mandates. I decided to be the change I wanted to see and create TV shows that inspire people to be more, do more, and love more. All the content I am making is designed to help uplift people. If I want to see people around me having a better experience on this planet and feeling better about themselves, then I need to be part of that solution. I’m so lucky that I create TV shows and inject positive into the world through my content.

Moving forward, I would love to see filmmakers and content creators create content not dictated by money but because they want to inspire people to live better lives and enhance people’s lives through their uplifting entertainment. There are too many shows on TV that are breeding hate and negativity. It’s hard enough living on planet earth right now in the real world without having to watch bad situations play out on our TVs and in our cinemas.

As a part of our series about Inspirational Women In Hollywood, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Serena DC. Serena DC is an internationally recognized TV star, writer, and executive producer best known for creating the Emmy nominated hit TV series Hollywood Disclosure and Dream Life.

As a member of the prestigious Television Academy, Serena has worked many different roles in front and behind the camera. Over the last five years, she found recognition in creating the series mentioned above as well as her lead role in the Pluto TV series Life Unfiltered and breakout starring role in the Netflix reality series Instant Hotel. Currently, in production on a feature film, Serena also owns and operates Elysium Media, a production house with offices in the UK, USA, and Australia that focuses on creating positive reality TV, documentaries, and films with the mantra “It’s cool to be kind.”

Serena has been a speaker at some top industry events, including MIPCOM & NATPE in Cannes. In addition to her career in TV and film, Serena is a dating, relationship, and personal transformation expert, holding degrees in Psychology and Counseling. She is the author of the bestselling self-help books, “Love Me? Love Me!” and “The Turn Around.”

Serena identifies as Poly & Pan and is the proud mum of Halo (12) & Lucian (16). She spends her time living between Los Angeles, USA, and Surrey, UK.

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 was born in the UK but moved to Australia when I was 9 with my mum, dad, and brother Noel. We were a happy middle-class family for the most part until I hit my late teens and became super rebellious. I mean boys, parties, the works. I had a hard time figuring out who I was and where I fit into the world. My mum worked in a hair salon, and my dad was an entrepreneur. They rubbed off on me. In reflection, one of my first ventures was to open a hair salon. I have lived in Melbourne, Australia for most of my life, but when the pandemic hit, everything changed. Australia closed its borders, and I decided to take my family and move back to the UK to allow me to continue working in LA and living my double life. Next year will be exciting as I will finally live in LA full time!

Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?

Randomly I was cast on a TV series created by Netflix called Instant Hotel. While making the show, I fell in love with production and being in front of the camera. I was so excited about the series, but when it finally premiered, it did not turn out as planned because my fellow cast members and I were trolled relentlessly online due to poor editing making us all look like villains. It was a horrible experience because we created such a joyful TV series; however, the editors chose to twist and turn our words to make us seem like we were all enemies when we were all friends in reality. After this experience, I decided that I wanted to start working in television, but I wanted to create shows where only I would have the ability to edit them so that my words were never twisted and skewed again. I also wanted to create inspirational and transformational reality TV series that people at home would watch and feel empowered by instead of watching and feeling compelled to jump online and become online trolls. They say you need to be the change you want to see in the world, so I think of my production company Elysium Media and all of the content we create as “the change.”

Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I have had some incredibly interesting moments since I began my career. The one that stands out most for me was when I was invited to Caitlyn Jenner’s house in Malibu to interview her for my TV show Hollywood Disclosure. I had come up with the idea for Hollywood Disclosure when I was sleeping one night. I remember having a dream about sitting down with Caitlyn at her house, and she was telling me an inspirational story that I shared with the world. Instead of people looking at reality stars and forming negative habits by emulating them, by watching my show with Caitlyn, people at home were able to be inspired and develop positive habits that created a magical shift in the world. I remember sitting on Caitlyn’s couch in real life, and just before the show director said action, I looked over to her and told her this same story. I told her, right now, we’re in the middle of my dream, and she looked at me and said, “I’m so proud of you; dreams really do come true.” That was an incredible moment for me and has inspired me to follow all of the dreams and ideas that I have because if you believe in yourself, anything is possible.

Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I made a lot of mistakes when I first got into TV production, and one that I kept making repeatedly was that I believed everybody who promised that they could help with my career in Hollywood. I learned early that many people in Hollywood would promise you the world and deliver you nothing. After being promised my own TV shows, being promised funding for my shows, or being promised that my shows would air on specific networks and none of that come to fruition, I realized that if I wanted to get anywhere in this life, I had to rely on myself. Hollywood is a cutthroat industry, and most people out there are focused on their own careers and achieving their own goals. If you want to succeed in Hollywood, you need to rely on one person and one person only, and that is you.

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?

There are so many people that I’m grateful for, but one person that comes to mind now is my producing partner Warren Burley. We were in the middle of the pandemic, and I had just finished production on my TV series Dream Life. Strangely, the man we hired to edit the series disappeared with all of the footage for the show that needed editing. Due to restrictions, I was stuck in Australia and unable to come to the USA to retrieve my footage so that it could be salvaged. I was fortunate to have Warren in LA, who went to this editor’s house to liberate my footage. He then worked tirelessly for weeks to edit the 10-episode series for FYI and Hulu and delivered it two days before the deadline. Warren is an example of a true friend and a true professional, and someone I’ll be grateful to forever.

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?

Work on projects that you are passionate about. Create content about things that you love and explore things that you are deeply curious about. That’s how you can access your best creative ideas, and that’s how you can make truly impactful content. Boredom teaches you a lot too. I’ve learned to never work on shows for a paycheck and only work on projects for passion. If you are going to allocate a large amount of your time to a project, make it a project you care about. If you pick a career that you are passionate about, even if you fail, the time spent working isn’t wasted because you are doing something that brings you joy and fulfillment. It may not bring you a big paycheck but instead gives you experience. That is something that money can’t buy.

What drives you to get up every day and work in TV and Film? What change do you want to see in the industry going forward?

I see what’s happening in the world right now, and there are so many things that I find troubling and scary. People worldwide have lost their sense of self trying to figure out who they are in this new world riddled with masks and mandates. I decided to be the change I wanted to see and create TV shows that inspire people to be more, do more, and love more. All the content I am making is designed to help uplift people. If I want to see people around me having a better experience on this planet and feeling better about themselves, then I need to be part of that solution. I’m so lucky that I create TV shows and inject positive into the world through my content.

Moving forward, I would love to see filmmakers and content creators create content not dictated by money but because they want to inspire people to live better lives and enhance people’s lives through their uplifting entertainment. There are too many shows on TV that are breeding hate and negativity. It’s hard enough living on planet earth right now in the real world without having to watch bad situations play out on our TVs and in our cinemas.

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?

We are in the middle of production for season two of the series and have already interviewed RJ Mitte from Breaking Bad, Eva La Rue from The Bold and The Beautiful, and Nikki Blonsky from Hairspray. In a couple of weeks, I get to sit down with Tori Spelling, a fellow mummy and TV personality, which I am super excited about. Season two premieres end of January, but I am most excited about my first feature film, which premieres on my birthday, February 3rd, called We Are Not Alone. It’s all about people who have contacted UFOs and ET’s. I do a deep dive into their lives and answer the questions about whether we are alone in this universe. Another project that I’m excited about is the social experiment TV series we have premiering in February called Life Unfiltered. The series follows five other remarkable LA natives and me as we navigate the post-pandemic new world. Coming off the heels of a disastrous 2020 and 2021, I am inspired and excited to share all these shows with my viewers.

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?

Diversity in the entertainment industry is so important because people, particularly our youth, are heavily influenced by what they see on TV and in film. It’s tough to try and teach children and young adults about the importance of inclusion when they watch TV series that only feature one race or exclude people from the LGBTQI community. My production company Elysium Media is proud to be a fully diversified production company. We boast fantastic talent and crew from 13 different countries, including Brazil, Guam, Australia, England, America, Seychelles, and Italy, to name a few. We’re also a fully inclusive company with a rainbow collage team that brings life, color, and excitement to our productions. One of the things we love most about our team is the food. Because we are so culturally diverse, food is always the center of everything we do within our productions. One day we can be eating Brazilian food and the following Chinese. It’s enjoyable and a great way for our team to share their culture and passions with each other.

Can you share with our readers any selfcare 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 am really into crystals at the moment. I surround myself with beautiful giant crystals that have been excavated from all the corners of the earth. My favorites are Amethyst and Citrine. Amethyst is an excellent stone for protection and also for clarity of mind. When you’re in a competitive industry like this one, it’s essential to feel you have a protective forcefield around you, so all the evil eyes looking upon you don’t affect your energy and mindset. I surround myself with Citrine because it is the manifestation stone. I am a big dreamer and having crystals like Citrine remind me to keep focusing on my goals. Everyone I meet who is embarking on a big dream or trying to manifest an exciting goal, I always recommend they buy some Citrine, and if there’s somebody I’m close to, I’ll buy them a large lump of Citrine myself.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

The quote that I subscribe to the most is ‘be the change that you want to see in the world.’ Every day, everybody walks around feeling disgruntled with someone or something in this world, and it causes us a lot of stress and anxiety as human beings. But if we keep waiting for the world to change, we’re going to be waiting for a long time. It takes visionaries and people who want to see a change in the world to step up and create that change themselves. I wanted to see more positive reality TV shows on television, so instead of waiting for some other production company to make them, I decided to make them myself.

You are a person of huge 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?

My life, my mantra is to be more, do more and, love more. I want to encourage people to get out into the world and make something of themselves. If they have a dream, I want to encourage people to follow it at all costs because we were all put here for a purpose, and if we’re not trying to actualize that purpose, what is the point of living life? I encourage people to do more because there are so many issues in this world that need fixing. Whether that be helping somebody with a disability to make some home improvements or helping somebody homeless to find shelter or something huge like helping the world’s fishing industry stop having so much bycatch, nothing will change unless we get out there and do more. Lastly, love more is there because I want to encourage people to inject more love into this world. To love their friends more, honor their parents, be there for their parents more, support their partners more, and love humanity in general because there is no purpose without love.

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!

I would love to sit down with Louis Theroux. I absolutely love his documentaries and the way in which he is able to help the people he interviews open up and share their deepest thoughts and feelings. I would love for him to mentor me, so Louis, if you are reading this, teach me your ways!

Are you on social media? How can our readers follow you online?

Instagram.com/iamserenadc

Facebook.com/iamserenadc

Twitter.com/iamserenadc

This was so informative, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!


Filmmaker Serena DC: “I would love to see filmmakers and content creators create content not… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.