Jania Ashlynn
The actress’ struggle with addiction inspired her to take the starring role in Stay Awake.
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In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the actress and musician, 42, shared why she decided to take part in the film – she wanted to emphasize the difficulties people struggling with addiction experience.
“It was one of those things where I understand addiction from a food perspective because I have food issues, and I know people who suffer from several different types of addictions,” she shared.
Michelle (played by Metz), a mother struggling with drug addiction, is at the center of the movie Stay Awake. Her two sons, Derek and Ethan (played by Fin Argus and Wyatt Oleff respectively), attempt to help her cope with her multiple relapses. Metz commented that she thought this story was both ‘important’ and ‘necessary’ to tell.
“Not only do you want to draw not attention, but awareness to the particular role or the project, but that there are real people who are really struggling and who really don’t want to be addicts,” she added.
Metz shared that she couldn’t “watch the movie without crying” because it navigates several difficult scenes and presses on the hardships of overcoming addiction.
“And the empathy I have for those people in particular in this situation, mothers or parents, it’s just heartbreaking,” she shared.
Personal Connections
The actress discussed accessing her own insecurities to adopt the character’s mindset of not feeling like a satisfactory mother or feeling undeserving of recovery.
“I think we all have insecurities in that way of just not being enough,” she explained. “And I certainly have felt that way personally. That’s something that is very deep in my sort of experience too. So, I definitely wanted to bring that too to the role.”
She hopes the project will help people understand what a person with addiction goes through every day.
“That’s what art does, is it hopefully opens people’s minds and hearts and allows there to be some sort of relatability in some aspect in that,” she continued. “Also, when you educate people about a certain particular subject, hopefully, the fear goes away and then maybe there’s some healing through that.”
Stay Awake premieres in theaters in NYC and Los Angeles on May 25.
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