As Sharon Van Etten was promoting her last album, 2014’s Are We There, she realized she had reached two diverging paths. One led to more of the same: a life spent on the road nine months out of the year, with the ongoing struggle to maintain relationships back home. The other would urge her to focus on her life outside of music, perhaps even with a new career. In various interviews, Van Etten expressed an interest in becoming a therapist, noting that while performing offers emotional catharsis, she felt distant from the experiences that inspire her songs. “I started playing and people responded to it and connected with it and now, I don’t even know what I’m really connecting with anymore or if I’m helping people,” Van Etten told SPIN. “Now it’s more of a business. I love everyone I work with, but how am I going to have the time to step away and have a life to even write about?”
Since Are We There, the New York City-based musician has largely taken the latter, more unknown road and kept to herself. Still, Van Etten’s quiet period is still relatively prolific. In 2015, she released the I Don’t Want to Let You Down EP, a collection of five songs that were cut from previous albums. Last year she scored a film, Strange Weather, and covered the Grateful Dead, the Flaming Lips, and others for tribute albums and TV projects. Then, in mid-December, she showed up out of the blue in Netflix’s new supernatural mystery series, “The OA,” from co-creators Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij (the brother of Rostam, who did the show’s music). It’s difficult to describe the show without giving too much away, but the basic plot is that a blind woman disappears for seven years and when she returns, she inexplicably can see. Van Etten appears in a recurring role as Rachel, a woman who was given an angelic singing voice after a near-death experience that killed her brother.
Pitchfork caught up with Van Etten to discuss “The OA,” new music, and how her studies to become a therapist are going—at which point she revealed that she’s very happily expecting her first child.
Pitchfork: “The OA” was your first scripted television appearance. How did you get involved with the show initially?
Sharon Van Etten: I’m still trying to wrap my head around how it all happened. In 2015, I told my band that I was taking a break so I could focus on my home life, go back to school, and try to remember what it was like to feel like a human being again. It was a really emotional decision because I developed this deep connection with my bandmates; even though it was sad, they understood, and we all went our separate ways for a little while. I got into school in Brooklyn. I only went part time, so I started going to school for a few classes, then I would be in the studio for a couple of days.
Only two weeks into school, my manager got a call from a casting agent in New York. The casting agent had seen me open up as a duo with my drummer, Zeke Hutchins, supporting Nick Cave in 2013. Somehow, the mental Rolodex of this guy—I don’t know what phrases came to mind when they were talking about the casting for Rachel, but somehow I was somebody that they wanted to audition. It was because of the show that he saw me open up for Nick Cave.
My manager had found me an acting coach, just to go once to be prepared since I’d never done anything like that before. I went to the audition super nervous, read nervous, sang nervous. The audition was my “big scene.” They called my manager the next day and said that they wanted me to do it and that I had to give them an answer in two days. They were shooting in a week or two. I had to drop out of school. I was very torn about it. The answer didn’t come easy because I felt, “Was I not being true to myself with this acting role after I decided to go off the road to go back to school?” It was a very circuitous route. The reading was so close to my own history, I connected it with so deeply that I felt like the universe really wanted me to do this.
So it was a coincidence that the character was so similar?
I'm telling you, the reading that I got [for the audition] was about how I grew up in the choir, and I left to go to Tennessee to pursue music. All of these terrible things happened to me on the way. Obviously the sci-fi part is a little bit embellished from my autobiography, but it was still very close to home with me. I felt like I had to do it. At first I was the one that wanted to do it the least. I doubted it for myself. Real actors who work their entire lives get a role like this and I'm like, “Oh yeah, I'm a musician.” I'm so glad I took a chance and had a whole lot of supportive people around me to say, “Yeah, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Give it a shot.”
Was it always the idea that you would sing one of your own songs on the show?
I picked “I Wish I Knew” [from 2009’s Because I Was In Love] for the audition. Mostly because it was the most stripped down and the melody developed over the whole song. It never repeated itself. Also, the content of it wasn't specifically about love—it was about being unsure of yourself, being able to communicate that you just don't know about anything. I felt like I could sing that naturally as opposed to somebody else's song in an audition. I didn't really know the context at the time. When I showed up on set later, we had talked about doing other songs, but that one ended up being the one we circled back to.
Are plans for a second season?
I'm just as curious as the viewer. They're very secretive. It's so funny, nobody knows anything. I think that keeps it exciting, too. We honestly can't tell people. Even my mind wanders. I'm like, “What happens to my character?” I have no idea.
On a different note, you've worked on some soundtracks. You went back to school. What else have you been up to?
A lot of doors have opened since I closed one. I think that's what is supposed to happen. Because I left school and decided to do this show, it coincided with being asked to do this score for this film Strange Weather, which I'd never done before. It opened up a lot of time for me to do that score in the spring, which I finished in the summer and it premiered in the fall. I hope that I can continue to do more of that because it was a wonderfully collaborative experience. I've also been trying to write. I have small writing space in Brooklyn. I'm trying to incorporate that into my every day.
Writing for yourself?
Writing to write. I feel really lucky that Jag [Jagjaguwar], my label, is so supportive of any endeavor I want to try. When I told them I'd be acting, they just had a laugh and said, “Good luck.” They're like, “We're not pushing you to make a record. Whenever you're ready. It could be a year, five years, whatever you need to do.” That being said, having that kind of freedom, I've written a lot. I have enough songs to where I could record a record in the next year if I wanted to. In the middle of all that, over the summer... I am pregnant.
Wow, congratulations!
That's going to dictate a lot in the coming year. If there's a season two, I'm due in March. My partner and I are laughing. “Let's see. What can we do?” “Let's just do everything. Let's just try to do as much as we can this year.” Between going to school, acting, doing score work, and trying to be involved now in the community, 2017, especially with the reality of creating a family and what that means, there's a lot of things I want to do this year.
You're back in school, though?
I was in school in the fall, but since I'm due in March, I felt like I would focus January, February on writing, nesting, and taking care of myself until the little guy comes.
In a lot of your interviews from the Are We There time, you talked about the struggle to find balance in life. How is that coming?
I think that's the challenge of the human being. Especially if you're a working creative, you're your own boss. You can't say you don't have time—you make the time and figure it out. You find the right people to surround yourself with that help you make it happen. I was lucky enough to interview Mimi from Low, and I was very curious how they were able to have kids, tour, write, record, have space in their home, and still have their career as they wanted to. They're very deliberate people. Especially as a woman, to go on tour with a child, I was very curious how she did that. This was a year or two ago before any of this happened, but she's definitely one of the biggest influences on my writing and singing.
She said one thing that really rang true: “Your family is everyone that surrounds you, everyone that reaches their hands out. You don't have to know what you're doing going into it. You figure it out because you have the family around you already.” It was really beautiful and made me feel like it wasn't impossible. I never felt like it was possible up until the last few years, with how I was living my life. Things are really good right now. I don't think I'll ever feel perfectly balanced, but I feel like I'm figuring it out and I'm surrounded by really wonderful people that want to see me succeed and be happy. Life is wild.
Are you still interested in mental health counseling?
Yes. I'm going to return to school. I met with the head of the psychology department. He laughed. I told him about the acting gig. He was supportive of it. But he cried when I told him I was having a child and I have to again set things aside. He just said, “Promise me you'll come back.” I'm like, “I'm coming back, as long as you'll have me.” I still have a long journey. I'm only technically a sophomore after this semester. I'm going only part time because I'm giving myself the freedom to still have my creative side in the music world, and acting world now, but I still know that it’s a real passion of mine that I want to pursue long-term. My goal is to become a therapist by the time I'm 50. I'm giving myself 15 years.