Lolita Milena Interview

Lolita Milena is an actress and author. She is in a wheelchair.

You wrote a novel in a month. What was the most challenging part of doing that?

Writing the summary of it. I hate writing summaries for stories. I can write till my hand falls off, but when it comes to having to summarize it all onto either two lines or a page, I struggle to do so.

What aspect of writing a book do you enjoy the most?

Probably the world building. I love trying to make a world feel like if you close your eyes, you can just step into the page.

Who are your favorite authors in general?

My favorite authors would be probably the Grimm Brothers. I grew up reading them primarily as well as Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King.

You produced and acted in your own short film. Do you have plans to produce other productions?

Not anytime soon, but I feel it would be a wonderful opportunity and a new area of an industry I love to try and tackle it.

What have been the main challenges of your career?

Getting jobs. Getting jobs I would say just because there are so few wheelchair parts and also probably behind the scenes trying to cover travel as well as figuring out the ramifications of getting me to that work.

People are usually inspired by disabled artists. How do you feel about this?

I think it's great because I grew up with disabilities around me, but I also know a lot of people that have never encountered someone disabled. I've noticed that through my TikTok platform, people ask me all these questions because they never experienced someone in their life similar to me or like me, so I find that very intriguing that I'm kind of their window into a world they have not experienced before. So I would say that is the most, I don't really know how to word it, but to me that's the most intriguing part of all of this.

Do you prefer acting in theater or screen productions and why?

I would say screen just because with theater you have to overact essentially to get your point across, whereas I like the idea of cinema. I can tell a story through my eyes, and the camera can pick up on that.

What are some ways that you get into character?

I would say the ways I get into character would be sitting down, reading the scripts over and over and over again until I can have it become natural to my own thoughts to where it's coming out of my mind, not from the page.

What's your opinion of how well people with disabilities are represented on screen? Do you have good or bad examples of characters?

It's not so much the characters, it's the way that the stories go from the producers to the writers to fruition. Some characters are in wheelchairs that miraculously walk again, that are played by able-bodied people. That kind of upset me because when I behind the scenes, the audition process was, they never told us about that, that the person was going to be walking one day or the person's entire character is their disability, which I think I can safely say for a lot of us, the disability is the last thing on our minds. We have so much more to offer and so much more to do in our life than be strictly confined to something that's hindering us.

Do you think there are enough disabled people behind the scenes like writers, and if not, what could be done to improve this?

I would say there are not, and I think to improve that would be to simply reach out to entertainers who are disabled and say, what are your thoughts? I know not every entertainer is a writer. I know not every writer is an entertainer, but I know that a lot of them have ideas and can be great consultants, and think consulting is a great step, but it should not be the only step. I cannot wait to see more writers like us.