Willa Holland is currently starring in The Mortuary Assistant, which is now streaming on Shudder. She is best known for her starring role as Thea Queen aka Speedy, in seven seasons of the CW’s Arrow. She came to prominence as Marissa Cooper’s younger sister, Kaitlin, on the hit show The OC, and made guest star appearances on Gossip Girl and, more recently, The Flash. She has also starred in features such as Michael Winterbottom’s Summer in Genoa, playing opposite Colin Firth, Scott Stewart’s Legion, and Rod Lurie’s Straw Dogs, opposite James Marsden, Kate Bosworth and Alexander Skarsgard. Most recently, Willa could recently be seen in Matthey Yerby’s The Dirty South. Willa is also an accomplished model, having appeared on covers for both Teen Vogue and Fashion 18 and campaigns for Burberry, Guess, and Ralph Lauren.
Three Great Things is Talkhouse’s series in which artists tell us about three things they absolutely love. To mark the current theatrical release of the horror movie The Mortuary Assistant, starring Willa Holland, popular actress Holland – best known for her role in the TV show Arrow – shared some of her things she loves most in life. — N.D.
My Dog Billy
I’ve had my dog Billy for 11 years. She’s the light of my life and just went through the most traumatic thing she’s ever experienced. The other day, she got attacked by another dog, and it was very distressing. But I must say, I’m so inspired by her resilience, because she’s this tiny five-pound dog who was attacked by a much bigger dog. And even as scary as it was, she still held her ground. She’s a beautiful inspiration, and proof that you should never underestimate the little ones.
Her vibe is super energetic, spunky and cool, and she loves to play roughhouse. She thinks she’s much bigger than she is, which is a stereotype for little dogs, but she does it in a cool way.
Billy comes with me absolutely everywhere. She is a born-and-raised set dog and sleeps under my feet on the plane. She’s the greatest. She’s a perfect animal and I could not be more blessed to have found her. We just have this crazy, weird bond. I’ve had animals throughout my life, but I’ve never had such an intense bond with one as I do with her.
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She’s the first thing that I see every morning, and she’s the last thing that I see every night. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. She’s the best snuggler. When we first see each other in the morning, she crawls up to me and puts her paws on my chest and I just lift her up. She almost wraps her paws on either side of my neck, so it’s like a hug. It’s just perfect.
The day my partner and I found her, we were looking around a bunch of rescue places and we walked into Bark n’ Bitches, a dog rescue in Los Angeles. We saw a little dog hiding under a bench, and she just crawled over to me and my partner, wrapped her arms around his ankle and plopped down on his foot. We immediately picked her up and then looked at each other and said, “We have to get her out of here. She picked us. This is it – this is our dog.”
Her energy inside the rescue was really sad and little, but the moment we brought her home, she changed. The look in her eyes and the way she walked through the house, there was a pep in her step. Right then, I knew we had saved her from a place she did not want to be, and she’d found her forever home. It was perfect.
Poker
I love poker. I first got hooked by Texas Hold’em, which I played for about seven or eight years. Somebody people warned me that I would play Pot-limit Omaha once and then never play Texas Hold’em again, and they were unfortunately correct, because now I am obsessed with PLO.
Initially, being able to use my skill as an actor was one of the things that got me into poker. But I don’t think about it that way anymore. I’ve gotten to the point where when I’m in a hand, I come up with about three or four outcomes of how it’s going to go, and as each street comes, I follow the inevitability of those outcomes. So if before the flop even comes out, I know I’m going to be chasing the nut flush draw and it doesn’t come, I usually already have it in my brain that I have a bluff in me. I just always try to act the same in every situation, in every hand, so my hand on my cards doesn’t do anything different, the way I play with my chips isn’t at all different, I don’t look at the cards any less or more, I just play a role and stick to it and stay in character.
The thing I really appreciate about poker is that it has given me a stronger sense of discipline. It’s also taught me an insane amount of patience, and to be OK with the rejection and the loss. As an actor, you get rejected constantly for things that you want, and it hurts your ego so much. But you have to know that it’s not really about you, it’s just the situation and it’s happening to everybody. Poker is a wonderful reminder of luck and how things can go against you. You can have pocket aces pre-flop and still lose, and it has nothing to do with you. It’s all circumstance and luck. Poker has taught me to not take anything personally and to move forward focusing only on what I can control.
FiveFingers Toe Shoes
This is a weird one, but right now I’m wildly obsessed with Vibram FiveFingers toe shoes. Ever since I started wearing them, I am crouching everywhere in public, getting on my toes, acting like I’m an acrobat. Exercising in them is so much easier, because there’s a strange sense of stability that I’ve never had in any other shoe before.
The reason I got them is I saw Vibram came out with some pretty pink toe shoes with Mary Jane-type straps, which looked cool. I like weird-looking things, so I ordered them. I thought I’d wear them a couple times and laugh about it, but when I tried them on, not only were they the most comfortable thing I’d ever put on, but right away I also noticed it gave me incredible balance. When you’re trying to crouch down and end up getting onto your tiptoes, you usually wobble forward and backward, but that never happens with these shoes because of their grip. The way that they separate your toes, it gives you this placement and you feel sturdy in ways you otherwise wouldn’t.
I love working out in my FiveFingers. I used to roll my ankles quite a lot, as I have very flimsy ankles, but I’ve been wearing these shoes nine months and I haven’t done it once since then. I think the shoes have built new muscles around my foot and my ankles, because of how they stretch out my toes. I swear by these shoes and think everybody should get them. People will sometimes say, “What freaky shoes you have!” and constantly ask me, “Why? What’s the benefit?” So then I’ll crouch down and show them the stability that I have now. And if anyone judges me for how my shoes look, that’s fine. I think they look cool!
Featured image, showing Willa Holland in The Mortuary Assistant, courtesy IFC and Shudder.
