Meissa Hampton – Principled Actor
Written By: Michael D. McClellan
Meissa Hampton has something to say.
The award-winning actor is also an awarded poet who also happens to make socially significant (and award-winning) documentary films, her creative energy an amalgamation of Seimetz, Sappho, and the incomparable Barbara Kopple. With coronavirus raging and masks a political hot-button, Hampton is unwavering in her support of women’s truths and resolute in evangelizing Black Lives Matter, raising a powerful voice in one arena and lending an eager ear in another. And make no mistake: While the camera clearly loves Meissa Hampton, the multi-hyphenate filmmaker is just as comfortable behind the lens as she is in front of it. A Social Cure, now streaming on Amazon Prime, tells the stories of five unique individuals as their lives intersect with the HIV epidemic in South Africa. Hampton wrote, directed, and produced this exceptional documentary film, refocusing attention on an issue that was cause célèbre in the United States during the 1980s, but which has been largely forgotten about in the decades since, due, in large part, to those keeping their HIV infection under control through effective treatment. But the global HIV pandemic persists, despite our deviated interest. Especially in South Africa, the epicenter of the HIV pandemic. Hampton skillfully reminds us that HIV remains a very real threat to millions of people, all while offering hope that we can slow the spread of this devastating disease – and promote positive behaviors – through social media.
The result is a film that spits science and speaks from the heart, connecting with audiences and critics alike. A Social Cure is a 2020 Official Selection at both the International New York Film Festival and the Vienna Independent Film Festival, the latter also recognizing Hampton with a coveted Best Director Nomination. While the attention is welcomed (A Social Cure also received Vienna’s Best Documentary Film Nomination), accolades aren’t why Hampton embarked on a journey that began nearly a decade ago. A Social Cure is all about educating the masses and saving lives, and doing so with outside-the-box thinking. Ironic then that a film about a pandemic would be released during a pandemic, with COVID-19 wreaking havoc on festival dates and sparking a global, social media debate about slowing the spread until science can engineer a cure. One can only wonder what Ryan White would make of matter, and how different the world might be today had smartphones been ubiquitous when the AIDS crisis was raging in America. Back then, Human Immunodeficiency Virus was considered by certain groups to be a plague on the gay community exacerbated by homophobia, much like the deaths of George Floyd and others today have been portrayed by large swaths of Americans as the heinous acts of a few bad apples, and not for what it is – the consequence of systemic racism passed down for generations. HIV, like many other social ills, disproportionately affects marginalized communities.
Into this fray steps Meissa Hampton, no stranger to a creative world that still discriminates against women, and which still sees abusive, abhorrent, and criminal behavior by men in positions of power. You need look no further than Harvey Weinstein for proof positive that, while much has changed, the casting-couch culture is still very much alive and well in Hollywood, and that female actors are far too often objectified instead of respected for the intellectual capital they bring to the table. Hampton is doing her part to change that, too. The powerhouse filmmaker is a unicorn in a field that remains predominantly male driven, birthing A Social Cure in the face of long odds and then seeing it through, from inception to completion to distribution.
Which begs the question: How does an independent filmmaker swim upstream and get something so ambitious greenlit, much less streamed into our homes on demand? For Hampton, the juice comes from within – a place where, as beautifully stated in her own poetry, she finds her power, her courage, her wit…her spirit, her warrior, her faith.
A Resident Artist at MIT, Hampton exudes a confidence that comes from tapping into that hidden reservoir. She’s tasted rejection. She’s experienced all manner of roadblocks. There have been moments of doubt, when she questioned whether this film would ever see the light of day. Through it all she’s persevered, leaning into the adversity and leaning onto the things that have gotten her this far.
The things that make her Meissa Hampton.
To understand how A Social Cure got made is to first understand the woman at the throttle. And to do that, you need to try walking in her shoes. It’s easy for some to take the cynical view and vulgarly dismiss Meissa Hampton as a feminist, emphasizing the word as if it were akin to child predator or concentration camp Nazi. There are those who throw shade on her outspokenness over women’s issues, but that kind of rhetoric was Neanderthal way before she ever appeared on the scene. Today, it’s just fucked up. Hampton has a voice and isn’t afraid to use it, and you’d be surprised at how many people – in the United States of America…in the year of our Lord 2020 – still consider a strong, intelligent, opinionated woman to be off-putting at best, and something closer to a rabid, hormone-fueled monster with ovaries in the eyes of just about everyone else. But if you truly open your mind and walk in Meissa Hampton’s shoes – and frame it against the backdrop of her chosen profession – then you start to see the world in an entirely different light. Regardless of your willingness to go there, the fact is this: When it comes to the workplace, men have had it far better than their female counterparts for far too long, and inequities in pay still exist. It’s an ugly truth that rears its head time and again, either in the news or off the radar, depending on the Q Rating of the person involved.
“In some respects, the union has made great progress with respect to pay,” Hampton says. “But, like so many other issues, there remains much work to be done.”
Before you dismiss Hollywood’s gender pay gap as fake news, consider the kerfuffle over the pay disparity in Ridley Scott’s 2017 film, All the Money in the World.
To recap: Nine days of reshoots were needed to recreate Kevin Spacey’s scenes after the actor was accused of sexual misconduct and replaced with Christopher Plummer. With the cast and crew in the midst of reshoots in Rome and London, The Washington Post ran an article about pay disparities among the cast, specifically between Mark Wahlberg, the male lead, and Michelle Williams, his female co-star. Turns out that Wahlberg, who in August 2017 was named the highest-paid actor of the year by Forbes, with annual earnings of $68 million, was being paid $1.5 million. Williams, on the other hand, who has been nominated for four Oscars, five Golden Globes (winning two), a Primetime Emmy Award (winning for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie), a Screen Actors Guild Award (wining for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie) and a Tony, was paid an $80 per diem, which amounted to less than $1,000 total.
Oh, and like everyone else, she read it in the paper.
That’s just one high-profile example of the world in which Meissa Hampton walks. And that’s just pay inequity. Layer in the sexual harassment and sexual abuse that runs rampant in the film industry, and you begin to appreciate her outspokenness for what it is – Meissa Hampton exercising our most important freedom to effect change.
“Speaking out on women’s issues is near and dear to my heart,” she says. “Regardless of the consequence – and there have been professional ramifications – I am compelled to make my voice heard.”
A Social Cure benefits from Hampton’s outspokenness. South Africa hosts the largest HIV epidemic in the world, a country where 19% of the South African adult population is living with a disease that disproportionately targets underprivileged and minority communities. Her film points out that, while as little as 11% of the population own home computers, cell phones have an astounding rate of penetration, putting connective technology in everyone’s hands. A Social Cure attempts to raise the profile of this pervasive connectivity, leveraging it to not only encourage HIV testing, but to de-stigmatize the disease.
“In exploring the amazing culture and landscape of South Africa, I found a resilient and radiant country facing the worst HIV epidemic in the world,” Hampton explains. “I also encountered emerging research on the use of social networks to affect positive social and behavioral change. When I saw how this research and a few dedicated people were changing their communities with the same tools we have at our disposal every day, I knew that this was an important story to share. I feel that it’s one not just relevant in South Africa, but its relevance extends around the world.”
Meissa Hampton was born in Silver Spring, Maryland, approximately 8,000 miles from South Africa, but her childhood helped set the course for her career as a creative. Active as an adolescent, she immersed herself in myriad sports, everything from swimming to skiing to fencing. She was on the basketball and softball teams. She biked. She hiked. She rock climbed. And, of course, she found the relentless gravitational pull to the performing arts impossible to ignore.
“I was very active, with a lot of interests,” Hampton says. “I was in a pre-Olympic camp for competitive swimming. I had a brief adolescent ambition to swim in the Summer Olympics and downhill ski in the Winter Games. I started classical piano and dance when I was six years old. I think that being well-rounded really helped me as an actor. When it comes to creating a character, I think it’s essential to have rounded life experience to draw upon.”
With more than thirty-five independent film credits on her résumé, the creative foundation laid during Hampton’s youth has served her well. The darling of indie cinema, she most recently played the lead role of Babe in Marcia Haufrecht’s Full Moon & High Tide in the Ladies Room, taking home the Best Actress Award at both the 2019 Festival of Cinema NYC and the 2019 Austin Independent Film Festival. This film was of special significance to Hampton.
“Marcia is a very close friend of mine, and someone I admire greatly,” she says. “Marcia is one of the greatest actors that I have ever known, as well as one of the greatest acting coaches. She’s a phenomenal artist in every sense, and an extraordinary person with an extraordinary heart. This was her first time directing – she was 80-years-old at the time – and it was based on the script that she had written in the early 1970s.”
The premise of Full Moon & High Tide is as relevant today as it was back then. Babe, a waitress in the Village, gets pregnant. Her boyfriend, Hal gets scared. Two years into Roe v. Wade, homeless Babe must make a decision: Have the baby? Don’t have the baby?
“It is a film about abortion at a time when it was still very controversial,” Hampton says. “Women had new rights, but the focus wasn’t only on the political controversy in the wake of Roe v. Wade. At its heart, the film is about the deeply personal human experience of having to make that decision. The script has stood the test of time, and the current controversy feels as fresh and challenging as it did then.”
For Hampton, acting in Full Moon & High Tide was a thrill on multiple levels.
“That Marcia finally got to make it, and to make her directorial debut with it, was just a wonder to see. The fact that she asked me to play the lead character in this film, which she had cultivated for decades, was such an honor. It started out as an idea that Marcia had work-shopped at The Actor’s Studio, where it became a stage play that Shelley Winters directed, and so many great actors had played this role onstage. Marcia is so respected that she could have gotten anyone to play Babe when she finally got to make the film, but she asked me. I can’t tell you what an honor that is, that Marcia put her trust in me to lead this film. That was enough. The awards are definitely the beautiful, red maraschino cherries on top.”
Hampton also knows how to keep things in perspective.
“When you win an award, that only happens because you are given a great role, with a great script, and you are working with a wonderful director and you have a great cast around you,” she says without hesitation. “That is the only way it happens. I can’t attribute any award that I’ve ever gotten to myself.”
Still, winning Best Actress at The Festival of Cinema NYC holds a special significance.
“That festival was really special. Some festivals have a way of really welcoming artists and showing them warmth, and providing a really beautiful showcase for their work in a supportive environment. That is the Festival of Cinema. It’s among my very favorite film festivals, and it was very gratifying to be recognized. And while it provides a measure of validation for what I’ve put into a performance, it also helps in other ways. Actors are in a perpetual state of searching for the next role. We endure a tremendous amount of rejection, which means there is so much uncertainty around our work schedule, so anything that can help open a door can make a difference.”
The elephant in the room: Meissa Hampton is a beautiful woman.
She is an accomplished model, with gigs ranging from Ralph Lauren to Tory Burch to L’Oreal, not to mention hosting turns on QVC and ShopNBC. Her eyes are hypnotic – good luck trying to look away. She doesn’t go out of her way to ‘be’ beautiful, that’s just part and parcel of the Meissa Hampton experience. At first blush, paying her a compliment can seem like dangerous business, like trying to tiptoe across a minefield without losing your legs, but Hampton appreciates the flattery. It’s all the other stuff that gets under her gorgeous skin. It’s also where she eagerly lends her voice, regardless of the consequence.
“It’s obvious that women’s issues are very important to me, and I have been an advocate in that space for some time now,” Hampton says. “Shortly after we last spoke in 2015, I offered a petition to the Screen Actors Guild to address gender inequities that were fueling sexual harassment and assault against performers and members of the union. That was a difficult process for me. It had some negative ramifications on my career, and the union was not as responsive as I had hoped. I spent years continuing to beat on that door.”
The #MeToo and Time’s Up movements have made a significant impact in the areas of sexual harassment and assault, but Hampton wants more. She sees a broken system that needs fixing, and she has put her career on the line to make it so.
“I had started to be vocal in the industry years before #MeToo and Time’s Up,” Hampton says, “and I had already seen it hurt my career. I accepted that, because I knew that I was not comfortable playing by the rules that had been laid out before me at that point. Rules that include our sexualization on screen and advances from employers as a rite of passage. Oftentimes we’re not really even clear on those rules until we are well into our careers, having invested in our educations and career development and we don’t have a lot of options at that point – which is part of why we are so vulnerable. Play the game or forego your career – your dream. We’re freelancers. We don’t have a human resources department behind us. We don’t have any job security whatsoever, and we’re in a very competitive business. We are highly replaceable. We have no one to tell, except our union, whose purpose is to protect its members. They’ve done a wonderful job with wages, but they are missing the mark on this issue.”
Hampton pauses.
“When I initially opened up that petition, I asked specifically that a special committee be formed to begin to address these issues, but at that time there was no response. Several years later, the Weinstein story broke. I called back and said, ‘How about now?’ To my surprise, I’ve become even more of an issue for them, because this is something that I had brought to them years before and they had not addressed it at that time. So I was even more of a stain, and something that they needed to brush under the carpet, so to speak.”
If Hampton is being blacklisted, she doesn’t flinch.
“It has been very detrimental to my career, but I am not sorry for one second,” she says. “It’s only made that issue closer to my heart, and more important to me. It’s also made me understand just how important it is that we use our voices, and that we speak to these issues. That’s why I wrote an article that was featured in The Guardian. I had made some powerful enemies up to that point, but that article made me a few powerful friends. I will continue to raise awareness about those issues and try to turn the tide. It’s not just about changing policies and laws, which are an essential first step. More fundamentally, it’s so often about changing our culture.”
Despite the uphill battle, Hampton sees progress. And hope.
“It’s so important how we are portraying women, but what goes on behind the camera in this industry is reflected on the camera. You can see this in the statistics about female nudity. More and more attention has been coming to that in the past couple of years, and it just swells my heart. It’s wonderful to see. But we do have to keep going. There is still the issue of not enough women at the helm of films, telling our stories in our way. I will continue to advocate for that. I’m really excited to see all of the changes underway in our industry. There’s still a long way to go, so I’m going to keep using my voice to raise awareness.”
Meissa Hampton was a struggling young artist before she scraped together the funds to study at Brooklyn College, where she received a Ford Scholarship and graduated with honors. Her next stop was the prestigious Stella Adler Studio of Acting, eventually continuing studies at Harvard and MIT. She studied voice and movement at studios and privately in NYC, and seems most affectionate about her studies of Comedy and Improv with the Upright Citizens Brigade. She seems to be known for having a light touch with serious issues and an ability to bridge drama and comedy seamlessly. While a career in front of the lens seemed predestined, she was fascinated by the filmmaking process.
“I initially got into acting as a film student,” Hampton says. “But I also learned that film school is very expensive [laughs]. It takes a lot of money to make the film just to get into film school, let alone pay for film school. Acting was more immediately accessible, and not only did I find I adored the work, the process of giving voice to my characters, it allowed me to gain valuable experience as a filmmaker, just from a different perspective. Every time I was on a set I did my very best to understand everyone’s role and their contributions. If there was an opportunity to help someone – working with sound or light, for example – then I would jump in and learn more about that person’s contribution to the process.”
Which brings us back to A Social Cure.
“I started my production company, OPoS [One Pair of Shoes], with the intention of focusing on meaningful projects. There are so many issues that I would love to be able to tackle in my lifetime, but the reality is that I’ll probably only get the chance to deal with a few of them. I felt that HIV/AIDS was starting to lose focus at the most crucial point in its history, because we are so close to a future free of this terrible disease. We’re really starting to harness the capability of ARVs (Antiretroviral medications), which not only helps facilitate long, healthy lives in people who suffer from HIV/AIDS, but also reduces the likelihood of transmission of the disease. The goal is to normalize the HIV healthcare, especially testing and pursuant treatment, stripping it of stigma and approaching it like any other healthcare issue, like diabetes or hear disease. If diagnose and you take your medication daily, you can live a normal life with average longevity, but most importantly – ARV medications can lower the levels of HI Virus in your system to where they are undetectable and you can no longer transmit the disease. Normalizing testing and treatment can help us realize a future free from HIV – one of modern history’s deadliest pandemics.
“Part of accomplishing this is eliminating the stigma surrounding HIV in all cultures. The stigma prevents us from getting tested, because we don’t want to be the one with HIV. We don’t want to be the one who’s perceived as being immoral, or dirty, or whatever the case might be. Homophobia has also perpetuated this despite the fact that globally, HIV is overwhelmingly a heterosexual disease. And this is where media comes into play. It has an extraordinary way of changing our minds about issues. There is a connection that occurs between the audience and the individuals onscreen, and it creates heroes. We see the person on the screen differently than if we’d passed them on the street.”
As Hampton speaks, the passion in her voice is impossible to ignore. She expresses the need to make medication available to those who can’t afford it, and she is convinced that this film, coupled with the use of existing technology, can become a medium for change.
“HIV/AIDS remains the one of history’s most lethal pandemics,” Hampton says. “And Africa remains the epicenter of the disease, where as many as one in five people – twenty percent – are infected with HIV. And if you go into some of the low-income communities, it’s as much as half of the population. That’s an extraordinary amount of people living with HIV. Continent-wide, that translates into an estimated 23 million people who are currently HIV-positive.”
Which begs the question: Was tackling such heavy subject matter difficult to keep in the proper perspective?
“When I set out to make this film, I wanted to make sure that it had an uplifting message and that it didn’t wallow in despair. A lot of documentaries have a way of making you feel horrible, because you see these great tragedies but not a lot of hope. You finish watching, and you’re just wrenched inside. I wanted this film to be different. I wanted to look at a community that has this incredible problem and focus on their resilience.
“During my time in South Africa, I discovered a cultural and social response to the epidemic that I believe can serve as an example to the rest of the world. I was privileged to get to connect with some of the most heroic and buoyant people I’ve ever known. They were courageous and generous enough to share their most personal and optimistic stories of living with HIV, stories that normalize and humanize the HIV pandemic.”
So much has changed since the start of 2020. The coronavirus pandemic rages on. Social distancing is forever a part of the lexicon. Masks are a political hot button. Bad cops continue to kill people of color. The U.S. seems to be anything but united, and on the verge of ripping apart at the seams. In the eyes of many, Hampton included, President Trump is enjoying every minute of it, starring in his own made-for-TV role: The Divider in Chief.
“Our president has had us a tailspin for three years,” she says. “It’s like a bad dream, and we’re just now starting to rub the sleep out of our eyes. It’s a difficult time in our country’s history. What are we going to do, and how are we going to move forward? Who are we now? Who are we going to become? I don’t know how you can be a woman, and have any self-respect, and not be disgusted by Trump and his behavior. That’s my opinion.”
Hampton has watched the Democratic primary season with great interest.
“We’re were mocking the Republicans four years ago,” she says. “A friend joked with me during the previous election that we were watching the Republican Party implode. It seems that the election in fact fortified it, and it’s been the Democratic Party that appears to be imploding. At best we’ll look forward to reform and new politics.”
Like many on both sides, Hampton can feel the divide growing wider, and the anger growing more intense.
“Politics have polarized us so much,” she says. “The anger and disgust that I felt during the last election was so palpable to me. I was glued to my TV for two years, and then I had to shut off and deal with my own personal life. I had to figure out how would I engage with this new world socially, culturally, and politically. We have to be realistic, and we have to learn to look at things from other people’s perspectives. I do know that to be absolutely true.”
Hampton sees blame on both sides.
“We’ve gone too far in alienating people whose opinions are different than ours. I think this is something that we really need to work on. We need to understand how other people can feel disenfranchised, even if we think that they don’t have anything to be upset or angry about. We have to start listening more and talking less. So in that way, I’m trying to not alienate people by what I say. I think, sometimes, we as people with more liberal ideas, we have a way of sounding – and even feeling – a little superior.”
Is she happy with the Democratic nominee for president?
“I was hoping that Elizabeth Warren would have gotten the Democratic nomination, because I think that she is the real thing,” Hampton says. “We are desperate for the truth. It’s just gotten so clouded that I don’t think any of us know for sure. I feel like that we need someone who we can inherently trust, and someone that is genuine. I really felt like Elizabeth Warren was that candidate. I appreciated her tenacity her intelligence and her experience, and I felt like she could step in to the role of president and really get things done. I do feel that Joe Biden is our best hope of getting Trump out of office, so hopefully we have a candidate that will swing the election in the Democrats favor in November.”
Meissa Hampton has an amazing new gig since the last time we talked.
“Motherhood,” she says with a smile. “My son is the light of my life. He’s the reason for everything. It’s definitely complicated being a working mother, especially in this industry, where you are required to be available for 12 hour days on short notice. Unless you are at a certain level of clout where you can make certain demands, It’s difficult in that way. It’s definitely a delicate balance, but I wouldn’t trade a moment of it. You cherish the time that you do have with your child.
“I think my continued interest in advocating for gender equality across the board is now motivated by my son. I think the future is complicated for young men, especially when it comes to navigating new roles. On the flip-side of that, I also think that it’s going to be easier for young people to enter a new world in which they understand equality from its roots, and hopefully won’t have to unbind themselves from any sort of instilled cultural ideals that existed previously.”
A Social Cure continues to stream on Amazon Prime, and Meissa Hampton couldn’t be more proud. It’s been a long journey, and one that has consumed years of her life. It’s a time investment she would make all over again.
“The film is doing really well. It’s completion took longer than I thought it would. Having a child in the mix had something to do with it. Then there were the other projects that came up along the way. Also, when you are doing a social issue project, money is always an issue. I’ve had to take side jobs in order to fund that project, which affected part of the scheduling. “Because so much time elapsed from start to finish, we had to work on keeping the content relevant. Over time, the target moves a bit as we change and evolve socially. Different messages become more critical, more urgent, more timely, and other ones sort of fade into the background. The important thing about this film is that the message about HIV needed to come to the forefront of our minds again. It’s time had passed with respect to it being the disease du jour, and it had become somewhat passé. We needed to bring it back into focus. I think we’ve done that.”
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