Meet Eshaana Sheth | Writer, Model, Actress, Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Eshaana Sheth and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Eshaana, what role has risk played in your life or career?

When I was younger, I was more single-minded, and then in my 20s, I became much more risk-averse. A big part of it was the influences around me; I’m very permeable so if I’m around cautious, anxious thinkers, I mirror the same energy. I was just starting to work on taking more calculated risks in my career and life when I got diagnosed with breast cancer—a rarity at my age—and went through active treatment through the pandemic, immunosuppressed. Whether I liked it or not, my entire life became risk/benefit analysis down to a granular level like, “should I talk to this friend on the phone or is the potential social benefit not worth the potential triggers?” I always say, I just wish the stakes were a little lower…like possible death not being on the other side of the decision-making process ha. It’s a tough way to live, I’m not going to lie. As difficult as adulthood can be, I often wake up and think it would just be a cakewalk if I didn’t have all the stakes of my health weighing on my brain. No matter what risk I take in my treatments whether it’s stopping or changing or reconfiguring or adding, there’s risks to each variable, and so much of it can affect my ability to work. It’s hard to know what to prioritize. I’m actually in the thick of this as we speak. There’s a lot of guilt and pressure.

Two things have helped me: one—taking risks with others you trust who can share the burden, whether that’s doctors, friends, or creative collaborators and two—understanding that finding those kinds of people who you are willing to die on the hill with and vice versa can be challenging and a process unto itself. I don’t feel supported by my entire healthcare team or every work relationship, but that’s just part of the unfortunate game of navigating a career as a young adult with an overwhelming disease, and that acceptance goes a long way.

I’m also working on learning how to leave things with more ease and less guilt. There’s a premium placed on not being a “quitter” in America but quitting relationships, jobs, residences etc. can be one of the most courageous things to do.

It’s difficult, because the rollercoaster of breast cancer alone—let alone what I’ve been through in the past few years—makes your body and needs change at a rapid pace, and that’s difficult to deal with and difficult for others to keep up with. Every week looks different and sometimes I worry that people will judge me for appearing scattered, but it’s not really a choice. I ride the waves and move it forward. I’ve finally reached a place where I’m so eager and ready to take career risks in things that feel so inconsequential now after all my heavy experiences, but now I’m faced with the worry about the impact of those choices on my cancer care and body…and that’s the bittersweet catch-22.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work. How did you get to where you are today professionally? How do you overcome the challenges? What do you want the world to know about you or your brand and story?

I’m a multi-hyphenate based in Los Angeles: a model, fiction writer, screenwriter, actress, and filmmaker. A lot of my work is comedic in nature, dramedy, or dark comedy—my specialty being celebrity impressions. I was formerly part of a sketch comedy troupe and recently was in a zoom stage play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I wrote, co-produced, and directed a short film called The Butter Knife in 2018. I currently have another on the film festival circuit called The Argument. My work as a model ranges from beauty, athleisure, commercials etc. I recently got to do something that felt very high-concept. That’s my favorite!

I’ve had a weird trajectory that’s hard to keep track of at this point. I really wanted to be basic growing up. My goals were to have washboard abs, a locker, and a boyfriend in high school like a blonde girl in a Disney Channel show. I didn’t understand varying body types or hyperpigmentation…and clearly neither did the media…but my dreams of being average were repeatedly shattered, because I was always shoved out of the status quo. I grew up in a small Southern California suburb—lodged on the geographic border of posh and punk—with my older brothers and immigrant parents who still call Mumbai “Bombay” colloquially. We listened to American rock music, watched European soccer tournaments, and ate different types of Asian food. No matter what I do, no scene feels like home except amongst other fish-out-of-water who also have a hodgepodge background or lens. Storytelling became a way to make sense of the world, and I realized that mixing around different types of people had given me a heightened awareness. People will say that there are two types of individuals in this world: participants and observers, but I’m very much a participant-observer.

I flew the coop and studied anthropology in college in New York City where I wrote an ethnographic thesis on finance bros, which involved interviewing them about comedy films. I thought about leveraging the craft into music journalism but was more driven to continue producing the plays I had written in college. So, I took a day job and started pitching a piece of work that later was adapted to film. I’ve always loved acting and did theater in school but never had the confidence or cultural access, so when I started mid-size modeling, I became more comfortable with being on camera. Pretty soon, I found that comedy was the perfect nexus of all my pursuits—it’s highly intellectual, performative, and very people-driven.

Then I got diagnosed with breast cancer right before the pandemic broke out, when my life was falling apart. I’d like to say it shocked me, but it felt more like par for the course—an extension of feeling othered in my 20s. My friend joked to me upon diagnosis, “it’s so funny that you grew up wanting to be normal, because you’re so good at abnormal shit” but it’s true; I didn’t need more ways to be unique. Cancer just added another hyphen to my hyphenated identity. The company I was working for went under, and I couldn’t leave the house.

In 2021, I got my immunity back and signed with a few modeling agencies, still in expanders. I suppose it was pretty brave in retrospect…showing up to castings with hard plastic in my radiated chest and sparse eyebrows from chemo.

My life feels like it’s existed in a vacuum for 3 years…it’s rather odd; there are times where I really feel like I have nothing to my name, and I’m like, what was the point of all that? And even though I never want to go back, sometimes I miss the profundity…like soldiers coming back from war only to find they’re starting from scratch again, doing remedial work, unable to relate to people, like, this is what was waiting for me on “the other side” after all of that? I’m in long term treatment and have 1 million doctors but nearing the point where I can function more, but it’s not as glamorous as the societal narrative makes it seem. Sometimes, I have to remind myself of what I went through to justify why I can’t keep up with my peer group, as painful as it is to recall. I feel back at square one, as though my life didn’t exist before cancer.

The most challenging thing in my life right now is navigating this career with cancer; it’s harder than dating without breast tissue, which surprises me. The entertainment industry is haywire enough without a serious disease, but now I know what it’s like to also not have control over your body or mood. Breast cancer for premenopausal young adults is an absolute shit-show with no shepherding that needs a serious refashioning especially around the demands and difficulties of endocrine therapy, and going through it during Covid times, making constant decisions, has been unreal. The cognitive issues are brutal…the energy lows. I forget common words and have physical pain…it’s a laundry list of medical issues and a fulltime job. Basic human desires can feel like work, and dealing with the infrastructure of the healthcare system on top of doctors and people is sometimes harder than cancer.

My brand is to take it week to week and scream in my car from time to time…to focus on my abilities more than my disabilities and to pet dogs. I don’t have a partner or kids or a large net worth. What I do have is my passion, and it’s what I’m chasing.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? Let’s say someone was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them?

I recently started a series called “painfully Eastside conversations” where I pull conversations from my texts about Silver-Lake-adjacent things: succulents, backyard comedy shows, hiking in Griffith Park etc. We would basically do all these things, because I’m an Eastside girl. First, we would get coffee…maybe in Echo Park…and take a walk along the LA River. I’ll likely jump into a British accent and talk about something topographical like the storks that are endemic to the waters or something as though I’m a host of Greater LA on KCRW (you should know, I have no idea what I just said). If it’s summer, we’re going to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery for Cinespia. If it’s winter ‘22, we’re watching the World Cup at my favorite soccer bar! We could even vacation on the Westside over the weekend—hang with the seals around Marina Del Rey. Lastly, I’m going to make you do something boring like attending a lecture at my favorite museum, The Hammer (The Getty comes in at a close second). We will eat gluten, see live music, have spicy prickly pear margaritas, and blow our savings at Erewhon, and if you’re someone I’m dating, I might kiss you on the night hike that saved my life, which overlooks the downtown skyline at its peak. 🙂

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?

I’d love to dedicate this to the movies and songs that have literally been survival for me over the past couple years, giving me characters to relate to and offering me a source of hope and healing when nothing else could.

Also, shout-out to my friend Taylor who is a wonderful interior designer and a truly unique person. Check out Soul Key Studio!

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_eshaana

Other: https://www.pointsincase.com/author/eshaana-sheth https://medium.com/@eshaana.sheth https://www.intheknow.com/post/comedian-performs-spot-on-impersonations-of-celebrities/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9531861/ https://vocal.media/authors/eshaana-sheth

Image Credits
Greg Swartz Sameerah Hoddison David Kinchen