77 www.CharlestonWomenPodcast.com | www.ReadCW.com | www.Instagram.com/CharlestonWomen Tell us how growing up in Gaffney shaped who you’ve become. Gaffney is a small, working-class town filled with colorful characters and although I found its smallness stifling when I was a teenager, as an adult, I fully appreciate how Gaffney and all its colorful characters shaped my soul. My childhood was saturated with family and Friday night football, Jesus and jacked-up trucks, creeks and crawdads, Duke’s mayonnaise and manners, tractor pulls and tiaras and lots of clogging and country music. Most everything I write is from a small-town perspective and no matter where I live on earth, I always call Gaffney home. What led to your success? As for mindset, I attribute any strength I have to being raised in the South by parents who worked hard to teach me both grit and grace. On some level, my grit is written in my southern DNA. My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles all had incredible work ethic. I was raised with the knowledge that luck favors the backbone, not the wishbone. And of course, grace has certainly come in handy as 99 percent of show business is rejection. Anybody can win. But a real winner knows how to lose with grace. As for what literally led to my success, I’d say it was fully embracing my southernness. The truth is, I never even realized how southern I was until I moved to New York to pursue acting. I worked hard to disguise my accent and eccentric southern ways — as I was repeatedly told that was necessary for success. But I was miserable. I felt like a fraud. I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin because I wasn’t embracing my authenticity. Once, I unapologetically embraced my southern roots and leaned into my uniqueness, success began to slowly unfold. My first big break was being cast in the original cast of Broadway’s revival of “Annie Get Your Gun.” My clogging skills and southern accent literally landed me that job. I decided then to start writing in my southern voice and to look for and create as many opportunities as possible to act in my southern accent. This led to screenwriting and working on southern project’s such as Netflix’s “Country Comfort,” my YouTube channel, my southern books, “Talk Southern To Me” and “Embrace Your Southern Sugar,” and a ton of fun acting on TV shows such as “The Closer.” More importantly, embracing my true southern nature led to self-acceptance, which is way more validating than any career success. Sit on the Porch for a Spell Charleston Women gabs with Southern Women Channel’s Julia Fowler Charleston Women in the Arts Julia Fowler, creator of Southern Women Channel.
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