Miss Samantha Win is a martial arts practitioner and actor from Barrie, Ontario. Now living in California, she has been featured in the films Wonderwoman and Man of Steel.

Indulging in your pain. Knowing that that pain is making you stronger, just like in training, all the times you’re suffering, you’re so much stronger when you come out of it. Just knowing that and having experienced that on a physical level gave me a lot more emotional strength than I was expecting.

Episode 462 – Miss Samantha Win

After being literally forced to train in jiujitsu at age 4, Miss Samantha Win has made martial arts her lifestyle all through her life. At a very young age, Miss Win became aware that acting and martial arts can go together. She has been featured in the films Wonderwoman and Man of Steel, to say the least. Miss Win, aka Samantha Jo, has also represented Canada for wushu and won a bronze medal at the 2007 World Wushu Championships. With all the hats she wears, Miss Win has a lot of interesting stories to tell so listen to find out more!

Show Notes

Find out more about Miss Samantha Win’s filmography here

Follow, Like, and Subscribe to Miss Samantha Win’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

Show Transcript

You can read the transcript below or download it here.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Hey everybody, welcome! whistlekick martial arts radio episode 462, today, my guest is Ms. Samantha Win. I’m Jeremy Lesniak, I’m your host here. I’m the founder of whistlekick and I’m just a guy, a guy who loves martial arts, all of them and I’m training in as many as I can and I plan to continue that, to keep that white belt mindset going. If you want to see everything that we do at whistlekick, go to whistlekick.com. You’ll see links to various projects like martial journal, links to our social media and our store because that’s how we fund all of these stuff from protective equipment and fun apparel to functional uniforms and more. Use the code PODCAST15, that helps us know that that purchase came as a result of this show justifies what we’re doing to the accountants. You want to know more about the show? Go to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. 2 episodes a week, all for you, all for free and all to support the traditional martial arts community with education and connection and inspiration. That’s why we do all these. Now, today’s guest, you might have seen her on TV or maybe in movies. Maybe you followed him around in social media, I will say, she is one of the most authentic guests we’ve ever had on this show and I’ve had a wonderful time talking with her so instead of trying to sum it up in any way other than that, let’s get into it. Welcome to whistlekick martial arts radio.

Samantha Win:

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Jeremy Lesniak:

It’s a pleasure to have you here and listeners, I can tell you, just based on the kind of pre-show chat, it inevitably happens, I mean, it’s very rare that we just jump right into it but based on the last few minutes, I think we’re going places on this one. I’m kind of excited.

Samantha Win:

I am a little nervous but also very excited. I like going deep, we’ll see.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Hey, hey, we’re going to make it happen. We’re going to make it happen and everything, because it’s a martial arts show, we’ve got to take the boring question that inevitably leads to some exciting answers so let’s get that out of the way so we can work off of that. It’s a martial arts show, how did you get started in the martial arts?

Samantha Win:

I got started because I was forced into it as the story goes, I think for many others. I continued of my own volition but my mom was black belt in Japanese Jiu Jitsu growing up so just by default, both my older brothers and myself had to join and had to, at least, complete our junior black belt before we were allowed to decide if we wanted to quit or not but I guess, I didn’t want to quit and I just kept going and now, my entire lifestyle. Ha! Ha!

Jeremy Lesniak:

I’ve heard plenty of people say their parents forced them to or I’m tired of getting beat up at school or whatever it is. Parents have a lot of reasons for putting their kids in the martial arts but most of those parents are not also martial artists.

Samantha Win:

That is very true.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So you’ve got that line of you have to achieve your junior black belt like that’s not a small accomplishment. That’s years. I don’t know how many years it was generally in your dojo but that’s not a small standard to hold a child to. What age did you start?

Samantha Win:

I started at age 4 but both my older brothers, they are 2 and 4 years older than me so I was always there even when I was younger. I don’t remember not being there and I was the toddler on the side of the mat that even though I wasn’t allowed to join class, I was punching and kicking on the side trying to follow along anyways so I was really happy to go into it but I think the reasoning that my mom put us through wasn’t because she was worried about us getting beat up or picked on but I think her goal was to instill that work ethic and that sense of ritual, getting out our energy, just all of the psychological benefits that you end up accumulating along the way and I found it extremely helpful for the way I am now in my work ethic and my, I think, ease in being alone at the same time, if that makes sense?

Jeremy Lesniak:

It does.

Samantha Win:

But yeah, I don’t think it was for any physical reasons. She’s just, in my mind, kind of an enlightened person. She doesn’t carry herself that way. She’s very unsuspecting. You’d think she’s just this loving mom that’s just carefree and funny but she is a very in-tune woman.

Jeremy Lesniak:

What do you mean by in-tune? I’ve got an idea but let’s go there.

Samantha Win:

She, and I don’t know how or who taught her these things growing up, but she’s always been…she’s had these little bits, these gold nuggets of wisdom that she’s given to us along the way like kill them with kindness or you don’t know what the other person’s day looks like. Just general things when you’re angry or upset or going through basic childhood emotions where you’re in this whirlwind thinking and analyzing yourself. She just knew how to bring us back to peace so effortlessly, it seemed and she wasn’t a philosopher, she wasn’t a psychologist. She wasn’t anything like that. It’s like she just understood these things internally. She would have me write down my goals and hang them off of my bed so that I could look at them every day and give me direction in life and I don’t know where she learned that. I think she might’ve gotten off of google and known that it was really important for people and just giving it back to us but yeah, it seemed anytime she came across information or ideas, she just knew how to extract the most important aspects of it and give it to my brothers and I and I’m so grateful for that.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I can hear the kindness and it’s almost reverence. It sounds like you’re really appreciative of who she is and the way she raised you.

Samantha Win:

I really am and again, it’s unsuspecting for people. I don’t think…she’s not an egotistical person. She doesn’t really preach to anybody. She just is the way she is but yeah, I wouldn’t be the person I am today without my mom. That’s for sure.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I think we can all say that for good or for bad, hopefully, much more for good. You talked about siblings, you talked about your mother. What about your father? Did martial arts extend there?

Samantha Win:

My dad is a day trader. He did do martial arts for a little bit. I think he saw the whole family going all the time and he wanted to be a part of it and he did get up to his yellow belt and then, I think he just realized it wasn’t his passion, his thing and so he just continued to come and support us but he never continued with the training himself but he’s an avid runner so he’s jogged and ran every day for the last 25 years and I grew up in Barrie, Ontario, Canada and I don’t know if anyone listening has ever been there but it is freezing in the winter. It would be -25, -30 and my dad would still go running. He would come home with icicles off of his moustache. It was ridiculous so he had his own way of, I guess, showing that work ethic and training and the will. Yeah, we still learned the same lessons from him but just through a different outlet.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I just did a quick check on my phone and Barrie, Ontario is almost due west of where I am. You guys would have had the lake effect but temperature-wise, I bet we’re pretty similar. Doing the quick translation from Celsius into Fahrenheit.

Samantha Win:

I got locked outside of the house one time after school and it was a blizzard and I actually thought I was going to die so that’s how cold it is. I had to build a snow fort with my brothers and we spooned inside of it to get out of the wind and then never talked about it again.

Jeremy Lesniak:

That’s great! I mean, all that time building snow forts for fun and then you got to use that skills to maybe save your lives or at least a couple toes.

Samantha Win:

I mean, it’s funny now that I tell it here because now I live in California and that’s just so far out of the realm of possibility here but that was a very real issue then.

Jeremy Lesniak:

When you started talking about martial arts, you said you were required to. I think the word you used was forced because at some point, that transitioned because you continued past that requirement in your black belt. Do you remember when it went from being a requirement to something you enjoyed?

Samantha Win:

It was actually when I decided that I wanted to be an actress and something in my young brain just associated martial arts and the training and the mentality of that to what I needed for acting and I kind of knew that, at least, in my heart, they kind of went hand in hand and the things that I was training in martial arts were helping me as an actress and the things I wanted to be doing in acting would further my martial arts and I just felt it was a good complement, at least for my personality and my upbringing but yep, that was around age 11 or 12 and mind you, I know that extremely young for a junior black belt and much of the training I did was just like conditioning. I literally got stuck in a toilet at some point when I was training so take that a way…

Jeremy Lesniak:

No glossing over that one. You can’t drop that and run away. Stuck in a toilet?

Samantha Win:

Yeah, I was really young. I went to the Barrie Jiu Jitsu and you can only really absorb so much at that age, I think. Most of it was the philosophies of the training that I took from it and the physical conditioning. I can’t remember very much of my Jiu Jitsu training because I was so young. Yeah, I went to the bathroom one time and it was just so small. I fell into the toilet as I was peeing and I got stuck and I had to yell for my mom from inside of the bathroom which, now, I realized would have been horribly humiliating but at the time, I was like I NEED HELP and I was just screaming from inside of the bathroom. Oh gosh. I’m picturing it in my mind and it looks a lot worse when I remember it.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Well, when you’re that age, you don’t quite have the context of life to be as embarrassed. I’m sure if we dug into everybody’s martial arts childhood, at least for those that had it, there are some pretty ridiculous stories. I’ll drop a quick one. I don’t know if I’ve ever told this story but I started when I was 4 and sometime aged 6, 7, in the middle of class, I raised my hand and tell the instructor my mother washed my belt and in our karate school, you didn’t wash your belt. You washed your gi, you didn’t wash your belt and so, the whole room turns and looks at my mother and my mother, very confidently looks back at me and says Tell Sensei why and I looked at Sensei because I dropped it in the toilet.

Samantha Win:

And the room’s response was? They laughed at you?

Jeremy Lesniak:

I think it’s a combination of laughter and we better move on before this devolves even more.

Samantha Win:

Oh my gosh. I love your mom standing her ground like that.

Jeremy Lesniak:

That was something she was never afraid to do.

Samantha Win:

She’s like you’re going to embarrass me? I’m going to embarrass you. That sounds like something my mom would say.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Why acting? You knew pretty early. We’ve had quite a few martial arts actors on the show and most of them, it’s something that they end up in even the ones that had wanted to do it for a while, that aspiration doesn’t seem like it took hold until their teenage years but it sounds like it happened much earlier for you?

Samantha Win:

Yeah. I thought about this because I don’t fully understand why but I think my guess is that I really loved performing. From a young age, I was always wanting to perform whether it was singing or dancing or martial arts, whatever it was but I think at heart, I’m also a very shy person and I’m very introspective and I can, for instance, if I’m flying somewhere, I often don’t bring music or headphones. I’ll have a book but I spend a lot of that time just thinking and reflecting and kind of checking in with myself and I think I was so drawn to acting because it allows me both of those. I get to perform but so much of the work, I guess, so much of the work is thinking about feelings and all of those things that I love to do already anyways so I don’t know that I’m necessarily drawn to the glamour. Not that it’s a glamourous thing. I’m literally rolling around on the floor most of the time. That’s my job but yeah, it’s a combination of performing and also getting to do my favorite thing. Analyze my feelings like the typical actor or just like, I don’t want to say woman, I think a lot of people analyze their feelings but I can sit and do it for a very, very long time. It just allows me a platform that I can do that in a healthy way and there’s an appreciation for that. it’s not considered a bad thing. It’s part of my job. That was the draw. Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

How has that exploration changed, enhanced; I’m not quite sure what word I’m looking for there but how has your acting affected your martial arts?

Samantha Win:

It has allowed a level of response that I didn’t have before I got really deep into my acting work. I think just the concept of listening and responding applies to both. As I knew beforehand but it’s like the more I was doing in my work and the more listening and responding and the more in touch with myself and with my scene partner or whoever I am working with I was, the more I was in-tuned in martial arts to observing my partner or their movements. I was just quicker at responding and it wasn’t necessarily that I was doing reflex training. I just saw more and I don’t know if there was a line there where I crossed over it into my acting world, it just became more apparent in martial arts but it’s that aspect of listening and responding that made all the difference so I highly recommend acting training for the martial artists listening when you’re fighting and sparring and you feel like you just can’t see the other person’s movements quicker and you wonder how other people are able to react so quickly, to dodge things so quickly or to anticipate the next movements, I was that person who wondered how other people’s reflexes were so quick with that but after acting, I see now. It’s almost like an instinctual thing that you develop to be able to really listen to other people and to get out of your own head and your own ego of trying to be good at it and just doing it.

Jeremy Lesniak:

In my experience, that word that I use is allowing. By getting out of your own way, by getting out of your own head and feelings, however you want to term that, I’ve had a few moments over the course of my training where I have no idea how this happened where there was an example a couple months ago, someone was tossing a pen to somebody nearby and I just snatched it out of the air. I had no idea how I did it. It just happened and it was because I wasn’t thinking about it and I suspect that, as you’re getting better with your martial arts, you’re getting better with your acting which is making you better with your martial arts and it almost sounds like you’re merging.

Samantha Win:

Yeah. It does feel like it and it wasn’t even an intentional thing. I knew I liked performing, I knew I liked thinking and analyzing feelings and I knew that they would, I think go hand in hand but I didn’t realize that without necessarily training it. they would, I guess, help one another or help improve the other aspect so effortlessly. It just was an instinctual thing. It just wasn’t that I was training towards so that was a really neat discovery.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So how did the acting happen? You wanted to act and at some point, you started acting. What did it look like at the beginning?

Samantha Win:

At the beginning, it was just something I kind of did at home and my parents knew I wanted to but in Barrie, there weren’t a lot of avenues to really pursue that but my aunt found this convention and there’s so many of them nowadays. I think it was Model in Town at Search Canada. One of those things that you hear about in the radio and you’re like oh, it’s probably just for them to make money or a scam or whatever, whatever it is, but I really wanted to do it. My aunt told my mom about it and I was begging her and she has always been a supporter of whatever I wanted to do in life and I think she knew, because I love performing, I would be a good fit so she brought me. I had to do monologues, read a commercial, things that you do at conventions and got my first agent. Started doing print modeling and toy commercials and then it just kind of went from there but even at that age, my mom, because my mom was such a big supporter, she would research and she and I both knew that if you want to do acting eventually, you moved to LA. That’s the thing you do but being a Canadian, it is a little bit trickier and we don’t have family in The States so we kind of knew that there would have to be something special or there would be an extraordinary ability for the E-1 Green Card and that’s when my focus shifted back towards martial arts because we knew it would, I’d say we because my mom was very much my partner in my career almost but willingly. I wanted and needed her and I’m so grateful for her for it. She was truly like an ambassador for me but yeah, we knew that there had to be something special and I loved martial arts and I loved action actors and I just thought, that would be the perfect blend of both of them. If I were so lucky to be able to do that in life, that would be amazing so worked in the martial arts and just tried to, I guess, be so great at something that I couldn’t be denied and I didn’t know what that would look like or where it would lead but I knew if I worked my butt off, then doors would somehow open hopefully and I could step into it and be ready for any opportunities when that came but if I had to repeat the process now, I don’t think I could do it. There were so many amazing people along the way and so many coincidences, it seemed, that I just feel grateful that things aligned the way they did.

Jeremy Lesniak:

One of my favorite business podcast ends each episode asking the guest how much of your success do you attribute to skill and how much to luck and I’m curious how you would answer that. Your acting, this path, you just mentioned, it almost sounds like if you were to roll the dice again, you wouldn’t think it would happen because of all of these external forces. Is that true?

Samantha Win:

That’s very true. I don’t know that I would call it luck, though. I do believe in luck. I do but I think it would maybe be 50% skill and 50% connections of destiny, perhaps. Just amazing people along the way that you’ve allowed yourself to be open and vulnerable with who in turn wanted to see you succeed because of their amazing hearts and gave what they could give and in return, I want to give everything I have to give to people because I just feel so grateful for it but I don’t think it would necessarily be luck but a helping hand from amazing people. 50% skill, 50% all of the wonderful people along the way.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Sure and I fully agree. Whenever I talk about whistlekick and what we’ve been able to accomplish, it’s far more than simply because I had this idea or this thing or whatever and I think you expressed it in a really good way. You were open, you were vulnerable. You were willing to be so dedicated to that goal that you shared it at a really fundamental level with people around you and that resonates. People like being around people who have passion about things even if they’re not passionate about the same thing.

Samantha Win:

Yeah, yeah and I think, just being able to live and practice what I love makes me just very happy and at peace person. I feel like I could get to do the things that give me peace and so I have all this extra love and energy, I feel like and I just want to give it all away and I love meeting people. That’s my favorite part of the job is just getting to meet and work with new people and the same people at every job and have all of these deep conversations and get to hear so many different people’s life stories and how they became who they are and what they’re passionate about and that’s my favorite thing to do so I think, a lot of people crave that more than we’d really know, those kinds of human connections and they’re lasting. When you connect with someone on that level, you can’t really help but want to see the best for them or you just want the best for them and that’s why I find myself, even on a professional level, but a personal level as well, working with the same people over and over because you just, you end up loving them so much that you wouldn’t have it any other way and I really think that’s where peace in life comes from.

Jeremy Lesniak:

What was moving day like? I’ve heard horror stories.

Samantha Win:

Yeah, I guess it was a little lonely to begin with. I was very lucky that my ex-husband, I obviously knew him when I moved over here so I did have someone but I think it was harder for me to make female friends than I had anticipated and so, for the first 4 or 5 years, I didn’t have a lot of friends, necessarily, that I would hang out with. It would be a lot of training, a lot of…I don’t know…I think I was still scared maybe. I was 18 when I moved over here. It just took me a while to figure out how to connect with people or how to…I don’t know what it was but it did take me a few years to actually settle in and be able to appreciate the city for everything it has to offer but it’s still so much that I have yet to do like I’ve never been to the Hollywood Bowl. I should probably do that. I’ve never been to Disney World, I should probably, Disneyland…Disneyland here. I should probably do that but there’s no other place like it when it comes to people, there’s so many different types of people and if you actually take the time to talk to some of them, it’s actually really eye-opening and wonderful and also, opportunities for this industry, of course, there’s no place like it so for those reasons, I do love it. I miss Canada, though. I mean, it’s my roots but it was a hard transition.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I’m sure. Now, when you said it was a few years before, you didn’t say you made friends before you made female friends and I’m wondering if there’s more there.

Samantha Win:

I think just because of the industry I was in which was stunts when I first come over here, there was just a lot more men around than women, I think, and because I grew up with older brothers, I think that it was just easier for me to connect and speak on that wavelength and it took me a while to step into my femininity. Actually, I think just recently in the last maybe 1 or 2 years, have I actually started to feel feminine. Anyone who knows me or anyone of my past friends know that I’ve always kind of said I felt masculine and part of the reason, I’m sure, was all the masculine influences in my life and all of the men I was always around especially on 300: Rise of An Empire. It was like 50 stuntmen and me and I literally got farted on my whole life. At work, my brothers…

Jeremy Lesniak:

That is the best example of what it’s like to be a guy and be accepted as a guy I’ve ever heard.

Samantha Win:

Yeah, I got farted on all the time. You know it’s hard to feel like a woman when people are just farting on you and laughing and no one even thinks twice about it. you’re like wow, they do not see me as a woman at all so it’s hard to see yourself like that but I really value those times because I feel like I have a…maybe a good blend of both but it took me a while to find it and now, I wear jewelry and skirts and I enjoy all of that stuff but I don’t even wear jewelry before. I wore minimal makeup. I wore athletic clothes all the time. I just felt like one of the guys and at the time, I was proud of that and making those connections but I do think both are needed and I’m a better person for it, though, if that makes sense.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I’m sure. We have a little bit of a recurring theme happening here. As you get older, train, explore; you’re integrating parts of yourself and so, I’m going to ask that same question now from this point in the conversation. How did discovering more of your femininity impact both your acting and your martial arts?

Samantha Win:

I think I may be on that journey at the moment so I’m not sure I would have an answer to that yet but hmmm…yeah, I’m not sure other than being ok with…yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know if I have an answer but I’m going to be aware of it as I carry myself through the world now but actually, you know, from the acting standpoint, I probably can answer. From the martial arts, I’m not sure yet but from the acting standpoint, I do feel like my femininity is…well, I’m crying more. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not but I’m feeling things on a deeper level and I do think I’m…yeah, they’re resonating with me on a deeper level and I don’t know why that is but I like it. I like feeling it and then taking the time to check in with myself and trying to discover why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling or because…isn’t that the actors’ favorite thing to do?

Jeremy Lesniak:

One of my favorite people in the world, one of my mentors, says there is strength in vulnerability and I think there’s something to that and it sounds like whether you’ve been aware of it or not, it’s something you’ve had. That was the word you used when you talked about these people around you to reach your goals. You were vulnerable.

Samantha Win:

Yeah, yeah, I guess so. I think I’ve always been a pretty open person when it comes to my feelings and I think it’s given me a certain level of confidence because if someone asks me how I’m feeling or if I’m upset or what’s making me upset, I usually have an answer and I’ve usually thought about it for hours and hours ahead of time so it’s not a surprise to me and I like that because it doesn’t always have to be or it doesn’t have to be at all a negative thing. Feelings come and go and there are reasons for it but you don’t always have to take it personally. You kind of can control your feelings but you can be open and vulnerable about them and be open to them changing and I think that alone means a lot to people because they can connect with you without feeling personally responsible. You can just be honest and let it go and see what happens next in life but it’s no one’s fault or responsibility. Things just happen. Feelings happen and you can try your best to navigate it to make other decisions or to change them but at the end of the day, we all do our best and I kind of think that’s it. You just have to allow, as you’ve said earlier.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Totally. Let’s take a hard left. Stories, I love stories. I love hearing our guest stories and I would imagine being on set and all the things that you’ve done beyond stepping into a toilet and getting farted on, you’ve got some pretty good stories so I’m wondering if you might share one of those behind the scene moments with us.

Samantha Win:

I guess one of the memorable things that happened from my training years, I don’t know why this one always stuck with me; it’s a little bit silly, I guess, but part of what our instructor taught us, especially as children, was that if you can, you always run first. Fighting should be your last resort. You should try as many ways of resolving conflict as you can before you have to fight. That’s your last resort and so, that always stuck with me and so when we were doing our blue belt grading, I must’ve been like 9 or something, he would yell out technique number 4 and all the students would have to do it, it was part of the grading. So, we all go up there, the first technique he’s going to call out, we’re all wondering which one and he goes blue belt technique number 4 and then, I ran out of the room. Everybody else did the technique and I don’t know why in my brain was just like well, the first thing that you do is you run. I ran out of the whole building and nobody knew why I did that and they were confused. No one even laughed because they just wondered what happened. This child decided to run out the building and when I came back in, he was like what happened? Did you have to go pee or like where did you go? I was like well, you always said run first then everyone burst out laughing but it’s just funny like the connections that your brain makes at that age. I don’t know why.

Jeremy Lesniak:

How old were you, though?

Samantha Win:

I think 8 or around there.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Anybody that’s ever taught children is probably laughing and nodding along because kids are amazing at coming up with…they break rules you didn’t even know needed to exist. Don’t randomly run out of the building. You stay on the training floor while class is going on. I love it. That’s great.

Samantha Win:

And you can totally justify it too, like in my brain, everyone else was wrong. He always taught us to run first so if you’re telling me to fight, I’m going to run first apparently. I don’t know. I passed though so that’s good.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Are you still in touch with your instructor?

Samantha Win:

Through Facebook, yes. I guess that’s the beauty of Facebook. I haven’t seen him in person in many, any years now. I would love to go visit but all of my family moved away from Barrie so I guess it’s just one of those sad things where I don’t have a lot of reasons to pass through anymore but it was such a big impact on my life that I would like to go back. I just worry that my training is so rusty that I’d embarrass myself but I’m sure that’s fine.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I suspect that anyone who helped raise you and you start training at age 4, your instructors helping to raise you, if you’re able to take what they teach you and turn it into a career, I can’t imagine anybody being upset with that even if your block, punches, kicks et cetera aren’t where they used to be.

Samantha Win:

Thank you. I do hope that’s the case. I know that they hold a very special place in my heart so it’s nice to think of that being the same.

Jeremy Lesniak:

One of the things I enjoy about martial arts is that it’s not just physical. It gives us these tools, these resources you can draw on through good times, difficult times, physical altercations or just the stress of life. Think about a time where things were not going well and you were able to use or reflect or implement, whatever verb is appropriate, your martial arts to help you get through it.

Samantha Win:

I guess that would be the past maybe year and a half or so along with all these amazing new opportunities that have been happening in my life, it was a very difficult personal year. I went through divorce and that alone came with a bunch of emotional turmoil but I think the practice of being comfortable sitting with myself and thinking about my feelings and knowing that feelings come and feelings go, those things are temporary and there are other things that you can, there are ways that it can better you and deepen an understanding of the world. I think just knowing that that was the case already helped me get through it instead of just sitting and kind of indulging in your pain knowing that that pain is making you stronger just like in training. All the times you’re suffering, you’re so much stronger when you come out of it. just knowing that and having experienced that on a physical level gave me a lot more emotional strength that I wasn’t expecting so it was actually a really profound year for me for that. I found things in myself that I hoped would be there but they were and I feel emotionally strong right now which I’m really grateful for but yeah, yeah. I think anyone who goes through divorce or death in the family or of a good friend or any major emotional change in their life would benefit from having a practice of either martial arts or an outlet of art, something that enlightens them to the philosophy of growing through your pain.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Well said. Growing through your pain, I like that. If you could train with anybody, anybody at all, anywhere in the world, anywhere in time, who would that be?

Samantha Win:

Miyamoto Musashi definitely. I have to go way back with that one but it’s just so many of the philosophies he teaches, I have this idea of who he might be if you ever met him in person but I would like to know what that is for sure. So much of what he talks about in the book is just such enlightened information and so selfless and kind of removed from yourself that I just picture him as this evolved person who’s super Zen but I would like to know what that actually is in real life because I think a lot of times, if you’re sitting with yourself, you can seem really chaotic. All the thoughts and feelings that goes in and out of your conscious and I wonder if you would be able to see that in him or he would just be this Zen master or he would just seem like a normal person talking about things like we are talking about now, only it’s recorded in a very eloquent way and we see him as this profound philosopher. I’m just really interested to see how many of these enlightened people were just people.

Jeremy Lesniak:

It sounds like the construction of him that you have, it sounds very similar the way you talked about your mother.

Samantha Win:

Yeah, yeah, actually. I think something about it gives me peace and knowing that you can have all of that information and be human. It’s not like you have to be some special person to be able to understand these things and to be able to live them truthfully. I want to believe that any of us could be like that and any of us could have those guides and any of us could be that at peace with ourselves so I just want to feel like they’re human, they’re reachable. They’re not some far away godly person that can achieve that.

Jeremy Lesniak:

The people that I’ve met who, especially in the martial arts, we’ve talked about this from time to time on the show. You kind of have these 3 tiers of martial artists. You’ve got the vast majority of us who we train, we love martial arts, we do our thing and that’s where it ends and then these two “higher”, I don’t necessarily mean that word but it’s the easiest word to describe it, tiers of people. You have these amazing people who have done wonderful, wonderful things. Sensei Fumio Demura or Bill Superfoot Wallace, people who are world-renowned because of what they’ve done in and around the martial arts and they are incredibly wonderful, humble people who are generous with their time but then you’ve got the tier in the middle. People who think they have done amazing things but really haven’t and they’re not generous with their time. They’re not humble and it’s really interesting when we reach out to guests. I can tell from, really, the first sentence that they write back, how the interview is going to go based on which of those 3 buckets they fit in and it’s interesting that you talk about Musashi and this idea that these grand philosophers really, they are people. They’re not separate and I don’t know if I’ve ever thought of this before but I don’t think they can be separate and be as great as they are because otherwise they’re describing a condition that we’re not going to relate to.

Samantha Win:

Yeah, and so it’s hard for my brain to come up with this human version of who they actually are and that’s why I’m so curious if we could sit down and have a conversation with them, how alike we would feel and I would hope I would be able to relate but it’s like you have this intimidating version in your mind and I just…curiosity, I guess. To be able to have conversations like this and be able to learn more. I would just love that. Even from an acting standpoint, some of his philosophies like just accepting everything the way it is and just, his practice of how kind of little you need to know and control and thinking about. It’s just…interesting to me. I think I live so much in my own head because I’m always thinking about characters and feelings and everything and I would like to fully be able to just allow and I guess there are moments of that in my actual work but so much of the preparation is spent thinking about it that…ah, man…you could definitely spin out.

Jeremy Lesniak:

How do you prepare? How do you prepare for, I mean, the physical stuff, I think we can all probably relate to but there’s so much more. There’s depth to whatever you’re doing whether it’s a stunt role or something more of a speaking role. How do you prepare for those?

Samantha Win:

I have a wonderful theater teacher and she has a very simple phrase and it always resonates in my mind when I’m doing anything. That’s effort is all so I just try to do as much research as I can. I try to think about it as much as I can, watch material that relates to it, read, read books that relate to it. I just try to be as in tune as I can and try to feel it as much as I can ahead of time and then, you do your best to just allow and to just let it go and when you’re actually performing, you’re actually in a scene with someone, to forget all of that and that’s the hardest part. Some people struggle with the work ethic part of it, with the discipline to actually sit down and research and read and watch and think and then, those same people would find it…oh, sorry. On the flipside, the people who are really great at reading and doing all of the analytical work, it’s really hard to let go afterwards because it’s almost like you want to show your work or you want to be good or you want to…whatever your ego reason is for it but it’s hard because to achieve both of those, they almost work against each other and I feel that you need the perfect blend of both of them to really do a great job so, yeah. I do my best to do both but it’s the allowing and letting go part that I would like to practice more because I spent my whole life with martial arts doing the work part of it and I’m very comfortable with doing hard work. I want to earn anything that comes to me and I’m not afraid of working hard but the allowing is something you can’t just tell yourself to do. You have to feel it from the inside and allow it. It’s so much harder than it sounds. You don’t actually have to do anything and I think that’s the hardest part of it.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Totally.

Samantha Win:

And there’s a fear part of it as well because not doing anything means you have to let down all of your walls, any protection mechanisms…you really have to, you just have to live very courageously, I guess, and it’s not something you can fake or put on. You almost have to evolve yourself as a person, I think, in order to do a really great job.

Jeremy Lesniak:

How do you develop that?

Samantha Win:

I think it’s, I’d love to be able to ask one of the great actors. I do my best in understanding but I would imagine it’s just by practicing living truthfully every day in your real life and eventually, it’s just 2nd nature for you but that means exposing your flaws to the world constantly and being emotionally vulnerable constantly and it’s…I don’t know. I’m on that journey. I think it’s a lifelong journey. I don’t know if anyone ever really gets there but we can all do our best trying but I think it’s just being open and vulnerable and things that all sound very easy but in practice, you don’t know what you don’t know.

Jeremy Lesniak:

One of my favorite sayings. Do you have a favorite martial arts movie? Actors are the worst to ask this question, I’ll be honest. None of you ever want to commit to an answer.

Samantha Win:

I know! That was my thought reading it but I think, if I just take one aspect of it, I really appreciate what The Raid did for the industry part of it because I’m personally a fan of that violent style of fighting on camera and it’s the most fun to be able to perform, I really like The Raid for those reasons. I feel like it opened up this genre of real violent long takes of fighting and, just as an actor, a performer, it’s so fun to be able to do that. I’m glad that it’s becoming a little bit more mainstream and you get to experience that because there’s nothing like it on set when you get to do a whole sequence and you get to live it fully all the way through, maybe 20 kills or something as opposed to punch-punch-cut, punch-kick-punch-cut, slash-slash-cut. It’s like in wushu. I would do a minute and 30 second routines so I like being able to do the whole thing and getting that adrenaline rush and you really feel it in your bones so I like that because of The Raid.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I can hear you getting pumped up as you’re talking about it.

Samantha Win:

Yeah, I’m kind of moving my arms around, I’m out of breath. I just really like it. On my last project, I got to do a couple of really long takes of things like that and there’s just nothing that compares to it and especially because you need more people for longer takes too and with more people who are just as involved as you are, there’s this energy that just can’t be replicated when you get to live through the whole thing like that. It’s just like a performance on the stage. For every single shot, you just get to reset and do it again and then any extras or crew members, they’re getting like a show and I love that because I’m a performer. I love giving people a show. It’s a great feeling.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Tell us about your last project.

Samantha Win:

It is called Army of the Dead, a Zack Snyder film on Netflix to be released Winter 2020 but it is going to be a zombie flick so I’m pretty excited about that and I’m pretty excited there was a lot of weaponry in it, like gun handling that we got to do training for and not a whole lot has been released about story or details yet so can’t talk too much about it but the kind of training that we got to do was something new for myself. We had a couple SEALs going over rifle and pistol work with us and anything involving zombies is just going to be super fun but probably one of my favorite experiences on that was, in one of the sequences, I don’t know how I’m allowed to talk about yet but it’s nice discovering some UFC fighters that were there and I had no idea they were there but zombies is just such a genre that’s fun for people. Why wouldn’t you be there if you could be there? So, it was really neat to me. Yeah, a lot of fun. I hate how vague I have to be.

Jeremy Lesniak:

We’ve had episodes that we’ve embargoed for a certain time and I think, for the most part, the audience gets it so bottom line, there’s a movie on Netflix coming out. Now, when you say Winter 2020, does that mean January or December of 2020?

Samantha Win:

I think it’s probably December.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So, we have a year. We have to wait a year for this?

Samantha Win:

I know. I have to wait a year for it too. It sucks!

Jeremy Lesniak:

Do you have anything lined up? What’s next?

Samantha Win:

I have a couple personal projects I’ve been working on a little bit more lately. I’ve kind of been dabbling in writing and producing my own smaller projects and just experimenting with that at the moment so if they really suck, I may never release them.

Jeremy Lesniak:

It’s the beauty of film.

Samantha Win:

What’s that?

Jeremy Lesniak:

It’s the beauty of film. If it’s a bad take, nobody has to know about them.

Samantha Win:

Exactly. So, we shall see. I’m really appreciating the journey on that but yeah, there’s a short film I’m working on by myself at the moment that I feel very emotionally connected to so that’s taking my immediate time.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Can you tell us anything about it? Even just a little bit?

Samantha Win:

I’m such a private person with this stuff. It’s funny for being such a public industry, I hold so many things close to myself and I’m like out of the way, it’s my heart but I guess it’s…it ended up being more of a parallel and more of a reflection of what was going on in my personal life than I anticipated so it’s making me really nervous as I’m going through it but I have a wonderful group of friends and collaborators both because a lot of collaborators are so dear to me that have been on this journey with me which is the most special part with most of it but it’s just a very simple story. Two people, a lot of open space and a lot of things emotionally and mentally that happen given those circumstances so, yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Cathartic, is it a fair word?

Samantha Win:

Yeah, I would say that.

Jeremy Lesniak:

We can apply our own suspicions and hopefully, when, I don’t want to say if but when you’re willing to share that with the world, we can all get to check it out.

Samantha Win:

Yeah, very appreciated.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So, let’s talk about the future. Let’s talk about goals and training and work and anything else. When you look out into the future, as far as you want to look; you can look next week, next year, look out to be a hundred if you want. What’s coming? What are you hoping for, what are you hoping towards? What are your goals, your aspirations and anything else that might fall into that bucket.

Samantha Win:

There’s only one line that comes up in my head and that’s I want to help people. That’s always something I strive to do and I think I’m in this place now that I’m figuring a way, for me personally, to be able to do that so I’m not really sure but I know I’m doing this all for something. It’s not for accolades or for money or anything like that. I want to be able to use this to help in some way and I’ve always, I don’t know why but there are certain things that hit you harder than other things but for me, human trafficking has always been one of those things. The moment I discovered what it was and the affects it has on the victims, I just…I don’t know but I know I want to be involved in that healing somehow. There are a couple of times in my life where I was being followed and when I went down the rabbit hole of what that could have been and why I was being followed or what could have happened, it just freak me out and from there, I couldn’t really go back and I wanted to help somehow. So, that is somewhere in the very distant future but along the way, I think I want to witness and see how big of a, how much of a platform, how much I could really grow now in order to be able to effect change for that later but I really have to focus on one thing at a time because can’t put the cart before the horse.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Sure and if people want to find you online, stay in touch, see what projects you’ve got going on and all that, how would they do that?

Samantha Win:

My Facebook page at Official Samantha Win or my Instagram but I’m a little bit sillier on my Instagram so to get a better reflection of who I am as a person, I guess, Instagram would be the deal and that’s @sam.antha.win so yeah. I struggle a little with social media. I know some people are so effortlessly great at keeping people updated but again, I just feel like such a private person most of the time and if I do show things, I show the weirdest parts of myself. I do! If you were to look at my online presence, you’d be like this girl has nothing in her head and she’s just weird. She wears sumo costumes a Halloween, dances and takes weird pictures but I don’t know. Maybe that’s a protection mechanism or maybe that’s just me trying to practice taking myself lightly and taking the world in deeply. Another Musashi philosophy.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Or maybe that’s the very real part of you and that’s the avenue that you feel comfortable expressing them. You’re not going to get any criticism about silliness from me. Anybody that knows me, longtime listeners know, I’m a pretty goofy guy.

Samantha Win:

That is very appreciated. I’m a really goofy person too and I think it’d be hard, since we have conversations like this, I can seem pretty in my head about this or I do think about things and analyze things a lot but I’m equal parts a total weirdo so yeah, I guess that’s the duality of people. We’re all different. We’re all a little bit weird.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I hope so. Alright, this has been awesome. Tons of fun. I thank you so much for your time and I’m going to ask you to send us out, give us some parting words, whatever you want it to be as we head into the closing that I’m going to record later.

Samantha Win:

I guess, live bravely, love deeply, feel openly and give generously.

Jeremy Lesniak:

I can usually tell within the first couple minutes of conversation with a guest, before we even start formally recording how the episode’s going to go and this time took about 30 seconds. I knew we had something good from moment one and I was really, really happy that I wasn’t wrong. I had a great time talking with Miss Win and I hope you had a good time listening. If you haven’t already, go follow her on social media. See all these things she’s got going on and make sure you show her movies and upcoming projects some support. If you want to learn more about her, pop on over to the website, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com, find the episode, episode 462 and there you’ll find some links and a whole bunch more. Sign up for the newsletter while you’re there and then, maybe while you’re done, go to whistlekick.com, show us some love, make a purchase in the store or leave a review or share something. Lots of opportunities to show some support for the things we’ve got going on. If you want to email me, jeremy@whistlekick.com. if you know of a great guest we should have on the show, send us the guest form. Until next time, train hard, smile and have a great day!