011: Best Actress

Written and Edited by Eve Mikkelson, host of Brooklyn Buzz on WPIR
Photography by Daniel Schwartz         
Interview on 2/10/2026

NYC’s Best Actress started in secret, born from three musicians who met on local bills (including members of Our Lady of Sorrows and No Big). Now, they step into their debut era together with I Know It Sounds Bad, a tender, self-aware full-length album born from discovery and careful tinkering. The project began “intentionally and quietly” before blossoming into a 28-minute attic-pop dream. In our conversation, the trio opens up about embracing sincerity over irony, working with producer Nate Mendelsohn of Market, and why the album title is both a joke and a manifesto.
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Would you guys like to introduce yourselves? Individually or together?

Georgia Pettit: Together :)

Erin Harland: Ok, 1… 2… 3…

G+E: We are Best Actress!

Ryan Jantz: We aren’t being listened to on-air! *laughs*

I love the spirit of it though.

R: Ok here goes… We are all in different bands. Erin plays music solo, I’m in No Big, and Georgia is in a noise-rock band called Our Lady of Sorrows. We met through playing on different bills, and we quickly became friends and started this project together.

E: We were like fans of each other.

R: We started off very theoretical, just talking about how to be in a band but we eventually said “Alright, we should try to do this.” Here we are years later. It took a while for the music and the visuals to come together, and it’s a whole new mountain trying to promote our stuff.

E: This interview is like our official kick-off!

Oh wow I’m honored! Well, how would you guys describe your music for someone who may not have heard it before?

R: I think our guiding principal is The Magnetic Fields, even though we may not sound so much like them. But, their toybox approach where everything is kind of delicate, fragile, and melodic has become our guideposts. The Roches, Moldy Peaches…

E: When we were kicking around band names one of the things we kept coming back to was attic music. It’s like whatever you’ve held onto like something sentimental or even random… It just feels like something you pull out that’s comforting.

G: Best Actress ended up working so well because it’s like “What do you need me to be?” So long as it’s good. *laughs*


You mentioned before we began that this whole project was started “intentionally and quietly.” I was wondering how this more quiet approach helped shape the music and project overall?

R: We sort of started in secret. It was so precious, and we already had these demos that we really really liked. I think we could see the future but we didn’t want to play shows, we just wanted to tinker until we really had it right. I think we are finally feeling not-shy about it now.

E: I think especially because we were coming from separate groups it was good to start having  the relationship to hang out and say “Hey I’m working on this thing, what do you two think about it?” So throughout those hangouts came the discovery that we were all into this other kind of music that none of us made at the time. We talked about it so much that we started thinking we should try to make that kind of music together. We thought maybe it'll just be a quick, fun project on bandcamp. But then as we started really assembling it, I think we all felt like “Oh, maybe this is actually something more.”

So was there ever one moment where you realized “Oh shit, this is the band!!”

G: Oh I know. When we realized we had enough songs for a record! *laughs*

R: There were so many moments like that for me. There was a moment around the time we were working on the song “Slane” where we realized the original feeling where we were going to be more jokey and self-referential naturally started to become a lot more sincere. It was surprising to have all of us naturally go in that direction. I think that was a moment that the band locked into being what it is now.

E: All of our songs started fitting in with each other that way.

R: We also work with such a wonderful producer, Nate Mendelsohn from Market. We work with him uniquely because we record everything on our own at our apartments, and then rather than just mixing and mastering we go into him and he brings us the last like 10% of the song. He really is like the other member of the band.

E: It’s nice to have someone that’s not too close to the music. He brings something we would have never thought.

R: We also come from three different bands, and I hope you don’t mind me saying this, *laughs* but we are all easily the worst musicians in our own bands…

ALL: *laughs*

R: So we really needed somebody with some real chops.

G: He can do anything. Like, he laid down a clarinet track on “Slane” that was so so beautiful.

R: He really is like a world-class producer.

  

Obviously your new album is coming out soon… [Now the album is streaming and ready to be listened to!] …It’s called I Know It Sounds Bad which I LOVE. That’s a very funny and sort of vulnerable title, so I was wondering what that name really means or reflects to you all?

G: I think that since we all front bands but we also don’t consider ourselves craft musicians, we always can feel a little inadequate in comparison. Like, we all have lead guitarists that are incredibly talented, or keyplayers that understand what’s going on structurally and compositionally in a song. I think living in NYC and being surrounded by such talented people, you constantly feel self aware. But we also want a place to sing our songs! So the idea of “I know it sounds bad, just hear me out” really reflects our feelings.

R: We had a rule where we had to not feel embarrassed by the album title when we tell people about it. *laughs* That title really passed the test because it’s so self aware.

G: I recorded some vocals with Laura Jean Anderson, and I think we were still on the fence about the title at the time. I gave her a few titles and when I pitched that one Laura said “Oh hell yeah.”

E: That’s what’s nice about being in a band too. I Know It Sounds Bad is something that I would probably love for my own stuff but I know I would’ve talked myself out of it. I realized I trust you guys and I trust what we’re doing, so it was nice getting to talk out those decisions.

R: As you can tell, we have been overthinking it.

ALL: *laughs*

E: We are very self-aware, yeah.

R: It is a personal miracle that we finished this and titled it. *laughs*  We did it, and we like it, and we didn’t compromise.

    
I love the few songs that are released already. “Long Long Time” is short but really emotionally dense. Very successful at embodying the feeling of something slipping away, or at least that’s how I read it. I was wondering what sort of feeling you were trying to provoke or preserve with “Long Long Time”?

G: I think that’s really astute to say it’s a feeling of slipping away, because it really is about how time has gone by without you noticing. I joke that I overshot on self-preservation and I haven’t felt the love of another person in maybe too long. That reflection is work too. It may be dreamy and romantic, but it’s also hard to lay it out so plainly.

E: Every time I hear the lyrics “If I could try a little harder, be a little softer, go the extra mile even though it’s long” I tear up because I think it’s such a feminine feeling of thinking there is always something you could be doing better. That also – maybe accidentally – relates to Best Actress too. “I gotta get it right, maybe if I do this then things will be easier…”

To mention another song, I think “Bunny Tattoo” is my personal favorite so far. A lyric that really stood out to me talks about “a body that feels like it’s mine” even though it isn’t. I listen to everything through a very queer lens so it was notable in that way to me personally, but it could also mean so many things. I was wondering if you could speak to that key lyric a little bit.

E: Whenever we are writing songs together I try not to go too personal, but that one is definitely kind of about body dysmorphia. Inside your mind you think of yourself a certain way, but you have this awareness that on the outside people are maybe seeing you a different way. This song definitely is partly about dreaming about the person you see yourself as, and reconciling also with the person that you can’t help but objectively be seen as.

R: I like that song a lot because there are a lot of different meanings in it. “A body that feels like mine” can be your body, but it can also be the person you’re lying next to.

E: One person may be the main songwriter but they can morph into new things as we all build on them. That’s the beauty of it. It can become something you didn’t think it was. It’s so cool to hear how different people interpret them.

That’s a huge reason I love music so much! Well, not to switch up the vibe, but I saw someone describing your song “Bardo” as the “banger” of the album…

G: Was that during my fit check? *laughs* I got my first first check on the street and it happened to be the day that “Bardo” came out.

E: It’s so funny because everytime I see those online I think they probably planned it in advance, but this one totally wasn’t.

Wait I always think that too – this one was authentic?

G: Yeah, I was in San Francisco!

E: Somebody just pulled her aside and she got to say “Yeah, my band’s song came out today!”

G: I just said “It’s a banger!”

R: It definitely is the song that rocks the most. The album is very delicate but that song is a lot more propulsive.

Wow, that’s awesome. I was gonna ask if there are any other bangers we can look forward to.

R: Yeah, quiet bangers. *laughs*

E: Every song on the album feels like our own little baby. If you listen from beginning to end, that is the right experience. You can kind of feel like you’re being held for 28 minutes and taken through this journey.

G: I think because it’s pretty brief it does feel almost like changing the channel when you’re a kid. It holds attention in that way.

E: We were trying to figure out the track order and it just wasn’t fitting right but one day Georgia had an epiphany…

G: I left a week long meditation retreat, got in my car, got a coffee for the first time in seven days, and I realized “I have it!” *laughs*

R: “I’ve seen god!”

ALL: *laughs*



I nearly skipped this question until you mentioned changing the channel. Pratt is an art school so we are always keeping an eye out for good graphic design *laughs* and I love the home-video vibe from your album art and what I’ve seen on social media. I wanted to ask if you feel like those graphics were an accurate representation of your music, but I guess the answer would be yes!

R: Yeah, we have this trusty thing I bring everywhere. [Ryan pulls a camcorder out of his bag.] It has kind of turned into its own multi-media project. We have been shooting on this all the time. Like an archivist, I’ll go through all the footage and edit little reels.

E: I think we have so much documentation because we didn’t know what it was going to be. That has ended up informing our style.

R: The graphic designer we work with, Lucy Andersen, is amazing and she came up with our logo and a lot of our visuals. It’s definitely meant to be reminiscent of 70s film, mostly just for fun.

This is a little bit of a throwback, but back when I first got in contact with Georgia you mentioned tuning in when I played “Our Lady of Sorrows” on air…

G: The best day of my life!

That’s so sweet! You said it was really positive and emotional which just made my year. I’m so glad I could have an impact like that.

G: I grew up listening to college radio. Princeton Record Exchange had a station and I always revered it as this institution of cool. It really caught me off guard to hear my own song then. It happened so quickly so I didn’t have time to intellectualize the experience. As it was happening I got really emotional and weird in my kitchen.

R: “Weird in my kitchen” is a great line.

G: *laughs* We have been talking to a lot of music bloggers and people that just love music. I have this riff that people who don’t play music but just love music so intensely should also be called musicians. They have such a reverence for the art and craft, and often they know way more about music than I do *laughs* so I really appreciate the work of that.

Is there a specific song on the new album that you would want to hear on-air? Because obviously I’m gonna play I Know It Sounds Bad when it comes out.

G: We are really excited for “Bardo” because it’s our hit. But honestly, I think we are most interested in what you’d naturally decide to play.

E: Our pick AND your pick!

G: Oh, you know what’s funny? You played the “Our Lady of Sorrows” song and then I played a show soon after that. There were these two young girls at the show and they said “Are you Lady of Sorrows? I heard about you on the college radio so I came to see you!”

Stop…

G: They wanted their picture with me and it was so sweet. They were so cool too, I wanted to thank them for coming somehow but they were like “Nah, we just wanna see the show.”

That’s literally everything I always wish would happen. This has made me so happy! I see we are nearing the end of our time but I always like to ask: Is there anything additional you’d like to mention or promote?

G: Listen to our record! We feel like it’s a recording arts project more than a live project. We made a record and we want people to listen even though we know it sounds bad… *laughs*

E: Also we have been talking about plans for the eventual future. Releasing the record will be such a release in the emotional sense too, so after that we can start thinking about what we want to do further. Exciting potenltial next steps. And we have a lot of songs that aren’t even on this record! Time to start this whole journey over again.

[Make sure to listen to I Know it Sounds Bad by Best Actress! Linked here] 



This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.