CLEVELAND — You may know Chrissy Metz from the hit NBC series "This Is US," but did you know she’ll be here in Cleveland this weekend singing with Jim Brickman at Playhouse Square?
Chrissy got really candid with me when I asked her about her "reset" — the moments she says helped push her forward when she was fighting a giant. The giant was fear — something we almost all struggle with at some point — but for her to make the pivot from preschool teacher to actress to singer, she says she had to deal with old demons and learn to put herself first, and she says you can, too.
"The reset, for me, is doing things that I want to do," Chrissy explained.
Today, Metz is an Emmy and Golden Globe nominee for her work on "This is Us." She's also an author and singer, all things she wants to do. But giving herself space to do them — and believing she could — wasn’t always easy.
"Most of my life has been about everybody else," she recalled. "I'm the middle child of five, so I'm the peacemaker, I'm the diplomat, I'm the mediator, and sometimes to my detriment. And then that, of course, seeps into other things in my life, and my therapist always reminds me, she's like, 'What's in it for Chrissy?' And it's not even in a selfish way.; it's a very balanced, healthy way to sort of live life, and I never thought of it that way."
A few years ago, Metz's sister took her to an open call, and Chrissy says she started to recognize that opportunities big and small are all around us if we just pay attention.
"I was afraid of my own shadow teaching preschool," she noted. "Happy to sing at circle time. That was OK. It was enough for me, at least I thought, until I had an opportunity that I never would suspect would ever come my way."
While her acting star was rising, her manager discouraged her from singing, just to keep her focused. But music, she says, is her first love.
"I just put music on the back burner," she reflected, "and it just wasn't really supported or encouraged."
But during the hiatus of "This Is Us," she started flying back and forth to Nashville to songwrite. That’s when another extraordinary door was opened — when Kelly Clarkson's music director Jason Halbert spotted her.
"He came up to me, he's like, 'You don't know me, but I literally heard a voice say, "Ask her about her music and see if you can help her."' And he goes, 'I know that sounds crazy, but do you do music? Do you want to?'"
Her answer was yes, and in this, now second open door, Metz realized that faith was shining on pathways she didn’t even see on her map.
"There's always seeming to be these little guardian angels who are ushering me to these places I wanted to go," she stated. "So I'm really grateful for that. I think you're never given a vision without a provision."
Chrissy also credits her grandmother for instilling faith in her life at a young age.
"I don't know where I would be without [a] relationship with God, because I think that people are like, 'Well, I don't know how to have one,'" she told us. "And I'm like, 'Well, can you call your friend? Can you text your friend? Do you hang out with your friend? You have to cultivate the relationship.'"
Metz believes the opportunities are available to all of us, especially if we’re truly open to what’s possible.
"When things keep coming back and keep coming up, or the universe is conspiring for us for our good," she said. "Nobody can take anything away from you that's meant for you ... and sometimes it's just being in the stillness."
And she's learned that listening to what your heart's trying to tell you can make all the difference.
"I don't even know why we have the word 'failure' in our vocabulary, because no matter what we do, we are going to learn something from whatever we do," she stated. "I would just encourage people and bolster them and doing things that scare them, doing things that feel uncomfortable, because that's really where the growth comes in, and that's where you prove to yourself. Like, 'Oh, I can suit up and I can show up for myself.'"
Join Jim Brickman & Chrissy Metz for 'A Joyful Christmas' LIVE at Playhouse Square on Saturday, Dec. 16 at 2 p.m. & 8 p.m.; and Sunday, Dec. 17 at 2 p.m. Tickets and more information can be found here.
Watch out conversation with Jim Brickman below: