Let’s Get Vulnerable, Y’all

Starring Beth Behrs as Gemma Johnson, Season Three of The Neighborhood premiered on November 16th. “One of the things our show has done from the beginning and is continuing to do is to promote the bringing together of people in communities and that love transcends all sorts of racial boundaries, and we will continue to do that through the lens of laughter,” she says. “The first episode, we tackled it pretty head-on in a serious matter, but the rest of the season is really showing what we’ve shown from the beginning, which is really these two families from different walks of life coming together, and they want to do the best for each other and their community. I think that’s really the message of the show that will still prevail and is needed now, more than ever, in this current climate. I’m just really excited and hopeful that if people see it, maybe we will be able to change some minds and hearts, but definitely bring some love.”

The premiere episode focused on systemic racism, police misconduct, and the Black Lives Matter movement – an episode that made Behrs incredibly proud that “our show and CBS were going to go there. Our system, the way it was set up was inherently racist, so I think the ‘system’ has been broken since its inception. And I think the beautiful thing is that we are finally confronting that as a culture and as Americans.” While continuing to highlight and shed light on the broken system that maintains disparities in policing, healthcare, education, and economics, she remains hopeful that we can fix it. “I think there’s so much hope in these younger generations, there’s such a fire ignited in them,” she asserts. “I am doing my part. I hope everybody’s doing their part in order to be a part of the change so that the systemic racism is eliminated. We have to keep on trying.”

Besides working and learning how to play the banjo, Behrs created a podcast during quarantine, Harmonics with Beth Behrs, which is centered around the relationship between music and mental health. “I was having a lot of anxiety as we all were with 2020, and I really just couldn’t,” she says, referring to her continuous journey of wellness and healing. “I started to think about the intersection between music and creativity, and how it’s tied to wellness and spirituality and what our connection to that is as human beings – and I really wanted to explore that.”

In addition to exploring the link between spirituality and music, Behrs also features so many powerful women on her podcast. “My goal of having these conversations with creatives, artists, writers, and musicians was really to find out what they do in their darkest times and how they have pulled through, and how they take care of themselves and their mental health,” she adds. “In Season Two, I would really love to get more activists and women in government on it.”

Writer: Savannah Dial

Photographer & Videographer: Blake Eiermann

Photographer Assistant: Sebastian La’ Bianca

Editor: Eiko Watanabe

Special thanks to EPK Media (@myepk & @epkmedia - epkmedia.com)