Eva Amurri Dishes on Her New Show, Quitting Acting and Growing Up as Susan Sarandon’s Daughter (EXCL)
See the sweet way her famous mom helped inspire her approach to work and parenting
Eva Amurri may have started out following in the footsteps of her mom, Susan Sarandon, as an actress, but since 2015, she’s been primarily devoted to her lifestyle blog, Happily Eva After, and has won over a loyal audience for her honest takes on home design, fashion, beauty, relationships and motherhood.
In her latest project, Amurri is taking her passion for design to the next level as she documents her process of renovating a Connecticut home from the ground up in a new online series. With The Westport Project now streaming on YouTube, the multitalented actress-turned-influencer sat down with Woman’s World to discuss her foray into home renovation, finding work-life balance as a busy mom of three and the ways her famous mom has inspired her.
Woman’s World: What inspired you to create your new YouTube series?
Eva Amurri: I’ve had my brand, Happily Eva After, for a decade now, which is wild. Through the process of creating this online world, I realized a lot of what I’ve been doing in terms of marketing could be applied to real estate, because there’s so much competition and a lot of what sells homes is actually about lifestyle.
My business partner, Chris O’Dell, is the contractor who renovated my last home for two years, so that’s definitely a make-it-or-break-it experience. You either come out of that hating each other or loving each other. We found all these ways that our values aligned, and he always had this dream to build an innovative home in Westport, which is a beautiful beach town. We purchased this property that’s a complete teardown, but it gave us the opportunity to create a spec home and test out a lot of things and bring our different areas of expertise together. It’s been really freeing in a lot of ways, because designing your own home, you can almost get too caught up in it.
Being in the entertainment industry for so long, I’ve been around the luxury price point and had experience with designers, but what I want to do is mix that elevated style with the practicality that families need, and I want to do that all under the umbrella of a net-zero wellness-focused home. I think that the family that moves in is going to be very lucky, and to be honest, I’m envious!
Our web series has something for everyone. It’s not just for home renovation buffs. There’s a reality show component that’s like Fixer Upper meets Southern Charm, and you can get to know us. You can see the building of the house, but you can also see the Westport lifestyle and me interacting with my family.
WW: You started as an actress but transitioned to focusing full-time on your lifestyle brand and related projects. What has your career evolution been like?
EA: I was acting for 15 years, but I was very unfulfilled. I actually felt like the industry was slowly killing me. It’s not an easy place to be a woman. When I had my daughter, I suddenly realized that it would be really disingenuous for me to tell her to find fulfillment and do what makes her happy and respect herself but then not be that example for her. I wanted to live those words of advice, so I knew something had to change.
I had to make a list of things that I enjoyed to figure out what my next steps would be. My now ex-husband looked at the list and said it looked like a lifestyle blog. At the time, I wasn’t an expert at anything online. I had no idea how to code or blog or anything like that. I had this new baby at home, and I’d always loved writing, entertaining, design, crafting and cooking. My ex was like, “You already do all these things. Why don’t you start writing them down?” So I did, and it was a wildly uphill journey. I’d be trying to use Photoshop and doing YouTube tutorials until 2 a.m. and then press one button and everything I’d been working on would disappear, so I’d be sobbing in front of my computer and then my daughter would wake up early in the morning. It was definitely not glamorous in the beginning.
I kept sharing, and I was consistent with it, and then I started writing longform pieces on topics that were a bit more taboo at the time. When I started, it was still the world of perfect little squares on Instagram. I started talking a lot about the hard parts of parenting and marriage and being a woman and mom guilt and sex after giving birth. Then I had a miscarriage, and I wrote about it publicly. That was when I noticed that my voice in this space was unique, and I’ve stayed true to myself throughout these 10 years.
After a couple years blogging, the monetization and brand growth came and I signed with an agency, and the influencer boom happened. All throughout that process, I kept thinking that I wanted to create something concrete, so from there, I had an in-house lifestyle line for a while, and I launched my couch collection with Benchmade Modern last year. I’ve been looking for a way to meld my past life as an actress and my current life as a creator into one, so it’s been really fun to do that through my new show.
WW: As a busy mom, how do you find work-life balance?
EA: Anyone who says that work-life balance is possible is lying. It’s not entirely possible. I recently heard a quote about how we have all these balls in the air all the time, but some of them are glass and some of them are plastic, so you need to identify which of those you can’t drop, and which of those you can afford to drop. That really resonated with me. I try to be gentle with myself and know that it’s not going to be perfect all the time. There will be some months that lean more towards work and some that lean away from that.
I’m a perfectionist. I’m the oldest daughter of seven kids, so you can imagine how type-A I am. I’m working on letting go, because there’s no perfect mother and there’s no perfect family, and all of us are just doing the best we can. I think now that my kids are getting older they’ve internalized that a lot more as well, and I’m proud that they see me working and doing what I love while also being their mom.
WW: What do you do for self-care?
EA: I’ve gotten back into playing tennis regularly. I played as a teenager and let it go, but recently, I’ve been playing weekly with a group of women for an hour and a half. It’s been so fun to have that social aspect, and I just turned 40, so I’m trying to be consistent with exercise.
I’m very independent. Having a big family, my concern has been maintaining the alone time that recharges me. My husband is great about helping me find those pockets of time where I can get away for a walk or grab a coffee or go to the beach. I love reading and I almost never have time to read recreationally. Having an hour on a Saturday morning while my husband plays with the kids in the yard and I sit in bed with a cup of tea and my book is unreal. That’s my idea of self-care.
WW: Growing up in the public eye, as Susan Sarandon’s daughter, how did you manage to stay grounded?
EA: A lot of the stereotypes around that exist for a reason, but there’s a spectrum within the experience of living in the public eye. It can be quite humbling, and if you use it as an opportunity to keep great people close to you and see who your true friends are, it can be a way to grow and keep a safe community for yourself.
In a lot of ways, I’m lucky to be doing this job now, because I’m so comfortable in front of the camera. If anything, being in the public eye has shown me, and is now showing my kids, that nobody really knows everything about you. People have the lens that they see you through, and there isn’t much you can do to change that. It’s all about knowing your truth and experience and knowing that people’s perceptions of you will come and go, but nobody really has your number the way that they think you do.
WW: How do you feel your mom has influenced you, and what do you most admire about her?
EA: She always showed me that it’s possible to be a mom and do what you’re passionate about and work outside of home. I feel fortunate that I was able to see my mom have this big career while also having such a close relationship with her kids, and I think that gave me the confidence to do that same thing. Obviously my mom and I are in very different businesses now, but having her as an example has really made me a lot less hard on myself, because I’ve seen another woman go through the trials and tribulations of being a busy working mom.
One thing that I really admire about my childhood was that my mom would always make every single holiday and experience so special. She went all out and was always there, even if she was filming on nights and weekends. Our house was always the place where everything happened. It was so magical, and I cherish all those memories. I’ve recreated that with my own family. I love hosting, and a large part of my lifestyle brand was born out of that experience and the joy of gathering people and the beautiful memories that it creates.
I come from a blended family, and now I have a blended family of my own. Having people come together in a mishmash modern family way was always happening when I was growing up, and now that’s very much the case in my own family. Ever since my ex-husband and I split up, we’ve continued to spend holidays together with the kids, and now his girlfriend comes along, and my siblings from both sides with my mom and my dad come together to visit. I think it shows my kids that love is what makes a family, and that it’s important to stay flexible.
WW: If you could give your younger self advice, what would you say?
EA: I would tell myself to take more risks. I was always so worried about trying things that I didn’t know I was going to be successful at. I wish that I had pushed myself outside of the box more. I was concerned about being financially independent from a young age, and then I became a mom before I was even 30, so everything suddenly felt much heavier and more important.
I wish that I had left the acting industry sooner and had the courage to stop doing something that wasn’t fulfilling me. When I was younger, I saw myself as needing to have a more stable world. Looking back from 40, I can see that I really didn’t, and I wish that I had given myself the grace of making a few more mistakes.
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