She was driving to her Grand Canyon University graduation in Phoenix, nervous about what was next in her future, when lunch with a friend in Flagstaff was interrupted by a phone call.
“We just wanted to call and let you know you didn’t get the role you auditioned for.”
“I was thinking like, ‘Cool, why are you calling me?'”
“But they are offering you an alternative role.”
“I was over the moon. I was shocked,” said Nanabah Sam, a December 2022 GCU graduate in behavioral health science who appears in the Netflix series “American Primeval,” trending as a top TV show for much of last weekend.
She was shocked because she had never auditioned for an acting part, never really acted at anything. She was shocked because it was her graduation day, when she thought behavioral health was going to be in her future.
And, in a way, it still is.
“I definitely use it in my acting. If I didn’t have that degree under my belt – just the understanding of human behavior and how people react to things during trauma – if I didn’t understand that I wouldn’t have been able to throw myself into acting as well as I did,” said Nanabah, who in the film credits and her modeling career is known as Nanabah Grace.
There is plenty of trauma in “American Primeval,” depicting the brutal landscape during Utah settlement in 1857, when a Mormon militia, Native American tribes, the U.S. Army and pioneers violently clashed. The opening scenes depict a true event, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, when Mormons dressed up like Native Americans to shift the blame of the slaughter of a large group of pioneers crossing the state.
Nanabah (she prefers to be called the single name) played the Shoshone warrior Kuttaambo’i, and the scenes of her comforting a kidnapped Mormon woman, Abish Pratt (played by Saura Lightfoot-Leon), and engaging in a final chaotic final battle scene were memorable.
The set was cold in New Mexico’s countryside. Horses were tromping everywhere. The elaborate choreographed fighting was insane. But she loved it all.
“I truly believe anyone can be an actor if they want to because when you are in the environment it felt gruesome and felt intense,” Nanabah said. “My co-star who played Abish – she was there. During every shot, she was Abish. Same thing for the other co-stars. When they are there, they are in it.”
The scenes were not easy.
“The content of it was why I was OK with signing on to a project so heavy. The West at the time was violent, and I knew about the Meadows Massacre long before I did this,” she said. “People are going to see it, and it was meant to be shocking. But it did happen.
“It was a harder role to play because of the historical trauma it does play for indigenous people. I talked about it a lot with my co-stars who are indigenous, and we supported each other through it.”
Nanabah grew up just outside the Navajo Nation in Cortez, Colorado, but constantly went back and forth to the reservation for family and ceremonies, as her father’s side is all Navajo.
“I’m very versed in Diné culture; it was part of the reason I was comfortable to play a Shoshone character. We are not monolith, but our people dealt with similar trauma. It was an honor to play such a bad-a— character. She is a young girl who is angry and lost a lot. There was a lot of resentment.”
Acting with the likes of Taylor Kitsch (“Friday Night Lights”) and Betty Gilpin (“GLOW”) was not expected after her high school graduation in 2019 led to GCU. She began studying nursing on campus in the fall of 2019, then the pandemic sent everyone home after spring break. She came back to Phoenix for one semester of hybrid study in 2021 but struggled to make ends meet and even worked at Fry's until the schedules didn’t gel.
Then she had her first surprise call.
It was from a top international modeling agency, IMG Models, which had seen her photos by a local Cortez photographer and offered her jobs. She still works with them full time but decided to become an online student at home and, instead, study behavioral health.
“(GCU) talked me through some stuff. They thought I needed a change of pace,” she said. “I had some really great professors who changed even how I view college,” she said. “I had people who stuck it out with me, helped me through it and helped me figure it out.”
Then the second surprise was her offer to audition for a new Netflix film after they saw her modeling work.
“I did this self-tape in my living room. I moved the furniture around. My dad helped me. We spent three hours doing the tape because I was so picky,” she said.
After landing a role, she spent weeks near Santa Fe, New Mexico, on the set, interrupted by pickets in the writer’s strike. She finally was sent home to wait for a few months. Significant events were causing her another pause in her plans, until the filming finally wrapped up in February.
Nanabah has since moved to Los Angeles and was speaking via mobile phone near yet another infamous disruption – the L.A. fires. She’s is safe and volunteering to help out Colorado firefighters there take in some Hollywood sites during their breaks.
That’s why she went to college – to help out. She’s been speaking to indigenous youth about pursuing dreams, and eventually wants to get another degree in indigenous studies and a master’s in suicide prevention. She did her GCU senior capstone on suicide prevention among indigenous youth.
But for now, Nanabah is enjoying the surprising turn in her life – modeling for such events as the Ed Hardy show and Grace Ling in L.A. and pursuing additional acting jobs.
“It definitely changed my trajectory of what I planned to do with modeling. It really opened my eyes to the beauty and creative process of acting,” she said. “It was beautiful and so much fun. I want to do it again. Hopefully, this isn’t the last you hear of me popping up on Netflix.”
Grand Canyon University senior writer Mike Kilen can be reached at [email protected]
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