Shanti Lawrie used to be a professional dancer, performing with Shaggy and touring with the likes of Chaka Khan and Earth, Wind & Fire, but for this beauty, dancing has always meant leaving everything on the floor. It was a great way to do it, but her love for CrossFit attracted her. She plays with the raw, primal emotions needed for projects like the upcoming film Persona. M&F has discovered why.
Persona is a movie produced by and starring Lowry (her credits include NYPD Blue and Murder). She was also nominated for an Emmy Award for her role as Yolanda in The Bronx. Ta). The premise is just fascinating. Suddenly. “It’s about a woman who wakes up in severe pain and has no memory,” Starr explains. “And she’s like, ‘Where is this pain coming from?’ She notices that she has a cut on her head and a bad bruise on her ankle. There’s so much going on. , she’s stuck in this house trying to figure out why she’s there and why she feels this way.”
birdie thompson
Shanti Lawrie introduced the ‘Method’ by channeling CrossFit with Persona
To make her gritty performance a success, Laurie went “way through” and used her love of CrossFit to find a way to emulate the pain her character would feel. She recreates the feeling of reaching her mental and physical limits. “So I decided to train really fast before filming started and it really hurt,” she told M&F. “I did so-called open workouts in CrossFit (often involving as many reps as possible in a certain amount of time) until I had Tyrannosaurus arms. You know, you never reach anything. And it was the same thought for me as someone who wakes up and doesn’t understand why everything hurts. Why does it hurt when I breathe? Why does it hurt when I reach for something? Is that so?”
Lowry has found that exhausting himself with CrossFit workouts further improves his performance, but this also means he has to keep increasing his tempo during filming. “I had to keep it up throughout the movie, while breastfeeding, during production, and while sleeping,” laughs the talented artist. “What I learned from CrossFit was to actually lift heavy weights and lift a lot of volume. So. The whole movie was a struggle and a great workout!”
Persona is scheduled to be released at an upcoming film festival, so it won’t be long before it hits our screens. “It was a dream come true,” Shanti says of the project’s completion. “This is truly my favorite thing I’ve ever done.”
What’s her next goal? Of course, to master muscle-ups!
