Juliana Edern-Martinez earned her breakout role straight out of Yale drama as Detective June Hawkins in Netflix's Griselda.

Then, worked right up. There were a ton of near-misses,

and Juliana supported herself serving tables before landing the role of Kate Silva, the newest

detective on Law and Order SVU. Juliana shares incredible stories about working with Sophia

Vergara and Mariska Hargitay and really valuable lessons about advocating

for yourself being the appropriate amount of delusional and accepting the non-linear nature

of a creative life. Juliana, thank you so much for doing this.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm so glad to be here.

When you talk about going to Yale drama, I mean, that is about as serious as it gets in your world.

Was there ever an alternate path for you, or was it always drama? Was it always theater? Was it always the arts?

I really wanted to do political science, and I really wanted to do human rights international law. I was an AP student, so I was very kind of just a very ambitious student.

And then I had to take an elective and I took a drama course and shout out to Ms. Basso,

who was my first high school drama teacher, and she said, if you do this right, there's a way

to speak truth to something that we're not even allowed to in the real world.

And that was kind of like the first nugget for me to latch onto that maybe there's some form of

social activism or some form of social healing that can come from acting.

But yeah, that was really my first act.

Or being a soccer star, you know, either.

There's so much overlay between the failed theater kids and the political kids.

It is amazing.

I look forward to someone doing a study on it one day.

I think it's just like wanting the world to be better, maybe in somewhere, people, love for

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