Content note: this episode includes discussion of sexual assault and an abusive relationship.
Sometimes the yes that changes everything looks, at the time, like an escape.
Angela Harger Thompson has been a storyteller since she was four, waving a feather duster in her sister's home movie. At 30, she packed her Honda Civic and drove to Los Angeles with no connections and a very big dream. Two months later, a producer who had promised to keep her safe drugged and assaulted her.
Angela reported it. She went to the hospital, then sat with police for six hours, then waited nine months for a district attorney to tell her the case wouldn't be prosecuted. And she made a very intentional choice. She would heal right there in LA, through therapy, yoga, and a lot of anxiety attacks behind a bar, because he had already taken enough.
A few years later, burned out and waiting for her big break, she said yes to crewing a sailboat from Panama to the Marquesas. She had never sailed. One week out, the world shut down. Borders closed, plans changed daily, and what was supposed to be six weeks turned into 49 days at sea, including sixteen days with just two people on board and a storm straight out of Castaway.
She kept the camera rolling the whole time. That footage became her documentary Quarantine at Sea, and the rest of the story became her memoir, Worst Tits Ever. This conversation is about survival, faith, and the moment Angela realized she could stop waiting for someone to hand her the role and start creating it herself.
What You'll Hear:
• Moving to LA at 30 and why knowing her values early mattered so much
• The producer who groomed her by promising to keep her safe
• What reporting an assault actually looked like, and why she understands why so many women don't
• Choosing to heal in the same city where it happened
• Pushing through anxiety attacks while bartending and auditioning
• The dream that helped her say yes to crossing the Pacific
• Being stranded at sea as COVID closed every border
• Learning to sail in a 15-minute tutorial and riding out a storm near the equator
• Recognizing an abusive relationship and fighting to keep her documentary
• Why she stopped waiting to be chosen
Guest Bio:
Angela Harger Thompson is an actress, filmmaker, and storyteller whose work spans film, commercial, voiceover, and now the written word. Her screen credits have included Sense of Urgency, Something in the Woods, the web series Austin Wannabes, and the video game DC Universe Online, where she voiced the iconic DC Comics character The Question.
Her transformative experience began in January 2020, when she wrote a single goal in her journal at a church Dream Day: let God tell a great story through me. She had no idea that would soon unfold in the most unexpected way.
A few weeks later, she boarded a sailboat in Panama and set out on a three-to-four-week passage across the Pacific. One week in, a satellite email changed everything. COVID-19 had become a global pandemic. With island borders closed and nowhere to land, Angela found herself stranded at sea, navigating squalls, relational conflict, and her own spiritual awakening.
She kept the camera rolling the entire time. That footage became Quarantine at Sea (2022), a feature-length documentary she directed, produced, and starred in, now streaming on Amazon, Apple TV, and Google Play.
But the story was bigger than what the documentary could hold. Her memoir Worst Tits Ever tells the rest: a raw, laugh-out-loud funny, heartbreakingly honest story of faith and the hard work of rebuilding. Foreword writer and actress Jen Lilley describes it as "a love story, a survival story, and a coming-of-age-in-your-thirties story."
Believing every person carries a story worth telling, Angela founded The Storytell Initiative to help others find and share theirs. She lives in Southern California with her husband, Dustin. She is grateful to catch the sunsets over the Pacific, though now safely from a beach.
Website: https://angelahargerproductions.com
Quarantine at Sea on Prime Video: https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0LZUYBIYA02UYEYORJXKNF3D33
Worst Tits Ever on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Worst-Tits-Angela-Harger-Thompson/dp/B0G8R4BLXF
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• Starting Over: You Can Lose Everything and Still Be Okay (https://www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com/lora-cheadle/)
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