She Left Nova Scotia, Sold Her Eggs, and Built a Film Career—Why Does It Take That?

Sonja O’Hara sits down with Afternoon Pint for a conversation that gets real, fast, about what it actually takes to build a career in film and television when you’re starting in a place like Nova Scotia. There’s a pattern here we don’t talk about enough: if you want to make it, you usually have to leave. In Sonja’s case, that meant going from Halifax to New York, then grinding her way into Los Angeles. And somewhere along that path, you’re not just chasing a dream—you’re figuring out how far you’re willing to go to stay in the game. Sometimes that includes selling your eggs to finance your first feature. That’s not a metaphor. That’s the reality.

Sonja is an Emmy-nominated writer, director, and actress, and she walks through how a horror limited series about a matriarchal cult became her foothold in the industry. It’s a practical breakdown of how this business actually works: awards create leverage, horror sells when nothing else will, and film festivals can change your life—if you know how to use them. But underneath it all is a bigger question: why does so much Canadian talent have to leave to get taken seriously in the first place? And what would it look like if we built an industry here that didn’t force that choice?

Her path wasn’t clean. It was visas, student debt, and the constant pressure that one wrong move could send her back home. She talks about the cost of American training, the mental toll of rejection, and even the strange technical side of acting—like learning to lose a Maritime accent just to book work. It becomes a conversation about identity: what you hold onto, what you adapt, and how you don’t lose yourself trying to fit into someone else’s version of “castable.”

There’s a turning point in the episode where it stops being about survival and starts being about control. Sonja credits advice from Faye Dunaway as the moment she realized no one was going to hand her a career—she had to build it herself. That meant writing, producing, directing, and getting comfortable asking for things most people are too afraid to ask for. Cold emails, constant follow-ups, protecting your voice while still taking feedback—it’s less romantic than people think, and a lot more strategic.

Her first feature, Ovum, is where everything comes together. It’s personal, uncomfortable, and funded in a way that says a lot about the state of independent film. It’s also proof that if the system doesn’t have a place for your story, you either force your way in—or you build your own door.

The back half of the conversation gets into the machine itself. What it’s like directing at scale with a company like Lionsgate, how to lead a set, and how to earn trust quickly when you’re the one in charge. They dig into unions like SAG-AFTRA, the rules that keep people safe, and the trade-offs that sometimes come with that structure. There’s also a moment that perfectly sums up the industry: Sonja jokes about firing her own cat and replacing it with a “nepo cat.” It’s funny because it’s true.

What sticks with you is her mindset. This isn’t about waiting to be discovered. It’s about building something sustainable—balancing the art with the business, being careful how you show up publicly, and creating a career that can move between indie films, commercial work, and elevated horror without losing direction.

And it circles back to the same idea: we have world-class talent coming out of places like Nova Scotia. The question isn’t whether they can make it. It’s why they still have to leave to do it—and how much better things could be if they didn’t.