There’s a particular alchemy to Elizabeth Tabish — a magnetic blend of old-soul wisdom, rebellious creativity, and a refusal to be placed neatly into anyone’s box. You might know her as Mary Magdalene in The Chosen, a role that’s given her global recognition and a devoted following, but to define her by that alone would be to miss the point entirely. Tabish, it turns out, has always belonged to the in-between spaces — the ones where genre, medium, and expectation blur into something far more interesting.

With a background in both theater and film studies, Tabish learned early how to spot a well-written female character — mostly because, for years, she wasn’t offered any. “So many female roles were just one-dimensional props for male protagonists,” she recalls. Her frustration fueled a creative hunger, leading her to seek out — and eventually create — stories that centered women in all their messy, complicated glory. It’s a pursuit that shaped not only her career but her entire creative ethos.

When The Chosen came along, it wasn’t just the historical weight of Mary Magdalene that drew her in — it was the sheer complexity. “The challenge was to keep her fully human,” Tabish says. “Not sanctified, not simplified — just a woman witnessing impossible things and trying to make sense of them.” That balance — between mystery, humanity, and something just out of reach — is where Tabish thrives.

Beyond her acting work, Tabish has carved out a bold, unapologetic space as a filmmaker, turning her lens on female archetypes through short films that are equal parts haunting and subversive. “These are stories about trauma, obsession, coercion — the darker sides of womanhood we often silence,” she says. “But in confronting them, we also get to explore healing.” Her films, from Mother’s Day to The Darlings, don’t tie everything up neatly. Instead, they linger, inviting viewers into a space where forgiveness and fury coexist — a place many women know all too well.

This duality — the raw vulnerability of acting and the exacting control of directing — is where Tabish feels most creatively alive. “Acting requires you to keep your heart wide open,” she explains. “Directing demands you hold the whole picture in your head. Both need a bit of the other — vulnerability in control, and control in vulnerability.” It’s no surprise that her work in both realms feels deeply personal, each project a small rebellion against the limitations so often placed on women in storytelling.

For all her critical success, Tabish admits to feeling like an orphan in the industry — too unpolished for Hollywood’s mainstream sheen, too provocative for the sanitized world of faith-based entertainment. “I don’t know what Hollywood is,” she says, half-joking. “And I don’t fit into the faith-based world either.” It’s a sentiment familiar to anyone who’s ever carved their own path, one step at a time, without waiting for an invitation. For Tabish, that sense of creative exile started early — growing up in a small Oklahoma town where culture wasn’t exactly around every corner.

“There was boredom,” she says. “And in that boredom, you either wither or you search.” She became a seeker — rifling through library shelves, obsessing over old films, building her own sense of taste and purpose from scraps of inspiration. That self-taught, self-determined spirit still drives her today — a reminder that you don’t need permission to make art, you just need the will to start.

That same rebellious streak led her to co-found The Arthouse Film Festival, a celebration of boundary-pushing cinema. “I wanted to see films that didn’t follow formulas,” Tabish says. “The kind of work that feels like a message in a bottle — part film, part secret code.” Inspired by avant-garde icons like Maya Deren and David Lynch, Tabish envisions a space where experimental filmmakers are not just accepted, but celebrated for their willingness to make something strange, beautiful, and entirely their own. While the festival is currently on pause (creative lives get busy), the spirit behind it — a love for work that defies categories — runs through all her projects.

Tabish’s creative impulses don’t stop at storytelling — they extend into aesthetic obsessions, particularly her deep love for vintage styles. Whether it’s the fuzzy textures of 60s horror, the saturated palettes of 70s thrillers, or the analog grit of 80s punk, Tabish treats aesthetics as emotional triggers. “Some aesthetics just arrest me,” she says. “They make me feel something, and that’s usually where the storytelling begins.” That blend of retro influences and psychological depth is part of what makes her work feel both timeless and utterly modern — a cocktail of nostalgia and unease, wrapped in a velvet glove.

For someone as creatively restless as Tabish, success isn’t about box-office numbers or industry validation. “It’s about creating without apology,” she says. “Without second-guessing myself or shrinking to fit.” It’s an ongoing process — peeling away layers of self-doubt, resisting the urge to explain herself, and making space for the next wave of dream projects, of which there are many.

Among them is a feature script she’s been quietly developing — a surreal, aesthetic-driven exploration of a woman’s psyche. It’s the kind of story only Tabish could tell: haunting, beautiful, unapologetically hers.

After projects like Between Borders and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and As The Chosen continues to unfold, Tabish is embracing the contradictions that make her career — and her art — so compelling. She’s both insider and outsider, actress and auteur, soft-hearted and steel-spined. She’s proof that the most interesting stories often come from those who don’t quite belong — and don’t particularly want to.

For The House, that’s exactly the kind of artist worth celebrating.

Credits:

Photography by JSquared Photography | @j2pix

Styling by Karen Raphael | @karenraphael

Makeup by Trace Watkins | @tracewatkins

Hair by Dallin James | @dallin.james

Written by Kacey Perez | @studioblume_