Hollywood star steps up and out in style in SA
● Former Hollywood star Briana Evigan, who ditched Tinseltown to build a village in Bushbuckridge, is stepping up her activism game with the launch of a range of boots designed to leave a social message.
Evigan, 37, who has starred in blockbusters including Step Up movies, played scream queen roles in numerous horror films and appeared in Linkin Park’s music video Numb, turned her back on fame and fortune, in favour of life in Africa.
Here she is immersing herself in humanitarian projects that are uplifting communities and championing social causes.
“I was doing all these great things when I realised that Hollywood is toxic. There’s so much rejection and long hours. I mean there’s good stuff too like fame and money, but despite all that I just felt emptiness,” she told the Sunday Times during a brief visit to Joburg this week.
So, after three vivid dreams about Bali when she was 25, Evigan headed off to the island where she lay down on a mountain and experienced what she describes as “a spiritual awakening that filled me with an overwhelming joy”.
Coming down from the mountain she was riding an elephant and experienced strong feelings about “human consumption and tourism camps that lead to animal abuse”, and decided to do something about it.
She visited Africa and spent a month in the jungles of Rwanda with gorillas, experiencing them as “the perfect species and what humans should be”. She went on to work with elephants “because they portray family and loyalty” and with orangutans “that are just playful little kids”.
These were the metaphors that, along with the death of a baby elephant in a snare trap, led to her realisation that the atrocities perpetrated against animals are generally rooted in need and helped her “to start liking humans again”.
And so three years ago, while bored during Covid, she decided to move to Hoedspruit and fund her own nonprofit venture in Mpumalanga.
She developed Abundant Village — a set of sustainable solutions providing water, food and energy security, housing, education, a clinic, employment and finance solutions for the locals.
“When people are in survival mode they don’t care about animals. So I wanted to build something that meets all the basic human needs and with the community we built this little eco-friendly village from the ground up,” Evigan said, her passion evident.
“If you are suffering, you can’t dream, and if you can’t dream how are you living?”
The plan is to replicate the first Abundant Village in other areas, with the end goal being to create more than 100 villages around the world within a decade.
But that’s not the only project Evigan has been involved in.
She also met up with business partner Stuart Newton “who is a brilliant guy and knows all about business” and they created their own production house. MoveMe is based in the US and makes environmental documentaries.
Their first production, MoveMe South Africa, won “best documentary” and “best woman filmmaker” at the Vegas Movie Awards, another at the Paris Art and Movie festival and is up for eight more awards.
“I’m obsessed with the power of storytelling and how it changes hearts. I’m very excited about it and I want to film more and go bigger and take our next big production to the Sundance Festival next year.”
Seven years ago Evigan met Australian former sniper turned game ranger Damien Mander. He was in the US on a fundraising mission for his own projects, and they became firm friends.
This changed three years ago when they reconnected in Cape Town after Evigan had recovered from a break-up and Mander had gone through a divorce. They began dating and got married in front of 200 people in Bali last October.
“There’s nothing better than marrying your good friend. I ended up switching countries, gained two stepkids and had a baby.
Now we live in a beautiful house in Harare with lots of dogs and animals.”
The couple both work from home, travel extensively and visit the US every few months on fundraising missions and to visit Evigan’s family.
Mander, who is an Iraq war veteran who served as a special operations sniper for the Australian Defence Force, founded the allwomen army Akashinga, which means “the brave ones”.
It’s an anti-poaching unit of about 500 vegan rangers drawn from the abused and marginalised communities in Zimbabwe and operates in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Botswana and Mozambique.
Evigan, who does all her travelling with their baby Astraeus (the Titan god of the stars), loves the synergy between her passions and those of her husband.
Unwilling to slow down, she recently partnered with small Cape Town-based company Veldskoen Shoes for a range of black social impact boots, called the Ranger.
“We’re really excited to work with Briana, she’s an amazing woman,” said Freya Bell of Veldskoen.
“Check these out,” Evigan said, lifting her feet up to display the soles of her boots, which carry the word LOVE carved backwards into one sole and TRUST carved backwards into the other.
“They’re really great, and when you go walking in the bush they leave this trail of words in the dirt behind you.”
Bell said the boots, which are sold online, had proved to be a hit, and 50% of their profits are donated to Evigan’s Abundant Village.
A second range manufactured in brown with the words HAPPY and KIND on the soles has also been launched.