Interview: Corbin and Grace Pitts Talk About Life Outside of Arkansas

Continuing our Arkansas Families in the Arts series, we were thrilled to reconnect with Corbin and Grace Pitts. We first had the opportunity to get to know them just before the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped the world in 2020, making this long-awaited revisit especially meaningful.  

Grace Pitts is a Central Arkansas–based performer and arts professional with experience across stage, screen, arts education, and arts administration. Performing since the age of three, she is a 2025 University of Alabama graduate with a BFA in Theatre (Acting) and has trained and worked with organizations including DDO Kids LA, Arkansas Repertory Theatre, Argenta Contemporary Theatre, the City of North Little Rock, Rock City Dance Center, and Wildwood Park for the Performing Arts, where she also served as assistant director for the Triple Threat Summer Arts Program; she currently works as an Operations Associate at Argenta Contemporary Theatre. Her screen credits include HBO’s True Detective (Season 3), PBS Kids’ Mystery League, Lifetime films for MarVista Entertainment, and independent projects, while her stage work spans Arkansas Repertory Theatre, Argenta Contemporary Theatre, and The Studio Theatre. Grace and her brother Corbin also performed off-Broadway in The America Project: A New Musical at the Sheen Center in New York City, and she remains passionate about strengthening the theatre community through both artistic and administrative work. 

Corbin Pitts is a filmmaker, actor, Eagle Scout, and founder of Heroe Productions Entertainment LLC who has been acting since the age of five and launched his production company at eleven. Classically trained in ballet, tap, jazz, voice, and percussion, he is currently pursuing a BFA in Film/Television and Acting at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. Corbin was named Arkansas Times’ Best Filmmaker and Best Actor of 2025, following multiple honors in 2024 including first-place wins in the Thea Foundation and Arts Across Arkansas Film Competitions, Arkansas Times’ Best Filmmaker, THV11’s “Arkansan of the Day,” 501 Life Magazine’s “Five Oh One to Watch,” and a City of North Little Rock proclamation declaring July 31, 2023 as “Corbin Burke Pitts Day.” In June 2024, at just 18 years old, he wrote, directed, and produced his first SAG-AFTRA feature film, Good Time Charley, now in post-production with its world premiere set for December 17 at Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock. His screen credits include recurring roles on HBO’s True Detective (Season 3) and PBS Kids’ Mystery League, major commercials, and numerous film projects alongside notable actors, while his extensive theatre work includes off-Broadway, national tour, regional theatre, ballet productions, and creative leadership roles. 

Together, Grace and Corbin Pitts represent a remarkable blend of artistry, discipline, and dedication to storytelling, each forging their own path while remaining deeply connected to Arkansas’s creative community. With accomplishments that span stage, screen, education, and production, their journeys offer insight into what it means to grow up in the arts and continue building meaningful careers. We sat down with Grace and Corbin to talk about their creative beginnings, school, Good Luck Charley, and what lies ahead as they continue shaping their voices as artists. 

BWW: How's it going?  

Grace: Good.  

Corbin: Good.  

BWW: How's life?  

Grace: It's good. 

BWW: How is it that you guys are here in North Little Rock at the same time?  

Grace: It's nice. It feels like we're little kids again.  

Corbin: Little kids with jobs and cars and bills and insurance. 

BWW: It happens.  

Grace: It's definitely weirder now that we're older.  

Corbin: She's about to pack up her bags and go to Atlanta. 

BWW: What are you going to do in Atlanta?  

Grace: I'm going to keep working here (Argenta Conteporary Theatre) because the majority of what I do here is via computer. I'm going to keep doing that remotely and still getting to be involved which will be nice. I'm hoping to continue my acting career there. Just one step at a time. I've always wanted to live in a big city in my 20s and Atlanta sounds like the spot right now. I got a community there already and obviously he'll be there which will be nice. 

BWW: You're in Atlanta too?  

Corbin: I am in Atlanta. I'm going to SCAD. Savannah College of Art and Design. t's a liberal arts university there. I'll just be about 10 minutes away from her which will be nice.  

BWW: That'll be good so you won't be alone. That's awesome. So, what's new? What's been going on these past few years?  

Grace: I went to the University of Alabama. I got my BFA in acting there. I've been in college having fun learning a bunch of different things. Now I'm back where it all started.  

Corbin: What did you study in college?  

Grace: I was an acting major. I was a creative media minor as well but I ended up having to take a little bit more classes than I thought so I had to drop it but I almost got it. I studied acting, got to do a movie in college. It was the first feature film that my university ever did so I was the lead in that which was pretty cool. I did a show here (ACT) when I was in college. I think it was my summer going into my sophomore year. That was the last theater production that I've been in so it's been a while. I did a lot of the backstage stuff when I was in college. I worked in the costume shop. I did that kind of stuff. I've never really done that before so might as well try it at a collegiate level. 

BWW: Be well rounded.  

Grace: Yeah, I really gauged everything which was cool. Even though I didn't get to perform on stage I got to learn other stuff which was awesome.  

BWW: What does Atlanta have to offer you?  

Grace: I feel like it's becoming the new Hollywood.  

Corbin: Call it Y’allywood. It's arguably one of the biggest film hubs in the world. Netflix has offices there. There's tons of film and TV shows that film literally in Atlanta. They have really great theater there. Amazing, amazing theater. 

Grace: His dorm is right outside of the Alliance Theater which is one of the biggest theaters in Atlanta, which is super cool. Anywhere in city proper you're within 10 feet of some sort of theater film action which is pretty cool. 

Corbin: You'll be walking down the street and there's a major blockbuster shoot.  

Grace: We're right in the middle of it.  

Corbin: I don't know if you ever saw Black Panther. It was a massive film that came with Chadwick Boseman who passed in 2020. They shot a lot of that film literally where my dorm is. The campus that my dorm is on they shot a lot of chunks of that film there. The Hawkins lab from Stranger Things is like 10 minutes away. It's cool to just be driving and it's like, oh that's from The Walking Dead. It’s crazy. It's like L.A. lite. 

Grace: Another thing for me is the sense of community. Since I went to Alabama, the pipeline for people that grew up in Atlanta and surrounding suburbs to go to Alabama, go there. A ton of my friends from school live there too. A lot of my connections that I made with acting and film and theater at school, they're all moving to Atlanta too. One of my acting professors, he was a grad student, but he taught a lot of my classes, he actually lives in Atlanta too. That's where he's from. So, I'm like, that's cool. One of my teachers is there, and he's very well invested in all of it too. A lot of the connections that I got to make on my own are there, so that's really cool.  

BWW: Well that's exciting. Now Corbin, you have a movie coming out. 

Corbin: I do. It's the world premiere is December 17th at Ron Robinson. It won't be releasing to the public then, but it'll just kind of be a, once again the world premiere, it'll be kind of the early access, early screening of it to give people a taste of what's coming. I'm hoping to release it sometime next year. I'm very excited about that. That's fun. Tickets are on sale right now on eventbrite.  

Grace: Shameless plug. 

BWW: What got you into making films?  

Corbin: Long story short, I was on my first film set when I was five years old. Grace and I grew up in a ballet academy. We grew up doing theater. We’re very artsy kids. Up until I was about 11, I just kind of grew up doing, I was very hybrid with what I did. I did a lot of film. I did a lot of theater. We did a lot at The Rep. Did, of course, a lot at this (ACT) wonderful theater. I just was always infatuated with the magic of film, because with theater, it's all done practically for the most part. You get to see it happening right in front of your eyes. You get to see how so and so is going to fly. They put cables on right in front of you. There's nothing that's really like, how did they do that? Of course as an audience member, it's a different story. But I guess what I'm saying is from the perspective of an actor, it's just more interesting.  

BWW: I’ve never been on a film set. 

Corbin: I think I sit on film set more often than I do in the theater, and I'm like, how are we going to pull this off? Typically when you're on film set, you genuinely don't know. If you're not the director or any creative head, unless it's been explicitly communicated to you on what's going to happen, or if you have a lot of VFX involved and you're talking at a tennis ball, unless you have what they call pre-vis, which is basically just kind of a pre-visualization of what it's going to look like, you kind of don't know what's going to happen. You don't know how they're going to do it. How are they going to CGI a whole other building? What is CGI? How do you cut from one thing to this? How does that work? That's kind of all the thoughts that were running through my brain as a child on these film sets is, how does this work?  

BWW: Sounds fascinating! 

Corbin: When I was in True Detective in 2018, when I was 11, I remember you show up to set and there's hundreds of people, and it's like a Little Village, and it's just so interesting that you have, it's like a military encampment, a mobile camp. They just move in, there's 200 people there, 18 trailers, and then in 12 hours they're going to be out of there. It's just crazy. It's crazy. And so that's why I've always just been infatuated. I'd love to get back in a theater. The last live production I did was Billy Elliot, and I rehearsed that for nine months. I trained, and we were supposed to open in May of 2020, and of course COVID happened, but I already knew almost the whole show, And so that was the last show I did, and then I spent all my free time during COVID kind of doing my own little film school and writing a ton of scripts and whatnot. Like I say, giving myself my own education. There's the long story long, I guess. 

BWW: What's the movie called?  

Corbin: Good Time Charley  

BWW: This is your first?  

Corbin: This is my first feature film, so full-length film. I made a few films up until this point, but this is my first SAG-AFTRA. It's a pretty big deal. Because it's a SAG-AFTRA film, we were able to bring unionized work here for our actors, and it's incredibly hard. It costs a lot of money and a lot of people to work with the union, and so the fact that we were able to even have a film that's remotely watchable is pretty remarkable. I'm very proud of the team that we have. But yes, Good Time Charley. Three years in the making. 

BWW: That's an undertaking. 

Corbin: It sure is. It's one of those things where you... kind of feel like you're building an airplane in the sky as it's flying.  

BWW: So, fun experience.  

Corbin: That would be an interesting way to put it. It was a...  

Grace: You learned a lot. 

BWW: Educational.  

Corbin: Yes. That's a better way of putting it. Was it fun in the sense that I was smiling 24 hours a day and not breaking a sweat? No. But it was a very educational and... what's the word I'm looking for? It changed me. It fully changed me as a creative in all aspects. And so I would do it over again if it meant learning all the stuff that I've learned and experiencing all the lessons, if you will.  

Grace: Defining moment.  

Corbin: It was defining. She worked on it as well. 

Grace: Yeah, I did.  

Corbin: She worked on it for a month, and you were my little production manager. She was helping me run the show. I think Grace can attest it was...  

Grace: A little hectic.  

Corbin: It was a little hectic.  

Grace: But we got it all done. 

Corbin: For me, 18 to 22 hour days, seven days a week for about a month and a half. Once you start a film shoot, it's like when you start an actual run of a show. Rehearsing is one thing, but once you start the run of the show, you just hopped on a roller coaster and there's no getting off. You can scream all you want, but no one's going to get you off. That's how Good Time Charley felt. Because of the union and the insurance that was in place and everything between all the business mumbo-jumbo, I couldn't afford to miss a day. If I missed a day, I would have been shut down. And so we had eight hours with our actors and I’m glad we did it. 

BWW: So we're ready for feature number two now?  

Corbin: We are ready for feature number two. We're ready for feature two, three, four, however many more after that. Yeah, I'm ready for feature two. 

BWW: And you have your own production company?  

Corbin: I do. Heroe Productions Entertainment.  

BWW: So, this is your end game? 

Corbin: I think right now we're just kind of doing anything and everything to get our foot in the door. Everyone's always asked me, what would I rather do, be a filmmaker, writer, director or would I rather be an actor? And honestly, I just love it all so much. I don't have any preference. Wherever the work is, that's where I'm at. And I think Grace can say the same thing, which is why she's going to Atlanta to continue her path and continue working here. Because Grace, like me, is a Swiss Army woman, where she can do whatever you put her up to. I think her working in a theater is very helpful, like me working on a film set. It deepens your understanding of all the different roles involved. 

BWW: Grace, do you have anything lined up in Atlanta?  

Grace: Not yet, but I mean, the thing is, when you move to a big city, when you're at my age, a lot of people, when they're doing what I'm doing, they don't typically have a plan. You just kind of have to go there and then figure it out. But I feel like I have a pretty good head on my shoulders, and at least I have a job too, so I'll be able to float myself while I do figure it out. 

BWW: How much longer do you have at SCAD?  

Corbin: I'm in my sophomore year, so two more years.  

BWW: What's been a lesson there that you're like, I'm glad I came here.  

Corbin: Just kind of being thrown off in the deep end. I knew a lot of people in Atlanta, but I was 18, and it's like, what do you do? You kind of get dropped off, and you feel like you've been shot off in outer space, and you're never coming back. So, the biggest lesson of mine there is truly being by myself and being okay with being by myself. 

Grace: It's a pretty important lesson.  

Corbin: Well, yeah, because being by myself, being at SCAD and being in college, this just sounds terrible to say..... 

Grace: Well, it's made you invest in yourself. It's forced you to invest in yourself.  

Corbin: I treat it like solitary confinement. This sounds crazy. But really, my freshman year, I was able to write three features in my dorm room. When I'm at school, I'm a student. I'm an apt pupil, and I am there to learn. 

BWW: So what has winter break been like? Are you relaxing? 

Corbin: This winter break hasn't really been much chilling out and whatever, but that's fine. I've been working on this film and auditioning, auditioning, auditioning, auditioning. That's the job of an actor. You know, it's always rolling. I think people forget that is my J-O-B. That is my bread and butter. And so, I would love to get back into acting. I'd love to get back into live theater. 

Grace: That's what I'm planning on doing in Atlanta too. For the last four years, my job was being a student and getting through college. So I've kind of had to put auditioning on the back burner a little bit just so I could get my degree. But now I'm back and am excited to see where this next chapter of my life takes me. 

BWW: We are excited to see what the next chapter is for you guys as well, and we can’t wait to see Good Time Charley! 

To follow Grace and Corbin on their journey, Grace can be found at gracejpitts.com or IMDb.me/gracepitts and Corbin at IMDb.me/corbinpitts, http://www.corbinpitts.com, www.heroeproductions.com.   

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