121. Respectfully Decline | Red Flag Agent

In this episode, Tiwana shares the red flags that caused her to pass on agent Lorraine Bradley who sat in a car for a video conference meeting with Tiwana, overshared inappropriate personal issues, and mistook Tiwana for a 65-year-old woman. 

Respectfully Decline is a three-part series where Tiwana shares the behavioral inadequacies of agents and managers that showed patterns of abnormalities in a meeting.

Tiwana has taken enough meetings with agents and managers to know most talent representatives need to prove themselves credible or worthy of her signature on a contract.

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Transcript

Welcome back to Acting Lessons Learned. I'm Tiwana Floyd, and I share personal stories of the lessons I've learned that helped me overcome obstacles as a working actor in Los Angeles.

If you're a loyal bi-weekly listener, you're probably wondering where the heck has Tiwana been. Where are these new episodes, Tiwana? I know. I ask forgiveness and a Pardon for my disappearance. 

I had to take time off from recording. I am still navigating and finding balance post-quarantine. Am I the only one feeling like I'm not energetically at 100%? And since I'm a recent card-carrying member of the slow-living movement. I am now putting systems in place to funnel all of my creative outlets into "Do Less More Often" while getting it all done. And first line of business is batching podcast episodes, so they go out consistently, even when life becomes overwhelming. 

The reason for the overwhelm is two-fold. One, I booked, or instead, I was requested to be a last-minute addition to a one-night-only play that thankfully turned into a staged reading called "When Seasons Change," written and directed by Njeri Njihigu. 

A poignant story of an independent woman reaching a turning point in her life as she unexpectedly becomes a family caregiver to both parents. Her mom and step-father. As she heals her family and her heart in the face of illness against all odds.

The story reveals family caregiving is not just about providing care; it's about healing old wounds and stepping into a new purpose through tears, laughter, hope, and love.

It's a reality many of us may have to face as our parents age into seniors. It's a topic that's been coming up in my friend groups lately. I played the role of the cousin who not only gave her mother away but was jealous and deceitful toward the main character, whose mother outlived mine by eight years.

I was grateful it turned into a staged reading instead of the full play because we only had three days to get off book and block this emotional dialogue-heavy play. Working on my character analysis and the dialogue took precedence because, like many of you, one of my fears is going up on my lines during a live performance. (shudders). So THANK you Njeri for making this a staged reading instead. And hopefully, one day, this play will return as a full production. 

Doing this play brought me back to my theatre roots. Which I hadn't done a straight legit play since 2017. As I got acquainted with my character, I was surprised to discover how much I missed the stage, the preparation, the discoveries, the pre-production, working with phenomenal actors I had just met, and janky green rooms.

This was Njeri Njihigu's first play. She is a television writer-producer and wanted to pay tribute to her parents, who had transitioned, her mom as recently as January. She brought awareness to the audience and the cast on the challenges of watching one's parents decline while having little to no emotional help emotionally, psychologically, and financially. 

Then, amid preparation, I encountered an incident that had me reeling with the idea of staying or terminating my commercial agent. I don't care how capable I am of releasing an agent. It is always a challenging decision, especially when I actually like the agents, as I did with this team. But I had to do what was best for me and my business. After weeks of heavy, energetically draining deliberation, I decided to move on, terminating the contract—just this past Friday. I will share that story at a later date. 

But, as I promised (mumbles) 3-4 weeks ago, I will pick up with the third installment of the series "Respectfully, Decline," talking about a theatrical agent who, after a meeting and some back and forth, prompted me to question the integrity of this woman and thus decided. Nope. Thank you for I respectfully decline. As you know, I don't say actual names to protect myself from libel, slander, defamation, or cancel culture. Although she was not ideal for me, she would be for someone else. And I don't want to discourage anyone who may meet her in the future or may be repped by her now. So Let's call this manager Lorraine Bradley.

In the last episode, I mentioned the "Talent Link" service offered by Breakdown Services. This is not an ad for Talent Link. I have yet to have success with it, but I know a few actors who have. But it's integral to this story, so I mention it again for those who may not have listened to the previous episode. 

Talent Link is a service where Actors pay a fee to have their profiles sent to many agents, like several hundred, those agents looking for new talent. I bring this up because this is how Lorraine found me in 2021. After being shut down during the quarantine, the industry was resurgent, so I used talent Link because most industry professionals were working from home, making it challenging to mail hard copy headshots, or had released their brick-and-mortar offices, or closed their shops indefinitely. 

Now, I was only interested in theatrical representation. And you can state the type of reps you want to have contact you. So, I was a little surprised to receive an email from Lorraine offering to meet with me commercially. And she had contacted me directly when Talent Link explicitly stated all correspondence goes through them. She stated that she had looked me up on IMDbPro. And I was thinking, well, she had to know a great commercial agency repped me because they were listed on my IMDb profile. Regardless, I could understand why an agent would try to poach me because I had three national commercials airing during a pandemic, and it doesn't hurt to see if I'm unhappy with my current reps.

I've said this is past episodes. When any industry person requests to meet me, I'll do my diligence, look at their roster, and research them online to see what they have going on. While perusing Lorraine's roster, I discovered that she not only repped actors theatrically but also had two actors I knew personally who were working. One of them a series regular. And most of her clients were middle-aged, which was attractive to me. Because I'm middle-aged.

I responded to Lorraine's email, informing her I was happily commercially represented but was looking for a theatrical agent if she were interested in meeting for that instead. She answered that she would meet me for theatrical consideration, she sent me a list of her success stories, big-name actors I assumed she had once represented. Along with a couple of youtube links of her doing interviews and discussing how she operates in Hollywood.

We set up a date and a time for a video conference meeting later that week. I watched the videos. They were informative, and she came off as personable and funny, making some salient points on managing talent. I felt good about meeting her. On the day of the meeting, she confirmed early that morning and sent me a link for the Zoom call. So, when we got on the call, I was flummoxed to see she was calling me from her car in a public parking lot. Saying she was out running meetings. 

The visual of this woman, a Hollywood agent, sitting in her car to meet with me about possible representation threw me for a loop because my mind went into overdrive, questioning if she was legit or maybe she hit a financial rut, was she living in her car? Was she outside a Starbucks trying to get wifi? No, she was on her phone. If she knew we had the meeting at this time, why was she out and about, and it's midday on a Friday? Are there no submissions for her to be handling? Well, maybe she's out for lunch. But no. we said we'd be meeting this time. Why is she in her car.

Does this happen to anybody else? When you're trying to take in the totality of an abnormality, trying to make sense out of things, that you lose presence and then don't hear all of what's being said to you. You either try to figure out what they were saying or have to grapple with asking them to repeat themselves, but then that would mean you weren't listening, but they presented you with such an awkward moment, so now you're mad at them for throwing you off-kilter? I can't be the only one. 

So I blamed Zoom for the delay and asked her to repeat herself. I swear this felt like some form of CIA, or KGB defense tactic to knock me off balance because I spent the first half of our conversation tryna get back on solid ground. Or maybe it's me. Perhaps I don't rebound as quickly as I think in the presence of bizarre happenings. Possibly because this was the height of quarantine, and everyone was a bit off. She made up some vague excuse for being in her car, which didn't make sense. Then, to use a car pun, she hit me t-bone me so hard by saying "you look much younger than your photo. I thought I was meeting with a 65 or 70-year-old woman." 'HUH?!" Y'all. I looked exactly like my photo. I was deeply bewildered by this comment. I didn't know what to say to that. Except to ask, what photos she looked at? Or if she was certain she meant to meet with me, Tiwana Floyd? Because I've heard stories from my actor frens of agents who accidentally met with the wrong actor. Lorraine said no, there was no accident, I just looked younger than my photos.

We began talking about New York, and Lorraine made it seem like she was a native New Yorker like me. Still, when I asked her specific questions, Was she born and raised in NY? Or, what boro she was from? She began dodging the questions instead talking about the high-profile casting and agent offices she worked in while she lived in manhattan. I asked again, and she changed the subject—red flag. I can't have you be my agent and you avoid my questions—especially such a basic, low-stakes question. I know me. When I don't get straight answers from people, mainly people I'll have close relationships with, I distrust them.

I mentioned the two female actors on her roster that I knew personally. She feigned adoration for them both, as she redirected her eyes to look out the driver's side window. And then she couldn't even pronounce the last name of one of the ladies who was a series regular on a show. Oh, come on!! Are you telling me you're earning commission from this actor's work, and you can't get her last name right? Second Red flag.

Then Lorraine started boasting about the big-name actors she once represented when they were first starting out. I could see on IMDB that all of those actors were repped elsewhere. One of them was experiencing recent success but had already moved on to a more prominent agency. This situation felt like a repeat of Daniel Marsh, the agent I spoke of in episode 120, who kept reminiscing about his claim to fame actress who had died at 80-something. 

Then at some point, Lorraine began talking about her ex-husband and how their marriage was fine until his mother got involved and started pulling the husband away. And then she went on about how much weight she'd lost. (sigh) Lady, what does this have to do with representation? Inappropriate. I don't want to hear about these issues? I remained quiet. So she changed the subject. To something even more awkward saying she had no Black people on her roster and now that there were more roles for Black people, she needed to add some to her roster. UGH!!!

We ended the call with her asking me to send over my most recent headshot session because she couldn't get over how old my pictures made me look. She was the only person I was hearing this from. No other industry professional said this about my photographs. I wasn't willing to accept her opinion. But I indulged her and said I'd send the images to her and we ended the call.

Later that day, I uploaded the photos to a gallery and sent Lorraine the link. About thirty minutes later, she responded, "Do you have other pictures besides these? You just seem to skew older in these shots than who you are! So, I sent over a different session. She was unsatisfied. Finally, she asked, "What commercial shots do you use?"

With this second pass, I became insecure about my photos and my looks. Wondering how I could have been so off about my photos. But, I knew these photos weren't skewing old because I was getting work within my age range using them. 

 But here I was, scrambling to find more photos to send Lorraine. My temperament went from optimistic and self-assured to oppressed self-doubt like a circus act trying to jump through hoops to get the ring leader to notice me.

I was in a great mood about an hour ago. Now, I didn't feel well. I didn't like what I was feeling. I felt like I was experiencing psychological warfare. So, I stopped. I asked myself, what is going on here? It's like when you're in an acting class, and your acting teacher asks, "how do you feel right now?" So you pause, breathe, check-in, examine your emotions and label them. And you try to find the cause. 

I replayed the meeting over in my head. Lorraine sitting in the car. Me feeling off-kilter. The red flags. Her personal affairs. Being told my photos looked like a 65-70-year-old woman, her needing more Black People on her roster.

 I deleted all of the galleries and sent her one final email. 

Hey there Lorraine, 
I've decided not to move forward, after all. I don't feel we are a fit. 
Thank you for your interest.

Within in four minutes of me sending that email, Lorraine replied,  

"I never offered you rep I asked to see more pictures. I wish you the very very best."

Sure, she never offered to rep me, but why have me go through all these changes with the headshots? 

At that moment, I was infuriated with Lorraine's response. Was she playing mind games? Was she planning to get me on her roster and make insidious attempts to disempower me, sway me away from my intuition, and disenfranchise me so that she could tilt the scales of authority in her favor, causing me to rely solely on her? I'll never know.

I don't know if people are aware enough of themselves to make that choice. Sure, there are sociopaths and, narcissists, bullies. But most people are unconscious of their driving force to control or coerce others. 

I remember feeling angry toward Lorraine. Thinking she was deliberately trying to upset me. Now that so much time has passed, I can look at that situation differently.

Lorraine may not have been in a good place. And it was evidenced in our meeting. Sometimes people have chaos in their lives and aren't aware they are bringing it to you. If we're not cognizant, we'll get caught up in it as. I was about to until I stopped and asked what was happening here. And in that breath, I dared to respectfully decline, even though an offer to represent me was not made. I declined the entire situation. It was making me crazy. And those pictures she said made me look 70 years old continue to work for me to this day. 

That's it for this episode AND for this installment of "respectfully decline." I may have more in the future as I take more meetings.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Acting Lessons Learned and experienced some takeaways that will enrich your journey. Like when you feel like you're being spun out of control, like pin the tail on the donkey. Take a moment and ask what is going on here. Reaclimate to sound mind and body and then make your decision from there. Ring the bus bell and get off the next stop of other people's crazy-making machines.

Thank you for listening.

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