Acting Lessons Learned with Tiwana Floyd

130. Actor Discernment: When Casting Director Advice Goes Bad

• Tiwana Floyd • Season 1 • Episode 130

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Have you ever found yourself caught in an endless loop of conflicting casting director advice, feeling overwhelmed, immobilized by which advice was the right direction to follow, not knowing what to ignore and what to keep? I've definitely suffered analysis paralysis of "what actors should and shouldn't do." And I was reminded that if you ask ten people for advice, you'll get eleven different answers. 

In this episode, I'll share my experience of a recent conversation with a casting director whose service I paid $100 to give feedback on my Actors Access Site. Her superior disposition caused her to offer unsolicited opinions on my social media presence, my self-submission success, and my overall approach to acting and how I should do things without even asking about my business goals or getting to know me. Once we finally reviewed my Actors Access, she divulged it was the best she'd ever seen, and she didn't know why I hired her. And I wondered the same thing. 

When we ended the call, I decided that would be my last time taking advice from a casting director or anyone who showed no interest in getting to know more about me before arrogantly offering one-size-fits-all advice.

Lastly, I share my approach to using highly effective postcard marketing to help me get into the doors of casting offices. 

Acting Lessons Learned is Produced, Written, Recorded, Engineered and Edited by Tiwana Floyd
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Speaker 1:

Hey there, welcome back to Acting Lessons Learned. I'm Tuana Floyd and I share the personal experiences and lessons I've learned, and still learning, as a working actor in Los Angeles. In this episode, I'm going to talk about why I chose to ignore advice given to me by a casting director and the times that I allowed that advice to really steer me off of my path, off of my journey. I'm going to have a little bit of a tangent about postcards, but the information is good, so let's dive in Now. If you've been following me, you might have heard me joking about having over 10,000 hours of experience in casting director Q&As. According to Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, this makes me a master of casting director advice. I've gained 20 years of industry guidance from the perspective of casting directors on what actors should and shouldn't do to advance our careers. However, the overwhelming amount of what we shouldn't do has caused me to rely less on external advice and trust my own instincts and internal compass, because with 200-plus opinions on any given topic, it's easy to get lost into contradictions and suffer from analysis paralysis. Therefore, I've learned to take casting director advice with a grain of salt and focus on what works best for me in growing my career, because I used to go through a cycle of manic operations when trying to follow the advice of casting directors. And it would start with okay, I would hear a casting director give a suggestion about this is the thing to do, and then I take action on that thing, gaining a little bit of momentum. But then, when I would attend another casting director Q&A with a different casting director, that person would debunk the previous suggestion of the thing to do, saying it wasn't the right approach and expressing their disdain for actors who use that approach. I would stop using the debunked approach because of the negative feedback, and then I would stall out and lose momentum. And so this pattern would repeat itself with every casting director Q&A panel workshop that I would attend. What actors should and should not do always comes up. But if there was like a certain thing that a majority of the casting directors could agree on, even though they didn't know they were agreeing on something, I would give a little more credence to that idea, to that thing, and I would implement it into my business practice. But, more so than anything, I was learning to carve my own path. I was paying more attention to actual business practices, to business people who work in business every day. I mean, this is a business, but for some reason, when it comes to actors, nobody wants us to be business people. What we are, we're entrepreneurs.

Speaker 1:

And I know I'm not the only actor who has been confused by conflicting casting director advice, because I've seen many of my friends struggle with the same issues that I have, and sometimes we try to help each other, or rather, we try to police each other by saying don't do that thing, because this casting director over here said that she doesn't like it. So naturally, I reached a point where I no longer wish to hear these constricting suggestions about what actors shouldn't do. And while I'm here, can we please stop asking casting directors about their pet peeves? Why do we even ask someone what their pet peeve is? It's not helpful, or it's not helpful to us anyway, because learning about someone else's pet peeves puts us in a position to be overly cautious good little actors contorting our behaviors to make someone else feel comfortable. Meanwhile, we're not being authentic to them or to ourselves, because we're trying to tiptoe around trying to please them. And it's not like casting directors take into consideration our personal annoyances, and I believe it would be beneficial for us all if they did, because I don't know about you, but I have accumulated a list of things that I wished that they would refrain from. Nonetheless, the constant pressure to please casting directors in order to avoid being blacklisted is detrimental to an actor's confidence and restricts us from taking necessary steps to advance our careers.

Speaker 1:

Over time, I learned to view advice as an opinion that may or may not align with my own beliefs, and I'd only implement advice that felt right and worked for me, because the true value of advice lies in identifying the golden nuggets that resonate with you and seem to be achievable. But it's hard to disregard conflicting guidance from casting directors who have a strong and unwavering stance on their advice. I mean, they are the gatekeepers to the opportunities, so we kind of have to listen to them. I guess right. I have personally experienced how dismissive a casting director can be when I don't agree with their advice. I once had a casting director tell me well, that's why your career isn't working and I was like, really, why such a low blow? Why is it? Because I don't want to take on what you're telling me is the reason why my career isn't getting where it's getting.

Speaker 1:

I had to finally learn to ignore the guidance from casting directors when they said don't send postcards because we just throw them away. Save your money. And this didn't seem, I don't know, like it doesn't make sense. Postcards are meant to be discarded. They convey a clear message in an eye-catching way and then we throw them away. And in regards to saving our money to reproduce a postcard and buy stamps, it's pretty inexpensive and the costs can be written off in our taxes at the end of the year. I had to look this up because I was really curious and I learned that postcards were created in 1865 and they still remain to be one of the most effective and economical methods of marketing next to social media. I still receive postcards from companies and I give them a quick glance and read them before tossing them aside, and even a brief glance is considered a point of contact, making it an effective marketing tool. It prompts you to consider the company for a moment and, whether or not you need the services now or in the future, you're likely going to consider that postcard and the company it came from. I also learned that postcards offer a range of psychological benefits, but one of the benefits is anyone who receives a postcard. They tend to absorb the message, mostly unconsciously, through the brain's system, one which is the faster and more intuitive mode of thought that influences decision making. So this means that when people receive our postcards, they can decide whether they want to consider us or add us to a time slot audition, and then they can throw the postcard away.

Speaker 1:

Pre-pandemic, I was a heavy postcard person. I have a targeted list of people that I would send to monthly, bi-monthly, with information about what I was doing, because it was my way of informing them that I was here, that I existed, or actually reminding them. It's almost kind of like I remember there was one time when I was trying to remember someone's name and I knew we were Facebook friends. So I went to Facebook and it's like, well, how are you gonna look them up? Tuana, you can't even remember their name, but you know who. I do remember the people who post on Facebook. Often I remember their names and, quite frankly, if you asked me to recall 30 people on my Facebook group or my Facebook page, I wouldn't be able to do it successfully, but I would be able to recall the people who I constantly see, who are posting fun stuff on Facebook, and that's probably like 15 to 20 people. So every time I've sent a postcard to my targeted list, I would receive an audition. So it's hard for me to hear someone tell me that don't send us postcards when there are actual casting directors who like them. And if you're not regularly working on a TV show or feature film or anywhere where you can be recognized, how else are you supposed to let them know that you're out here trying to remind them that you exist? I'm done with that tangent.

Speaker 1:

But now I'm trying to remember when I stopped listening to casting director advice, like there was a specific time where I declared you know what, I'm done with that, and I think it was around 2017 or 2018. But then, when the world went to lockdown and we were all unsure about what to do or how to navigate the business, casting directors were very accessible and so I thought you know what, let me go back on here and let me listen to what people are saying. And you know they were on Instagram Live and SAG After Foundation Zooms and Clubhouse Forums and, just like that, I was back in the casting director suggestion trap. I was expecting hmm, I was expecting them to tell me something new, something I hadn't heard of, something insightful. But I have to remember that I've been listening to people for 10,000 hours I can say 10,000 years. I've been listening to 10,000 hours of advice, so what could possibly be new that I would expect to hear? I know that casting directors are wanting to be helpful. I know they are, because why else would they offer their time for free most times to just come and speak to a room of actors? That is them giving back.

Speaker 1:

But the information becomes problematic because there's so many different versions of what to do. And when I think about, you know, the lockdown and during the pandemic and the quarantine when everyone was speaking, like I remember specifically because I would go on Clubhouse and there would be a room full of at least maybe 10 casting directors they would have. It would be a huge panel. If you've listened to Clubhouse, you know what I'm talking about. But there would be a huge panel and there would be contradictions even within the conversations, and so you would hear you know some of the people who were there, the listeners who were new to acting, ask the question.

Speaker 1:

Well, I was on last night and this person said that I should do this, but today you're telling me that I shouldn't do that and I really don't know which one I should do. And so it's just hard, I think, for newer actors which is what was happening for me to really gauge the best thing to do. And I think the best thing to do is to really, you know what? I think the best thing to do is follow business. Follow, read the Wall Street Journal, read the Hollywood Reporter, understand how business is being done and pay attention to what's going on there, because I feel like by doing that and reading business trade magazines, it alleviates the contradiction cauldron. So, even though all of these talks were happening during the pandemic, I had to retire again that's a funny term that I had to retire from casting director advice. But you know, my curiosity always hopes something helpful will be expressed, something that will cause me to say, ooh, I needed to hear that. Oh, I didn't know that, and on occasion it happens. And so on occasion I still hop on a Zoom call for veteran casting director as featured.

Speaker 1:

But I also like hearing from the younger generation of casting directors, because they think differently and they have fresh perspectives and fresh views on guidance and ideas for actors. More recently, I was doom-scrolling on Instagram and I stumbled upon a woman, a casting director who I didn't recognize named. You know what I'm gonna call her Geraldine. I'm not gonna give her real name because I'm gonna say a couple of like maybe not so great things here and I don't want to have any type of defamation clause and also I want to respect her because there are people who appreciate her information and I'm not trying to block anybody's bag.

Speaker 1:

But she was speaking on something I had never heard a casting director admit to. I'm paraphrasing she said that casting directors will only get to our submission if our headshots are really good and our demo reels are spectacular. So that kind of eliminates a lot of actors who don't have one or both from being considered for roles. She also said that good representation someone who's advocating on our behalf to make phone calls to pitch us is helpful, but more often enough, the more likely way to be seen by casting directors is if they scout us out in plays, movies, stand up, television shows, social media. They take note of actors creating exciting content on Instagram and TikTok and may even reach out to us directly, and I've witnessed this happen. There's a girl oh, I forget her name right now, but her name is Caitlyn and she's really funny and I've seen her do a lot of very funny bits. I think she's an improviser, but I've also seen her on new television shows like Lute on Apple.

Speaker 1:

Geraldine ended her reel by stressing that we should always be performing, seen, performing, creating, being on stage, doing stand up, being in plays but, more importantly, creating content for social media. And I found this not only to be daring but really helpful because at the time I was creating a lot of sketches for Instagram and TikTok with my sketch group. We were feeling really empowered to be making our own content. It was nice to hear a casting director would consider or scout our work. I was intrigued by her, so I watched a few more of Geraldine's reels and then I looked her up on IMDB to learn more about her background. She's an Emmy award-winning casting director with a long history of working on popular network shows.

Speaker 1:

I'd visit her IG on occasion and catch a few insights here and there, and then I saw that Geraldine had offered audits for actors access from a casting director's perspective for $100. I felt it would be helpful to hire her to look at my profile and get some coaching and help me to make my site more cohesive and specific, yet easy for casting directors to navigate, to offer me more auditions. So I signed up and paid on her website. I left a brief introduction note. She contacted me and we scheduled a time. On the day of our call we spoke on Zoom and I was happy to meet Geraldine because she always seemed warm and nurturing in her IG videos and she was.

Speaker 1:

Now that we were face-to-face, geraldine was cheerful and friendly and I didn't know what to expect. But our session started off a little rough. After exchanging pleasantries, she launched into telling me what to do. It was the things again, the things actors should do, the things actors shouldn't do, and quite frankly, I mean that's what I was there for. I just wish she would have inquired about my interest before she just launched into what she thought I should do or need it to do.

Speaker 1:

Right at the top, geraldine advised me to start doing stand-up comedy because it was a great way to be seen and scouted by casting directors, which immediately caused me to turn off my hearing because I have zero desire to perform stand-up. It's an entire departure from my interest. It's a whole other career and it's a grind. I barely want to be at a restaurant or a friend's house past 10 pm, so there was no way I'd be open to working out some jokes in some dark, half empty stent of old beer dive of a comedy club in Hollywood at night, or any other time of the day for that matter. I don't even care to watch most stand-up comedy. I find a lot of things cringe these days. I gather maybe Geraldine assumed that my experience in improv and sketch comedy automatically translated that maybe I'd be open to becoming a stand-up comedian. However, those two things are very different.

Speaker 1:

I remained quiet and I thought damn, I just wasted a hundred dollars. And I was wondering how am I going to survive this call and I wanted it to end before I was going to lose my temper. I think my silence caused her discomfort. She began to go harder on trying to persuade me into considering stand-up, saying things like no, you could do it. It's the only way to get noticed. And I was so disappointed speaking with this woman who didn't take the time to get to know me better. I understand it was just an hour, but come on, man, ask me a couple of questions before you just write me a prescription. In my annoyed state I unconsciously blurted out yeah, I'm probably never going to do stand-up, and she responded no, no, it's great, I did it and I started to ask you did it? But you stopped why? I didn't dare to ask her because then I don't know, I didn't have the courage, I guess, but I was disengaging during this top portion of our conversation. I wish I had recorded it because there's some parts of this talk that are foggy.

Speaker 1:

Geraldine brought up my Instagram and she complimented the content on my lifestyle page and then suggested me merging two of my three profiles, insisting that I didn't need to have three. Again, no inquiry of why I have three, and just so that you know, the reason why I have three Instagram profiles is because one is for this podcast, the second is a gallery or like a portfolio of my acting work, but mostly the things that I've written, filmed and directed, and the third one is my lifestyle page. So she was suggesting that I merge the acting and the lifestyle page because casting directors want to see who we are. She was giving me bad advice because she didn't have enough information to know why I had three Instagram channels pages, and it took everything in my power to restrain the thoughts in my mind from leaving my mouth because I was thinking how arrogant my social media is not for you. But instead I took a breath and calmly explained my lifestyle page is being primed for monetization and blending niches is not smart for what I'm looking to do. But she said, yeah, I just don't think you need to do. It would be better if casting directors could see everything in one place the disregard. I didn't respond.

Speaker 1:

This is how quiet it was. Geraldine paused for about seven seconds, looking down at her notebook. I thought the zoom had frozen. I asked Geraldine if she was all right. She blinked her eyes rapidly, as if she was coming out of a trance. I'm still uncertain what that was, but it was the turning point of our conversation. She became present with me. She had to. So she replied with a soft, awkward giggle that she was okay and I said oh no, did I break you, geraldine? And we laughed together.

Speaker 1:

And then we got to the purpose of the call the audit of my actors access profile. How do we start off with stand-up in my Instagram page when I was only here for my actors access profile? I think that's why I was getting becoming disoriented, because it was such a left turn or I wasn't there for that. But once we got to it. She paid me a really nice compliment by saying that my actors access was one of the best ones she had ever seen, and she didn't know why I was hiring her. I wondered if she thought or if she felt insecurity Like sometimes. I know I'm guilty of this, but I feel like an imposter if people who have their shit together hire me to work to do something for them. She may not have seen her value when it came to working with me, but I did. I was very clear that we were gonna look at my actors access profile.

Speaker 1:

Geraldine commended me on many areas of my actors access profile and then she was back to harsh critiquing by saying but your reel is too long. So here's one of those things that casting directors are divided on the length of an actor's reel. My reel on actors access is three minutes long and the reason why it's that long is because casting director Ramani Lea of the Casting Directors Cut edited my reel and she said she left it that long because casting directors can always scrub through until they find what they're looking for. She also stressed the importance of clips because, depending on her director's taste, she may not want the director to see something in our reel that could dissuade him or her or them from wanting to see us, and so she prefers clips because she can curate a reel for her director by downloading their appropriate clips and editing them together. Now, that's very logical to me, and so I'm going to keep my clips, but I can understand trimming my reel down to one minute. That doesn't seem like a bad thing to do.

Speaker 1:

I shared with Geraldine that Ramani had talked about casting directors being able to scrub through the content, and I sensed her condescension as she looked down and said oh, ramani, almost in that way, when you know an older generation are kind of like belittling the younger people for not knowing better. Geraldine advised me to remove the clips, which, like I said, I'm not going to do, and I also wasn't interested in sitting here trying to counter everything that she was telling me to do, with the reason why I'm not doing that is. But instead I accepted her advice to clean up the language and the descriptions, meaning it was a little bit too long and a little cumbersome and a little clunky, and she just told me to make it very to the point, succinct and very clean. But really she just wanted me to get rid of my clips. When we got to the independent films that I did and the accolades of the laurels that I had listed with asterisks, she said those things didn't really make a difference because they weren't feature films and if casting doesn't know the films then they kind of disregard them. Now I can understand the idea of casting directors being more interested in big name features and television shows to give me credibility. But what she didn't know is that most of the indie films I worked on have the director's name listed next to it, and a few of those directors work on network shows. So while Geraldine may not know these names, there are casting directors who cast the shows that the directors work on and so that section is for them so that they know that I've worked with one of their directors before.

Speaker 1:

Geraldine did like that I had a nice list of sketch shows and that I had performed at the top comedy houses in LA, and she said that if I had more theater, to go ahead and add that, because when casting directors see theater they just know that you must be a great actor or that you can handle dialogue. She appreciated that I segmented the new media from television, but she mocked me for having series regular and recurring on a web series and the micro shorts I wrote, filmed and directed. And it's like you can't win for losing. You know casting directors are always telling us actors you should be creating your own stuff. You have a whole video camera in your back pocket. There's no reason why you shouldn't be creating things. And here it is. I created content that got me into festivals and now I'm being told that I shouldn't correctly title that I was the lead or the series regular. I mean, the contradictions are real.

Speaker 1:

And she went on to say that new media was a wash and that it diluted the strength of the resume, and I totally disagree with that. Of course, I didn't tell her this, but we are in the season of new media. Studios and production companies have created and redistributed funds to new media departments. So new media on a resume is important and it's helpful to the casting directors who work in that space. We talked about my photos. They were great. I have three there and she was happy that I didn't have more than that. But again, you know, when actors have 10 headshots on submission sites, granted, they're not the same photo with the same expression, with different outfits, like actual photos that are very distinguishable from the other. It's because most times, a good agent who knows how to submit the perfect photo requires 10 photos.

Speaker 1:

The final insult came when I shared that I enjoy working on films and since I don't get invites to audition for feature films, I submit myself on actors access and backstagecom to independent and thesis films because they tend to go to festivals. Now, I didn't know that this was one of her pet peeves. I mean, yeah, I follow her on Instagram, but I don't follow her, and so she talks about this on Instagram. She continued to say that the projects there are lowbrow and usually not well produced or well filmed, and I'm like I don't know what she's looking at, but that is not the truth, that's not factual. And then she was like, yeah, I get people like you know, do the whole festival thing, but quite frankly, I don't know what that whole, what the festivals are for, I mean, aside from the primary ones, like who attends those things I I needed. I didn't know, I didn't know what to do. I'm trying to process this in a moment, but it was such a misinformed statement I and I wish I had the courage to just say you know what? All the thing, everything that you're saying is not Factual.

Speaker 1:

I have gotten my best footage from independent films, and I'm not just talking about quality, I'm talking about narrative, I'm talking about the size of the roles. One film I did is on canopy and in the hat. Actually, I did say this. I said that one film that I did was on canopy and that it had a nice run at some high-profile festivals and that that director currently works on a series. Well, not now because we're on strike, but she does. But it didn't matter. I got the sense that she was more interested in something that was something you'd read about in the Hollywood Reporter, and if it wasn't a major television show on a streaming platform or a network or feature film, then it didn't matter. And we are in a time where content in any form, whether it's independent, a web series, it can turn into something major. But that aside, actors who are committed to good storytelling understand that film is like theater. The film community is the purest of the craft of storytelling and it's not always about the blockbuster movie, it's about feeding the beast of wanting to tell great stories. So I was beginning to feel like this one-on-one was a waste of my time and my money. But it wasn't.

Speaker 1:

There was two good things that came out of this. We had a conversation about the challenges of getting a theatrical agent and how it's always been hard but it's progressively gotten even worse, and her response to that was, you know, she agreed and she said really what's really helpful is having a referral. And so she asked me what offices was I interested in? I had one in mind. It's the same one I've had for a very long time and so I told her what the office was. And she lit up because not only did she know the office, but she knew the owner and she had a working relationship with him, I guess back on some other show. And she offered to pass on my materials once I updated my actors' access. And I thought that was really generous and kind, because she said to me Tuana, you're a good actor, I looked at your work and you should be working and I'd be happy to refer you. I'd be happy to do that on your behalf. And that was that was really unexpected and kind the person who I thought she was. I appreciated the offer.

Speaker 1:

Now, while this hour interview or conversation took a lot of emotional turns, the most significant takeaway for me is this People. We myself included we love to give advice, and advice is a pretty version of opinions. But when we give advice we are really wanting the best for the people, because we really don't just give advice. We don't like like when somebody says can I take a coffee date with you? Depends on who they are, because sometimes you offer people information and they just never do anything with it. They sit on it or whatever, and there's some people that you just aren't that thrilled about. So when we give advice, we're really wanting people to do well, but we're speaking from our own experience and what we know to work, and I'm guilty of it. I'm guilty of advising people on the things they should do without inquiring about their interests first. I think it's just part of being human.

Speaker 1:

So while I was so, while I had moments of frustration and anger with Geraldine at first as I processed our conversation over the course of three days, I took what worked for me and filed the rest in a trash bin that will one day be forever deleted. I also recognized that her thoughts on films and self submissions were narrow, because she spent the bulk of her time casting television I think about 20 years. So she was speaking from that perspective, the onus of responsibility to get the best information for me is on me, is on us Actors to mine for gold and the casting director Q&As of what actors should and shouldn't do. I mean, they do this for a living and they truly are wanting and desiring to be helpful to us, but we can't take everything that we say as gospel, as the holy grail. It ends up being too harmful and detrimental to us. Let me leave you with this.

Speaker 1:

There is nothing wrong with relying on casting directors for guidance and information regarding our careers. I know I say I've quit, I've retired, but, like I said, every once in a while, my curiosity is peaked when someone like April Webster is going to be doing a talk. It's like what she's? Like? A unicorn. You can't even find her. I don't even know what she looks like. Where is she?

Speaker 1:

But we have to be critical thinkers, considering the messenger and the message. Who is this person that's giving me information, and do they even work in that field, or are they making a generalization? We don't always need advice. We get inspired thoughts that tell us the next step to take, and so that's why it's important to mine the things that don't serve us the things that keep us from our instincts, and listen just because you heard a casting director tell you what not to do. They don't know that. You heard that. So if you don't want to stop doing whatever the thing is and you find it to be helpful for your career, do you boo because they don't know.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening. Hey, if you enjoyed this episode, can you do me two quick favors? First, we'll take a minute and leave a review on Apple Podcast or wherever you enjoy your podcast. And two, will you leave a five-star review? I would appreciate it very much. There are links in the description to my Instagram and TikTok pages and my website. If you want to check out my bio, and also if you'd like to buy me a coffee, there's a link for that too. Acting Lessons Learned is produced, written, recorded and edited by Tawana Floyd. That's me. I'll be back in two weeks and I'll look to chat with you then. Take care.

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Tiwana Floyd

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