Actress Rachel Bloom

Rachel Bloom started as the creator of videos on the internet, eventually garnering attention that would lead to the creation of her hit Golden Globe-winning TV show, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend". She sits down with us today to discuss her work on the show she stars in.

Tova Laiter: Hi and welcome to The Backlot. I’m Tova Laiter moderator and director of the New York Film Academy Guest Lecture Series. In this episode, we will take an in-depth look at one of my great guests and hear about her experience in the entertainment industry. And now Eric Conner will take you through the highlights of this Q&A. 

Eric Conner: Hi, I’m Eric Conner senior instructor at New York Film Academy. And in this episode, we bring you the woman behind such legendary songs as West Covina and Don’t Be a Lawyer. It’s the co-creator, writer, producer and star of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Rachel Bloom. 

[Crazy Ex-Girlfriend theme song]

Eric Conner: For a performer with so many talents singing, acting, writing, dancing, etc, etc., one of the toughest things she had to figure out was what to focus on first. \

Rachel Bloom: I was a musical theater major and I realized shortly; I was like, I don’t like being a musical theater major. I felt outcast from the people. I mean, the NYU musical theater program at the time was very big. There were 80 people just in my freshman class. So there there wasn’t a lot of personalization. The kids who knew each other had done the NYU summer program the year before, which I hadn’t done. And so there was already this kind of like what felt like a popular clique. That’s also my own s**t. And also, you know, 18 year old musical theater kids, myself included, aren’t the easiest people to be around. So it’s like you get in and everyone’s just like, how high can you sing? And it’s like, oh, no. I’ve made a grave error. And you’re busting your balls to, like, audition theoretically for these shows and you’re in New York and you’re seeing what musicals are actually getting put up and a lot of musical theater is s**t. So I started to get very just disillusioned with musical theater. And I think also part of it was a fear thing because I came from being the s**t in my high school and I went into NYU and suddenly I wasn’t the s**t anymore. And that was very threatening to me. So I think there were a bunch of factors. And then I got on this sketch comedy group and for the first time I had no, I’d been on an improv group in high school, but I’d never said I want to be a comedian. So I didn’t. My whole life, I’d said I wanted to be on Broadway. I want to be a big musical theater star. So I had all of these like loaded aspirations. With comedy, I didn’t care if my sketches sucked. So it was the first time in my life that I truly worked my hardest at something and didn’t care if I failed because I had no emotional stake in it. And I just fell in love with writing sketch comedy. And it was a sketch comedy group where we did a new sketch show every month. And so that’s what I did for four years. I was simultaneously a theater major while doing sketch, and I remember sketch people at a certain point saying, when are you gonna stop doing this stupid musical theater thing and just come into comedy and start doing UCB classes. And same thing with with musical theater teachers being like, well you can’t do comedy and theater, you really have to decide. And and at a certain point you do because if you want to do standup. At a certain, you just where do you want to spend your time. Do you want to be rehearsing at night or do you want to be in clubs at night? But I started to think maybe there was a way I could combine them. And I remember my friends showed me there is this singer, Julie Brown, who made comedic music videos in the 80s. One of them is called Because I’m a Blonde. 

[Because I’m a Blonde]

Rachel Bloom: The other one is The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun, which is super dated if you watch it now. And it was the first time I’d seen a woman doing comedy songs because I’d seen Mel Brooks. Like I had the template of Mel Brooks, I had the template of Weird Al, I had the template of the Lonely Island and the digital shorts that they were doing, but they were all men and the South Park guys. But it was the first time I saw a woman and I thought, oh, I could be doing like comedic pop videos. Like pop videos but funny because like, I just had, it hadn’t occurred to me until then. 

Eric Conner: Once Miss Bloom saw the possibilities of making her own comedic music videos, she went all in, even financing the videos herself and figured out how to make a few bucks go a long way. 

[F**k me Ray Bradbury] 

Eric Conner: The Ray Bradbury one. 

Rachel Bloom: Yeah that was the first one. 

Eric Conner: It doesn’t look like a flimsy little put together video. It looks very professional. Who financed it? 

Rachel Bloom: I self-financed it and it was cheaper than you’d think. So the location, I mean, this was just like luck. The location was an old Catholic school that had since been repurposed into an artistic space in New York. And I rented the whole school out for one day for two hundred dollars, which was a donation. I don’t know how this happened. And the school stopped letting shoots in shortly after the video filmed. At the time Internet, so so the trend of Internet sketch comedy had been kind of like gritty and grainy looking. And that was really started by the landlord, which was the first Funny or Die sketch with Will Ferrell and the little girl. 

[The Landlord] 

Rachel Bloom: And so everything looked kind of grainy. And then people were just starting to make Internet sketch that looked good. And my friends were involved with this production company called Landline TV in New York, which did a lot of pop culture parodies. So sometimes it was music videos, sometimes it was just sketches. But for the first time, I was seeing really good professional looking films come out of them. So when I wanted to make this music video, I thought I could maybe make it with Landline. Landline didn’t finance it, but I ended up getting a lot of the crew. And Paul Briganti, who directed the video and he edited. He did the first edit too. I paid him $400 for the whole thing. I don’t understand why it was so cheap. The DP was this guy, Paul Rondeau, who’s still a DP. He’s he’s an amazing DP and I’d be working with him more if he didn’t live in New York. I paid him $250-300. He came with his own camera and his own lights. I mean, he was a one stop shop and that’s just shot on a, F**k me Ray Bradbury was shot on a Canon 5D. It’s a great camera. And you’ll see at one point I’m walking down a hallway and there are these flashing lights. That’s just two unpaid PA’s doing with this with lights on a, lights on a wheel. When you have a good looking camera and you have a cinematographer who knows what he’s doing, you really can do anything. But also people who are willing to be paid in pennies, which I never had those prices again. It was stunning. And I think people were doing me a solid because it was my first thing and I was self-financing it. Yeah. I mean, it was just working with a lot of talented people. And it was the first thing I produced because for a while I saved money by self-producing and I really learned how to produce on the go. And I’m still not an amazing producer. I get it done, but I’m still not great at it. I mean, that first shoot day was a night. It was a nightmare. I got to the shoot late. I’d been personally picking up the donuts like I f**ked up. I f**ked up a bunch of things. 

Eric Conner: Whatever f**k ups she might have made didn’t get in the way of the videos themselves, which all these years later still feel fresh, funny and, you know, a bit dirty. And at the time these videos got her noticed. Though some of that attention was more of a curse than a blessing. 

Rachel Bloom: So my first manager discovered me in a friend’s internet sketch and I was twenty one, twenty two and she was just like, you’re gonna get me my beach house, which is a crazy thing to say. No, don’t sign with someone who’s saying that s**t because that’s a hyperbolic insane thing to say. And then she set me up with an agency meeting of an agent who was on the phone the whole time. And so between her and the agent, I thought, well, this is how the industry works. If people talk like they’re in Hollywood and he doesn’t give a s**t. No, if people are actually good at their jobs, they they want to take a meeting with you and they listen to you and they don’t say you’re gonna give me my beach house. And this particular manager had me fly out to L.A. for two months to audition for pilot season. And I was like, this is my big break, even though I’d never auditioned for film or TV. I was coming off of being a theater major and I really didn’t feel ready, but I was like, you know what? This is what I said I wanted. I’m going to be famous. She wanted to make me like a child star, because I was twenty one, twenty two at the time. So she was sending me in for like teen heartthrob auditions and I went in for this one. I probably was on the CW like Sci-Fi audition called Betwixt and I had terrible auditions, because I hadn’t taken a class. And so the second the feedback from the auditions was terrible. She dropped me like a hot rock. She was just like, never mind you don’t have it, kid. But just all that to say, like I, you know, there are, there are a lot of weird potholes and there are a lot of, you’re gonna meet a lot of weird people and you’re gonna have a lot of false beginnings and a lot of false starts. And that’s part of it. I mean, I. When I was in New York, I had an interview. God damn it. I had an interview for a movie. Just remembering this now about like a journalist who was discovering the S&M scene and my interview with the director was in a sex dungeon and I went because I needed, I wanted work. And it was fine. Nothing like Me Too-y happened. We just sat next to some harnesses. But I guess I just want to say, like, it can be a bumpy, unpredictable road. 

Eric Conner: Thankfully, she had something that helped her get over those bumps in the road. And that was writing. 

Rachel Bloom: Like every story, there’s no one story that’s similar. For me, I had released this comedic music video online that was getting me some notice from agents and managers and then in my back pocket I had a spec. Not even an original spec. I had a spec of 30 Rock that I had written to try out for the Nickelodeon Writer’s Fellowship, which I didn’t even come close to getting it, but I had had the spec in my back pocket. So between the video and that spec, when I got representation from the video, my managers, my new manager sent that spec to Fox Animation and I had a general with Fox Animation. And at the time they were hiring for two animated shows and I went and interviewed for both of them. And I and I got one. So that’s kind of how it happened. I mean, I think that the biggest advice I have for writers is try to find ways to meet other writers and for other people to see your writing, one, so that your work can literally get out there, like I’m a performer, too, so it’s it’s easier for me to get my work out there, be it live performance or on videos, but also that’s how you’ll get good at writing is just. And you’re a student here, I assume, so that’s you’re already doing it, but just get good at it and then just try out for everything. Like I found that trying to make deadlines for those fellowships and those writing programs, even if I didn’t get them, they gave me hard goals and hard deadlines. I think most writers only work well with deadlines where you’re accountable to something. I mean, I just started writing a book today and like the only thing motivating me is, like, the guilt over the fact that I procrastinated on it for like a year and a half. But like, I said to the publisher, like, I need you to be angry at me if I don’t make my deadlines. Like I need people beating down my door. So just find a way to make yourself accountable. I also give the advice of, if you have a script, set a date for you to sit with friends and read it as a roundtable. That way you have to have it finished by then. 

Eric Conner: Rachel Bloom eventually was hired on the staff of Adult Swim’s Robot Chicken, though it was her YouTube videos that led to the creation of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. 

Rachel Bloom: I had been doing comedic music videos on my YouTube channel for quite some time and I’d been otherwise kind of a working television writer and I’d been doing live shows at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. But it came from those music videos that had been based on some of my live work, and one of them was featured on the website Jezebel. And Aline Brosh McKenna, who is a screenwriter, my co-creator of this, spoiler alert, was procrastinating and she was on Jezebel and she saw one of my music videos and she realized that the same person who was in them and singing them was the same person who wrote them. And so I got an email saying, Aline Brosh Mackenna wants to meet with you to discuss a potential musical television show with CBS. Well, we got together and we said, what show do we want to create? In this blind date she busted out a premise called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which was a movie she’d been wanting to write, which was kind of flipping the crazy ex trope on its head. And I said, that’s amazing, because all of the stuff that I’ve been pitching was like show business related. And she was like, no one cares. No one, no one cares about showbusiness. No one wants. No one wants to watch that. What people care about is like emotion, what lends itself to a musical. And she was so right. I mean, that’s the thing is the reason my shows had failed is because they weren’t an eighth as good of an idea as Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was. So Aline and I got together and we started writing and we developed a pitch. Lets see, we we started developing the show in June. We went out in September after going to West Covina together and spending a lot of time together. And I think that she really taught me, I kind of had been coming from a world of sketch comedy where I came at things very premise-y. And she really wanted to dig into Rebecca’s character and talk about the character at first. And I learned a lot from her about, it has to start from the character. Even if you have a great premise, you have to have a well-rounded character and know that character inside and out. 

Eric Conner: A musical about the archetype of the crazed ex was pretty specific and yet so universal and it got immediate attention. Even if there were some concerns about Miss Bloom playing the lead. 

Rachel Bloom: When we pitched it, everyone’s been a crazy ex or had one, which is very true. So we pitched to eight places and CBS was our studio for only the big places because originally it was going to be a CBS network show. Or it was gonna be a network show that CBS would be the studio. And then CBS said, well if it’s a network show, rachel’s an unknown. She might not get the lead that you’re writing for her. She might have to audition for the show. And I was like, I don’t want to do that. And Aline goes, Well if it’s a network show, you’ll make more money. And I was like, I have very little money. Any amount of money is a lot of money to me. And Aline was like, well, I’m not doing this for the money. And so then we decided to pitch it to cable, which is weird that we ended up being a network show. So we pitched it to eight cable places. And the places that were interested were Showtime, MTV and FX. And Showtime offered a put pilot agreement, which is that if they didn’t turn it into a pilot, they would pay us money. So we went with Showtime because it was very promising. Let’s see, so so we turned the pilot in. And then they spent three months trying to then attach a director. And it was only when they attached an impressive director, they decided to make it a pilot. And so then when Mark Webb signed on and said he wanted to do it, instantly we were greenlit. Because we’d been talking about other directors, but when Mark said yes like, Showtime immediately greenlit it. 

Eric Conner: You would think that would be the happily ever after. Showtime’s onboard. The director of 500 Days of Summer is at the helm. But things in the entertainment industry are seldom a straight line. 

Rachel Bloom: So we made it for Showtime. We felt very sure it was going to series. Until it wasn’t. And so then we had a rejected pilot on our hands. I’m just telling you the whole. We had a rejected pilot on our hands. We had a half hour and we re-sent it to all of the places, including the places that had wanted it before. No one wanted it. And Aline had been watching Jane the Virgin. And Aline said, you know, the CW is doing some really interesting stuff that doesn’t feel network-y. And CBS co-owns the CW. Do you want to just send it to them? And we’d have to make it an hour. I was like, who cares? Whatever. That’s fine. So we had a great meeting with the CW. They said, we’re considering it for mid-season. We didn’t hold our breaths. Then we heard that the pilot pickups were happening. Upfronts were starting to happen, and that CW didn’t like any of their pilots and that we were being strongly considered for the fall. But they had some notes which were these tiny tweaks. So we did the tiny tweaks. And the next day we got picked up to series. So it was crazy because we went from thinking we had, I mean, I remember the day we got a bunch of rejections in one day for the filmed pilot and I had just gotten married. I paid for my own wedding dress. We’d had a beautiful wedding. We wanted to buy a house. And I just remember being at home like saying to my husband, I I thought I was gonna be a Showtime star and that we were gonna be able to buy a house. And oh my God, I spent so much money on our wedding because I thought I was gonna be a Showtime star. Oh my God like, I’m so sorry. I’m so broke. And so I went back to working at Robot Chicken and I was at Robot Chicken when I found out we got picked up to series. And I had just had a sketch rejected that day in the room, because you get like sketches approved or rejected. And we got ordered to series. And I was like, I quit. Bye. And those guys, I’m still really good friends with those guys and they were just like, yep, goodbye. You go. Go, go, go. 

Eric Conner: Robot Chicken’s loss was the rest of the world’s gain as we got to witness Rebecca Bunch’s journey from powerful NYC attorney to lovelorn L.A. lawyer. And along the way, the show took an honest look at everything from mental illness to the real world pains of having a large chest. 

[Heavy Boobs] 

Eric Conner: Rachel Bloom and her team also found a way to parody a number of musical genres while still giving us some of the catchiest tunes of the past decade. 

Rachel Bloom: It’s a very inexact science and a lot of it was like gut and emotion. I mean, a lot of it came from my own unironic love of musical theater and then learning comedy and realizing that a lot of musical theater is like goofy or embarrassing, but still loving it. And so. It’s just more instinctive, I have to say. Like, because sometimes on the show we were straight up taking the piss out of things and other times we were writing that line of an homage and a serious song. I mean, the song that we have right now that’s Emmy nominated, which is the antidepressant song.

[Antidepressants Are So Not A Big Deal] 

Rachel Bloom: That was probably the most sincere song we’ve ever done because we take the piss out of the genre a little bit, but it’s mostly just sending it up. There’s a joke about opening a pill bottle and there are tap shoes inside. And so I think it was like, it was just a gut thing. And I think that’s like a lot of this stuff you’ll find like, sometimes it’s just an inexact science and that’s OK. And that’s why you just got to write a lot and feel it out. And art is subjective, you know. Not everyone is going to like what you do. I’ve heard of some people who watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend who only watch the music videos online. And then I heard of some people who fast-forward through the songs because they just want like the plot. Arts f**kin’ subjective. There are people in the world who don’t like pizza. 

Eric Conner: Well rest assured, I like pizza and musicals and I find myself humming a lot of these songs days after I watch an episode. But the Ex-Girlfriend team had more on their mind than just making a bunch of snappy musical numbers. They also wanted to tell a complete, four-season story about Rebecca’s journey of self-discovery. Warning, slight spoilers ahead, but I think you’ll be OK. 

Rachel Bloom: So when we pitched the show, Aline was always, because she was a screenwriter, she was always interested in doing a 50-60 hour movie. And so we pitched basically a four season show from the get go, because that’s how you’d structure a movie. You have Act 1, you have Act 2 split into two parts, then you have Act 3, which is the fourth season. And the last line of the show, which is this is a song I wrote, that was in the pitch from the very beginning because the whole point of the show was always about someone finding out what actually makes them happy, not what they think should make them happy and telling their own story. And I actually, I, it’s the first tattoo I got was of the, was of the line. Right there. 

Eric Conner: As well-planned as their story arc was, the Ex-Girlfriend team still had to deal with a few unexpected curveballs along the way.

Tova Laiter: You said you had a four act structure, you had it all planned out. So I was wondering, not to spoil anything, how you handled unexpected changes such as what happened with Greg? 

Rachel Bloom: Yeah, that was a real curveball. So we had the structure planned out. It was very much the first person structure. Like there was a lot that we didn’t have planned out. What we knew was it would be a story of, the first season was denial. The second season was OK, we’re in love now. Obsession. The third season was spiraling and the fourth season was redemption. So that was very first person. Yeah. I mean, so the actor who played Greg asked for a one year contract. We did it in good faith. Don’t do that. Don’t expect that an actor with a contract is gonna then like understand how the writing process works. That actor decided to leave because I think he wanted to be back in New York, which is his right. And we were only given on his end about two and a half weeks to write him off the show. So when you watch that plot, that’s little writing pat on the back that we really earned it. You know, we, because it was any character other than Rebecca we managed to work it in thematically. So that second season was about obsession over Josh Chan. So having that other character leave, it f**ked with our how we wanted to do the series end, but it didn’t necessarily f**k with like the arc of the season. And then Aline, who was the showrunner and very smartly said, we need another love interest to come in and fight Josh and that’s how he got the character of Nathaniel. And I, I mean, God the show without Nathaniel. Like, what would that. I mean, he’s such an important part of the show. And then, of course, then when we realized, OK, we’re in the fourth season, we’re now coming back around to what we’d originally plotted, which is all these love interests coming back, because you wouldn’t have the character Greg be as big as he was in the first season if he was just going to like go away. Hence the recasting, and the recasting it from that meta level. And I actually love the way that it ended up working out because we got to really explore what happens when someone earnestly changes and earnestly wants to change their life. And before Greg, original Greg had left like, he was a very flawed character. And so the idea of now having him come back as a viable love interest. It was an unexpected gift. So I think like viewing anything that happens, even if it’s a pothole, as like an unexpected gift and you’re like, OK. Let’s pretend this is the choice we were always going to make. How do we do this? It’s like an improv scene. There are no mistakes. They’re always just choices that you have to roll with. 

Eric Conner: In other words, it’s not a problem. It’s a choice. And here’s the good news. The audience is none the wiser. As long as the choice services the show and the character. To really capture Rebecca Bunch, both Rachel Bloom and co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna needed to put a lot of themselves into the role while still giving Rebecca room to be her own woman. 

Rachel Bloom: I’m emotionally similar to Rebecca. I think autobiographically it got less and less and less so as as the series went on. But a lot of those emotional reactions, especially in the pilot are like, come from me. But really, Aline and I wrote the pilot together in a room, kind of improvising aloud to each other. So it’s very much a mix of us. And then the character kind of became her own thing. Coming at it from a first person perspective and coming at it with empathy. We always came at the character from I’ve had issues with anxiety and depression and elements of OCD, and so it was always coming at it from a very, very personal place. So we were never coming at it from a labeling, which is why the show is called Crazy Ex-Girlfriend because that is inherently an inflammatory label and the show is all about going beneath that. And some people didn’t get the subtlety, which the whole other thing. And then even when, when it was something that I hadn’t experenced, just coming at it with empathy and understanding why a character is doing what they’re doing, where a character’s coming from. And and if you can do that and you can still do a joke, as long as you understand where the joke is is coming from. I think just, I don’t know, empathy and understanding. 

Eric Conner: It’s a rare show that can make a catchy song about antidepressants equal parts hysterical and still painfully honest. 

 [Antidepressants Are So Not a Big Deal]

Eric Conner: So where does one go after a success like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend? Well, you go back to writing. Just as long as it’s not in the house. 

Rachel Bloom: You just got start. For me, staying in the house is death. I have to get out. I have to write in a coffee shop. I have to get somewhere. I go on walks to get inspired because, you know, when writing feels really fun, it’s when it feels effortless. When you have like an idea and you’re just like, but that’s not always the way it is. And then often you’ll come back to those ideas that felt effortless and you’re like, this is a pile of garbage. And so you just gotta do it. But I find getting out of your house, getting out of your normal. Like if you’re in a place that has a rut, just getting out of that space and going somewhere else really helps me. Getting your brain into a relaxed place. It’s why sometimes I like to write in the bath, which I have a little bath caddy and I’ll put my laptop on it. If it falls it’s not enough electricity to electrocute me. That’s what I’ve been told. And like in the bath, it will just like free me up or I’ll be taking a shower and I’ll want to write something down. So I think that just, and I should do this more, you know, walking around and carrying around a notebook and just talking to yourself and jotting down ideas and watching a lot of things too. Watching movies and TV shows and music videos and live theater too like, just being in a place of generally wanting to be inspired. I think being alone in your house is the opposite way to do that, and I’m saying this as much for myself right now because I’m in my house alone so much right now. And it’s, it’s not good for me as a writer. So that’s it. But it’s hard. 

Eric Conner: Miss Bloom also encouraged our students to not let other people determine how many creative hats they can wear. 

Student: I’m an actress and I am also very much into directing and producing and into writing and I’m having this issue where I keep being told that I need to do one thing. And I’m trying to figure out how to prove myself in terms of showing that I’m more than that. And I just want to know if you had any advice on that. 

Rachel Bloom: That’s stupid. That’s bulls**t. You don’t have to do one thing. It’s possible to get good at all those things. You just gotta work your ass off, which a lot of people do. First of all, you go where the gigs are. So if you get a gig directing something, that’s what you’re focusing on for the next bit. If you get a gig acting, that’s what you’re focusing on. If you just leave yourself open to all those opportunities. I find the opportunity or the job will kind of dictate you. I was an auditioning actor, but I was way more, I think, partially because I was kind of a s**t auditioner. I was way more successful as a, as a writer in the start of my career. And so I was like, OK, I’m more of a writer right now and you kind of feel it out. And then the second thing is so many people now are directing shorts that they also write and star in. And so that’s what you do. And you write your own short and you get a really good AD to help you plan those shots. I mean, this is you know, I’m sure there are many people in this room who can help you. You get an AD. You watch a bit of playback. You make sure the frame is good. People do it all the time. 

Eric Conner: It takes a lot of dedication, talent, effort, and yes, some luck to pull it off. And it’s going to take some time. So enjoy the process and enjoy the journey. 

Rachel Bloom: Just before Crazy Ex, just before Aline e-mailed me, I had pitched to musical television shows that no one gave a f**k about. Like no, people could not have cared less. So. So, yes, I have to believe that hard work and honing your craft work out and pan out. But you can’t necessarily do it for that end goal because that’s just luck. And that’s a lot of factors. You have to love the craft and you have to love the work. And I remember reading an interview with Tina Fey where she talked about how the happiest time of her life was when she was just performing in Second City in Chicago and she would swim in the river every morning and she would go perform. And she was like, yeah, if I did that for the rest of my life, I would have been fine. And so I think that that’s really important. I think in L.A. you meet some people who are so product, like they just want the end game. And it’s like, just hone the process first and make connections in organic ways, but get good at your work first and then see what happens. So I think that that’s really important to emphasize because I’m not the first person who thought of doing comedy music. I’m not the first person who decided to write and perform my own work. I’m not the first person who did a solo show. I was around a lot of people doing this and they inspired me. And then I took it and ran with it in some unique ways. And I and I do credit myself with that. But I guess it’s just important just to emphasize, like especially to students that like, focus on getting good first and worry about the getting discovered and all of that, that that will come. And when you’re ready, you’ll start researching how that happens. And it’s a process. 

Eric Conner: Well we’re all looking forward to seeing what Rachel Bloom will do next. We want to thank Miss Bloom for speaking with our students. And of course, thanks to all of you for listening. This episode was based on the Q&A moderated by Tova Laiter. To watch the full interview or to see our other Q&A’s, check out our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/NewYorkFilmAcademy. This episode was written by Eric Conner. That’s me. Edited and mixed by Kristian Heydon. Our creative director is David Andrew Nelson, who also produced this episode with Kristian Heydon and myself. Executive produced by Tova Laiter, Jean Sherlock and Dan Mackler. Special thanks to our Events Department, Melissa Enright, Sajja Johnson, and the staff and crew who made this possible. To learn more about our programs. Check us out at NYFA.edu. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. See you next time.

Actor Tony Hale

Tony Hale has put together quite the comedic career in Hollywood, featuring heavily in two of the most successful comedy TV shows: Arrested Development and Veep. We talked with him to discuss his start in the industry and his career.

Eric: Hi, I’m Eric Conner senior instructor at New York Film Academy. And in this episode, we bring you an Emmy winning actor who’s appeared in two of the greatest comedies of all time, Veep and Arrested Development, not to mention over 100 other credits, including Playing a Suicidal Spork Come to Life, the fabulous Tony Hale.

Tony: Well I was an Army brat? So we moved like seven times before the seventh grade or something like that. And then we settled in Tallahassee, Florida. So most of my childhood was in Florida. And then I was I was not a kid who was into sports. And so my parents just kind of didn’t know what to do with me. And they found this little children’s theater called young actors theater and which I’m incredibly grateful for. Cause I they kind of sign me up for that. And and I’m I’m such an advocate for arts and schools, just because even if you don’t make it a career like I did, certain personalities need that environment to thrive. So even if I didn’t go into it, I just was a kid that needed that environment. So I’m really, really grateful for that. And then after that, I went to college in Alabama.

Anne: And then when I met you was in New York and you just arrived there.

Tony: I had just arrived there. And I studied journalism in college because I didn’t know if I could make a career out of acting. And then after that, I said, you know, I’m a dip my toe into the acting thing. And then in nineteen ninety five moved to New York. And my first show was Shakespeare in the parking lot where I did Taming of the Shrew and I was there for eight years.

Eric: Like many an actor, it was eight years filled with nos until he got the first major yes.

Tony: I moved to New York, didn’t know anybody, and I had so many jobs, so many jobs. I remember I would go through this temp agency and I never could like commit to a full week. So I would always just go day by day because you never knew if something was going to come along. And then in the lobby, they would play these Jim Carrey movies all day long. And it was like a purple room. And I saw that every single day. But I would temp and I would cater waiter and all this kind of stuff. And then I would do this thing called actors connection where you would pay money to meet agents. Sounds sketchy. And I went for like four or five times and I was like, oh, this is bullshit. I don’t know why I’m doing this. And then the fifth time I went and I met this agent with SVM MNM and she saw me as like a David Schwimmer type cause I’m like quirky and not all there. That’s how she described me, which is pretty much my entire career quirky and not all there anyway. So she started sending me out for like these kind of types. And and then the more commercials I got, the less kind of many, many jobs I had to have. That was most of my time in New York.

Eric: When Mr. Hale was first breaking into the industry. Everything was done in person as opposed to now when anyone with a YouTube account or an Instagram following can get noticed.

Tony: When we were starting, it was not the digital age, and so the way you got showcased or the way you got seen was you would do all of these like scene nights. And like we would do a lot of theater because agents would always go to theater to find new talent. And that was kind of the way to get yourself seen. And now, obviously, with YouTube and all this kind of stuff, there’s a lot more places to get seen. But back then, that was it. So it took me seven or eight years to get an agent to represent me for TV and film because they only saw me as a commercial actor. I was always the quirky guy, wide eyed, and they never could see me for TV and film. And this one manager met me and was like alright I’m going to start sending you for other stuff. And I was like, Oh, thank you. I really appreciate it. And then a year later, I think one of the casting directors who had cast me in commercials, Marcia DeBonis this Arrested Development came through and she remembered me and she saw the description and she was like, this sounds like Tony Hale. So I don’t know what that’s saying, but. And then she brought me in and they just kind of. I just remember reading the script and A I was just so grateful to have that audition. Yeah, but just thought it reminded me I was a big Christopher Guest fan. I still am with the kind of Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show and all this kind of stuff. And it reminded me of that kind of style. And so I went in and he was just kind of a manchild. And. And I remember I was in a sketch comedy group called King Baby. And there’s one character I did named singing Billy who had who would be very, very awkward and just walk into random places and just start singing. And I brought a little bit of that into Buster. But I remember with Buster is Mitch Hurwitz, who created the show. He would always tell me that all Buster ever wanted in life was safety. That’s all he wanted. And so he was always in this state of defense. Like his chin would go back his neck and his head would go back and his hands would go back like this. And he was always just like, what’s coming at me? And so he was always in this really defensive state. And that just I kind of always thought about that. with Buster. But just very kind of an innocent. You know, it’s like a seven year old trapped enough at the time, 32 year old body.

Eric: Tony Hale used Buster’s we’ll call it survival instinct as a window into capturing that character. And this process has served him well, even when he’s doing a character that at first glance doesn’t seem like him at all.

Tony: I remember doing this movie in 2006 with Jimmy Fallon, and it was he was really good. It was just not the character I was playing. I didn’t like the guy because he was kind of a player and he was manipulative and he was kind of the town douchebag. And I was just like, oh, god, I know people like this. And it’s like, I just didn’t like this character. And I went to this woman named Diana Castle here in L.A. She’s this place called the unimagined no the Imagined Life the unimagined life the Imagined Life. And I remember her saying to me, Tony, you have to realize that these characteristics are inside of you. And it was so kind of a wake up call. I had known this, but it was so refreshing because it’s that sense of the fact is I would be lying if I didn’t say I’ve had moments in my life where I’ve been manipulative. I’ve had many moments in my life where probably in a douchebag, I’m not proud of the moments I’ve had in my life where I’ve been a bit of a player. You know, it’s like. And the more that you can bring out these traits in yourself with whatever you like, you look at Buster. He deals with anxiety. I’ve dealt with anxiety. He has panic attacks. I’ve had a panic attack in my life. You know, it’s like you have to find those places in them that are inside of you. And yes, you take it to the extreme. But when you find that place in you, not only can you give the most authentic version of that character, but no one else can do that. Like you. And it’s like if I’m playing just an idea of a character, like if somebody comes up to me and says, hey, Tony, we want you to play this I don’t know football coach or whatever. It’s probably never gonna happen. But like, you know, I’m going to play this football coach. And in my head, I have an idea of the guy of Friday Night Lights. You know, that that coach. But then I think a football coach is what he’s motivating. He’s encouraging. He knows the game, whatever. But if I just try to play the idea of a football coach like that guy on Friday Night Lights, there’s a thousand other people who can do that better than me to play that idea. But if I bring out those traits within myself, how I can be encouraging, how I can motivate someone, how I can be interested in the game, let me tell right now, I might not get the job, but nobody else can do that because I’m bringing out of myself and it’s authentic. So I might not get it, but at least I went in there and did something that nobody else can do. And I did my best my best version of that. If that makes sense.

Eric: Well, his best version of Buster Bluth on Arrested Development turned him into a TV star. It was a dream role for any comedic actor. But as Mr. Hale learned, it takes more than achieving one’s dream to actually be happy.

Tony: I will say I’ve learned a lot in this business and I love, love, love talking to other actors and people who are in the business because so when I was in New York and I booked Arrested Development, that was by far my big thing. That was my dream. All I ever wanted was a sitcom. And when I got that sitcom and I was on a lot in the on the Fox lot in 2003, I realized it didn’t satisfy me the way I thought it was going to satisfy me. And it really, really scared me because I got my dream and it didn’t satisfy me. And what I realized is for most of my time in New York, I was constantly looking ahead, whatever I was going through. I was like, OK, OK, OK. But that big thing is coming. That big thing is coming. And the fact is, if you’re not practicing contentment where you are, you’re not going to be content. When you get what you want and I’m not saying it comes easy, I’m saying it’s a discipline. And that’s why I say practicing, cause I was so far in the future all the time when I was in New York, very rarely present. I just gave that big thing, so much weight. And nothing can match that. You can’t match that weight in the since Arrested Development, it really woke me up to beginning the process of trying to be present. And for instance, when I was in school, like you guys are now, I was always, always somewhere else in my head. I was always looking ahead. I can’t even imagine being in this town where you’re surrounded by all this kind of stimulus. And it’s just like it’d be probably very, very difficult to be present here. But the more that you guys can wake yourself up to where you are and try to be present and try to make the most of these resources. It only makes whatever happens, I think, that much more rich. And it’s very, very difficult. It’s very, very difficult. But it’s it’s one of those things that I woke up to, the fact that if I don’t begin the discipline of being present and waking myself up, I’m going to get to the end of my life and I’m going to look back. And every season was just me constantly looking to the next thing, having a great job. I mean, look at Arrested Development, great cast, amazing writing, awesome opportunity. Was still looking to the next thing. What what’s wrong with that equation? And to the point where I wrote that I wrote this children’s book about it called Archibald’s Next Big Thing about a little chicken that gets a card in the mail that says your big thing is here. And he’s like, where he goes on all these great adventures. But every time he’s on an adventure, he’s like, I’ve got to get to my next big thing. And this bee travels around with him and the bee’s like, you’ve got to just be man. You got to just be. And then in the end, he realizes he realizes that his big thing is right here. My big thing is talking to you guys right now. That’s my big thing. And the more that I can get in to that practice of waking myself up to the fact that my big thing is not somewhere else. It’s right here. And I will say this. It’s not that ambition is wrong. It’s not that dreaming is wrong. But if I’m honest with myself, I think when I was dreaming or when I did have ambition, I think subconsciously I was saying I will have value when this happens. Because what this business does very poorly is it says you have value when you get this. You have value in this. That’s bullshit. That is 100 percent bullshit. If you guys win an Oscar a year from now, I’m telling you right now, your personal value is the exact same today as it will be after you get that Oscar. And that’s something that you have to begin to remind yourself about because it’s very, very important. And if anything, I mean, I’m so grateful. I’m so grateful to have been given the opportunities I’ve been given. And it was so nice to have the recognition. But the fact is, you know, 50 years ago, there were people who were getting Emmys and they thought they were the shit. And it’s cyclical. It’s fleeting. It’s fleeting. So the more that I can wake up to the present and the more that I can wake up to the life around these things that are given so much power. I feel like the more of a richness it is honestly, which is, by the way, again, a discipline that I struggle with. And that I have to practice myself. Like, for instance, I have to whenever I find myself living in the what if I say not now. Right now I’m talking to a wonderful group at the New York Film Academy and that’s where I am right now. Another thing I do is I always feel things around me like I’ll feel the chair, I’ll feel my jeans, I’ll feel my jacket just to ground myself where I am. Because the fact is, most of my life I’ve been checked out somewhere else in my head. And speaking because I know you teach Meisner. One of the big things with Meisner is activities. And I think one of the reasons that’s very important is an activity and the tactile doing an activity or anything grounds you to where you are. It keeps you in that space, you know, because even if I’m talking to somebody in a scene, it’s very easy to kind of even not check out and just kind of get into the lines. but the more I can kind of ground myself there, it really does help.

Eric: Only by being fully invested in the work can an actor completely show what they alone bring to the part.

Tony: I would say I don’t know if anybody else could not play those roles, but I the version that I gave, nobody else can do that because that’s out of me. And it’s like I think that’s when you get to those honest places. And it’s really, you know, a big thing that I always remember in this town is comparison is the thief of joy. Especially with nowadays with Instagram and Twitter and all the social media, when you’re just seeing so many other people’s lives constantly, it’s really hard to not get stuck in this game of comparison. And it steals your joy. And the fact is, many times you can look and say, oh, why didn’t I get this? Why didn’t this happen? And oh, they did that. It’s like you forget your identity and you forget the gifts that you bring to the table, you know, and just to really mine those out of you, rather than that sense of like, I’m not like that. I’m not like that, I’m not like that. It’s like, wait a second. I’m falling into comparison again. And it really is. It’s I mean, not that it cann’t inspire you, but most of the time, if we’re honest comparison many times steals your joy.

Eric: Learning not to compare yourself to others is part of the work life balance that everyone in Hollywood strives for Mr. Hale points to one of his Arrested Development costars as being an inspiration for this balance. The Fonz himself. Henry Winkler.

Tony: Henry Winkler. He’s one of those. I really hope you guys can maybe bring him in one day. You might have already done that. But here when I came to L.A., I’d come from a very strong support system in New York that I really I really loved my friends and I had met some not necessarily on arrested development, but I had met some personalities in L.A. that were jarring to me. I just I was very new and I didn’t know what to expect. And Henry, when I met him, he was so gracious and so humble and so full of love and just kind of kindness. I had this moment where I was like, this guy has been in this business since before Happy Days playing the Fonz. And he can still remain that kind of a character, like having that kind of a character and that kind of integrity. And I was like, OK. I’m not saying I’m not a work in progress, but I’m saying it’s possible to have that longevity in this business and to still have integrity and character. And, you know, you sometimes you meet those people who are not that way. And I was like, damn it, that’s possible. And I’m not damn it. But I was so grateful. It’s a gift that he gave me to be like that. And it really continues to be a gift. I’ve worked with a lot of I mean, Julia’s another one, like on Veep. You know, whoever’s number one on the call sheet, who’s the star of the show, they really set the tone for the show. They set that kind of environment and many. You know, we’ve all heard these stories. Sometimes the star of the show creates kind of a fear based environment where everybody’s kind of walking on eggshells around them. Let me tell you right now, that sucks creative energy out of a space. It sucks it out. Pride, entitlement, self, all that bullshit sucks creative energy out. No need for it. Julie was gracious. She was a team player. She came in knowing the power of an ensemble. Everybody’s ideas were welcome. Her family was her first priority, not this business. And what that did is it just created this loving, trusting space where we all were able just threw ideas out and made. Just wanted to make the best show possible. And it what created that environment. I felt very like free to just be like, I don’t know if this is Gary. And they were like, totally get it.

Eric: Arrested Development also gave Tony Hale the opportunity to perform with another icon and Hollywood, royalty at that. The one and only Liza Minnelli.

Anne: I’m curious what it was like working with Liza Minnelli.

Tony: Oh, guys, she was my girlfriend.

Anne: I know.

Tony: Lucille 2, who is my mother on the show was Lucille and she was Lucille 2. I loved it. I remember the first year of Arrested Development when they came up to me. And by the way, I had never been on a lot. I had never had that much free food in my life working on a show. I was so amazed by that. And then remember somebody coming up to me and saying, okay, so we’re thinking Liza Minnelli is gonna be your girlfriend. And I was like, okay, I just need a second. I need to just digest that for a minute. But she the thing is, when you’re dealing with icons like that, you never know which direction it’s gonna go. They can be really difficult or they could be as gracious as she was. She was so lovely. And all day she would just tell me stories about her growing up and how she, you know, her mom, for those of you who don’t know her. Her mom was Judy Garland, who was Dorothy in Wizard of Oz. And just like she grew up on the MGM lot, she would tell these stories of like being in London with her mom, Judy Garland and Vivien Leigh from Gone With the Wind. And you were just like, what? And her stories never came from a place of ego. They just came from a place of like, listen to my life. Listen to my life. She took my wife and I out to lunch once and she was in the backseat and she was talking about her having just done a concert at Radio City Music Hall. And she’s talking about her music. And I didn’t really know her music. And I said oh what’d you sing? And she said, I sang the song Liza with a Z. By the way, she’s chain-smoking the entire time while telling me this. And I’m like, please, I want everything about this moment. And then she says, she says, You don’t know it. I’ll sing it for you. And she breaks out in song in the backseat of my car. And my wife and I are like, what the hell is happening right now? And the best thing is she had done the song so many times that she could hear the orchestration. So she would go like Liza with a Z. Ba-da-ba-ba-bam! And I was like, I have left my body. And then she took us to the hamburger hamlet and would just keep telling stories. And I was just like, God, this is one of those moments. I really just like, wake yourself up, Tony, to where you are. Yeah. People either thought she was Joyce DeWitt from Three’s Company, my mother, or an impersonator of herself. And I was like, this is great. And she you know, she just like, she’s old Hollywood man. And just so loving, really, really loving and lived a very, very colorful life, obviously. She’s amazing and she would sit on she wouldn’t sit on a director’s chair normally. Not normally. It was her way. She would sit like this, like she was just about to bust out in cabaret.

Anne: A little high kick.

Tony: Just a little kick, and I was. I just wanted her to. I was like, go, go dance. Do what you gotta do.

Eric: Sometimes you don’t know a moments on your bucket list until after it’s happened, just like being serenaded by Liza. Mr. Hale’s time on Arrested Development felt too good to be true. Made all the sweeter because nobody thought the show could possibly last.

Tony: If I’m honest, we were never a hit when we were on air. So we definitely held it lightly. We were always on the bubble. As they say. And we never knew when we were going to get canceled. So every year I kind of expected that we were gonna go away. And then they think I don’t think Fox was very crazy about us. But then we would get an Emmy and they’d be like, I guess we gotta keep it around. You know, so we were very grateful to the critics and the accolades we got. I think that really gave us longevity for those two and half years. But the truth is, Fox didn’t have to keep us around. They really didn’t because our ratings. So I’m very grateful that they did keep us around for what they did. But I always we were always just like we might get canceled tomorrow. And then Netflix brings us back, which was very surreal. So, yeah, I always kind of never knew when we were gonna go away. I was nervous about, you know, getting back into Buster if I was going to kind of match expectations because I had done it so long. But when I heard Jessica Walters, whose plays Lucille, when I heard her voice go Buster.

Clip: Buster.

Tony: It was like it was like this Pavlovian pain where I was like, I’m back. Just this rush of neurosis and anxiety. Well, we’re back.

Eric: Arrested Development’s rapid fire jokes and intricate structure were Tony Hale’s trial by fire. After that, no role could ever throw him for a loop.

Tony: It is intense. I like that. Like I was doing this thing recently and which I admire their process. But I was working with an actor who really, really appreciated getting the script. Many days before. I have never experienced I have I’ve only experience where the script comes that day and well not the script, but like alts are constantly flying to you. And I for something. I kind of like that energy. But like, they were very like it was very, very stressful. And I’m actually incredibly grateful to Veep and arrested because it kind of gets you in the system like almost don’t stick too hard to the script. Now, if you’re doing theater, or if you’re doing a play, I mean, obviously those words are set and all this kind of stuff. But in my experience with TV and film, it is just that page. You hold it very lightly. You have no idea what’s going to change.

Eric: Both Arrested Development and Veep have such a comedic energy, you’d assume they were mostly improved, but as Tony Hale explained, improv would have actually gotten in the way of arrested’s many plants and payoffs. Veep, on the other hand, let the actors go more off leash to hysterical effect.

Tony: Arrested Mitch Hurwitz, who created the show. He had such a comic grid in his head of like how jokes puzzled together. Like, for instance, my favorite joke in the entire series is Tobias’s in the Blue Man Group because he thought it was a support group for depressed men.

Clip: Are you crazy?

Clip: Are you blue?

Clip: Only in color, Michael.

Tony: And there was all of these hidden things of like a blue hand on the wall. And this meant this and this meant this. And so we never really wanted to leave the page because there was always like, for instance, when my when my hand was eaten off by a seal.

Clip: I’m a monster!

Tony: There was all these previous foreshadowing jokes about hand off and like arm off and all this kind of stuff that I at the time was like, these are odd. Why is there a hand chair in my room? I didn’t really understand what was going on, you know, cut to if I had that day been like, I don’t want to pay attention to the hands or I don’t want to say then I would have messed up this kind of puzzle that he had created. So we really stayed true to the page. Whereas on Veep, they had a large rehearsal process of just not necessarily new lines, but really to kind of see if it gelled, if it made sense, because we really wanted that foundation of like this could happen. You know, and so really just kind of sensing if this made sense. And and then the great thing is working with Julia, you know, we would get the lines kind of locked and then we would get on set. And then it was even more joy because we could work out the physicality. So it’s like we get on set to be like, okay, how can we bump up the comedy? And then it was like, okay. So if you drop your coat here, I’m going to catch it here. Where can you possibly hit me or or where can you abuse me more? You know, and it’s that sense that’s just like trying to find those bits to amp up the comedy. And that was there’s this one scene we did. I don’t even remember what season it was where she’s not president anymore and we go to a museum and she’s sitting behind the rope in a president’s desk just to feel like a president again. And we’re doing it in hiding. And then somebody comes and I actually pick her up and then throw her over the rope.

Clip: Hey ma’am, I think somebody is coming.

Clip: Oh. Uh oh, oh. Gary.

Clip: Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Tony: Her head came so close to the floor. Thank God that I didn’t like bash Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s head but it was I was just like it was so timed specifically to get it. Exactly. You know, and stuff like that. I’m really gonna miss. But it was so fun and it was so it looks so chaotic, but it was very choreographed. You know, it was really, really fun.

Eric: Even though he’s now become more comfortable with the form, Tony Hale did not actually have much improv training. Fortunately, the acting students here at New York Film Academy do get that opportunity.

Tony: I’m so glad you’re taking an improv class. I wish I wish I had taken an improv class when I started out because I have learned more about it and I have grown with it, but has been by being thrown in the deep end and trying to figure out, OK, what’s going on. I don’t have many regrets, but if I could go back to those anytime somebody says, oh, I wish I could go back to that time, I have no desire to go back to my early days. But I would take an improv class because there is a real I struggle with being in my head too much. Like I’ll do something and I’ll have already thought. Is it funny? Is it not funny? Is it smart? Is it not smart? And by the way, the moment’s gone, you know, and it’s like, well, I lost my moment because I was so in my head to get into that practice and exercise that muscle. Just to try it, just to put it out there might be stupid. Might be hilarious. Might be whatever. But just try it, you know? And Veep has really been a gift to me because it was a very safe space where you’re able to just throw out ideas and try stuff. And if it sucked, it sucked. If it didn’t. Hey, great. So I’m very thankful for that. But classes in the beginning. That’s the space to just free your mind up. I can’t tell you how much that is going to work for you and how much of a gift that’s gonna be for you. Like, really that’s a really great choice. I would encourage anybody to do it, actually. By the way, I remember when I was cast and I was like, I’m in a show with Matt Walsh, who created UCB. Who’s pretty much is the one of the founders of all that stuff. And I’m like, I don’t know much about improv. I was petrified.

Anne: I bet. Yeah.

Tony: But they just really I don’t know. It’s. The more I’ve done it with doing Veep for eight years, you just see it’s all from that honest space. You know of just like trying not to be funny because with sketch comedy or doing so many comedy in New York, it’s all about finding that joke. It’s all about finding that bit. It’s all about making somebody laugh. It was really just. And Matt Walsh. I have studied him. And you can see many times when he’s improving something and it’s more of just reactionary. Like if somebody says I’m an astronaut and I’m going off into space, like Walsh’s response would be like, wow, that’s a real transition for you. That’s a real like. That must be interesting. You know, it’s like responding naturally how somebody would respond. Yeah. And that’s amazing how that’s always a challenge. You know, of just kind of like, all right, listen, listen. Focus on the other person.

Eric: One of the toughest parts of the entertainment industry is well dealing with the entertainment industry, letting the frustrations get into your head and stop you from doing your best work. Even pros like Tony Hale can feel this pressure. Fortunately for him, he also found a way to deal with it.

Tony: The older I get, I realize that I spent a lot of time frustrated and not that I still don’t. But I spent a lot of time frustrated at my agents and frustrated at my reps. And then when that children’s book kind of came around and I realized how much joy I just got from generating my own stuff, and not that we ever have any real sense of like complete control. But there’s a sense of ownership and the fact like, you know what, I’m just going to do this and try to do like in New York, just like I couldn’t get a theatrical agent. I was super frustrated. I would just do plays and I would go through Backstage magazine. That was like our Bible and we would see what auditions were there. And I’m going to do this. I’m just. And it was the sense of like, how can I be active in this process rather than what I was doing is just getting very frustrated and just kind of sitting and waiting. And it’s very hard. And not that you’re not going to still be waiting for them to kind of maybe have a different opinion. But if you creatively activate yourself in something else, it’s amazing. Like even because like Veep finished in December and the show’s done and then, you know, you kind of now wonder what gigs are gonna come and all this kind of stuff. But during that time, this children’s book is now a children’s series that’s gonna be on Netflix. And it has given me so much joy. And it’s a very simple thing. And I edit these scripts, but it’s something that I’m activating myself creatively. And then whatever happens with, you know, quote, money gigs or whatever like that, just to it happens. But to kind of keep my focus on something like that has really, really helped. It’s almost like when you when I gave it so much power of waiting, it made it worse in my head rather than trying to activate myself creatively, other places, even if it’s like, you know, finding a play and doing a part in that and going to rehearsals and being around other artists. It’s just that sense like, oh, my gosh, my focus is here. And then, yes, it’s not like you’re not going to get frustrated. I could be waiting around, but it’s almost like, okay, well, 40 or 50 percent of that attention was on this creative thing. And now it’s the other half. Is that rather than all of it on the waiting.

Eric: Another potential frustration actress can face is being typecast after Buster Bluth and Veep’s Gary Tony Hale could have just cornered the market on put upon neurotics. But like all good artists, he’s looking to expand.

Tony: That fear of being typecast. I mean, it’s very easy for my work to be seen that way. And it’s like but I kind of don’t mind playing the quirky sidekick. I kind of enjoy it and kind of beaten down guy cause it’s just fun to live in that. Concerning the drama, I love it. And I the more I realize of just like I’ve already done stuff that really comes from a dramatic place. But I’m doing an indie in August that is just the opposite of what I’ve done. And it might not. The gigs that I get in my life might not be the bread and butter for my career like to pay, you know. I don’t know that yet, but it’s nice to do these indies or these side projects where you can kind of branch out a little bit. And that’s I’m looking forward to that. I’m nervous about it. I am nervous about it. Just because it’s there is something about doing a comedy where even doing Veep and arrested even off set everybody’s kind of in this energy of play. And it’s fun. You know, I remember doing this law and order years ago where I was. I was playing a dad whose daughter was kidnaped. Oh, God. And I remember telling my friends, oh I’m going to New York. I’m doing law and order. We can have drinks and it’ll be fun. I got there and I started doing this character and I didn’t want to leave my hotel room. It was so sad because you kind of have to go in the space of like if my I’ve a thirteen year old daughter, if she was kidnaped, I didn’t want to go out. I was just like, oh, God, I’m just going to go to bed because it’s a more intense environment sometimes. And so I think it’s going to be a contrast in that space. But I am looking forward to it.

Eric: And what better way to expand than playing a suicidal spork named Forky in Toy Story 4? Though being in an animated film meant he couldn’t rely on his considerable physical chops.

Tony: I was doing the voice for Forky while I was doing Veep and the interesting about it is my character on Veep is pretty much not allowed to speak. He could only live through his nonverbal. He was even called a bitchy mime on the show, and so he would only use his non-verbal because she was constantly shutting me down. And then at the same time I went to Forky, who didn’t even have any nonverbal because he had no flexibility. He was a spork and he only had these like out of control pipe cleaner arms, his googly eyes didn’t even have control, they were just kind of going all over the place. He could barely walk cause he had popsicle sticks for feet. So he had no physicality, really. And he only had his voice. And so what I did is I would actually the thing with voice acting, the more I do it, the more I realize, man, I act the hell out of that in front of that microphone and just go crazy. I mean, granted, Forky couldn’t. But I did. I was just like all over the map and using my arms because at first it’s very intimidating because you don’t have your physicality more. It’s only the microphone because as a comic actor you get very used to like, oh, I can use my eyebrow to go up. I can do a smirk. All that nonverbal is gone. So I just learned I’m doing the same acting, the same expressions, the same crazy in front of that microphone and just trusting that that’s gonna be channeled into the microphone. I saw this cartoon once that this guy’s in this voice over Booth and the director on the other side goes, okay. Can you sound like you have more hair? And it was just like, you know, just like the worst direction.

Eric: Mr. Hale gave our students considerably more positive direction. He explained that one of the most empowering things a performer can do is turn down a rule they don’t want to do. In other words, sometimes it’s okay to say no.

Tony: A big thing that I learned early on is having been an actor for so many years where you’re so desperate to work and I’m still looking. Always thankful for gigs when they happen. But if a job is presented to you, if you have to say no to it cause you’re uncomfortable with it. That guilt that rushes over your body. How can I say no to this job? Because I’m an actor and I’m so grateful for the gig. I feel guilty about not. The key to remember is the freedom that you can have to say no is because if you say yes to that job, you’re actually doing them a disservice because you’re not going to be 100 percent there. And so if you can think of it like if I say yes, they’re not getting 100 percent for what they’ve paid for. And so you’re actually helping them by saying no, because you’re not going to be in your body if you’re doing something you’re so uncomfortable with. There’s gonna be a resistance that you’re not going to be completely open and they’re not getting 100 percent for what they’ve paid for. So you’re doing them a gift by saying no. And I think that’s a mind frame that’s really good to get into. I’m a huge people pleaser. I like everybody to like me, you know, and it’s very hard to say no. It actually hurts my stomach. But if you if you say no with something that you really feel strongly about. It’s amazing how it gives you that kind of power. It’s a very empowering thing. Yeah, it is.

Eric: And if you don’t believe him, just ask Forky.

Tony: One thing that Forky said in Toy Story that I love, because I do love telling people this is like it’s gonna be OK, because I think we as artists, very emotional. And I’m we’re always kind of like, when’s the shoe going to drop? What’s it’s the uncertainty of it all. But just like I like to be told it’s gonna be OK, because I think it really is. It is. It’s gonna be an emotional rollercoaster like life just coming back to the space of like, it’s all right. It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna unfold in time, whatever happens.

Eric: Some actors get that truly great career defining role once in their life. With Veep and Arrested Development, Mr. Hale pulled it off twice. And he’s got lots more to go. We want to thank him for sharing his story with our students. And thanks, of course, to all of you for listening. Check out the animated series Archibald’s next big thing based on Tony Hale’s book on Netflix. You can also check out our previous episode with Henry Winkler. This episode was based on the Q&A moderated by Anne Moore. To watch the full interview or to see our other Q&As check out our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/NewYorkFilmAcademy. This episode was written by me. Eric Conner. Edited and mixed by Kristian Heydon. Our creative director is David Andrew Nelson, who also produced this episode with Kristian Heydon and Myself executive produced by Jean Sherlock and Dan Mackler. Special thanks to our events department Melissa Enright. Sajja Johnson. And the staff and crew who made this possible. To learn more about our programs, check us out at NYFA.edu. Be sure to subscribe on apple podcasts or wherever you listen. See you next time.

Producer & Ace Entertainment CEO Matt Kaplan

A conversation with founder and CEO of Ace Entertainment, Matt Kaplan, who produced Netflix's 'To All the Boys I've Loved Before.'

Tova Laiter: Hi and welcome to The Backlot. I’m Tova Laiter moderator and director of the New York Film Academy Guest Lecture series. In this episode, we will take an in-depth look at one of my great guests and hear about his experience in the entertainment industry. And now Eric Conner will take you through the highlights of this Q&A. 

Eric Conner: Hi, I’m Eric Conner, senior instructor at New York Film Academy. And in this episode, we bring you the producer who helped bring the Netflix film To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before to millions of viewers. Producer Matt Kaplan as a producer. He’s got over three dozen film and TV credits from horror to romantic comedies, mostly geared towards younger audiences. Mr. Kaplan described how he remembers being a kid himself who dreamt of one day making his own movies. 

Matt Kaplan: I think I always wanted to do this even as a kid like I loved movies and that was my passion. And, you know, I played football in college and I went to film school. And those are the only two things I liked doing for fun. So if you’re lucky enough to do what you love in business, then then you’ll have a pretty fun career. And so I’ve been fortunate to find something I love. And it’s not work because I work with my best friends and I get to wake up every day and read books like To All the Boys and then try to make it happen. And so I think I’ve always known in my heart like that was what I wanted to do. I think I like putting things together. I think I just looked at like what I was good at. I mean, when I was your guys age, I was at Columbia and I took writing classes and directing classes. And to be honest, I wasn’t that good at it, but I knew I was good at assessing material. And like I knew I had an instinct for what I felt like I could sell and market. And so I just spent a lot of my time making relationships with great writers and great directors. And then I focused on making relationships with the people who have to, like, sell the movies and distribute the movies. So for me, it was just like kind of a slow process. But again, I just tried a bunch of stuff and failed and figured out what I was good at. 

Eric Conner: For Matt Kaplan, his trying and failing was making his own original content, so instead of only waiting and hoping and praying for the perfect job. Instead he went out and just made his own material. 

Matt Kaplan: I went to Columbia University and studied film and when I graduated I started to make short form content and YouTube was just getting popular. And so I started making short like videos with my friends after I kind of had made enough videos that no one was paying attention to it. And I ended up at Lionsgate, which was a film studio, and I was an assistant and I just started working my way to be an executive. And I was part of the team that made The Hunger Games, which was really fun. And then I kind of knew as a younger executive, I wanted to be the one making the final decisions. And so they gave me an opportunity to run a division that made movies from like 1 to 10 million dollars, mostly like young adult films, comedies and horror movies. So that kind of became an area that I loved. And so I just kind of started to make a bunch of movies. And so I never worried about what price we were making for. Sometimes people only want to make Avengers movies and that was but I was passionate about telling good stories and not worrying about, you know, where they got distributed. And luckily today I think which you guys all get to experience, like Netflix and Hulu and Amazon like allows us to tell cool stories and it’ll find the right home. When I first started in the business, those things didn’t exist, so it was either theaters or no one really saw it. So it’s a cool time to make movies. So from Lionsgate, I ended up partnering with a guy named Jason Blum who does Blumhouse, which is a bunch of horror movies. So we made about eight movies together over three years, which was for me because I was an executive. So I was more from a marketing and distribution perspective. And then I learned from Jason how to really start to produce, which was an amazing time for me. And then I got a phone call after working with Jason from a guy named Jeffrey Katzenberg who ran DreamWorks, and he called to say there’s this random company awesomeness. There’s 13 people and we’re about to put in one hundred million dollars. Will you help go run it? So we grew awesomeness from, you know, 15 people to 400. And we were just focusing on making movies and TV shows and YouTube content for young adults. 

Eric Conner: So before he produces material for these young adults, he first needs to develop an idea that’s going to be exciting to him. 

Matt Kaplan: I was first trying to figure out what kind of movies your passionate about telling. For me, I love trying because a lot of other producers are older than me in the business. So I just always kind of felt like I should stick to movies for younger people, but I didn’t want to get pigeonholed into one genre. So I don’t want to only make comedies or only make romance or horror, but I just was like maybe I should just like, look at everything we look at from like a youthful perspective. So typically we will option a book or you know buy an article from the newspaper or whatever it is and then hire a writer. So like an example is I woke up to a text message from my two friends who who are directors who created catfish and they’re like, did you read about this story about this kid who’s 12 years old? And he, like his parents, were getting divorced and he like flew to Bali and I was like, what are you talking about? So then I Googled it. And like on the front cover of CNN was like some 12 year old kid stole his parent’s credit card, flew to Bali and like home alone style, like went on vacation. And like, then the parents who hated each other had to get on a plane and fly to go get the kid. And so I was like, that’s a cool idea. And so then a friend of mine who’s a big writer who wrote like a lot of the Will Ferrell movies, I called him and I said, take a look at this article. I think there’s something here. And then he was like, this is amazing. And then I got those directors who then had done this movie Nerve. And so we all just teamed up and then we sold it. And now we’re gonna make it for Paramount. So then I called. This is funny I actually have a video of it. Then I called the mom of the kid and I said, I want to buy your life rights. And so then I had a conference call on Skype with the mom and the kid that I videoed, even though they didn’t know that it was cuckoo, because the kid just was what you think he is. He was just a wild child, but he was amazing and he was like charismatic. And so we ended up sharing that with that writer. And so then we got the life rights and then Paramount bought them. And so it kind of just pay attention and read a lot, like read the news and pay attention to what you guys think is cool going on around you. Like whether it’s get out or us, like there’s so many interesting ideas to come up with and talk to your friends about it. And a lot of cool stuff will happen. 

Eric Conner: Here’s the great news about an interesting idea. It doesn’t have to be expensive to get noticed, though, if it’s too small or too niche or just unbelievable. Well that writing better be amazing. 

Matt Kaplan: Start with a great big idea that doesn’t mean it has to be expensive, but if you start from a small idea no one can access, then you better be the best writer ever. Because if your story is just about two people who work. I don’t know at the studio city Starbucks like it’s going to be tough to like get Will Ferrell to be in that movie versus like we have a movie we’re about to make and it’s about the pope is possessed in the Vatican. So it’s as big of a big idea as like you can come up with. But it’s not for a horror movie. It’s like not that expensive. So I think start by trying to come up with depending on the genre of story, you want to tell something that really feels sticky and modern and zeitgeist-y. So that when you pitch it back, it can really resonate. And I think even today more than ever even with to all the boys. Like what I was so passionate about was like I haven’t seen a Korean American family have, especially for teenagers like have their story told. So for us, like as popular as the books were like that was the thing that I was like, even if no one wants to see this, like, that’s what I cared about. And I felt like other people will, too. And we ended up being right. So try to pick ideas that you think are sticky. 

Eric Conner: With the recent film adaptation of To All the Boys. Matt Kaplan produced a movie that’s reached everyone starring NYFA alum Lana Condor and DP’d by former NYFA instructor Michael Fimognari. The movie has become one of Netflix’s most watched properties of all time, and it showed that romantic comedies could still be fresh, original, funny and yeah romantic. Not bad for a movie that was frozen in development for years. 

Matt Kaplan: So it was funny. It was actually set up at Sony Pictures and the book had been out for about four years and I had read it back at Lionsgate when I was a studio executive. And once I had started awesomeness, we started to look at what cool projects we had looked at over the years and Sony hadn’t made the movie. So I called some friends over at Sony and said, if you’re not going to make this, can I buy it from you? I didn’t love the script they developed, but I did love the book. So I called the book author and said, would you be willing to allow us to buy it from Sony for you. And so we did. And then we hired this amazing young writer who was a playwright who hadn’t really written many screenplays, but all her plays were amazing. Her name is Sofia Alvarez. So she did a pass on the script and turned out great. Then we hired our director and we met Noah Centineo and Lana Condor, and we just felt like they were the perfect match. And so we greenlit the movie six months later. And I called some friends over at Netflix and I said, I made this movie. I think you guys are gonna like it. And they watched it and bought it. 

Eric Conner: Even though the movie was based on a series of bestselling books, it still took a really long time to reach the screen. But once it was actually in production, the book’s author, Jenny Han, stayed on set pretty much all the time to make sure that the film accurately captured the life of its Korean American main character. 

Matt Kaplan: We love adapting books because I feel like you can always go back to the original source, which is that author, and talk to them about what inspired them and why they wrote it the way they wrote it. And even in this movie in particular, like I didn’t really understand Korean American culture the way that one should to produce this movie. So I had to spend hours with the author and ask her but like why would she wear this piece of clothing versus that? What kind of food are they making in their house? So we spent months deliberating on what those choices were. And ultimately, like, we invited the author to come to set. She stayed on set the whole movie. And so that’s really fun when you’re collaborating with people to have another person to bounce ideas off of, because sometimes when you developed an original script, you’re just with yourself and the writer and you have no idea if people are going to dig it. 

Eric Conner: For Mr. Kaplan, part of collaborating with talented artists is knowing when he needs to step in and maybe even more importantly, when he doesn’t. 

Matt Kaplan: I think it’s all about who you’re working with. So like as I mentioned earlier, like Michael Fimognari who’s a cinematographer, has a really amazing handle on aesthetics. And so I on this particular film. I am totally hands off because he has such a good handle on like how we shoot it versus as he would admit, like he’ll say, Matt, I need your help on what we do with Noah’s wardrobe or the production design. Like what do the bed sheets look like to the wallpaper? And so I get really deep in some of those decisions. And I had no idea what Lana should be wearing. And so I had to have many consultants and especially the author, because it was very personal to her. 

Eric Conner: I actually went to film school with Michael Fimognari, the cinematographer, and I can see why Matt Kaplan trusts him. He is a maestro with that camera. These collaborations and relationships in the industry, well, they’re important at every step. Whether you’re producing your 20th feature film or whether you’re just starting out. 

Matt Kaplan: People in this business want to help. So if you put yourself in a position to ask for help, I would say start off by trying to like, you know, get experience, go to a agency or a management company and just watch, but then don’t just watch, like try to make friends with these people and be helpful. And I think once you start to do that, good things can happen. 

Student: If you like get rejected the first time do you still follow up? 

Matt Kaplan: Dude we get rejected every day. I think that’s the thing. Like there’s so many times I work on a script for a year and I send it out to Warner Brothers and Lionsgate and Sony and they they they pass on it. And then I try to understand why they don’t like it or what’s wrong with it. But I think if you’re gonna be in this business, you’ve got to wrap your head around like rejection is is meaningless. Just do it again. That’s just the first stop. The set’s a different story. I think the harder part’s actually the stuff in the navigating Hollywood, like the managers and the agents and the scripts and all that. Once you’re on set, you usually hire a depending on where you’re shooting the movie or TV show, like whether it’s like we shoot this in Vancouver. And so there’s a individual named Chris Voss that we always use in Vancouver because he lives in Vancouver. So he helps me hire like all the grip and electric and all the people who work the hundred and ten people that work on the movie. But once we get to the place of where we’re actually shooting, I’m I’m really just worried about the performances and making sure we’re not spending too much money. 

Eric Conner: Mr. Kaplan’s movies tend to have lower budgets and only modest box office goals these days. Netflix, Amazon and those million other streaming services help these smaller movies see the light of day and reach an audience. But just a few years ago, that was not the case. 

Matt Kaplan: Just to go back into my life a little bit like I made a movie that I was so proud of that you guys. I don’t even know where you can find it, but it was called they came together and it’s like a spoof movie about romantic comedies. It’s Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd and like a million other famous actors from the guys who created Wet, Hot American Summer. And so, like, I was such a huge fan of this guy, David Wayne and this writer, Michael Showalter. So for me, being able to make a movie with them for like under five million dollars was a dream come true. But there was no Netflix, there was no Hulu. So it was either like put it out in theaters and spend 30 million dollars in advertising, which was a lot given the movie only cost us four point five million dollars. But in today’s world, we could’ve made that movie, sold it to Netflix and you guys would have all seen it the day it came out. Back then, it was basically just put to like a version of Blockbuster. And so the fun part is you can make stuff and ultimately all we want is to have people see it. And so I think there’s an amazing moment that we’re in to like make cool stuff. And instead of it just going to Blockbuster, like you can actually have it be seen around the world. 

Eric Conner: Although as Netflix has continued to grow, getting a movie produced or distributed by them. It’s become a bit more complicated. 

Matt Kaplan: They have so many divisions now because these companies have become so large. If you have a book and an idea, you will go to one group. And if you have a finished product, you go to another group, which is called acquisitions. Most of the stuff we sell is to the acquisitions group because we sell finance and then we make it and then we sell it to them when it’s done. But you know, Netflix has the capability to reach the biggest audience and has a lot of money now to chase the right project. So you can go in through an agency. But the truth is, it’s better to make your own relationship with those buyers directly and just call them and say, hey, I got something cool for you. 

Eric Conner: Matt Kaplan explained how a big part of producing is learning how to deal with people, whether it’s trying to get someone to read your script or finance its budget or just getting the movie made. 

Matt Kaplan: I deal with a lot of people’s emotions every day, including my own. So you’re just you have a writer who wrote something. Who wakes up feeling like I wrote this. I hope you like it. And now I have to read it. And then I’d be sensitive towards how much time and effort they’ve put into it. You have a director who makes a movie that I watch. Either I do or I don’t like it or if we’ve made a movie and now I’ve got to go sell it, I need to like make sure everyone wants to buy it. But there’s a lot of people’s feelings in all of this because it’s not the same as like being an accountant. Like people pour out their either true stories or even if they’re not true. Like you’ve written this script or if you’re an actor, you’ve like you’re literally crying on screen like there’s a lot of emotions at stake. So you’ve got to be really sensitive about that process. And so just be sensitive towards other people around you. 

Eric Conner: Yeah. If you want to produce, you might want to take a course or two in psychology and perseverance. 

Matt Kaplan: Passion and tenacity to learn I’ll always help. Like if you follow up with me three times, even if I haven’t hit you back, like I will always get back to you because then you’re just like this person cares as much as I do. And so why would I not want to help people? Like I think that’s that’s that is my responsibility. That’s why I’m here tonight. I feel like I had a lot of people that influenced my life and helped me and propped me up. And I’ve got to give back. What would I not want? I don’t know you’ve got to be a real asshole not to want my help, but yeah, I don’t know what the the negative is, but just be passionate and be a nice person and good things will happen. 

Eric Conner: Well, that’s a pretty lovely note to end on. So thanks to one of Hollywood’s good guys, Matt Kaplan, for coming to New York Film Academy and sharing his experiences with our students. Check out his newest movie, the sequel To All the Boys, To All the Boys. P.S., I Still Love You. Coming to Netflix on February 12th. Directed by former NYFA instructor Michael Fimognari and starring NYFA Alum Lana Condor. This episode was based on the Q&A moderated by Tova Laiter to watch the full interview or to see our other Q&A’s. Check out our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/NewYorkFilmAcademy. This episode was written by me Eric Conner. Edited in a mixed by Kristian Heydon. Our creative director is David Andrew Nelson, who also produced this episode with Kristian Heydon and myself executive produced by Jean Sherlock, Dan Mackler and Tova Laiter with a special thanks to our events department Sajja Johnson. Melissa Enright and the staff and crew who made this possible. To learn more about our programs, check us out at NYFA.edu. You be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. See you next time.