Tristan Alexander: Inside the Mind of Evil Characters

Tristan Alexander is an actor and podcaster passionate about exploring the psychology behind compelling performances. Alongside his work on screen and stage, he has developed a Notion platform designed to support actors in their craft, providing practical tools and resources for character development, preparation, and creative growth.

In this episode of The Human Frame, Tristan joins Łucja in exploring the portrayal of morally complex and psychologically dark characters, and how actors can approach challenging roles with empathy, curiosity, and authenticity. They discuss the relationship between psychology and performance, the process of building believable characters, and why understanding human behaviour is at the heart of great storytelling. Tristan also shares the inspiration behind his Notion platform and his mission to make high-quality acting resources more accessible to performers at every stage of their careers.

This is a conversation about storytelling, psychology, and the craft of bringing complex characters to life.

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Host: Łucja Hawking

Music: Yago Cardalda 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome to the Human Frame Podcast with me, Wilsia Hawking, where I talk to incredible people that I've met along different industries to talk about art as a form of activism.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Thanks so much for joining me today, Tristan. Tristan Alexander is an actor, podcaster, and founder of the Inner Scene Acting Management System, a platform focused on helping actors navigate the professional and business realities of the industry. As a performer, he is drawn to psychologically complex and often darker roles, exploring the inner lives of morally ambiguous characters. Alongside his acting work, Tristan also hosts a podcast dedicated to analysing psychological literature and drawing on his academic background in psychology to examine human behaviour, motivations, and the darker dimensions of the mind. His work sits at the intersection of performance and psychology, exploring what drives people both on and off-screen. And that's kind of what we're gonna be exploring today.

SPEAKER_04 1:11

Sounds good, looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Great. I'm just gonna jump straight into it. When did acting for you shift from performance into investigating something?

SPEAKER_04 1:23

Well, I would say that I think my journey with acting has changed based on the reasons for why I'm in acting. So I would say that you know, once a lot of people get into acting for a lot of different reasons, but once you kind of settle on that you really love this craft and that you want to be almost in my in my approach, try to portray something as real as possible, then it's kind of that's the skill you're aiming for. How can I portray a character that feels really real? And so by chasing that, you have to kind of explore yourself because I find that a lot of the characters that you're trying to portray, you may not have, you know, you may not have come across them, you may not have met these kinds of people, and so to really get down deep you need to explore the different traits and the different behaviours, and so it becomes less about performing and more about exploring. And I think also in daily life we don't perform, right? We just be, we just are, and it seems weird. Right now I'm having this conversation with you, I'm not performing to anyone, and so I think it is it's completely different. And I think once you realize that as an actor, then you're like, okay, really, I don't want to feel like I'm just acting, as they say. I just want to be, I just want to be natural, and it's constantly chasing and exploring how you can get to that point, and not instead trying to like, oh, I'm going to show that I'm this Shakespearean character. Rather than being like, Well, I wonder what it would be like to actually be a Shakespearean character, if you get what I mean.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

No, completely, and I think you know, when some people say, like, I need to figure out the character's backstory, like, what do they do when they're a child or any of that kind of stuff, but like day to day we never walk on the street thinking about what we suffered through as a child or or like whatever, and I think maybe sometimes people dwell too much on that. Obviously, it's important. Well, it's interesting because I feel like I don't really do character backstory. I do only if it's important to their point of view that they have, yeah. But I don't sit thinking like what school did they go to, or how did they get treated and I don't know anything like that unless it's in the script.

SPEAKER_04 3:45

Yeah, it's interesting, but because I think I I would argue that like a lot of people's behaviour is basically driven by their beliefs, right? So your actions are you know dictated by your decisions, which are dictated by your emotions, feelings, thoughts, and those are dictated by your beliefs. But a lot of the time we're not aware of our beliefs, they're so deep we're not conscious of them. And if we were we'd probably be able to change our behaviour so easily, but a lot of the time we're not. And so we act in ways and we don't know the reasons why we act in those ways. Because we might have acquired a conditioned belief when we were a kid, you know, and it might have suited us back then, but it's not suiting us now. And so instead, when our act when we act on things and we, you know, um have certain behaviours, it's done right then and there. And you're not really, you know, there isn't like you're not doing it as performative because if I'm to perform something, then I'm consciously doing something, and I'm kind of like dictating it rather than you know why I speak in this way, why I behave in that way. And a lot of it is for reasons that we can't actually remember or why why we act that way.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Yeah, and also like you know, figuring out a movement of a character I think is also quite important in that sense, like how does the character sit? Maybe more actually embodying it rather than mentally understanding what they might do, because then you don't actually show it on screen, which is you know, on screen you show don't tell, right, most of the time. Exactly. But what is your process when you get a character?

SPEAKER_04 5:16

I mean, I'm still figuring it out. Um I've gone through multiple different ways of trying to understand a character, I think it also changes with every character. I remember watching a video of um Willem Defoe being interviewed about a method, and he was like, I don't believe in a method, I think the method changes for every single character. And I think in a weird way that's right, because once again, if you don't know much about these characters, if I suddenly had to play someone in Wall Street, I have a stereotypical knowledge of a you know someone from Wall Street, but I don't actually know what it's like to be one, and so my approach to figuring out that kind of character might be completely different to a different one. And although there might be general kind of actions that I take to understand it, I'd say now a lot of it is trying to understand trying to find a way to justify the actions. So I will go through a script, and the way that I think about it now is like, what is the script saying he he actually has to do? Like the facts, like he moves over here, he picks up this bottle, he says this line. So these are the facts, and that's the stuff that is scripted, and then there's a lot of stuff that isn't scripted. What does he do before he picks up the bottle? What does he do before he says the line? And that's where your character really comes to light, because although you're developing a character, there's so much between the lines between the actions, and so for me, I quite like to try and get an understanding of the identity of the character, the beliefs that kind of dictate all these actions, because then I can see okay, how can I justify these actions, and then what if once I've done that and I figure out the identity, okay, how can I use that to do all the unscripted moments? So that's kind of my methods.

SPEAKER_02 7:05

Yeah, and I've seen also like like I study Meisner, so that's kind of our approach stuff, but then also figure out like the small intentions within like the moments, like what's the thought process of why you suddenly say it, because you can tell the difference between you know saying one line and then sudden suddenly saying another one, yeah, versus saying a line, seeing the actual thought process that goes in that person's head and then reacting with an a new line, and I think that's really something that I've started working on more and more. That's as you know, character develop and and and technique develops as well, just to make it even more believable. Because again, like if I'm picking up my phone, I'm not suddenly picking it up just because it's an action that I have to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's something that is you know, there's a reason for it.

SPEAKER_04 7:49

And I and I think you want to be able to, when you get on set and you haven't been in this environment yet, and you have an idea of how this scene is gonna play, but now they're like, Okay, we're not gonna do it in a bedroom, we're gonna do it in a living room, and this is all these are all the things that are around you now. And so this is new for you, and you need to be able to have a relationship with the things in that room, but a relationship that's not just you, it's you kind of filtered through this character, right? So it's like, how would you pick up that bottle? I don't know why I keep using the bottle. But that's that's it. I think that's what brings it to life because when you see some of these amazing actors, it's kind of the stuff that isn't scripted and what they do in between, their reactions, how they like hold themselves, the things that they weren't told to do, and then they did it as a character.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Jim makes me think why one of my friends is saying, Have you seen this video?

SPEAKER_02 8:40

I think can't remember what what show it's from, but there was an action that it just said disappointed, as then you say it disappointingly, and he just rather than showing or saying it disappointingly, he just screams out, disappointed!

SPEAKER_00 8:55

But they kept it in, and it's so funny they actually kept it in because he fully committed to it.

SPEAKER_04 9:00

That almost sounds like something that would be in the room in like the whole film, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

No, it was hilarious. I I'll send it to you off because it's so funny.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Um but yeah, going from that, what draws you personally to complicated, morally ambiguous characters rather than like clear-cut heroes? I mean, you have played soldiers before, I guess, so they're more heroic like, but I think you're like me and we tend to play a bit of the darker side of characters.

SPEAKER_04 9:24

I mean it's interesting. Um I I think they're just more interesting because they're less, they're further away from where I normally sit, right? So it's like we have you know, there is an area of normality, and we as society we tend to like judge people who are on the fringes of those things. But that goes for every single kind of trait, right? And I think we can observe people who might seem strange, but to them, once again, it's completely justified. Like we look at a crazy person who's acting in some really strange way on the street, and to us we're like, that's mad. Like, how why would they be doing that? Why would they be screaming down the street? But for them, it's perfectly justified, they're not judging themselves screaming in the middle of the street, and I think I'm drawn to exploring that. Like, how did they get to that point? Because they could have been at exactly the same place that we are now, and somehow they've ended in ended, you know, up in this completely different place. So it's like, what were the breadcrumbs that led there? And how can I follow and not get stuck there? But like explore those realms, and I think that's something that I love about acting, and I think it's very unique to acting because I think it's one of the only I don't know, disciplines out there where you really explore yourself because you're forced to go through these, like, you know, you you take these little steps to these other areas that you've never explored before, and you're exploring literally your yourself, your mind, like what you're capable of, what you relate to, what you resonate with, and then you get there and you're like, okay, wow, and it completely changes your perception of people, you know. You learn to like, okay, maybe I shouldn't judge that person for screaming in the middle of the street because maybe you know her kids were taken away from her or this or that, and it's like you start to you can kind well you kind kind of empathize a lot more with it, and I think it teaches you that.

SPEAKER_02 11:21

Yeah, I think empathy is the biggest thing as an actor. It's really funny yesterday Wednesday I went to a writing class and we were reading a script. And this one guy who's never done acting before was like, What do actors actually like can they play at characters that they don't like? And I was like, Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But it with I was just like, you can't judge them by their actions because, like you said, for them, like even as a psychopath or a serial killer, you can't judge what they're doing because obviously then as you're playing them, you're it's not gonna be truthful because you're portraying a character rather than being the character in itself. So in in that I kind of just wanna see how do you approach that in terms of gaining empathy, or is that is there anything that you do if it is like a psycho psychopathic kind of character or an abusive character?

SPEAKER_04 12:13

I mean I I like to read like kind of literature around those kind of characters. Um I find them quite interesting, and I think from just my kind of psychological background, I find those traits quite interesting. So you kind of have these darker traits which are Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism, um oh god, there's another one, the main one, and I can't actually remember. Narcissism. Um yeah, and uh I remember reading this book a while back, which I recommended to you.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

It's on my shelf, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:49

Uh called Evil, and it kind of it was it's in line with what we were just saying. It's in a lot of the time people don't judge themselves when they're like, you know, take certain actions. They feel justified within it. And the book was kind of saying that in a strange way, it kind of turned the idea of evil on its head and was like, okay, well, evil is actually in the eye of the victim, not, you know, the perpetrator. Uh and victims view themselves as central to a perpetrator's actions, but actually a lot of the time they tend to be what he says like collateral because they're they don't see it, they they've adopted certain kind of almost psychological coping mechanisms to be able to do what they're doing, to justify, find justification in what they're doing, rather than having these this kind of cognitive dissonance, which is the idea where you know your beliefs are different to your actions, and so you change your beliefs to justify what you're doing. And so, if those people are doing that, I find it quite interesting because it's like, well, how how did you end up that way? You know, and a lot of the examples he uses are obviously of soldiers in like World War II committing atrocities, and it's like, how did these people get to that point? The same thing with like is it Stanley Milgram's kind of experiment of like the shocking, you know? Like, how is a perfectly ordinary person able to go into this kind of experiment and then by the end of it think that they've electrocuted someone to death? Um so I find that very interesting that those kind of characters still don't judge themselves, or you know, and how you can kind of get to that point. Does that kind of answer?

SPEAKER_02 14:32

No, it does, but also it makes me think like I had I was had a conversation yesterday w about um survivors of domestic violence as well, and there was a lot of you know, we talked a lot, I mean it's it's one of the apocalypse episodes actually, but it was all about how survivors of domestic violence always see a lot of shame in what they've gone through and how actually the abuser should feel shame. But I personally don't think abusers can feel shame because they don't care, that's why they did it. Well they don't see it as shame, yeah. Because they see it as it feels whatever they want to do, right? It's building their own ego, and when their ego is bruised, that's when they react because they don't want to be seen as that bad, evil person. Because, like you said, like no one no one sees themselves as evil, it's just the action that they take because they think it's right. Whether it is morally right is the other kind of question.

SPEAKER_04 15:21

Exactly. And that's what's interesting, is like this is not to say you condone any of the actions that these people like commit, but it's interesting to see like how could you get to that point, you know, where you're committing this, and to a majority of society, we condemn that behaviour, and yet to you, you're just able to do something like that. And what's what I find even more fascinating is I think we all have that little streak in us.

SPEAKER_03 15:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:48

I think every single person, and I mean like, you know, like war. War is almost like the rawest form of humanity. I know that sounds really dark, but like when you take away all the systems that kind of govern and regulate and uh society and help it like prosper, it's it's hard to do well in life in general, right? If we were to just resort back down to nothing, it would become this dominance hierarchy, and war is just so inevitable. And so I think it's it's there is a slithery of it in all of us. It's just we hopefully can condition ourselves to be, you know, morally uplifting like characters in society that you know abide by ethics and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

But it's different when I mean look, I'm gonna bring I always bring this up, but I feel like because I've studied the Holocaust a lot, yeah. But it's interesting to see, you know, you can always say in hindsight what you would do, what if you're not in that situation, what you would do, but when you're actually placed in a situation where is life or death, yeah. Or maybe when it even isn't even life or death, but you don't want to be associated with a group of people because they are being persecuted, what your fight or flight response is. And again, I I mean, you know, Primo Levi talks about the grey area very well, yeah. And the fact that you don't know because it is the grey area, there is no black and white, it's a rule to follow. Yeah, what is the rule, right? It isn't anything like, and again, you can judge it after, you can analyse it, but when you're in that moment, you have no idea, and and like you said, everyone is capable of one thing and its opposite. Yeah, everyone can do good, everyone can do bad, whether they intend to do it, again is a different thing. This is why I love moral responsibility, I think it's so fascinating.

SPEAKER_04 17:29

Absolutely. I think there it it's it's interesting because yeah, it completely comes down to the context with which you're in, and also what is at stake, right? At the end of the day, like we are animals, we want to survive and prosper and have offspring if we're breaking it really down to the basics. So if those things are challenged, it's it's a hard argument to say that someone will take a moral a moral line that impacts their survival in this case or their children, but to go the right line rather than you know breaking that to you know hold on to you know their life.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

And again, it's like what your motivation is, right? Whether it is to protect yourself or whether it's for other people or yeah, I just think that you know, and some people do really sacrifice themselves. I mean, um Bonhoeffer always talked about you know cutting the line between um you know costly grace, like having to always sacrifice everything to do the morally good thing.

SPEAKER_04 18:30

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Rather than you know saying that you're doing the right thing, rather than uncostly grace, which is what cheap Gracie Paul did, which is like you know, just saying you're gonna do it but you never actually do it.

SPEAKER_04 18:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

So but then you know he went to the extreme and ended up Yes, it's diff it's difficult.

SPEAKER_04 18:45

It's funny because that was my that's I mean kind of similar to what my dissertation was on, which is the idea that like it was more to do with people actually kind of um pro-activism but on social media compared to people who actually like sacrifice something for activism and whether the idea if you can share something and it's easy to make yourself feel like you're an activist, um, rather than like you know you have to sacrifice time or money or effort or things like that, would activism go down because more people have these lighter options at their disposal, and because it makes them feel like they're being activists.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

I feel like some people do it for show, which is literally what it is.

SPEAKER_04 19:35

It's like I shared it, I'm showing that I cared about it. But I'm like, okay, but then if you were to commit time, but would you commit time to it? Would you go to a rally for it? Would you do this?

SPEAKER_02 19:43

But even then I feel you know, because we're on this topic and being an activist, it's more like you know, I think activism gets a really bad name for you know the type of activists that do scream and all of those, you know, the Greta Thumb types of characters. Um yeah, I feel like she's very I remember my mum because my mum's a psychologist as well. I remember she her saying with her um work colleagues saying that she's just mad at the world rather than making the world, you know, interesting better. Which is really interesting to look at it. I mean activism does fuel mad at uh stem out of madness, but then you do something good out of it rather than you know being like you're wrong and you're wrong and you should be doing this. That never worked, in my opinion, anyway, from working in the sector now.

SPEAKER_04 20:27

No, exactly, I don't think that.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

But it's interesting to see how different people go about it, and I think activism is cool. That's why I think film's a really great form of campaigning, because it does it through a different lens that isn't so confronting, because not everyone wants to be confronted, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_04 20:42

No, exactly. Yeah, and I think you end up I think film is a good medium because fundamentally one, it's a story, but the story was essentially there to kind of convey an emotion. So if it reaches people on an emotional front and people are able to like understand the story and the moral behind it, if it's to do with some kind of access cause, then it can it can change people's perceptions of things. You know, and I think it is a good medium for that. It's like an easier way through their kind of sceptical mind, their sceptical like filter that a lot of the time when you hear people talking about certain causes, they they just switch off, they're like, oh that's a political thing, I don't want to, I don't want to go there. But if they're able to see it in a kind of disguised story format in a film or something like that, then it's I mean everything's political, yeah, whether you like it or not.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Exactly. But it's interesting also because I did my undergrad this on whether you can separate um moral responsibility from art. For example, I did it on uh Coco Chanel and Lenny Reifenstahl, who were both Nazi co conspirators, let's say. But one was really badly punished, and I mean Lenny Reifenstahl never really worked again. But I mean she was very close to Hitler, so I don't know whether you know versus like Coco Chanel, who was only I mean technically only doing it to survive, but what she did wasn't exactly no applicable. But do you think people can I mean because you know you you get that now a lot with actors with oh not even actors, just uh any musicians as well. Can you separate their work from maybe if they do do things that are a bit more morally questionable?

SPEAKER_04 22:22

I think it's it's difficult because I think one art in our case it can be like hijacked, and I think there are so many moving parts to it that your part may not have been that, you know, how I say it, as in like let's say a film is made and it conveys a certain message, and you're there as an actor, you know, trying to portray a character. The way the film comes out in the end is also very different, right? Like you're there quite literally for that moment when you're acting, and then you leave and you go off and you're unemployed and you go off and do another job, right? That's that's how it works. But that film might come out and it might have the way it's edited, the way it's filmed, the way that the lighting, the what the whole story of it might have been completely changed, it's out of your hands, and then once it's distributed, then it can take on a whole life of its own. And so, and you're a tiny little cop in that, right? But then at the same time, sometimes you know what you're getting yourself into, and I think if you have more control and power over the art that you're actually distributing, um then yeah, sometimes you do have more responsibility, and yeah, it's like it's it's difficult because it's so like entangled. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 23:51

Yeah, I mean there is no like right, it's so complicated. Again, it's another gray. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I feel like a lot of people get cancelled nowadays if they do do something that is very questionable.

SPEAKER_03 24:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Um, which again, I don't know whether that's right or wrong in itself. I mean, right in the sense that they shouldn't be celebrated, but can you separate that from the great work? Because many people that do do horrible things are very, very talented.

SPEAKER_04 24:16

Exactly, and then this obviously brings up a whole thing of like who gets the sense of who and what is right, right? Like there are certain things that you know we can agree on that are you know morally outrageous, and then there's a lot of grey area, once again, and just because someone might hold a different political belief, does that make it wrong if society, you know, like it's it's pretty crazy. Like, I I can think of an example of you know Kanye West's song that you know caused a lot of outrage, right? Um, that's quite extreme, but you have lots of people who do things far less extreme, but because they're politically not what is expected, and depending on who can censor who, and what their like the people who are the senses and what their political like bleeding is, it can be kind of hijacked, and that can be made to be like worse, especially like when you get comedians who are who are um censored. I think that is an awful thing because a lot of the time jokes can disguise truth, and when they suddenly get censored, it's because the people who are censoring them don't want a certain truth to come out, and I think that is something that is quite um yeah, I'm not I'm not for that.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Uh and I tend I it's normally, you know, with the further down the chain you are, the more you tend to suffer if you do speak out against it as well. Which, you know, is just how the world works, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_03 25:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:44

Um, just back to uh morally questionable characters. Have you ever unexpectedly found yourself to sympathise or, you know, have a lot more empathy for a character that you maybe initially resisted or weren't expecting?

SPEAKER_04 26:00

Yeah, I think so. I think when you can. I mean, I've I've never done, let's say, a biopic, so I've never studied a particular person, you know. But if I'm studying if I'm trying to portray a particular character, and I go and research about different characters, uh, you know, those similar kind of characters, because obviously you can construct anything to try and justify anything, that doesn't mean that it's suddenly true, but you will find that like, you know, maybe the character that you're researching, there are a lot of similarities with a lot of people who, you know, let's say soldiers or things like that. And so once you start to understand, you know, the context, and I think also just I think also just with life, like as you like go throughout life and you realize there are a lot of situations that you just find yourself in that were completely out of your control, and you're like, fuck, this is actually happening, and you can realise, well, the same would have happened a hundred years ago, or 80 years ago, or 60 years, you know, the same thing, like with life is just a cycle, and so when you have a better understanding of you know kind of how life works and also the different contexts that people can find themselves in, like what we were saying before, that you know, people can do whatever based on their circumstances, you know, nothing's kind of impossible, then yeah, you start to not judge them as much and empathize with them a bit more. And I think also like there are certain characters that might hold certain traits that are considered weird or you know, um socially taboo or things like that, and that might just be because of society hasn't progressed a lot, you know. It's like we haven't, you know, the idea like it's it's interesting if you just look at like the LGBTQ scene in the last 30 years, 20 years, even 10 years, and how much that has kind of progressed and how it was very kind of taboo like back in the day, it just goes to show you that society shifts, and that's just the one example, but like you can understand how when you're with a certain character, you're like, okay, this might be wrong based on my social understanding and how everyone kind of sees this certain character, but actually, if I was to suspend my judgment based on like okay, I'm not gonna adopt how society sees them. How is it like neutrally if I was to put everything aside? Like, is it you know, and that gives me a better understanding, I think, of the character, and once again allows me to kind of empathize. Um, maybe not sympathise. I don't know, depends on the character.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

I think yeah, I think I don't know, I don't like the sympathizing. Yeah, I don't I'm I feel like it's pitying.

SPEAKER_04 28:44

Yes, yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_02 28:45

Which I feel like a lot of people do do when they read a character, um, especially with when it's not a character that they're playing. I mean, I remember just a film I did recently, and everyone's like, Well, this character is really bitchy, and I thought, well, yeah, she is, but I don't think I mean I was playing her, so I was like, I can see why. Yeah, just literally reading the script. Like it's maybe she comes, some characters come across in a certain way just from plain view, but I always think there's something way deeper, and there's there must be something that stems that. No one's just a bitch because they're a bitch. I mean, there's very few people that are just like that. There's always a reason for it.

SPEAKER_04 29:22

Yeah, it's yeah, I think I mean, you know, if you were to remove all these layers of why people act in certain ways and why they've like conditioned certain beliefs, like at the end of the day, just as we were saying, how like war, which is basically just fear, right? Is like such a kind of default behaviour to some extent. So is kind of like uh it sounds like every fairy, but like so is love to the other extent. Like everyone just wants that, right? Everyone wants to be content and bliss, and they want to be able to be completely who they are with someone else, but none of us have like a completely neutral life. Everyone like adopts so like has certain traumas, adopts all these like you know behaviours over time, and that's why they act like this. But if you were to just get them and be like, you are completely fine to be vulnerable here, there's absolutely no judgment, anything like that. Most people would want that, but we have all these coping mechanisms, and you know.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Yeah, and also like the more you know someone, relationships are really important in that sense. Like, you know, if you're playing a character where maybe they're more crazy with a partner, again, it's because they feel more vulnerable, more they allow that to express because it does happen in day-to-day lives. Like how you're how you are with your partner is very different to how you are talking to the lady in the shop, you know. You're not gonna, it's not gonna be the same. There's different layers of tension and experiences that you've had and gone through, which might be why you react more, react less, or whatever it might be. So I think it's just literally viewing the script as a kind of map of where they go. Yes, but also I love reading, um this is just being the big nerd in me, reading like academic papers on like psychopaths and why and all that kind of stuff, just to understand why they are that way, and then how can I wire my brain to do the same. Okay, yeah, just in those instances.

SPEAKER_04 31:21

No, no, I know I know yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, of course, of course. No, I completely get that. And I think there is, you know, we all have different like curiosities. I'm the same, I find you know, them very interesting because they I think they have an inability to feel guilt, right? And that's one of their trademark traits, essentially. Um psychopaths in particular, and the others they do, but they have ways of kind of like suppressing it. But yeah, no, it's it's it's fascinating to find Yeah, we wanna we wanna understand people, right? Like we and I think maybe there's a weird way of like we want to understand ourselves, and so we use we try to understand other people, right? It's like a mirror, and it's like, you know, and by exploring those kinds of people, we we can figure out, oh okay, that's my relationship to that kind of thing, that kind of trait, that behaviour, that person. Yeah, which is interesting.

SPEAKER_02 32:19

I do think most actors are very like obsessed with humans' nature and how it all interacts, right? Because why would you want to do it otherwise? How do you leave a character um behind at the end of the shoot, especially if they're quite because sometimes they stay with you for a bit.

SPEAKER_04 32:34

Yeah, I mean I've actually I haven't found that as much. I know that a lot of people do, and I've seen people where they find it very difficult to get out of it, especially when they're doing an actual scene. Um I find I'm still able to very much say, you know, that was that was separate from me. And I like to appreciate what I got from them and what I want to leave behind. You know, there might be a character that I play that is, you know, super confident. And so that makes me have to explore certain ways about like, well, why is he so confident? Like what's his relationship to other people, and that might generally impact my confidence. And so that's something that I really like. But if he was also like an arsehole Wall Street, you know, banker, I don't I don't want the other traits, do you know what I mean? So it's almost like by delineating the things that I like about it and what I don't like about it, I can leave it behind much easier. Um But there are certain like I haven't, you know, I haven't played something that's I haven't played a character that's you know gone through extreme grief or you know, something too extreme. I haven't explored that yet. And I could imagine that does not taint, but like impact your perception of the world. And I think it could probably, you know, it could make it quite negative, um, because you might start to see things through a certain lens, and you pick things out from like society that you're like, oh gosh, yeah, I remember researching about this. Like, you know, when you research when you think of like Erin Brokovich, okay, and you know, the that there are companies polluting, you know, waterways with you know toxic chemicals, and then all these children are dying of horrible diseases and stuff. That's something that would probably I'd be like, pfft, you know, I don't I'm very skeptical of big companies, you know, and you see how that kind of permeates your perception. And so I can imagine that there are certain characters when you do your research, and especially based on like the script, that you might come away with it, and it's like you know, it leaves certain things, but it's like ignorance is bliss to some extent, but um you know, once you find out about it, yeah, you have to kind of integrate that.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

Have you ever shocked yourself with what kind of thoughts come to you as a character?

SPEAKER_04 35:01

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I mean I think I yeah, but you gotta yeah, once again, like you can't judge your thoughts. You're not gonna be a bad thing.

SPEAKER_02 35:08

No, no, no, at all.

SPEAKER_04 35:09

But it is, yeah, you can get some strange strange thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

It's nowhere, because I've had the same where I've playing a psychopath and it was just interesting, like thoughts came into my head and I was like, this is not mine, this isn't me. Yes, yeah. But it is scary, but it's also interesting to see how far your body and your mind kind of travels with you because your brain doesn't really know the difference between real and imaginary in terms of emotion.

SPEAKER_04 35:38

No, 100%. It also just doesn't know what acting is, right? Like the idea that you're pretending to be a character is how other people perceive you because you're an actor. But your brain doesn't know what acting is or pretending to be a character, it just thinks, oh, you're randomly trying to entertain this idea. And I think there is something scary with acting regarding that, because if you are. I mean, I was saying that like your identity is shaped by your actions, and your actions are shaped by your beliefs, right? But the more you like, the more you think a thought, the more patterns, thought patterns occur, right? And so the more they occur, the more they're prevalent, the more you might start attributing that to certain things throughout the day or actions or whatnot. And so it wouldn't be too much of a jump to assume that they they could start impacting maybe your beliefs, and therefore the idea of just entertaining certain characters that you would never normally do, but now you're only doing it because you're an actor, could change your behaviour. And I think there is something scary in that, but I don't know whether that's just uh theoretical, like whether your brain would I I wonder how long you would have to be doing it for it to, you know.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

Proper go.

SPEAKER_04 37:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:01

It's interesting because when I was doing my training, uh Coach Faber, who hasn't done a podcast at before, told me to kind of split your brain. So it's like one side of your brain is you know aware, just so you keep safe, right? But the other side of your brain, you switch, and you do this with different things as well. Not only like it might be certain traits that a character does, if you know, I don't know, if if they have if they twitch, for example, and you might have to split your brain in order to do that just naturally.

SPEAKER_04 37:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 37:34

In that sense, whatever that might be, you might or whatever uh characteristic. But it's interesting as well to do that with psychopathic thoughts as well. Maybe when you're playing in character, maybe a thought will come into your head, but you have to navigate that, you know, okay, fine, that's that side of my brain, but actually I'm not gonna act on that. It's just the thoughts that's popped in.

SPEAKER_04 37:56

Yeah, it's it's it's an interesting one because the problem the thing that I found is like there we can theorize so much about how our brain, how our thoughts, how our behaviors change through acting, right? But you never know, like there is nothing that will ever tell you you acquired this trait because of this, right? Unless God was to come down and tell you, right? You would never know. We can we can hypothesize about why we adopt adopt certain behaviours, and therefore, like how we can snap out of these things, and I think because I remember when I was going into when I was going into Meisner, and I was thinking, oh wow, this is really cool, like you know, I'm loving this, and I was reading a lot of um psychology books at the time, and one of them was about like anchoring things, and you can anchor things to a certain physical kind of movement, and so I would always think, like, okay, I'm gonna completely throw myself into this character, and then afterwards I like click my finger, and then suddenly I'm back to being me. It's all very good in theory, but I don't think it works that way. And I think there's an element of I like the idea of that you can, you know, if you have these thoughts that come in, you switch, but that would be require complete awareness that a lot of the time we don't have, and I think these thoughts permeate through. When you're in like rush times, you're emotional because the emotion almost opens that lever for that thought to come deeper, and so we're not conscious at those times. It might just be like you see a particular character on the street, you have that kind of thought, but like you're a bit rushed, you know, and then so you don't think to like switch it. And if that occurs more and more and more when you're not in those kind of prime positions to like, okay, I'm gonna change, will that influence your behaviour? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 39:48

Probably maybe probably live. May maybe the thing is, you know, just for me anyway, it's just training.

SPEAKER_04 39:52

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

Because I don't want to like track it on anything.

SPEAKER_04 39:56

No, of course, of course. You do, and it's the thing is that it's interesting because I think we get those kind of thoughts regardless of whether we're you know exploring a psych path, but like even just in everyday life, we get these thoughts and we almost feel shameful about them. And this comes back to the thing, like, you know, can you judge these kind of characters? I think as a society, we're incapable of accepting that kind of shadow, you know, that like kind of Jung talks about, or integrating it, and just accepting that like we are all flawed human beings, um, and instead we like we project backwards and then we vilify those people who you know they happen to have uh you know acted on them. And I'm not saying that that shouldn't be the case, but as in like we judge a lot because we know that we've had thoughts, you know, that are weird and that that that are like dark, but everyone's like that.

SPEAKER_02 40:55

Yeah, and again I think it's just what people don't yeah, well they just don't want to admit sometimes, I feel like, because it is stigmatized as bad, suppressive.

SPEAKER_04 41:06

Yeah, exactly, and I think people do give it just if I've had that thought that's me. I'm like, it's not you. We all just have thoughts, you know, like your thoughts aren't you. Um but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

But that's the other, yeah, I guess the other like question should is having bad thoughts a bad thing? Because some people would say it is.

SPEAKER_04 41:27

I don't think you can get rid of bad thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

That's the other question. I mean like I don't know, I feel like in some um Buddhist teachings, like even like if you have a bad thought it could be a bad karma kind of instance. But again, I don't know how it's just interesting, I think, just to analyse in terms of like, is that something that does go down that route? Because if you start having bad thoughts, maybe it becomes a habit. Maybe that's in that problem.

SPEAKER_04 41:56

If it's a recurring thing, then I think you need to explore it. You need to try and understand why you have that and you need to have an honest opinion of it, not a kind of egotistical perspective of it and be like, oh, this has nothing to do with me, and you know, and trying to push it away, instead be like, Well, maybe it's because I feel insecure about this or I feel insecure about that. I think if it is recurring, then yes, I think you know it's it's worth analysing it. If they're like one-off thoughts, then we all have those. Uh but it is interesting because I was also listening to a cost-oh, I can't remember who it was with I think it was Chris Williamson, some psychologist. And she was saying sometimes we over-fixate on our problems, we overthink them, as in we spend too much time thinking on them. And I feel like in a weird way, that's like your brain saying, This is really important, I'm gonna attribute more and more energy to it, and you almost make it a bigger problem in itself, rather than like, you know, dealing with it and then trying to like you know separate it.

SPEAKER_02 42:57

Yeah, definitely. Do you think actors carry a responsibility when portraying violence or abuse or trauma?

SPEAKER_04 43:06

Um I find this quite tricky question because I mean they're all very hard questions. Yes, yeah. It's difficult because it's this kind of argument that, like, you know, if you make an let's say, um a film with violence, does that normalize violence? You know, do people get very used to it and therefore like desensitized to it, and to some extent, yes. I don't know in the literature on that. Um I'd probably argue that it does a little bit. Uh but in terms of an actor actually portraying a certain um, you know, do they hold moral moral responsibility for certain characters that they portray? I think once again it comes down to like how the film or the story portrays them. And I would argue, for example, let's take Wolf of Wall Street. Great film. You know, all the all the uh all the portrayals, you know, all the acting is great, love it. Uh but it's basically it's not vilifying any of this behaviour. In fact, it's doing the opposite. It's glorifying the idea of cheating people out of their money and their mortgages and their homes, so you don't see any of the people that lost their jobs, and I don't know why, but there was always this statistic that popped up from um the film uh The Big Short. And I know it's slightly different in a bit of a tangent, but Brad Pitt says for every 1% of unemployment that goes down, that will go up. Um 42,000 people kill themselves. I know that's quite dark. So, but the idea is that like, you know, we kind of build systems where we don't want to see that stuff. The stock exchange is a prime example of that. We like can't we it's just numbers, like, oh when you're winning that's fucking great, but you don't see the people who lost. And in this case, like with Wolf Wall Street, it's someone who's just cheating people out of money, and it's all about greed and spending disgusting amounts of money on things that aren't really needed, and that's a whole argument in itself, but um then you know it's kind of he's come out and he's kind of a hero now, you know, Jordan Belfort, and he's seen as this like oh business mogul, and loads of people want to be like him, they want to emulate his behaviour. And I think in that in that kind of circumstance, it's you know whether you can blame the film, because the film is in art, it's got creative license and artistic license to it in itself, and um, what's his name? The director, great director. Italian American guy. I can't remember. But I you know, I'm uh I'm not shooting the film, but I'm saying that the story can phase it in a completely different way than how society should view it, and I think it has impacted loads of people, especially like young men who want to be in this like hustle culture, and they want, you know, a yacht and a private jet, and you know, they just want all these models. And I'm just like, it's just such a deluded way to- But that's what it is.

SPEAKER_02 46:07

I feel like it's a misinterpretation of what maybe the film is showing, because maybe it's just trying to show how fucked up it is, but people then glorify it, right? Which happens in a lot of films, and I think you know, films try to present reality and confront, and when people take it the wrong way, is then the problem rather than sitting and analysing maybe what it actually shows.

SPEAKER_04 46:32

Yeah. Um and that's the thing, is like, does it come down to the viewer who requires, you know, they need to like think about it, or the story or the film that is created and how that can uh yeah, whether that needs to be changed. I mean, like it's a it's a hard argument to say that like a film should be changed, because you could argue that's art, right? And like you wouldn't say to a painter, like, you can't do that because it needs to look like this.

SPEAKER_03 47:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:02

You know, because the whole idea is that it is an expression of in the film's case, like hundreds of people, right? Not just the director. Mark Scorsese, there we go. That's a director. Um so yeah, it's a it's an interesting, it's an interesting question. But it's in it's I think our reaction as a society says a lot because we glorify these people and then we put them on a pedestal. Uh and yeah, we and we yeah, it's crazy to put them as like role models. I'm like, well, they if if you had so many people like that, society would just fail. Because it's just like putting a cheetah or a narcissist, you know, on something. They always make it though.

SPEAKER_02 47:45

Oh, they do, I mean because they don't care about treading on skulls, exactly. Which is the issue. But it's interesting to see because I mean it's I think it's interesting to see because like you said at the beginning, it's like separated so far away from where I am. It's interesting to see, but what does it feel like when someone does do the opposite and it doesn't feel right, but for them it does. Yeah. It's really interesting. I think this is where these kind of films then drag it from why also society's obsessed with you know serial killer documentaries and lives, and like I mean, I'm a big guilty person in that, which my fair share of all those. But it is, it's trying to understand why someone does that. Yeah, yeah. And you know, what goes on in their mind because they don't feel like it's wrong.

SPEAKER_03 48:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:35

Or maybe they do, and that they don't care. And that's just the interesting point of view to kind of present.

SPEAKER_04 48:42

I think we've also got to a point where I don't think these people would have got to that point had they been made accountable along the way. And I think there is a there's a discrepancy, especially now, in society, with how we're brought up and how the world actually works. We're told to follow rules when you're at school and to not, you know, um, to not break them, otherwise you'll be punished. That doesn't work today. As in like, it works to some extent, but look, I mean, but you know, you talk about the Epstein files and how you have how are the most powerful people in the world, quite literally the most powerful people in the world, the the president of the United States and everything like that, they're all you know involved in this thing, and it's because they realize that we operate on like we operate in unspoken like social ru rules, right? And we hope that if I do something, if I break them, someone's gonna hold me accountable. The whole idea of a psychopath back in like a kind of you know um foraging tribe is that the other, like, in stereotypical case, men would hold them accountable, right? They're like, no, you're not going to cheat because we're gonna hold you accountable, otherwise, like we'll die, right? And we just don't really have that in place anymore. We don't have those like guardrails. Maybe it's because society is just so complex now, it's so big, it's so globalized, we don't have things to manage everything, and I don't know whether we ever would, but I do think that like a lot of these people get to these points where you know they are you know at the at the top of the world in some kind of industry and they do possess these kind of uh certain traits, and it's because it's just been unchecked for so long.

SPEAKER_02 50:35

Also, because they're quite charming half the time as well. Oh yeah, if they're a psychopath, yeah. Um yeah, but that's the interesting thing, it's like you know, even when people know what they're doing is wrong, they're not held accountable because they manipulate their way out of it and no one believes then the people that are um affected by them. Which to me just blows my mind the fact that you know you're believing a dead man's files over thousands of people's testimonies, yeah. Which is just ridiculous. But it's not only those kind of I feel like it happens in society, like there's more and more narcissists in society nowadays than there ever was. And I wonder why that is.

SPEAKER_04 51:18

I mean, uh I have a little theory, but it's a bit off topic. It's it's more that like I think that um when I thought when when Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, yeah, predominantly those two, who are all for like a free market, now economically I think that's good, but I think it happens to coincide at the point where like w we're not a particularly religious country anymore. So the values that we used to hold, the Christian values that used to kind of bind us. Once again, Christian values are the unspoken social rules, right? That is what they are. If those are starting to go, and so then you throw everyone who's kind of not doesn't have any values, but you put them all in a free market and be like, you can act however you want. Okay, then the people who are going to reach the top are the people who are willing to cheat, right? The cheaters in society, the selfish gene, that kind of thing. So then what that does is that that creates the structure for how the market then runs. And then what you see is people who want to be at the top, and they're like, I want to be like that, I'm gonna copy the way that those guys got to the top, and those tend to be rooted as kind of selfish ways. And then that just everyone who jumps into that system is complicit and becomes a product of the system. And so now, especially because you know you look at yeah, we're even further down the line, this was what, 80s? Was it 80s, 90s? Well, I mean 91 is technically when bird and warfare, I can't remember, but I think what 81. I think since then, yeah. Well, yes, the official end. Um yeah, is I think we've just created this kind of capitalistic like structure where yeah, there's there's no there's no space for value.

SPEAKER_02 53:14

But it's also interesting, I think, because I've done a lot of research on Eileen Warnos, the first female serial killer in America. Um and I feel like you know she was really criminalised for her actually, I mean look, she she killed a few men. I wouldn't condone that.

SPEAKER_03 53:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:31

But because she was severely abused as a child, and it's just interesting how the only men she murdered was because they were well one of them was raping her, and it's they were all in their 50s, around 40s, 50s. Yeah. And it was because she was abused by her granddad when she was younger. And like for me, it's just quite interesting to look at you know, she ran away from home, she she was homeless for so long, she was abused, and society I feel, just from you know, also playing her in just the little thing I did, I feel like she was failed by society so much, but then so punished for what she did whilst but because she was at the bottom, right? She was a prostitute. Yeah, yeah. Whilst well well, also a gay prostitute, right? Because then at a time where being a lesbian was very round upon and all being LGBT. Whilst now whilst you know, when you look at Donald Trump or Epstein or all of these kind of men, well mostly men, usually men, I mean Maxwell is the exception to that, they're already at the top. So they're not gonna be persecuted because no one is there to persecute them because they initiate the the rule. Yeah, exactly. So it's just interesting to see like they do clamp down on the law, but Trump likes to blame immigrants and now smashing ice, and now the UK is trying to take a very similar approach, and they you know it's always penalising the minority in order to create Yeah, and you know, it's a very act utilitarian approach, I I think. The fact that, you know, it doesn't matter go to prison, it's just the fact that someone's in prison so society can see you're like, you know, we're doing the right thing.

SPEAKER_03 55:04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:05

And it's just an interesting point that we've gone through and society has allowed to develop.

SPEAKER_04 55:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:12

Which is very scary as well.

SPEAKER_04 55:14

It yeah, it is. And I I I think it's I don't know whether it's just inevitable, which is quite, you know, pessimistic to say, but I just the idea that we need to create systems to hold people accountable for certain behaviour, but behaviour is so complex, and when the world becomes more and more complex, you've now got what are we I don't know what the population is at the moment, like eight and a half.

SPEAKER_00 55:40

I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 55:42

It's just I don't know whether you try to map reality, but reality is so complex that you can't come up with so many rules, and then to a point where we create ridiculous rules because reality changes, and that's what a tyranny is, where like you know, you try and impose rules, reality changes, and you're still trying to hold everyone accountable to these rules, and it's I don't know whether it's doable, and that's why I think you know I'm not personally like religious, but I understand the idea of having these kind of unspoken values or ways that you interact with people because it holds people accountable to like acting with one another.

SPEAKER_02 56:20

Um I also think I am religious, so it's like I feel like sometimes it's the only bit of hope in a such a fucked up world as well. Because otherwise, what's the point?

SPEAKER_03 56:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:29

What's the literally what is the point of life if nothing is fair?

SPEAKER_04 56:34

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And like when you come if you were to strip away all these systems, right, and you to go back to you know f foraging, you would probably the first thing that would come back would be some form of like unspoken rule, um organ oh not organisation, you know.

SPEAKER_00 56:52

I thought you were gonna say something else.

SPEAKER_04 56:54

What?

SPEAKER_00 56:54

I thought you said they're gonna say organ donation. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_04 56:58

You read too many of those books. But you would you'd have these kind of unspoken rules that come up that because people don't like people behaving like this or behaving like that, and that's kind of what a religion is to some extent, you know. It's not gonna enforce you if you like, you know, you break one of the commandments or that it used to be, but like who knows?

SPEAKER_00 57:19

We'll find out one day.

SPEAKER_02 57:32

What kind of stories do you think are currently underrepresented, or if are there any?

SPEAKER_04 57:40

I don't know. I don't I don't know. I mean I would argue because I'm writing something at the moment and it's somewhat realistic based. Like it's quite realistic, but it's the idea of like 20 years in the future. And I think things that maybe underrepresented is like, what if we were to take today and where we're going, and we would just go a little bit further? The almost the repercussions of where society is going, as like almost a forewarning. And I think that would be quite interesting to see certain things that are like, I mean, you know, take your pick. I mean, we've got Trump, ICE, Venezuela, China, Taiwan, Ukraine, Russia, Israel, Powers. I mean, there's just there's so many things about like we could have spotted a lot of these along the way, we could have seen the trajectory like half of them already happened and they're reoccurring. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, it's it'd be interesting to see some like you know, directors and writers writing about okay, how can we make the public more aware of the re like you know the ramifications if we continue to go on like this? If we were to take AI, like another huge one, this is so never-ending, is it? Yeah, it's like what would happen if like we had AI now govern politics? Do you know what I mean? But what's interesting is like these are actual questions that people are already thinking.

SPEAKER_02 59:14

The news it probably already is starting to go down that direction.

SPEAKER_04 59:18

Oh no, absolutely. I I I wouldn't it's an interesting question, and it's kind of a philosophical question to some extent because you're like, well, there's rights and wrongs for it, but the idea is like how can we get the public starting to think about it, you know, especially in a well pseudo-democracy. That's that's a different topic.

SPEAKER_00 59:37

I love how like we've gone down such a spiral of depression at the moment.

SPEAKER_04 59:43

Let's bring it back.

SPEAKER_00 59:43

Let's let's switch topics.

SPEAKER_04 59:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:45

You founded the Inner Scene HQ to help actors handle the business side of their careers. What made you realise that kind of support was was needed?

SPEAKER_04 59:54

Yeah, so um uh it probably came from getting back into acting. So I originally was doing acting for a couple years, and then I when Covid hit, kind of the industry dried up for a little bit, so I wasn't really sure how to go about it. So I decided to go back to uni. That's when I got my degree in psychology. And then when I came and when I finished, I wanted to get back into acting. And I think my whole experience going through university and kind of running a podcast to some extent and just being a lot more organized, I reflected on my period of acting before uni and just how lazy I was, how laissez-faire, I had this idea that I would you know, I'd land a film, or I'd get an agent, I'd land a film, and it would just all be very easy. I didn't really try that much, I didn't think of all these different avenues. I think I was also naive and ignorant, I didn't know of the different areas where I could go and find jobs and things like that. Um and the the thing is that that happened, so it reinforced that idea. I got an agent, I landed a film, then COVID hit, and I was like, oh what do I do now? You know? And then so when I finished uni and I got back into acting, I was like, look, this is an incredibly hard industry to break into. If you're gonna do it, you have to be proactive, full stop. You can't rely on these, like, oh you're gonna there's gonna be a miracle where someone spots you on the street and wants you in a film and then wish it was that easy. Yeah, don't we all?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:25

We still walking around central London all the time kicking.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:28

Yeah, you're not an agent by any case. Um so yeah, I I was like, okay, I'm gonna be very proactive about this. So I just started to apply to as many jobs as I could get, um, look into different like resources, things like that, and then I found that I was using Notion at the time, which is this kind of project management tool, to help me kind of build certain systems to help me h hold me accountable, and before I knew it, it kind of turned into this big system. And I remember being on set, and someone was like, Oh, what's that? Like, that looks really interesting, and I was explaining it to them, and they were saying, Oh, that's something that I would very much like to use, and it was just a way of tracking all my auditions, all my casting directors, everyone I met in the industry, all my invoices, my training. So it started to allow me to manage all the things around acting and helped gave like navigate me through it because I found that this industry is just it's so chaotic. There's no manual, everything is like you know, you have to figure it out on your own.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:38

It's different for everyone though, because no one has the same path. You get different roles, you get you know, you never know what's gonna make it, what's not gonna make it, what needs more development, what doesn't, who will get you somewhere, who who's gonna become something.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And then I I found on top of that, you know, when you any kind of creative, when you get into the craft that you want to do, whether you're a musician, an actor, or you know, you get into it for the craft. And so you jump into this craft and you don't you're not aware that by doing that, technically you're a freelancer, which means you're a business, and you don't product.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:17

This is the thing, like running people don't realize like you are a product, you know, what you look like determines what roles you get, and you can't change that, and then you can't take it to heart if you don't get a role because you know, maybe you just didn't look right for that that specific role, and it just wasn't meant to be.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:32

And there are all these things, right? That's that's marketing, and then you've got oh, you didn't realise that you know you have to file your own tax and you have to um you know be on top of your invoices and payments and expenses, and that's accountancy. And then if you want to like try and you know reach as many people, well, you need to have some kind of social media. So there are all these roles that you weren't aware of when you jumped into the craft, and so the thing that I wanted to try and create was some kind of system that would help manage all those areas around the craft, so that essentially it reduces time spent on that so that you can spend it on actually doing the thing that you love, which is in this case acting. So, yeah, that's how it kind of came about.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:13

Yeah, and I'll put a link to the thing if anyone wants to check it out and use it because it's very handy and in just tracking, you know, where you are and what you are doing and who to kind of like reach out to again if you have worked with people, because a lot of the time it is who you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:29

It is.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:29

If you've done really well and you've worked with a certain director or a writer and they want you in something else, I mean it's happened to me a few times, and you know, we build a really good rapport, and then it can take you places.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:41

It it genuinely. I mean, like I think it's the same for every industry, it's who you know. Um, we create these, you know, particular pathways that we tell everyone we should go down, but actually at the end of the day, people's word is a lot stronger, like you know, if someone can vouch for you or they can get you a a job. I mean like executive producers just ring up certain actors and they're like, Yeah, we know what you've been in. Do you want to do you wanna have this film? You don't need to audition. And yeah, it is. The thing the thing is, the thing that I found is that as you're going through acting, you're getting all this experience. You're meeting people, you're having experiences on set, self-tapes, auditions, training. You're already doing all of that, so why couldn't you just plug that into a system that helps kind of looks over it, connects the dots, creates patterns, and then that's essentially opportunities.

unknown 1:05:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:33

I literally it's it's it's just annoying how you have to do it. Oh, yeah. You know, that's what you have to do. Exactly. It's like you know, half the time it's you only get to act a very small percent of the time because most of the time it's just getting jobs and marketing yourself and all the the other stuff that but most jobs are like that. You always end up doing stuff that you don't want to do, but and sometimes that's a it's a plus in the sense that you learn about something you didn't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:00

Know even existed. You know, you have to go through some of those like hard jobs or the awkward jobs or things that like you didn't want to do, and then you might meet someone or like you learn about something that you didn't even know existed. Um like a lot of pe it's interesting because a lot of actors they don't stick at acting, they go and do writing or they go become a director or a DOP. And that's I think it's because people aren't introduced to those kind of careers when they're younger. When the idea of acting is just acting when you're at school, it's not like you can be a director at school, or you know, there's like those kind of courses, you do drama, and then if you go on to do acting, then you're introduced and exposed to all these other different jobs that you didn't even know existed that might just be more in line with you. And you're like, actually, like I like acting, but what I really like is writing, and they finally found their way to that point, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:52

So I just feel like it's frowned upon. Like, I just I remember I didn't take drama GCSE way level because I was I was just like a the way they taught it, I was like absolutely not interested in it. I'm not even that, it was just it for me, it didn't feel like acting, it was like a presentation of something. And it just performative, yes, it was just not real and not true and not like the core central part of what acting is. Like I don't understand where they can't like teach Meisner and just like all of the different types of of because then I mean I guess because kids don't always take it seriously and you know all that kind of other stuff. Um but yeah, just to wrap up, what's your hope in the acting industry and what other yeah, what's next for you? Hope for me or hopeful for society, for you, for uh however you want to interpret the question.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:43

I mean, um I was thinking on the way here, I mean I haven't seen a lot of these films, like um Marty Supreme or One Battle After Another or Hamnet, but we've had suddenly a a spell of a lot of good films but original films, and I really like that. Films that almost don't fit into a category. Um and I think that's props to a lot of the writers, so hopefully, especially because of this kind of upcoming uh Oscar season, that might have an impact on like what what get her what her what writers get grants, or you know what's what producers are looking for, and hopefully there are a lot of like new original screenplays and films and that have like quirky characters, and a lot of these are kind of independent films. I'm not a big fan of like you know these huge mainstream kind of franchises. They have their place, and that's fine, and that's great. Um but yeah, I'm really hoping that like there's just some good writing that starts coming out. I think independent films will start to rise, especially I mean especially because like AI is on the rise as well, and that's going to impact our industry. That's a whole other conversation. Yeah. But uh, I do think there there is like yeah, I think there's hope. Um, and I think really a lot of people creating their own content because I think nowadays you have a lot of content creators that can that can make incredible content. I follow a number of them, and I'm like, they did that in their bedroom, and they've basically got a whole production team on their laptop, you know, on their phone, and it's incredible what they can do. And I so I think the barrier to entry is so low now that like anyone who has like a really incredible like idea and can start to like you know, you can even use AI to help you understand what it's like to write scripts or things like that, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:36

Yeah, well I think AI is great for helping you organise and plan. That's what it's really great at, but to act but it's not good at the art. No, it shouldn't be.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:44

It helps with gen like giving you ideas and like helping you along the way of like logistical things, and I think that's what it should be used for, it's a tool at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:53

To give you more time to do the stuff that you want to be doing. Yeah, and I think also just you know surrounding yourself with a great team of people that are like-minded and want to create with you because that's ultimately what was to help you go through this industry at time tough at tough times, because you know, doesn't always love you this industry.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:12

Yes, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:25

Great. Well, thanks so much. It's been a great up and down of all the different topics all around one. I know, right? I mean, it makes it more interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:37

Thank you very much. I really enjoyed it.