So here's what it's like to work with someone you hate.
I'm sure there's a lot of people who want me to name names.
I'm probably not going to do that.
That is not the point I'm trying to make.
Have you ever worked with somebody
that you just can't stand that just represents everything you despise
that conducts themselves in a way that's like rude, unprofessional
and just downright just not your cup of tea?
I have worked with many people like that, to be honest.
And over the years, you can see it coming
a mile away from the moment you meet the person.
And then it actually starts to become way harder
because you are put in situations that are very intimate,
sometimes actually intimate.
If you're a costar
and you're supposed to be in love with that person
and then there's like really stressful conditions when you're filming,
at least with the film industry, right?
I was on a set once
where I was bringing some of my personal drama to the set.
And what happened was
is that there was a person who saw this as a vulnerability
immediately just disliked me, and they were a little older than me,
and they weren't happy with the fact that they were
sort of sharing the spotlight with me.
And they ended up
kind of becoming more or less the center of like a gossip circle.
I was sort of suffering and unaware that this was kind of happening.
And so there was sort of this like silent opinion being drawn
about me, which is really dangerous for women to be breaking each other
down in an industry that already is rooting for you to fail. And the minute
that a woman messes up in Hollywood, even if it's the slightest thing.
There are very few women that can really come back
from that, whereas Jared Leto is in like every single movie trailer
when I was watching, you know, Ghostbusters yesterday.
You can't fight it.
You just have to know that that's part of it.
Being female makes you automatically ostracized.
And I've seen that some people are like, Well,
don't make it about the patriarchy.
But unfortunately, this is what the patriarchy does.
This is why it exists.
It's not something that I'm making up,
and this is something that's been happening for a long time.
I'm just having a conversation around it, and that's that.
It's sad that it came to that.
Like, I think that maybe she had a right to have an opinion.
But at the same time, I was still super professional.
I was still showing up to work on time,
you know, trying my best to give a good performance.
It's hard when people don't like each other on set.
I have been on set with legends, OK, I'm talking like legends.
They were horrible.
They say, Don't meet your heroes, right?
I guess so that you don't get disappointed.
And that's by the way,
if anyone ever comes up to me, I try really hard,
even if I'm in the thick of it
to be super personable, say, hi, how are you?
Look you in your eyes and see how you're doing.
And if I don't do that, there's something
seriously wrong going on in my life.
But I love when people approach me respectfully and are really
I have the best supporters, so I love that. Anyway.
So I was on a set
and it was a really small movie and there was a legend
that was sort of known to be pretty eccentric.
They were just a really negative force.
And when a negative force is on a set, it's like a parasite.
Like, they literally just wrap their tendrils
and their negativity all around
everybody and just
everyone hates coming to work and everyone talks (bleep) on that person.
And everyone's just like, Oh, that person sucks.
But if it's a guy I guess they keep working.
I don't know. You know, unfortunately,
I actually got into it with that person,
like they kind of
tried to like, tell me to get out of the van at one point
because I was sitting in the front seat.
And I guess the legend wanted to sit in the front seat to get to set. And
I just happened to be sitting there because I got to the transpo van.
I think that people have a lot of ego when it comes to their
status and their positions at work, whether that's on a set
or just in any other job, any other occupation.
It's kind of your job to only focus on yourself.
It's your job to try to be solution focused.
I do think that when it is a volatile situation, it would be good
to approach the person.
But if the person is really just negative
and looking to combat you, you may want a third party
that is sort of a higher up
do a moral inventory. Of course, and be like, OK,
what have I done that is warranting this behavior from this person. Right?
Which I've learned now.
Got to keep your side of the street clean they say.
You look at yourself,
and you go, OK, I can see why this person
might feel this way. But this is still wrong
if there's still things that you think are not ok,
get a senior person involved.
I wish I would have gotten a producer
to get me to sit down with that one person
or that other person that I just mentioned
and been like, Hey, we really can't behave like this.
Like, we have twelve hour days, sometimes longer.
We really need to just be a team.
It can be really difficult.
There are drag out fights on set. I have seen them.
I have seen lots of people come to blows.
Sometimes it's not even people that are acting with
one another, as much as it's people on the set, the producer, the director.
A lot of times a director. If it's a opinionated, like really artistic
actor or actress that wants their way and sort of has to throw this like
public tantrum or something, really, because they just feel powerless .
And, you know, the power dynamic shouldn't really exist
in a film production, in my opinion.
The minute that you sign a contract and you've signed on to do something,
all that matters is making the day and doing your best work.
You leave it there.
It's twelve hours a day and sometimes overtime, and you're
respectful to your crew and you're respectful to everyone that you meet.
And ideally, that's how you make a really good name for yourself.
Oh, and you have to be on time. It's very, very important.
It was something that I totally missed the boat on in my twenties.
It makes people hate you because their time is valuable.
And if you're late
and you're in a team environment and you're working together,
if you're not on time, you're basically telling them
your time doesn't matter.
It's a very childish, selfish thing to do.
I try to be on time for everything.
It's a concept of if you're not early, you're late.
That is something that I wish I would have
really understood in my twenties.
I was late for a lot of things, and I definitely pissed
a lot of people off. Casting agents when I was late for auditions, but
it was a different time and I was a very different person.
You know, sometimes it's nice to look back and say, OK, I made mistakes.
I'm going to use it as motivation to be a better person.
I was even somewhat kind of distracted on some of my sets.
When I was younger, I had some bad relationships.
I would take it in with me,
and that's the most unprofessional thing you can do is take
your personal life in with you.
It's hard because when you're young,
you kind of don't know where to draw the line
when you're on set, especially when you grow up on set.
You plug in to the crew as your family unit.
It's very serious, that crew around you is like your family.
You look up to them, you smoke your first cigaret
with like a crew person or, you know, like a grip or
somebody who just happens to be smoking.
You're like, Hey, hey, hey, let me try that. Let me try that.
There's innocent stuff, you know, it's not always so
tawdry as like, you know, some of the things that we talk about.
But speaking on the younger actors, when younger actors are told
that they're going to be big essentially,
or that they've got a lot of heat on them,
what I find interesting
is that there's a lot of people that just kind of
look away at bad behavior that would otherwise be completely
not acceptable in a normal social situation.
What's really kind of crappy about that
is that these kids become monsters later in life,
especially if they continue down the road of success
because they just don't know. I mean, they just weren't taught correctly.
They were enabled.
This bad behavior was not corrected.
And then you see the MeToo movement coming out of this
because people just kind of let things go.
And it's just like, Cool, whatever, OK, whatever.
You know, he didn't mean it.
It's this like cycle of abuse
that it does exist and it probably will always exist.
But until people really start to learn protocols
and stand up for themselves and know that they don't have to take that.
And so there's certain things happening,
you know, unions are on strike and those things kind
of really curtail certain kinds of bad behaviors.
And when I'm saying bad behavior is, you know,
it's again, it's not just the actors.
There's a whole ecosystem
in the industry where it's the agents, the managers, the producers,
the studio, stylists, the makeup and hair people
that really have your ear, the makeup and hair
people are the people that know all of the gossip
and all of the drama, and I don't know why.
I always really, really
gravitate towards makeup and hair.
They're touching your face they’re in your like personal space.
They're making you look good.
Kind of are the only place
that you can kind of sit and it becomes like this, like
one little meditative space for you, especially as a female.
We got a bunch of different makeup changes every day, and you just talk,
you talk about what's going on in your mind.
You talk about what happened in the scene
and then you start to talk about all of the other gossip and drama,
and they're already clued into it right from the other actors.
They become this kind of like gatekeeper of what's OK.
Like I said, it's like,
it's like your big sister because it's like a family on set.
And so you designate certain
relationships to certain people based on their personalities.
When we're at work, we're a team, and if you can focus like that
and you can sort of quiet out all of the mess and all of the ego,
I think that's the best way to either enjoy a job or still hate your job
because it's a crappy job and you just don't want to do it.
But it's no fun if the people around you are also awful.
And I'm so sorry if that's happening to you.
It's just not fun to have to wake up and deal with any kind of
negativity like that.
But if you set your boundaries in a really healthy way,
then you will have a better time of understanding what the next things
for you to do are.