Agent to Actors: 'I Will Drop You' During Pilot Season

On Thursday, Deadline.com's Nikki Finke acquired a strongly worded email from self-employed agent Ryan Hayden, founder of Ideal Talent Agency, to his clients. In the email, which he sent late Tuesday night, Hayden admonished actors for bothering him about "small stuff" during this year's busy pilot season, and threatened to drop anyone from his roster who he felt was wasting his time with questions. Finke called Hayden's open letter the reason "why actors hate agents at pilot season."

Read excerpts from Hayden's email below. (Visit Deadline.com to read the full letter.)

"During the next month, if what you're calling or emailing me about does not pertain in some way to a major feature film role that you know definitively is currently casting or does not pertain to a series regular role, I do not want to know about it. Period.

"If you have an issue with that, I ask that you kindly find an agent whose priorities are chasing SAG Ultra Low budget roles rather than potentially multi-million dollar pilot roles…

"If you ask me about a project that isn't casting, or that you heard might be casting on some BS source, or that was something you heard about on a blog, I will drop you – and probably on the spot. Consider this your warning.

"I am in the business of building and representing stars. This is the time where I can best make that happen. I don't care about your co-stars right now, I don't care who you met in a workshop (unless its directly related to a pilot), and I don't care that you have a job and need to reschedule. All of that is a time suck you will be dropped for. I'm dead serious…

"I hope to provide you all with every big chance available to you during pilot season – and unapologetically at the expense of the small stuff. If you care about the small stuff, you're a small time actor I do not wish to work with…

"I am there for every one of my clients in making that dream a reality – in any facet – but I will not tolerate anything that stands in the way of that for any of you. If you stand in the way of my facilitating the fruition of a clients' dream, even for an extra second, you will no longer be one of my clients."

Hayden adds that once pilot season is complete, he "will go back to being the less intense, more laid back version of myself – especially if I have multiple regulars on series."

Hayden was previously an assistant at ICM in the Motion Picture Talent and Motion Picture Packaging Departments. He founded Ideal Talent Agency in January 2010. He has also worked as a casting associate at MTV and FremantleMedia.