Are you tuning into Backstage’s “In the Envelope,” our interview podcast featuring Emmy, Oscar, Tony, and SAG Awards contenders? If not, you’re missing out on insights and advice from the industry’s biggest stars of stage and screen: how they achieved their success, what they wish they’d known, and their thoughts on navigating careers and strengthening craft. Check out snippets below from this year’s Emmy-nominated actors who have joined the podcast. And subscribe for free on iTunes, Soundcloud, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Pamela Adlon (“Better Things,” FX)
“If you’re completely laying yourself bare and trying everything and not being self-conscious, you’re going to do as well as everybody. I feel that with voiceover. I’ve always said this: my voice is what got me in the door, but it’s really about my ear. When you can hear something and you have a fine-tuned sense, I think that voiceover artists have the best ears.”
Anthony Anderson (“Black-ish,” ABC)
“You have to be ready for when that window of opportunity presents itself. And you have to work on yourself and work at your craft in the meantime. Because we’re all going to get that window of opportunity.... You can’t will it any sooner than what is destined, either. The only part of the equation you can control is you. So you want to be the best at whatever it is you can do.”
Darren Criss (“The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” FX)
“I think the advice is just to make shit. And more importantly to make shit with people you care about, and have fun.... It’s so easy and the overhead is so low and you can just do stuff. You know, 80 percent of it is just showing up and doing the thing.”
Brandon Victor Dixon (“Jesus Christ Superstar: Live in Concert,” NBC)
“Even as a successful actor, you’re probably going to get cast in 30 percent of the auditions you go to. So you’re dealing with rejection and personal evaluation all the time, ultimately it’s all how you feel about yourself. But you’re caught in systems and constructs that will make you go through this process all the time and it can be very easy to fill yourself with self-doubt or a lack of self-worth and break yourself down in those ways. [It’s important] to really fight that process and to seek support in that process, because everyone around you is doing the same thing.”
Ann Dowd (“The Handmaid’s Tale,” Hulu)
“It is a choice we make how we react to rejection. I say to my students, we don’t need protection against loss or rejection.... Our work as actors on a personal level is to continue to drop the armor. Just like, ‘Hit me.’ We have the largest hearts in the world, and therefore we are given the strength to cope.”
Betty Gilpin (“GLOW,” Netflix)
“I think that the process of auditioning and hearing no all the time, it’s very tempting...to pull down steel doors in your brain to protect yourself. But you’re also pulling them down to things like creativity and being open and that connection to the world. So you have to be careful. You have to choose what boundaries you’re going to put up to protect yourself, but not to cut yourself off from the thing that you love.”
Brian Tyree Henry (“Atlanta,” FX)
“At the end of the day, find the joy.... As of right now, there’s nothing more gratifying than being able to show up and play with my friends. Because I’ve realized that life is going to give you what the hell life is going to give you, and it’s best that you really just embrace and enjoy that.”
Allison Janney (“Mom,” CBS)
“I don’t try to be funny, I just know that in order to make it funny I have to be committed 100 percent to what I’m doing and that will be funny.... I will always make the funny physical choice if I have to get from point A to point B. If I have to jump over a couch to get there, I’m going to do it. I’m very brave that way.”
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Ron Cephas Jones (“This Is Us,” NBC)
“[Auditioning is] an opportunity to go in and do some good work. The more you audition, the better you get at it. The better you get at letting go. So cherish and prize every one.”
Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black,” BBC America)
“I feel like fear drives everything I do, in that it’s like the buzzing that I know I’m in a place that is new and that’s probably going to be more creative than a known place. I’ve had so many acting teachers [for whom] that’s kind of the mantra, moving towards the fear. For me embarrassment, fear, all of these things kind of coexist at all times for me creatively, personally, all of it. Kind of just a raw wound walking through the world trying to be cool.... As an artist, that’s where it’s safer for me to go into those places and allow those places to be where I live.”
Edgar Ramírez (“The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” FX)
“I think doing the homework and trying to really get deep into the research is going to make you grow so much. Because that is your only private experience, and then you take that homework on set and then you let the magic happen. But I would say, be prepared. Be prepared for battle. No—be prepared for fun. Be prepared to really let the creative combustion happen on set.”
Tracee Ellis Ross (“Black-ish,” ABC)
“If you want to become an actor because you want to become famous, this is the wrong job. Because it is way harder than anybody thinks. Rejection is a part of it. So having a sense of yourself is key and that means you gotta know yourself and learn how to love yourself. But if it’s what you want, then go for it!”
Henry Winkler (“Barry,” HBO)
“[Working actors] can very, very possibly live their dream if they are prepared, if they are tenacious, and if they are filled with gratitude. I did it because I knew what I wanted and I went after what I want. And I didn’t hurt anybody along the way. I want every young actor to know, don’t talk about it. There are so many actors who talk about it. Do it. And do it anywhere. Do it anywhere, as long as you keep your motor going. I take my axe and my pick and my shovel and I mine the system every day.”
Evan Rachel Wood (“Westworld,” HBO)
“Keep doing whatever you can. Even if you’re like, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this. This is so dumb.’ Just get as much experience as you can even if it’s getting a bunch of people together and filming a scene. You can do that on your iPhone and stuff now. Just start doing things—even if they’re not good—because that’s how you get better. If you get in something that’s not great, but you’re great, that’s all that matters.”
Jeffrey Wright (“Westworld,” HBO)
“An audition is an opportunity to perform...at [the beginning of my career], I didn’t necessarily have a lot of opportunities to work, even though it was work without pay—the payoff potentially was the job—so back then, you know, I was hungry. I used to take those things very seriously. For those first early [auditions] I pretty much showed up to knock it in the mouth.”
Milo Ventimiglia (“This Is Us,” NBC)
“I personally celebrate actors. If I see an actor that I’ve known has been in the business now 20-plus years like I have, I’m very happy about that because I feel like they’ve made it. It’s always an encouraging thing. The competition...there are plenty of jobs and there are jobs I want that maybe I didn’t get that someone else I know got—but that wasn’t the job I was supposed to get. I live very much in that and close friends remind me: the jobs you get are the jobs you’re supposed to get, the places you are are the places you’re supposed to be, the people you’re in contact with are the people you’re supposed to be around.”
Ready to book your Emmy-winning gig? Check out Backstage’s TV audition listings!