Commercials, Reels, & Intuition: An Interview w/ President of People Store Talent Agency, Rick Estimond
I don’t know about you but before I had an agent, I viewed all of them as these robotic gatekeepers sitting behind the green curtain, essentially holding your entire career in their hands. Years of cultivating relationships with agents, I’ve certainly shed that idea and if you’re ever lucky enough to speak with long-time former agent, now President of People Store Talent Agency, Rick Estimond, you will too.
On a Tuesday afternoon, Rick is gracious enough to speak to me as staff members in the background ask when he is available for what I’m sure are important tasks. Giving me his undivided attention, he chats with me as a friend, warmly laughing about nerdy things like the new Matrix film coming out and how he spent his holidays. Rick is not a robot. He’s a person -- a person who happens to have significant experience working at one of the top agencies in Atlanta (among other locations).
Let’s dive in!
KB: I don’t think people know you’re actually the one who discovered Shannon Purser [of Stranger Things fame] at a showcase. I’m assuming you search for both commercial and theatrical actors?
Shannon Purser on set of Stranger Things
RE: That’s true. She was a student at AWP [Atlanta Workshop Players], an acting school that’s been around for a long time. A lot of great young actors have come out of that school. They invite us to come there all the time and it just so happened I went there and met Shannon. She was 16 at the time and obviously very very talented. We signed her right up. She was with us a whole year and never booked anything which isn’t unusual.
That happens but I can remember her reaching out to me, coming in having a meeting because she was feeling discouraged and we talked -- not that this talk made all this happen -- but we had a talk and not too long after that, she booked the role on Stranger Things. That tends to happen on a lot of these big shows. You don’t know it’s going to be a big show. I still can remember hearing about The Walking Dead before it was The Walking Dead. No one knew what it was going to be. Same thing. She got to shoot this small role on a new Netflix show that worked a couple of days and then when it released...gosh, it was so crazy. That weekend. It was just...it was bonkers.
Actually, it wasn’t immediately that weekend when things went crazy. BuzzFeed did an article about her and then things really got crazy. People started reaching out wanting to do interviews with her. It went from zero to one hundred very quickly.
When you meet or “discover” people like that, do they still end up going through an audition process for the agency or are they signed right away?
RE: Because of the way People Store functions since you’re not being repped by any one individual at the agency, if someone goes out to the showcase and they see someone they really like then what we typically do is have that person come in and meet the rest of the staff. So if you’re someone like Shannon, a beginner, we’d have [you] come in and audition for the entire staff.
If you’re already an established actor we’ll still have you come in and meet everybody so that way you’re getting an opportunity to chat with the team that would be working for you. Rebecca, CEO and Founder of People Store, represents the primary core value of the company, which is teamwork in a family-oriented atmosphere. So we like to communicate that to the actors and make sure that when they come in, they get an opportunity to meet everyone on the staff.
We feel like we can’t adequately represent somebody if we don’t know them. So we do the best that we can to make sure we get a chance to meet our actors, learn about them, ask questions about their life as well as their goals within their acting career, but we just want to get to know you. To that end, we do actually bring the actors in.
KB: Does that go into how you consider certain actors? Is this person someone I think the whole staff could get along with? I’m assuming when you’re intrigued by someone, you’re not just looking at them firmly from a commercial side just because that was your department…
RE: Right. For me, personally, my role is different now because technically I’m not an agent anymore. I’m not actually the one facilitating opportunities to the actors; however, I still love talent. Meeting new people and finding those actors who you just know are gonna be something. That to me is a lot of fun. So when I go out to a showcase or a play and I see someone really special, I may think about it in terms of, “Ok, hey. Here’s somebody who would probably do well on the commercial side. Here’s someone I think would do well theatrically. And here’s someone I think the staff members would really like.”
Sometimes I go and see someone I know I like. Meaning nobody else will [laughs]. But ultimately if I think they’re going to add value to us as an actor, then yes I’ll bring those people in regardless. If I need to do some work to convince people and say, “Hey, you may not see it, but trust me on this one,” I’ll do it and that happens.
We do leave room in our process for people who really feel strongly about someone, especially the senior members of our staff. Brenda Pauley, the head of our TV department -- she’s been doing it for ages, so she discovered Dakota Fanning and lots of other great actors and it happens all the time with her that she’ll bring somebody in for us to meet and people are like, “What? Really?” And somehow, she’s always right. So you kind of just have to go with it.
KB: Something I’ve heard you mention before are the clients you’ve had for years and you’ve watched them develop before they start really booking consistently. A lot of us feel like we can’t mess up. We have to deliver now or my agent’s going to drop me, especially when you’re in the beginning. What makes you say to yourself, “this person is green and not fully polished yet, but I’m going to invest in this person’s career?”
RE: Oh yeah. Sometimes it’s gut and intuition as an agent. And then sometimes there are these clear signifiers of successful attributes that you’ve observed in your tenure as an agent. It just takes time to build an acting career in general and it just breaks my heart to see all the time when there are actors who get signed with us and you can see that they’re putting that pressure on themselves. Like, “Ah man. I’ve been with you guys six whole months. I’ve only had five auditions and I didn’t book any of them. You’re gonna drop me.” I’m like, what? It’s funny to me. You’re gonna have lots of auditions. And there’s gonna be lots of opportunities and we’re not putting that kind of pressure on an actor so it’s always interesting to me -- even sort of sad.
Don’t do that to yourself because there’s plenty of time and rather than worrying about your agent dropping you, you should be spending that time for growth, discovery, and enjoying this journey. I do get it when you get an agent for some actors they spend so much time, effort, and energy trying to get a good agent. So that becomes the mountaintop. And then when you get an agent, it’s like, “oh wait. I’ve actually just arrived at the mountain.” Now it’s time to start climbing and ultimately that’s when the pressure is on. I think it’s good to have a healthy amount of desire to succeed, but I think putting undue pressure on yourself is not healthy. It’s better to realize that it’s all a process. It takes time. As agents, we want to communicate that to our actors and support them and help them to get to where they’re going.
KB: We don’t give ourselves permission to fail or make mistakes. So you saying that is going to help a lot of people feel better.
RE: Yeah! One thing too I always say to a lot of actors is you should always take stock of yourself and give yourself credit for the growth. Because you started one place in your career and you should be able to look back a year from where you started and almost every time, you can look back and say, “wow. I didn’t know anything back then. Look at all the things that I’ve achieved. Look at all the things that I’ve learned.” Then a year from there, you’ll look back again at that point and say, “well, I didn’t know anything back then!” So it’s always good to realize that you’re always going to keep growing and learning.
You shouldn’t be hard on yourself. Otherwise, you’ll just never ever be happy. There’s no success island. You’re never just gonna be like, “Oh ok. I made it and now everything’s perfect,” because even if you’re an A-list actor, you’re always struggling to stay relevant and do the right projects and all those different things. So if you can’t figure out how to be happy along the way, then this career is going to destroy you.
KB: To shift the conversation a bit, you mentioned before that commercials are putting more investment in social media in comparison to your typical national commercial. Does that impact how you sign an actor -- their social media followers?
RE: Social media following definitely has an impact. I wouldn’t say that if you don’t have a social media following then that’s a negative, but having a large social media following is a plus. Right now, we’re actually putting more emphasis in developing a fully-formed “influencer” department so if you’re somebody who already has a bit of a following and you understand social media more than your fellow actor, then yeah that’s a plus on the commercial side and sometimes on the theatrical side as well. There was definitely a time where some productions would see an actor who’s got a huge following and that would actually be part of the reason why they booked a TV show. Still, ultimately, your abilities as an actor are going to speak most loudly, but social media does help you.
KB: Is it true that your resume isn’t weighed as much as your reel when going out for commercials?
RE: Yeah. Listen, if you come in and you’re looking for commercial rep and you’ve got lots and lots of credits, that’s really impressive and helpful, but if you come in and you have a really impressive reel, that’s fantastic. If you’re doing some great comedy in a commercial or even not a commercial, like in a short film or a student project...If we can derive from your material that you’ve got the skills and ability to book commercials, then we’ll take a flyer on you. It’s not as important to have a big, long resume on the commercial side.
KB: For the reel, do you care where it comes from as long as you demonstrate ability? Because there’s been a lot of people investing in reel services modeling ads, but they’re not actual ads. What do you see when you look at something like that?
RE: The reel services drive me nuts. Here’s the thing. There are some of those reel services that will produce a really good-looking product that looks like an actual reel. Some of them do commercials, films...the clips that they put together to fully fabricate a reel are good enough that it looks like the real thing, right? To me, there’s something about it that just doesn’t jive with the spirit of growing as an actor. That, to me, feels like circumventing the process because that’s important.
It is a catch-22. “I need to have this reel to get a good agent; however, I can’t book the work if I don’t have an agent.” There are so many great opportunities out there though -- to work on a student film, for example. To work on a short film. To work on an independent film. To work on a web series, especially right now in Atlanta. There’s such great energy and spirit of creative people who are getting together and trying to shoot things and make things happen.
The argument gets made to me a lot of times with these reel services, “well, what’s the difference between shooting a short film and having a reel service shoot a clip in a full film for you?” And I’m like, “Ok, yeah, but just go shoot the film, though!” [Laughs] You do that and I think you get the full breadth of the experience of shooting a film. You didn’t pay someone to cast you, you know? You’re actually going through that process and you’re working with actors and you’re being involved in a collaborative process ‘cause then to me, that should be the goal as an actor. What you want ultimately should be to make art -- to work with other people and storytell. Go do that. Don’t skip that process so that you can then do that on a different level. If you really love doing this, then you shouldn’t have a problem doing it at a novice level where you get to learn. At that point, then yeah, you build up and you get to where you need to go. I just think it’s bazaar to pay someone to fabricate that. I don’t think that’s the right spirit.
KB: What’s something you wish someone would ask you as an agent/VP having worked for People Store for 10 years?
RE: Hmm...I feel like when I meet actors a lot of times, there’s sort of an agenda, ya know? For me, I think of it like storytelling and people and connections are so important to what an actor does that if I meet people who are very committed to like, “Oh well. What do I need to do to get represented by People Store?” I’m less interested in those kinds of questions than I am in people who just have questions about...anything.
I just read this really great book by Brian Grazer. He’s the producer that did The Beautiful Mind, Whiplash, and Get On Up, Apollo 13, all these great movies, and the book is called A Curious Mind. The whole book is about how he has used curiosity to help grow his career. And that basically when he was first starting out, he would reach out to people, interesting people he felt that he could learn from and he would make sure that in reaching out to those people he wasn’t trying to get anything from them other than knowledge.
He wouldn’t necessarily have anything in particular that he wanted to learn from them. He just wanted to be able to sit and talk with them and things would just come up naturally in that conversation. In that conversation, there would be things that he was curious about and he’d ask and he’d learn. Sometimes he wouldn’t even realize the thing that would be interesting and all those little nuggets later helped him build his career into an Oscar-winning filmmaker. It’s really fascinating, but I love that. That’s the kind of thing I don’t always get.
Sometimes I do meet super nice people. That’s the thing I like about Atlanta. I will say people here are really enthusiastic about making art together where it doesn’t totally have that LA-vibe where it’s like, “Wait. Are you somebody that can do something for me? Yes? Ok, then let’s continue talking. No? Then I need to move on to the next person.” And there are nice people in LA too, but that wheel has also been spinning in LA for over a hundred years and it’s attracted all different kinds of people for this one reason. I don’t feel that in Atlanta. In general, just more questions about other stuff [laughs].
KB: What’s the last thing you saw (on-screen or on-stage) that really touched you? Like if you could sign all those people (commercial or not) on your roster, you would?
Image from Amazon Prime
RE: Aw man. I’ve been watching this show on Amazon, called Modern Love. It’s based on this column. I think it was in The New York Times just about all these different kinds of relationships. They took some of the articles from this column and turned them into short little episodes. They got all these incredible actors in them. Like in one episode they got Anne Hathaway who plays this woman who’s bipolar and they do a really good job illustrating what it’s like for her where she feels great and then she feels terrible. She’s trying to manage a career as a brilliant woman, but she also gets into these deep dark depressions where she can’t even get herself up to go to work. But then she meets this guy when she was feeling great and they agree to go on a date and then the date comes along and she’s depressed.
There’s that episode and another with Tina Fey. There’s one with Dev Patel. It’s a really lovely show, done very well. After each one, you feel all warm and gushy and good about love. I’m sort of a hopeless romantic so those sorts of things catch me.
KB: Thank you!
*This interview has been edited and condensed.
