Is there an easier target in the entertainment world than a well-known actor creating a Kickstarter page for a personal project? From Zach Braff to Amanda Palmer, any number of celebs have taken a lot of heat for making fans ask that magic question: Um, why can’t you just pay for it yourself?
Well, actress Alicia Witt (The Walking Dead, Justified, Friday Night Lights, Twin Peaks) is trying to get funding for her latest album through the crowd-funding site. Her last album was produced by Ben Folds and she’s trying to raise the funds for a follow-up produced by Jacquire King.
Witt, who’s as straightforward as she is talented (that was a 12-year-old Witt playing piano as Gersten Hayward in an iconic moment in the original Twin Peaks), addressed that “Elephant in the Room” on her Kickstarter page.
I know that there are some who may read this far and say, 'yes - but - she's been on The Walking Dead, and Justified, and Nashville, and Supernatural, and all those Hallmark movies-- and all those other movies and shows. so she's rich! right?'
no ☺ without being tacky- it just isn’t that way. if you’re not a series regular on a series or one of the top box office draws in film these days, the acting business isn’t in any way a windfall. I consider myself massively, enormously, beat-the-odds-and-i-thank-god-everyday lucky to be one of the fraction of SAG-AFTRA members who can support myself and pay my bills doing what I love. I don’t in any way have an extravagant lifestyle, and EVERY penny of savings has gone to my music in the last 8 years.
the TV shows I referenced above were all billed and contracted as guest starring roles. I don’t want to be tacky and share what we get for that- but it is the same for me as it is for any other actor in SAG-AFTRA who guest stars at top of show. that’s just how it works these days - any actor can attest to it. and while I am *very* blessed to be working... my earnings don't currently provide me anything left over to create a project like this.
How much does Witt care about her album project? So much that she was willing to get down and dirty and answer probing questions about that most personal of showbiz topics: money.
Our candid, dishy conversation about agism in the record business, iPhone auditions, and the less-than-rosy economics of being a working actress was both entertaining and eye-opening. It explains, once and for all, how an actor can be quite famous, but far from rich. And it might even persuade you to toss in a few bucks to support a very worthy project.
Tell me about your record project.
Jacquire King was my dream producer, for so many reasons; the records that he’s worked on, and the way in which he just makes a song come to life and it sounds like that’s exactly what the song was always intended to be. Without having known his name, I had already loved his work. The James Bay record and the Della Mae record. I loved both of those records, and I didn’t realize it was the same producer. Tom Waits’ Mule Variations is one of the five records I would bring with me to a desert island, it means so much to me. And that Kings of Leon album, Only By the Night.
There’s something about the way Jacquire produces these things that illuminates the individuality of the artists and the songwriter. He just knows how to pull together these soundscapes in such a way that more people can access the song, but it doesn’t feel in any way like it’s been produced to--I don’t know--dumb it down or make it just poppy; it just makes it feel right.
My manager decided she was going to reach out to him, but he’s extremely booked and he’s extremely expensive and I didn’t remotely have the budget to work with him in the way that he normally works. I thought maybe a best case scenario he was going to recommend someone to work with me if he responded at all. But she played him some of my songs and to my amazement, he said that he wanted to record with me, and he ended up choosing five songs out of fifteen for an EP.
You've got the songs, you got Jacquire, but not enough money to make it happen…
We had this incredible opportunity where this producer wanted to work with me and we’re trying to make a project that is the kind of thing you would make with a big record label budget. But we don’t have that. So I turned to Kickstarter. And to be clear, Jacquire is working with me on an indie songwriter rate. He’s not doing it for what he would do a big label project for, but still we needed to work at the Blackbird Studios for a week and work with these musicians that have played on other albums he’s produced.
He’s a super hands-on producer, unlike some other people of his stature, who might have an engineer do a lot of the work and they pop in at the end of the day and sort of oversee it. But he has been there every moment, from the scratch vocals to right now he’s doing vocal comps. I’m going back in to lay down additional vocals next week with him and additional strings and guitars. He’s just devoted every second that has been required to make these songs on the EP the best they can be.
Where did the title 15,000 Days come from?
In the music business, there is a notion that at least for women, it’s a better thing to be younger, as opposed to being experienced and having learned from your mistakes. I’ve always thought that women, as they age, are more beautiful, more powerful. I’ve always looked up to women such as Judi Dench and Helen Mirren and Diane Keaton. And musically Shawn Colvin has always been one of my role models. If I’m not mistaken, she had her first single when she was 41. You can hear it in her voice, and those songs that I first fell in love with when I first got to know her music. Those are the songs of a woman who’s lived, who’s battled various addictions and destructive toxic relationships. She’s still trying to figure it out. She doesn’t come at it and say “I’ve got all the answers now,” or any of that stuff.
As I started out in my music career, I can’t tell you the number of times, even seven years ago, when I would’ve been 33 or 34, I had so many people say “What? You’re 33? You’re not starting a music career, you can’t. You’re too old.”
And that’s really bullshit, you can do whatever you want. It’s not up to you whether people listen, or if people like it. But luckily, I’ve worked really hard at it and I’ve gotten better and better and less and less afraid. And people do listen, and they do like the music and I have an audience for it.
So it’s your 15,000 days?
With this record, I want to reach people who are the age that I am right now, which is 15,000 days. That’s my age. I’ve been acting since I was seven and you can Google my age. It’s been there forever. <laughs> I’ve never been able to lie about it. But I’m glad because I don’t really want to lie about it. I want this album to reach people, not in spite of my age but because of my age. I think my age is an asset and the music I’m making now I would not have made if I had gone out there when I was 18 or 19 and had started releasing pop music.
There’s a really youthful spirit about it because I’m embracing my age. I’m not trying to be younger, but happen to be a 41-year old woman who doesn’t particularly want to get married and isn’t chomping at the bit to have kids and in some ways, I feel like I’ve only just figured out who I am. And I know I’m not the only woman of this age who is that that place in her life.
Some people would say, “You’re famous. Why can’t you just go to a large record label and get the money for the record that way?
This is an interesting conversation because you know, I could, probably. My music manager, approached a couple of big record labels and they were like, “She’s how old, again?”
I’m totally serious, that happened and the other thing about making music with major record labels from the start is that, yes they will fund the record, but then they own it. You don’t own the record anymore, you own your writing share of it, but in exchange for having put up the money upfront, that’s their record. They can even choose to not release it. I think that they’ll be interested once the album’s actually done and they can hear what we’ve done.
And then there’s the Elephant in the Room.
<laughs> There’s a misconception that actors who you might recognize are automatically super rich.
But the reality is quite different, right?
Yeah, there’s several answers to that, one of which is that, over the years, the amount that actors make has just changed a lot. A guest starring role like the one that you saw that I did on Supernatural last week [pays a lot less than] when I was on Two and A Half Men. I think that was about eight years ago. At that time if you had a guest star who was more recognizable, you would get a different rate. But nowadays, if you’re doing a guest starring role, you get paid “top of show.”
What exactly is “top of show”?
I don’t understand where it comes from, but it just simply means the top amount that we will pay anyone appearing on the show. It varies from show to show, but it’s SAG/AFTRA [actor's union] rules. It depends, I guess, on what the budget of the show is but it’s never more than $9,000 pee episode. And it’s usually between $5,000 and $6,000. [Editor's note: By comparison, Jim Parsons and the other stars oof Big Bang Theory earn $1 million an episode, while Andrew Lincoln, star of The Walking Dead, earns more like $90,000 an episode.]
I gather there used to be a rate that was above Top of Show for actors with a body of work. But that’s not the case anymore?
That’s it. Nobody gets more than Top of Show if you’re a guest star. That means that if you’re someone that people might tune in to see, it doesn’t affect how much you make. They consider it more an opportunity for you to be on their show, and you just get paid the same as someone who’s just getting started.
To clarify--I say this on the Kickstarter page too, I am in the tiniest percentage of SAG actors in that I'm able to support myself doing what I love and I’m so grateful for that.
Of course. But this is a business and you built up a career and a fan base. Yet the producers are in “work for the exposure” mode.
One thing that’s really changed is that I was on a series [Cybill] for four years, starting when I was 18. I got very lucky to get that role and then you get what’s called a quote. [Editor's note: A quote is what a producer has to pay to hire an actor, based on how much she got paid last time.]
I did a couple of pilots that didn’t take off and I had a quote from those and I made movies. With every movie, you make a little bit more. I made Urban Legends for very little, but then the next movie I made more than that. You work your way up and you start having dollar amounts in proportion to the name value that’s assigned to you, where they think people are going to tune in or buy the DVD or whatever it is, based on who’s in it.
Your performance is part of the product and helps to sell it.
That has changed so much over the years. Any actor would tell you that, you audition for pilots and they just say “That’s your quote? We’ll offer you half of it and if you don’t want it, there’s about 20 other actors who are going to be fine with it.”
And that’s just become the way it’s done in the business, so all of the quotes that used to be what you worked your whole life for, they just don’t count anymore.
And I guess it’s harder now to get paid extra for recurring roles on television?
Another thing they’ve done is sometimes when there’s a role such as on Friday Night Lights or Justified, which seems like a series regular for a year, now you’re paid as if it’s a guest starring thing. That’s not anything against those producers, it’s just the way it’s done these days.
A few years ago, if you were going to do an entire season of a show, you would be paid at least at a recurring rate, but there is no such thing anymore. Now they just say “Well, it’s going to be 10 episodes out of the 13, but they will all be billed as guest starring roles, and again if you don’t like it, there’s always someone else lined up who will take the part so you have to decide by the end of the day.” And then if it’s an incredible role, like the one I played on Justified, you take it.
So what you’re saying is that you can make a living but you’re not super rich.
It’s not a Kickstarter because I’m floundering and can’t support myself. It’s a Kickstarter specifically for this incredible project that is not just something I’m recording with my friends in my living room. I’m recording with an extremely accomplished producer that normally a record label would be funding.
What’s something that would surprise most people about the world of acting now?
One thing that people are surprised to hear about is that I still audition for almost everything that I do. it’s so called pilot season in LA at the moment and I have to do what’s called “self takes’ all the time. I think people who are not in the business are surprised about, because even the role I had in Supernatural, I had to go audition for that. I didn’t get offered that.
And I’m fine with that, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It’s cool because I don’t know that they would have known I would have played that role. I’m at a point in my career that I’ve done so many different types of roles that I’m constantly running into people who have, say only seen the Hallmark movies, and they aren’t aware that I’ve done all these dark, gritty, independent films or they’ve maybe only seen the dark stuff or they’ve only seen Walking Dead or Justified.
Or that great Sopranos episode.
After which I got offered one executive role after another <laughs.> It’s something to be aware of as an actor. You can get pigeonholed really fast, regardless of how much you’ve done in your career up until that point.
So explain about these "self takes"
Today I’m in Nashville so I’m going to be going over to my friend’s house, putting on makeup, getting the light just right, learning the lines, my friend is going to hold my iPhone, and I’m going to audition. And just send that off to Warren, my manager, who's gonna send that off to my agent and the producers.
Easier or harder than being in the room with the casting director and the producers?
It’s sometimes so much better to do a self-take because you get to do exactly what you had in mind and if you blow the first take, you just do another one and don’t send them the first take. And also, I love that they don’t get to have a conversation with you first and form an opinion about who this actor is, as opposed to judging the actual performance. But the bad thing about it is that there’s nobody there to give you directions. I could be on completely the wrong track about what they’re looking for with the character and nobody is there to say “Hey, could you do it a little differently?’ They see the take and think, "Oh, she’s not right for it."
How has social media changed things for you?
After watching Supernatural, and live-tweeting the episode, I feel so connected to all the people that reached out and were kind enough to say that they were loving this character.
I’m coming into a show that has been on the air for 12 years, and the fans of this show are so lovely and so devoted. They know everything about these characters and they were pretty much unanimously kind. I just went to sleep feeling like I had communicated with thousands of people. I was sharing pictures from the set and people were retweeting them and reposting them and commenting. It was just such a special evening. If this had aired ten years ago, I would maybe watch it with my friends. And maybe not.
And earlier in the day I did a Facebook live Q&A. And that’s incredible because it had thousands of people on it and now it’s over 100,000 people that have watched that video that I made. I got to play some music. I shared some of my new songs and answered a bunch of questions. It’s just so immediate. I did it in my friend’s living room, with my iPhone propped up on the table, but there’s all these people popping up with questions, responding to the songs, maybe sharing something that they’ve seen me in years ago I’d forgotten about. I just feel like I spent my day yesterday talking to all these people when I didn’t leave Nashville. That would never have happened without social media.
What’s an example of the non-extravagant lifestyle that you mention on the Kickstarter?
I’m just trying to remember the last time I went and did some serious clothes shopping. Whenever I have cash in my hand, like per diem cash, I might go to some local store where they have, usually locally-made cute dresses or cute skirts or cute t-shirts you wouldn’t find anywhere else. That’s usually when I do my shopping. For those who don’t know, per diem is the money you get on a daily basis when you’re on location, through the union, whenever you’re staying in a hotel or anywhere that isn’t your house to cover basic expenses like meals and laundry.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve just gone out and said, “You know, I’m gonna do some damage on my credit card today.” <laughs> I just don’t do that because I’m trying to save my money to put everything I can towards my music. My last big expense? My dog had to have surgery a few months ago, and that was expensive.
Alicia Witt's Kickstarter campaign runs until February 16. While she's reached her initial goal to be able to make the album, if he reaches her next goal, she and Jacquire King will expand the project into a full album.
