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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Spirited Actor Podcast with me Tracy Moore. I was a casting director for film and TV and commercials for over thirty years. I transitioned to a celebrity acting coach after I cast a film New Jersey Drive with executive producers Spike Lee and director Nick Domez. I auditioned every rapper from Biggie Smalls to Tupac, and I realized that rappers and musical artists they needed help transitioning to acting. My clients consist of musical artists from Buster Rhymes to Eve, Missy Elliott, Angela Yee from The Breakfast Club, and Vanessa Simmons, to name a few. I also coach sports stars and host as well. I feel I have the best of both worlds. As a casting director, I know exactly what they're looking for, and as an acting coach, I can coach you to be remembered in that room. Now I know. I know actors want to get the job. I get that, but being remodmember by a casting director that is powerful. Meditation of the day life has two rules. Number one never quit. Number two always remember Rule Number one Duke Ellington, no matter how challenging it gets, never give up. You should always keep the vision of your dreams clearly embedded in your mind. When things do appear bleak, know that it's just a moment. You can get through it, and you will survive. I have had my share of chaos, but looking back, I can honestly say I made it. It's over, but at least I know that somehow I will continue to persevere, and so will you. Today I will promise to value my strength. Welcome back to the Spirited Actor Podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Moore, and I'm really excited today to introduce to you a phenomenal director as well as a spirited being. I'm so honored and proud to know her work and to know her, and I want to share her with you today. I want you, guys, to make sure that you have your You're taking your notes on your phone, you're writing things down, because every show, every guest you leave with pearls, you leave with Jules, and I want you to have those. And it's very rare that you get an opportunity to have like this, one on one with a director been specifically talking to you actors, you know, letting her letting you guys know how she directs what she's looking for in an audition, things that and questions that you don't get this opportunity and you don't get a chance to really engage with directors like this unless you know, you watch the director's cut at the end and then you hear feedback and things like that. But this is special. So ladies and gentlemen, I want you all to put your hands together for Darnell Martin. Yay, Darnell.
00:03:17
Speaker 2: I am so blessed to know you. You know, you are one of the most incredible acting coaches. And I go to you a lot and you know that. Yes, so it's fun working with you, and you know it's great because you know, I can you know one thing you never talk about is how a director works with an acting coach, right, Oh, one thing that you know, the way that I work with an acting coach is you know, I, let's say, but let's really get into this world and what you know, specifically I'm looking for about the character and this actor and where I see their need of saying hm hmm, let's can can we spend some time on on a certain on being a certain character from a certain place that maybe this character isn't from. So that's something that that I wouldn't work work on as a director. That's some some of the homework that they would do for themselves, like Okay, let's find out the place where this character is from the history. You know, everything that I do as a as I'm a writer director as well. So the work that I do as a writer director, I expect the actor to do a more detailed version of that. So you know, many times, you know, it's interesting because a lot of my directing is in my writing. Well, like I'll obsess over the fact of how many people in nineteen oh seven had telephones and what kind of people were those people? And you know, I'll research that for like two days and maybe not even use it in the screenplay. I just need to know because they don't want to put a telephone in their house, right, I have to know who they are. Right, People go, well, why do you do all that? And if the actor asked me, I need to know, no good after going to ask you, and really, phenomenal actors should do their homework. Do you ask me?
00:05:41
Speaker 1: So do you find that most actors do their homework? Because I struggle in my classes to get homework for actors, and one of my first homework assignments is a character breakdown of yourself. And I say to them, in order for you to know someone else, you need to know your self. So I need you to write a character breakdown. And I got a fifteen page character breakdown one time. But I find it challenging to get actors to really commit to the homework outside of the class.
00:06:14
Speaker 2: Yes, it's challenging to see actors when they, you know, who actually do their homework, but it's a big difference. I've rarely seen an actress who has done their homework who doesn't come with the goods.
00:06:29
Speaker 1: Wow.
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Speaker 2: You know, look at Sarah Flaucett majors okay, career. A lot of people don't know who she is. She was a horrendous actress, horrendous, it was like shocking, you know, and she became a good actor.
00:06:45
Speaker 1: Wow, burn this right, Yeah, it got It's.
00:06:49
Speaker 2: Worked, you know. And people think people think that writing that you're born a writer. I disagree. People think you're born a director. I disagree. I think that And Faulkner, William Faulkner will tell you that as well. You know, if there's writers, you know that he thought writers were born if you put in the work. There are some people who are just naturally very talented or have things that are very natural, like transtance, they can very easily let go of themselves, right, and you know they're not shy, let's say, but there are some breeding actors who are terribly shy. Way they can
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get out of their shyness is when they're putting on the clothes of someone else.
00:07:37
Speaker 1: Right, Oh, I love that the clothes of someone else.
00:07:40
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, And a lot of actors actually can't pull it together until they signed out what's this character wearing. So that's another thing is a lot of you know, wonderful actors spend a lot of time in wardrobe and play with their clothes, like you know. I had a kid who was an actor who was playing with his clothes period piece, and he kept, you know, messing his clothes up as he was playing with it, and the wardrobe personal wasn't very experienced, came over and said, you know, he's really got to stop that. And I said, are you crazy? No, right, this is now he's you know, this kid is acting. You know, he's playing with it in a you know, he's in the moment, you know, like being in a scene and having a splinter in your finger and sucking it out the scene's going on. You know, another thing this kid did and people were like, you want to stop. They're like, oh, this is great, this is what would happen. The kid just had a fight. He should be sucking a splinter out of his finger, you know. So these are the things to be in the moment. That's a natural thing. That's not the work. There are just some people who are oddly naturally in the moment and aware of and also aware of their behavior. The same kid, same kid was beaten by their father in a scene and later on had a bloody lip and a scar across the sided. So while they were in the scene, the kid was playing with the edge of his lips with his tongue touching it, you know, where the wound would be. Now there's no wound there. There was no woman there. And later on, you know, the kid's aunt said why were you doing that with your tongue and he said, you know, and she thought it was wrong. I said, no, that's great, and he said, because if it was cut, I don't want to touch it with my tongue.
00:09:35
Speaker 1: Wow for him.
00:09:38
Speaker 2: So now that's just behavior, right, and so that is a really special thing to have that Max just like not you know, to allow your behavior to be on camera and that's to you, that's something that you don't really need in there. It's a real cinematic thing. Wow, you know, like uh, and you know, we do this exercise about touching, you know, and that whole country exercise you know where you have uh you imagine a piece of fabric on your lap, right, you know. I think that's a very powerful exercise to just go places. Time travel too, and this is pretty for the dinner actors who you're finding this problem with homework. So there's this you know kind of time travel exercises. I learned very young with a theater acting coach called James Jennings many many years ago, like decades ago. And I found it at the American Theater of Actors. But when I was, you know, very young, and I first started in this, I was a teenager and I got into this you know, adult program. But the interesting thing about it was he did this exercise that I thought it was pretty wonderful and I and I sometimes use it where you know, you have this piece of fabric, you imagine it, okay, and you imagine what it feels like. It could be silk, it could be corduroy, we don't know, but really trying to focus on what that fabric feels like. And then from there after you really understand it and you ask them questions. Your datas are not allowed to answer. They're just allowed to be there and feel the fabric and touch it and how heavy it is in their hands, you know, to really because that then you start to get into play right and meditation, and then after that getting into okay, I want you to go back to a time where you know, maybe you really laugh and something was so funny, you know, and put your hands on your lap and remember what you will wearing, you know, with their pants that you were wearing. So we go back into that fabric, right, and then we start to talk about, you know, smell what it smelled like. Remember who was there? How many people to see it? You know, really going back time, traveling back to that space. Remember what was said? What was You're not forcing anything, it was so funny, and to really what does it smell like? Using every sense very slowly, and this exercise can go on from anywhere to half an hour to an hour could take you could have two people and have it take a whole class.
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Speaker 1: Wow. You know it's a brilliant exercise.
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Speaker 2: And it's amazing because also when you get to the emotion, people really go to a place and it takes a while to let go. That's why you can go from an hour to an hour because and this is also where I have learned that I don't believe something. So I'll be in a scene with somebody who I wish shooting right right, and they'll do something and I'll go take your time. I have time. I can cut it. I always say I have said this, I got this time. Just be there. The action doesn't mean you start, just means I said it right. Don't go intol you're ready, don't utter a word until you're ready. And then they'll go through it and go stop. I don't believe it, find.
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Speaker 1: It, find it and do it again.
00:13:28
Speaker 2: Take the time, take the time. You have a lot of rush actors who don't take their time. And again, I love that exercise. And you know it's tough because people will sit in your classroom for half an hour and then they'll get really excited when it's their turn, and they'll get scared as hell, you know, And you could also give them the opportunity of what moment they want to remember. Okay, if you have a moment, is it a sad moment? Is a happy moment? Well, it has to be a moment that has an emotion because ultimately, with you even to see in the entire class, we'll see you will see their face change and you will see an amazing scene, an incredible scene that they could never reach with words, right because all words are alive.
00:14:16
Speaker 1: Oh well, at this moment, right now, dar now,
there are actors out there who are holding on to every single one of your words. And we have a call right now for you that just came in, So we're going to patch them in.
00:14:29
Speaker 2: Hey are you doing? Hi?
00:14:30
Speaker 1: What's your name?
00:14:32
Speaker 2: Oh? My name is Rob Muriol.
00:14:34
Speaker 1: How are you doing?
00:14:35
Speaker 2: Hey? Are you doing? I just want to ask a question. You know, I heard a lot of actors talking about working from outsider and inside out. What do you mean by that? What does that mean? Okay? So, Sean Penn, I believe from from what I've heard from him, is an actor who works outside in and he he uses a mask, right. He once he finds the mask, he finds the character. I know that that Karen Howard, I worked on the there. I was watch a guy with him and he works. I mean, I believe that he found that character from the outside end, maybe our mom, because he spent so much time in the wardrobe really picking together and really designing and finding who he was and the specificity in his wardrobe. Now he might he might work with the inside out too, but that but work is from the outside in is basically getting the clothes first and letting the clothes affect you. You know, maybe you put the clothes and you know, like maybe maybe I've heard another thing about this, and I can't remember which actor it was, but this is the very famous actor who had to find the shoes and once he found that this character, he put them on and he walked in this very specific way, very famous action. It's a very famous character. And I wish to god I could remember he found Oh you know what was it was quite tamper.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow, Stanford.
00:16:23
Speaker 2: And yes, he could not figure out who that character was until he put the shoes on. And put the shoes on, he had the walk, he had everything. Yeah, because you know Red Fox was snazzy, right, yeah, yeah, shoes like that. So he puts those shoes on and all of a sudden, you know, it came to him. But all for instance, Ed O'Neill from Married with Children, people don't realize that O'Neill is amazing. Yeah, people think he's a comedian, but he just fell into his laugh is because he was a big theater actor like Eugene O'Neil and all this stuff. And what happened was is he came in for that audition he said, you know what, this guy is like my uncle, And so then he started working on that character from the inside out because he knew who his uncle uncle was. So it's like and also working from the inside out, and we talk a little bit more is actually doing that character work. I just talked about like, well, see it's funny because I feel very much like I do the actor work with writing. Again, I go into what was happening at that time, What did they wear at that time? What was this person's family like, like what moved them? What was this thing? What was their fatal flaw? What was this thing that hurts him so much? You know what? Here it is every character is working out something that they've been working out since they were five years old. Something happened between the ages of one and six that kind of defined them and they've been wanting that thing that they never got from that prime And so if you can find that in your research, that's great. Sometimes you have to make it up and make a decision. Sometimes you're playing with different types of sadness, right, and you can say, I don't know the sadness of losing a child. I have no clue of what that means. So you can make h a transfer? What is it not a transfer?
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Speaker 1: The word you know what your substitution is.
00:18:47
Speaker 2: You make a substitution. So maybe you had a friend who was very close to you and died, right, I got your mother or your father. I was. I was in a very horrible film when I was young, and I hated it because I know I did not want to be an actor, but I was acting in order to get behind the camera. And it was one of those thriller films where you like run and cry and or tortured through the whole thing and try to get away from the killer, and then at the end she killed the killer. So it was very hard to sustain every day, six days a week, you know, thirty days shoot, this period of hysteria and tears and and fear grief and you know, dig to this and and I was young. I was young, wow, And I remembered, you know, going to my father's grave and just being exhausted and just laying on his grave and not wanting to be an actor, but not also knowing how to how to how to get there every day like that, because it was like it took me. And that's one of the one of the things that I found very hard about being actor, of of letting it go afterwards, you know, yeah, yeah, that was I couldn't do that well.
00:20:07
Speaker 1: And then that young you didn't have the mechanisms to you know what I mean, to know how exactly.
00:20:13
Speaker 2: And so when I was lying on my father's grave, I took a watch call a leaf it was fall and and I put it in my pocket. And then I realized when I went to work the shoot, I had it in my pocket, so I just transferred it into my my costume. And it was really weird. I had to live there and I touched it and boom, I was there boom right away.
00:20:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, And to discover that, right, like, wow, I I held on to that.
00:20:52
Speaker 2: That leaf throughout the whole production. No one knew I had it. It was in my pocket. It was my secret. And so here's the deal is that when you have a secret and you have like a very emotional moment, and that has happened with me many times where actors have really gone places and just broken down, and everyone feels like, Okay, maybe when need to stop, you need a medic because this is really you know, and it's like no, and I just walk away with them. And sometimes people want to say it. Many times people want to say what happened? I'm like, no, you cannot tell me. This is yours and this is your private thing. It's not my place to hear it. Even if you feel
like this is something you need to tell me, it's not my place to say because it's no one's place to know. You know. If that kind of pain, that kind of that's for a very close friend, that's for therapist, that's for priests, whatever it is, you know what I mean? Right, also one to release it into that working world, it no longer has a power. Well, well, you're a private thing, and you you know, and your director is not your therapist and they're not your friend. They came very very close to you. But I feel like that's a breach of trust also for me to hear that, because you're in the actors in a very vulnerable place there, and later on they might feel like, oh my god, I don't know why. You know, they might be embarrassment, it might be all kinds of stuff that gets in the way of your relationship with the director.
00:22:39
Speaker 1: Well, I'm gonna have to thank.
00:22:42
Speaker 2: You right right. That's that was also Fred so much. I appreciate you.
00:22:49
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. And I hope you recorded it or wrote it down something, because oh, well, yeah, you just come back and you just visit, you know, visit our website and that's where everything is. So but thank you so much for Colin and Darnelle. We are at the end and I didn't even get a chance to laundry list your credits from Law and Order franchise to Grim Blindspide New Amsterdam. The list, you guys goes Gray's anatomy. Well, I was going to say, in terms of a writer director, Cadillac Records, and wow, to work with those greats and that's why you know what We're just gonna have We're just gonna have you come back on. There's so many guests that you know, we're going to do a part two two and we need a part two to you for the committed actor and we need to just get some more nuggets and insights from you. So I'm gonna say so long, not by because you're coming back to the Spirited After podcast, but you were awesome actors. You need to be applauding standing ovation wherever you are right now. To miss Darnell Martin, writer director Darnell Martin, thank you, Darnell, thank you, thank you so much, and now the give love. You are phenomenal. I have this theory that most people are not afraid of not making it, they are afraid of making it. One of my favorite poems was written by Mary Anne Williamson and Nelson Mandela read this when he was released from prison. It's called Our greatest Fear by Mary Anne Williamson. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us the most. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be? Brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You're playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in all of us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we liberate from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. Fear is an illusion, don't believe it. Thank you for joining us on the Spirited Actor Podcast with me Tracy Moore. I look forward to our next Spirited podcast. Thank you.