Before stand-up, I didn't even have an agent. Once I started doing stand-up - boom. I got an agent. In fact, I got three agents. I got a lawyer. Now I get taken seriously.
I never actually sought out an agent or a publishing house. A friend of mine named David Simmer got wind of what I was doing, and he sent one of my books to a literary lawyer in Los Angeles. He loved it, and he sent it to other people, including an agent, and he picked me up, and that's how 'Bird Box' got to where it is now.
I had been struggling to get roles in Hollywood for three and a half years after leaving the WWE. Then I finally got an agent - the agent I have now. He's a great guy, but he turned me down three times before he even decided to take me on a as a client.
I started doing my own animated movies when I was in ninth grade; that's when I got the filmmaking bug. When I was about 16, I started writing jokes for doing stand up, and then I was 19 and started doing stand up.
Stand up comedy is this thing you get to do, so you have to treat it with respect. You can't just be like, 'Alright, I got my hour down, people are coming to see me now. Now, I'm going to lean on the mike stand.' No, you gotta work even harder now. You got to top what you already did. Because they'll find someone else.
As I got older, I'd say probably when I got to, like, seventh or eighth grade, I was living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time, and I went for an open call for an agent, a local agent out there, a woman named Joy Purvis, and she ended up picking me up.
I started doing '30 Rock' and started writing 'Mystery Team' at the beginning of that. While I was doing 'Mystery Team,' I started practicing stand-up. While I was doing stand up, I got 'Community.' It's like I planted trees six years ago, and now they have fruit.
I think right now there's more TV shows than ever. You've got network, you've got cable, you've got Netflix, you've got Hulu, even Amazon is putting out original content. So there's a lot of opportunities to find fans. You don't have to have a huge audience. You can cater to the people that like your stuff. So there is a boom in comedy and television and stand-up too through podcasting and all the different talk shows.
I knew I wanted to be in comedy but the path of least resistance was doing stand-up in folk music clubs where I could get on stage. I guess you could get up no matter how bad you were and you didn't have to audition. You just got up. Everything else required an audition and if you auditioned for a TV show, you would stand in line with a hundred other people. But at the clubs, it was okay just to get up, so that's why I started in stand-up.
But long story short, I didn't start doing stand-up because I wanted to have a TV show or be an actor or even wanted to write sketch comedy. I got into stand-up because I love stand-up.
A lot of times if you want to get another agent, agents actually make you do monologues in their offices. They still do that! You've got to come up with something!
I didn't have an agent until I got 'Hairspray.' I had to get a Broadway show without an agent to get an agent.
I wanted to become an actor. I went to Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which is one of the main drama schools in London where you go when you are older. But I was doing the junior one when I was a kid. And some friends there had agents. I was fourteen and I was like, "I want an agent! It sounds awesome!" I had no idea what that was. I thought those guys looked like men in black. They were hanging around in suits all the time. So I luckily got a very good agent in London and started auditioning. And then when I was 16, I got my first film and I've been working ever since.
I got an agent when I was 12, and I started working in more amateur productions well before that. But even as a kid, I never felt like a kid actor, you know? I always took myself kind of absurdly seriously.
I first did stand-up when I was 17, and then I passed out fliers for a comedy club (in New York City) and I got onstage whenever I could. And musical theater went out the window as soon as I started doing stand-up.
Of course I had a piece of luck I couldn't have imagine for myself in a million years: I got an agent. That sped up the process. I'd say it's a good idea, getting an agent.
?It isn't enough to stand up and fight darkness. You've got to stand apart from it, too. You've got to be different from it.