Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kate Orsini. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kate, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

I’ve been able to make a living from creative work for the last ten or fifteen years. However, the nature of my creative work had to change drastically, in order for that to happen. I’d been working regularly enough as an actor to live (simply) on that alone (plus a few writing assignments – maybe a script polish, or some script coverage here and there) for several years, when Covid happened. I don’t know if y’all realize this, but Hollywood still hasn’t recovered. Suddenly there was just no work. Luckily, there was screenwriting, which I’d been doing all along, and which I leaned into heavily. I wrote a feature during Covid. I shopped it after, while nobody was working at all. I also co-starred in and co-wrote a web series (33 episodes) during Covid, which taught me I could write in a series space as well as in a feature space. Since then, although I’ve shot four or five indies and a few series, it’s been much more about the writing. And adapting novels into screenplays pays better than acting, unless it’s series regular acting! If I hadn’t taken the time to experiment, though, in that time when we were all sent to our rooms for nearly a year? I wouldn’t be where I am now.

Kate, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started acting right around the time I started breathing. But I wanted to be a ballerina. I got my first professional dance job when I was 12, in the chorus of “The Wiz.” I kept doing musicals, eventually in a repertory company, so we were doing three different shows each season. I got tired of musical theatre face. I wanted to work in straight plays, which I did for four years at Vassar. When that was over, all I wanted to do was TV and Film. So I moved to LA 25 years ago, and I’ve been doing that ever since. My first professional job was saying, “I don’t know. I think he went that way?” on CSI. The same day, I got an offer for a series called “Grounded For Life,” because a casting director had seen me in an actor’s workshop the night before, and called me directly. My agent almost dropped me for that. Because she wasn’t in the loop. I said, “I’m calling to PUT you in the loop, and my work just doubled, which means your commission did, so why am I in trouble?” That logic and spirit and has guided me through the whole business. The entertainment industry tends to trade in FEAR. People are taught to stay in their lanes. I’m not into that, especially now where the only work available, is work WE make. I wrote a feature during the Actors Strike. I shot an improv feature (zero dollars, zero payment, zero script, so zero scabbing, folks ) during the Writers Strike. Nobody’s going to do it for you, people so DIfreakin’Y! Two years ago I started Material Girl, because I realized that authors didn’t have the information they needed about Hollywood when their novels were optioned. They didn’t know which agent did what, what they could expect in terms of input; or what their next steps should be. And increasingly, independent producers are approaching authors with the offer of a shopping agreement – a document giving them legal permission to take the novels out to studios and financiers – but only if the authors adapt their work, or have it adapted. Most individual authors can’t afford a screenwriter like me. So I started a company that helps them adapt themselves! I’m kind of like Etsy. I craft the author’s experience based on an their unique needs and wishes.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

The Elevation of the Mundane. That sounds strange, but hear me out. There is an operatic, raging, soaring level of emotion in every day life. At any given moment, someone’s heart is breaking. Someone’s faith is dissipating. Someone is falling in love; someone else is falling out. I do not need a drone, a gun, a space ship, or a zombie, for the story to matter, to grip an audience, to take them on a ride. I’m tired of seeing video games and sci-fi and blood. And I’m doing a hard launch of a return to 70’s filmmaking. Do It Yourself. Gritty. Low-budget ’til it’s not. You know what I’ve been wanting to see? A woman my age in the clutches of a massive depression, and how she decides to cope with it, on her birthday. So I teamed up with a Director I love, Landon Popadic, and we started working on it. We want it to have a Cassavetes energy to it, where THIS is the whole crisis. Not the apocalypse. Not aliens coming to take over. Not even the orange one who’s already taken over. Just a basic, universal, existential crisis in the mind of a human being who can’t handle life. And we’re making it!

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

It’s never being bored. It’s being afraid, sometimes, and unsure, as much as being sure… but it’s ALWAYS having something to do. Whether it’s for a client, for myself – for my own work or my own pleasure. And that’s it, isn’t it? When the thing you like to do off-duty, is just….more of what you like to do on-duty? That’s the biggest reward. That’s the gift: the joy.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.kateorsini.com
• Instagram: @kateorsini
• Facebook: Kate Orsini
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-orsini-016b0212/
• Other: Material Girl: www.kateorsini.com/services-3

Image Credits

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