During my days lliving in Los Angeles, I worked for a couple years at a small, but very well-respected, talent agency. The agency represented a variety of talent, mostly character actors and a few big-names everyone knows, although not necessarily “A-list” stars. My old boss had been around the business a while, and back in the 70s and 80s, she was responsible for discovering lots of great talent. But in the mid-90s, during a period when it was virtually impossible to break new talent into big-time stardom if you weren’t one of (at the time) the big four agencies (CAA, ICM or William Morris, and the then still small but growing UTA). Because of the natures of packaging for TV and casting major motion picture leads before casting directors would even necessarily be involved in the full process, it just became that much harder for a small agency to find major lead roles for unknowns clients no matter how talented they were.
As I mentioned, my old boss had a great eye for finding talent, and during my time there, we had several clients who I knew were starts just waiting to happen. One example is Naomi Watts. She was a client who had it all: she was young, beautiful, incredibly talented and every time she would audition, we would hear great feedback. And from a personal perspective, she was one of the nicest, most genuine clients we had. But we just couldn’t get her in to producers and directors early enough in the process. Our big hope at one time aws when she got cast as the second lead in Tank Girl, an adaptation of a really popular underground comic book that starred Lori Petty, who at the time was still hot off her performances in A League of Their Own and Free Willy. Unfortunately, the movie sucked, and it definitely didn’t help Naomi’s career at all.
Naomi eventually changed her management team, including her agency representation, and we all know what has happened to her since, culminating in her very deserved Oscar nomination this year for 21 Grams. In all the years since I started working in in and around the film industry, I haven’t been as happy for anyone as I was (and continue to be) when Naomi finally started finding success and being the star that I always knew she was going to be.
I mention this now because I think it’s about to happen again. Another client (of the ingenue type) we represented during my time at this agency was Fay Masterson. Fay was another young, beautiful, very talented actress — also British but able to do a flawless American accent — who just wasn’t getting the chance to prove herself in big parts. You might recognize her from Mel Gibson’s directorial debut, The Man Without a Face. She also had a role in The Quick and the Dead (a pre-Spider-Man western from director Sam Raimi most notable to me for being the first time I saw Russell Crowe) and the great Stanley Kubrick cast her in Eyes Wide Shut. But in both cases, a lot of her performance wound up on the cutting room floor. Over the past several years, she’s appeared in several low-budget and indie films, but not really anything of note. She did appear as the villain in the two-hour movie of what was to be The WB’s attempt at creating a series of The Lone Ranger starring current One Tree Hill heartthrob Chad Michael Murray, but if I were her, I wouldn’t be using that on my reel.
She has a couple other small films finishing-up, but the reason I’m smiling for her today is that per The Hollywood Reporter, Fay will be joining the cast of ABC’s planned spin-off of The Practice starring James Spader.
I used to be a huge fan of David E. Kelley, especially of the late, great series Picket Fences. I enjoyed both Ally McBeal and Boston Public before they each became completely absurd, and in it’s first couple seasons, I regularly thought The Practice was one of the best shows on TV. But it lost me last season, and I stopped watching. I tried again at the beginning of this season, but the love was gone. I hear Spader has brought a fresh and interesting touch to the series, but it’s obvious by ABC’s decision to spin-off that character that they too had decided the series had run its course even if they could still run separately with the character.
ABC has a lot counting on this spin-off though, and chances are it will make it to the schedule and be supported. I hope that’s the case. And I’ll definitely give it a chance, if only because it’s long past the point in time when Fay Masterson should be a household name. Hopefully, this spin-off will be a catalyst to making that happen.
Congrats Fay!!!!
Out of Focus 