A year or so ago, I left my comedy agent. There wasn’t some big falling out between us or anything, it was me who pulled the trigger on it and we parted ways on good terms. All it was, was - meaningful paid work opportunities were coming by less and less often, and my emails were taking longer and longer to be responded to. It felt like interest in me as a client had weaned, and I was being hung out to dry a little bit. Plus, the agency had been a small, boutique one when I first joined up, but had recently been acquired by a much larger conglomerate, meaning I’d be rubbing shoulders with such ‘icons’ as Professional Ghoul - Andrew Neil from The Politics Show and GB News. Seeing his viscid horror in the flesh at a BFI schmooze event was enough for me to commit to leaving the agency, confident in the fact that I’d acquired representation before - and that I could easily do it again.
Coming up on nearly two years since then, and I’m still ‘looking’. Every email I’ve sent has either received no reply at all, or has been a ‘now isn’t great - please come back to us after such and such time…’ It’s a bummer, for sure, and doesn’t do much for your ego. As a coping mechanism, you convince yourself that you ‘don’t need an agent’ - that you’ve already built up a good reputation (and good contacts) in the industry, and that actually, it’s better to not have one anyway, because all they do is take a percentage. Then, when you realise that a production company you like doesn’t take unsolicited scripts, you have to eat your words and sit in a dark from for a couple of hours until your migraine goes away.
For me, representation was never so much about the ‘doors it could open’ or the ‘status symbol’ it represented (although those things definitely helped) - it was about having a cheerleader. Someone to support you and go to bat for you - to rally and translate your unique vision to the normies in the production meeting. A rejection then - that implies that that ‘unique vision’ of yours must actually be, well… shit. What if I’m wrong about everything? What if this script idea I have isn’t funny at all, or this book I’ve just spent 2 years writing is a deluded, overly ambitious piece of garbage? Did I just waste 2 years putting my heart and soul into a project when I should have been using that time instead to build up a TikTok account full of short form content that I hate but the public kind of likes - all about how quirky it is to be a trans woman?
Maybe? Maybe I have taken the wrong path towards finding good comedy representation. Maybe my vision of what a career for myself looks like is rooted in the past, and if I was smart I’d be focusing on panel shows, light short form, snarky podcasts or novelty Edinburgh raves. But honestly? No. No one actually wants to be doing that stuff, I’m convinced.
I recently, in one week, received two quite hard hitting rejections for literary representation for the novel I’ve just spent 2 years writing - and although they were very complimentary, the rejection emails did hurt. They made me question every decision I’ve made in the past 2 years. Who the fuck was I to think I could wade into that world? What the hell do I know about writing a book? But now that I’ve had a little bit of time to think it over, I’ve yet again applied the only working coping mechanism that I can… which is: I’m playing the long game here.
Because, if you’re going to be the type of creative who perseveres with actual, truly creative work, you have to tell yourself that. You have to tell yourself that what you’re doing is somehow more than whatever else is currently in vogue, even if you’re wrong about it. I probably am wrong. But the only way to get through and finish projects like that is to hold onto the hope that other people will see it, and have confidence in it, too… eventually.
And it’s hard, because most people won’t. Most people simply will not understand what it is you’re trying to do. What you’re trying to say. You have to not let their rejection be meaningful. They don’t know any better. It might not look like it, because they’re good at putting on a professional front, but they’re more than likely also kicking their legs furiously underwater, trying to keep afloat in turbulent times.
Or, it could just be that they already have one tranny comedian on their roster. One that has a million followers on Tiktok and is fine with self deprecation.
I guess, ultimately, all I’m trying to say is - rejection is hard. It doesn’t feel good, ever. But it doesn’t mean that you are the crazy one. Sometimes it is everyone else who is wrong - as unlikely as it may seem. And now, when I feel really upset or depressed about having an email left unreplied to, or a rejection from a 22 year old comedy agent who has never heard of Nathan Barley - I think about how Kamala Harris must be feeling right now. She just had the biggest rejection imaginable - one from the American People™. And wasn’t she onto something?
I guess, at the end of the day, America just went for someone with ‘more of an online presence’.
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Maybe you should try not being such a cunt to people who actually like you