Tom Lenk
DISCLAIMER: We do not represent SAG/AFTRA or the WGA in any form. The following are individual opinions only. Please see the SAG/AFTRA or WGA websites for current information on the strikes. Read our #UnionStrong Statement here.
In Conversation with Tom Lenk & Kirsten Vangsness
Photography by Yuri Hasegawa
Grooming by Danielle Haxton
Photo Assisting by Z Gregorio
Tom: We have similar sorts of stories. We both grew up here in California. I was in Ventura County. Kirsten where were you?
Kirsten: I was in the Central Valley. I was born in Pasadena, but then I was raised in farm country. I went to Orange County for high school, then to community college until I got grades that were good enough to be able to go to regular school. Then I went to Cal State Fullerton. And you went to UCLA.
Tom: We met we did this play called Book of Liz by Amy and David Sedaris.
Kirsten: You had already been on it, and I came in to do it, and my fiancée at the time, she was having me watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was like, you're not going to believe who’s in this show.
Tom: The show that we were doing was in a 45-seat theater. It's called the Blank Theater.
Kirsten: It doesn’t exist anymore.
Tom: The air conditioning would break every single day, and we would be sweating. The audience would be sweating. It was horrible, we were cramped. And then the show ran for a year and a half, and we were like, what is happening? Because that just has not happened before or since to a black box Hollywood theater-type situation. It was a very rare thing, but we had fun, and then we were in it long enough. People's lives changed. There were breakups, there were beginnings and endings. Then Kirsten, while we were on it, got booked on Criminal Minds.
Kirsten: I had done the pilot. You hear that those things go nowhere. But then they put me in another episode of it and another. By the time it was at the end of that year, it was like, oh, this is my other job now.
Tom: I've been in airports with Kirsten, and she causes a scene. She causes a scene wherever she goes. It's super fun to watch. It's great just knowing that we were sweating in a tiny black box theater, so yeah, I love her.
Tom: We’re working on a [live theater] show now, it’s Kirsten’s, baby, but I'm happy to be in it and helping out with it. It’s called Bits, because it’s specifically raising money for people in our industry affected by the strike. Bits is a brainchild of Kirsten. It's a show where people come in and try out ten minutes of something new.
Kirsten: I’m lucky that I know people like Tom. It's so much fun to watch someone like Tom make something that he's thinking about creating so people get to see this bit of a bigger thing. Tom has actually done this a few times now, and he's generated quite a bit of a stir where people come back. What's so neat is that we are raising money for things.
We're a nonprofit. We're one of the oldest theaters in Hollywood. I'm a company member there. It's completely democratically run, which is tricky, but I think it's a wonderful experiment that blows up in your face all the time. Half of the money goes to the theater, then half the money goes to a charity that needs it. Last month we gave to Alex’s Lemonade Stand, which is cancer research. Then we gave money to the Wildlife Learning Center, which is a place that helps Chapter One schools learn about nature and also helps wild animals that wouldn't survive without the help of this place. We did Kitty Bungalow, which is a feral cat shelter. And, coming up, we're going to do the Entertainment Community Fund, which obviously needs it.
Tom: We’re really excited about this one. The Entertainment Community Fund was originally called The Actor’s Fund. It’s older than SAG and was started as a collection of actors. They started it because there was no union established yet, and it was like how do we protect traveling actors? There used to be a thing back in that time, where hotels would say, no dogs or actors allowed at a hotel. So this fund was combating that from the very beginning. It slowly morphed into supporting actors in the film industry here in Los Angeles, back in the golden days of Hollywood. Then they expanded a couple of decades ago into supporting all people in the entertainment community. Recently, in the last few years, they changed their name to the Entertainment Community Fund. If you can't pay rent, you apply, and you send in your bank statements and whatnot, and you're able to get your mortgage covered for a month or get your rent covered for a month based on your participation in Hollywood and working as part of the greater entertainment community.
Kirsten: We know people that are in a dire place right now, big time.
Tom: Another huge part of it is, obviously, so many crew members have been affected by the strike, and they're supporting in solidarity, and they're not even in positions that are unionized, and they're affected by this. They may not be able to work at all right now. It's really great that this fund is supporting anyone affected, not just actors. There's this idea that actors are all rolling in dough, and there are so many people who are at different levels.
Kirsten: The spectrum is so big. I’m very lucky in that I make my living doing this. I could probably play my cards right and be totally okay for the remainder of my days, which is an incredibly rare situation. And what you should have in any job. The spectrum is a middle class, and we as actors don't have that anymore. So you either have someone like me, who has been in 19,000 episodes of a TV show, or you have everybody else, people that are absolutely recognizable, which means that they've absolutely used their face and their talent to sell toothpaste and whatever, all those commercials that are part of it. And they're not making even the tiniest sliver of money to compensate for that, let alone healthcare. That’s why the strike is so important. And that's why things like the Entertainment Fund are so important. Because we need to dig our heels into the ground about this. This is one of those jobs, we love it so much that we do it for free. And they will try to trick you into thinking that your labor, you shouldn't get paid for it because you love it.
Tom: Most of my work as an actor is going on job interview after job interview that we don't get paid for. You're going on, say, 25 job interviews, and then you finally get the job, right? Normally, someone who had gone on 25 interviews, they'd get the job, and they're like, “Yeah, I'm set for a few years.” For actors, that job lasted maybe one day, maybe a week at most. If you're lucky, like Kirsten, it turned into a whole giant thing.
Kirsten: Well let’s say you were super lucky, and you got to be on four or five episodes of a show. But let's say that show currently is on Hulu. You're not making any other money except for that one week that you worked. And that's it. Everyone thinks you're rolling in it because they saw you in that show a bunch of times.
Tom: When things were on national network television, then you were receiving a check for reruns, and it was a great way to take care of yourself. Doing an episode of television was then an investment in your future earnings.
Kirsten: We're trying to get that back. You know, also, Tom has been on television a bunch of times. So every time you work, because they know that he's going to go in and knock it out of the park, he has a quote. Well, they started a thing where the casting would be like, well, so and so will work for this much, and all of a sudden, they're able to lower your quote.
Tom: Anyone at my level now is working at the bare minimum that they can pay you when it's like, well, I spent many years working up a big resume, and in any other industry, with experience and promotions and raises, you get to earn more.
Kirsten: What ends up happening with this kind of world, it's democracy. It's not just handed to you, we don’t just get given democracy, we don’t just get given workers' rights. That's not how these things work, especially in the arts. It can get confusing when you love it so much. What happened pre-pandemic and during the pandemic is that they started chipping away at it. Everyone said yes because we're grateful for any offer or opportunity. But there's a line. There's a line between that and realizing that, especially during the strike, we're all artists.
When you work for a big corporation, you're a squatter in a fancy house. They give you a lot of money to squat there, and they can kick you out anytime. That's what we're all doing. But the people who own the house aren't the ones decorating it or making it pretty. They’re not the ones adding joy and laughter. I can tell you right now that outside in that picket line, it is a fucking party, right? It's joy abounding. And these rich studios are like, “Why are you guys just laughing?” They're mad because they don't get to play with us. We can make that joy anywhere. Artists can make that joy anywhere, whether you're making nothing or you're making money.
Tom: There's a quote of some famous person saying something like “Would you be happy doing this if I said you'll never get paid to do it?” And if you're like, yes, I want to perform. We're the type of people that, well, I’ll always be performing even when I'm not. Like when I did a play called Tilda Swinton Answers an Ad on Craigslist.
Kirsten: Genius play. It was in Edinburgh, where else was it?
Tom: We did London, New York. I had so much fun doing that. And I said, like, oh, yeah, I will do this. You don't even have to pay me. I would do this every night. The payment in energy from the audience and laughter was so fun and so exciting and so wonderful that I was just like, yeah, I would do this free forever. But then how do we pull this around, with the strike, we're saying, but you have to pay us?
Kirsten: I do think art and commerce are different. I always talk about this, but I think it's something that we always need to highlight.
Tom: I guess we're saying, yes, we're artists, and yes, obviously we do it because we're passionate about it. But when there are people making lots and lots of money from us, we're asking for a small portion of what we deserve.
Kirsten: They’ve taken a two-dimensional image of you and put you on a screen. And now they get to do whatever the heck they want through voice and music and this and that. You’re part of pop culture, you're part of whatever, but also there's a piece of you that kind of gets snatched up by that.
Tom: That’s true. You're taking my image and you're making money off of it.
Kirsten: One of my mom’s friends saw a Criminal Minds game, and bought it. My mom is very bored by the whole Criminal Minds thing of it all in general, but it was funny because she was like, “Well, they wanted to buy it because they thought you’d get a cut of it.” I'm like, I don’t have cut of that because that's just my face that they now own. I'm not complaining an iota, but just a funny thing to think about.
Tom: What are you hoping for after the strike?
Kirsten: I'm hoping for a fair deal with all the regular things that everybody else wants for Christmas, which is, AI protection and residuals, and boundaries around auditions. Because I find the auditioning thing right now very classist.
I also want, in general, more live performance. I want people to go to more live performances. I think my hope for comedy, my own personal hope, is that I'm involved in a lot of it, in a lot of the stuff that I'm making, that I follow through and finish it, which is one of the reasons why I'm doing Bits. I think there needs to be more comedy that makes you laugh and breaks your heart.
Tom: I feel like there's so much value and worth in the live performing community, and there are many great things being created here in LA, such as original comedy, theater, and music. I feel like we really need to spotlight that and celebrate the amazing work happening here. This ties in with the strike and the big industry executives. When they decide to film abroad or in another state to save money, of course, you want as many jobs to be made, and I want jobs in all places to be happening. But at the same time, we are your friends and neighbors that you may or may not be putting out of work.
It’s like how San Francisco is going through a similar situation. People are traumatized because businesses are leaving due to remote work. Restaurants are closing as fewer people go downtown. It shows the chain reaction when a major industry change happens. We should recognize that our friends and neighbors include shop owners, restaurant owners, and waiters who rely on LA's production and entertainment industry. Let's see the value in fair wages and supporting our community.
Kirsten: Yeah, if our culture, if Los Angeles thrives as theater or an entertainment space, it essentially means that we have better libraries, better parks. Everybody benefits from that. And this is our neighborhood, so we want everybody to benefit.
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