debor009

I saw an article at Backstage a few weeks ago ( 4 Sites You Need to Be on Now! ) about using social media. I think it gives good general information, but I also think it misses the real purpose (and benefit) of social media for actors. It's not about the world looking at you (as in a fan page), it's about YOU building goodwill and relationships with those in the industry. Many actors I know bypass FB fan pages, for example, and instead have two FB personal pages: one for family under their birth name and one for colleagues under their professional name. (Yes, FB doesn't like this, but if they enforced single pages for actors they'd be losing a LOT of big name stars.) Why is this important?  Because you can talk to family about politics and religion, but making such remarks to people in the business can cost you work and connections. Examples: I recently found myself waiting in a studio side room with an up-and-coming actor who is currently starring in an action/thriller...

#CapSouth , the new online political comedy about the antics of the Capitol Hill staff of yours truly (as Congresswoman Gracie Todd Englewright) continues to gather media accolades: the Washington Post , Washington Times , Morning Express, Politico (full page spread with photos), RollCall (twice), The Hill, and online at Cynopsis.com 7/9/13 and  Comedy TV is Dead .  Creator Rob Raffety also got a radio interview with CBS radio affiliate WNEW here in DC and a write up in his hometown paper the West Virginia Gazette .  I think that has been more attention than even House of Cards got - at least from the inside-the-Beltway press. "Gracie," by the way, is very media savvy.  She has her own Facebook page for responding to "constituents" and tweets at @HonorableGracie.  Episodes of CapSouth can be found online at YouTube, and I appear (so far) in episodes 2 and 5.  We'll see where this takes us.  Will it prove a hit or be too inside baseball for the rest o...

An actor will take good news wherever he/she can find it, and this is the week my horoscope said my career was going to take off! I know nothing about the movement of the planets but - so far - it's looking pretty darn good! Check out the spread on my new political comedy #CapSouth in today's edition of Politico !  That's me as Congresswoman Gracie Todd Englewright in the photo at lower right, with the statue of former House Speaker Sam Rayburn. The series was created by Rob Raffety , and the cast (playing my Capitol Hill staff) includes NY comic Andrew Heaton , R. Michael Oliver , Allison J. Howard , Naomi Brockwell , Satya Thallam, Chris Mannix, and a host of others. The CapSouth Marketing Team has been working overtime and doing a bang-up job. July 8th spread in Politico

I attended a SAG workshop a couple of weeks ago where a recent arrival from New York City was adamant that an actor’s Klout number was now checked by every casting person in NY and Los Angeles and that it was entering into the decision to hire. I queried my agent about this and she said her talent in LA talked about it a lot. They told her it is a number that tells how well you are doing in the acting business. Famous actors have a large number;  new talent much, much smaller. Actors have to work their way up the ladder, they said - work hard, get great roles - to increase their numbers. The SAG actress who insisted it was a big deal said she had 2,500 Twitter followers and a 28 Klout number, which she said was pretty good. Well I decided to run a test using my Twitter account, because I had until then seldom tweeted anything and had only 4 followers. I started out with an 11 Klout number and within a week had manipulated it up to 31, simply by replying to tweets from large ...