This year marked a turning point for us here at Actors With Issues. We hit 200 episodes. We launched this very website. We started creating content exclusive to our YouTube channel. We reached 500 subscribers on our YouTube channel. We reformatted the show to better reflect our roots of being a mental health/career advice podcast instead of being all about promotion. And by us, I mean me, of course. I’m a one-man operation here. Of course, I do hope that I can take this platform to a place where I am able to have a proper team: some additional writers, an editor, a talent booker, etc. But until then, it’s just you and me, reader! So let’s take a moment to look back at our origins and at this momentous year for our little show.
Actors With Issues was an idea from 2019 for a podcast where I’d “talk shop” with my actor friends and colleagues that I hoped to launch back in November of that year. At the time, I was working a part-time job that was practically full time, writing articles and television reviews as a freelance journalist, working as an extra on film & TV sets from time to time, and auditioning semi-regularly for acting jobs. I was so exhausted from working 50+ hours a week that the last thing I wanted to do was come home and have to muster up the energy and focus to conduct an interview, and then edit and promote it. So the show’s launch was put on hold.
When the COVID-19 pandemic practically shut down the entire planet in March 2020, I finally had the time and energy to start this idea back up again. My first guest was my dear friend and fellow actor Alec Tincher. We talked about auditions, bookings, industry misconceptions, mental health, and how we were handling being stuck at stay home and keeping our creativity alive and sanity intact. After that first episode, I was so incredibly excited with how it turned out that I reached out to a bunch of actor friends and colleagues to come on the show. Before I knew it, we hit double digits. 10 episodes just a few months in! Then 25! Then 50, and the big 100. By that point, I went from chatting up friends with a handful of credits to interviewing actors who had starring roles in TV and film, some of whom I’d been watching on screen for years!
I started collaborating with talent publicists who would pitch me their clients, or I’d make requests, and we got some fantastic guests on our show in the process. This year, we earned nearly 6,200 podcast listens and 34,000 YouTube views. It’s down about 25% from last year; not bad considering productions were shut down for nearly 200 days due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike. Due to the strikes, actors were not allowed to promote any of their work that was part of a struck company: major studios like 20th Century, Warner Bros, Disney, Paramount, most streaming services, etc. So I had to adapt and improvise. I began interviewing more and more actors from the Broadway community. I think I saw more theatre in 2023 than I have in the last 10 years of my life. Some Like It Hot; The Cottage; Here Lies Love; Good Night, Oscar; Here We Are; Parade; A Doll’s House; Shucked; Kimberly Akimbo; The Play That Goes Wrong and Chicago. This was such a rewarding experience because, actors and aficionados know, there is nothing like seeing live theatre.
The turning point I alluded to earlier was my overall feelings toward my three and a half years of podcasting efforts. Over the years I have hit some snags and low points, wondering if this was all worth it as I saw listenership/viewership plateau or decline, sending dozens of emails a month with rejections or no response at all, or only getting 5-8 minutes and try to turn that into a podcast meant to be half an hour. But all of this became a reminder that, like an acting career, a pursuit in any creative industry is a marathon and not a sprint. I never expected this podcast to blow up overnight, or even within the first couple of years. I knew it’d be hard work, but with the 4 year mark just a few months away, I’m not sure exactly what I expected. All in all, running Actors With Issues has been an incredibly rewarding experience and after 200 episodes, I have no intention of stopping.
We already have great guests lined up for January 2024. Upcoming guests include:
Sam Stiglitz, former Casting Director, current Acting Coach
Jacqueline Piñol, Rio Morales in Spider-Man: Miles Morales
Ava Cantrell, Abigail in new horror film Abigail
Graham Campell, Appropriate on Broadway with Sarah Paulson and Corey Stoll
John Markland, founder and acting coach The Markland Studio
And many more! Stay tuned!
