Our guest today is many things. First of which is an accomplished actor. You've seen her in TV shows like Mad Men and Jag, movies like One Moment with Danny Aiello. She's also a teacher, a producer, a writer, a coach. She does it all, and she's for a long time she's been helping actors to hone their craft with greater confidence and greater authenticity. Please welcome to the VOPro podcast. Our guest today, the lovely and brilliant Adria Tenner. Hi, Adria. Hi. How are ya? I am well. How are you? I'm well. I've been looking forward to this for uh a few weeks now. We've been trying to get this on the on the schedule and uh super excited to talk to you. I realized and I think uh we we chatted a couple of weeks back, a few weeks back, and I mentioned that I had seen your work and not even known it because I was a huge fan of Mad Men back in the day. So uh obviously you've you've got a lot of T V and movie credits. You're an accomplished working actor. Uh, and have been doing it for a minute. How in the hell did it all start? Did you choose acting? Did it choose you? I my grandma took me to see Annie at the Fisher Theater in Detroit when I was six. And then that was it. I just wanted to do that. My mom thought I was gonna grow out of it. I was so she's still sorry now that she didn't take me downtown to to the auditions. she feels like she stunted my Career that I would be further along. Um, but yeah, I just wanted to do that. Um, did all the the the theater in high school. I even found a mentorship program because I really wanted to learn how to direct. I never wanted to be just that actor that came and stood on their mark and said their lines. I wanted to be involved in the whole storytelling process, movie making, uh, whatever, content creating process of that. Um, So yeah. So I I learned some directing even in high school and that I think really helped me get into a a college. I I went I went to NYU and it was just a fantastic experience. I was accepted as a director. They actually asked me to stop uh and sit down during them during my monologue portion of the audition. But when I like sat with them and showed them that I directed these two plays and especially when I said, Oh, and I really like Ibsen, they were like, Oh, hmm. So um yeah, and then that's it. I just have always wanted to do it in order to to make it through the the hoops as a director. W I also had to take acting classes. So I took all of the classes that the actors were taking, plus my directing and producing classes. And I think I realized that it was haughty enough. To say at twenty two that I'm an actor because you have to have so much life experience in order to portray true life. I just felt more comfortable. So that is how I started as as an actor. I didn't do any directing until a lot later. But So was it was it Annie? Was it NYU or some point in between where this went more from something that you enjoy to something like, I've got to deep into my bones, I've got to do this. I think I think it was Annie. I really think like that was it, like, oh, that's what I'm here for and that's what I'm going to do. and it just was confirmed over and over again throughout my life. We all sort of uh kick the can, voice actors included. Uh we all learn hard lessons. We all have days where we're not the windshield, we're the bug. Uh what would you say was the hardest lesson that you had to learn or maybe one that you had to learn over and over and over again, either as an actor or as a director? I think one of the things that I learned the hard way was, you know, my parents, when I got out of college, they really wanted me to make money, obviously. Like that's what it they were worried that that wasn't what was gonna happen. And I got a great job at an amazing restaurant in I was in New York at the time called the River Cafe. Uh I was checking coats and I they told me that if I worked full time, I could get health insurance. And then shortly after that, I met Maria Bello, who wasn't Maria Bello at the time. and she was doing a play. Spike Lee was producing, and she wanted to give me the lead in the play. And I said, You know what, I can't I can't do that because the play's gonna be at night and I have to go check coats in order to get my health insurance. And so I didn't do that play. There was other things. There was a casting director who met me who was like, You're really talented. You need to learn how to audition. Michael Shirtliff is teaching probably what will be his last audition workshop. You should go take it. And I was just like, I just got out of NYU. I just spent all this money and I am not gonna go take this class. So I didn't take the class. And Michael Shirtliff is now like the bones of what I teach, you know? Like I I can't believe I didn't get to work with him. Um I I remember reading Audition when I was in high school. I like I I consumed that book, Adria. Like I I like I soaked it into my bones. So when you say the name Michael Shirtliff, my God, it takes me back. That's very very cool, but very sad that you didn't get to take that course. Yeah, like t bo open go through the open doors. I think that's like the the biggest biggest lesson I learned. And then I think like the hardest thing it has been for me to learn is to accept who I am, what I am, and use that. That that is the goal, that I don't have to be anybody else. And and I think like my my battle with my nervousness has been ongoing. And I feel like it is just recently that I have really and I don't know, it's probably gonna come back and be like, uh we're not through yet, lady. But to really understand that nerves are actually our friends. They are part of us. They make us human, especially in this day and age of AI where everything's so freaking fake. We wanna see sweat. Like it makes us go, and we we we feel it's so relatable. And the other thing about nervousness is that it gives us this this insane natural human carbonation. It makes us alive. And if if we're over here, hi, I do this all the time, trying to stamp it down, it's like it's like it's like just like working like exactly opposite of what we want to be doing. We want to be coming from our authentic Place and instead of judging, like, that's not where I should be. No, like just accepting, like, okay, this is where I am. This is my gold. This is what I have to give. Like, this is me. That's so valuable. The author, uh Simon Sinek, has a great quote about that. He says, What happens when you get nervous? Well, your heart races, your you sweat a little bit, your palms get moist. What happens when you get excited? Well, your heart races, your palms sweat a little, you're right, well, just the same thing. And so it's really just kind of a mindset shift. Well, am I nervous or am I excited? Auditions have changed. We don't have to go in person. So there's not that that nervousness as much to deal with. I mean, if you're testing for a show. But I think sometimes your your clients must have to go in person to tape something in a in a s in a studio. And that can be a place where people, you know, nerves crop up and Well And I think that happens more now than maybe it did a few years ago because going in, unless you're in New York or LA, uh, I'm in Richmond, Virginia. So I go into a studio that is not mine maybe a couple times a month, if that. And I notice that the less you go, the more nervous you get because you're a little bit out of your element now, right? It's not like you're, you know, you're not going twice a week anymore. Now you're going maybe twice a month and You spend more time building relationships and you know, it just takes a little longer to find the pocket, I think. Speaking of that, um we all know actors that uh, you know, do it for years and and just spin their wheels. They're never really able to get past the survival job thing. You had the restaurant early on, uh, and we're able to, you know, progress past that at some point. What is it about actors? Some get stuck, some take off. Is there some science to that or is it all just fate and luck and the big break? I'm writing things down so I don't forget because I want to say all these things. Um first of all, I think that the moment that I came to terms with my day job and that it like I didn't look at it as jail, and part of that was that I I got when I got to LA, I got to work at Campanile restaurant, which is was sorry, it's not even open anymore. It was owned by Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton and Manfred Krinkle. And these people were just so supportive of everybody that worked there, especially Nancy. She came to see everything I did. sh she threw me a party when I booked my first big guest star. She f she cooked for my friends. I mean like she's like a world class famous chef. So anyway, that was like a big lesson was to see this person who wasn't threatened by her employees, you know, wanting having other endeavors. Um, the other thing that I I can't I can't doubt that that environment attracted the most amazing customers. And I built my resume. I built my my first credits, big credits, friends. Um what I'm sorry, cross crossing Jordan. Like I got those jobs because I waited on those producers, those writer producers. And I saw them every week. This was the kind of place where they would come every week because it was just that that kind of vibe. And I got to know them and they got to know me and care about me and wanted to help me. And so that's how I got like my first list of credits. Well, and I think the other lesson in there is relationships. Right. You built relationships with these people that led eventually to work. Yeah. Yeah. I just rel remembered Ira Ungerleiter, who was one of the writers on Friends, met him there. He just cast me in something recently, just said, Hey, we're doing this little thing. Will you come and just do this thing? Like j that's it. Like that's and that was I'm gonna say it was so embarrassing, but that was 30 years ago I met I met Ira. Um, okay, and then the other thing is. Make your own work. I I think like there are actors that take off because they have, you know, parents in the business. They're they're they're they start when they're five and they've been building their career and they're young and beautiful. Fine. Sometimes that happens. But I feel like the actors that like come from nothing and start maybe later in life are the ones that like that make their that for me, that was how I escalated my my career. I was working at Campanilla. I wasn't meeting all those people. And then I wrote a a solo show that Nancy came to see and was like telling everybody about. And that really launched my career. All all these casting people saw that. That's how I got mad men is Laura Schiff and Josh Einsen. I I mean I can't I can't say that's like, you know, they told me that, but they came to see me in this show that I wrote and then I got an audition for Mad Men. So You know what I mean? Like I just have willed my career into existence and it also makes me happier, you know, when even even when there's auditions coming in, those are those can be like vacuous. But when I'm writing something that I care about and it's mine, it just it just makes me a a better Person, actor, I I I don't feel I think I don't feel so needy, like I need this job. Like it's because I got this other thing that I really care about. So I I can't stress that enough. It's fantastic idea. I'm thinking of a colleague uh named Alison Cossett who uh has written several now audio dramas because she took your advice, right? Like not knowingly, she does I don't think she knows you, but you know, she took the advice that you just talked about, which is write your own work, right? Make your own work. I feel like she might have written to me. She's very successful in the audio trauma world. So props to to Alison. And yeah, I think that's I think that's fantastic advice. We mentioned at the open that you wear a bunch of different hats. You're writer, director, actor. Um and I'm also interested, maybe because I am one, in the coach aspect. What uh what is it about coaching? That gave you a different perspective on acting when you started to teach it rather than just be taught it. So em I love this uh idea or mindset. That the subconscious does not know the difference between you and anyone else. Everyone else is really a mirror for us to see ourselves. So for me, coaching is like. coaching myself. I'm learning at the same time. I'm I'm I'm I'm tell and I'm also boosting myself and I'm I'm I'm giving myself the pet talk that I'm giving to these people and I can see their path so clearly. It's so I feel like it's harder to see your own path. Um yeah I just there there's a there's a kid in in one of my classes who just wants to do theater. I mean he wants to do, you know, he wants to be Robert De Niro, but he's living in Missouri and he's primed to do theater. And I'm helping him figure out how to do that. And at the same time, I'm like, this is not a bad idea right now when the when the film and TV industry is like con con contracting and and and basically non existent. Um anyway, yeah, I just feel like it's so it so benefits both sides. I I I have to agree with you because I notice it obviously I I coach on the business side, which is different than the performance side, but all the content I create, all the courses, all of the videos, like people think I'm talking to them. I'm talking to me. Right? Like my my newsletter are usually reminders that I need myself. You mentioned earlier uh auditions and how they've they've changed. I'm curious about this fr as a as a voice actor. and as somebody who's not in one of the two major media centers in America, uh for on camera, how much has the audition process changed? How different is it since COVID? So before COVID, I got an agent in Louisiana and that's how I that's how we did it. Like that's how she all most of her clients, because it was she was representing an area of the southeast. So people were uh coming from Texas. There's a there's something called a regional hire, which is they will put you up, but you get yourself there. So, like if you're within a five, five hundred mile radius that they feel like, okay, you can drive to set. Um, so I was already taping. It's just, I feel like like it's so nice that the rest of the freaking metropolises have embraced this and understand. I know there are a lot of actors that that don't like this new thing, that they have to be basically filmmakers. This new thing being self-taping you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, which I guess is a little bit different for my, you know, on camera stuff. And we have it in in the voiceover world too, Adria. People say, well, you know, I I did this twenty-five years ago and I'm getting back into it, and I think it's really awful that I have to be my own engineer now. Well, you're allowed to think whatever you want to think, but the reality is the world has changed and it is what it is now. So You either get on board or you don't. I think the economics of the the business, you know, we used to have three networks, right? We used to have three networks. So if you did a commercial, it would it would air on those three networks. If you did a show, it would so all the eyeballs were that was very valuable real estate. Now the the real estate is just it's it's it's the it's just huge. You know, we have the eyeballs are very fragmented. And so when you do one thing It's not not very many people see it. Not as many people see it as when you did something on CBS, you know, 30 years ago. It's just not the way it works. I think that's true, but also I feel like in some ways, there's a a a newer golden age of television going on because the quality of stuff that's being produced, and honestly, I look back at Mad Men as one of the first series Mad Men and the Sopranos, to really sort of Bring film quality, writing, production, and acting to television. And I feel like that's where a lot of the great work is being done now. And especially since COVID, which made us, for better or for worse, more reticent to go out into a big crowd in a movie theater anymore. Right? So I don't do you agree or disagree with that? Like it there seems like there's this thing, like on one hand, the industry seem seems to be shrinking, but on the other hand, like there's a lot of great work being done. Yeah, I mean I do think that like Mad Men spurred this season of beautiful, beautiful television. And then the strikes happened, uh, the fires happened. So they've the fi they figured out how to make content, how to shoot it in different places, which I think is a bummer, you know, for me. I'm in uh I'm in the United States, I'm in California. A lot of stuff's being shot in Canada and and Canadians, they don't they don't want us to work there. Nothing against Canadians. I'm happy that they've got some some work, but it's it does I'm I'm trying to figure that out myself. Like how do we how do we do that? You know, how do we b because everything is so spread out now, how do we how do we make a living doing this if we if we if we can even do that? Yeah. Uh we talk a lot uh in our community and on this channel on this podcast uh about mindset. And as a as an acting coach, I'm curious as to what you think is maybe the the biggest story, the biggest piece of bullshit, the biggest limiting belief that actors tell themselves and how do they overcome that? How do they manage that? How do they get past it? I think people think that there's cock blocking and nepotism and Ageism and yeah, if you're not like a twenty five year old white guy, that there's no place for you in this business. And I have to say over and over and over again, people people that are not those things to do do it. I was told That actors cannot create their own TV show and have it be successful. And then, and so I believed that. And then we had Atlanta. And then we had Pamela Adlon and my crazy ex-girlfriend. That was like literally a year after someone told me, like, you can't, you can't do that. Don't waste your time. Anyone telling you you can't do something, and especially if it's your own self. They're they're wrong. They are wrong. So the old Henry Ford quote, whether you think you can or you can't, you're right. Yes. Right? Yep. Uh we've talked about you uh as an acting coach. Uh I know you have a wonderful program called Casting DNA. I love the name. Thank you. Tell us how you got the name and tell us a little bit about casting DNA. So I was trying to figure out well, the the name just comes from, I feel like We are programmed. We have a DNA about us. I um the first job I ever got W the way I got my SAG card was playing a 12-year-old boy. I was twenty-two, was playing a 12-year-old boy in a Hal Hartley movie. I d I didn't get the footage from that film for two years. This is so valuable for actors, right? Like they're freaking footage. I didn't I didn't have an iPhone and I didn't have a way to shoot my own sh shit. Um, and then when I got that footage, I marched around town to all these casting people and and agents. And I would call them a week later. Like literally, like we're talking VHS, right? Like, hi. Yeah. and what every single time I would follow up and they'd say, but you dropped off the wrong tape. It's you, it's it's it's two men. There's it's just two you you this isn't you. I'm like, No, that is me, that's me. I'm working with all these young actors who are showing me their footage, you know. And At the beginning of this of this journey, uh we're we we are grasping like anything. We're we're we're getting like these little one-line co-stars. And then I look at these reels, and mine included, you know, not not so much now, but like there was just this little string of these weird random clips that I've been able to garner, you know. So the other thing that's happening is casting directors are telling actors to put their own. self-tapes up on their on their profiles, on their casting profiles. Um so then I thought, well, okay, wait a second. Wait a second. If we're gonna do that, like let's be intentional about this. Let's figure this out. And I know actors hate prototypes, you know, I'm I'm me. But um you know what? I'm sorry. This is a shorthand we use. When I get a breakdown for a commercial, it nine times out of ten says we want an A polar type. We want a Kristen Wick type. That's just what the shorthand is. So we we we Like don't fight that. Figure out who your your prototypes are. And then we go down a a beautiful rabbit hole of material. So if you're gonna put your own material that you can now make and there's there's an exact corollary in voiceover because, you know, we get specs in. They may they may have, you know, Morgan Freeman, uh Le you know, Lev Schreiber, uh Alec Baldwin, whoever it might be. And as you say, it's it's shorthand. They're not looking for an impression. They're looking for the essence of that actor's personality, for what they bring to the machine, right? Uh or what they bring to the microphone. So there's an absolute one-to-one corollary there. And that's why I'm interested in this casting DNA sort of idea that what it sounds like to me is that you're you're you're looking at the audition process as it exists today. Not as it existed five or ten years ago and trying to teach to that. Is that is that accurate? Right. Well, the audition process and the the the vetting process, the the selection process. I mean, in order to get agents, in order to get auditions, you really have to have footage. So for you for you guys, it's your your audio demo reel. For us, it's a it's a, you know, visual demo reel. So if you're gonna do that, let's really be specific. And have everyone thinks like, oh, you know, we want to be able to play everything. It's actually not super helpful for for casting or for especially for an agent. Like they want to see what you are. They want they they want to they want, they need the the shorthand of like, hey, this is who I am, this is what I do best. Great to like put on the other stuff, but like let's really get specific about who you are and what you do best. And then let's create a beautiful demo. If you don't have that footage already, let's create that footage. So you're telegraphing exactly who you are and what you do. What you do. But think I think it's uh it's probably uh that's where the there may be a bigger difference. In voiceover, we tend to do a lot of different genres, more so than uh than on camera. Uh and because I think overall the voice is more pliable, more I don't want to say manipulatable, but I think more people can do more things with their voice than they can physically and bring that to the the their physical presence to the camera as well. Right. Well, yeah, I think that when we see something, it it it it adds a whole other layer on top of that. So Adria, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for spending your time with us today and for being so generous to our audience, because we mentioned casting DNA, you have a special offer. For folks that are watching and listening. That's very cool. What uh would you be so kind as to let them know what that might be? Yeah, let me let me remember the the thing. Well, I'll tell them what it is and then you we can both tell them how to get it. Uh we can do it. So we'll put this in the show notes and uh description, but you can go to Adria Tenner, that's T-E-N-N-O-R dot com. slash vo pro to get that offer. Again, that's adria tenor.com slash VO pro to get fifty dollars off of casting DNA. You are an absolute delight. Thank you so much for spending your time and your expertise with us today. Thank you so much. This has been lovely. I'm I love talking to you. Thank you. uh Adria Tenner, everybody, thanks so much.