Name: STAR MAKING: LESSONS IN HUMAN CAPITAL FROM A HOLLYWOOD AGENT
Uploaded: 2025-05-21
Duration: 19 min 26 s

Trailblazing Hollywood agent Tracy Christian has shaped the careers of Oscar, Golden Globe, and Emmy winners from the ground up. She’s a master in the art of talent scouting, strategic career development, and negotiating high-stakes deals – all while navigating the unpredictable world of showbiz. Discover how her strategies for advocacy, influence, and resilience in the entertainment sphere reveal real-world lessons in human capital leadership.

STAR MAKING: LESSONS IN HUMAN CAPITAL FROM A HOLLYWOOD AGENT

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Ready. Our next guest of the afternoon works her magic in Hollywood. She's a renowned talent agent who's a left a mark on the entertainment industry. Tracy Christian is founder of TCA Management. She has a keen eye for emerging voices and a sharp instinct for career building. Some of her clients include Octavia Spencer, Elizabeth Moss, and Jeremy Piven. Tracy excels at crafting long-term trajectories and brokering pivotal opportunities. There are skills that can be applied across any industry. And that's why we have her here to talk with us today. Please welcome Tracy, along with Fortune's Ruth Umo to the summit. Very excited for this conversation. Thank you, thank you for joining us. Thank you for fortune, uh, talent Asian. I think I am a star myself, but I think only in my mind. Uh, we're delighted to have you here because obviously there's so many parallels between what you do as a talent agent and what everyone here does, which is attracting and recruiting and supporting and developing talent. So let's jump right into things because one of the many jobs of HR heads, as I said already, is to spot and develop high potential talent. So when you spot someone with that raw star power, what are you seeing that signals that they're worth betting on? Oh God, um, I think really early on when I started my company, I wrote out the things that I thought made a really great agent, a really great client, and I'm looking for those things, right? When I'm, um, when I'm when I'm when I'm being more corporate, I'm looking for those things, but really it's a gut feeling. What I think we all are hoping for is what I call the cocktail party story. You're looking for that person that you met and their resume really was not demonstrative of who they are, but you saw something in there, you saw the carbon that could be pressed into a diamond and worked with them or they, you know, they came into your infrastructure and that's what happened like truly. That's what a star is. So there's an agent that I know, um, very famous named Patrick Weitzel, and I would always tease him about representing Matt Damon. Like Matt Damon is a good looking straight white Harvard grad like, oh it was so hard to tell he was gonna do well. Oh, who knew that Matt Damon would make money, you know, as opposed to, you know, when you look at someone like um. I won't go too esoteric like Linda Hunt. I represented an actor named Michael Kenneth Williams who, if you ever watched a show called The Wire, he was Omar and he was, you know, dark skinned with a scar, a real scar that bisected his face, and it took convincing. You know, to, to, um, convince my colleagues that he had value, the industry that he had value, but once we got him in front of a camera, he just kind of exploded. So I'm sure that's what you're doing too. And if you're investing in your skill set by coming to things like this and you've been doing it a while, I bet your gut is pretty, you know, finely honed, finely tuned, uh, before I ask the next question, I think we're getting a bit of feedback. Oh. my hairstyle. I just wanna make sure that everyone's able to hear you and hear you hear you well. um, do a, do a hair slip there we go. When you are reaching out to talent or signing talents, I'm sure that they're getting a number of shiny offers from other talent agents. What do you think? Why do you think they come to you? What do you think? What is it about you and what you represent that attracts them? Can't you see how fabulous I am. Must you? Must I explain? um. That's a good question, uh. I think it's for me, right? I am so enthusiastic about what I do and how I do it, uh, and I've just, we'll use Michael again. Uh, when I met Michael, he was flying to Los Angeles just to meet with two agencies, William Morris, which is, you know. Very large company I think it's the oldest agency in the Hollywood right now, and I was at a teeny tiny agency called PSA and I just said to him, uh, you know, I'm your agent. Like I, I get it. You're gonna meet at William Morris and they're great, and who's who you're gonna meet over there and they would do a great job for you. They would, but I have the ability to pull your future into the present. I know what it, I know what it is that you need to make you a star, and you'll sit here and you'll tell me that you just want to be a working actor, and that's not true. In your heart of hearts you want to be a nasty, greasy, multi-million dollar polling movie star and you actually have the ability to do that. If you work with me. And um so I feel like, you know, you guys, you're kind of the casting director meets producer meets agent for talent and people are attracted to your company like we're all somewhat I feel like high performers generally are somewhat narcissistic and they want something and they may not voice it. But again, you've got the experience, you know who this person really wants to be and pull that out of them and say, I'm not just looking for, you know, a square to fit in this slot. I'm not just looking to fill this position. I am looking for stars in my industry. And you are one of them. Let's work together to bring out your full potential. And if that means that you're only here 10 years and then you're gonna leave and start your own thing, I can help you with that too. But for now, and I, I think when people see that you are really a cheerleader and you see who they really are, they plug into that and you're off to the races. Let's decode that it factor. Is it born or is it made? I don't know. That's a good, you know, I don't, I don't know, but my dad had an expression called you can't teach height. Right? And we've all met someone who's. Impossibly, you know, charismatic. And I've identified uh kind of things that have happened in actors' lives. Like if you look, you know, if you write down three of your favorite actors and then you look at their history, you will generally find none of them come from like perfect all American kind of families. They have a lot of. Um, drama in their path and they are looking to you know, correct something over and over again in their life. Um, so, you know, do the, do the work to find out what are the high performers, what, what's the background of the high performers in your industry. Yeah, I'm sure that you often uh spot greatness before the person has a proven track record. How do you convince skeptical stakeholders, whether it's studio execs, so I guess in everyone's case here, business leaders, the teams you're hiring for to take a chance on. Talent that hasn't yet really proven itself. It doesn't have that track record yet. Well, I have the track record, so if they don't, what the reason they put me in the position is because I'm a good handicapper, right? So, um. Very, very early on, uh, I had the opportunity to work with a group called Marcy Films, and this was a film company that Jay-Z started. Now Jay-Z was already Jay-Z at the, at that point, right? So it wasn't like, you know, I saw him when he was in high school or something, but um. I was going around Hollywood and, you know, saying, oh I got Jay-Z and and everybody, the first thing that they thought is, oh great, I have this project and we'll put Jay-Z in the project and you know, and I said, let me tell you, Jay-Z cannot act. Daisy cannot act and they'd be like, well how do you know? Did he know, I just, I've been dealing with actors enough that he I know he can't act and he probably doesn't want to act. I said, but. I would never bet against this man. Ever. And I, and I'd say again, I use my cocktail party story. I said, you want to be the person, well, here's who you don't wanna be. You don't wanna be at the Vanity Fair party talking about you have the opportunity of doing this documentary with Jay-Z who was not married to Beyonce yet, um, to be in business with this person, and you said no. Or to produce this with this person, and you said no. And And I just convinced people that, you know, in Hollywood that he was more than, you know. A multi-platinum rapper that he was, uh, I'm not gonna quote his lyrics but you know that he was a businessman right that everybody that you should feel lucky to have access to you're gonna be telling that story one day or and here's another story. So my one of my clients and good friend, she owned a management company called Violator and um one of her clients was a young Curtis Jackson, 50 Cent. So I talked to 50, so I was like not really repping him but kind of repping him, and I spoke to 50. His album hadn't come out yet and uh I was calling around different casting directors. I've got this, you know, um, young rapper. I really believe in him and you have time to sit down with him and no one in Hollywood. was interested in meeting him. And except one show, Sabrina the Teenage Wolf, I mean teenage teenage, uh, which, which. So he went in and he met the casting director for Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and uh the casting director later called me and said that was the most charming man I've ever met in my life. Like he had on some, you know, big chain, but he came in and he was like super nice to the ladies and he put the chain on them and they took, you know, *** are like. You know, 50 year old white women that live in the valley, so, so you know they took pictures with them and he told everybody his story about how yep he'd been a drug dealer and then he'd been shot so many times and there was a bullet still in his jaw and how he had to teach himself to talk again and. And people were just captivated, you know, by him, and I, and I said to folks, OK, so this album is gonna come out in February and life will never be the same, and you'll be telling your grandkids that you hung out with 50 Cent, which is exactly what happened. And then when I, I have those stories, the next time I call about someone, they get in with no question, right? And again, that's what all I think that's what you have to do in your infrastructure. Uh, you said that high performers, top performers, uh, are a bit narcissistic, uh, certainly in the corporate world, sometimes the top performers can also be the most difficult. So how do you manage brilliant but difficult and challenging personalities oftentimes very ego driven. You know what, I look to um sports, and I'm not like a big sports person, but I look at what it takes to command respect from someone like Michael Jordan. Like if you're Michael Jordan's coach, you know. You still have to coach. You can't just say, OK, uh, we're playing today and give the ball to Michael. Alright, you know, right, right. You still have however many other people on the team. So that goes into my relationship with the talent. I got to have some idea of who they really are and what they really want. And it's never as simple as more money, a title. There's something else that makes them tick. There's somewhere else that they want to go and you pivot them, you continue to pivot them. You're gonna tell them and like the way to success is a team. And it's true. Nobody gets anywhere alone. Michael Jordan, arguably the best basketball player in the history of the game, but if Scottie Pippen wasn't on that team, if, um, what's the other guy with the hair, yeah, thank you. Dennis Rodman wasn't doing his thing and I don't know who else was on the team, you know, I know the coach. I, I was gonna say the coach's name is Phil something, right? Yeah, OK. Oh, this is very interactive, right. So if there wasn't that alignment, Michael Jordan would still be Michael Jordan. He'd still be amazing, but, but with that team, he's unbeatable. He's like kryptonite to every other team in the league. So when you have your Superman or your superwoman, you're telling them, I'm. Holding the Avengers around you, right? You might be Superman, but even Superman has Kryptonite. So we need a Wonder Woman who can lasso that Kryptonite and get it away from you. We need, uh, you know, Batman, no, not Batman, he's um DC. You know what's the other, Ben Affleck. Oh, he's Batman. Yeah, Batman. OK, so you need, uh, so you need him who can afford everything. I feel like the Avengers would all be on welfare if it wasn't for Batman. But right, you need that team and part of what you're gonna do for this person is build a team around them so that they can be at their best they can be a success and you tell them, OK, so here's what's gonna happen you're gonna start I'm gonna start you in this department and you're gonna hate it because this person is head of the department and they are micro. Many and you can come in here and bitch and complain, but you're staying on this team, staying on this team for 3 years. Why? Because after 3 years this is what it's gonna look like on your resume and blah blah blah and then I'm gonna promote you to this position and here's what you're gonna learn here. Whatever it is that they want, you're gonna kind of um road map for them how you can get them to the position that they, they want to get to. And when you tell them what's gonna happen and how it's gonna happen when you have another uh company that comes in and tries to steal that key employee, that person is gonna say. Tracy told me that was gonna happen. She said after I got that series regular on the TV show that CAA was gonna call me and if I was stupid or if I just want the fast money that I could go there. But if I want this thing that nobody knows about, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, play this out and I can't tell you how many of those stupid. I've gone to like the client comes in they're like, well, hey, you know, I see him. Yeah, but I told you I see him was gonna, yeah, you did, you did. I'm just calling. I'm just, we're having dinner because I wanted you to know that it's happening and I'm not going anywhere, but you know I'm gonna stick to you stick with you, Tracy, but if such and such doesn't happen in two years, like you said it like uh shut up and eat your meatballs. I wanna quickly jump here and take one audience question. We do have mic runners. Any questions from the audience, raise your hand and the mic runner will come to you. Anyone, right, I'll end with this question, um, because it's over now, because to your point, uh, you know, when, especially as they become more, uh, popular, um, they rise and, and acquire more star power. I'm sure that there are other agents who are looking at them reaching out, sliding in the DMs as Gen Z calls it. So how do you, uh, kind of establish that loyalty and build. Attention with your with your clients. To me, one is all about that pivot. You usually people will act as like I said, especially your high performers, they're gonna act in their own self-interest. And if you can show them that you know how to get where they want to go, that you have that roadmap, people will normally act in their own self-interest, which means to stay with you. It's not 100%. It's and people have a lot of damage that you can't correct from your office, but normally. If you pivot them, if you let them know that you know how to get them where you wanna go, they wanna go, and then if you can even support them even outside of your infrastructure. You know, because maybe their idea is, hey, I want to open the same kind of company. All right, great. So you're not the person who's gonna work for the company for 30 years, get a gold ring, and retire. That's fine too, but I need you in this position for 3 years. And if you give me that 3 years, I'll introduce you to such and such and such or I'll make, I'll help you attain that dream. Certainly a lot of parallels set at the top of the conversation, uh, with what all the people in this room are doing uh as it pertains to human capital and talent. So thank you so much, Tracy for you for having me. This was fun. He's gonna come help you. Uh, all right, you all may be familiar with the hit series Severance, the sci-fi drama on Apple TV with a cult-like following. It's set in Lumen Industries, a company that surgically splits employees' consciousness into two distinct beings a work self known as an innie and a personal life self known as an Audi. All of this is happening in a dystopian future.