A Casting Vet on Hollywood’s Infrimeting Embrace of InfluenCers and The Challenges of Starting Over

“We’ve Decides to Go in A Different Direction.”

It was a line TESS SANCHEZ UTERTEN INTEN IN HER Job As a High-Powered Casting Director, First At the WB and Later at Fox; THEN, IN THE FALL OF 2020, that Same Phrase Was Used on Her As Her Boss Revealed The Network Was Doing Away with Her Position, ENDING A 20-YEAR CAREER OVER ZOOM. Sanchez Detailed All of It in Her Recently Published Collection of Essays, Approprrialy Titled We’re Going in A Different DirectionWHICH She Discussed with Moderator Ali Wentworth, Herself An Author As Well As An Actress, Producer, Podcaster and Comedian, At East Hampton’s Hedges Inn In Early July.

The Lively Talk Kicked Off A New, Weekly Conversation Series That Inn – Now Under The SteWardship of Andrew and Sarah Wenhall, Known for Revitalizing The Colony Hotel in Palim Beach – Is Bill. Curated Selection of Guests and Luminaries for Engaging Discussions, Inspiration Demonstrations, and Community-Driven Activations. ” On this evolution, Guests from the Worlds of Entertainment, Literature, Fashion and New York Society convened in the home Gwyneth Paltrow and Husband Brad Falchuk Dining on the Patio Above.

Once It Became Clear That Sanchez Wasn’t Going to Share Salacious Stories from The Casting Trenches – Something She ALSO DECLINES TO DO IN THE BOOK Sanchez’s Professional Rise and Fall, The State of Hollywood Broadly and Casting Specifically, and Her Relationship with her Husband, New Girl an The Neighborhood Star Max Greenfield. (Thought Greenfield Was Not in Atendance As He’s Currently Shooting An Adam Sandler Comedy in Nearby New Jersey, He Did Get Pet Plenty of Airtime.)

As Sanchez Details in the Book, She First Met Greenfield at An La Bar in the Early Aughts, Back WHEN HE WAS STILL A HARD Partying, Aspiration Actor and She A Young Casting Exec. And Thought their Earliest Days Were Arguably Rom-Comity, He’d Ultimately Spiral Into Addiction, Entering Rehab Dringing A Brief Hiatus in Their Now Decdes-Long Relationship. Sanchez Suggests She Saw No Value in Keeping The Latter a Secret, Particularly Given Her Husband’s Success. Greenfield Has Been Sober Since 2006. What’s More, Her Husband’s Sobriety Journy Caney Can serve as “A Cautionary Tale,” Particularly for Their Two Children.

Greenfield Had Given His Wife His Blessing, Too – Thought She Jokes He Wasn’s Handied A Manuscript To -Over Over Uver Was Too Late In The Process To Make Significant Changes. To Her Relief, He Read It and Had None to Offer. He Even Agreed to Write the Introduction, Introducing Himself to Readers As “Mr. TESS SANCHEZ.” His Manager, Jason Weinberg, Had Been Enlisted as A Reader ConsiderBly Earlier in the Process. In Fact, Sanchez Credits Him with the All-Important, Initial Assurance That She Had A Book On Her Hands. Weinberg, who’d attached ther Superman Premiere with Client David Corenswet in La The Evening Before, Was Now in Atendance at the Hedges WHERE HEH WAS SHACATED OUTMED OUTOR MORE ONCE.

While Sanchez’s Stories Weave in Plenty About Her Family and Friends, The Book’s Inciting Event Is That “Humiliation” Zoom Call with Her Former Boss that Left Her Utterly Blindsides. She’d Expectioned a Standard Check-in, But In A Matter of Minutes, She’d Been FRIED FROM A CARER THAT HAD DEFINED HER FOR TWO DECADES. Who was she with this job, she wondired offen. After all, she’d played a key role in the casting of such shows as Brooklyn Nine-Nine an The Mindy Project. AT FOX, HER PROFESSIONAL HOME OF MORE THAN A DECADE, She’D Become The Longst-Tenured Senior Programming Execution and the only Woman of Color in a Senior Creative Execurity.

WHEN The Discussion Orated to Questions from the Audence, A Woman Asked If Sanchez Had Heard from Her Ex-Boss Since the Book Came Out. I Worth noting that he is Never Named; Rater, he’s descripted in the book as a “President of a major Television Studio/Network/Streamer” and “A JOSEPH GORDONON LEVITT-TYPE.” (Sanchez Casts Everyone She References, Including Herself: “Think Jennifer Lopez.”) Yes Was Her Answer. In Fact, She’d Been His Wife Had Ordered A Sigrated A Copy to Give Him for Facher’s Day, Whosh Sanchez Could Only Assume Was Some of Twisted Joke. But Before Heading East for the Summer, She Bit The Bullet and Says She TEXTED HIM, EAager to see if he had read it. He have. HE EVEN TOLD HER IT WAS WELL Written.

Still, The Most Poignant Moments in the Evening’s Conversation Were Not About her Firing or Even Her Rocky Road to Marital Bliss; Insthead, they centered on the Heartache of Watching Parents Age, Something Both Women and Likely Many More in the Audence Hve ExperienCed. As she does in the book, Sanchez Spoke Adoringly of Her Dad, Her Mentor and Biggest Cheerleader Who Passed Away a Year and A Half Before The Book Was Published. He’d been Diagnored with alzheimer’s only a week or so before her Firing, and HIM NOT BEING WELL ENOUNUGH to GUIDE HERTUGH this Capter, as he have allbhhhhhhhhhr.