Categories: TV Business

Acting for TV ft. Jona Xiao (Halt and Catch Fire/Being Mary Jane) (PT78)

Alex and Nick invite Jona Xiao (Halt and Catch Fire, Being Mary Jane, Gifted) to discuss acting for television, and what writers can learn from actors.

What is the casting process like in TV? How are character descriptions influenced by the script? What preparation can actors do before going into production? What makes an interesting character and compelling scenes for an actor? What can TV writers learn from performers?

The Paper Team gets set to recur…

SHOWNOTES

Content

Early influences, building a career, getting representation, casting process, diversity, getting cast, actor preparation, drama versus comedy, character descriptions, table reads, production, scripts, character arcs, script revisions, post-production, getting cut in the editing, fan interaction, goals and aspirations (01:06)
Resources and Next Week On (43:47)

Links

Jona Xiao on Twitter
Jona Xiao on IMDb
Bananatag
Sidekick

Resources

Career ACTivate
“The Eight Characters of Comedy” – Scott Sedita

This episode brought to you by Tracking Board’s Launch Pad Writing Competitions

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Special thanks to Alex Switzky for helping us edit this episode.

If you enjoyed this episode (and others), please consider leaving us an iTunes review at paperteam.co/itunes! :)

You can find Paper Team on Twitter:
Alex@TVCalling
Nick@_njwatson
If you have any questions, comments or feedback, you can e-mail us: ask@paperteam.co

Paper Team
Alex Freedman & Nick Watson

Paper Team is a podcast about television writing and becoming a TV writer.

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Tags: Agents & Managers Books Characters Diversity & Representation Interview

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