Chapter 1: What challenges did Madelaine Petsch face before becoming an actress?
you
I'm actually really coming to terms with as an adult because there's so many like ricocheting effects from the way that I was raised that I find in like personal relationships where I really do chameleon to behavior in the room. So like right now, if all of a sudden your body language changed and you seemed upset with me, I would immediately go into fight or flight.
And I would have to actively work and do the therapy I've done to remove my sense of worry about what I could have done to upset you. Because that was what I was taught to do as a child. My father would immediately flip on a dime and, you know, say things that he didn't necessarily mean. And I immediately as a child, you're like, what did I just do to make him do that?
Madeline, welcome to Reclaiming. Thank you for having me. Yeah. I'm actually going to dive right in because ever since I learned this about you, I think it might have even triggered me. But I'm just so curious because I am a rejection-sensitive person, maybe even rejection-sensitive dysphoria. Maybe I might even have that. I don't know. I tried to self-diagnose.
Chapter 2: How did Madelaine Petsch cope with rejection in her early career?
But when I learned that you went on 250 auditions before you landed Riverdale.
Yeah.
How did you find yourself again after each incident and then show back up again?
It was honestly so much less heartbreaking at the beginning of my career because it's just par for the course when you're a new actress in Hollywood. You don't expect to book anything. I mean, I always knew that I had the calling to it. I always knew that this is what I was supposed to be doing, but I never thought it would be easy.
So in the beginning, it was like every rejection was like, okay, let me get the note. Let me find out why it didn't work. Let me take notes. I had a notebook.
Wow.
I would keep track of, like, the casting director's name, if they told me any personal facts about themselves, any notes they gave me on the character. And I'd, like, keep all of that in a notebook so I could, like, kind of use that to my advantage moving forward. It became a lot harder to receive rejection, like, at this point in my career now.
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Chapter 3: What role do horror movies play in Madelaine's emotional regulation?
Because there's, you know, when you're going on, there's certain levels of callbacks where, like, I was going on pre-reads, which is, like, before you even get an audition. So I'm pre-reading with a casting associate. Sometimes they're not even recording it. And they're just, like, seeing if you're good. So it's, like, a pre-read is, like, you're not even, the door's not even open yet. Right.
Now the door is fully open and I'm usually doing like a director meeting or a callback or whatever. So you've got to be really in love with the material. And for me to do the job, I have to love the character. I have to be obsessed with the character. And so I become obsessed and I like understand everything about them and I fall in love. And then I've got to learn to walk away.
And that's much harder, I think, now.
That's really interesting. I've seen that, and I know you're producing too, and we'll talk about that later on.
Chapter 4: How did Madelaine's family background influence her perspective on strength?
But it's one of the facets of producing that's been interesting to me to see, because I sort of came into the industry late in my career, if you will. And so I get to see things from a very different lens. But the whole, you fall in love with the show, you're spending so much time with the writer and showrunner trying to create the pitch, and you're
Every moment, everything, and you get in there and then it doesn't go. And it's interesting because I sort of feel in some ways like the industry is weirdly designed to kill creativity in a sense. Because I find myself now, and I haven't even been doing this very long, but I'll find myself sort of thinking, okay, I'm not going to invest as much as I did last time because there's
that felt like such a devastation. And I'm not even the writer. I'm just a producer, so.
I think protection also can be like a thief of creativity, though, in a way. I think like, you know, yes, we're in a weird time in the industry in general where I do find we're not really taking risks like we used to because I get studio mandates, right? And the studio mandates is like, what's the next Stranger Things? What's the next this?
And it's like, what if we make something completely original that no one's ever seen before, like Stranger Things was when it came out in 2017 or whatever. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: What insights does Madelaine share about setting boundaries in Hollywood?
So there's that piece of it, but there's also the piece of like, that's part of the game. And I think being a producer, you have to understand that. I have a piece of material that I think is probably one of the strongest things I've ever made or will make that I've pitched 20, 25 times and I've gotten a lot of no's. And the no's are usually like, I don't understand it. Oh, interesting.
And I'll take an I don't understand it because it's like, okay, I can do a better job helping you understand it. But it's also that means there's no comp. Like a lot of the times people will be like, what's the comp?
Right.
And I'm like, well, my design is to hopefully make things that are uncompable. Like I can say it's this meets this meets this in this universe, but that's not really a comp. I don't want to make things that have a direct relation. That's not interesting to me. And, you know, sometimes it is. But as a producer, I find it's more interesting to try to find the stories that haven't been told.
Chapter 6: How has Madelaine's experience with her father's mental health shaped her?
There's not a lot of them anymore. Right. Right. So you got to find new iterations of old things as well. But even like a new filmmaker on an old story is a new lens.
Yeah. No, it's true. Or different gender orientation to certain things. But it's funny. I have a project where I got to a point where my opening to the pitch is like, this is the easiest project to say no to. Oh, I like that opening, honestly. It takes place on a ship. It's a period piece. And there are no Americans. Oh, period piece.
Chapter 7: What advice does Madelaine give about pursuing creative projects?
That's rough right now. It's rough right now. And a ship.
And a ship.
And no Americans.
Well, a ship. What I like about a ship, though, producerially, is it's contained.
It's contained. Exactly. So it's one set piece. Mm-hmm.
And period piece and one set piece does actually remove the problem with period. So I think it's not the – That's an interesting way to talk about it. Because people usually hate period because they're like, we have to get old cars and we have to make buildings different and every background has to be dressed differently. It's so much money.
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Chapter 8: How does Madelaine Petsch define her current journey of reclaiming spirituality?
If you're on a ship, it's not – Right.
It's just the costumes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. New perspective. Thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah. It's – But I do want to go back. First of all, I'm also just like now stuck on the interesting fact about your notebook. Was that something you came up with yourself or is that something you learned from someone? What an interesting way to move through auditions.
I think honestly my mom might have told me to do it. I had a couple auditions where I would like – I'd call her after every single one and I would tell her about it. And eventually I was like, man, I wish I knew what it was about this that didn't work.
Yeah.
She was like, I think you should start writing down the feeling you have when you finish the audition, what your relationship to the character was. Just start writing down your feelings. And I am a big writer. Like, I like to write diaries. I like to write journals. I like to write manifestations. I like to write everything. Just kind of put it out in the universe.
And so I started doing it because my mom told me to, honestly.
Mm-hmm. My mom is going to watch this and go, oh, if only she would listen to me like Madeline listens to her mom.
Look, there are things I listen to my mom about like the rest of us, but that one I really did.
Yeah, no, that's good. It's interesting because you were, you know, not too long ago, I think you were on Call Her Daddy and really opened up about a lot of things in your childhood, which I love. I want to get to, but I sort of want to set the stage a little bit before of just understanding. So you were born in South Africa, but then raised in Washington.
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