At the End of a Broadway Run
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Will you walk me through what your resume looks like on paper?
Let's see. I've done three Broadway shows. I've done a lot of commercial work when I was a child. I've been on TV as a guest star on Instinct, Maisel, FBI, Great News, Odd Mom Out, Younger, Good Wife, Big C, Law & Order. I've done like four. four feature films as small roles. One I had a big role in. Well, I've done a shit ton of regional theater because they're so short. One national tour, which was actually a big reason why I actually have some savings. I'm pretty successful, I guess, on paper. Yeah. But yeah, I'm still completely have no idea what I'm doing from one day to the next.
This is Olivia. I'm 38 and I live on the Upper West Side. Are you from New York City? Born and raised in Manhattan, yes. Olivia is an actor.
Which means that most of the time I'm doing other things like babysitting or I have a pretty successful video editing business, but I've literally done everything from waiting tables to working at a shoe store. When I was doing the audio diaries, I was in a Broadway show, which was for the past four months.
For Olivia, being an actor living in New York means her financial life has been unpredictable. Like she said, she's doing what every actor dreams of. She's been on Broadway, in TV and films. She has made it. But being a working actor means you have to just keep working, keep looking for the next thing. And you have to figure out what to do when there is no next thing. That means Olivia's financial picture is a mix of things we usually associate with success and things we associate with hardship. I mean, she owns an apartment in New York City on the Upper West Side. And she has a platinum Amex card. But she's also been on food stamps. And in the past, she's had to rely on unemployment. In fact, when we talked, she was about to be on unemployment again.
This week, we're going to follow Olivia through her last week in her Broadway show, and we'll hear how she feels as she gets closer every day to another phase of uncertainty. I'm Courtney Harrell, and this is What We Spend.
What was money like growing up? I was unaware of what was going on, so I don't really know. One of the things that I remember my mom telling me was that when I was born, they didn't have insurance. And this sounds like something out of a movie. I don't even know if this is true, but she claims that my dad handed the doctor who delivered me an envelope of cash. Oh, wow. Because they didn't have—that's how they paid for things. So I'm like, okay, that sounds very dramatic. But like that, but even that story, like that would kind of, I guess, personify like my childhood.
Olivia's dad was a sushi chef who moved to the U.S. from Japan in his late 20s. Her mom was a stay-at-home parent who moved to New York to be a ballet dancer. And when Olivia was growing up, they all lived together in a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan.
We went on vacations. We did nice things. I was never... It wasn't a fancy childhood. You know, we didn't go to... Paris and the Hamptons. But I now understand that there was absolutely no cushion. Yeah. And the first time anyone ever spoke to me about money in any way that made sense to me was when I was 19 years old. I was in... Mama Mia, the Broadway show. And I met someone there who has pretty much been my best friend since then. And she said, well, you always have to have $10,000 in the bank no matter what. And I had never heard anything like that before. And I don't know where she got that number. I don't know any. But it literally, from that day on, that was my rule. And that was her advice to me as an actor. Yeah. So, yeah.
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