An Interview With Susan Johnston
Don’t be afraid to follow the path laid out before you. — It is most likely not going to look anything like you expect it to. The key is to know where you want to go and take the opportunities that come your way along the way. If you are not sure if these opportunities are the right ones, ask yourself, “Does this move me closer to my goal or farther away?” This is very hard to learn, and me writing this right now is as much me reminding myself of this as it is me relaying it to you.
As a part of our series called “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became A Filmmaker”, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Mary McGloin.
Mary McGloin is a Bay Area chick living in Brooklyn. Obsessed with performing since she was eight, her acting career has driven all of her life choices. Mary is an award-winning SAG-AFTRA-AEA actress, writer, director, and produce and also toils away as a Senior QA Engineer to pay her outrageous student loan debt.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us a bit of the ‘backstory’ of how you grew up?
I grew up in the small town of Petaluma in Sonoma County, California. As the second of four kids, I’m a middle child. I pretty much fit the stereotype: fiercely independent, often taking the path less traveled, at times to the chagrin of my family. It’s funny to look back now because all my siblings and I get along very well, but growing up there was some of that dynamic. When we were really little, my older sister and younger brother had a “gang” they made up called the “Wowy-Wows.” They used to tease me that I was not allowed to be a part of it. But when we heard a little sister was coming along, I thought surely she would be my friend. I’d say we’re all friends now, though the Wowy-Wows are long gone. I was teased a lot, though all in good fun. For example, because I am somewhat the runt of the litter, they liked to use me as a term of measurement. “Watch out! You’re only about three Marys away from that car!” To be honest, I find that as an adult, if people don’t tease me, I don’t think they like me very much. My parents were both educators and very Irish Catholic. I kept the Irish, but I left the Catholic part behind as soon as I could, though I can still recite most of the typical Catholic mass. While I am grateful for what that taught me about compassion and empathy for others, I tend to follow the beat of my own drum. The importance of a good education was well instilled in us, and we read a lot as kids, mostly because my parents would pay us a penny a page to read books to earn our way into Disneyland.
We spent most of our summers between New York and Los Angeles, where we have family, and of course, Disneyland. Disney was a big part of my childhood, as were Saturday morning cartoons. Many of my childhood memories have Disney or Underdog in them somewhere. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you how, when I was a little girl, I was convinced I was Alice in Wonderland. When I was two, I went missing while we were in the Magic Kingdom. My parents feared that I had fallen in the moat around Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Disneyland has a “lost parents” area where panicked parents can go to find their children. After describing me, the staff said, “Well, we found a little girl who says she’s Alice in Wonderland.” My parents were relieved, as they immediately knew that had to be their daughter. I guess I wasn’t quite as worried as my parents had been; when the staff asked me my name and where my parents were, I replied, “I don’t have any parents; I’m Alice!” And thus, my spunky and imaginative spirit was born.
Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?
I became a content creator out of necessity. I am an actor first and foremost, but acting has its ups and downs. It’s easy to feel disempowered as an actor and like you’re constantly waiting for someone else to hire you, to give you the opportunity to shine. Instead of waiting around, I decided to take charge and start creating my own material. I started writing when I was a kid and minored in playwriting in undergrad. Later, I began producing and acting in plays here and there. In 2012, I started a production company called Goodly Rotten Apple Productions and produced an Off-Off Broadway revival of Wendy’ MacLeod’s play, The Water Children. The production was a success and well reviewed in Backstage, The New York Times, and by theater critic John Simon. Unfortunately, that show didn’t move the needle on my acting career as I hoped it would, so I began writing my own material. When it became easier and easier to start filming your own scripts, that’s when I started writing for film in earnest. My first web series was called Lines & Asides, and I shot the pilot for it in 2014. It was quite a learning experience. We shot what we intended to, but unfortunately we had major sound issues. Despite this, the pilot got into a few festivals, and I have since revamped those scripts into a half-hour series called Try, Try Again.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your content creator career?
Back in 2014, I saw the premiere of Silicon Valley at a festival. Afterward, there was a talkback. I got up and said,
“Hi, I’m Mary McGloin, and I’m an actress and a QA engineer. I used to work in Silicon Valley, and I thought it was hilarious. I have a question for you, and I don’t mean it to be challenging, but do you have any plans to have any female characters who are engineers, because we exist?”
Now, to be honest, I was asking because, ever the actor that I am, I wanted to audition for that role when he wrote one. The audience had other ideas. They went insane, clapping with the energy of, “Yeah, where are the women?”
The actors immediately started making jokes: “We’re nerds; we don’t know how to talk to girls!” And one of the producers chimed in that the character of Veronica was going to be more technical.
After causing this ruckus, I went home to NYC and to my tech job at a startup. I told a coworker about the experience, and she said, “Wait a minute, I just read about that — is this you?” And sure enough, she sent me an article talking about “this woman” who got up and asked this question, causing quite a stir.
I later relayed this story to my friend Amanda Van Nostrand, a comedian and bartender at my neighborhood bar. She knew I was writing another series, as I would often come there when I had writer’s block. Amanda said, “Why don’t you write about your day job at the tech start-up, and I’ll help you because I used to work at a start-up as an office manager?” So thus, at a bar in Brooklyn, Tech Bettys was born.
Two years later, Amanda and I partnered with producer Lindsay Schimer. We shot a short trailer that got into a few festivals. While Amanda and Lindsay decided to step away from the project and move on to other things, they encouraged me to keep the torch going.
Who are some of the most interesting people you have interacted with? What was that like? Do you have any stories?
This is a strange question. I think everyone is interesting if you know how to listen to them. As an actor and writer, I spend a lot of time people-watching and listening. For me, what makes people interesting is how invested they are in life and the activities and things that amuse them. It doesn’t really matter what they think — just that they think it’s important and fascinating and are excited to talk about it. Sometimes, I prefer to travel alone because it allows me to talk to more strangers. You never know who you are going to sit next to on a train, bus, or plane. I like to strike up conversations when I can. I can be pretty shy sometimes, so I don’t always do it, but I never regret it when I am in an outgoing mood.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I don’t think I can narrow this down to one person. There are a lot of people who led me to be where I am, from my mother, who told me she had always wanted to be an actress but didn’t have my drive, to my father, who always believed in me no matter what. My high school drama teacher taught me the foundation for most of what I know as an actor, and my college and graduate school professors built upon that. The coaches I continue to train with now — all of these people have helped me improve my acting work over the years. My writing mentor helps me strengthen all my scripts, and my fellow actors, creators, and filmmakers’ work and tenacity inspire me daily. I am grateful to all of them as well as to the people in my life who aren’t in the industry but who continually support me and keep me in check as a human being. I am grateful to all of them, even those who didn’t believe in my work. I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am without all of them.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“What’s personal is universal.” I first heard this quote from my writing mentor, Jerry Perzigian. But it’s come up in some form throughout my career as an actor-hyphenate. In drama school, it was finding the “universal truth,” but it wasn’t until Jerry said “What’s personal is universal” that I realized that was really the key to finding the universal truth. I see that not only in my own work but also when I read or watch the work of my fellow creators. Even if we seemingly have nothing in common, if it’s coming from that authentic place, we can all relate to it.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
Right now, I am working on a few projects in the creator space. First is Tech Bettys, a half-hour TV show. Tech Bettys is a workplace comedy about women in technology that is loosely based on my many years of experience as a senior QA engineer at tech start-ups. I have taken what Amanda and I originally wrote as a web series and expanded and restructured it into a full eight-half-hour episode season. There’s a lot more meat to what you can see in the award-winning proof-of-concept webisodes I shot with Kathleen Davison and Painted Saint Entertainment in 2018. I work with veteran showrunner Jerry Perzigian as my writing mentor, and he’s vetted all my scripts. I believe the season is in very good shape, and I am seeking ways to find the funding to shoot the season and get it distributed on a network or streaming service.
My second project is a half-hour animated comedy series entitled Bright Blue. It’s a sweet and funny show about a deep-thinking, imaginative little girl named Blue, her four-legged best friend Sami, and their adventures growing up in suburbia. I am currently writing the seventh episode of what I plan to be an eight- to ten-episode season. I’ve always wanted to voice a cartoon, and this little girl has lived inside of me for many years. I’d love to bring her to life. I’m looking for animators to help me create a vision for the artwork.
My third project, which I mentioned earlier, is another half-hour comedy entitled Try, Try Again. It follows the story of Rory, a classically trained actress struggling in NYC, who’s about to give up on her Broadway dreams when the ghost of her eccentric uncle comes back from beyond to keep her in the game. The pilot is written; I am still outlining the rest of the season.
Which aspect of your work makes you most proud? Can you explain or give a story?
I don’t know that proud is the word I would use. I do what I do because it’s who I am. When I was a kid, I loved the show The Facts of Life. There are two episodes of that show that really shaped how I view myself as both a performer and a writer. In one episode, Tootie, who was the actress, had an audition for Broadway. It was to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. She did her audition, and they told her she “didn’t have enough grit” to play Dorothy. I believe that in the end, Kylie Minogue won the role. Dorothy is one of the least gritty characters I can think of. Despite that, I took these words to heart. No casting director was going to tell me I didn’t have enough grit to play Dorothy or any other role. I didn’t know what “grit” meant, but I knew I had to have it. My search for grit probably made my life a bit harder than it needed to be, but the collection of my experiences has certainly allowed me to expand my playable range.
In the other episode, Natalie, who was the writer, was writing a book, I think, and having writer’s block. She went to a cafe and had a dream where all of her characters came to life to tell her about themselves so that she could write her story. It was very much like Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello, one of my favorite plays. It is how I look at writing. My characters come to me and tell me what to write. Sometimes they haunt me and drive me a little crazy until I write them. I don’t know if these explanations make me proud, but I enjoy how I work.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
We live in a world of instant gratification. It seems there are people who have overnight success, and if it doesn’t hit quickly, it’s going to fail. I think all of this is false. If you’re in the game as a content creator, you’ve got to be in it for the long haul. It’s not going to go anywhere; you need to be prepared to be consistent and persistent in bringing your vision to life. This could take a short time, or it could take a long time. If you believe in it, keep at it and give it a chance to shine.
Enjoy the journey.
This is not a path for the faint of heart. Similar to the marathon, you need to find a way to keep going. Be fascinated by the unfolding of the journey you are on to get your work done. Unless you are born into riches, you will likely need to find people to help you fund your dreams. This is all part of the work we do as content creators. It’s a process that takes planning, action, and follow-through. It’s better to smile and enjoy it than try to swim upstream.
Don’t wait; just do it.
You have to give yourself permission to stink. Don’t wait until you’re ready to write, or ready to show people, or ready for anything; just begin. The place to begin is where you are. There is no one way to do this and no real step-by-step guide. I’ve looked for one. I wish there was. Seek out people who’ve done what you want to do and ask them for their best advice. Mine would be to just start.
You must turn yourself inside out for your art.
A graduate school friend of mine said this was something one of his college professors had said. I believe this is true. No, you don’t have to do this to make content, but art does require it. What does this mean? I think you need to answer that question for yourself. This means being as genuine as possible in the stories you want to tell and telling them.I think people worry about being “commercial” or “relevant” or whatever other nonsense is going on at the time. I think the only thing you can ever really be is who you are. So take what you know and make your art. It won’t be for everyone. Some people will get you, and other people won’t. It’s okay; they’re not supposed to. Hopefully, by sharing who you are, you’ll inspire other people to share themselves.
Don’t be afraid to follow the path laid out before you.
It is most likely not going to look anything like you expect it to. The key is to know where you want to go and take the opportunities that come your way along the way. If you are not sure if these opportunities are the right ones, ask yourself, “Does this move me closer to my goal or farther away?” This is very hard to learn, and me writing this right now is as much me reminding myself of this as it is me relaying it to you.
When you create a film, which stakeholders have the greatest impact on the artistic and cinematic choices you make? Is it the viewers, the critics, the financiers, or your own personal artistic vision? Can you share a story with us or give an example about what you mean?
The last time I saw my father before he died, I asked him if he had any more advice for me. He was a bit of a sage and always gave the best advice. He looked at me sternly, then turned away, turned back, and said, “Just be you.” Simple, sage advice: I think as artists, we do ourselves and the world a disservice if we fail to reveal who we are in our work. As an actor and a creator, I must feel aligned with whatever stakeholder input I receive.
While I appreciate the input of others and respect the creativity, knowledge, and experience they share with me, there is a voice inside me that ultimately guides everything I do. While I continually learn throughout my life and work with mentors and coaches, I will not accept things that make me feel compromised, even if other people think I am crazy for it.
If you would like us to tag you on social media when we share it, please list your profiles:
Facebook: @marymcgloin, @techbettys, @GoodlyRottenAppleProductions
Instagram: @marymcgloin, @techbettys
This was very meaningful, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!
About The Interviewer: Susan Johnston is a Media Futurist, Columnist as well as Founder and Director at New Media Film Festival®. The New Media Film Festival, honoring stories worth telling since 2009, is an Award-winning, inclusive, and boundary-pushing catalyst for storytelling and technology. Susan was knighted in Rome in 2017 for her work in Arts & Humanity.
Mary McGloin: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Became A Filmmaker was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.