10 Insights From Brian Caspe ~ Actor

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Photograph of Brian Caspe credit: Nicholas Dawkes — Photo Credit: Nicholas Dawkes

Brian Caspe and I recently had a wonderful conversation. Here are 10 Insights that have been carefully selected from our interview that you can, hopefully, draw inspiration from no matter who you are or what you do…

There is this pace that you have to move at in LA to keep up with everything, so I was moving at that pace but then in Prague people don’t move at that pace. A lot of people who move to a smaller market like Prague from the larger market such as London or LA or New York will move with a certain rhythm, a pace to get stuff done and you’re all go go go!
I was doing all this other work but not focusing on my own career. I was feeling very depressed about it and I went to see a therapist. I started talking to her about my feeling guilty and procrastinating and how I’d like to learn how to not procrastinate and she said, “Why do you need to do that in the first place?” I thought, “Oh, I don’t have to do this. I’m choosing to do this and I don’t have to.”
I then started focusing on my career and that’s blossomed…
I’m not going to just bitch to the producer about how they should have done it differently because I know that it’s a difficult job. That’s a hard lesson to learn because we are also self-centred but I think that’s a really important lesson too as much as you can just go with the flow and be cool. I’m just happy to be there and trying to not complain.
One of the things that I try to tell myself, and I have to say it over and over again because it’s such a hard thing to keep in your mind, is to try to take fulfilment from each step of the process, because it’s so easy to be unhappy with the current stuff.
That’s my mantra and like I said it takes you having to say it over and over because it’s so easy to put that psychic pressure on the past or the future, so easy, so tempting. It may not be the right paradigm for everyone but for me, it takes so much pressure off.
The sense of play that they have and just throwing ideas out there and being like, “Let’s just try it and see if it works.”
Sometimes as local hire you are just not included because you go home at the end of the day, versus the people at the hotel where they’re going to dinners. But with Jared and Indira there was none of that, no feeling of separation, it was like “you’re part of our team, we’re going to hang out.” I am incredibly grateful for that.
I think it’s more that it doesn’t help you if you are approaching it like a supplicant and saying, “Is this okay? Am I doing it right? Am I doing what you want? Please like me.”
Nothing is owed to anyone so it may end up that you’re not going to be a professional actor but that doesn’t mean that that you can’t act.