MADELAINE TURNER

Nicole: Cheers. Good morning.

Madelaine: I like your mug.

Nicole: I like your mug! 

Madelaine: We kind of have a matching mug thing going on?

Nicole: Except these are my sister’s. And they have like little faces on them.

Madelaine: Oh, that's way cuter.

Nicole: It's interesting.

Madelaine: I think this is from like the dollar store.

Nicole: I love that. My sister worked at Anthropologie, so… ya know. 

Madelaine: I have a bad sister for not working at Anthropologie.

Nicole: Get her on that!

Madelaine: She's 15. Why doesn't she work at Anthropologie? 

Nicole: They get a mad discount. It's really good.

Madelaine: I know. I'm gonna need her to hop on that.

Nicole: Yeah, first jobs. Go. Okay, so Cool, you have a sister, that's cool.

Madelaine: I have lots of siblings.

Nicole: Tell us about yourself!

Madelaine: I'm a SoCal girl born and raised. I come from a really big family. I'm the oldest of many. That's sort of been my like, well, the big sister vibe is very much how I incorporate reality within me. I'm always sort of like, “we're gonna go here, where this is what we're going to do”, even when it's just me. I have always really loved film, always been kind of obsessed with it, and kind of in love with it. But until the pandemic, I hadn't really forayed into, narrative storytelling at all. But it was something I always really wanted to do. I think if you know anything about the film industry, always like, “this is really difficult to break into!”. It is not for the faint of heart. When thinking about a future career, I was like, I think my heart is really faint. But since pandemic times, just having the loveliest people in the world find me on Tik Tok, and like to see more of my things. I have a manager now, I'm writing pilots for TV shows, I'm working on screenplays, talking to producers. So it's been really crazy and been really, really cool. 

Nicole: You didn't start film until the pandemic? That's crazy! 

Madelaine: Yeah, I didn't go to school at all. I'm a college dropout. Community college dropout. I was not a good student, I was ditching. In my senior year, I was ditching class to go to my full time serving job. I was like, “I'm gonna make money here. I'm going to make money, duh!” Especially being from a big family… typically, big families tend to be on the less financially secure side. And we were definitely on the less financially secure side. When I was thinking about going to school, community college was the only option. Even then it was like, I don't know how well you're going to do here. So I just sort of hustled for a decade, and just sort of bounced from job to job to job and ended up here now, which is really wild.

Nicole:  That's wild. So, what other career changes did you make? I saw that you worked for a construction company...and then you also worked in fashion...

Madelaine: Fresh out of high school, I had my serving job. I moved out two months before my graduation from high school. And my mom had to beg me to go to my high school graduation. She said, “You have to do this. I know you no longer live at home, but you have to go to your high school graduation.” I was serving and then I worked for a wedding planner for a little bit, which was really fun, and really insane. I learned a lot within that space. I was able to network with a lot of people within the wedding planning industry. In Southern California especially, it is a crazy huge industry. There's so much money that goes into it. I connected with photographers, florists, videographers and somehow ended up in the downtown area of Long Beach working for a bunch of vintage shops and a bunch of small businesses. I was in the ‘brick and mortar boom’ in 2014 working in a bunch of different shops that were across the street from one another. I just sort of bounced in between working retail and nannying. Then one of the girls who used to work at the vintage shop ended up getting hired at Clio Bella, which is the fashion company that I work for, and they had a position that was opening in their warehouse space. They needed someone to help do e-commerce. I ended up getting the job, which was really crazy. I felt like at that point I was like, “I've made it; I'm Devil Wears Prada.” I worked there for a couple of years. I made so many lovely friends and learned so much. That's where I started doing editing, because they needed someone to take on, they wanted to start doing YouTube videos. So they needed a video editor. And I was like, “I kind of know how to do this. But if you want me to learn, I will learn.” So I got to learn on the job, which was really cool. Then had a little bit of a personal breakdown, just all encompassing. I nannied for a year or so just to sort of get my footing, get my ground. I was working at the construction company, which was a job I adored. I love that job so much. I loved all the ladies I worked with and the family I worked for and I did that for about a year. It was sort of a meditative, mellow time. And we went straight into the pandemic. Now I have sadly left that job, because I couldn't do both. I was like, “I can't be a film director and answer phones anymore. It makes me so sad that I can't do this. But I can't!” So yeah, that's sort of my foray in between all of that - serving, nannying, editing podcasts, working for an artist. I just pretty much did anything. If you'll hire me--if you'll give me money--there are a lot of things I'll do! 

Nicole: And I'll learn on the job! I love that you said that. That's great.

Madelaine: Yeah, no, I'll learn. I'll figure it out. I'll pull up a YouTube tutorial. 

Nicole: Exactly. Yeah. That's a great mentality. And that's really cool. And you're following your dreams now!

Madelaine: Which is insane!

Nicole: That's so great. I want to know, what is the first film or piece that you put together that you put out into the world? What was the story behind it?

Madelaine: Oh, my gosh, like on Tik Tok, or like anything?

Nicole: Maybe the one that you just thought of and you're like, “Oh god I don't want to talk about that.”

Madelaine: I'm trying to think. The movies that I would make as a kid, the scripts and stories that I've read as a kid. I thought about asking my mom the other day because I was always writing stories, but one that took hold of me when I was 10 was this ‘space opera’ that I was obsessed with. I just wrote pages and pages with the story of a man fighting people in space. That's all I can remember. I was really into Star Wars at the time too, so maybe that had something to do with it.

Nicole: I love that.

Madelaine: It's not Star Wars but it's a lot like Star Wars. 

Nicole: But they sing?

Madelaine: Yeah, yeah, but but but more kissing than the prerequisite.  On TikTok it's so interesting. I've done spoofy sort of surreal videos on Instagram over the years. I tried to squelch the creative filmmaker in me for a really long time. But I always had secret dreams of doing it. So when I got on Tik Tok, and the ‘for you’ page came about, and I started--if you get on Tik Tok, you'll know what I mean-- if you start scrolling through the for you page, and they start showing you the things that you would want to see. There was this one TikToker, who I'm actually now pretty good friends with. Her name is Scorpio Sierra. She's really, really talented. I saw what she was doing on there and I was like, “Okay, she's doing something different.” You can tell she's taking it outside of the app, she's putting work into this, and people really like that. The big thing is effort versus attention. I had a couple videos that were very tentatively tapping into that space. Then I had this one where I was like spoofing BBC TV shows and people really liked that. Then the next video after that was this ‘Wes Anderson Guide to Surviving the Pandemic’ which went crazy! Like that was crazy! I just went from a space of having fun online to having Vulture write an article about me, or millions of people seeing my stuff on Twitter. After that happened, it sort of set the precedent for what I could do, like what I could put the effort into, and then get rewarded by attention which is always the goal. You know? 

Nicole: I love that. Of course. Yeah. I love what you said about looking at something and noticing the work versus solely being entertained and knowing that there's something in it for you. That's really interesting. When you did this Wes Anderson video, I read other interviews where you grabbed everything in your room, and just kind of did it as you went along. What was it like waking up and seeing those numbers and seeing the engagement?

Madelaine: I was like, “What the fuck? Is this really life?” I don't think it was easy. It was definitely a labor intensive process, filming the whole thing, but I didn't really categorize it as being difficult because I was having such a good time making it. And I was like, “Oh my God, I can continue to experience this artistic joy, this bursting of creativity.” It's something that people want to see! That was the biggest thing. Very quickly after that video, it went very zero to 100 really, really quick, where a lot of people were like, “Hey, do you have more things? Do you have pieces of writing? We see something here.” The encouragement from the outside world, which as a creator, you don't get that often. In such a large sense, it was like, “I can't not take this opportunity, I have to continue doing this.” I feel so lucky that I get to continue doing this. It's been a lot of ups and downs and a lot of new feelings of stress and not stress. But for the most part it’s an overwhelming feeling of gratefulness. That's the biggest thing. Oh my God, I'm so lucky. I'm so lucky that everything came together in the way that it did. And I was able to create in the time that I'm creating, the stars aligned.

Nicole: The stars aligned. It happened really fast. Once you wake up with that and those phone calls, it's kind of like ‘Pressures on.’ So what's next? What challenges have you faced internally, especially on Tik Tok, where there's a time limit? Where you can't make the longest piece in the world, you have to fit it in, what is it? A minute? minute and half? 

Madelaine: 59 seconds. We don't even get that extra second. It's so interesting. I am really great at reflecting and processing by reflection. When things are happening in the moment, there's almost a fugue state that I tend to go into, where I'm trying to get from one minute to the next to do what I need to do without really reflecting on what's going on in the space and then also looking at the future. Now where I am, I'm able to reflect on three or four months ago. Like, “Okay, I can process that now.” It took awhile to get to the point where I was able to process what had happened. By then, so many new things that happened. Even up until now, everything's happened so fast and so many things keep happening. So many things keep presenting themselves to me as opportunities that I don't think I've fully processed. It’ll take a bit of time for me to really understand how I feel. Luckily I have a therapist that I haven't seen for a long time. She's really excited. I actually had to send her the articles before sessions because I was like, “by the way, just so you know, this is what's happening.” 

Nicole: And this is what we're gonna be talking about. 

Madelaine: And this is what we will be needing to process. 

Nicole: Oh my goodness.

Madelaine: It's been a lot figuring out how to really define and express my artistic vision and refine who I am as a creator, in tandem with getting the opportunities to produce and have my things be displayed on a very large scale is really interesting.Sometimes I put out things that I don't know if it necessarily works...if that's exactly what I wanted to do. But it's there. And lots of people saw it. It’s sort of being okay with the things that you're not the most proud of. While having a very large audience, looking at that, marginally large, not very large..

Nicole: I think it's pretty large!

Madelaine: I’m so grateful, everyone is so nice. People are just so freaking supportive and kind and enthusiastic. I've been really lucky to get the audience that I have. They continue to be really wonderful. I feel very enriched by them. 

Nicole: Yeah, that's great. I feel like it's always a big challenge to find the balance between catering to the artist, but catering to yourself. Especially as a new creator, all of this happening so fast. You mentioned that you're still trying to figure out your style, or what your aesthetics and what it really means for you to be a creator. In what ways are you doing that? Do you have inspirations that you're looking towards? I do want to mention that I love the ‘highbrow adolescence meets feminine sensibility’ I think that's very all encompassing.

Madelaine:  I'm young in terms of the time I've been actively creating, I am still very young. But I have had a pretty significant chunk of time to be drawn towards these specific art forms, and be influenced by different filmmakers and different art movements and different musicians. It's more finding the ways to really define the things that I like. Luckily for me, my goal as a filmmaker is always to be entertaining. That's the thing. I might have a much harder time putting out content if I had a really specific message in mind, but I really do just want to entertain. My goal as an artist is to entertain. My favorite types of creators are the ones who give you something splendid, and clever, and exciting, and you don't even realize that you were learning something or you were understanding an emotion until you leave that piece of art and you're like, “Whoa, okay. The whole time I thought I was just laughing, but I really got this whole other thing going on.”  Always pushing towards entertainment, always finding ways to delight people has helped a lot as an artist and as a creator. Usually the things that I am the least happy with are the ones where I don't think I did my job that well, that I think are boring. 

Nicole: I get that. Yeah. I love your vocabulary, by the way.

Madelaine: Oh, my God, I needed that.

Nicole: It paints a very good image of your vibe. 

Madelaine: Thank you, thank you so much I love it, I'm a big fan of words. 

Nicole: Words are great. They're the best. I wish we had more of them.

Madelaine: I often will be in the middle of a conversation, and if someone uses a word, I'll be like, wait, what does that mean? What does that mean? Tell me how to spell that word. I need to know what that word means. Because I love it.

Nicole: So what goes into your process when you're planning out a video? What gets you inspired? Where do you start? What do you use to film?

Madelaine: It has evolved a lot over nine months, I think it's been since the last video. What I really love about the platform is that it allows you to create something that is short. So you can create a lot of different things. I don't have to spend a year devoted to one film, or one script, or one project. What I'm doing now is, anytime I consume anything, it's getting filtered through the vein of “Where does this fall within what I know about culture, what I know about references?” Then finding ways in which things connect or oppose in really delicious ways. The “Pride and Prejudice: Mean Girls” is probably the one that I'm the most proud of. Because when the idea hit, it was like, “Oh my gosh, I have to do this”  and I'm married, I have a husband. He's lovely. Love them a lot. Um, he can attest to this. It’ll be midnight, and I'll be like, “Oh my God.” If an idea hits, and he's like, “What?” I'm like, “Twilight, Gossip Girl, Twilight Gossip Girl.”  And he's like, “Okay, it's great. I'm gonna go back to sleep.” Just matching things constantly, fine tuning my own references for culture and just constantly consuming old and new. That's the biggest thing is understanding what influenced the thing that I'm being influenced by right now. And what influenced that thing and just having a really wide basin to pull from. But luckily, up until now, I haven't really run out of ideas. Usually if I'm gonna make something I'll know the day before, sometimes it does happen where I have an idea and I can pretty much make it happen with what I have  in my house. That'll be a mad dash and getting everything together and filming it while the excitement and spark is still there. Then just seeing how it goes. I film on my phone. I don't do many second takes, if any. I just get in front of the camera and say a couple lines or make a few faces and get a couple different shots. Then everything finds itself in post production.

Nicole: That's lovely. That's also nice. I'm assuming your husband has made some features and some TikToks before. 

Madelaine: He has, he has, he's showed up a couple times if I absolutely beg him to be in there. Or I'll have him read a line or two. Luckily, I have a younger brother who shows up in my videos sometimes as well. There is a video that is one of my favorites. Two French detectives, running around Paris being idiots. That's me and my brother. We did that one together. That was really fun.

Nicole: Yeah, that's awesome. Just a question that I didn't write down. How are you dealing with or processing putting yourself in front of the camera. To a whole wide audience with your ideas, like presently there? How are you able to separate the Maddie on screen versus the Maddie who's at home?

Madelaine: That's a great question. This is a trend on TikTok. It’s the main character syndrome, where you always assume you're the main character. I always want to be in a story and be in a movie and exist as this person or this person. It's a lot of wish fulfillment. I have not run into, you know, I don't, I don't get hate on my videos. I think I have a little bit of an older audience. We're pretty mellow by now. And so no one's out--they don't like it. They just won't say anything. It's just really nice. 

Nicole: Yeah, people can be mean. 

Madelaine: They can be so mean. I feel so, so lucky; people are very nice to me. I have gotten, I've never even gotten a hate comment. I've mostly just gotten very helpful critiques of audio quality camera placement.

Nicole: That's awesome.

Madelaine: I'll be like, “Hey, have you looked up the 180 degree? You know, some camera angle? You should, you should look at that. Because I think that would help you a lot.” Like that's the kind of hate that I get. 

Nicole: You're like, “Damn, thanks. I'll look it up now. That maybe really helped, like, all right.”

Madelaine: “Thanks for being a fan.”

Nicole: You mentioned how you love that on TikTok, you can just constantly be turning out ideas, and you don't have to spend so much time putting all of your energy into one thing, which is amazing. And you also said you get to put yourself on the camera and you get to be in front of a screen. 

Madelaine: Yeah, I get to be in as many different stories as I want. 

Nicole: Yeah, which is lovely. But is there anything about the platform that you would want to change? Or about creating within the platform?

Madelaine:  I think the impulse would be to have more than 59 seconds. If that needs to exist on another platform, then I think the art form needs to evolve in a certain way. Whichever way you approach it, a streaming platform versus a movie theater versus a Tiktok versus a YouTube video, the way that you're going to structure your content has to evolve. The only thing that I impulsively want is more time, but I don't think that that would be helpful in terms of keeping the platform as it is or having an interest in what it is because I think so much of my creativity comes from those boundaries, comes from how do I how do I effectively do this in 59 seconds? And that, to me, is exciting and challenging. I don't think it would be as easy to convince people to even start watching while you're making, if they knew they had to engage for more than 59 seconds. But if it was more than that the structure of it would totally alter. Time is such an important element of storytelling. End thought.

Nicole: Very well said, I think, especially because we are such an ADD culture. Now I hate using that word, but...

Madelaine: No, we are such an ADD culture of anyone who didn't have ADD before definitely has it now.

Nicole: There's like, no stopping it. Watching all of these two year olds with their iPads. We're just starting them from birth.

Madelaine: Yeah, One thing that is always really fascinating to me is storytelling is not a new thing. It’s existed throughout the course of history. The idea of people being entertained is something that is integral to human interaction, which is so fun and fascinating. Regardless of the way that things evolve, and we evolve as a species, it's important to engage with the way the culture is accepting storytelling and then also challenging it a little bit. And so in the future, there might be a movement that is geared towards meditative, slow, long form storytelling, and that's going to be the avant-garde. New wave of filmmakers are going to be more meditative in the midst of *snaps* "Give it to me now, I want now now now". But even the history of film, the first films were shown in little parlors that you could walk into, and you just watch 10 seconds of a thing, through a, through a little hole in a box. It evolved into the cinema that we have now. So I think Tik Tok is what it is. But it has the capacity to teach storytelling in a way that is different from what we've had access to before.

Nicole: Yeah, definitely. I want to snap a lot. I love what you said about the new wave of avant-garde cinema. That's so true. I can see that happening. The next decade or so, people are like, “Wait a second.”

Madelaine: It'll be: Here's a 24 hour film.

Nicole: And then everyone's gonna be like, “did you go see it?” And you're gonna be like, “left out if you haven't.” 

Madelaine: Exactly. My I, I have and had in the past, very weird, very artsy parents. They made us watch a lot of very interesting cinema. But there was this one filmmaker who did that, that was sort of his deal. And he would have these eight hours of just filming the Empire State Building. Just people walking in and out of the Empire State Building and the music of Philip Glass. People would just sit and say “Oh my god, the artistry.”  But that's going to happen in the future. There's a really interesting rise in the way that we've gotten to the point now where our visuals can be played better than the human eye. We can capture, we can create visuals better than what human beings can experience. We can capture sound better than ears can. That is something that's fairly new, in the whole scope of film. We're gonna have a really interesting wave of filmmakers utilizing that, and integrating it into their films in a way that's going to become the status quo. You're gonna have to have your audio at this level in order to engage that particular energy or experience that you want your viewer to have. So interesting to think about.

Nicole: I don't know very much about the film world. Yeah, you're right. That makes so much sense.

Madelaine: Even a rise of - I don't know how into this you are - but I'm kind of obsessed with ASMR. I totally get those tingles and have gotten them forever. When I was a kid I didn't know what it was. But I was like, “Oh, yeah, that's what it is.” But the way that you can see it being integrated into music too. People using these little ASMR sounds, because they know that the user experience is geared towards headphones versus listening on a stereo. So even the way we engage with film on our phones, it's going to totally change what a filmmaker’s intent is

Nicole: Yeah.

Madelaine: That's more intimate.

Nicole: Definitely. A lot more care, thinking about the experience of the consumer, which I love. 

Madelaine: On a really individual level, when you categorize movements of filmmaking, it used to be “Oh, how is someone going to engage with this in a movie theater, surrounded by a bunch of people and making this experience emotional and impactful”  versus if you saw Normal People. I loved it. It's a show on Hulu. But it was a show that I think is meant to be watched just by yourself. And your streaming service. This would be a really insane show to show on network television. Because it feels like such an intimate story. We can talk about this forever.

Nicole: Yeah, no.

Madelaine: I'm really fascinated by the evolution of how film and culture intersect.

Nicole: It's fascinating. I want to keep talking about it. Especially right now, the personalized experience is so key. Obviously Tik Tok existed before the pandemic, but because everyone was at home alone...

Madelaine:Yah, it's really isolated.

Nicole: Really isolated, you're able to have such an experience on that app. Everybody's user experience is going to be different from the person next to them. Which is really cool.

Madelaine: The idea of like a video going viral, but only to the specific subsection of people who would be interested in it. That's crazy. There are people with millions of followers that I have never heard of, and will probably never hear of. It's crazy. 

Nicole: It's insane to think about. I'm gonna switch gears, because I wrote this in a question. You were on @myfirst1000 - in an interview and you were talking about the rise of the middle class of creators?

Madelaine: Yeah, I don't know If I made this up, I probably did not. But when you thought about entertainment before, it was what's on is what's on in the movie theaters and television. In order to be able to tell your story within those parameters, you had to go through many different hoops, you had  maybe know someone, and if you didn't know someone, you had to convince a bunch of executives to give you the money to finance this thing that you wanted to make that you know people will be interested in. And now, we've sort of eliminated the studio system by having this rise of content creators, user generated content, essentially, on YouTube, first and foremost, and then bleeding into Instagram, and Tik Tok, and any sort of medium. Whether it's through Patreon, or through a sponsored video, that person in themselves, without anyone else, really, it's just them and the company, or them and the user can sustain an entire life, an entire income, just by creating content that a smaller audience of people want to see. I think that's really, really cool. Because for someone like me, who, 10 years ago, there's no way I'm going to be able to get into the film industry, there's no way that I'm going to be able to get through all these different checkpoints, it's just not going to happen. But because the biggest platforms make it easy to gain an audience, and then create content, I'm at a place where it's totally possible. It's like, fingers crossed, it's inevitable. That's so cool. It takes a lot of power away from a small group of people. And it allows for many, many different stories to be told, and many, many different types of entertainment to be financed and accessible. I love YouTube. YouTube is my sanctuary. There are so many people who are just making incomes. Modest, but sustainable incomes, just through that platform. Which I think is so cool.

Nicole: It's the future.

Madelaine: It's the future. And for me, that's how most things should be. I think we should take power away from the very few and give it to the masses. Yes, across the board, a pretty good idea.

Nicole: Yes. Yeah, redistribute the wealth.

Madelaine: Yes. That's what it is like. The wealth is being redistributed in a lot of different ways. I don’t think you know, no one's making Seinfeld money anymore. But that's okay. You can still have a very comfortable lifestyle without making Seinfeld money. Yeah, making Friends money.

Nicole: Right. It's interesting, because all the things that you're saying happened to the music industry, like a few years ago. With everything that’s happened with streaming, it's really interesting from my music perspective hearing the words or saying, it hadn't happened to the film industry.

Madelaine: I mean, in the music industry that's crazy. I'm not within the music industry, but even just looking at musical trends and looking at the way that music evolved from 2010 to 2020 is bananas. I would love for someone to teach a class on that. Please just explain the evolution of music within the last 10 years.

Nicole: Oh, my God, I should send  you some resources.

Madelaine: Please do. We talked about, I didn't go to college, and I’m so hungry for teaching and knowledge. I could swim in it. 

Nicole:  I love it. Yeah I'll definitely--

Madelaine: I think it's fascinating. I'm so happy that I'm coming into the scene right now. I feel like I didn't have the chance to get kicked around and get jaded. So I'm just young. I got to quit my job because people are sponsoring me. And it's so great. I love being a storyteller.  Well, I mean, come back to me like five years and see if I'm still here!

Nicole: Yeah, I'll pencil you in for 2026. 

Madelaine: That's what I'm ready for. And it's all trash. But even now, like if I really wanted to, I could film a 90 minute film. I could write and film the film, put it on YouTube if I really wanted to, and get people to watch it. That's something that 10 years ago, you could not do in the capacity that you can do now. Yeah. That's really crazy. It's crazy.

Nicole: It's so cool. You're doing it, you're just living the dream.

Madelaine: I really am, I feel like I'm living the dream. The dream.

Nicole: I want to ask, as you said that you were learning on the job in a lot of situations. Obviously, this last year has been your first big year in the industry. Do you have any resources or tips for people who are starting or wanting to jump into that realm?

Madelaine: Yes, I have so many resources. The biggest one probably the most obvious one: Youtube, if you're not aware of how much is out there. Just type in a few buzzwords and you’ll get pages and pages of people wanting to teach you. You'll find a teacher that teaches to your specific style. Also, all the large museums have open access portals. So if you want to go through their archives and download swatches, papers, imagery, if you want resources, go into their open access portals. I just found out about this, a lot of my backdrops and wallpaper is from the Smithsonian open access. It's like wallpaper swatches from the 1800s, which is really fun and exciting.They want you to download these things, they want you to do things with them. The public domain is also a really cool space that has a lot of cool visual, and musical things that you can work with and evolve. The biggest resources that I don't think people know how much information is out there just waiting for them. J do a little digging. And you'll find it. 

Nicole: You'll find it. The internet is your oyster.

Madelaine: Exactly.

Nicole: Just because we're not quite out of this quarantine period, yet. I know, half the nation's been, or maybe a quarter of the nation's been vaccinated, but we'll see. Just keep knocking on wood and keep staying inside. Yeah, it's fine. But as a creator, when you're getting reached out to by bigger companies, sponsors, how are you staying motivated to keep creating? When sometimes it's like, “I want to stay in bed today?” 

Madelaine: I think it's listening to yourself. I think if there's a space where there's a season, where you're feeling like “I want to stay in bed, I feel overwhelmed by this.” Really listen to that. I think the thing that inhibits action is not processing what's happening in the moment. And so allowing the non productive spaces to be reappropriated into  caring for yourself and rest, I think existing in that for a smaller space of time is going to allow you to get out of it, and be able to then come into a season of creativity. Also always, going backwards is a really good place to find inspiration, I think looking inwards, looking at your past, looking at who you are, and what formed you as the DNA of where your creativity comes from. So whether that's journaling, or looking at a photo album, or watching a movie that you loved as a kid, I think that's gonna spark that. That thing that is inside you, and the person that has always been there.

Nicole: Great advice. I am running out of questions, which is fun. But I kind of don't know if there's anything else that you wanted to talk about? I just wanted to ask as a final one: what is on the horizon for you? I know that you said that you're working on some pretty cool stuff, pitching TV shows and all that jazz. In combination with that, what is your goal for 2021? What do you want to do for yourself this year?

Madelaine: I don't have anything I can officially talk about. I'm hoping to have more concrete things to brag about, but it's all ticking over the horizon. So my 2021 is to sell a script, fingers crossed, and hopefully have it go into production. That'd be really great. Then I would love to have a pretty solid base for my first feature as a director by the end of 2021. That would be really cool, if not a finished script.

Nicole: I will manifest really hard so much on my end!