Meet Jude Roth | Writer, Actor, Creative Coach

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jude Roth and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jude, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I’m sitting at my desk where I work as an executive assistant to the very busy Head of New Business, Financial Services clients, and HR at a big Boston ad agency. The second screenplay I’m attempting to write is constantly in my mind, taking all my attention like a proverbial new guy in my life that “could be the one.” This script is something I want to spend all my time, to get better at writing it, and to get better at writing overall. But to pay for my life, I spend long days managing the personal and business world of my perfectly fine boss. And when I get home at night and awake on the weekends, I feel brain dead, listless, lost. I desperately want to write but all my energy and passion are gone, sucked out of me.

My live-in boyfriend is an emergency medicine intern at Mass General Hospital and I barely see him to talk to him about my quandary.

In desperation, I use my airline points to book a kind of ridiculous weekend trip to the farthest-away Caribbean island to try to shake myself…out of myself. More than ridiculous, actually, it was on the surface a horrible trip – I go during the (torrential) rainy season, stay in a studio cabin on what was billed as an idyllic cove but is un-swimmable, my one-room has no curtains on the windows where rain and wind batter the panes, I’m scared to go out, I have only scraps of food, I’m cold and only have sheets, no blankets, no warm clothes, and the one electrical outlet is super sketch. But I have a pen and paper. And I sit on the twin bed and I write some stuff down. A lot of stuff.

Amid everything that pours out of me, a few memories…of how friends and peers have almost always asked me to write for them or edit things they’ve written; and others ask me to coach them on scenes that they have to do for acting class, auditions, or on-set and stage performances.

Other than being a dance teacher in high school, I have no formal training as any kind of coach ​but it seems to come naturally and I feel ​really useful when I do it. I love the performing arts, I understand th​em, it’s not something I do, it’s something I am, something like the water around a fish that doesn’t know it’s surrounded by water, it just is. And no matter how hard I try to compartmentalize so my identity isn’t all wrapped up in “the water,” I’m not able to separate the two really – who I am and what I do. And I want to be the best I can be as a writer and actor. How do I get to do that? Do it “all day long as much as possible” – that advice flows out of the pen and onto the paper while the Caribbean rains keep drumming on the tin roof. Because am I really going to get better at it when I have no energy to perform or write?

Maybe…I’ll formally offer my services as a coach and see what happens. Maybe it’ll free me. Yes, I can feel myself lighten up even while I shiver in the cold. I feel the light and warmth in the bleak night coming from within.

Then Monday evening back in Boston when my boyfriend comes home from a 36-hour shift, I grab the only moments we’ll have together for the rest of the week and tell him: I’m either going to get fired because I’ll do something stupid at work from being distracted by despair…or I need to give two weeks’ notice tomorrow. And… I think I can start a coaching business and maybe it’ll spark my life in a way that allows me to write scripts and perform more, and better.

This boyfriend once asked me in frustration with my frustrations: Why do you need to write and perform for anyone else, can’t you just do it for yourself and be happy?

I had snapped back: Why did you spend all that time going to med school and now doing your residency? Can’t you just put bandaids on yourself and be happy?

But in this moment, my boyfriend – who makes less money as a medical intern than I do as an executive assistant, who comes from a total science background, the son of two hard-core doctor parents – sees the seriousness of my situation in my eyes or hears it in my voice, steps up and says: “I believe in you. We’ll make it work. Resign.”

The thought process behind starting my own business was: “I can’t keep doing what I’m doing and grow as an artist.” Was that the best business plan? Um… no. Were there a ton of learning curves I had to travel, taking every writing and editing and coaching job that came along? Yes. And did it work? Did I finish that screenplay and many others after that and wind up writing, producing, acting in, and selling films? Yes. Do I have any regrets? Not a single one.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
ARTISTS’ POVS THRILL ME
I’m an award-winning filmmaker, actor, and TV and feature writer with a speciality in spy thrillers. But regardless of genre, from the time I started writing and acting, my “true north” has been to center historically excluded stories and voices to help authentically reflect our wonderfully diverse world. I also take all my experience and channel it into helping others tell their stories, too – as a script consultant, acting coach, editor/copyeditor, and consulting producer.​​​​​​ My clients span a very wide gamut: from Emmy-winning editors, TV showrunners, TV, stage, and film actors, narrative and documentary screenwriters, published novelists, short-story and non-fiction writers, and memoirists…to Paralympic athletes, medical doctors, JFK School of Government historians and Brookings Institution fellows.

Along with having a keen sense of and strong opinions about what makes a great read or watch, I have an equally strong commitment to support each creator’s unique voice and intent.

I’ve learned to be proud of almost every type of work I’ve done because I believe life’s too precious to do otherwise. But I’ve also learned to be more discerning about what work I take on and the clients with whom I consult – for the same reason: Life’s too precious to be unclear about what serves me best and how I can serve others best.

Some experiences I’m most proud of include both “failures” and successes. I put quotation marks around the word “failures” because I can’t say for sure if a failure is really that, since almost all obstacles or disappointments have guided me to make more effective decisions for better experiences. At the very least, I want to leverage any problem (self-created or otherwise) into something useful, or else it feels like a waste of a problem.

BUMPY ROAD TO A WIN
The following “oops” led to one of my proudest wins. A former TV literary manager turned out not to be the best fit for me for a couple of reasons: Not the least of which was that he made sexually inappropriate comments on every one of our phone calls. Then one day at the last minute he canceled a strategy meeting he set for us in his home office. I’d driven 40 minutes on a lunch break to meet him, so to “make it up to me,” he asked to meet in a Whole Foods parking lot near his home office but not in it because that’s where his directing client from out of town was staying. And so I…mistakenly stood in that lot for half an hour in the cold while he droned on about…not our careers, which was the whole point of our relationship. I should’ve let him go right then but I was afraid to not have any representation so I stayed even longer than that Whole Foods lunacy.

Shortly after, a showrunner with whom I got my own meeting liked one of my pilots and said that if I didn’t staff as a writer that season, I should find new representation. When I didn’t staff, I left “Whole Foods” manager and the showrunner sent some of my sample scripts, including that pilot, to his CAA agent who then referred me to a different manager they worked closely with that took on “baby” writers. That manager enthusiastically called me on his summer vacation to say “I can sell your pilot every day for a year, don’t sign with anyone til we meet when I’m back in town.”

When he got back, we met. At which time he said: “I’m not sure what to do with you until you have a watershed writing sample.” I was dumbfounded and confused: His interest in repping me felt solid when he’d called and then suddenly…melted away?; and what’s a watershed writing sample if not the “I can sell your pilot every day for a year” kind of sample?

Now I had no representation, which I really needed if I was going to write TV. But I realized: My resistance to leaving “Whole Foods” manager for fear of having no manager kept me entangled with him and hopeful for longer than I should have been; and I wound up un-repped anyway. It would’ve been great had I been able to accept the “ick” situation earlier and saved myself the agita but…lessen learned.

Nevertheless, the good news was that my path narrowed when I asked myself: What could I do to keep creating as a writer? How could I be empowered to tell the stories I wanted to tell without waiting on anyone’s permission or approval?

I had a short film script I wrote called EL DOCTOR stuck on my computer for a couple of years; something two producers had asked to run with but never got around to it. The story is about what I see as the abhorrent immigrant witch-hunt that keeps taking place in this country and I was determined to humanize the innocent victims of it on screen. So though I’d never produced a film, the director and the cinematographer who did stellar work on a previous film of mine that someone else produced wanted to be a part of EL DOCTOR. I raised money to produce it, hired smart and talented people to support it, it screened at national and international Oscar-qualifying film festivals, including the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), then was acquired by Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB), and then placed #2 nationally in PBS’s online film festival. After the rights reverted back to me a couple years later, the film went on to play many more festivals around the country. And LPB purchased it a second time in 2023.

Side note about “what’s meant to be will be”: I’d really wanted to cast Edward James Olmos in a cameo performance in EL DOCTOR; I had three different and directly personal ways to connect with him but none, it turned out, could seem to get to Mr. Olmos due to changes in circumstances, timing, etc. Then after the film was made and screening at festivals, I got to tell him myself about my former hopes of casting him because he was the co-founder of LALIFF – and, as it happens, the founder of LPB. His response to me was: “Things came together so well anyway!” (A sentiment I try to remember along all bumpy roads.)

My path to a win was bumpy until it became smooth(er) and led to clear, wonderful outcomes for which I’m profoundly grateful. (Now…if EL DOCTOR could soften hearts and minds so we can advance as a kinder civilization, that’d really be something.)

A CLEARER-CUT “WIN”
A writer had been self-publishing her novels for a number of years and was looking for an agent for her new book but everywhere she sent the manuscript, reps passed but offered no reasons why and so, understandably, she was confused and frustrated. She asked for my feedback. Her writing was stunning but I proposed that perhaps agents were passing because the first 100 or so pages could probably be condensed to about 30-50 pages so that she could get to the real meat of the story faster. But there were so many exquisitely written and important details in those first 100 pages that I didn’t want her to lose them; so I shared some ideas for where she could weave in the details later in the story. She did the amazing edit over several months and that 4th of July, while I was grocery shopping, the writer called to say that SIX top lit agents wanted to rep her based on her rewrite. The following year, her book was published by Simon & Schuster and then was offered a four-book deal. Her win is one of my proudest because I loved her writing, knew she deserved the success, and I got to play a small part in putting such a thrilling and emotional story out into the world.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
All I really want to talk about and share with friends and family is food; and I especially love sharing my opinions about places to eat that don’t involve me cooking, so here are a few favorites in no particular order because they’re all equally awesome in their own ways (though “cozy” or “quaint” ambiance is definitely a recurring theme for me as a NYC transplant who really misses the Italian cafes in the Village):

FIGARO BISTRO in Los Feliz: Go for the quaintish ambiance and the best-ever almond croissants

CRUSTACEAN in Beverly Hills: Go for An’s “Famous Garlic Noodles” (seriously famous for a reason)

MIAN in the West Adams district: Go for the Sichuan-style noodles

AOC Wine Bar in West Hollywood: Go for the lovely, quaint ambiance and ALL the most delicious food

CANTALINI’S/SALERNO BEACH RESTAURANT in Playa Del Rey: Go for the charming, cozy ambiance and family-run, delicious Southern Italian food

TAGINE in Beverly Hills: Go for some of the loveliest, quaint ambiance in LA and THE best Moroccan food

DELLA TERRA RISTORANTE in the Beverly Grove area: Go for the cozy hip ambiance, bar, and fantastic Italian food, especially the pizza

BACARI in Echo Park: Go for the grand tree-infused ambiance and delicious Americana food

CASA VEGA in Sherman Oaks: Go for the fairy-lit ambiance outside patio or cozy but large old-school (red-vinyl feel) ambiance inside and my favorite frozen strawberry and coconut margaritas

MADRE in Palms: Go for the cozy, lively ambiance, delicious Oaxacan Mexican food, and the best piña coladas this side of the drinking age

CASA CORDOBA in Montrose: Go sit at the bar for fun, lively personal service experience and order the best spicy margarita (“es picante”), the roasted potatoes (“patatas bravas”), the sautéed oyster mushrooms (“setas y trufas”), and the only salad in the world I like – “ensalada de remolacha” (finely chopped kale, beets, strawberries, raisins, marcona almonds, goat cheese, and honey citrus dressing).

BOXX COFFEE ROASTERS COMPANY in the LA arts district: Go for the real-deal Turkish coffee and comfy ambiance

MASA in Echo park: Go for the killer deep dish pizza and WORLD’S-BEST bread pudding

I could go on and on about all the great places in and around LA I’ve been privileged to get to dine and lounge in but I gotta go…now I’m hungry!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I dedicate this “Shoutout” to two acting teachers because their influence on me have informed almost everything I’ve done professionally and personally; One taught me to speak authentically and the other taught me how to genuinely listen.

Teacher #1: The voice teacher Peggy Loft taught many actors including Robin Williams at Juilliard, and then was on faculty at Southern Methodist University’s (SMU’s) acting conservatory. The summer before I started college at NYU, I was lucky enough to have her as my teacher at the Chautauqua Institute in upstate NY.

One day while I was rehearsing a Shakespeare monologue with Peggy, she asked: “Why do you always speak on a whisper ?” I had no answer for that because I had idea that I did. So she taught me how to own (and know) myself and trained me with the specific vocal techniques to have all that was in my heart, mind, and body come out in my voice authentically, rather than hiding myself in cautious whispers. She took a special interest in my career and, seeing how shy I was, encouraged me not to go to NYU and instead study at SMU where she could get me accepted without my having to apply or audition. She felt I would evolve as a performer better in a smaller, more attentive setting. Though I turned down her offer because it had been my dream to move to NYC and I was in a rush to do it, I’ll never forget or take for granted her generosity and belief in me, which helped me believe in myself – to believe that what I had to say was important enough to say authentically.

Teacher #2: Overall, Alan Langdon taught the best acting class I had at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. But, like Peggy, what he taught me as a person was even better: humbling, so simple, and life-altering: One day freshman year, after I performed in a scene in class and was receiving feedback, I kept frantically interrupting people giving notes to argue for my choices. I could tell Alan was getting fed up with me but I couldn’t stop; apparently I was super scared of being “wrong.” He eventually guided me off to the side of the room, away from others’ ears, and gently, sincerely said: “Shut up, Jude. Listen to notes and critiques without defending yourself or your choices. You don’t have to agree but you must be open to learning something unexpected – and to possibly improving as a result.”

Thank you Peggy and Alan. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without you and how you cared enough to call me on habits that were holding me back.

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