Imposter Emmy
1.) …They DON’T tell you that you have to buy your own. LOL.
2.) They don’t tell you, you shouldn’t put “Regional” before it on a resume.
I saw the email and it was crazy. We won. The team I was a part of WON an EMMY. Which meant, I…won, an EMMY.
It was unreal. Without the due diligence it deserves of me going back to that email exchange and listing out everyone who contributed and all the waaaay more important people than me in the process, here’s what I remember.
I remember being in the studio…Watching one of the members of our team do what I thought at the time was PURE EGO DRIVEN MADNESS FLAUNTING…of the show’s Emmy statue. Then I remember being told, no you have to order your own, which you can only do once you win. We’ve won, so you can order yours. With your name on it. This was a bit troubling because, I went by a stage name.
Matter of fact, real quick. If you are in the city of Milwaukee (WI), where I was born and raised and cut my teeth as a creative, you have NO IDEA who Larry D. Brown II is. But, there’s a chance, a pretty good one depending on your cirlce, that you’ve heard of or know Bobby Drake. That, is what’s on my production credit so…ALREADY You kind of see the dilemma with me ordering what I am SURE is something that requires a verification of REAL NAME and birthdate.
But I digress, this person, was flaunting the show’s Emmy. And It didn’t “bother” me like I was annoyed, It bothered me because of this deep misunderstanding of what winning an EMMY means.
See I thought, never having consciously thought about it before, that winning an Emmy meant that I, ME, had pitched such an amazing story idea that my EP would jump out of their seat with such exuberance that papers would fly around cartoonishly, as they approved all of the resources I needed to get “the shots” to deliver an epic, cinematic and emotionally driven package in 7 days. I thought it would be my “iron clad ball busting interviewing skills” that got someone to confess on camera how the story wasn’t true and they lied and here, here, on MY SEGMENT is the actual confession. That the whole of media and news cycles would descend upon our office and give me a title worthy of being FULL TIME and not just INDEPENDENT, so I didn’t have to work jobs I hated anymore and could just do this. Which…I mean, I hated editing (i was bad at it) which is like, a really important part. BUT- man… I never, ever thought-that it would come from a day where I was ASSIGNED to deliver a package and really didn’t feel like I nailed it with the interview AND the edit. If I’m being transparent, I don’t think I, nah I’m pretty sure I didn’t even DO the edit for that package. My EP was (still is) a master editor. He’s got Cabinets filled with Emmy’s and NABJ’s (of which I also won 2 thanks to this team) and a host of other awards.
I watched my team mate flaunt this thing. As if it were solely their’s. It’s heavier than you think. The cynicism in you makes you believe it’s probably plastic but no…that thing is real. And I underestimated the power, the prestige, the utter imposter syndrome I would feel once it was in my hands. Years later, Jamie Foxx did a Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee with Jerry Seinfeld and talked about not having the Oscar in his house for fear of what it would do to his ambitions and relatability… I felt that. Nobody I knew had ever won an Emmy in the time that I knew them. Had never touched it, smelled the hard case box that it came in. And this team mate that was flaunting it, did so because after, God, at least most of my 35 years alive at that point (I’m 43 now).. They had been on tv, local news, respected, well known, dedicated, but without this recognition. This was THEIR EMMY. I wanted to feel like they felt. Like, I had EARNED it. But I didn’t. And truth be told I ended up leaving the show slightly after that, I dragged my feet resigning my contract because I was so engrossed in trying to get a sales job to “make a lot of money” so I could afford to be stable, while I pursued my art…that new management and my EP saw that my heart and head weren’t in it and dropped me. Good for them. It was the right call for sure but-My family always said, I should get the statue. I still haven’t. There’s a piece of me that just still feels like, nah- You gotta earn it.