How to Juggle Theater/Film/TV and Master the Side Gig with Matt Crabtree

Today’s episode features Matt Crabtree, a theater, film, and television actor who can be seen on the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Harlem, Brass Tactics, and many more. Today, we discuss starting his theater career in New York, moving to LA to pursue film and television, then moving back to New York to do all three. He is also the master of the side gig, and living in New York on the cheap. 

Find Matt:
MattCrabtree.com
on IG @themattcrabtree

Theme music written by Rachel Dean and orchestrated by Katie Coleman

Audio engineer Mike Rukstad

Special thanks to the following folks from the SIX Boleyn Company for lending their voices to the intro:

Mike Rukstad
Dylan Dineen
Sarah Ortiz
Jane Cardona
Kaitlin Ciccarelli
Kami Lujan
Jillian Bartels

Find us!

on IG @howtosucceedintheater
HowtoSucceedinTheater.buzzsprout.com

Transcript

 This is so fun because I really know nothing about you. I 

know, I'm glad. It's hard listening to you ever since I found out about you. Because of our friends in common. Yes. But it was nice to, you know, it's nice to, you know, share 

different perspectives. Yeah, totally. Okay, I was looking at your website, and it says, so you were in school for biology and other science y things, and then it says a chance audition convinced you to leave school to perform in a national tour.

Will you tell that story? 

Yeah, I'll tell it. I went to school for pharmacy, so I was gonna become a pharmacist. But I had always done theater on the side, so I always had a blast doing that, and continued to do that throughout school. And then after my second year of pre pharmacy, I got a C in organic chemistry.

Oh no, is that, that's good for O Chem, right? Yeah, but not for pharmacy school. So I switched from there. So when I didn't get into pharmacy school, I ended up doing pre med, and so I got my undergrad in biology. And then I went off to the School of Nursing at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond.

And when I was there, I got a call that I got the job. Now, the job actually came from doing a regional production of She Loves Me, done at Cape Fear Regional Theater down in North Carolina. And the choreographer for that show was the dance captain for the Broadway revival back Okay, so he came down choreographed the show and liked what I did.

So not only was I art pad, but I was also the bus boy, uh, which is a fun, fun, fun dance role. And then he said, Hey, we're doing the national tour. Why don't you fly up to New York and audition for it? And I did, that was April, I think of that year before I graduated, um, auditioned, you know, it was my first New York audition ever and came back and didn't hear anything.

So I was like, Oh, let me go up to. Med school now and see how that goes and then actually he called me and said hey Just you know, they're gonna offer it to you This is what you asked for you asked for this this this this and this because this is what you're gonna do this this This and this and then I went on the road for I think we did seven months.

I think 

Wow So yeah, you were just doing theater for fun purely for fun Up until then. 

I was. I mean, I did a lot of regional, uh, not regional things, but local community things while I was in school. Okay. So, it's always been in my back pocket and I've always loved it and would always say that med school was my backup.

Yeah. It's a good backup. Yeah, it was a backup, but then I never needed it anymore. You 

quit school and you never worked in medicine? Nope, never worked in medicine. And have you played a doctor or a pharmacist on TV 

or in a show? I have played a pharmacist in a film. Played doctors on Grey's Anatomy, Monday Mornings, Hawthorne.

So yeah, I played many doctors on television. 

And do you draw from your medical background 

for that? Absolutely not. They don't care. They don't care. Just the only thing from my medical background is learning how to say, you know, Bactrin and all the scientific terms. I still know that, but all of mine came with a Southern accent and they're like, you're saying it wrong.

I'm like, that's how we said it. 

It's right, but, oh, that's funny. So after tour, 

then what did you do? I stayed in New York and I started doing theater. I got my first off off Broadway show at the Grove Street Theater. And then I ended up going on a European tour of West Side Story. I did that for about eight months.

Great. And then I left about six months later and moved to California. 

Oh, okay. So then what did you do in California? 

Television commercials to keep me afloat. I was a tour guide. I worked as a house sitter for a real estate agent. When they had a property that they were going to renovate at some point, someone bought it, but they're not moving in for a while.

The place is just empty. So they actually, they actually let people either stay there or hire them to stay in the house. 

Oh, that's cool. I definitely want to talk more with you about side gigs, because I feel like you're good at that. But before we do that, okay. So what was the impetus of moving to California?

I 

had a bad experience in 99. I did this off Broadway musicals. My first off Broadway mini contract. And the creator of this musical musical had approached me years before and said, Hey, I have this script here. It is. I want you to play the, uh, when, when, when she played the lead role. And I was like, great, let's do it.

And then when I came back from West side, they were already in rehearsal. So they were already doing their thing. So he's like, Can you be the understudy and I look great be happy to during the rehearsal process. The lead kept saying, Oh, I can sing that higher. I can sing that higher. I can sing that higher.

So we ended up singing it higher to where I couldn't sing it anymore. Not a trained singer. I sing, but during the understudy rehearsals, the music director, just, it was verbally abusive and my beat the hell out of my confidence. So after that, I was like, not singing anymore. I'm not gonna do it. Yeah. It took me about seven years to do it again.

Oh my god. Yeah. I feel like that story is actually quite common. 

I didn't have the necessary skills to keep up with what they wanted me to do. I left here in 2000 with 500 in my pocket and a 200 ticket to LA. Okay. And back then they had this actress connection kind of. LA experience. So we went out with that.

I paid to go out with like, you know, 10 other actors and we met casting directors for a week and just met all these different people there. And this one woman who I was in that class with said, Oh, I know you're moving here. I'll be on the lookout for some places for you to stay. Great. And I was like, great.

And it ended up happening. And I found this, this roommate without meeting him, um, that, that I, that I just ended up staying with in this little house close to all the Paramount Studios and Sunset Gower. So that's how I got out there. And I went out just because I wanted to do more television commercials.

And at that time here, the only television was, Of course, Law and Order and Spin City, I think was the only TV show here at the time. So, yeah, I wanted to try my hand at that. So I said, okay, I'm done with New York. I'm never coming back. 16 years later, I came back. 

Wow. I know nothing about film and television, and in fact, I don't really watch film or television either.

So that's a fun fact about me. Um, I was like reading your list of things you were in and I was like, I didn't watch any of those. 

Never seen Modern Family, never seen Will and Greg, I got it. I've 

seen like a couple episodes of each of those, um, everything else I'm like. No 

idea. Yeah. Interesting thing about most, you know, journeyman job or actors is that, you know, they're in a, just in a variety of different shows.

You have no idea who they are. Right. I always wanted to be that guy. Oh, you're that guy. Yes. Yes, I am. Thank you. Yeah. I 

think when people think about a career in film and television, they think about like being the lead in a show. But in fact, most people who work in that. Are just in one episode here, one episode there, which sounds absolutely exhausting and like really hard to get, but I actually know nothing about how you might go about getting that kind of work and whether it's exhausting or not.

It is exhausting. A lot of actors listening to this do both, too. Yeah. And they get it. Working on a TV show for a day or a couple of days is a gift. It pays really well, but the thing about it is, you know, it takes you out of work for the next couple of weeks, typically, once you have things lined up. Feels like there are more days of being unemployed than employed.

Right. So if you get something, you know, once a month, it's great. I mean, you're really successful. Yeah, that's great. But, you know, people think that when you do TV, you're, A, you're making a lot of money, and B, why don't I recognize you? It's because the only people you recognize are the people who are on every single week.

Yeah. Yeah. 

What is a typical day? on a TV show. What does that day look like? 

You get your, uh, script probably the night before if you're lucky. Wow. Most of the time it's very similar to what you auditioned for. Sometimes it could be changed. They may have changed the character a little bit along the way.

So yeah, you get there in the morning, you go straight to your trailer, probably a little, small, tiny Honeywell trailer, which is just like a little bench, and a sink, and a bathroom, it's a, you know, it's a tiny trailer. Cool. Um, and so you're there, you, you know, you go to wardrobe, you go to makeup, people tell you what to wear, people give you, you know, make you look really pretty for television.

Yeah. And then you get on set, if you're lucky, you get to rehearse. Yeah. You know, they may do some blocking for you, tell you where to go. And so it's a lot of hurry up and wait. I've heard that. Yeah. You may, you know, do a little blocking. They're like, okay, see you later. And they'll bring in other people to stand in for you.

You go back to your trailer and you wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And then they call you to set. And if you're lucky, you'll be out in six hours or eight hours. 

And if you're unlucky, 

then you're there for 10, but you get paid overtime. So 

it's fine. So, and then how much money would you make for a 

day like that?

A minimum I think is now 10. 80 for an eight hour day for a co star. Uh, the smaller roles, the guest stars are five plus thousand dollars a week, but you're there for the week. Yeah. It's great, especially if you did that three, four times a month. Yeah. But a lot of people don't get that opportunity unless you're recurring on a TV show.

Um, and that way they may bring you back every couple of weeks if you're lucky. I did, I did a recurring on a TV show called Harlem last year and I auditioned for it once, did it, then they called me back a few weeks later and said, Hey, you're working again. That's great. It's beautiful when that happens.

Because once you're on a TV show, you're not back on the TV show unless you're recurring. You can't 

be. Oh, that's fascinating. Or unless the show runs for like 20 years and needs so many people, maybe, 

like Law Order. I think Law Order is the one that brings back people from different roles. Yeah. Did you have an agent?

Yes. In New York now I have a manager. Los Angeles, I have a manager and an agent. What's the difference? Manager, manages your schedule and manages your career, manages how, you know, guide you on projects to take, don't take. But then, and the agent is the one that's legally able to negotiate contracts. Oh, nice.

So, and the agent takes 10, manager takes 15 or 10, and they work in tandem to get their clients what they need in order to move forward in their career. After the first writer's strike in 2009, work, um, everyone was so desperate for work. They could get people who had, or even celebrities coming in and, you know, they would take one role and then that would just knock everyone down every couple of months or every six months you would get something, or, uh, which is why we love doing theater in Los Angeles.

Cause that just, that kept us alive. And. After a while, it just felt like climbing smooth walls couldn't get any kind of traction. So I said, I think it's time to go. 

Yeah. Is it like you get called and then for a shoot and they're like, it's tomorrow, we need 

you. That has happened before. Yes. Some, sometimes you will get booked in advance.

Mm-Hmm. . And they're like, oh, you're gonna work on this particular day. And I knew. three weeks in advance. Okay. And then so you go in the day before that to do your fitting. Yeah. 

You know. So if you were given the opportunity to do a film versus a theater piece and it was the same amount of money, which would you choose?

Oh, I would do theater in a heartbeat. Yeah. There's nothing like the, A, the rehearsal process. Cause you're getting there and you're getting to know everybody. You're, you get to dig deeper and have more time to play and more time to collaborate. Yeah. Um, when, when you're on a set, you, you can collaborate, but it's a lot faster paced because there's, you know, time is money there.

Right. There's nothing like being in the theater. Yeah. I love it so much and I want to do as much as I can here. Yeah. I auditioned for a national tour about a year and a half ago here and it went so well. Yeah. And I felt so great about it. I'm like, whatever the outcome is, I had such a great 

time. Did you ever like try to figure out why they went with someone else?

It's probably better that you don't, 

but I've been behind those tables because I've been a reader for many casting offices. Oh, so it's like I hear conversations and I'm like, Oh, it's fascinating. Oh, I get it. Oh, yeah. I see why I see why that happened. Yeah, I see why that didn't. Oh, yeah. And I approach being being a reader when I am because The reader is the most important person in the room for an actor, just because that's who you're connecting with the entire time.

You want to make sure that everything that, everything that you do, the reader's on your side. Yeah, 

it's kind of like the accompanist. 

Exactly. Yeah, vocal auditions. I'm like, hi, first of all, can I put this on top of the piano? No? Okay, that's okay. I'll put it down. Put this on top of whatever you need me.

I'm going to start here. Is that okay with you? 

And the pianist is like, Dude, calm down. I was like, I'm so sorry. 

I don't do this that often. 

So what are you working on these days? 

Currently, one of my many gigs is a tax preparer. How did you get into that? The guy I work for here in the city, Dominic, Empire Tax Prep, he and I met in Los Angeles.

A tour guide for the Oscars of the Kodak theater. We were Oscar history tour guides. Nice. And he became a tax preparer and he moved back to the city. And when I moved back, I said, Hey, you need some help? And he's like, yeah, absolutely. So I just assisted him with his office assistant for, you know, by the year and a half.

And then he said, you're really good at this. Why don't you take the exam? And I did. And so I've been doing it for three years now, three and a half years. Great. It's great because most of our clients are performers. Uh, we have a lot of touring, a lot of stage managers, a lot of directors, a lot of crew that, you know, travel the country.

So we just like, it's our way of giving back a little bit because. We know how it all operates. Many performers don't understand a money or be business or, I mean, I didn't for a while, but like, you know, budgeting or doing any kind of things to prepare you for the future. Like the one thing that I wish I had known 30 years ago was open a Roth IRA.

That was it. You know, had that happened 30 years ago, we'd be sitting differently. Not everyone's going to get a pension. Not everyone is going to, you know, be set up for retirement at the end. There are many people that are. Yeah, yeah. But a lot of people, you know, won't get vested. They won't, you know, make enough on SAG AFTRA to be vested or, you know, equity to be vested.

Right. And to get a good pension when, when you retire. So, there are other ways to... Save for that. There are other ways to prepare yourself for that. Yeah. And that's what, and that's what we try and instill in all of our young clients. And 

the tax prep for people who work in the industry is very complicated.

So it's so nice to have people that understand that. 

We've seen, you know, other people's returns from other preparers who then come to us and we see like, oh, the people that get audited the most? Uh huh. Are people with, I don't know, multiple employers, lots of deductions, and I don't, I think that's uh, pretty much every actor that I know, and music director, and anyone who works in the theater.

Because we don't just have one employer, we have, we have, you know, 15 throughout the entire 

year. What's the biggest mistake that you see performers making with their taxes? 

One of the biggest mistakes that people make are thinking that they can deduct everything. Yeah, you can't. And you can't. But I flew to London to see his show and I'm like, you sure you didn't go see your friends?

Are haircuts deductible? Only to the extent that if you are, if you're required to do it by production and they don't reimburse you for it or you're getting your headshots done. Oh, okay. 

Headshots. Ish. What about expenses when you're traveling on, like, if you get a per diem And then you go out to dinner.

Can you deduct that dinner? 

Well, what do you do is when you're on the road, you keep your receipt. Uh huh. Because not only do you get a per diem, there's also a standard allowance for every city that you're in. So it's good for your tax preparer to know where you, what, what city you're in and how many days you're there for business.

And then, you know, we look at the per diem you get for that week and your expenses. And if your expenses exceed the per diem, then we're like, okay, let's look at the standard deduction. So the standard deduction is more than your per diem. We just do a little bit of math, and then it's a smaller percentage that can be deducted, but not the whole thing because you got pretty young.

That sounds like 

a lot of work for you guys. 

It's really a lot of work for the client. Yeah, that's true. That's fair. All the bookkeeping. Yeah. Again, something we're not told how to do is bookkeep or to keep receipts. Yeah, we tell people just to, if you're not used to it, just throw your receipts in a box.

Put them in a box, look at them once a week, then let's categorize them. Maybe we can do it together, we can do whatever, but it is a lot of work and a lot of people are relieved at the end of the year. And a lot of people are sad at the end of the year because of, I owe how much money? I'm like, that's because you didn't pay your estimated taxes.

It is always a nightmare. Don't you have a fun side gig where you work at a coat check? 

I do. I work at a bar here in the city and I started doing winter coat check last year. And it's, uh, it's in Chelsea on the east side, I mean on the west side, all the way towards the water. There's a lot of great people watching, and I enjoy that, and I've worked security for them before, and I...

Yeah, the things I see, it's amazing. I'm a very aggressive coat checker. Oh, what does that mean? I make people cry every once in a while just because they don't, because they lost their ticket and I have to yell at them a little bit. Yeah, come on. And they're like, my coat's over there and they're pointing to a thousand coats behind me.

And it's, you know, three in the morning, they're cold, their friends left them, they're drunk and they're just, they just start sobbing. And I'm like, stop it. We'll find it. Go over there and wait. And you get tips? Oh yeah, we get tips. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, with tips, you can make your rent in a weekend if you want.

Oh my gosh. And a code check? A, I have cheap rent because I did the affordable housing lottery a few years ago. 

I always assumed that it was just so impossible to actually 

win it. When I moved back here in 2016, I started applying for everything immediately. And first one I went to, it was a studio for 385 a month, but I made too much money.

And I'm like, you know, if you made it under 28, 000, then you could have, I could have gotten it, but I didn't think, I don't know. Thankfully, maybe the one I'm in now in Brooklyn is amazing. You know, I'm locked in for, you know, a couple more years, I think, until they decided to raise it to market. And then who knows what I'll do, but you have to prove 

income right now, or you're just there.

Just 

the first time. It's not like, like Manhattan Plaza, where you have to recertify every year because their rent's on the sliding scale thing, depending on, on how much money you made. Oh, wow. So, so people always wanted to get into Manhattan Plaza because they're like, oh, your rent changes every year, based, based on your income.

That's very cool. 

If someone is looking to have success in theater, or film and television, what are the top three things that they should be? 

Flexible. Persistent.

Just stay with it. I mean, if you love it, you're gonna do it. Yeah. And if you're meant to do it, you're gonna find ways to do it. You're gonna, you're gonna find these odd jobs along the way, from being a reader, to working in a furniture showroom, to being a tax preparer, to working in a gay bar coat check, to, um, you know, you're gonna find ways to pay your bills.

We used to do storefront theater, uh, in, here in the city in the 90s. It's a little tiny sits. 15 people and you're crammed into a space. I did a show called my first time with Barbie then. Oh, Barbie. Yeah. Barbie's in kind of a resurgence now. You should bring it back. You should bring it back. The show would be a hit.

30 years later. Oh, I can never, I can never perform with my shirt off now. But, but yeah, persistence. When I went to LA, it was, I kept that New York energy. Which a lot of people didn't have, and it was like, I didn't stop, you know, I went to class, I did this, I dropped off pictures, I did every audition I could, every workshop I could do, and I didn't stop, I went from, you know, 99 seat theater to 99 seat theater, from show to show to show, and then, but persistence.

Flexibility, persistence. Is there one more thing? Oh my gosh. 

I have to have 

three. It's okay. It can be two. Well, it's interesting too, because I feel like in some ways, flexibility and persistence, but heads. 

Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know. I think being, if you're being persistent and like hustling to, you know, to find that next thing, being flexible allows you to, you know, it's like, okay, I got to do this, but okay.

Let me put that off for like two seconds to go do this because I've got to get this before I get that. So I, I 

don't know. Yeah. I think. Open minded. And then with side gigs, uh, you're saying persistence in just like, you'll find ways to make it work. And that means being flexible with like how you pay 

your bills.

You know, you find different ways to do things cheaper in the city. Like I see a lot of theater, but I pay full price when my parents come to town. Um, so I buy them tickets, but everything else, I do everything on, on a cheaper way, you know, and, you know, you find programs, you find, you know, museum memberships for.

Being an artist, there are ways to, you know, bide your time throughout the year. There are, you know, programs for, you know, cheaper cell phones, cheap internet, um, for cheaper internet and city bike memberships. Yes. I love city bike. I went from Brooklyn to Midtown every day for four months. Wow. When I was doing, um, COVID compliance on a TV show.

Rode in every day. That's 

awesome. Great exercise. It's so easy. And it's faster than any other way. How do people find you? Besides seeing you on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel or, you know, 

Marlowe. I love it. You know, my, my main way is just Instagram. Cool. At bematchcrabtree. Excellent. Slide into my DMs, kids. Ask me any questions.

Awesome. 

Well, it's so fun to learn more about you. Yeah. 

Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah. 

Yeah. Hopefully I'll see you 

soon. Yeah, please. Bye. Bye.