Listen, struggling actor: Abigail Spencer has been there. The “Timeless” star remembers cleaning an acting teacher’s toilet to pay for classes.
She was in her early twenties — well before she earned a breakthrough part on “Mad Men” — and many available roles were in what she calls the “American Pie” genre, which “didn’t feel like my thing.”
“Before ‘Mad Men,’ I worked for 10 years as an actor, but pretty inconsistently,” she said Thursday during TheWrap’s Emmy Season Screening Series. “I felt like the best thing I could do was start writing for myself. … So I started writing and I ended up selling a pilot during that time.”
Spencer, who also earned critical acclaim for playing the moral center on “Rectify,” says it’s important to share your creativity — “it festers too long, that’s when it turns inward and get get unhealthy.”
The panel also included “Better Call Saul” star Jonathan Banks, “Fargo” star Mary Elizabeth Winstead and “Underground” star Aisha Hinds. Spencer told Hinds, whose show was recently canceled by WGN, not to give up. NBC canceled and then quickly revived “Timeless” after a deluge of fan support.
“It really was magical,” she said. “They were voracious.”
Watch the video above for the complete panel discussion, featuring Spencer, Hinds, Winstead and Banks.
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