A Conversation With Orange is the New Black's Alysia Reiner

I first met Alysia Reiner at SXSW about 5 years back.  I was immediately taken by her energy, spirit and determination.  We spoke for a long while about a life pursuing creative success and best practices on navigating the business.  We discussed how the most successful creatives find ways to eat excuses for breakfast and figure out how to control more than they relinquish. 

Alysia has been a huge fan of the Stage 32 mission and has contributed to the platform in many ways including blogging (read her blog here), working with Stage 32 members (read about that here), judging our feature screenwriting contest (read about that here) and sharing in her success at Sundance (read about that here).  She's been quick to offer many on the platform sage advice, always bringing a fiery combination of truth mixed with optimism and inspiration. 

So when I asked her if she would find some time to speak before the debut of her latest film EGG, which premiered a couple of months back at the Tribeca Film Festival, I had no doubt she would find the time.  But true to Alysia's style, she said, "How about right now?"  And this was mere hours before the film's premiere - and as you'll see, while she was getting her makeup applied for the event.  And you wonder why I adore her.

EGG stars Alysia, Christina Hendricks and Anna Camp.  This is also Alysia's second time serving as a producer on a film.  She turned to producing to not only tell the stories she wanted to tell, but to give more women the opportunity to find work.  True to form, every single department head on EGG is female.

Just some of the things Alysia and I discussed include:

• Independent producing (bootstrapping)
• Best practices on putting together an independent project
• The importance of having a quality entertainment lawyer to lean on
• How you can control your own content and make the best possible project
• How to best create opportunities for yourself
• Understanding the difference between being an artist and a business person
• How making a movie is like dating
• The best advice her dad gave her and how she applied it to her career

This is an empowering talk and one I think you'll enjoy quite a bit.  Big thanks to Alysia for making it happen!

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