Yes, the Rumors Surrounding Child Actors Are True | Brett Cooper

So you enjoyed your time in Los Angeles between 10 and 14? I loved it. There's been a lot of rumors about child actors in Hollywood recently. What do you make of all that?

A lot. It's all true.

So what ha—what did you escape unscathed?

I did. I—I would—I saw a lot of it.

What did you see?

Um, for example, I worked on a children's TV show on a major network, and one of the writers, after we wrapped on the show—after the show was canceled—had incredibly inappropriate relationships with young women like me who were on the show. Young women in my—how young?

Okay. And to my knowledge, this was not sexual, but it was objectively grooming. It was inappropriate relationships between an adult and minors because Hollywood goes ahead and it blurs the lines between what is appropriate between adults and children because you're working with adults constantly.

My entire life—I spent my entire childhood—I spent more time with adults than I did with children. My management team, they were all adults. Obviously agents, managers, directors, casting directors, producers, wardrobe assistants—I was surrounded by adults constantly. Writers, in this case. And those lines get really blurred.

So if a writer on a TV show that you worked on invites you and one of your co-stars out to lunch to talk about another TV show that you're working on, your parents go, "Oh, okay. Yeah, well, you've worked with him for two years at this point. Let's take you to lunch."

And then you're sitting here with this girl who's a year older than you, and he starts talking about the lesbian fantasies that he has about you and your friend. Like, nothing happened, but that's the fact that he thought that that was appropriate—the fact that he—

Well, that's a testing behavior.

Yeah. And then the fact that later, we're walking around the restaurant and he puts his hand in my friend's back pocket—who's 15 years old—and I was just—you know, "Get me out of here!" Completely inappropriate.

How many of the young people in Hollywood are sold into that, so to speak, by their parents? Now, you characterized your mother as someone who was loath to take you on the Hollywood adventure, but there's no shortage of parents. Is it more common among mothers?

Probably the cluster B type mothers who use their children to their own advantage, come hell or high water.

Yeah, JZ Jennings for example, speaking to mind, right? In the most brutal and horrible possible manner. Right? But there's—you can see a lot of this on social media.

Yeah, you know, parents pimping out their children, transforming them as well, you know, and then proclaiming their moral virtue in consequence of the transformation. You know, "My child is very, very deviant, but I'm such a wonderful person that I still love them deeply."

Right, right. But—or pushed them in that direction in the first place, and then you might say so.

Yeah, and I think another example—did you read "I'm Glad My Mom Died" by Janette McCurdy?

No, I haven't read it.

Fantastic! I mean, that I think is the most incredible example of what a lot of—Janette McCurdy—she's—carette—you haven't talked to her on your podcast?

No, I have not.

Um, I believe she talked to Michaela Michaa.

Okay, okay. Um, it—it was just an incredible book. I remember sitting—I read it last year when it came out, and I was just—I mean full—just tears reading it because these are the stories of the people that I grew up with. They're the things that I saw, but was protected against.

My mom was very wary about me being involved in this industry, and she was a sharp—she set firm boundaries. She was always watching, she was always within eye shot.

Had a—I—oh, yes. Right.

Um, and the other thing that I think was incredibly important that she did was, again, like I said, I had so many other things going on in my life, so my identity was not wrapped up in this industry. I never connected it to money at all because my money was put in savings accounts. My parents never touched it. My mom never touched it.

The state takes 15% of whatever a young actor makes and puts it into your Coogan account, so if you are in a situation where your parents are exploiting you, at least by 18 you have some money.

Um, never touched any of that and never wanted me to connect con Hollywood and making money because I would see—she saw people in my circle—these kids—they would, you know, do an episode on the TV show and then their parents would go out and buy, yeah, six American Girl dolls and they would buy a fancy new car for the family.

And, you know, the parents would take a huge vacation that the kid, at 8 years old, paid for.

Right. And my mom always wanted to ensure that I stuck in this industry because I loved it, because I couldn't live without it, because I loved telling stories.

And at least once a month she would say, "Are you sure you want to do this? If you ever want to stop we'll stop. I don't care how much money we've invested in your acting classes and your dance classes. If you want to stop, if you want to go home, I'll pack up and move to Tennessee."

What made her so sensible?

She's just a brilliant woman. She's incredible. She's one of the most resilient people I've ever met. She has been to hell and back a million times. Her first husband passed away, her child then passed away.

Um, my older brother, in light of my brother's passing, has severe mental illness. He’s permanently in a psychiatric facility for schizophrenia.

Um, very, very hard marriage with my father; very, very hard upbringing where she was often the black sheep. She is very comfortable being non-traditional and doing things that would be considered unconventional in whatever circumstance she's in.

How did you end up with traditional values then?

Because she's very traditional. But I—I realized that, as I said that, I contexted myself. She is willing to be unconventional in the given circumstances.

So in Hollywood, we—so she's daring. She's daring. And the majority of people that we were surrounded by were parents who were pushing their kids into this. She was willing to be the one that says, "No, my kid is not doing that. My kid isn't doing this kind of project. My kid is not going out for this project that is run by a producer that we know has, you know, a bad track record."

She's incredibly involved.

Right. Well, so fundamentally—I mean, the case you're laying out—it's always useful to look at situational determinants of unfortunate outcomes, let's say.

And, you know, the first thing you said was, well, there are kids working with adults, and so the lines are blurred.

And, okay, so that sets the stage. And then you can imagine that within those relationships, there's no shortage of people—always, whose ability to obtain intimacy like in a relationship or sexually is, like, stunningly compromised.

Right? And so those people, at minimum, are going to, like, just as a consequence of their inability—are going to be looking for opportunity, and maybe not even that good at distinguishing an appropriate from an inappropriate opportunity.

And then there's the ones that are really bent because they're resentful and because they're isolated—they're actually looking for innocence to subvert and destroy.

Those are the more people who tilt more in the explicitly narcissistic and sadistic direction.

And your circumstance was such that you had a mother who was watching out for you, and so that instead of a mother who was complicit and exploiting you, who turned a blind eye.

Yeah, now you said you had a grief experience—

SP: When you were how old?

Um, nine.

Yeah? So what—how physically mature were you by the time you were 14?

Um, relatively, I always looked older for my age.

One. So I—that's another thing that blurs the lines, right? And if you're around adults and you learn to act like an adult, you're going to also present yourself, you know, in a more mature manner.

Yeah. And if you physically look like one, I mean, I—

Yeah, yeah, well that's—yeah, it makes it very, very complicated.

However, it also—it just shouldn't—what did you—what did you do?

Do you think that so often girls—bully victims in general, girls who are subject to exploitation—are not very good at subtle signaling? They don't know how to say no; they don't know when to say no; they don't know how to broadcast no.

Yeah, like right from the initial interactions, right?

So how do you think you conducted yourself so that—‘cause I know you said your mother was protecting you, but did you conduct yourself so that nothing got going?

Yeah, okay. How? I would say just intrinsically, I'm very self-aware and have been for a long time.

And I think that that is because I had to grow up very quickly in terms of my family. I was just very aware of everything that was going on.

You also said you didn't want to cause trouble.

Yeah, um, unnecessary trouble.

Yes, unnecessary trouble. But I don't think that means that I was not willing to stand up for myself because in situations that were this severe in terms of my safety—my innocence—um, anyway, I—I think that I was very self-aware.

And then it goes back to my mother again—when we moved out to Los Angeles, she knew everything—all the rumors about Hollywood, the casting couch.

She put me in women's self-defense against sexual assault classes when I was 10, and I did those classes until I was 15.

They were the most incredible thing I've ever done, hands down. I was put in situations—I started out doing group classes—and you learn how to fight against a male opponent that is bigger than you because you can do jiu-jitsu; you can do karate.

I think that those disciplines are incredible; they often do not translate to real-world fighting for women specifically, of course.

Women, we hold our strength in different parts of our bodies. Um, when you are dealing with an assault, your, you know, situational awareness is so important; your voice is so important—just being able to scream no.

Yeah, um, it was—it was incredible. And so I mean I was put in situations in these classes where, you know, a man comes up behind you; my instructor comes up behind you holding a knife to your throat—knowing how to get out of that; holding a gun to your head.

You were on the—at least you were run through situations.

I was run through, but I think this situation you described in the restaurant where this writer, I think you said, was—writer slipped his hand into the back pocket of this—of your friend?

You said she was a little older than you?

Yeah, she was 16.

Why didn't he do the same thing to you?

He tried to, and I moved away and I said, "That's weird, don’t do that." Okay.

Did she do that?

No.

Okay, so—so that—that's the perfect example.

Yeah, well that's exactly my point. Those are the micro no's that stop things from proceeding.

Yes, right?

Yeah, and so—and I credit a lot of that to these classes that I did because, as you said, and as you brought up again, I was unwilling to rock the boat.

I was a doormat in my family, and still—that's something that I'm still working through as an adult now—I'm being very, very nervous about that in my immediate family, just because of the way that I—

Are you an agreeable person? Do you like to please people?

I do.

Uh-huh.

Right, right.

Well, you can also see the complexity because if you're an entertainer and you're on the stage, you're obligated as part of your role to be magnetically attractive, charismatic and all of that, and to capitalize on that.

And so drawing the line—Marilyn Monroe, she said she could walk down the street as Norma Jeane or as Marilyn.

Right.

And if she walked down the street as Norma Jeane, no one paid any attention to her. But if she walked down the street as Marilyn Monroe, then she was magnetically attractive.

Right. And so those are obviously—

Well, she was a master of that seductor role. She's still iconic because of that, and it's like 70 years later. That's really quite something.

And it certainly destroyed her.

Yeah, right, because that was too much.

Well, if you're an actor, an actress, then you have this conundrum because you're rewarded for your attractiveness; you're capitalizing on your attractiveness. You're among adults, but you have to hem that in so that you're not exploited.

Yeah, right.

Well, when exactly are you being exploited, and when exactly are you exploiting yourself?

It's not like that's obvious, so it's a very good thing that you had your mother along with you.

Yeah, the courses too—that's interesting because you were at least placed in frightening situations, and you were at least alerted to the fact that those sorts of things existed.

How do you think what you learned in the course has translated into changes in your day-to-day behavior?