Ep. 197 How Audiobook Narration Cured Her Perfectionism And Changed Everything with Actress Kathe Mazur

What if the work you thought would be punishment became the thing that completely transformed how you show up in life? Actress Kathe Mazur shares how falling into audiobook narration accidentally cured her of decades of perfectionism and self-criticism, teaching her to trust her instincts in ways that changed everything about her creative process. Known for her nine-season run as DDA Andrea Hobbs on The Closer and Major Crimes, Kathe reveals the surprising moment that shifted her from someone who was never called 'easy' to someone who learned to make it both easy and good. Her journey from a one-episode guest spot to a beloved series regular wasn't planned, but it happened because she understood something most actors miss about bringing authentic personality to exposition.

In this conversation, Kathe opens up about growing up in a house of artists where success meant having a good day in the studio, the phone call rule that changed after 9/11, and why she reads terrible reviews out loud for laughs with fellow actors. She breaks down how to use your real feelings as creative fuel instead of fighting them, the moment in acting class when everything clicked, and why boundaries only work when everyone signs off on them. Whether you're navigating creative work, building resilience, or learning to trust your instincts under pressure, Kathe's insights will shift how you think about perfectionism, presence, and what it really means to show up authentically.


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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, everyone, Welcome to Achieving Success with Olivia Acken. I
am your host, Olivia Akin. Each week we will discuss
the role map of achieving your personal and professional success.
We give you real life stories on growing personally and
professionally to achieve your life and career goals with the
help of some top notched guests. Today we are speaking

(00:26):
with actress Kada Maser. Kada Maser an accomplished American actress
whose career spans two decades in film and television. Kata
is best known for her nine season portrayal of Deputy
District Attorney Andrea Hobbs on the critically acclaimed T and
T series The Closer and Major cons establishing herself as

(00:48):
one of television's most recognized legal professionals. Her filmwork includes
a memorable role in Clean Clint Eastwoods, American Sniper, and
her television credit span Major Network with appearances on NCIS,
Criminal Minds, House Castle, and The Mentalists, among so many others,

(01:08):
including her voice work that she does. Born in Providence,
Rhode Island, Kada has built a reputation for bringing depth
and authenticity to every character she porchays, whether in procedural dramas,
feature films or guest starring roles across television's most respected series. Hello, Kada,
it's fantastic having you on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
I'm so excited because for so many different reasons and
even the conversation we were getting on getting deep into
right before this recording. But I was so excited prepping
for this as well because seeing your credits and like,
I know who you are, but I'm like, this is
every show I've watched like four thousand times over and over.

(01:55):
I'm like, this is going to be the best because
I love it when people do their research on things.
As we were also talking about because you were prepping
before this, and I was like, I can actually speak
to like like a perspective of understanding the work she's
done in the portrayals she made. So I'm so excited

(02:16):
for all the places we're going to go in this conversation.
But to start off the show, can you tell me
what success means and looks like to Kaita Maser?

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, as you were saying, I had done all this
prep work and then didn't get a chance to look
at my notes. So now I'm going to be ringing it.
What does success look like? Okay, very very very very specifically,
success means to what degree I am freed up to

(02:47):
bringing the best of my own work. That is what
success means to me, is the only thing. So if
I did the biggest movie in the world, but I
was uptight and I wasn't happy with the way that
I I showed up, or I wasn't happy with the
way I behaved either as a person or as an actor,

(03:07):
then that would be a big fail for me and
I would feel crappy about it. And by the same token,
I can do like the tiniest little thing, including auditions,
and if I like what I did, it's a great day,
it's a successful day. So it literally has no other meaning.

(03:29):
You know, I was raised in a house of artists.
My father was a painter and my mother's a poet.
And these are professions that people don't make a lot
of money. These are and they're also very self motivated professions, right,
So you go out. What they did very different from
what I do, is they would go in their studio

(03:50):
or go in their office and do their work every day.
So what I knew about creating was you have a
good day when you've created well, and it's a bad
day when you haven't. And then my father took it
further and he said something that I think about all
the time, which is there's no such thing as a

(04:13):
bad day in the studio. And what he meant was,
he said, you go out to the studio and nothing
is working, and everything feels like a big failure, and
you don't like your work and you don't like what
you're doing, and the next day you go out, or
a week later, you go out and you have a
great day. And he said, you have no way of

(04:33):
knowing that that good day isn't a direct result of
that bad day a week before, so you can't write
it all. There's no such thing as a bad day
in the studio. And that kind of is the definition
to me of success, is to approach the work you
do like there's no such thing as a bad day

(04:55):
in the studio.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
And I think it's so important they brought that up.
And I love that's what you follow because I think
sometimes when we're in the thick of it, right, and
we were talking about stress before this and all those stressors,
and when you were saying that that was also coming
to my mind of when we're in the thick of it,

(05:17):
all we can sometimes see is the bad, the noise
that's around, right, and all these things. But to your point,
those moments create clarity and direction. So when the work
pays off right that all the pieces fit together, it's like, oh, yeah,

(05:37):
this is amazing, this is what I meant to be doing,
or how it's supposed to be preyed up. But I
think there's so much that shapes that.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
And you need those bad days, you need and a
great day, right, it's the result of hundreds of failures,
Like hundreds of failures go into every single great day.
So if that's true, how can they be failures? How
can we what I think of failure? Can I say

(06:17):
that kind of a what is that? The origin of
the word sin or something has to do with missing
the mark. It's like shooting an arrow and missing the mark.
And there's something about the failure being being able to
talk about failure in a really wonderful fun way, like

(06:40):
have some lightness about that, have some lightness about you know.
I remember I did a series. I used to do
a lot of sitcom work before I did dramatic work,
and I did a short lived sitcom with Christopher Maloney,
and we became very good friends, and we loved working together.
And I love loved working with him because he anything

(07:04):
that was going wrong, he always gave a solution as well.
So if he said this isn't working, he'd go, what
if I did this? And I learned a lot of
this was, you know, a long time ago, and I
learned a lot from watching him. But the other thing
I learned from him was after we finished that series,
which is called Misery Love's Company. After we finished that series,

(07:24):
he went and he got another job. This is before SVU,
and he got he he called me up and he
read me all his bad reviews and he was laughing
and he was going, Christopher Maloney incredibly unsexy and uncharismatic,

(07:46):
like he was reading me these things. And all I
could think is this guy's going to be a major star,
because that's the attitude, right, Like, not only is he
not being killed off by this failure, right failure or
didn't go He got terrible reviews, but he's using it
to make something else today. He's using it to make fun.

(08:08):
He's using it for us to have a good laugh.
He's taking things in, but he's not taking himself too seriously.
And I'd never seen anyone do that before. And when
I started doing audiobooks, we used to get This was
before audible, and so that where we would get like

(08:29):
reader reviews was on them. I can't even remember, like
the website, like the Books on Tape website, and we
would read each other our terrible reviews and we would
just laugh and laugh and laugh, and we'd have like
a bunch of readers together going like, oh wait, oh wait,
listen to what they said about me. And that has

(08:51):
been an extraordinary lesson that you really don't People don't
do that when they're tight. They don't do that when
they're holding on. You've got to be willing to go. Look,
the review happened. It's a thing they said. It's out there.
I can either go rather or I can go Okay. Now,

(09:13):
now I've heard this good thing and I've heard this
bad thing, and so none of it matters, right, Like
the bad doesn't matter if you're making fun of it.
I don't know if that's an answer to your question.
No it is.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
And what I've really heard you saying that too, is
you give weight to what you want to give weight to.
So if you want to give weight to the stress,
the bad review, the negative things being said online, then
that will that grip will be tight on you, and.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
It has you, It has you in its hold, like
you said.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Yeah, But if you don't and you laugh it off
and you practice that, it doesn't hold have that hold
for you. How do you continue to practice not letting
the noise of the industry, the noise of the reviews,
whatever it might be, get a hold of you.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
I learned somewhere along the way that, for instance, if
I'm in an audition, I can either use all the
real feelings that I'm having and find a way to
use them creatively, or I can try to ignore all

(10:38):
of my feelings and replace them with a bunch of
feelings I would rather have. And I learned at some
point that for me, that doesn't mean anything. It doesn't work.
It's like, if I've got all this juice that's based
on my terror, or based on my feeling of rejection,

(11:00):
or based on my feeling like I'm terrible person or
whatever's going wrong, that's actually just juice. And I can
do things like say, Okay, this character feels that way too,
but she doesn't want anyone to know it. Or I
could say that character feels that way too, and she's
going to use it to make this person feel guilty,

(11:20):
or I can do something with it, but I don't.
For me, everybody is a different way of working. For me,
I don't have the choice to decide to ignore what
I'm really feeling and choose an entire different set of
feelings and fake them. Some people are great at that.

(11:40):
God bless my juice. Is what's happening to me, And
so on a certain level, there's nothing to reject or
there's nothing to hold off. There's no nothing can hurt
you if it's all useful. So I remember being in
a class once and a teacher who I just loved

(12:01):
and admired, and I was doing my first scene for him,
and he when I walked in, he thought that, like
the thing I was wearing was stupid something, and he
goes take that off, go take that headdress off or whatever,
like who do you think you are? And he was
kind of making fun of me, and he goes go

(12:21):
and come back in, and I felt like I felt
like my world was crushing down right on me. And
I remember thinking you can either take all this and
just fucking sorry use it, or you can crumble, and

(12:43):
those are your choices. And that was the moment where
a lot of things changed for me, because when I
started again, I was so consolidated. It was like there
was nothing to be afraid of, and I was able
to go like, Okay, here what I want to do.
And that was where my thinking really changed about what

(13:08):
it is that creativity is for me and the best
way for me to use.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
You know.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
I remember being on a set once and it was
just a hard day. It was a day when my
child was dying. Anybody who's ever done a lot of procedurals,
not as the professionals, but as the victims or the
victims mothers or wives, you're just constantly crying. You're constantly upset.
You know. I used to have this joke. I used

(13:41):
to read a lot for ER and NYPD Blue, and
there was all these auditions and you'd either go to
ER NYPD Blue, And I said to my agent, it's
the same audition. It's just that in ER your child
is dying and NYPD Blue your child is dead. That's
the only difference. But the rest of it, because there

(14:01):
was this category, and we all watch them all the time.
They are expositional. They don't have any life outside of
their grief, and you're not. If you tried to bring
in life outside of your grief, it would overwhelm it.
You're there to be a grief anchor, right, it's the job.

(14:25):
And I remember there was one time I was doing
something and I just was tired. I was just tired
of all of that grief and I started to tell
my talk to myself and I said, I just want
to go home. I don't want to do this again.
And then I went, I said, okay, I get it.

(14:47):
You're going to go home soon. You can just do
it one more time. I knew I was going to
do it thirty more times, but I said, just do
it one more time. Just get the one more time
and that kindness of going. You're allowed to also hate this.
You're allowed to want to leave. You're allowed to hate
the actor you're working with. You're allowed to not want
to kiss them. You're allowed to have every single feeling

(15:10):
you have, and how are you going to use that
to stay present and stay having a bit of humor
and humanity for yourself instead of going you're messing up.
You're messing up. You're not supposed you should be grateful.

(15:30):
Whatever the crazy voices are, even that would be like
you should be grateful. Oh okay, so now I'm beating
myself up. What do I want to do about that?
Maybe I want to turn that out on the actor
I'm working with because I'm angry at them, and I'll
pretend they're me and I'll talk to them. It's all
all there, like in the moment, and you do all

(15:54):
the homework, you do all the preparation that then you
forget to look at you do all the homework, but
then when you're in the moment, you're going to have
one feeling at a time, and you don't get to
decide what that feeling is, no matter how much you
may want it to be different. And again, there are

(16:14):
extraordinary actors that could hear me say this and go,
just are you kidding me? I just decide what feeling
I want to have, and then I have it and
I'm one that's wonderful. That's not the way I function.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
And it's a pure example as well. But in life,
no two people are the same. The way you show up,
what your experiences are that day, every little piece of
your day, your life, your experience is shape who you
are in that moment and moving forward. And I say
that a lot with podcasting as well, when people ask

(16:50):
me about like podcasting advice and as a guest or
a host, and I'm like, the mistake a lot of
people assume is that what works over here for this
podcast in this host is a blue print and one
hundred percent template that as long as you do every
single step correctly, you are then going to emulate and

(17:13):
have the same exact success. And now you've just shortened
that significantly, and that's okay, just.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Do that, Just do what that person does.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Yeah, And that's what gets me in general too. I've
recently pointed that the term everyone's selling a Golden ticket
on social media right now of like, hey, just do
these five steps and then you can make seven figures
and if you just do this, and I'm like, no,
because no two people are exactly the same, no two experiences.
And even going through that, it made me think of

(17:45):
like how I try to give myself the space and
observance of like, like yourself, I have to be able
to live in the moment of like what I'm feeling,
and nine times out ten, it's gonna feel me. I
joke that I love when people tell me you're not
you can't do that, or that's not gonna work, and

(18:06):
I'm like, yeah, now watch me, like watch it happen. Uh,
And I'm like yeah, it's a great feeling to then
be able to like be like that's your challenge. Now
I'm gonna do it, and watch me do it better
than you ever thought, and then accomplish that goal. But
it's also like in moments of the day where it's like,

(18:28):
for example, when my boyfriend is underway in the US
Coast Guard, I leave my phone on, which I'll tell
you I have a golden rule in recordings, don't have
your phone on, and like daylight today, when he's underway,
I'm like, that thing stays on in the corner right
and I will sit and in a recording before this,

(18:50):
I saw it like light up with his name and
I'm like, oh my god, and I'm trying to be
present and I'm like, don't look at it, don't look
at it, just wait, just wait. And I was like, okay,
can I nod so outly grab it and just look
because then I can go back to focusing as long as.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
I know that's right, that's right, and people and people
are actually great, right Like, as long as your your
goal is to be present, the things you have to
do to be present are are things we love. Right Like,
if somebody said to me, I really want to talk

(19:32):
to you, I'm so sorry, I got to go take
this work thing five minutes, I'm going to be back.
That's taken care of me. That's fine. You can go
off and make that phone call. If somebody's spending fifty
percent of their energy, fifty percent of their time going
back and forth, then I'm going to be like, you know,
but whatever it takes us to I my son can

(19:54):
break through on my phone anytime, because it's my son,
you know, Like he doesn't call a lot, so if
he needs to call, it's always because he needs something,
so he can break through. If I'm in the theater,
I have to turn the phone totally off because he
could break through at anytime. My my rule about being able

(20:23):
to like my husband can break through, I'm pretty sure.
And the reason that is is or no, he can't
break through. But I never what's the word, I never
sent him to voicemail. I never what's the word what's
the word when you when you decide not to take

(20:45):
a call?

Speaker 1 (20:45):
When you oh, like you never by a I blanking
on this one?

Speaker 2 (20:50):
Yeah, Like what is that word?

Speaker 1 (20:52):
When you ignore the phone call?

Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah, when you ignore the phone call? Like, okay, so
I will ignore the phone call. And this is to
bring down the room. But it was because of nine
to eleven, because people called and went to voicemail, and
I'm sure that that's something that was very hard for

(21:13):
their loved ones to Now in some ways, it meant
that they could preserve their voice and that last call,
but you wished that you had answered so you could
tell them you love them and say goodbye. So since
we never know what's going on with somebody, I can't
ever decide that my husband's call is not worth taking

(21:37):
or my son's call isn't worth taking, and ninety nine
point nine percent of the time it's not worth taking,
like fine, you know, and then you just go can't
talk to you now. But I just need to know
that this isn't like a distress call or you're in
the hospital, and I'm like going, yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Well that even made me think in my house growing up,
we had a rule, right, because both of my parents
are in the medical field. My dad is an anastdiologist.
He's been director of multiple hospitals. My mom is a
on college and social workers. She works with people all
day who are dying families, and so we always knew

(22:23):
right growing up, they both worked. They're on call twenty
four hours a day, right, there's no getting kind of
away from that. And my parents even I remember talking
about nine to eleven. When nine to eleven hit, my
parents were at work. My mom actually dropped off at school.
I was in first grade. My sister was in kindergarten,

(22:44):
and we were close with the kindergarten teacher. And when
that first plane hint, the teacher called my mom, the
kindergarten teacher my sister was in kindergarten, and said, come
get the kids, like we're about to get unlocked up
if you could get here like the next fifteen.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
Minutes, because where were you I was.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
I was in New Jersey at the time, right, so
South Jersey, and so my mom came and picked us up.
My dad's my mom grew up in Connecticut. My dad
grew up in New York in Long Island, and his
family's business was in Manhattan, so he we came and

(23:25):
my my parents knew people who were in the Twin Towers,
and it happened. And then my dad got us in
the car and drove us to Long Island and then
me and my sisters, my mom came and went were
at my grand my nana and Pop's house for a
few days. My parents then went to nine to eleven

(23:47):
site and helped. And I mean I was so young then,
like we weren't calling people, but ever since that, using
that as a standalone point, my parents had a rule,
if you need to get in touch with us, you
call them. We'll pick up. If for some reason we
don't call, call second time and it doesn't matter, they

(24:10):
will pick up. So I have called my parents with
amazing life news. I remember when I got the call
that I became the youngest intern to intern at the
New York Giants and like life altering moment. And I
called both of them. They were and they're like, are
you okay? And like my dad's literally in the O

(24:32):
R and I'm on speaker because it could only pipe through,
and my mom's the patient, is everything okay? And I'm
like I got the intern and they start screaming you
you know, you hear the room o erpt. And there's
also times where I remember when I got hit. I
was in my car driving and I got badly hit

(24:54):
from behind and I called my parents and I was like,
I just got hit like this and that, and they're like,
luckily that was the day they were not working. I'm
just using it as an example. And my dad mom
were at a mall and they were apart, and my
dad was like, we'll be there in ten minutes, and
they were twenty minutes away. Okay, so there was definitely

(25:15):
some speeding that happened. And he ran to my mom
and he was like, we gotta go. Stop what you're doing.
We gotta go. And she's like, what's going on and
he's like, Olivia's been an accent. We gotta go, and
it was drop and we're there. So like, even now
that all their kids are grown, we have a rule
like if my parents text me, they'll be like, if

(25:35):
it's not important, they'll be like, hey, can you talk
right now? It will you know, just text about whatever?
If it is something more of importance, like something has
happened within the family, whatever might be happening. They'll call
and them be like, you need you need to pick
up the pub like come on, yeah and see vice persa.
I called my my dad the other day and he

(25:56):
picked up. He goes, you're good. I'm I'm about to
roll into the air. Are you good? And I'm like,
oh yeah, just commulater. But he's like, you've never in
our family. You don't miss a phone call, you don't
miss a text. And we tell each other like, this
is what my day looks like. Late last night, I
to run through with my boyfriend and my parents, like

(26:18):
I have four hours of recordings during this time, and.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
It's gonna be even more because this one woman, she
keeps messing up the time. So I don't know how
long I'll probably be going till midnight with her. No,
it's you know, but I.

Speaker 4 (26:35):
Also love you Know. What I love about your story too,
is you know, lives are are filled with lots of stuff,
and and you need to know what matters to you.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
You know, you need to me, you need to It's
just simple boundaries, right, It's just simple. Like it's kind
of a question. I know that there was some question
on your list of questions that had to do with
that or made me think of that, like how do
you set the boundaries between life? And so it actually
we just backed into a later question. So if it's

(27:15):
not a bad moment to talk about it. But I
do think that the people around you if you're if
you can be clear about what your boundaries are and
so that everybody knows what to expect of you and
you're in charge of that and they're signed off on that,

(27:39):
then you're good. You know, like you're good, Like you
need your family or your loved ones to be on
board with Okay, this is the way that I need
to work or you know, my husband knows. You know,
I like to spend a lot of time alone when
I'm working on something because that's the way that I think.

(28:02):
I'm obviously I'm going to pick up my kid. Obviously
I'm going to do everything that the family needs. But
then I'm going to be not available, you know, when
I when I can be not available, I'm going to
be not available and then everything arranges around that and
that's how everything stays healthy. And you know, I was

(28:25):
thinking about your question, and the head was in that
kind of world, and that's why I think it's you
have to be with people who are supportive. You have to.
I don't know. I don't know how you would do
this profession if if your mate is not supportive, I
don't I don't know how you do it.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
And my question that made me think while you were
also speaking, is have you ever had, like I've experienced
this where it's like you're not in the zone of
necessarily working or that creative lane and you're doing something
else and you're like, oh my god, like, bulb, this is.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
The direction or this totally?

Speaker 1 (29:07):
How do you handle that and communicate that because sometimes
for me, it's just like, oh my god, I thought
of this, like Okay, I gotta tell someone, I gotta
like get it out. And they're like, we're literally skiing
down a mountain and you're starting to talk about this
right now, Like how do you kind of handle that?

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Well?

Speaker 3 (29:26):
I love that, you know, I mean, I think that's
what it is to be a creative person, not just
an artist, you know, a creative person whatever you do,
whether you're a you know, a homemaker or whatever you do,
to do it in a creative way is to be

(29:47):
available for the messages to come through, however they come through,
and whenever they come through.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Every scientist, every person, every teacher, every everybody has had
moments where they go, oh no, I figure out how
to handle that situation, and they're not in the middle
of that situation. It's a really good thing to have,
you know, notes on your phone. I have to take
notes all the time just to remind myself because I'm

(30:15):
having thoughts that I want to you know, it's like
a to do list. I have to have it written down,
you know. And I my husband has add and he
used to say things like, oh, I just I forget
that I have to do that, or I forget about that,
or I get distracted. And at one point I realized

(30:35):
that he thought that all the rest of us are
holding this all in our heads, and I'm like, I'm
not holding anything in my head. It's all written down.
I have to look at look. If I don't look
at my calendar, I get really messed up. And if
I get distracted and I'm in a fitting like today
and it goes two hours later, I and things can

(30:58):
change that I'm not. But it was really amazing for
me to realize, like, oh, the pressure that he's putting
on himself is he thinks the rest of us are
like walking around on top of everything instead of no,
we just have the executive function to figure out what

(31:19):
tools help us remember what we need to remember. When
you know, that's a that's a learned skill, right, It's like,
what do I need to do my work? So let's
say you have a brilliant idea and you're in the
middle of like, I don't even know how much that hapened.

(31:43):
You know, for instance, let's say you were talking to
me about something that was really important to you. I'm
probably not going to have a brilliant idea about something
I'm doing, because that would mean I wasn't thinking about
what you were saying. I wasn't present with what you
were saying. But later I might go. You know it's
really interesting is when she was saying that, it made

(32:04):
me think of this. I think that I think that
fluidity and trust and instinct are more important than we
even realize. The ability to go it's okay if you
forget it. You know, when you're talking to people, we

(32:24):
all have this and we go like, oh dad, where
was I thinking? What was I going to say? And
to learn over time to go it'll come back. It
always comes back.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
You'll hear me mid podcast episodes. Sometimes I'll be asking.
I'll be like, oh, try to keep it going for
a second, like the question, and I'll be like, honestly,
I had no idea what I was going to say next,
So let's let's go down this story. Oh, I'm like,
I'll tell Ben my producer, leave it in there, like
it's just the flood. Leave it in Yeah, it's the

(32:57):
royal moments, like that is what happens in real time.
You know. I do want to dive in because I
can't believe we're so far into this episode and we
haven't even touched pieces of your career, which I also
love because so many times people get on especially actors
and celebrities and athletes, and it's like, Okay, let's just

(33:19):
focus on this piece of their career or that, And
so I love that we're thirty minutes in, forty minutes
in and we haven't even touched it. We've been talking
about such amazing things, but I think we got to
touch your amazing career, thank you know, and works that

(33:39):
I also love. And to be honest, like, I mean,
be very transparent here, I reached out to Kata's team,
just because I thought she was so fascinating in her journey,
not because I loved all the shows. And I was like,
and when I reached out to her and I'd researched

(34:00):
things about her prior, I was like, yeah, I have
typically people reach out to me, and I'm like, I
have to reach out to her team. I gotta try
to because this is so interesting. And then when I
was doing even more research, once you said yes, I
was like, no, wonder her image looks so familiar. These
are literally all the shows I watched, and like, no joke,

(34:24):
Like two weeks ago, I couldn't even find what to
watch on like Netflix, and The Closers now on Netflix,
and I was like, I mean, I've watched every episode
four times, but like, let's start it over. It's it's
been like a year since I watched it, so but
I'm on touch upon that. I mean, you had an
incredible nine year run as DDA Andrea Hobbs on The

(34:49):
Closure and Close are in major crimes. What was it
like to essentially grow up with a character for nearly
a decade.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
It was heaven, you know. I loved that character and
it was I always felt like there was nothing that
I couldn't include in that character. Even though her lines

(35:19):
didn't include anything about her personal life, you never knew
anything other than how she felt about the case and
what was going on. But you know, there was so
much that I felt was personal about her because the
way she saw the world was very specific, and you

(35:42):
could always tell who she thought was not stepping up,
who she thought, who she liked, who she didn't That
that wouldn't necessarily be in the lines, ever, but you
could just it was just what happened, you know. It
was just like if I looked and the way that
actor was doing that part was annoying to me at

(36:03):
that moment, not as an actor, but as like the
character being a dick. You know. Then even if the
next line I'm saying is you know, well let me
know later and I'll take a look at it, you
say that differently if you think the person you're talking
to is being a dick. You know. So I felt

(36:24):
like I was really, you know, the definition of success.
I felt like I was freed up. I felt like
I got to do what I wanted to do and
that I did do it. And that was one that
was supposed to be one episode really Yeah, that was
a one episode job.

Speaker 1 (36:45):
So how does going into that what is it like
going in thinking you're in for one episode? And then
how does it transition to a regular on our show?

Speaker 2 (36:59):
Well, you know, we weren't given having a panel talk
at one point and Mike Robbin, who's one of the
producers and directors, is wonderful guy, and somebody there was
some question about that for me, and what he said
was he said, you know, the truth is in Cada's situation,
and this is possible for anybody. You go in to

(37:23):
do what you think is it one episode thing, a
simple thing, a lawyer or whatever he goes. If you
put your own English on it, the writers will get
excited because they have somebody to write for. And in
series television where you're going to keep ongoing, they get
really excited by personalities that they feel they can add

(37:47):
to the mix. And maybe even not more so, but
very specifically so when it's a person who has to
give a lot of you know, facts, story data, you know, exposition,

(38:11):
what a writer wants is for the exposition to sing.
They don't want the exposition to seem like just a
bunch of information. So when you watch law and order,
or you watch any of these procedurals, any of these
doctor shows, any of these cop shows, fireman shows, legal shows.

(38:34):
You will and you're watching somebody give exposition. You can
tell when something happens to you where you're a little interested.
You're interested in the personality that's delivering the information. And
if you are going in on something like that, got

(38:55):
to know the story you're telling, and that's the most
important thing. If the story you're telling is she came
in at midnight, she made a sandwich, and then she
went to bed and I didn't see her after that,
that's a story. But if you bring yourself to it,
then the story is fun to watch be told, not

(39:18):
just informational and it seems really obvious, but it's actually
not what happens. People kind of think they're just giving
the facts, and you're never just giving the facts. You
create your part of a world. And when I got
that audition, and it sticks in my mind because it

(39:41):
was very specific. What happened was, I thought, oh, I've
never seen The Closer. Okay, better find an episode of
The Closer. So I found one on YouTube or whatever
was on at the time, and I'd never seen it.
I knew who Kira was, but Kira's Kara during the
Closer was not like Kira in real life, so I

(40:05):
wouldn't have known just from knowing who she was, what
that character was. So I'm watching that character and I'm thinking, oh, okay,
she is like a Southerner who's kind of ditzy and
does things in an indirect way. So I'm going to
be a very direct Northerner. I'm going to and that

(40:28):
is what I am, right So instead of me like
deciding to do something that's not I went, okay, okay,
I know exactly what part of me can be helpful
to this story. So when I went in there, it
wasn't about I hope I do a good job. It
was I actually know how I can be of use

(40:51):
to this story. So I'm completely relaxed about whether or
not I'm valuable or whatever because I actually have something
I can give here, which is a kind of directness,
a kind of real braininess. That her character's brainness was
all covered in all sorts of wild and femininity and

(41:16):
all sorts of things she's doing with her braininess, and
my brainingness is on the table. I am not interested
in going around things or wasting any kind of time,
and I got no time for it. And so every
day on that set was great, and they kept writing

(41:38):
it even they kept writing my characters smarter and smarter
in terms of the intelligence of the writing, because they
would pick up more and more. And I remember I
really liked doing those scenes with Mary McDonald for major Crimes.
I loved the scenes where we would be alone, just

(41:59):
the two of us, because something started to happen where
I felt like we were connected to each other by
being women of a certain age, and by being women
in positions of power, and by dealing in very male
environments that there was an understanding between the characters of
what they were dealing with. And the writers started to

(42:22):
really write a friendship in there that wasn't necessarily wouldn't
have been there. If I'd had a different feeling about it,
they would have written something different. They were really smart
that way. And there was this one episode where the
man she's in love with is in the hospital and

(42:43):
he's had a heart attack, and the scene was kind
of showing us here up talking, but I she took
my hand below the frame because we had built a
sort of a professional relationship and you knew these two
women did not get together outside of work, but they

(43:06):
had built some kind of a relationship. And then the
director took a shot and did it again so that
he could get her hand taking mine, and then that
ended up in the show, and you just go, that's
the miracle, you know, if you bring your own humanity

(43:26):
to something, and your own humor and your own instincts,
even if it goes against everything about what's on the page.
There's nothing on the page that looked like Andrea Hobbes
and her character should be holding hands. But that is
what people do, is what our people did. That's what

(43:49):
we did, and that's how you grow a character, you know,
is this beautiful alchemy between who you are and who
the writers start to see that you are. And I
just loved it. I loved it. And then when something

(44:10):
terrible happens to her character at the end of the series,
the writers had all of us in a circle sort
of facing each other and dealing with something and they
wrote that my character turned her back, and I thought
that is so sensitive, because it wasn't the kind of

(44:31):
person who was going to emote in front of everybody,
and that just seemed like that's like it was like
so brilliant to me. It was like an actor's choice,
you know that they wrote that that would be something
that I might have come up with, but they wrote
it anyway, And I just felt a lot of gratitude

(44:51):
and a lot of love for that whole process. So
that's a very very very very long answer to that question.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
That Wade's a great answer. And you know, also, I mean,
I've plus our questions, but I feel like there's so
much in there of what you just said. But I
know we're getting towards that end of time, and there's
definitely one question because I know you've had so many roles,
You've done so many things. You do voice acting, you
do audio books, and we haven't even touched upon that.

(45:19):
And that's a whole other thing I wish we had
time to dive into.

Speaker 5 (45:23):
But as someone who's been on so many impactful shows
where people really go in, they watch and they get
dialed into it and they keep on, Like myself, You've
watched some of these shows.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Plenty of time, right and I'm like, oh, I want
a good show. I don't know what to watch. I'll
just rewatch this one because I know it's good. I know,
I'm gonna be engaged with it for you. You know, in
that time, it was a TV regular. It's still those
shows still get shown on TV and get replayed. But

(46:02):
have you found that there has been new life brought
into the shows that you've been on, because now they're
getting out put on platforms like Netflix and these.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Absolutely absolutely, I mean it's fantastic. It's fantastic that people
can see things you did twenty years ago. It's beautiful.
I mean, for all of the the ups and downs
and pros and cons of the streaming world and all

(46:34):
of it, it used to be you couldn't see these things. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Well, and I think too. You know, for example, we'll
take Scrubs, which has rebooted itself right and that you know,
they said a big part of them bringing the full
original cast back and they're not trying to be like, oh,
we're going to pick up like the day after the

(47:01):
show ended.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
It is cool, yeah, yeah, as if some of these
characters have been alive all this time and now we're
just checking back in right, which I have.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
I have watched their season and I will say I
love how they strategically did that where they said, and
I've watched interviews with the cast where you know, one
of the characters was on a different show, and they're like,
if we're gonna do this, we're doing it with the
full cast. We're gonna make sure everyone has it, but
we're also making sure twenty years has passed. Yeah, and

(47:32):
like what life would be like, what we actually look like,
and all these things. But they I've watched them in
interviews where they go being able to be on this
platform and COVID hitting and this hitting and people having
access to that kind of show gave us the ability
to now do that. And I think, and I one

(47:55):
hundred percent want your opinion, because you know way better
than I do. It seems like a lot of these
shows and characters not only are gang now put in
front of new people, but it's bringing up new opportunities
because now it's at the forefront again.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think in some
cases that's got to be right, right, that that it's
that it's that it's finding a my my son's girlfriend
is a big Gray's Anatomy fan, and she said to
him the other day, Oh, your grand your your grandma,

(48:33):
your mother was on Gray's Anatomy and he's never watched that,
and she made him like they watched it together.

Speaker 6 (48:43):
And and then I just realized I wasn't born yet
when you did this, Like mind was like, oh my,
oh my god, Like I'm.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Actually looking at my mother from before I existed. And
things like that are pretty interesting, you know about the
work we do.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
What was that like for you too, Like having your
son look at things that you did before he was
alive after he's alive, and like be able to show
that to him, If that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
It makes me feel really good, like I you know,
when you make something, you know, if you make a painting,
it laughs, if you write a book, it laughs. What
we've done has traditionally been very ephemeral. In theater is

(49:43):
very ephemeral, and then TV used to be very ephemeral.
You know, you do it and it would show that night,
and whoever it wasn't home and didn't see it, that
was it. And so it's given I think all of
us a great feeling that we didn't know we would
have of that. It's not effemorable that the work we
do can pop back up. And I always think it's funny,

(50:06):
like if someone's watching TV and they see an episode
of something that you're on, and then the next night
they'll see an episode of something you did ten years before,
and to them, you're working all the time. You're like, yeah,
that was ten years apart. But that kind of convergence
will happen right where for some reason, you're on TV

(50:28):
all the time in that one week of that person's
watching just because of what they happened to watch. And
I think that's great. And I also love seeing my
friends and my colleagues seeing them pop up. You know,
you watch a movie and you see you know, if

(50:49):
you watch I can't remember what I was watching, But
you can watch a movie and like there's young Harrison
Ford in like one of his first jobs. There is
something about no the way a person's career went, and
then getting to see them when they didn't even know
how their career is going to go. And you're sitting
there going, you're gonna be really famous and you don't

(51:12):
even know that yet. Like you're you're standing on a
set somewhere saying these lines, and somewhere in the future,
like time travel, I'm sitting in my room going and
you are now seventy and this is what happened to you,
and I have more information about your life than you
have at this moment. There's something very magical about the

(51:34):
whole thing.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
I think it sounds very magical and like it made
me even think about my journey and some of my
peers journey. But the Harrison Ford thing, I will say
this when you brought up him just now, I've recently
watched an interview because he's been on the show Shrinking right,
And I watched that show and.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
So something's great on it.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Oh my god, he is amazing and like the humanity
he brings to the character and every aspect anyway, So
in one of the episodes he starts humming. And so
because I watched the show in this and that facebook

(52:15):
lestens right. So a group panel for the season that
came out, they were talking about it and they had
the whole cast on it and Harrison Ford talks about
I forget what the question was asked and he was like, yeah,
in this moment, I started humming. And I don't know

(52:38):
where that the like, where the rhythm came from whatever.
I guess someone asked about and he was like, yeah,
I just started humming. It wasn't in the script, It
wasn't anything. It just felt like doing it, and oh,
what's I'm forgetting his name? He was on how I
Met your Mother? Who's the main cast member.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Jason Siegel.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (52:59):
I'm like, I have I hope that's his name, because
otherwise I just said the wrong name.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
It's okay, But he turned to be cause you didn't
know that that was from Indiana Jones. He's like, because
it were, because it was just it was just in
my brain, I guess, and I just hummed it and
the whole cast are like that, so him and his character,

(53:26):
But also did you not remember like that is from
that baby? And he's like, yeah, I guess it was
just so long ago. It was just in my head
that day and I did it. And it just also shows,
like to what you were saying, how moments transcended, how
they stayed with you even subconsciously.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
Yeah. Yeah, that being.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
Said, we are now over our hour, which couldn't I know.
I'm like, there's so much more, but I tried to
be conscious of your time. So I can't keep you
even though I wish I could.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
Well, I'm here, so yeah, if you haven't, do have
another question. If you have another question, you can ask it.
But if you want to wrap up, you could wrap up.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
I think my other question for you would be now
also being in the voice acting space, how has that changed?
Has it changed how you show up or how you prepped?

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Audiobooks changed my life. They changed everything about my life.
I am an audiobook narrator, so I don't do voice work.
I mean I have, but really I'm an audiobook narrator.
And I fell into it. I didn't. Somebody suggested I audition.
This was in two thousand and one or whatever. Somebody said, oh,

(54:49):
I'm going to audition. You should come an audition. It
never occurred to me that anybody would want to listen
to my voice for twelve hours in their car. That
seemed like like punishment to me. I could not ever
have thought that up. But what I learned from doing
audiobooks is you're in a room. You have fifty characters

(55:14):
you have to play. You've got four hundred pages you
have to do. You do not have the time to
go up in your head. You do not have the
time to be hard on yourself. You do not have
the time to go oh, I think I did that wrong.
Let me keep doing it till I get it right.
And as a result, what I learned was you are

(55:36):
going to have to trust your instincts in the most
aggressive way that you ever have, and if you do
something wrong, you're going to have to go well, I
was broad and move on and do not be hard
on yourself. And during the process of going from not
doing audiobooks to doing audiobooks, I became a person who

(56:00):
took myself less seriously, who who stopp being hard on myself.
I thought, I'm choosing all these voices, I'm choosing fifty characters.
I'm telling this story from every like exactly the way
I think this story needs to be told I and
I don't have the ability to do that. While I'm

(56:23):
beating myself up, and I thought, sometimes you take a
page of dialogue and you beat yourself to death about
how to do it right, and that's not necessary. You
can actually do it just as well by not beating
yourself to death. And what happens is that something effortless

(56:48):
started to happen for me. That I try that, I
will I'll start to work too hard, I'll start to
over effort, and then I have to remind myself of
what I can do with my hands tailed behind my
back or just what comes out of my mind is fine.
And it's not about it's not about shrinking, it's not

(57:10):
about puffing up. It's just being present and doing the thing.
And I think that that changed everything. And I remember
my favorite boss was a guy named Dan Musselman at
Penguin Random House used to be first it was Random House.
Before that, it was books on tape. And he said

(57:31):
to me once years in to working together, he said, well,
you make it easy, and you make it good. And
I thought, oh, nobody ever would have called me easy
in the first twenty five years of my life or
whatever that was not. I wasn't easy. I thought that

(57:53):
I was never doing well enough or enough or good enough,
or that it couldn't possibly be that easy. There must
be something more that I have to do. And so
I was intense. And now I think, well, I'm intense.
I mean, I'm an intent I'm a very high voltage person,

(58:18):
but I'm not over efforting and I'm not making life miserable,
hopefully for the people I work with, by taking myself
too seriously or demanding that i'd be to you know, whatever, whatever.
I was just so hard on myself, and I think

(58:41):
we all just have to learn it wherever we learn it.
I certainly, and minute before I could not have guessed
I was going to learn that from doing audiobooks. I
couldn't have planned that in a million years. But that
changed everything about my self image. It made me trust
myself and have fun, have a lot of fun, and

(59:04):
make fun of myself. I mean, there are whole books
I did that I was like, well, it's that could
have done. That was not that great, you know, you know,
and and and what helped me was the people producing
those books didn't have a problem with it. So then
I'd go like, Okay, I didn't think that was that great,

(59:25):
but they thought it was fine. There's a there's a
you know, the parenting concept good enough, you know, or
we had I had a Mommy and Me teacher who
used to talk about, you know, when food drops on
the ground and you pick it up, but she goes
clean enough, clean enough, you know, good enough, and you

(59:47):
don't that that perfectionism is just it's awful for people
for themselves. It's awful to be around. And I'm not
talking about the perfectionism of people who know exactly the
way they want things done, and they are the creators.
I love that. That's not I don't call that perfectionism.

(01:00:10):
That's just very very strong vision and a person wanting
to deliver on that vision. And if Bruce Springsteen needs
to spend a month doing Born to Run, if he
comes up with Born to Run at the end of it, great,
But I'm talking about the kind of beating yourself up
or perfectionism that doesn't make better work. It's just a

(01:00:32):
psychological problem. It's not an artistic vision that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
Oh it does, and I think it's some like that
insight right there, and that reflection is why it's so
important to allow yourself the time to breathe and go
into new stages of life and continue down the path,
because it's all meant to shape us. It's all to

(01:01:00):
improve who we're supposed to be and how we're supposed
to be and teach us lessons that we didn't even
know we needed or wanted. And that being said, thank
you Kada for all of your insight today, and it
has been a pure joy to happen.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Well, thank you for having me same for me.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
And a few of our key takeaways from today's conversation,
though there was more than this, let me promise you that,
and I just I just was too hooked in to
what Kada was saying to the points I was like, oh,
I really needed to write that down, but I was
just so hooked.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
But they well, it's been recorded, actually, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
So you can listen to the whole thing. This is
not a probable is you have you have a good
day when you are creating a good day. So what
I mean by that is Kada talked about this in
the beginning, but I really think it's a theme of
the whole conversation is how are you showing up? And

(01:02:05):
then how are you tethering to that as well. One
of the things she brought up is being able to
laugh off the reviews you get from someone, I think,
whether you're in the acting space. And I love how
she brought that up and she started implementing that because
in today's society, social media and how quick it is

(01:02:26):
for people to comment something positively negatively in any of
your spaces, and sometimes it's really hard to not take
it personally. But as she said, when you know yourself,
you know your work, and you know like this is
just what it is. It's and you don't give you
the weight and the power. You are then able to

(01:02:49):
create what you want to create in life, in business
and acting wherever it might be as well as if
you can have clear boundaries and communicate that and the
other people around you, whether it's one person or ten,
have signed off on that, then all is good. And
I think that was so important as well, because so

(01:03:10):
many times, especially in recent years, boundary has been used,
I think to some level as a buzzword. Oh, I'm
setting this boundaries, Yes, and it is really something that
needs to be intentional but needs to also be communicated.
So I think it was so important that Keda also

(01:03:31):
brought up the fact of like the other people have
to be signed off on it, you have to which
highlights that you have to communicate it. You all have
to be on the same page with it. And it's
so important because we can all say, well, I have
a boundary on this, but did you communicate it, did
you hold a standard to it? Did you then say

(01:03:52):
here's the consequences if that is disrespected? And did the
other person go Okay, I hear you. I mean there
there's time. I remember saying it to someone myself, and
this literally popped in my head. I never do this
during a key takeaway, but I sold someone the boundary
and they're like, okay, Like oh well, and I was like, okay, well,

(01:04:12):
now I know how to proceed forward. And so when
someone doesn't agree to that boundary understanding, they're not going
to agree with it, and take that and take that
in and know what that shows you as well as
well as to do things in a creative way, you
have to be open to accepting that. As Kata talked about,

(01:04:33):
and we kind of sometimes the juices are flowing, you
have to be open to it. You have to embrace
it and know that those moments can come and they
can flow as well as you're not You're not always
just giving facts. This came across when Kata talked about
you know, or her journey as DDA Andrea Hobbes and

(01:04:56):
how she presented it and how she looked at that
character in those roles. I think that's so true. But
I think that's also so true in our lives. We
have to remember how we're communicating, how are we showing
this information, how are we delivering it? Because that makes
such as much of an impact to others than the

(01:05:18):
words you're saying. This was a great episode with our
top notch guest actress Kaita Maser. Thank you for listening
and have a successful day.