“What’s the worst that could happen?”
I said this to myself repeatedly for nearly a year about my talent manager. Thoughts of ending our work relationship loomed over me—but like any breakup, I wasn’t sure I was ready to go it alone. Something about our dynamic didn’t sit well with me, though. I felt that the way she spoke to me could be demeaning or negative at times. She let too many things slip through the cracks, struggled to take accountability when things went wrong, yet she’d take credit for things she had little to do with. Worse, I sometimes felt like she was competing with me.
We had worked together for nearly four years. She DM’d me on Instagram around May 2020, asking if I was looking for representation. I had been courted by several agencies that year and was practically ready to sign with one, but I thought, why not take one more meeting? I had two calls with her and the owner of her agency. It felt promising, but I still didn’t feel 100% ready to lock it down with anyone. I was getting a lot of work without any help, so I knew it had to be the right fit if I was going to give away 20% of my money.
A few weeks after our second call, a video I made about racism after the murder of George Floyd went viral. She was the only one from any of the agencies who checked in on me, asked if I was okay, and whether I needed any support. The fact that she was Black was also swaying my decision, because I didn’t want to feel like I had to explain myself all the time when it came to my partnership decisions. By October 2020, I finally accepted that I couldn’t manage my inbox on my own anymore, and we made it official.
For a year, everything worked as it should. More work was coming in, the agency set up meetings I was excited about, and most importantly, they were getting me higher rates for my work. A year later, in November 2021, my manager told me she was leaving to start her own agency. I immediately felt panicked, as if she were abandoning me, and I realized I was more attached to her than the agency. She was the one by my side, advising me and helping me make decisions. So, I asked to be released from my agency contract and joined her new venture the following month.
Perhaps the first red flag I ignored came about six months later, when I realized my manager hadn’t paid me for about 4 months. I mentioned it to a friend who was visiting me in London, and she didn’t hesitate to raise her concerns. I brushed it off, though, and assured her it was only because the agency was new and my manager was doing everything on her own. I wanted to give her grace, but I sent her a message asking her to pay out my fees at least once a month, and she complied. By the following year, I found myself keeping a running list of grievances in my head, like when she appointed her 24-year-old assistant as my talent lead to negotiate my deals, or when I felt like she hadn’t protected me in contract negotiations, or little comments that I couldn’t seem to shake off.
It got to the point where each week as I clicked “end meeting” on our team call, I’d let out a deep, guttural sigh. I knew things weren’t right. I could feel it deep in my body. But what’s the worst that could happen, I would say to myself, if I just continued to work with her until I had something better in place. She was basically a glorified assistant, and I was scared to do things on my own again after all this time of having a team. There was also a part of me that questioned whether it would be harder for me to get work without having someone pitching me, even though most of my work came directly to my inbox.
By spring 2024, I found out exactly how bad it could get.
On April 3, 2024, I logged onto a one-on-one Zoom call with my manager to discuss restructuring plans for the agency after her business operations manager had recently (and quite abruptly) left to “embark on a new chapter,” according to her email. Also on the agenda, she wanted to address the outstanding payments I had.