In this ShowbizU interview, veteran talent agent Judy Bowles (now Bowles Winnett) discusses her career trajectory, the nature of talent representation, and how the industry has evolved with digital technology. Bowles explains that agents are licensed employment agencies that submit actors for Broadway, Off‑Broadway, regional, film, and TV work, contrasting their role with managers and attorneys. She recounts her unconventional path from a speech‑pathology graduate who wanted to act, through a part‑time job at the Dramatists Guild, to working with literary legend Lois Berman and eventually founding her own agency. Bowles highlights the impact of the digital era—self‑taping, online submissions, and 24/7 casting—on how actors are evaluated. She offers practical advice for aspiring agents, emphasizing internships, networking, and understanding the business side of casting. The interview also features client success stories, notably Mia Panero’s rise from regional productions to a Broadway debut as Maria at the Guthrie. Bowles concludes with optimism about the future, noting the growing importance of streaming, new media, and continued human connection in theatre.
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What do you get when you have a Broadway professional and a camera crew? Long story short, you get a lot of cool info when you get Showbiz U luminaries. Well, hello. Can we start first by just telling everybody who you are?
I'm Judy Bowles, and I'm a talent agent slash used to be a literary agent as well, but used to represent playwrights.
Got it. Talent agent. Those two words, right? When you hear them put together, for somebody that's watching this, what should they— what should they take away?
Yeah, we represent actors and actresses. We get them work, basically. We submit them for projects on Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional, film and television. We just try it all, and I mean, technically we're licensed by the City of New York City as an employment agency, and some of the rules that the city and state try to impinge upon us are rather egregious, and our professional organization is actually often in contact with them about those things because we have to attach to our management agreements with clients like 4 pages of things that have nothing to do with theater or actors and actors, actresses, you know, so, but technically we're an employment agency and now because of the digital age we could be submitting and pushing 24/7. So whereas it used to be in the horse and buggy days, we could pull a picture and resume, put it together, construct a nice cover letter, And sometimes we would walk it over to the casting director and submit our clients for those projects. But now it's, it's point-and-click, and so that's what we do.
How did you get here? What got you to this chair today?
Good question, Tim.
Thank you.
I wanted to be an actress. I came here out of Kent State University program with a bachelor's in speech pathology, but I had a theater scholarship to Kent, but I didn't think that was practical coming from the family I did. So, but the day after I graduated, pretty much, I moved to New York City because I'd always felt like that was the place for me. And luckily my high school had come here while I was there for visits, and I just remember that feeling when I was here in high school, like, I like this. And this is where I belong. I didn't know exactly how at the time, but, um, so I came here to become an actress. I had never studied acting, though. I just did shows. And I studied with a Meisner teacher, Greg Zittel, who's no longer with us, unfortunately. He taught with Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse, and he was a great teacher. And I picked him out of the Village Voice, and I interviewed with him, and he took me in, and broke me down and built me up and kept saying like, "Go deeper, Judy, go deeper," and I didn't know what he was talking about. And I finally did at the end of 2 years, and I thought, "Oh, that, that dark hole." And I started auditioning with his permission after that, and I just couldn't do it. And luckily an older actor passed through my life at that time who I became close with And he said, Judy, if it's not the only thing you want to do, don't do it. And there's two parts to it: getting the job and doing the job. Well, my answer to— it wasn't the only thing I wanted to do, like my clients that I represent. That is the only thing they can do, the only thing they want to, and I do believe that's necessary. And I couldn't— I knew I couldn't get the job. Like, it takes a special person, and that's— we both admire our clients and and support them because we know we can't do what they do on a daily basis.
It's amazing for them that you have gone through this yourself.
I think a lot of agents have, you know, come to— well, many agents have worked professionally. I never— I did an Off-Broadway show at the St. Mark's Church, but that was my only taste of professional experience. But what happened was then I got a part-time job at the Dramatists Guild by chance. A fellow waitress got me in there, full benefits, part-time. It was wonderful, and I learned all about the approved production contract and processed royalties. I started delivering royalty payments next door to a little tiny office above the Helen Hayes, Lois Berman. And she one day said to me, do you know anybody who wants to do my books part-time? And I thought, I could use another job. I only have a part-time job. So I started working for her and I basically never left. She represented Sam Shepard, Lee Blessing, a lot of Midwestern guys, John Cline, Corinne Jacker, Barbara Field. So I learned how to type really well from her because this was pre-computer. I had lied and said I could type really well, but if I didn't do it really well, I had to start over back then. She was a lady of the theater, a grande dame, I think, that people used to consider. There was like 3 or 4, Bridget Aschenberg. There were several, like, ladies of the tough women agents, literary agents at that time, Helen Merrill. And I just stayed, and eventually she retired, and instead of merging with a book agency, I formed a partnership with a talent agent, Jim Flynn, and all of a sudden, unbeknownst to me, because I didn't do a business plan and we didn't talk about our goals or things, we just said, yeah, let's start a business together because he was out of work. I did— if I had merged with that book agency, I would have had to deliver like million-dollar advances and stuff like that. We would have weekly meetings. We were already like lodged in their basement, and the plan was when Lois retired that we would merge with them. And I would come to the weekly luncheons, and all the agents would be saying these million-dollar numbers, and I would say, "We have a reading at Playwrights Horizons," and they would just glaze over. So when my friend Jim Flynn said, "I'm out of a job. Do you know anybody who's looking?" I said, "Why don't we form a company?" And so that was Berman, Bowles, and Flynn. We lasted about 4 years together, and then we realized we had different ideas about how we wanted to run a business. So we pretty amicably split up at the time, and that's when I formed Judy Bowles Inc. And, and right now, in the last year, we changed the name to Bowles Winnett. So my colleague Jenna Winnett will be taking over eventually when she rips it out of my hands.
When you look at at that trajectory and all of the people that you've met and people that you've worked with and collaborated. What are some— just give me one or two stories of, wow, that's, that's why I'm here.
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, certainly getting to work for Sam Shepard, I mean, a gift. He, he's a legend, and so to be able As a young person, you know, to travel all over the world, to meet the people that he knew, that was a total gift. A couple of years ago when there was a certain election that happened, I was going out of my mind. And so I decided I would go back to school a little part-time just to figure out what more can I be doing because I've been doing this a long time and I felt stuck. And really, since I've gone back to school and I've learned more about history and theater, really, I never studied it. I've had a re— I feel like a reenergized— I'm really more excited almost than I've ever been because you know what I love the best is going to the Regions and sitting next to Joe and Sally Smith, and I love to interview them. And find out— I'm getting chills— like, why are they there? And I know it's like a connection, and I love connecting with humans. I still learn something about humanity, and there's a real possibility still.
When you hear agent versus manager versus attorney, can you, for somebody that's just coming into Talking mostly obviously about what you do, but can you just talk about that umbrella and then your specific role in that?
Sure. Agents are franchised by the unions and overseen in many ways. Managers are kind of like the Wild West. They have less clients. Our job is to get employment for our our clients. Managers are there to advise, strategize, and they are supposed to have less clients and not be submitting. And then there's the attorney, and we really only call on attorneys, or our clients do, when they have television deals, big, because certainly who we're negotiating against has a business affairs office, and we don't want to— we don't— we act like attorneys a lot, but we're We're not, and we don't want to endanger our clients, especially with all the new media and streaming. And we— it's, it's, it really is a burgeoning area that we, we can't profess to be, you know, expert at. We do work with managers. I know a lot of boutique agencies like ourselves, boutique meaning we have like 180 clients usually tops. And there's 3 agents in the office, and so a little mom-and-pop compared to ICM or William Morris or even Abrams or something like that. Abrams, I think, is considered a mid-sized agency. So the point is, a lot of boutique agencies will say, like, I don't want to work with a manager. We started out that way back in the day, but I feel like, you know, we try and work If our client needs that, feels they need that one-on-one, there's a lot more one-on-one communication with a manager and hand-holding, for want of a better word. So if you need somebody to be talking to every day and, and, and we're getting feedback on every audition, we usually tell our clients we can't get feedback unless there's a callback. But some people really need that, and, and So it's a relationship that even if we have our initial meeting with somebody fresh out of school and we all seem to be on the same page and we start to work together, then we really see how are we working together, you know.
And how does somebody submit to you? They want to be represented. What—
Well, still people send pictures and resumes through the mail. They— many— our email is on our website. We do look at things. The best way, usually that route, is to drop a name of a client that we already work with, to start their pitch with, "I just did this, I know this person," because some kind of momentum is appealing. Otherwise, we go to the showcases every year of the programs, BFA, MFA programs, and take a look A little less so lately because we really do have a pretty great, strong, busy list right now. But we're always looking, and I think the best way is to get recommended by a current client. And we always go to shows. We're, we're always going around, and I think that's the best thing for an actor to do and not be shy about it, is to ask their fellow cast members and find out who's represented and Do you mind if I reach out to that person and say, I love working with your client and I'd love to work with you or learn more about you?
There is the, just the human connection that we make, but now we're also in a digital world. How has, besides instead of submitting a paper resume and a headshot where you said you ran it over, how else has this digital era changed your world?
Oh, well, Number one, what occurs to me is that all actors, musical theater or otherwise, have to know how to self-tape like a genius filmmaker almost. They have to know how to set up lights and shoot, and yet, and also perform for that medium. Because yeah, in the room you're gonna be belting your face off, you're gonna be showing what you got. Even if you are in a small room generally. But for that medium, you have to adjust. And so we often recommend to clients— take a— the Times doesn't do it as much anymore, but remember they were doing the in-performance clips? That's what we refer them to. We often say, look at Norbert Leo Butz's tape from Big Fish and how he adjusted for that. And, and that's ideal. Of course, they had, you know, top-of-the-line cameras and lights and all that, but there are companies out there that are doing it affordably to be able to put together a demo reel or even to self-tape at the drop of a hat. That's like 50— more than 50% of the time our actors are auditioning on tape and have booked musical theater jobs you know, straight play jobs off tape.
Some of those stories of your clients that— give me one or two of some things that have happened where you go, wow, this is why I do this.
Most recently, our Maria had quite the journey towards getting in that show. To see her from the first performance she booked out of Montclair— her name is Mia Panero. She booked My Fair Lady down in North Carolina. To see her book that right out of school was great. And then, you know, 3 years later to see her play Maria at the Guthrie knowing she's getting her Broadway debut.
For somebody that wants to be you, they want to be an agent, give some tips.
They should intern. Even actors I think should intern in an agent's office if they can. Casting, just see what it is behind the table a little bit. And then if they have no desire to leave acting, they should get away from it as quickly as possible because it certainly has driven our interns mad, actor interns, to see clients not being responsible or taking auditions or going for it. And, um, yeah.
And last question then. Yeah, what excites you about the future of our industry?
I'm excited because I don't know, you know, I don't know what to expect. What excites me is, yeah, what artists have we not seen yet or heard from yet?
