Illustrations by: Hartley Lin
From "trafficking in conspiracy theories" to hawking their own music, teachers hired for film and TV projects can sometimes short-change young actors' education: "I don't think anyone expects kids to actually learn."
In 2014, producer David Kaplan noticed that a child actor on his set was receiving a rather unconventional education.
"We found ourselves with a studio teacher who, among other things, trafficked in conspiracy theories — one of her favorites being that Hitler was still alive in a bunker somewhere in Argentina," Kaplan recalls.
The indie producer of such films as It Comes at Night began scrambling to find a replacement and zeroed in on a veteran named Marty Carlin. Hours away from making the switch, Kaplan learned from press reports that the man they thought they were about to hire was,
in fact, an impostor, posing as Carlin. "Needless to say, it was a particularly grim day on that set," he says, declining to name the production for legal reasons.
Though Kaplan's predicament may have been extreme, producers concur that there's
a disconcertingly wide spectrum of quality
when it comes to on-set tutors, ranging from the good to the bad
to the downright dubious. Given how difficult it is for child stars to get a decent education while shouldering the demands of an adult job like film and television acting, it's
no surprise that so few wind up at Ivy League colleges (Natalie Portman, Claire Danes and now Harvard-bound Yara Shahidi are among the notable exceptions). Add to that the fact that the world of on-set tutors is rife with pitfalls — from unsettling characters to questionable practices.......
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