A few years ago I was contacted by the creative director of an independent production company who asked if I would act as series producer on an entertainment reality TV show. I had previously been the lead edit producer on season 1 of the show and at the time the creative producer had asked me to be series producer on season 2. However, I refused because during my time working with him I found him to be quite frankly a crass, rude, bully.
When the creative director asked me again to act as series producer for season 4 I made sure to address any potential issues I had with his manner and he assured me that was just the stress of making a first series and that everything had changed. I though “Great!”, I had landed my first series producer role on a show I had previously worked on. It was perfect – or so I thought.
Below are just a few of the things that I endured before I handed my notice in 2 weeks into the shoot.
- The creative director introduced me to the team by saying, “This is Jim*. You have to be a c**t to do this job and that is why I hired Jim. He’s a c**t and he gets things done”. - He insisted on quizzing me about my veganism whilst devouring a KFC. He then made a point of working out how many meals per day per year I would have eaten as a meat eater, so he could let me know how many dead animals I would have consumed before going vegan.
- He berated me because a contributor had dropped out over the weekend (I was off that weekend) and said as soon as I heard I should have dropped everything to come in and sort it out.
- He screamed at me for sitting in the wrong chair in the gallery in the middle of a live recording.
- The creative director is quite a large man and would regularly take up space and physically intimidate me and the entire team if he was having a bad day.
- During my brief time on the production he went through no less than four production managers, all of whom quit within weeks of starting due to the way he spoke to people.
- I live on the coast and made it clear that I needed to leave by half 6 most days to get home at a sensible hour but that I would continue to work on the commute. Every day without fail the creative director would point out to the entire team when I was leaving and make jokes, calling me a part-timer.
I have never been so upset by someone in my entire life. I would call my partner on location every night in floods of tears until ultimately I had enough and quit. Since then I have taken one series producer role for a small indie nearer home, but after that experience I have decided to stick mainly to edit producing.
*Names have been changed to protect identities.