Little America producer Natalie Sandy on not being “a ruthless killer” in Hollywood
“Sometimes I get really scared that what I do isn’t making a difference,” Little America producer Natalie Sandy tells HelloGiggles when we talk about balancing her values with a life in Hollywood. “And yet, for me, as a kid, movies and TV made me feel a part of the world. They saved me.” Being such a fully consumed lover of entertainment, she says, got her through rough times and big life experiences like first relationships and coping with depression. Movies taught her about herself, helped her connect to others, and helped soothe her. In high school, Sandy started a film club, she says laughing, with another movie nerd. She saved Entertainment Weekly covers in a laminated binder to “track trends.” She was constantly watching TV. The impact of film and TV on her life was always so great, that Sandy made her passion into a career.
She had a slow and steady progression in many senses. Growing up in Minnesota with no ties to Hollywood, she figured the only thing “a fan” could do was be an entertainment journalist, because she didn’t want to act or direct. While she followed that path for a while, she discovered she didn’t actually like writing. Sandy then went from working an unpaid internship at a local New Jersey PBS to getting a full-time job there to working in distribution for Radius TWC. But what she really wanted was to get into producing scripted narratives. She took a leap and became the right-hand woman and assistantto Russian Doll writer and director Leslye Headland, whom she met socially, to “see all aspects of how the sausage was made.” After that, she moved to L.A. and was hired by TV writer and producer Lee Eisenberg as his assistant while they made the film Good Boys. It was his plan to train her to be a development executive—essentially the person who finds projects for them to work on. That’s what she does now in addition to being the on-set producer for Apple TV+’s Little America, and is beginning to develop her own projects.
HelloGiggles talked to Sandy about how she keeps a level head so things don’t get, ahem, Hollyweird in her emotional life. It’s definitely possible to keep grounded in Hollywood, she says, and Sandy gives a lot of pointers on how to do it.
She maintains authenticity and kindness in her industry
Sandy loves her job, calling it thrilling and fun, but she says staying grounded in her sense of self in a sometimes shallow and shifty industry can be challenging, but it’s not an impossibility. Sandy has found a way to do it without compromising what she finds important.
“How to maintain values [in this industry] is a question I’ve asked myself a lot through the years and have stressed about it,” Sandy says. “What’s important to me in both my life and in my work is the same: authenticity and honesty. That’s the crossover. In storytelling, the more authentic the story, the more I feel connected to it […] In life, when I feel like I’m not being my most authentic self, it’s like all my limbs are falling off. I don’t know how to live in a dishonest way, which can actually be a problem sometimes.”
So when it comes to creating a work environment that feels good for her and others, Sandy’s intentional about being kind to the people she works with, kind to herself, and realistic about what matters in the grand scheme of things.
“I try to leave a room better than I found it,” she says. “I want people to leave a meeting in better spirits than when they came in.”
She reminds herself often why she does what she does
“I always had a lot of big feelings and struggled with mental health stuff as a kid,” Sandy says. “So seeing interpretations of that in TV or movies made me feel less alone.”
Moulin Rouge, she says, was all she could watch while falling in love for the first time. What else could express the operatic intensity of new romance? At the onset of depression at age 12, her whole summer was spent watching documentaries about sharks, because it calmed her down. Just the other day seeing a screening of Frozen 2 with her niece got her in touch with some deep feelings of loss. “That little movie,” she says, “helped me process grief about my mom’s death.”
While she keeps perspective on the fact that nothing in entertainment is as high stakes as people can make it seem or when she forgets why she works in the movies, she remembers that she’s doing this to tell good stories first and foremost.
Sandy makes sure she’s part of the change she wants to see in the industry
“I had this idea that to work in entertainment you had to be like Harvey Weinstein, even before the extent of his monstrous nature came to light,” Sandy says. “I thought you had to be a ruthless killer […] that it would just be phones thrown across the room and cutthroat men calling all the shots. And I knew from the get-go that that wasn’t me. So at first that made me confused about where I could land.”
But Sandy says that she is proudly part of a new wave in the business trying to run things differently. “I think there is a generation of people now who are trying to lead with kindness—or at least respect. Plenty of places, even ten years ago, were still operating in a very different way.”
The #MeToo movement changed things tremendously, she says; it has become a real priority to put storytellers of all different kinds on the top of her consideration pile when finding writers and directors for her projects. Especially women.
She checks herself when she feels her job—and the power it can bring—go to her head
It feels miraculous to create a show or movie, Sandy says. Pulling it off sometimes feels like accomplishing the impossible. But there is a flip side that can be ugly. The things that make the industry seem to run on magic also increase the potential for taking Faustian turns.
“I’m not sure there is any other industry that brings out narcissism in people [as dramatically] as this one,” Sandy says. “There is this texture of thinking you could be the most powerful person in the world at any moment, which is terrifying.”
There are hierarchies, power struggles, and way too much emphasis on money, she says. Then, of course, there is the intense insanity of celebrity culture that she “doesn’t really touch.” But as her career rises, there are times when she gets up close and personal with the material promises of working successfully in the movies. The possibility for money and power is there—it looms—and sometimes it can look pretty good. Sandy says that when she starts to “lust” for that stuff she checks herself, big-time.
“I want to have money, I want to be comfortable,” she says. “But I don’t do this to make money. And I’ve been around enough conversations where people are talking about what their money has bought them […] I go through the seven stages of grief while listening to that conversation.” When she feels self-righteous anger about luxury items and big paychecks, she takes pause.
Sandy sites being in a conversation listening to a bunch of men “talking about their money.” They were being gifted Teslas and getting huge bonuses for their work on big movies. She had the angry thought that she should be gifted a Tesla, as someone who works so hard all the damn time. It was at that point “she had to walk away.”
“If I’m feeling sad for myself [in a conversation like that], that’s when I know things are not OK. If I’m getting angry about stuff like that, I’m getting further away from who I actually am,” Sandy says. “I have to talk with people who know me and can ground me. If I’m rooted in who I am, I have much less of a reaction to all that.”
Sandy also says that she’s close with her family and she surrounds herself with people, many of whom do not work in entertainment, who make her feel like the best version of herself. She says she leads a really different life outside of work than a lot of people in her profession, and it’s both isolating and freeing.
She takes care of her emotional health and has set ground rules on staying well
“I’ve set a lot of ground rules for myself on how to survive,” Sandy says. “Work-life balance is number one. I used to fill [my schedule] the way other people did. Breakfast meeting before work, lunch meeting, dinner meeting then drinks. That’s how a lot of people do it. I just can’t. I absolutely can’t.” Sandy says.
As a sober woman, she’s also not partying all the time, and the work she’s done on her mental and emotional health gives her the tools to create boundaries at work. She also has a community of women within the profession. “I’m in a lot of mentorship groups with women to talk about these things,” she says.
Sandy puts herself first by not working on the weekends, because she needs that time. She doesn’t stay later then she absolutely has to, and it sets a precedent: taking care of yourself gives other people the permission to do the same. Nothing in the movie business is actually that urgent, she says.
“I try to allow myself to say, ‘You do not have to feel guilty for taking care of yourself, ever,’” she says. If that means leaving a meeting or having to skip a screening, so-be-it.
She keeps a Post-It on her desk that says “You Have A Fun Job”
Her Post-It note acts as a reminder to keep it all in perspective. “I am so lucky that I get to do this dumb job that influences people all over the world,” she says, laughing. She doesn’t want to forget that telling stories for a living is a privilege, and she hopes to use her position to extend that privilege, in a loving way, to as many people as she can.
