Inspirational Women In Hollywood: How Tessa Bell Is Helping To Shake Up The Entertainment Industry

An Interview With Guernslye Honoré

All the men in the circle turned to me, speechless. It took them about thirty five seconds to get over their shock that a little girl would have a thought, and an opposing thought at that. No one talked to me for the rest of the evening. They just didn’t know what to do with a smart woman.

As a part of our series about Inspirational Women In Hollywood, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Tessa Bell Producer/Writer Wild Flower Films LLC.

Tessa Bell began her career at CBS Sixty Minutes and the CBS Evening News. She created the FYI Column for Premiere Magazine, and for 20 many years was the President of Infinity Films & Video Inc. Since moving to LA in 2008, Tessa has produced three WIF International Short Film Festivals, Bipolar, a feature film by Jean Veber and the multiple award-winning family drama Life Inside Out, directed by Jill D’Agnenica as well as countless PSA’s for the WIF PSA Production Program. She is currently in development on “Nice Trick” a dramady to remind us of the magic in our lives. Her cabaret show “Men Money Madness” has been invited to the famous Avignon Festival and her screenplay “The Legend,” based on the myth of the first female Pope, has won three awards for Best Screenplay, including Best Screenplay at the Firenze Film Festival. Theatre West is hosting a table read of the screenplay. Tessa is a founding member of GreenLight Women whose mission is to champion professional women over the age of forty and promote diverse perspectives in media.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2854670/?ref_=nmawd_awd_nm#producer

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?

My father was a diplomat, so we traveled all over the world when I was young. Living in so many different cultures, Iranian, Italian, North and West African, I learned to adapt to any human relationship and observed that power dynamics are the same no matter the color of your skin, your gender, your education or economic level. On the whole, humans are all the same. We just enjoy putting ourselves in boxes and then have to fight to get out of them.

Can you share a story with us about what brought you to this specific career path?

I wrote my first play while living in Florence Italy. I was 7 or 8 years old and had a crush on a boy at school who did not pay me any mind. So I wrote a play about a princess whose father the king wants her to marry a prince. She is in love with the knight and runs away with him to live happily ever after. I cast my crush as the knight. The play was well attended (by all the parents) and I got the eye of the boy. As the hall filled with applause, a life in the arts was cemented in my heart along with the love of my knight.

Can you tell us the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Well, that is a question hard to answer. Being an artist, a producer, this kind of life lends itself to interesting things happening frequently. That’s rather the point of living to create. You need fodder.

It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting?

In so far as I am a perfectionist, no mistake is ever funny. All mistakes are painful, even in the retrospection of age. I can think of many things I would do differently in hindsight, and I promise you, not one is funny to me. My mother didn’t have a funny bone either.

Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

In general, the whole point of mistakes is to learn from them, and the one lesson that Los Angeles has taught me over and over is that success is not the same as fame and wealth is not a cureall. I am surrounded now by strong intelligent creative women, thanks to GreenLight Women’s programs. I am a part of a tribe of theatrical actors and writers, thanks to Theatre West, and my life is rich beyond measure as a result.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?

You know, for all that we talk about the importance of mentoring other women, when I was coming up there were not many mentors out there for women. Mostly women were busy carving out the first layer of economic success, too busy to lend a hand. It is different today, and I have made sure to support and mentor some extraordinary women who started with nothing and are now doing their thing.

You have been blessed with great success in a career path that can be challenging. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path, but seem daunted by the prospect of failure?

Most artists are perfectionists. One of the first lessons a perfectionist needs to learn is that the desire to be great can stop us from moving forward. When you start on a journey, with no compass, no map and only a dream of reaching the stars, there is nothing to judge yourself by, so you must create something small and meaningful to you. It will not be what you imagined and that will be painful. But keep creating. Create stupid, create fast, create simple, create horrible. It doesn’t matter. You don’t know what you are doing yet. You can’t know what you are creating yet. You are filled with ideas about what success is and they are all impossible to achieve. So be kind to yourself, be true to yourself, be willing to be poor and eat peanut butter, if you have to. Wealth is not a statement of your worth. You will have moments of luck, and they will usually be unexpected opportunities that don’t match the vision your perfectionist self has designed for you. Take them anyway and see where life leads you. If you are an artist, the purpose of life is to live and express. That takes courage, so go be courageous.

Every industry iterates and seeks improvement. What changes would you like to see in the industry going forward?

We are headed into uncharted territory in this century. Great ideas which we cannot imagine yet are waiting to be plucked from the ether and made real. AI presents tools for creation the likes of which we have never seen, and will be as disruptive as the steam engine. There is such change coming at us that I freeze at the question. I believe humans are evolutionary and we will evolve but how?

You have such impressive work. What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? Where do you see yourself heading from here?

I am working on two projects which are the core of who I am. The first is a screenplay (which, yes, could easily be a six part tv series) set in the tumultuous eleventh century about a girl who, disguised as her dead twin brother John, is raised to be a priest. A truly brilliant human, Joan rises in the Church while hiding her gender, eventually becoming Pope. At the peak of her powers, she finds love and her world is torn asunder, forcing her to pay an earthly price for being a woman.

This screenplay has won international awards and is going to be exhibited on Nov 5th as part of the GreenLight Women International Writers Workshop Table Reads at Theatre West.

The other project is my cabaret show “Men Money Madness” which has been invited to the Avignon Festival. The show is about… Men Money & Madness!

We are very interested in looking at diversity in the entertainment industry. Can you share three reasons with our readers why you think it’s important to have diversity represented in film and television?

What is the point of telling stories if they don’t speak to the experiences of real people? And you can’t do that if you are a monocultural industry

How can that potentially affect our culture and our youth growing up today?

Furthermore in an economic system which is essentially aspirational, stories have to inspire people, give them a world within which they can live. Can’t do that if you write from one voice only. Why do you think suicide rates are so high? And drug addiction? Alcoholism? Because people don’t have stories to inspire them. Nothing shows them their own world and how to expand within it. So they assume they can’t grow and that is depressing. Humans are guided by myths. We need heroes’ journeys that encompass all the dignity of all the lives that exist on earth.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why?

Oh my goodness, no one prepared me for the curve balls. No one really explained how deals were made, or why one person’s movie was bought and not mine. No one explained that I was disadvantaged because I was a woman. No one protected me against men who only wanted one thing from me. No one told me the rules. And the rules were made so that people like me would fail. But since no one told me, I just didn’t let it stop me. For example, I had just returned from living in Liberia, West Africa, and had written a paper on the likelihood of a revolt against the ruling elite. I thought it highly likely because the ruling elite — Americo Liberians, ie ex American Slaves, were running around in luxury vehicles while the population literally starved. I was invited to a cocktail party at a high level newspaper and I was probably the only twenty year old in the room. I walked up to the publisher, who was in a discussion with a bunch of cigar smoking journalists about Liberia, which was descending into a brutal civil war. One journalist was going on an on about how bad the populus was and I interrupted him to say I had just returned from Liberia and it appeared to me that maybe the ruling elite had done a bad job. All the men in the circle turned to me, speechless. It took them about thirty five seconds to get over their shock that a little girl would have a thought, and an opposing thought at that. No one talked to me for the rest of the evening. They just didn’t know what to do with a smart woman.

Can you share with our readers any self-care routines, practices or treatments that you do to help your body, mind or heart to thrive?

I have a fairly rigorous practice of self examination. I watch myself, I experience my feelings and my judgements, I watch how I treat others. And every day I ask myself if I am being a loving and caring human being. I personally assume that we are all connected in a spiritual world and that my actions make a difference, so every day I watch myself. Sometimes I play a game whereby I imagine that everyone in the world can hear what I am thinking. That little game has revealed more to me about my heart. I assume that when I pass away, my spirit will move into the infinite and in that moving, all the good that I have done, all the joy that I have created, will expand the force of life. I can’t prove it, but I don’t care. I feel it. Self care is about love and love is about truth and truth is above time and space and matter.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”?

Do you know why ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’? Because you don’t have to mow it. The point is not to want what you do not have.

Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

It is always better to love what is in front of you than to wish for something else. If you don’t have it, you don’t know it. Maybe you are missing something, maybe not. I have worked with some very wealthy people and have known many struggling (economically) artists. Happiness was available to both, and happiness is everything.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

I would get rid of religions that keep women subjugated to men.

Is there a person in the world whom you would love to have lunch with, and why?

I would love to have lunch with Megan Ellison. She strikes me as a visionary who would understand “The Legend” and want to get it made.

Are you on social media? How can our readers follow you online?

Linked in: Tessa Bell

Face Book: Tessa Bell

IG: tessabainbell

Tessabell.com

This was so informative, thank you so much! We wish you continued success!

About the interviewer: Guernslye Honoré, affectionately known as “Gee-Gee”, is an amalgamation of creativity, vision, and endless enthusiasm. She has elegantly twined the worlds of writing, acting, and digital marketing into an inspiring tapestry of achievement. As the creative genius at the heart of Esma Marketing & Publishing, she leads her team to unprecedented heights with her comprehensive understanding of the industry and her innate flair for innovation. Her boundless passion and sense of purpose radiate from every endeavor she undertakes, turning ideas into reality and creating a realm of infinite possibilities. A true dynamo, Gee-Gee’s name has become synonymous with inspirational leadership and the art of creating success.