We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Victoria Male and Luke Millington-Drake . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Victoria Male and below.
Victoria and Luke, so happy to have you with us today. You are such creative people, but have you ever had any sort of creativity block along the way? If so, can you talk to us about how you overcame or beat it?
Luke Millington-Drake: Take a walk. Do a lot of dancing. Do an Australian accent and yell “OOOHUURR NNOOUURR”
Victoria Male: We have snacks! Usually, when we hit a block we have a snack.
LMD: [laughs] I order Starbucks again.
VM: [laughs] Yeah! Personally, I think I do my best writing when I’m reading a book that has nothing to do with what I’m writing about.
LMD: And I eat, walk and then eat again.
VM: It’s also about keeping your creative and artistic diet full. So whenever you feel like there’s a lack when you’re creating, you can think back to or reference something that you were recently inspired by or moved by.
LMD: In that vein, I do listen to a lot of film soundtracks and dramatically stare out a window if I’m feeling stuck.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
LMD: I’m an actor, comedian, and writer from the UK. I’ve lived in the US for the past 12 years working in every capacity of the industry performing, which has been wonderful.
I started writing for sketch comedy and original characters in comedy clubs and theaters around LA. I’ve loved how much it has informed my work as an actor. Being able to interpret scripts and auditions with a more refined eye has definitely led to greater success in my career as a performer.
VM: As for me, I came up in this industry working in all facets of production. Most notably, I spent five years in creative development with Ivan Reitman at the Montecito Picture Company working on their slate, as well as the Ghostbusters franchise. I also helped launch the Western arm of the media startup Graphic India. And while I have always loved bringing a story to life in any capacity, it felt like over the past few years that it was really time for me to focus on being a writer and the originator of the story, rather than someone who comes in later and helps shape it. Similarly to Luke, I feel that my past in development and production also made me a better writer and shaped my ability and savvy on writing an impactful script. It’s been great to work with Luke who has such an interesting perspective, I know I can always defer to him on comedy, and genre aside, he thinks so vividly no matter what genre we’re writing.
Something new on the horizon that we’re really excited about is a novel that we got the rights to this summer. We’re both super passionate about it, and the story combines all of our interests, really everything we want to do as writers and producers. There’s spectacle, but it also says something really immediate and relatable at its core. So, we’re really excited to take our adaptation of that book out in the new year.
LMD: It’s interesting how we’re both at a point in our careers where we’re excited and want to be wearing all the hats, because we both have the experience to do that now. Especially in comedy the actor/writer/producer is just such a big selling point now. We’re ready to take on a more active role in the stories we tell and create something from the ground up that speaks to our vision.
VM: Because we’ve done the 10,000 hours to develop not only the taste and the vision, but the skills to execute it.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
LMD: From my point of view, it’s people watching and listening. Whenever I’m in public my eyes and ears are wide open. I listen to people’s conversations – people standing in line at Starbucks, human behavior on the tube. The airport is a goldmine for this. It’s pure, honest, unabashed human behavior and my favorite part of traveling. I’m always picking up character types, people’s conversations, people’s points of view, and logging it away as information to pull from.
As silly as it sounds, taking advantage of honest life experiences. Traveling, dinner parties, family and friend time. I think that awareness when living your life is the best tool to have.
Be curious. Curiosity creates spontaneity and a childlike sense of play that I have found leads to the best interactions and memories.
VM: Advice-wise, there are so many amazing resources that are free and extremely accessible for people to develop these skills or actually put things like listening and vulnerability and awareness and curiosity into practice.
I know I have really loved listening to The Screenwriting Life podcast, I think they’re an amazing resource. I think if you have the ability to enroll in a writing course or form a writing group, that’s a great way to give yourself accountability, which is one of the biggest challenges I faced as a writer. I also recommend Warner Loughlin ‘s book, The Warner Loughlin Technique, to a lot of my writer friends who haven’t had a background in performance or acting, because I think her technique is very conducive to building and distilling character, so then you can put them into the structure of a plot and they feel real and you know them really well. Also, don’t limit yourself to one type of art that you consume and get inspired by.
LMD: One other piece of advice I would give is to ask for help when you know you need help. The reason this whole partnership started is because I initially approached Victoria and was like, “I need help. I don’t know I don’t know how to do this. There are these gaps in my knowledge and I would like help. Would you mind helping me?” and Victoria was like, “Let’s do it. I can help.” That’s the scariest thing I think for anyone to do is to ask for help, because you have to check your ego in order to ask for help. I was at a crossroads and I was like, “I either ask for help or I just kind of disappear. And I don’t want to disappear.” Because you have to push through. It’s scary, though. It’s gross [laughs].
Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?
LMD: Writing, absolutely. One thousand percent.
VM: It’s been amazing to see Luke develop as a writer. Because I also think he’s a director too.
LMD: I would love to do that. I have a tendency to only think in sweeping visuals.
VM: It’s amazing though!
LMD: Yeah, and Victoria being able to translate it for me being like “So what you’re trying to say is…” and I’m like “Yes absolutely!”
VM: No, but I think you’re brilliant! For me, my biggest area of growth has been collaboration. I’ve always written on my own. and I was always actually quite scared to collaborate. Yet when Luke asked me for help, it was one of the first times I felt ready, and I wanted to take the plunge to see what it would look like working with someone else and building something with a partner, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with how it has all turned out so far.
LMD: Very lucky, very lucky. We met two years prior to that, so you just never know how one chance meeting can develop into something much later down the line. She’s the literal best.
VM: Stop, you are!!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @victoriamale1 @LukeMillingtonDrake
- Twitter: @victoriamale @LMDrake
Image Credits
Group Photops & Victoria Male Solo Photo by: Jackie Male @sh00tyoursh0t Luke Millington-Drake Solo Photo by: Carlos Parada @parada.photography
