When Actors Direct: What TV Can Teach You About Career Evolution

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5 days ago

An actor who decides to direct may inspire an eyeroll: Well, of course they can. After leading a hit show, what producer will say no?
A powerful actor who wants to direct has an advantage others won't. At the same time, to become directors Tyler James Williams, Ayo Edebiri, Jason Bateman, and Rhea Seehorn had to be willing to step away from the comfort zone of their expertise and see themselves as beginners.
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They also took advantage of a Hollywood truism: People work with people they know, and the only way to make yourself known is to be excellent around the people who can hire you to do the work. It's the same logic that creates a script supervisor-director (Karyn Kusama), a PA-producer (Kevin Feige), or an art coordinator-Oscar-winning production designer (Hannah Beachler).
Here's what these actors say they learned while making the transition.
Back when he was the lead in 'Everybody Hates Chris,' Williams began peppering 'Everybody' producer-director Jerry Levine with questions. As he told IndieWire's Proma Khosla in February 2025, he fell in love not just with being on TV but with the prospect of making it.
The dream came true in Season 4 of 'Abbott Elementary' with episode 13, 'The Science Fair,' but Williams realized that his dream was considerably larger than anticipated. The mockumentary style meant a single scene could demand crossing three sets at one time.
'We had a lot of conversation about not just where the camera could be for the shot, but does that make sense for the documentarian on the other side of that camera?' he said. 'Playing with these camera operators and cameras as characters in this world, what are their opinions on everything? Why are they getting this shot the way they are? It influenced a lot of the decisions I made.'
Williams' prep began months in advance. He sat in on production meetings, tone meetings, concept meetings. He talked with the crew, with the camera department, with executive producer Randall Einhorn. And he began breaking down the episode outline even before he had dialogue or characters.
'Because I know the space, and I know kind of the language of our show and how it works, I can start understanding how this needs to move and what this needs to look like,' he said. 'It's really hard to explain, and I guess that's where the the vision part of it comes in, where I just start to see it as I'm reading. I can kind of see it moving in real time.'
By the time Edebiri joined 'The Bear,' she had dozens of acting credits, she'd been a story editor on 'Sunnyside,' a staff writer on 'Dickinson,' and a writer and consulting producer on 'What We Do in the Shadows' and 'Big Mouth.' However, she'd never gotten to direct.
Before she directed 'The Bear' (Season 3, episode 6, 'Napkins'), she got a crash course on TV directing from the Directors Guild of America's First-Time Episodic Director Orientation Program. (It's a DGA requirement for a series that 'employs a 'first-time Director' to direct an episode of a dramatic television, High Budget SVOD series, or High Budget AVOD series.') She said it was 'probably one of the coolest, greatest things I've ever done.'
'The thing that I walked away with the most was that the only wrong way to direct — well, there's probably a lot of wrong ways, but beyond not communicating and not being open — is not finding your way,' said Edebiri. 'If you try to do somebody else's way, it's not going to work. Our instructors were so helpful with really illustrating their differences — and that they were successful with their differences — and so encouraging us to find our our ways of communicating, stressing the fact that you always have to be communicating.'
Her instructors included legends such as Paris Barclay, Keith Powell, and Dr. Valerie Weiss, but Edebiri had to rely on her own instincts and the readiness of her cast and crew.
'You have to have a certain amount of ego and a certain amount of assuredness in your decisions, but there needs to be space for collaboration, and to also be wrong, or to not have the answer,' she said. 'It's this really miraculous amount of collaboration … It's like making a Venn diagram, but out of a thousand circles. That's why those moments when you get something, or you get it right, it does feel so special — because it's like, that's insane. That's insane that there's a thousand circles but found the one overlapping point.'
The actress who portrayed Kim Wexler across six seasons of 'Better Call Saul' became the first performer to direct an episode of the show with Season 6 installment 'Hit and Run.' Bryan Cranston also directed episodes of 'Saul' predecessor 'Breaking Bad'; like Cranston, she played a major role that required she frequently 'hoof it to the monitor.' Relying on the producing team was vital.
'Michael Morris, our producing director, was kind of my right-hand person,' said Seehorn. 'I could watch playback when I needed it. And then I wanted to make sure that I was just available as Kim, once I was in the scene. I would never want a scene partner to feel like their director is observing them.'
For her episode, Seehorn was initially anxious about working with Giancarlo Esposito as Gus Fring; they'd never shot a scene together. However, Seehorn soon realized her way in with him.
'He's from theater, as am I. So we had a good shorthand from the beginning,' she said. 'I just simply asked him, 'Do like talk about the scene or beats or do you just only want adjustments after the fact?' And he said, 'I'd love to talk about the scene. Thank you very much.' I said, 'Fantastic! Because here's my six binders.'' (Esposito would shoot his own episode later that season.)
On Season 1 of 'Ozark,' Bateman directed four episodes while producing and starring in all 10. (He originally intended to direct all of them.) He believes a director's role hinges on making sure everyone is 'feeling good' — something he learned this from another actor-director, Michael Langdon, who Bateman worked as a child on 'Little House on the Prairie.'
'It was very helpful for me to see that a call sheet can get shot without yelling,' he said. 'It can be done well without being precious, but just by simply encouraging and being supportive and staying out of the way of something that might be better than what you thought.'
Understanding actors also helped him be an effective director. 'One of the easy tricks is to go up and if you want an actor to do something, compliment on them having just done it and you want them to do a little more of it,' he said. 'You gotta think of what's the positive way to say this as opposed to 'Stop doing that,' because that's gonna make them nervous.'
As IndieWire's Ben Travers noted back in 2020, Bateman would 'rather talk about the look, pace, feel, sound, and tone of his show — all of which form individual 'magic tricks' that help shape 'Ozark' — than his performance in front of the camera, and he's eager to steer the conversation toward his collaborators.'
'I mean, I'm a crew dork,' Bateman told Travers. 'I study who the gaffer or the best boy or the location manager is, let alone production designer [or] cinematographer. When I see a trailer, I'm immediately going over to IMDB Pro and just scouring the crew of that movie, because I'm noticing things that they're doing. I want to see who those people are so that maybe in the future, if I'm lucky enough to build a crew, I'm going to remember those names and see if they're interested in joining the team.'
It worked: Bateman won the 2019 Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series.
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