I was in a staff meeting around the time Call My Agent! was becoming a hit when a colleague confessed they couldn’t bear to watch. “It makes me too anxious.” No matter how many rave reviews the French drama received, it felt too much like real life. Why would we subject ourselves to more of the quarrels, the toadying, the exasperation, the disappointment, the bumpy camaraderie and hair-raising treachery?
“The word ‘agent’,” Peggy Ramsay, the legendary literary agent declared to that arch-thespian Simon Callow, “is the most disgusting in the English language.” Yet, we do not sit behind large desks barking at assistants in the style of Entourage’s famous LA agent Ari Gold, while selling our clients to the highest bidder for our cut, interrupted only for daily lunch at The Ivy or a red-carpet film premiere or opening night at the theater. Darling — that’s utter bollocks.
