{"id":850497,"date":"2026-09-17T03:02:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T03:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/850497\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T03:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T03:02:11","slug":"reality-tv-agent-sets-theater-project-zendaya-film-acting-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/850497\/","title":{"rendered":"Reality TV Agent Sets Theater Project, Zendaya Film, Acting Career"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA little over a decade ago, Mark Itkin sat in his plush WME<\/a> offices and suggested he was no longer having fun.\u00a0\u201cAnd I don\u2019t feel I can innovate the way I used to be able to in this job,\u201d he said at the time<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo after what was then a 34-year career \u2014 first at William Morris and later as a partner at WME \u2014 Itkin announced his retirement<\/a>. The man who\u2019d been an architect of both the modern syndication business and the unscripted TV model, bringing some of the industry\u2019s most significant hits to air, including The Real World and Deal or No Deal, was done. At 62, he\u2019d take some time off, and then he\u2019d decide how to innovate again.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn those first few years, Itkin did what many in his position would do. He consulted, both for the conglomerates and for a handful of production companies looking for their exit. He joined a few boards, he traveled, he kept up his DJing habit and his classic car and modern art collections. He even tried to sell a memoir. \u201cHow I Made Reality Television Sexy\u201d was his proposed title, but he says the market was still reeling from former agent Mike Ovitz\u2019s book \u201cnot being a success\u201d; plus, he was told that he didn\u2019t have enough celebrity content to get it sold. (\u201cWill I try it again? Perhaps.\u201d) He stayed active in the unscripted space, too, getting a handful of unscripted shows off the ground, including College Bowl with Peyton Manning for NBC and America\u2019s Test Kitchen: The Next Generation for Prime Video.<\/p>\n

\n\tOver time, Itkin stepped further and further outside of his comfort zone, lining up projects across theater (he\u2019s bringing the story of legendary songwriting and producing duo Gamble and Huff to stage), film (a Ronnie Spector biopic starring Zendaya and written by Barry Jenkins for A24) and scripted TV (a straight-to-series order for a Highway to Heaven reboot for Fox). A year or so ago, he added acting classes to his mix, too. Sure, Itkin had dabbled with plays when he was still in high school, but says he found himself dissuaded from pursuing it professionally \u2026 until now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI figured why not? I had the time,\u201d he says over Zoom in early September. \u201cI told my teachers upfront, like, \u2018I don\u2019t have to be doing this, so if you don\u2019t see any talent here, people be honest with me.\u2019 And they\u2019ve been very encouraging.\u201d He\u2019s now looking for an agent to represent him and intends to start going out for commercial auditions shortly. (The photo at the top of this article is one of his new headshots.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhether or not his acting career takes off, Itkin is exceedingly glad he extracted himself from the agenting business when he did. \u201cMy timing was impeccable,\u201d he says, as he laments a series of shifts in the agency business, including the demise of packaging (\u201cI understand it, I don\u2019t necessarily have to agree with it\u201d) and the concentration of power at the top of these companies \u2014 to say nothing of the industrywide consolidation and the fact that the unscripted business has gotten pummeled in recent years.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think back to the early 2000s when you could sell tonnage,\u201d he says, rattling off behemoths like Big Brother that he had a hand in. \u201cAnd I got spoiled because you could be innovative and try new things and really take risks. Now, it\u2019s the opposite. Everyone just keeps saying, \u2018We want IP. We want IP.’\u201d And as he acknowledges, that\u2019s if they are willing to buy anything at all.<\/p>\n

\n\tNot that it\u2019s stopped Itkin from trying. In fact, he\u2019s been busy mining the globe for potential formats, and is in various stages of development with a few. He says he\u2019s got a music competition show cooking that he\u2019s particularly excited about, largely because of the creative way it will engage the audience. Get Itkin going and it\u2019s clear he\u2019s similarly jazzed about all of the ways, from YouTube to TikTok, that you\u2019re able to test and distribute content now \u2014 and the fact that if a traditional buyer isn\u2019t interested, you can do it yourself in ways that you didn\u2019t use to be able to.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI see a lot of pessimism in the business, and my answer to that is then just figure out other ways to do it,\u201d he adds. \u201cI mean, we\u2019ve all had to pivot for different reasons, and sometimes it takes a while and sometimes it fails, but that\u2019s life. Things change. Turn lemons into lemonade.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A little over a decade ago, Mark Itkin sat in his plush WME offices and suggested he was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88,604,55194],"class_list":["post-850497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-reality-tv","tag-wme"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=850497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}