Teresa Jusino (42) settled in Los Angeles ten years ago from New York. “I managed to provide for myself with a marketing job, but I lost it in June 2020 due to the corona crisis,” she says via Zoom. Shortly after, she landed her very first job in the entertainment industry on a major TV show. Not as a writer, as she envisioned when she moved to the American West Coast. „A friend worked on the set of the second season of the FX series Dave and was looking for someone who could take covid tests by October. That’s how I rolled in. Ironic, right? That I was fighting all this time for a job on a big set and it worked thanks to corona.”
The prediction was that young creatives who wanted to make it in Hollywood could forget about it for the past two years. Sets and crews got smaller to reduce the spread of Covid-19. Producers only hired people they already knew so that they could guarantee quality. So get a foot in the door as an assistant in the writer’s room? Come on. Yet in the slipstream of the pandemic, a new opportunity suddenly presented itself, as a member of the team around the ‘Covid Compliance Officer’ (CCO). This team tests actors and the film crew three times a week and knows exactly how many people are on set through the daily check-in procedure. The CCO also monitors compliance with the corona rules.
The covid team turns out to be the ultimate entry-level function for Jusino. You used to become ‘PA’ (personal assistant), did you fly hours as runner, a kind of courier, or you became a writing assistant who was mainly allowed to observe and take notes for the script makers. “It covid complianceteam is a back door compared to the jobs we knew, because it is perhaps the least substantive creative job currently imaginable on a set. But you do get more access,” she says. She is in touch with every head of departments on set and often discusses intimate details about a person’s health. „That way I am in contact with all departments, from showrunners [creatief eindverantwoordelijke bij een serie] to PAs. Everyone has to be tested, so everyone has to pass me.”
‘Ready to run’ on set
From a hotel room in New York, for the recording of a still secret HBO travel show, Victoria Bottorff (27) describes the same. “Hollywood careers are built on relationships and depend on who you know. This has proven to be the way to get to know many people in a short time and to show them what you have to offer. That would have taken much longer as an assistant.” She pursued her dream of becoming a make-up artist for six years, but she put it on hold when the pipelines were shut down when the pandemic broke out. “Make-up and hair were the first to be scrapped from the schedule to have as few people as possible on set. Maybe one person was hired to take care of the entire cast, or actors were asked to come to the set ‘ready to run’”. That’s why she did her first CCO job eighteen months ago. She is now a full-time Health & Safety coordinator.
Test manager Teresa Jusino is now networking at Paramount, NBC, Universal and Apple TV+, talking to people who might never have answered her phone call or email otherwise. She is treated with respect, she says. “A PA or writing assistant often gets the frustration of a superior and everyone knows that they are at the bottom of the totem pole. The covid team is currently indispensable on set, ensures that everyone can continue to work and automatically commands more respect.”
Yet Jusino is also reaching the ceiling of what the covid job can mean for her career. “They are always surprised when I tell them I’m a writer. At the end of each job, I let the producers know that I want to be a showrunner someday and learn to produce, so they can also reach me for a job as an assistant or producer. But so far they only call me back for covid work.”
Contact with heroes
Bottorff, on the other hand, is on a triumphant march. “I tested a famous make-up artist every day for months and I can now speak of a good working relationship. I can ask her questions about the profession,” she says. She also counts some Netflix and HBO producers and production managers among her personal circle of friends, who brought her in contact with one of her personal heroes: Emmy winner Nicki Ledermann (Boardwalk Empire† She also did the makeup joker† The Irishman and The Devil Wears Prada† “Thanks to the contacts made, there is also concrete work ahead,” says Bottorff. “If you want the job, it’s for you, I was told.”
However, the huge demand for CCOs in Hollywood has put her in a bind. “I am too busy with covid work to take on such a job. And honest? It pays too well to switch to work as an assistant or trainee now.” However, that is ultimately the intention. She spends every spare moment taking classes to become that wig expert she’s been dreaming of for six years. A dream that she can continue to finance by working full-time in this sport for the coming year. “As long as corona is still around, also endemic, there will be a need for a CCO and covid team on every set.”
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of February 9, 2022