Name: Alyssa Milano's Path From Actress to Entrepreneur
Uploaded: 2015-12-02
Duration: 16 min 19 s
Description: The entertainer and philanthropist talks about making her career shift.

Alyssa Milano's Path From Actress to Entrepreneur

The entertainer and philanthropist talks about making her career shift.

um, So we'll we'll dive right in. I want to do some questions from you guys at the end. This time, you need to have questions. Um, so I'm just gonna run through, You know, we heard a little bit about your You don't really need an introduction, but we heard about some of the other interesting projects that you're involved with, and I want to run through a few more. So obviously started acting at a very young age. Yes. Um, you were singer for a while. You're a producer? Baseball blogger. Um, you have a sports, right? Right. Um, all these sports apparel line for women. Um, you are an adviser to square and Jack Dorothy. Little known fact, maybe. And more recently, a breastfeeding advocate. Yeah, which is weird. I was probably all over the place. So a few questions on that note. First of all, what has guided your career? How do you decide what to do? What feels right, what you want to do? Well, it's interesting, because for me, there's so many different aspects of who I am and where my fulfillment lives That I I feel like at this point in my life It's all very different than you know, earlier in my career, when I was started acting when I was seven. So, uh, started on who's the boss at 11. That ran for eight years until I was 19. Um, in a time when child stars never worked again after their series ended, Um, and a lot of people told me to save my money. Um, that I would probably, you know, not continue to have a career. Um, which, of course, I was like, Oh, no, I will keep going. Um, and I just, you know, kept working in the opportunities that that I was given. Um, it wasn't until I was older. Maybe 24. 25 when I was on Charmed in my life seemed somewhat stable that I started having much like most young women do. Um, uh, other interests and things that I found equally as fulfilling as as acting and the reason why that's important. I think, um is no matter what you do, uh, and however passionate you are about what you do, you need a complete, uh, array of things that you feel emotionally fulfilled with, so that if one area of your life is not up to your ideal of what that should be at that time, that you have other things that you can always do to make you feel like a complete human being. So that's when I started getting into my my philanthropy work, and I lived in South Africa in 2000. Uh, for three months, I'm volunteered in a township there in a Children's hospital, and really, that opened up this entire new world of me and my being that was, um, that took over every other aspect that overcame, like I did not care about celebrity or success or acting. The only reasons I cared about those things was because I knew it would enable me to make a bigger difference and to affect more people in a positive way. Um, you know, And then the sports thing is just like talk about being in the right place, right time, having a Dodger Stadium, and yeah, I mean, you know, I grew up in a very New York Italian family, um, that were they were huge sports fans. So I grew up going to baseball games and watching baseball games on my dad's lap, and he was a huge Yankees fan. And when we moved to Los Angeles, we got Dodgers season tickets and, um, Sports to me was a way to, uh and this is going to sound so just romantic and simplistic, but to escape whatever stresses I was feeling, being a child actor like that was my sort of normalcy. And it was a place almost like a church where I was part of a community and we were all had the same, you know, desire for our team to win. And you know all of that stuff that I think is really important. Plus, I didn't go to high school. Um, so to me, that was like my team spirit, my school spirit. My community spirit was at stadiums basically, and I was at a Dodgers game and I looked around. This was, uh, eight or nine years ago now, and it was cold. And I went I looked for for cute acute hoodie to throw on or something, and I went into the stadium shop and all I could find were the worst pink things you could ever imagine in your life. And I was so offended by the pink I was like, I'm not wearing pink. There's not a pink about a Dodgers uniform like I wanted to find it. So I wound up having to buy, like, a little boys pretty nice. And that's what you know, and I Yeah, well, no. I actually went back to my seat and I looked around. I saw a lot of pink, and I was like, Okay, surely not all of these women wearing pink actually want to wear pink. There's even if 30% of these women wearing pink did not want to wear pink, then there was a market for, you know, an alternative. So I went back to see a is my agency, and I, uh, I pitched them this idea of doing a female fan apparel line. Um, and this is a time that CIA didn't even have a sports department yet. So my actually pitched it to my film agent who looked at me and said, That's actually a crackhead idea. Uh huh. But I like it, and I'm going to figure out what to do with it. And coincidentally, some guy in the literary department knew someone from MLB properties. He got me a meeting. Um, I went in, I had hired, uh, I did a whole bunch of research on stats and how many women go to games and and and the consumer, you know, huge percentage of female fans. It's over 45%. It's almost half, Um, and it's different for every league. Um, and I hired a fashion illustrator too. Sort of illustrate what I was thinking and feeling would be cool. And I went into a meeting with six guys from MLB and I showed them the sketches and I was, you know, very proud putting on like my business woman had, like, trying to be professional, and one of the guys looked at me and goes, There's no pink. Yeah, and I go, Yeah, I know it's crazy, right? And it was but pink cells and I said, Yeah, pink sells because it's the only thing you're making specifically for the female fan. I guarantee you, if there was a pink boxy T shirt made out of crappy fabrics versus this, you know, very flattering silhouette made of soft fabrics. They're gonna go for this silhouette, and I don't know if they necessarily understood the idea as much as they could see that I was super passionate about it. And so they gave me the licensing, and they had the exclusive for the first year and three weeks after the line came out, it sold out. Um, and by the second year, we had all the league's lined up. So now I'm the only female licensee that has the licensing for every major league in every major sport. Uh, yeah. So and you also did this graphic novel? Um, it just it seems like you're very comfortable, sort of crossing over gender norms. And at the same time, you're also very comfortable with yourself as a woman, as a mother, breastfeeding pictures, all that is that you've you've also grown up and you've kind of gone through this journey in the public eye. Has that been a natural thing? Have you always been your, you know, authentic, holistic self in the public eye? Or did that take, uh, was that a hard process for you? Um I don't know any differently. Right. So I've always grown up in the public eye. So for me, I didn't And I think that's kind of why I'm so sane because I didn't have a private life ever. Really like my whole life has been sort of on display. So, um, to me sharing moments of my life and who I am and the things that I love, um, it's something that I I take great pride in because it's always been that way for me. Um, so to be, like, my whole self, I would say I'm having a very hard time as a mom right now, processing this, um, this very serious gender gap issue that we have because And I don't know if it's because I was raised by sixties parents who felt like they have already fought this fight and that they fought it for me and that I was raised to believe I could do anything and that I was completely and totally and equal and that I should have no fear about, um, my opinions or talents being valued any less than a man's. Um, But now, being in this time right now and raising a little girl and knowing being aware because the conversation is so in the forefront and relevant, um, I have a hard time processing like how I'm supposed to overcome and raising a son, by the way, which is equally as important, I think in in raising, um, in giving women. Equality is how we raise our boys, too. So it's something that I I don't have all the answers to or have mastered. Um, and it's something that it's It's hard for me to sort of wrap my head around it, because what's the hard? What's the hardest part about it? What's the challenge? Um, the challenges that we keep seemingly fighting for the same things over and over and most of its equality, whether it be gender or race or, um, sexual, whatever it is, um, weak. Just keep fighting the same fights generation after generation. And it sucks. I don't get it. Can't It just makes no sense to make you, um, on that note, Um, you're very active on Twitter, and you were early on on Twitter. Also, um, you have a lot of followers, I think, close to three million. Um, and and I just went through I totally stopped you online. Of course. I'm sure I'm not the first stock I got you. So good. Um, there's a lot more information about you. So these are just This is a sample of recent Alyssa Milano take you inside her mind. Um, so there was a link to a Ted talk on quantum biology I know nothing about There was something about endangered rhinos. You you do a lot of retweeting of Bernie Sanders. I noticed, um, squares i p o Atkins recipes. Your spokesperson, I think. And then my favorite was you had this tweet just very recently. I think after the Paris attack, um, attack in Paris that just said I need the world to be better for my babies. What guides you in? I mean, I guess this is similar to the career question, but what guides you in what you put out there and do you ever censor yourself? Today? Social media is a really interesting thing to me, because when I first I did not get Twitter at all. When I first joined Twitter, I was like What? I don't understand what this is like. I have to promote what I'm doing. Like it didn't make sense. It felt dirty, actually, and I followed all those celebrities that were, you know, made Twitter kind of famous. Um, and every time they did self promotion. I was just like, Oh, it's just not It's dirty. Um, so I I started looking at users that had a huge following that weren't famous. I was like, What? What did these people tweet about? And really, they used Twitter as they were almost curator of information. And I just found it fascinating that you could follow people, um, of, like, mindedness and be able to read their their their tweets and their links. And so I sort of started using Twitter as as a platform to share things that were not only important to me, but that were interesting to me. And I thought, that is almost more telling of who I am as a person for my fans than if I were like, you know, catch me tonight at eight o'clock on TNT. Whatever it is, um, I have to say it is so refreshing to see a celebrity twitter feed that's not just full of, like, purse split selfies, you know, right. So again, it may be dirty, but the the the thing that really got me, uh, really just obsessed with Twitter were the protests in Iran and how all of the media was blocked out during that time, and we were getting real time information from users on the ground, and it just felt like such a personal way to get this information because our computers are they know everything about us right there. Like our diaries. They hold all our secrets. And so to get information unfiltered from the ground in Iran, um, really just rocked my world really rocked my world, and that's when I was like, This is a powerful tool that, if used for good, can really change the world and its and social media in general. Look, there used to be, and this is a lot with my comic books about, but there there used to be a time where you needed a leader to create a movement. Now you just need a moment. A moment can create a movement with social media, and it gives the voiceless tools to rise up and to fight what they need to fight for sometimes for worse, which we're seeing now. But hopefully for the better. And the comic book is basically about if Jack Dorsey, who is a dear friend of mine, if he started a Twitter, basically a social media company, um, as a front to being the sole member of anonymous, um, and using the algorithms to create positive change. Yeah, we do. One question, please. I promised them she's going. She's going to kill me. Okay, One very, very, very quick question. Anybody or I will ask Yes, back there real quick because we are almost out of time here, or we are out of time. Okay, Quick question, um, related to the social media piece. So how does it feel with three million Twitter followers that you have more followers than Bernie Sanders across all platforms? I mean, what do you How do you How do you process that? And secondly, as a celebrity, how do you achieve balance when everyone tells you all the time that you're awesome and 20 seconds or less? Well, um, when I am breastfeeding, I really my daughter makes me feel balanced because it's the most. Or actually, I should say when I'm pumping because it's the most unattractive thing in the world and that is the equalizer. Exactly. Um, and as far as the social media, I really look at it like and I know this sounds weird and I've probably done more thinking about this than I should, but to me, I feel like my Twitter followers. Um I take it very seriously. I almost take it like I am the mayor of our little community. And with that, have a certain amount of responsibility to, um, share information, tweet responsibly, share who I am and really make a community from the experience. Um, if that means that I can share some some. And do I really have more Twitter followers than Bernie Sanders? Well, I'm gonna have to do something about that. Keep tweeting. I'm so sorry. We're out of time. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much. Yes.