LOS ANGELES – What’s the secret to landing a career in Hollywood?
A vision board, says “Matlock” star Skye P. Marshall.
To make a dream come true, “you’ve actually got to see it,” she explains. “When you see it, you feel something. Feelings also have to match what it is that you want.”
Marshall got into the vision board business after serving in the U.S. Air Force, graduating from Northwestern Illinois University and landing a job at a New York pharmaceutical marketing company.
“Two years into it, I realized it wasn’t my dream,” she says. “I told my mom, ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing with my life, but this is not it.’ And she said, ‘Well, then that’s what you need to ask God for – clarity.’ I didn’t have a relationship with God, but I was so desperate that I did. I said, ‘Where would you have me go?’”
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Because acting was a hobby, she thought that might hold the key.
Skye P. Marshall.
Jason Ritter and Skye P. Marshall play a couple on "Matlock."
One day, Marshall had a dream – to act in Los Angeles. “Within two months of that dream, I got in my car, left New York and came to L.A. I had two months of unemployment to live off from my corporate world.”
Her first vision board: Procedural drama. “It manifested immediately. But it was as a background actor for ‘CSI: New York,’ so that’s why I learned to be more specific.”
Marshall gave herself two years to build a foundation. Hill Harper, an actor on the series, agreed to share advice. “I started to align myself with the right people, and this,” she says of “Matlock,” “is my Cinderella story.”
In the new CBS series, she’s an aggressive attorney who plays Kathy Bates’ boss. Interestingly, the set is repurposed from “Good Sam,” her first series regular role.
“I would sit on those stairs,” she says on the set, gesturing to the staircase, “and visualize what I could be doing. I would hold onto it.”
Now, “I can’t believe what I’m experiencing,” she says.
To prepare for “Matlock,” she drew on experience from serving on jury duty.
“In most courtroom scenes, extras are told to have business but, in the courtroom, everyone’s told to look directly at you, the attorney. There is no lawyer that doesn’t bring a bit of showmanship to that space because all eyes are on you. That is not a comfortable position to be in when you’re fighting for someone else’s rights or someone else’s life. I always make sure that my stakes are high enough, which is why Olympia (her character) is so specific about what clients she takes on. That’s what makes ‘Matlock’ very original.”
The cast of "Matlock," from left, David Del Rio, Skye P. Marshall, Kathy Bates, Leah Lewis and Jason Ritter.
Skye P. Marshall plays a strong-willed attorney in "Matlock."
Even on a television series, Marshall says, she can draw on her experience. The corporate job, for example, taught her to utilize all departments, how to be a leader. And, since Olympia is a lead attorney she has to make sure her associates are serving the master.
“Olympia is very much about the chain of command. When Matlock comes in, she starts to rattle things up a bit. Olympia has a bit of a castle wall around her and Matlock finds the crack in that castle wall.”
And that vision board? It goes back to her days in the military. “I was trained in a very sophisticated way on how to process fear,” she says. “So, when a light bulb goes off, you can’t judge it and be like, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t call them because I know they’re busy.’”
Marshall had seen a notice about “Matlock” in one of the trade papers. She asked her agent to get a copy of the script. Once she started reading it, she felt she had a lot in common with Olympia. Rather than ask to have her name submitted, she sent a video to producers and asked if she could be seen.
They agreed and, soon thereafter, she was doing a chemistry read with Bates.
“If I was scared to send that DM, none of this would have happened,” Marshall says.
Today, she’s on a hit TV series, a newlywed (she recently married actor Edwin Hodge) and pondering her next move.
“I just keep telling myself not to cry because this was a part of my vision board," she says. "But I never would’ve imagined that I would be sitting here with the likes of these extremely talented and supportive people and saying the words on the page from (creator Jennie Snyder Urman) and her team. It’s a true honor and a privilege.”
Marshall’s mandate: “You can always change the direction of your life, where you want to go and how you want to get there. It doesn’t matter when you’re 18….or you’re 75. Our journey doesn’t end until it ends.”
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