Call Me Maybe? Interview with Carly Rae Jepsen’s Agent Julie Colbert

Julie Colbert works as an agent for musicians such as Carly Rae Jepsen, Britney Spears, Blake Shelton and Adele. Here is Part 1 of her interview, explaining how she went from growing in Minneapolis to being a top music agent at William Morris Endeavor (WME) Entertainment.  You can Part 2 here.

How did you get your start in Hollywood?

I grew up in Minneapolis and Hollywood seemed like a million miles away. I thought of working in film and television, toyed with theatrics for a little while, but I couldn’t live that life. I’m a much more practical person than living from job-to-job. So I decided, “Okay, I’m gonna work on the business side.” And then I said, ‘Wow, how am I gonna get in?”

And then I thought I’d get a law degree and get in that way and go be a lawyer in that world. So I got my law degree, with my whole purpose in law school to come out here to Los Angeles and be an entertainment lawyer.

How did you make the transition from law school to agent?

I came out here to some information meetings when I was just graduating from law school and someone said, ‘Have you ever thought about being an agent?” But I had this idea in my head that all agents were these dumb-looking, cigar-smoking… they were worse than lawyers!  There wasn’t even the possibility of that.

But I had a friend of a friend who was a casting director who said, ‘Go over and meet with this agency.’ So I went over and I realized that they were doing everything I wanted to do. They were interacting with the clients, they were setting projects up, they were reading scripts, they were talking about material, they were helping people put things together. I just fell in love with it from the word “Go.”

So then what did you do?

Then I went from being a lawyer to being a lowly assistant getting coffee. I was an assistant for a couple people, including one of the guys who ran the motion picture department and this woman who was a talent agent. She had amazing clients such as Daniel Day-Lewis and Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett — really actors. There was a lot of top-notch material and a lot of talking about Rand and Kafka and all sorts of literary-based things. I loved that.

In my dealings with her and my dealings with the motion picture department, I got to know the head of the music department. He came to me one day when I was still a trainee and not an agent yet, and he said, ‘What if we promoted you and made you an agent – and you worked for our music clients in film and television?’ And I said, ‘No! I don’t want that. I work with actors. I don’t put country stars in sitcoms.’

But I went into the music department and I realized there was all this opportunity that wasn’t being taken advantage of. I thought, “Oh my gosh, there’s so much to do here!’ This was before it was commonplace for musicians to do a lot of television. So I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it for six months, and if I hate it you’ll have to make me a motion picture agent.’ He said okay.

This is Part 1 of Julie Colbert’s interview.  You can read Part 2 here.