Canadian producer makes her film dreams come true
It’s not easy to break into Hollywood as a relative outsider, but emerging producer Erika Olde says it can be done. And the 25-year-old’s career is proof.
The rising Canadian filmmaker says she had no formal training, movie experience or industry connections when she decided to move to Hollywood and stage a career in film.
Three years later, Olde hits the Toronto International Film Festival with the period drama Woman Walks Ahead, directed by Susanna White and starring Jessica Chastain as a strong-willed woman who becomes a confidante to Hunkpapa Lakota holy man Sitting Bull.
Olde says being an outsider in show business has given her an advantage, suggesting it’s tempting for those entrenched in the field to lean on past experiences.
“If you take the approach where you come into an industry and you think that you can apply similar techniques and knowledge to what you’ve experienced in the past with what you have now, I think that’s a bit of an incorrect approach,” says Olde.
“When you come into an industry and you actively are listening and learning from people who are mentoring you — and I have had a lot of mentors — that’s when your work really pays off.”
Olde traces her passion back to watching films with her dad, an entrepreneur whose business dealings kept the family traversing the globe. Every summer they would return to the family tree farm in Stony Point, Ont., says Olde, who was born in Detroit and now lives in Los Angeles.
“Films were a constant for me because I travelled all over the place. I literally was somewhere (new) sometimes every couple of months.”
Olde studied marketing in London, but found herself more interested in helping film school friends shoot music videos and short documentaries. She then decided to make movies herself.
Her quick trajectory sounds like a Hollywood dream: Olde landed an L.A. agent and started perusing scripts. Her first project was November Criminals, starring Chloë Grace Moretz.
Then came Whitney Cummings’ directorial debut, The Female Brain, starring Sofia Verga- ra, and Hallie Meyers-Shyer’s Home Again, starring Reese Witherspoon, which opened last week.
Olde admits she’s had an easier ride than most, but she’s made it her mission to champion other women trying to break into the business.
“I do sometimes feel like I’m not taken as seriously as some other people might be; like when you’re on set if you have a male producer who is producing with you, sometimes there are tendencies for people to look to them for instruction before me,” says Olde, who set up her own production company, Black Bicycle Entertainment.
“I continue on despite them and I lead with my actions, and I find that that goes a long way.”
Olde pays it forward by running a mentorship program for aspiring female filmmakers at Ghetto Film School, a non-profit with campuses in New York and L.A.
“It’s our duty to support the next generation of female filmmakers,” she says, adding she’d like to bring a version of the program to Canada.
She’s also an ambassador for TIFF’s Share Her Journey campaign, a five-year fundraising effort to increase participation, skills and opportunities for women behind and in front of the camera.