Before actor Lamorne Morris became a national celebrity as Winston on the TV sitcom New Girl, he was a busboy. And a telemarketer. And a video-store clerk.
We spoke to Morris about the various jobs he has held throughout his career, the constant struggle of avoiding burnout, and Hollywood lessons for corporate America. Here are excerpts from our conversation, edited for length and clarity:
According to a recent survey from your team and Mike’s Hard Lemonade, 55% of working adults feel like their current job is hard. Working so many different odd jobs, did you ever experience burnout?
It happens all the time. I can tell you jobs that I will never go back to because I was so burnt out.
I had my first job at 14, maybe even earlier than that. I used to walk people’s kids home from school when I was in seventh grade. They paid me $2 to walk these badass kids home. I was grossly underpaid. I worked at Hollywood Video, and this was back in the age of video stores. I’m not sure if you remember those days, but Hollywood Video is a place where you go in and they have a gang of DVDs and VHS tapes and you can rent them out. I waited a lot of tables in my career. There’s only one job that I didn’t get burned out from, and that’s TGI Fridays.
Even in what I do now, even in acting and performance and film and TV, they allow for breaks, which is great. Every few weeks you get a week off, which is very much needed so you don’t experience burnout.
What does burnout look like for you? What are some warning signs you’ve noticed in your own career?
For me, it always manifests physically. It usually starts with either fatigue or restlessness, then I’ll notice that I have a sore throat or a stuffy nose or something. I go, ‘What’s been going on?’ It’s like, ‘Oh, you’ve been working your ass off.’ That’s your body’s way of telling you, ‘Go relax, go do something therapeutic.’
It’s really important for folks to just chill every once in a while, soak it all in. You should have goals, but you should never forget to enjoy the journey while you’re trying to achieve those things because I think that’s where the real joy is. It’s in those moments in between things, your relationships with different people, those times you get to relax.
Whether it is having a drink, whether it is just being in the pool, whether it is going on a hike. And the older you get, the more you learn those things, you start to learn your own comforts and the things that make you happy. And for me, it’s just I’m not exaggerating when I say my feet go up, I physically put my feet up, whether it be on an ottoman, whether it be on a stack of pillows,
Are there leadership lessons you’ve learned from directors on set that you’d like to see adopted in more traditional workplaces?
Oh, absolutely. There’s all styles of directing, but a great director doesn’t micromanage and try to nitpick every little thing that you do. They allow for the creative to be creative, and then after a few takes, you can come in and fine tune something if you feel like it’s off-tone. In a typical job setting where you have a boss and an employee, that’s letting your workers do their jobs. If they’re so far off, then you can come back in, but a great goss just trusts the worker to just kind of go.
Knowing when to give feedback is really always a useful skill.
Absolutely. Feedback, or even lack of feedback. For example, Noah Hawley, the director of Fargo, wouldn’t say much. You’d do a take, and he’d just walk by and kind of give you a look and then keep walking. And for a while that was a bit concerning. I didn’t know if I was doing a good job, and he would come up and remind you that if he says nothing, that means you’re doing what it is that you need to do and you’re in a great zone.
You have to have a relationship with your boss as well to know what certain things mean. If your boss is not talking to you, there are some who could get insecure and think, ‘Oh, they don’t like me.’ The boss might just feel like you’re right in pocket and there’s no need to coach you or manage you. Communicating beforehand is a great way to understand that dynamic.