Two very different careers, one shared stage
Caleb Hearon and Zooey Deschanel took the stage together at the Toronto International Film Festival for a panel with an unusually literal title: "For You Feed to Feature Film." Moderated by TikTok's Global Entertainment Partnerships Lead Jenny Kim, the conversation was aimed squarely at creators who have built an audience on social platforms and are now weighing a jump into film and television.
The pairing made sense given the project that brought them to Toronto. The two star alongside each other in Trash Mountain, which Hearon also co-wrote with Ruby Caster. That film is itself an example of the transition under discussion, and it gave both performers a natural platform to describe what the move actually takes. Mashable Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko shared a clip from the panel, which captured the core of the guidance the pair offered the room.
What came through in that clip was not a polished, corporate set of talking points. It was blunt, occasionally funny, and grounded in the practical realities of an industry that has been reshaped by the very platforms these creators come from.
Deschanel: stop waiting for permission
Deschanel's message boiled down to a single idea — creators should quit waiting for someone else to authorize their ambitions. She illustrated the point with a story from early in her own music career, recalling that she was told she could not make it as a musician because she had already established a name for herself as an actor.
Her reaction, as she described it, was essentially to ignore the warning. Rather than treating the objection as a barrier, she treated it as proof that she would simply have to be the first person to prove it wrong.
"How about you just be the person that does it first," she said, according to the clip. She went on to express her belief that everyone on that path already has something worth putting into the world — that the work itself is the qualification, not a permission slip from an established gatekeeper.
The sentiment lands differently coming from someone who has moved between acting and music across a long career. The advice is not abstract encouragement. It is a description of a strategy she used herself when the industry told her the categories did not overlap.
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Hearon: get comfortable saying no very early
If Deschanel focused on the internal barrier — the instinct to wait for approval — Hearon focused on the external one: the pressure to accept whatever terms are offered because a creator believes there is no other route forward.
His central piece of advice was to "get comfortable saying no very early." He described the tendency people have to box creators into a single identity, and warned against letting companies or institutions push creators into arrangements simply because they have been convinced it is the only way to get ahead.
For Hearon, the refusal is not stubbornness for its own sake. It is a way of protecting a career's direction before outside parties have enough leverage to define it.
The money math behind the advice
Hearon was also candid about the financial side of the transition, an area panel discussions often gloss over. He noted that most of his bills are covered not by acting work but by "reading ads on my gay little podcast," despite having worked on four movies in a single year.
That detail is a useful corrective to the assumption that a growing film résumé automatically translates into stability. For creators considering the leap, it reframes the decision: the online work that built the audience may remain the financial foundation even as screen credits accumulate.
It also explains why Hearon's advice about saying no carries weight. If a creator already has income flowing from a direct relationship with an audience, they are negotiating from a different position than someone who depends entirely on a studio or network to pay rent.
Leverage — and who carries the risk
Hearon's assessment is that creators now hold real leverage, a shift driven by the relationship they maintain with their audience. At the same time, he pointed out that institutions are increasingly offloading financial risk onto creators, a consequence of the do-it-yourself nature of content production.
Those two forces pull in opposite directions. Creators have more bargaining power than they once did, but they are also being asked to absorb more of the upfront cost and uncertainty. Recognizing both halves of that equation is what makes his final takeaway more than a slogan: learn how to say no early, and then make the thing.
The emphasis on making the work rather than negotiating endlessly ties the two stars' advice together. Deschanel says the permission will not arrive; Hearon says the deal will not be worth it if it costs you the ability to say no. Both roads lead to the same destination — building something yourself rather than waiting to be selected.
What creators can take from the panel
- Do not wait for authorization. Deschanel's framing suggests creators should treat the absence of an established path as an invitation rather than a stop sign.
- Say no early and often. Hearon's guidance is to establish boundaries before outside parties have enough leverage to shape a creator's identity or trajectory.
- Protect your income base. Hearon's reliance on podcast advertising despite a busy film year shows that online work can remain the financial backbone of a career.
- Understand where the risk sits. Institutions are shifting more financial exposure onto creators because of the DIY nature of content production, and creators should price that into their decisions.
- Make the thing. Both performers returned to the same conclusion — the work itself is the only reliable way forward.
Why the advice resonates right now
The panel's title captured the moment: social platforms have become a genuine pipeline into film and television, but the pipeline is not neutral. It rewards creators who can hold an audience, yet it also asks them to shoulder more of the cost and risk of production than the traditional studio system did.
Deschanel and Hearon approached that tension from opposite ends of the industry. One built a career inside established structures before crossing into music; the other built an audience directly and then wrote himself into a feature. Their conclusions nevertheless converged, which is what gave the session its edge.
For creators in the audience — and for the much larger group watching the clip circulate afterward — the message was less about tactics than about posture. Stop asking whether you are allowed. Start deciding what you will refuse, and then go make the work that answers the question.
This article is based on reporting by Mashable. Read the original article.
Originally published on mashable.com
