How Chris Quintos Cathcart brings representation to the big screen

Chelsea Lin: I'd love to hear in your words a little backstory on Unapologetic and your personal career in the entertainment industry.
Chris Quintos Cathcart: So, I started as an actor in high school, and I really thought that that's what I was gonna be for the rest of my life. But because I was an immigrant’s daughter, I was like, “Well, that's insane.”

CL: That's so sad.
CQC: I know, I know. I'm glad it's changing. So I kind of botched my audition at Juilliard on purpose—it was definitely a self-sabotage move. Whatever. Anyway, I ultimately chose to go to college in upstate New York, and kind of acted a little bit there, but also the theater department was like five people big, and I didn't like the head of it. So I kind of dropped out. After college, I had this really sh*tty, sh*tty job…

CL: Doesn't everybody have that job?
CQC: Yes, exactly. It was a rude life awakening. I was like 25, and I thought, “Oh my god, what is it that I really want to do?” It’s always been theater. So I went back to the theater in San Francisco and did a bunch of indie theater. I got to work at the Magic which felt like a career highlight. And then because San Francisco is the way it is, and maybe because I'm from there, I was like, “I'm just gonna start my own sketch comedy group.” I started one, and then I realized probably about a year or two after doing it, that if I wanted this to be something more than a hobby that I'd have to move to LA. So I moved to LA, and then I did a bunch of stuff: I wrote for a CBS comedy showcase, I met a bunch of people, I had a commercial agent. I felt like I was doing it, even though it's hard to say what “it” means. And then it was really when I had my second kid that I thought, “Oh my god, this is still really powerless.” It felt like I was still kind of waiting. With the birth of my second I realized two things: One, that I had no more time; and two, that the money my husband happened to be making as this tech entrepreneur exec, it was also mine. So I could do whatever I wanted with it. Really it took me having that second kid for me to really own that even though it had been a long, long time that he'd been successful. He had never said anything about that. Of course, it was just my own baggage.

CL: It’s really hard as a woman with your own ambitions and your own, I don't know, barometer of success to come to that realization. And also the world is set up to treat motherhood as an unpaid but incredibly exhausting job forever.
CQC: Totally. And, also as a creative, motherhood is also very creative. You can kind of get lost in it. You know what I mean? Especially the first couple years, you think, “Do I really want to be doing an Amazon commercial audition, or should I just play with my kids for two hours?” Yeah. It’s a good trap, that motherhood [Laughs]. But exactly what you said, I think especially with me and my husband…We met in college, and so I always hold dear that ambition is one thing that we had in common. A mutual value and goal.

Sean Wang's "Dìdi" tells an authentic story from an underrepresented point of view, exactly what Chris Quintos Cathcart was looking for.

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

It was really hard, especially as a creative. All the people who were encouraging me to use our money were my white straight guy friends, saying, “Just buy a part for yourself. That’s what everybody does. That's literally how anybody makes it.” And I was like, “I don't know what that means. I have no idea how that would even work or happen.” But that's kind of what I started to do. I was like, “Okay, well, I guess I'll just ‘buy a part’ for myself, whatever that means.” I started with trying to find Filipino American filmmakers and seeing if I could finagle my way in there. I couldn't—I couldn’t find any. I found one or two, but they just weren't at that level, where they're just cranking out roles right and left.

CL: And how long ago was this?
CQC: I went to Sundance in February 2020. Because I was like, “I'm gonna look at the finish line, and I'll work my way back.” And then of course, COVID happened.

So I joined a film fund called Gamechanger with Effie Brown heading it, and that's how I got on this project The Inspection. I doubled down my investment on it because I really, really believed in Effie and what she was doing, and the film felt just so right. And then when it debuted at TIFF, that's when my friend Tyler [Boehm], who had been in film finance, approached me about starting our own thing, because now I'm, not a proven entity, but at least not a fly-by-night actor who's going to make a movie and then run for the hills. So that's how we got started.

It was when I was networking to figure out where I could “buy this role,” I also figured out that this job was awesome. I just didn't know, coming from the other side, that the business part of it would be so appealing—just meeting a bunch of people, meeting writers and directors, reading a million scripts, reading books…It hadn't occurred to me that this was something that I could pursue.

So basically, then Tyler and I started Unapologetic in January 2023. We just have this really great partnership. Obviously, he's been in film finance for a much longer period of time, but working in the business side of things has really helped me to keep my edge. He would ask how it's going, and I would tell him, I feel a little feral. I hadn't been chained to my email, and I didn't have the whole office thing down really. I’d been in basements in Berkeley, doing gender-queer Romeo and Juliet. Just weird sh*t.