Kathryn Brink is one of those rare people who has thrived in the entertainment business in spite of never living in either New York or Los Angeles. She’s spent her entire adult life in New Mexico, and has never found any reason to live anywhere else. Since incentives were introduced to expand production in the state, Brink’s career has exploded, rewarding her faith.
Don’t limit her, either. She’s no longer just acting as the local casting director for productions, she’s now the lead for more and more films, including The Absence of Eden, starring Zoe Saldana and Garrett Hedlund, currently in theaters. There is something reassuring, maybe even a little thrilling, about someone succeeding in Hollywood without living there, or compromising what’s important to them in the process.
That’s Brink in a nutshell, a professional who stays true to herself. She spoke to us from her home office in the Land of Enchantment.
How did you get into casting in the first place?
I actually graduated from college with a directing degree, and went almost immediately into television production stuff that was mostly centered around commercials and big interactive video games. That was what was going on in the industry at the time in New Mexico. I was doing mostly line producing and things of that sort. I was also constantly doing casting for a lot of my directors.
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They’d be like, Well, you know what I want, why don’t you just do the casting on this commercial? I loved working with the actors, so it felt like a natural fit. Then, when the industry really started to change in New Mexico, we got all the incentives and the industry really started to pop, I thought, you know, I’d much rather be in the casting end of things. I’m not enough type A to be a producer forever. (Laughs) So yeah, it was a natural shift.
It’s amazing to me how often I talk to casting directors who say they kind of fell into it, or they started out as an actor or as a director, and then got into casting that way, because it was a chance to work with actors, without acting yourself, or from a directing perspective without having to deal with all the other stuff that not everybody wants to deal with.
(Laughs) Very true. I think it’s great because I had a huge amount of experience, being intertwined with other departments and understanding their concerns and priorities. I think that really helped a lot in terms of giving me the perspective and the confidence to work with people that are in all those different areas of production, and how I have to be part of a team.
Can you tell me about working specifically for productions set in New Mexico?
It has evolved. That is one 100% for sure, when I first started doing casting here, there wasn’t a single director that would would look at anyone for being anything other than a day player with two lines. They just didn’t trust that we had the talent pool here. That has absolutely changed drastically. COVID really seemed to move things in a whole different direction, because the the directors and producers knew that we couldn’t be in person anymore, they really had to take our word that these are the people that you want to see.
I think it gave casting directors that are in a local market a little more freedom to really be able to help make decisions about roles, and to start incorporating and bringing people in that would be reoccurring roles, costar roles, even starring roles. A lot of the movies that I’m working on now, I’m doing all the casting, not just local casting. Granted, they are more in the independent vein, but it’s really exciting to be able to see these New Mexico actors get elevated in their profession and be able to absolutely be able to compete and be cast in the larger roles.
I would have thought that something like Breaking Bad would be a line of demarcation for New Mexico, but it sounds to me like the equanimity of the pandemic really opened up everything for everybody.
I think it did. I just think it blew away some of the illusions that we had that you can’t be a casting director in New Mexico and be casting in LA, or an East Coast casting director can’t do west coast casting, and so forth. I feel like the directors and producers have had more of an open mind since then.
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What about the decision to stay in New Mexico, rather than moving to one of the coasts?
I think that when I really came into my own with casting, I had also gone through some fairly significant like changes. So I wasn’t 22 years old or 25, which is maybe a time when I would’ve said, I’ve got to go to LA and I have to be part of that market. I made decisions based on what I thought was going to be a very well rounded lifestyle for me, where my work was extremely important, but also who I surrounded myself.
The environment here was also equally as important for my child to be here. I just felt very strongly that things were going to change here. I could already see it coming. When the incentives started and things really started to pop, I think that was enough to keep us here. Now, there are casting directors in New Mexico who really have that strong connection to Los Angeles, who are equally as much there as here, and that works for them. But for me, I felt like my life style choices were just as important as my career choices, and I chose to stay here,
That’s surprisingly healthy talk for somebody in the entertainment industry.
(Laughs) And there have been moments when I’ve kicked myself and said, Well, why the heck didn’t I? Or I’ve lost a job to somebody else, and it’s like, gosh, if I had just been in LA, I would have attached myself to that project. But I guess I have a fairly humane, esoteric kind of view of life.
What piece of advice or wisdom would you give to an actor coming into audition for you?
I think just to try to relax. Because if you’re not relaxed, you’re not going to be yourself. There’s so many actors that are not used to auditioning in person anymore. Even actors who are very experienced, lately I had a callback session and I had an actor say to me, I am so nervous, and this is somebody I’ve cast like four or five times. So I’d say to those people, just take a breath and relax. We love you. You wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t crazy about you and your work.
So that’s number one. Breathe, relax, enjoy the process. Because if you can’t do that, then we can’t see you. Just be able to open up and show us who you are, and potentially where we could take you.
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State leaders are combining local and federal resources in hopes of tackling gun violence in our state. It involves linking law enforcement to a national network.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – State leaders are combining local and federal resources in hopes of tackling gun violence in our state. It involves linking law enforcement to a national network.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, Attorney General Raúl Torrez and Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart announced they’re adding new “NIBIN” machines across the state. It comes as we continue to see a rise in gun violence.
“We, according to the latest UCR reports, are the second most dangerous state in the United States. And according to that same data, the unsolved rate of violent crime is nearly 75%,” said Torrez.
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NIBIN stands for National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. It comes from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, and Firearms.
“These are the machines that analyze shell casings and really are able to quantify the geometric relationship between a particular casing and a particular firearm,” Heinrich said.
Heinrich says New Mexico currently has three of these machines: two in Albuquerque and one in Santa Fe.
“I was able to work through the appropriations process to get funding this year for a little over $1,000,000 to put NIBIN machines in Farmington and Gallup and Las Cruces and Roswell. Rather than having law enforcement officers driving from the very ends of the state to Santa Fe and Albuquerque, where the only machines exist right now,” said Heinrich.
As the machines are set up in their new cities, the attorney general’s Crime Gun Intelligence Center will train officers on how to use them. The data collected can be shared across county and city lines.
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“Those casings can then be analyzed and traced back to networks that we know not only traffic in firearms, but trade firearms for narcotics or use firearms in a variety of different violent crimes, not just in the metro area but across jurisdictional boundaries,” Torrez said.
Analysts will then use that information to help agencies make arrests. Stewart believes the machines are game changers.
“It connects this round to a specific weapon, a specific weapon. How invaluable is that? It’s an incredible tool in our arsenal. We need to start stepping up to technology. We need to embrace that which can make policing more efficient, more scientific, more unarguable in a sense, with prosecutions,” said Stewart.
ATF is going to help set up the machines. Once they’re installed, communities across the state will have access to them.
Two women were found dead and a 5-year-old girl critically injured at a park near Clovis, New Mexico, authorities said Sunday. Meanwhile, the FBI found an abducted 10-month-old girl, who’s the daughter of one of the victims, reports CNN, and a suspect is in custody. The FBI didn’t disclose the condition of the infant, or the identity of the suspect, per CNN. Police have identified the dead women as Samantha Cisneros and Taryn Allen, both 23 years old and from Texico, New Mexico, reports the AP. They said at least one of the women was fatally shot. The 5-year-old girl was critically injured with a gunshot wound. New Mexico State Police issued an Amber Alert late Friday for the infant.
Cisneros was the mother of both children, and the fathers of the girls were cooperating with investigators and not believed to be suspects, according to police. The Eastern New Mexico News reports that the women were found at Ned Houk Park about 5 miles north of Clovis with their purses and belongings near the bodies, state police said. A car belonging to one of the women also was found at the scene. The FBI and Clovis police are asking the public to come forward with any tips or leads. A GoFundMe page has been set up by the family of Cisneros.
Authorities in New Mexico are searching for a 10-month-old girl they say was kidnapped from a park where her mother and another women were found dead and the infant’s 5-year-old sister was found injured.
“Investigators believe Eleia Maria Torres has been abducted by the perpetrator of this crime and is in immediate danger,” the Clovis Police Department said in a news release.
Eleia has brown hair and brown eyes, according to an Amber Alert notice.
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Police discovered the infant was missing after responding to a call shortly before 4:30 p.m. Friday about two women found dead at Ned Houk Park near Clovis, a city in eastern New Mexico that is more than 200 miles east of Albuquerque and about 100 miles southwest of Amarillo, Texas.
The women, both 23, were found with “apparent gunshot wounds” on the ground near a minivan, the police statement said.
The women were identified by investigators as Samantha Cisneros, Eleia’s mother, and Taryn Allen.
The 5-year-old was found “suffering from an injury to her head,” police said, and was rushed to a hospital for treatment. She is recovering from her injuries, police said at a news conference Sunday.
The fathers of both children have been working with the investigation team, police said at the news conference.
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At the scene, officers also discovered “an infant car seat, an infant stroller and a small baby bottle at the scene,” and began searching for a young child, police said.
“Through interviews with family members, investigators learned Samantha Cisneros was the mother to the young female child found at the scene and was also the mother to a 10-month-old child, Eleia Maria Torres,” the news release said.
The FBI is helping local police with the investigation.
“I promise that the FBI will be with Clovis until we find Eleia, and we find the individual or individuals responsible for these horrific acts,” Raul Bujanda, special agent in charge of the FBI Albuquerque Division, said during the news conference.
