BOSTON HERALD

FEBRUARY 2, 2004

Ex-flack says job is more gruntwork than glamour

By Sarah Rodman

Meredith Myers once worked on a publicity campaign for actor-heartthrob Hugh Jackman.

Meredith Myers never actually met Hugh Jackman.

Like countless other workaday flacks at major publicity firms, Myers was down in the trenches: making incessant phone calls begging for ink to be spilled on the clients, mailing countless press releases, setting up interview schedules and prepping interviewees.

A performer by nature, Myers turned her experiences working in public relations - toiling at major firms such as Dan Klores Communications - into a one-woman comedy show entitled "Like a Publicist."

"I guess my advice to anybody that's thinking about doing publicity is to ask, why are you doing it?" said Myers. "If you really are wanting to be in entertainment PR because you want to go to the hot parties all the time or you want to be around celebrities, or secretly you're an actor and you think if you become a publicist, you'll make the contacts that way, you're in it for the wrong reasons."

Especially since, Myers says, even good PR jobs usually involve less partying and more stress, and much less pay, than most people think.

"You're becoming the babysitter, the answering service, the booty-call person - you're doing so many other things that really aren't about media. It really takes a special person to be an entertainment publicist," she said.

You also have to have a high tolerance for invisibility. "You're invisible to everyone else but you're the key player," said Myers, who tells tales of PR people filching awards-show gift baskets, throwing star-style ego trips and competing fiercely with one another inside agencies. "A lot of people don't know that the publicists are sometimes writing the scripts and telling the actors what to say on the TV shows or in the interviews, and you're molding their image along with the agent and the studio and all of that. But that's part of it."

Now that she has experienced the other side of it - drumming up and receiving press for "Like a Publicist," which she hopes to take on the road - Myers admitted, "It's weird talking about yourself." But at least she can say she knows her subject.