AKTA INTERVIEWS: JAZZ JENKINS— ACTING SHOWREELS THAT ATTRACT THE INDUSTRY’S TOP AGENTS

Writer: Takunda Muzondiwa

Jazz Jenkins | Akta Photography

3:04am and Other Coordinates of Wanting 

It is 3:04 a.m. I have just typed what makes a good showreel into Google again. I scroll through articles, bookmark tabs I’ll never read, drag Youtube links into a “watch later” folder swollen like an abandoned suitcase. I turn onto my back and stare at the ceiling. 

Actors speak of showreels the way sailors used to speak of maps: a precious guide to a place they have never been but must reach urgently. A small piece of footage that carries the weight of a future career. A distilled promise that you are worthy of representation, worthy of auditions, worthy of booking. I once met someone who said they could feel their Spotlight profile aging, like a bottle of milk left open on the counter. 

This is the atmosphere in which Jazz Jenkins filmed her monologue reel with Akta. She was hoping to make something honest enough it might carry her across that threshold that all actors aim for: the moment someone finally sees you and believes you belong on their roster, on their stage, in their story. 

“Things weren’t happening for me” Jazz Jenkins tells me when I ask her what led to this viral video. In search of momentum, she booked a Pay-What-You-Can Monologue Reel with Akta. 

The Reel, shared on Akta’s Instagram, expanded outward with startling speed. Her performance was intimate, precise and disarmingly transparent. The video resonated far beyond usual actor circles. Friends were convinced they were watching a real confession. Strangers shared it. And crucially, the right eyes found it. 

The Reel became the catalyst for the next chapter of her career. It led directly to agency conversations, and ultimately to Jazz signing with Curtis Brown. 

Calling Yourself an Actor Out Loud 

For many actors the title actor  is something we circle cautiously. But for Jazz Jenkins the title has never been a negotiation. “I feel very confident calling myself an actor,” she tells me, “because it is what I am and what I have always done.” I am awakened by her conviction. “My mum reminded me recently that when I was like eleven, someone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. And I said ‘I’m an actor and I think I’d like to continue to be.’ No one had given me a paycheck, I’d never signed anything, but it was already my identifier.”

Jenkins seems to have stepped on stage as a child and simply never found a reason to step off. “I started in musical theatre when I was six or seven,” she says. “And I don’t think I’ve gone three months without being on a stage since then.” 

What Drama School Really Teaches You

Jenkins' decision to pursue an acting career coincided with a bold life choice: moving to the UK. Having grown up in New York, she had long imagined herself studying abroad. What stands out most in our conversation about drama school is how her training didn’t reshape her by hardening her, but by softening her. 

“Drama school made me a much less serious person,” she says, surprising even herself. She entered LAMDA expecting a brutal transformation. “The dominant narrative is that they break you down and strip you of yourself and you rise from the ashes, And as a teenager, that appealed to me. I liked structure and the rigidity and hard work,” Instead, she found liberation in the playful—clowning, improv, rolling on the floor in animal studies.

“Taking the unserious very seriously absolutely unlocked a part of myself I hadn’t been in touch with since childhood.”

Jenkins names softness as an undeniable force in her artistic world. She explains this through a formative experience at the Barrow Group in New York. “They taught me an exercise called the conversation exercise,” she tells me. “You’d chat about your day as yourself, and upon a signal you’d drop straight into the first line of the script. The goal was to blur the line between you and the text so there’s no switching into ‘acting mode.’ This approach shaped how she sees her own artistry. Her most impactful performances come from bringing more of herself, not less.

Be the actor whose materials align with the actor they truly are.

How the UK and US Acting Industries Differ: What Jazz Learned on Both Sides of the Atlantic

Being an American actor trained in Britain places Jenkins at the intersection of two vastly different industry cultures. She describes the UK system as being marked by gatekeepers, prestigious schools, prestigious agents, prestigious theatres— each a checkpoint. “It can be really limiting for people who can’t get in the door,” she says. The U.S., by contrast, appears more chaotic. “It’s much harder to etch out a path because the industry is vast and spread across so many cities.There isn’t as clear or as ordered of a path to take.” 

In both the UK and US, actors speak endlessly about industry differences; who trains where, which city has more opportunity, whether London rewards theatre roots or LA rewards camera-readiness. And yes those differences exist. Jazz Jenkins knows them well. But nothing in her story suggests that geography is what changed her career. What changed her career was the fact that her craft and her admin finally spoke the same language. 

Jazz’s monologue reel is a reminder that when the work is strong, the admin becomes a vessel, not a disguise. Her Akta Reel carried everything she had poured into her craft, and from the first second, everyone watching wanted to see more. No fancy equipment, no crazy montage—just skill. 

And that is why the industry couldn't look away. 

If you missed the last article, it’s over here.