Tess Sanchez, WE'VE DECIDED TO GO IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION: Essays

Totally Booked with Zibby

Zibby Owens

Connection, Inspiration, Moms, Entertainment, Arts, Reading, Books, Parenting, Literary

4.4 • 602 Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

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Summary

Zibby chats with former casting executive Tess Sanchez (who is married to actor and past podcast guest Max Greenfield!) about WE’VE DECIDED TO GO IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION, a moving and witty essay collection about career upheaval, identity, and resilience. Tess reflects on a pivotal two-year period in her life that was filled with unexpected setbacks. She opens up about the shock of losing a career that had defined her for two decades, the struggle to reframe her sense of self beyond work, and the unexpected humor that emerged from this moment of crisis. She also touches on her experience navigating her father’s aphasia and Alzheimer’s diagnosis—and how grief and humor often exist side by side.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive
0:24.0	look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't
0:29.3	have to.
0:30.3	Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day.
0:36.2	For more information, go to zibbmedia.com and follow me on Instagram at
0:40.9	Zibby Owens. Tess Sanchez is the author of We've Decided to Go in a Different Direction. Essays,
0:50.0	Tess Sanchez has spent 20 years in the entertainment industry as a casting director. We've decided to go in a different direction is her debut book. She resides in Los Angeles with her husband, actor Max Greenfield, who has also been on this podcast for his children's book and their two children. Welcome, Tess. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Booked with Zibby to discuss. We've decided to go in a different direction.
1:13.0	Essays.
1:13.6	Thank you so much.
1:14.5	Thanks for having me.
1:15.7	Tell listeners, please, what your book is about.
1:18.4	My book is about sort of a two-year period of my life in which I experienced and dealt with a lot of what I like to call in the book, painful favors,
1:28.9	which are some challenges, unexpected challenges that ultimately were hard, but ended up being
1:36.2	probably, you know, interesting and good pivots in my life.
1:40.8	Do you really look back and feel like that? I mean, I know there was so much in your
1:44.3	book about, you know, what happens when you are in a career that you're really proud of and
1:50.3	things go off the rails and you just have a hard time sort of even recontextualizing your identity
1:56.5	after so long. Yeah, I mean, that's really what the book is about is, you know, me sort of
2:03.0	questioning why so much of myself was defined by my job and my career. And the other roles
2:10.7	in my life really being secondary to, you know, this like purpose, it's driving purpose that
2:17.0	I really felt so passionate about.
2:19.7	And yeah, when that goes away, you know, like it really did make me look at all the
	...

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