About a decade ago, as children’s programming was hitting its heyday, a 12-year-old girl from New Jersey, Caitlin Sanchez, was offered the gig of a lifetime: a chance to sign on as the voice of Dora the Explorer on Nickelodeon TV.
Her thrilled parents spent less than a half-hour reviewing her contract, which promised Caitlin $5,115 per episode and an unspecified cut of Dora’s lucrative merchandising revenue. Worried about losing the offer, they signed with no thought of contacting a lawyer.
It was “an all too classic mistake,” said Sally R. Gaglini JD’87, an expert on young performers’ contracts who teaches entertainment law at Suffolk and has worked in the field for 30 years. Caitlin’s case devolved into a multimillion-dollar cause célèbre in which she and her family claimed Nickelodeon “used convoluted payment-deduction clauses” to underpay Caitlin and “withhold her merchandise percentages.”
Such contract disputes are so rampant that Gaglini has written a comprehensive and easy-to-read manual for child stars and their families, Young Performers at Work: A Child Star Survival Guide. An award-winning ebook, it recently came out in paperback.
Gaglini has spoken with scores of families caught in similar binds. After signing deals that lock their kids into performance obligations—and penalize them financially if they opt out—the parents come to her asking, “How do I get out of this?”
“The explosion in kid-oriented programming in the last 15 years has created this giant demand for young people,” she says, “and businesses have cropped up like dandelions as a result. It’s a real minefield, and there are a lot of scams and a lot of pitfalls.
”Scams include bogus Craigslist casting calls set up by outfits that fleece the starry-eyed with up-front fees, promise them high earnings for small amounts of work, and wangle their parents into signing unfair or punitive deals. Impenetrable language is a common trap for parents so intent on indulging their child’s whims (and their own dreams) that they will trust without verifying.
In one of her own cases, Gaglini helped the parents of a singer void a contract that seemed to promise free studio time to the youngster while he developed as an artist. The costly awakening came when the parents received a five-figure production bill.
“Parents have to understand that it’s never a level playing field,” says Gaglini.
Gaglini helped craft Massachusetts’s first child performer law, passed in 1991. One of its protections requires that probate judges approve contracts for child performers, ensuring that they are fair and that earnings are set aside for the youngsters until their 18th birthday.
“Production companies hire lawyers to craft the contract as it best suits them, not the child,” she says, adding, “That’s natural, and it’s why this book is needed.”
Gaglini makes clear that she didn’t write the guide to dissuade young performers from careers that can prove rewarding. She wants to offer a road map for families interested in television and film, reality shows, baby commercials, boy and girl bands, and other avenues into the industry “so long as their child is treated fairly.”
She also shares advice on taxes, expenses, and agency fees, and on preparing for the inevitable “lean years” without work. And she spends a chapter on a prickly question that can divide many a household: “Who gets the money?”
Lastly, she tells parents to always put their kids’ educations before show-biz ambitions.
“I’ve heard so many parents say, ‘I should never have pulled my kid out of school.’ ”