From Viterbo to Hollywood
“I come from Soriano nel Cimino, a small village an hour north of Rome, with a population of just 8,000. My grandfather ran the film projector at the cinema when he was a boy, in the 1950s. I always knew I wanted to get out of there. I was suffocating in my hometown, so small, such a dead end. That’s what sparked my desire to run far away.” For Mastrodicasa, “far away” was Los Angeles, where she went at the age of 26 with dreams of working in the Hollywood film industry. It was here that she founded her company, Never Settle Media. A new venture that helps content creators and filmmakers introduce themselves on digital platforms with a strong focus on diversity & inclusion, and an all-women client list.
But the first step in Mastrodicasa’s getaway was her law degree in Milan. She says: “I was a bit of a moody teenager and the transition to university wasn’t easy for me. My parents would have liked me to follow in my sister’s footsteps – she studied law in Rome. I took the entrance exam at Bocconi instead. Partly out of anger and partly to show them that I could decide for myself.” Life at university is full of new experiences, but the idea of working in the entertainment industry was her childhood dream, from back when “I used to watch films with my father. I remember thinking that maybe I should have chosen the CLEACC, the course specifically dedicated to arts and entertainment. I felt out of place in the world of law, trapped in a life that was not my own. Looking back, though, this uncomfortable feeling prompted me to think outside the box and find my way with a passion and determination that I didn’t think I had.”
After doing a few internships in Italy and knocking on a few closed doors like the Apulia Film Commission, Mastrodicasa decided to enroll in the Business and Management of Entertainment course at UCLA in Los Angeles. Here she lived the American dream, interning at companies such as Sony and Paramount, and working as an assistant at Verve, one of the top agencies for writers and directors in Hollywood. “They hired me because I had a law degree and they thought I was smart and I could handle it,” she says. “And they asked me to improve my accent, so I took acting lessons — I was the only non-American employee. I read scripts all the time to develop my own taste in writing. Then there was the Talent Relations part, also involved major Oscar winners and showrunners who worked with the world’s top studios.”
Although agency life was tough, it gave her the opportunity to build a solid foundation and extensive network that led Mastrodicasa to make inroads to reaching her goals. And then came the turning point in her life. “I sent an email to Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy’s husband and Steven Spielberg’s producing partner, telling him my story. He replied ten months later, on his way back from the UK set of The BFG, asking for my CV, and I replied with an invitation to lunch. Five days later I was working for his company in Santa Monica.” During this experience, she had the opportunity to work with Marshall and Spielberg on an award-winning documentary, Finding Oscar, about the civil war in Guatemala.
In 2016, she found the place with the perfect blend of production and representation at Heroes and Villains Entertainment, where she stayed for over five years, following A-list talent and becoming a manager by successfully launching the company’s digital division. From there, she decided to go it alone. “Today, I look for different voices, people who stand out from the crowd, who contribute to social change. We have lots of women artists: Gen Z girls, entrepreneur moms and people who left a monotonous job to build their dreams through storytelling and digital.” To the new generations she says: “Believe in yourself. Intuition is a memory of the future.”
