Free Agents

With the old guard holding on to power, younger talent reps are shaking up the industry by walking out

- By Natalie Jarvey

Wherever there are thrones, there are games. In the early 2010s, the leaders of Hollywood’s most powerful talent agency, CAA, began telling senior agents that the kingdom would someday be theirs. The timing certainly checked out. CAA’s trio of cochairmen—Bryan Lourd, Kevin Huvane, and Richard Lovett—had already led the agency through a 15-year period of tremendous growth, and their contracts were set to expire within a half dozen years. But the new generation soon realized that coronation day was further off than they expected. Lovett began reminding staff that 60 was the new 40, according to two sources. “I was like, Fuck no, it’s not,” says one of them, who recalls thinking, Oh, you guys are never going to leave.

Lovett, Lourd, and Huvane are now in their 60s. They seem more engaged than ever, having just guided CAA through a turbulent few years that saw a ferocious battle with Hollywood writers, a crippling pandemic, and a $750 million acquisition of rival agency ICM Partners. So CAA’s leaders-in-waiting asked themselves if they wanted to stick around another decade or two to inherit the agency, at which point some of them would be pushing the new 40.