Award-winning casting director Jen Rudin announces her new podcast NINTH GRADE DIARIES, premiering on Wednesday, October 15. New episodes every Wednesday.

Long before Jen Rudin became a casting director and wrote Confessions of a Casting Director — also a podcast — she was a professional child actor in the 1980s competing with a small group of girls for some super big roles.

Forty years later, Jen's cracking open the cringey, overdramatic diaries I kept as a ninth-grader in 1980s NYC. Think backstage auditions, bad crushes, big hair, and even bigger teen angst—served with a heavy dose of self-deprecating humor. Turns out, all that teenage drama was weirdly good training for my future career as an award-winning casting director—because who better to spot talent than someone who once documented every single feeling in real time?

If you’ve ever winced at your old self, congratulations: you’ll feel right at home with NINTH GRADE DIARIES.