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Robert "Bobby" Kessler
Founder & Managing Partner
Former Vice President, William Morris Endeavor. Twenty-two years agency side. Founded Big Fish in 2014.
Acting · Producing · Overall Deals
— Issue No. 11 · The Firm
The boutique that
former agency VPs built
when they walked out.
A long-form profile of Big Fish Management, written for the principals, executives, and senior talent who want to know exactly who is across the table before signing the engagement letter.
Book Your Strategy Call — Email a partner directlyFounded 2014 · 9200 Sunset Blvd, Suite 1100 · West Hollywood, CA
Chapter One
Bobby Kessler, in his own words.
I started at the William Morris Agency in the spring of 1992, two years after graduating from UCLA with a folder full of theatre credits and absolutely no idea how entertainment really worked. I was twenty-three. I took meeting notes. I called agents' assistants. I learned, slowly, that the business of representing talent is not about the people on the screen — it is about the rooms where the people on the screen decide what to do next.
Twenty-two years. Four agency-side promotions. A VP title at WME by 2008. By the time I left, I had closed nine-figure overall deals, sat across from every studio head who mattered, and watched the agency model become something I no longer recognized. The rosters grew to a thousand names. The deals got done, but the talent got passed down — from senior agent to coordinator, from coordinator to assistant, from assistant to whoever picked up the phone on the day of the negotiation.
I walked out in August of 2013. I spent four months writing the kind of operating memo I wish someone had written for me when I was a twenty-eight-year-old mid-level agent trying to figure out what senior representation actually looked like. The memo had four lines at the top. They have not changed since the day we opened the doors at 9200 Sunset on a quiet Tuesday in February of 2014.
- Every client gets a named partner.
- No associate pipelines. No junior handoffs. Ever.
- The roster stays small enough that the founder picks up the phone.
- We measure success in careers moved, not deals logged.
Eleven people. Forty-seven active clients. A founder who is still in the office every day the doors are open. That is the entire operating thesis of Big Fish Management — and it is still the one I would defend against any partner at any of the three agencies where I cut my teeth.
— Robert "Bobby" Kessler
Founder & Managing Partner
Former Vice President, The William Morris Agency
Chapter Two · The Bench
Eleven people. Four partners. One inherited lineage.
The bench isn't hired — it's inherited from the three agencies where entertainment deal-making is actually learned. Every senior partner at Big Fish came off a principal-agent track at WME, CAA, or UTA before the firm's doors opened.
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Margot Villarreal
Partner, Talent & Unscripted
Former Agent, Creative Artists Agency. Eight years across the talent and unscripted divisions before joining Big Fish in 2016.
Television · Unscripted · Creator-IP
03 / 04
Daniel Okafor
Partner, Music & Recording
Former Agent, United Talent Agency. Six years in the music division representing recording artists and producers across the U.S. and U.K.
Recording Artists · Producers · Tours
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Helena Park
Partner, Digital & Emerging Platforms
Former Agent, William Morris Endeavor. Ten years on the digital and emerging platforms desk before relocating to Big Fish's New York satellite office.
Creators · Brand · Emerging Platforms
The remaining seven seats on the bench are filled by senior agents and managers who have spent an average of nine years in principal representation. No pipeline. No associate program. No exceptions.
Chapter Three · By the Numbers
Since 2014, in measurable terms.
$480M+
in cumulative project value
negotiated across the roster
230+
talent contracts closed
since founding
92%
principal-terms acceptance
within 14 days of an offer
47
active clients on the roster —
intentionally small
Named to The Hollywood Reporter's "Top 25 Boutique Management Firms" list in both 2022 and 2024. Behind six Emmy-winning series and two Grammy-nominated album cycles for current clients.
Chapter Four · Operating Principles
The rules the firm runs on.
What follows are not aspirations. They are operational doctrine, written into engagement letters, reviewed at every partner meeting, and refused to be compromised regardless of who is asking.
i.
A named partner on every deal.
Every contract that leaves this firm has been negotiated by one of four partners whose names appear on the engagement letter. There is no associate in the meeting. There is no coordinator taking notes in the back row.
ii.
No junior handoffs. No pipelines.
The talent sits across from the partner who signed them. Not an assistant. Not a coordinator. Not "the team that handles the day-to-day." The firm does not employ an associate tier because the model is built on the assumption that the partner is the deliverable.
iii.
Forty-seven clients is the ceiling.
The roster is reviewed quarterly. When a new client is added, a current one is — by policy — transitioned to a successor firm that has been thoroughly vetted. Boutique is not a marketing word here. It is a numerical commitment.
iv.
The founder picks up the phone.
Any client, any principal, any studio counterpart can reach Bobby Kessler directly. Not through a gatekeeper. Not through a scheduling assistant. The phone is answered, or it is returned the same business day — every business day, including the ones the founder is supposed to be on vacation.
"
We are not the firm that says yes to every project. We are the firm that, on the day the offer arrives, has already read the script, already called the buyer's last three references, and already decided what the principal's answer should be before the principal is asked. That is what senior representation costs. That is what senior representation buys.
— Bobby Kessler, Founder