What do you think has formed your interesting career?
I lived a dual life growing up. I was born and lived in Colonia, N.J., but spent my weekends at our apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I like to say I lived in New Jersey but the city raised me.
How did you feel about Brooklyn?
I grew up terrified of Brooklyn. It was a thousand miles away from the Upper West Side.
And city life developed your interest in the arts? Or in sports?
Both. My mother would take me to Lincoln Center and my father would take me to Madison Square Garden.
On which side did you land?
When I was young, in the theater. I studied acting in the Young Actors program at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute.
But sports won out in the end?
Actually, visual merchandising won out in the end. I applied to several college programs – for law, for theater, for writing, for architecture – but ended up at LIM. My role model is Norman Bel Geddes, the innovative industrial designer, and he started out designing stage lighting for the theater, which is a form of visual.
How did that lead to sports merchandising?
My college job was merchandise supervisor for the Prudential Center in New Jersey, where the Nets and Devils played. After school, when Jersey kids were coming into the city I was taking the train to Newark.
What has the Barclays Center meant to Brooklyn?
It’s incredible. The Dodgers were well before my time. But I can see how a home team gives the streets of the borough a unifying feel. Everybody in Brooklyn loves the place.
Three different worlds aren’t they – theater, retail and sports?
Not really. They’re all about eliciting an emotional response and pushing a pleasing aesthetic, and you want to walk away from each of them feeling rewarded.
Is the theater still in you?
It resonates in everything I do. It made me view the world in a grandiose level, no limits, everything is attainable. I kept pushing because I didn’t know I couldn’t.
Gina's List
Gina Mercatili may be one of the few people in our industry with her own page on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Here’s her IMDb filmography:
Ten-Buck Baton (Shot Girl), 2013
After Hours: The Movie, 2011
Mafiettes (Bartender Nikki), 2009
(“That’s what you get when your last name is Italian.”)