One of the #actorslife traditions is to celebrate our bookings with the community in a post called “Booked it” and hashtagged #bookedit … But the time in between those celebration-posts can be very long… very very long… (especially now in these covid times, the industry having slowed down).
In reality, behind the scenes, there’s much more going on in between those booking achievements. The actor’s life is a roller coaster. With our teams of agents and managers, coaches, actors and scene partners, it’s sometimes like a hive. When our reps get us auditions, life sort of stops… or starts… depending on what you where doing when it happens lol… Everything is put aside, reorganized, scheduled has to be cleared out. Then find out who is available to read the scene to self tape, get some coaching when needed, study the scene, then set up the lights, the camera… and there we are, doing what we love most: ACT. INTERPRET. BRING A CHARACTER TO LIFE. Make her (or him) rise from the paper, to land in our body, borrow our voice, our likeness… to exist…
Standing in front of a blank wall, we imagine that this is a forest or an office, that the scene partner holding the sides (the audition scene printed on a paper), standing at the corner of the camera, is actually holding a gun, threatening our lives, or that they are a beloved one laying in a hospital bed… The stakes are always high… despite the blank walls of our living room around. That’s how exciting it is… Then we wrap it up. Direction computer. Select the best take. Send it to our reps. Put away the lights, the camera… and… yes… it does feel like death sometimes. With sending the self-tape, the character now leaves our body and “flies” away, in the invisible interconnections of the internet… to land in a casting office’s computer who will watch our tape among many others… all different possibilities, traits and takes on the same character originally on paper…
And we… at home… have to get back to OUR life. It was just temporary. Like the library, you borrow a book and return it. We are returned our body and life, and move on until next character shows up on a paper and borrows us…
And so I wanted to rise up and celebrate not only the audition process, because it’s fun, because it’s life - It’s the actor’s life - But I want also to celebrate what I call an #almostbookedit audition!
Yes, recently I went through the whole process described above for a guest star role for a network show (I won’t name due to NDAs… but I’d be so eager to be on!). And a few days later I got a call back! What a THRILL! And it didn’t stop there. I am so grateful to my agent, Renee Glicker, who did a wonderful job at getting me to e-meet with the office. The casting directors took the time to chat and even explain to me all the layers: after their selection, they send to directors, producers, then production and network! So that’s a lot of layers to go through, but they do that pretty quick, as the pace of TV production is quite quick. They also took the time to check out my reel. That was just so elating to go further in the process. And even though I didn’t end up booking it, I trust that in the future, there is another character that will make its way from a new paper script… to me.
In the meanwhile… let’s not wait for our bookings to celebrate, but let’s celebrate our “almost bookings” and even simply our auditions. It’s a gift whenever we get one. Every milestone is worth it. Actor’s life is what it is, we have to be resilient and keep our spark up. So yay to an almost booking, and cheers to the next one coming… I’m ready for you :)