How to really F-up a casting
So, you’ve been invited to a casting, the first thing you do is fail to check where it is properly, so you haven’t worked out the transport links until you’re already on your way out the door. Now you’re in a panic.
You’re chewing mints and gum like crazy to try to take the stench of alcohol from your breath, but can feel it oozing from your pores.
You’re still hungover from last night, so you grab a coffee.
You realise you’re not going to make it on time, cos you miss the bus while getting your hot beverage and you’ve left the casting director’s contact details at home, so you can’t call ahead to change your slot.
So you run for every transport connection, becoming more sweaty and unkempt.
By the time you arrive, you look like a bag of shit tied up with string (thanks Mum).
You’re sweaty, anxious, but you’re only 15 minutes late, and you’ve missed your slot.
You think about going home, but they tell you if you wait, they’ll still see you at the end of the day.
Around lunch you get peckish and wander off to find a deli without telling the casting assistant. So when they look for you at lunch, to fit you in early out of unwarranted kindness, you’ve vanished.
You wait all day and get tired, stiff and grumpy.
Eventually you are lead into the casting room, where you fail to make eye contact, as you hand over your crumpled resume/cv and the headshot taken from the wrong angle that didn’t look like you when it was taken 8 years ago.
You do your monologue to camera, hoping they’ve never seen that monologue from Star Spangled girl, or the one about being raped and dying of cancer.
Despite traumatising the entire panel, they ask if you’ll read over the script and come back in 15 and do it to camera.
You beam as you stride out of the room forgetting to thank them or ask any relevant questions.
You spend the prep time trying to work out the character’s emotional islands and learning some of the lines.
When you’re asked back in, they ask you deliver it deadpan and the producer reads the other role. You make a quip about her being a failed actor, which goes down like a fart in a spacesuit.
You ask if they’re casting any of the bigger roles, and if you can be seen for those too, you always ask that because someone told you that it never hurts to ask.
You leave, head home, only to be told by text from your agent that you were unsuccessful. You spend the evening moaning to your significant other how tough it is being an actor and how you deserve to get your break because you work so hard for it.
If you want to totally f-up your next casting opportunity, follow the good practice described above.