Except when you really mean to say no...
by Iris McQuillan-Grace (Actor/Writer)
As a new actor, pursuing a career, you are sometimes asked to do some strange and specific things. Things you have to somehow already know, or fake enough to seem convincing.
For example, I have been asked to:
1) Sit in front of a window while someone threw a live pigeon at me and "act as if nothing is happening." (I am terrified of animals).
2) Sing and speak Spanish on an education tour to native speakers. (I minored in ASL in college).
3) Most recently, to "improvise naturally" about a sport I know NOTHING about.
There's some throwing, and then some catching...that's all I got.
And as an actor, you learn to always say, “Yes, Yes I can!” Or in the case of #2, “Si! Si se puede!”
It’s not lying, exactly, it’s just doing what you have to get the job. You get the job, then you figure out how to do it. And that never fails, right?
For every story about a famous actor who learned a skill or faked an ability to get a job, there are at least ten more where it ended in that actor losing the job and their reputation being tarnished.
There has been some pretty provocative conversation on CrazyTown about how our choices and our words can affect our careers.
It got me thinking, “If all we have is our word, isn't it okay to just tell the truth sometimes?”
Recently, I was got a callback for an NFL commercial. After the initial excitement of the, "Yay! I got a callback!" phase was over, the next phase hit. Let’s call this the, "How did I get a callback? What is the NFL? Who the **** is Aaron Rodgers???" phase.
Doing what every self-respecting lady would do, I Googled it.
It turns out that Aaron Rodgers is a very nice looking quarterback for the Green Bay Packers.
Hi, My name is Aaron Rodgers. I play football.
I recognized from the Allstate commercial where he dances in some sort of victory/insurance dance
Next, I had to learn about football.
This proved to be challenging and extremely dull.
Try as she might, my good friend and fellow blogger attempted to explain, with stick figures, how the All-American game is played. And try as I might have to absorb this information, I just couldn't seem to make it stick.
get it? stick? stick?
I arrived the next morning at my callback. I watched as one girl/guy combo after another went in to the
audition room. I listened with increasing dread as I heard all sorts of sports phrases and screams of delight being shouted from behind the closed door.
Just before I walked in the audition room, it hit me.
Instead of pretending to understand something I didn't, I should just have fun. It was okay to not know about football. If or when I got the job, that's when I could cram and figure it all out. At that moment, I just had to go in there and enjoy myself. The truth is, I can't make myself a football fan overnight any more than I could learn to tap dance like Savion Glover or lose 20 pounds overnight.
All we can do is play the hand we're dealt. In the big picture, we have to trust that sooner or later we'll have what the job requires-when the job requires it.
Five minutes after the audition I was grabbing my bags and heading to the door, after having to repeatedly shout "TOUCHDOWN" and waving my hands over my head.
I overheard two of the casting gents talking about me, "Well, she was hot, but she didn't know anything about football".
I walked away thinking, "Ok, great. One less thing to work on".
Iris McQuillan-Grace is an actor and a teaching artist. She lives in Williamsburg.
