February 1, 2000
As I was walking out of the audition room, Katherine Eckert, the warm and friendly casting associate offered this to me, "Thank you for spending the majority of your evening with us." And she was right, it had been a long process. And from what I understand, casting this role has been a long process itself. Originally the character was supposed to have a British accent and they tried to get that for a while. Then they scrapped the accent idea and tried to get that for a while. But time was nearly up. They start work tomorrow on this episode and need to cast the role.
The waiting room held a number of familiar faces, including the lovely and always enjoyable casting assistant Katherine Eckert. Also reading for the role of Andy were Mr. David Alan Basche, from television's Oh Grow Up, Bradley White, who had also tested for Norris, Brian Callen, from the early days of Mad-TV, and a few others. We sat around and chatted while we waited for the process to get underway. And waited. The first chunk of evening passed waiting to begin. Once we did, though, it still wasn't a smooth process.
I went in and read the three scenes they had given us. One of the tricky things about the scenes is that my character doesn't really have that many jokes. He's shy and cute but not all that funny. Still, I thought I could pull off shy and cute enough to get the part and then, of course, during the rehearsal process, I'm sure the jokes would appear. They always do. And the reading went pretty well. They gave me a fourth scene to look over and prepare and as I was leaving, one of the executive producers said, "I like your delivery of jokes. I like your attitude a lot. Try to keep that and play more with that." Good. Good. I can do that. I took the extra scene and I stepped out to look it over.
No jokes. My character had six lines and not a single one of them was a joke. Keep the attitude and play with the jokes!!?? Oh, frustrating.
I eventually returned to the room and did the fourth scene. Guess what? No laughs. That will happen when there's no jokes. I still tried to hold onto the realness of the part and the possible relationship I was portraying, but if I was supposed to sit there and make something funny happen, I was failing. "Can we try one more thing?" they asked, before letting me go. "Can you do a British accent?"
Looking back, this is where I maybe should have just realized that I wasn't going to get the part and called it a night. Instead I responded, "Well, I can read it with one and then you tell me if I can do a British accent." So we went through the scene again. I think I hit every British accent from Manchester to Liverpool in my six lines. And surprise, surprise, it still wasn't funny. But I went through the hoops like a good little actor should.
And no, I didn't get the part. I hear no one from that group of guys got the part, which is ridiculous to me. I know at least three of them (Yes, I'm including me) and talented enough and funny enough to make it work. Plus, they had told my agent that since the role was in such flux, it would be somewhat tailored to the person they hired. So just hire somebody, for god's sake. And really, when it comes right down to it, isn't it worth it that the gay guy from Oh Grow Up dates the gay guy from Will & Grace? How do you pass up a gem like that?
They did.