March 13, 2003
I lost out on reading for the lead in this pilot during the Great Pilot Duel of 2003 between Coupling and Sullivan, so today I would be reading for the colleague of our leads. He is a nervous guy, as I see him, and he is driven slightly crazy by one of the leads, and extremely crazy by another character in the show. Both of those people are in the audition scene for this role, as is a third character, the one I didn't get to read for. What I am saying is, this was a difficult audition because it's one of those scenes where you are talking to more than one person, but, in most cases, you only have one reader opposite you. It's hard to create the sense of talking to different people when you are always looking down at the same one. Still, I thought I had put together a creative solution to that and was ready to give it a whirl.
The real disaster of this audition caught me by surprise. When I got to the front of the little theater they were using for auditions, I realized that right behind me was a pool table (for reasons I cannot fathom). And so thought it would just be an interesting way to get into the scene if I rested my ass against the table. Seldom do you get a large prop that you can lean on. It's always stand or sit, nothing in between. How brilliant that I would begin this scene in the middle ground!
What a moron. The first line of the scene is the launching pad into the ways that these two women are driving him a little crazy. I launched from one of the most relaxed positions possible. There I was, Cool Hand Luke, lounging on the edge of a pool table while spouting about how someone is driving me crazy. What was I thinking starting the scene like that!?!
Needless to say, my reading did not wow them. Would it have if I had
jumped right into it? I doubt it, but you never know what little
trigger can turn good into great. I have been told already that I am
"not going forward" as they say. The official feedback was
that they are going with a very different physical type. I guess they
want a guy who doesn't lean on pool tables.