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Sunday, March 22nd, London
My practice sessions were moved to only the weekdays, and I was developing a stamina that I sorely needed in order to survive my schedule. Mum was spending the £80 left from my contract to take us to London and back every weekend. Yesterday, I had done three auditions. THREE! My mum had found an agent, alright. Adrian Baldini and I had reached an initial agreement. In the end, the contract actually entitled Adrian to any money I earned from all of my acting roles. Doctor Dolittle was excluded, as it was signed beforehand and I managed to make the open casting calls a 7.5% commission. It was good to at least know that my agent would negotiate for every fee, I had started at 2.5%, trying to reach 5% but he had only took off 2.5% from his usual fee. Not good when I had to pay, but great if I was negotiating pay for myself. It was crucial that he felt the need to negotiate for more.
When I did my little audition for him last week while he fumbled with a camera to get some shots, I wasn't expecting him to go off to another office room and make us wait for ten minutes. When Adrian returned, he was holding a sheet much like the ones that furnished the exterior and interior of his office.
"I get some scripts, but mostly a lot of casting sheets. Here's one that I have from BBC. I got five auditions that you can do in the next two weeks," Adrian had said.
I didn't believe him then, but now I believed it. Adrian Baldini deserved the full 10% commission because of how quick he worked. In less than a week he had secured me five auditions. Three of which I did yesterday, some sort of TV series for the BBC that I never received any scripts or even a line for. All I had to do was show up in front of an older lady in an out-of-the-way office near Guildhall. From my experience doing an open audition at Croydon, I had wrongly assumed that was how all auditions were done. I couldn't be more wrong. In fact, most auditions were done directly by casting directors who were trusted by the producer to choose appropriate actors. Lady I met yesterday had auditioned me for two different productions and five different roles and it had required me only give one audition.
Next audition I had on Saturday was with, Mrs. Di Carling, an older woman who was kind and soft-spoken. She was doing a casting for a show called Children of the New Forest. It was a series that BBC had apparently adapted twice before. Idea being that each generation got a new refreshed series that they could enjoy and relate to. After all, proven success from the past would surely translate into success in the future. One of such remakes just happened to be this. And the only role that I could get was for a Romani gypsy boy named Pablo. I was not too stoked about it, they could find someone with the appropriate race. Adrian had insisted I try though, all of his clients so far had done more than seventy auditions so far in the year. I didn't watch much cricket, but the batting average there seemed atrocious. No cricketer who missed that much would be on the field, but for actors it was normal to give hundred auditions just to get a couple gigs.
Di Carling had changed my opinion about playing a different race. Turns out the production decided to make the gypsy boy into a Spanish boy because of the racial elements and perceived backlash that would generate. While I didn't look exotic, I wouldn't have to change races for a part on TV. On Saturday, as I read the lines for my audition, I learned Spanish with a headache inducing revelation. I had known about Spanish before this moment, so I was shocked to suddenly be able to speak Spanish fluently just because I was attempting to speak Spanish. Afterwards, I could understand that the lines in the script were grammatically incorrect just by instinct.
Before today I had thought myself as an American in my past life. Now I wasn't sure which, if any, country in South America was my previous homeland. I couldn't even for the life of me use the language I had just learned. Because there was no way to explain that to Mother without sounding insane. What it helped me with was being able to put on a convincing and completely natural Spanish-accented English, Spanglish for short. I was hopeful about getting the role.
Today I had a completely different part that I was auditioning for. BBC had another production going on for a project called Vanity Fair. Also unsurprisingly, it was a remake, only this time for the fourth freaking time. Being a mainly adult-centric TV series, I was only auditioning for a role that would feature in one episode and would have no speaking roles. When I came into the audition office, a young blonde woman came over and brought me and another boy to a large room.
"Great, everyone's here," she said, sighing in a deep voice for a woman. "Line up, boys. Shortest to tallest. I haven't got all day."
I thought this was Jill, the casting director for the TV serial, Vanity Fair. In the hall were dozen boys aged anywhere between ten to fourteen. I was the smallest kid here, which made me worried.
"Sorry," I called out to a boy and went to the front of the line.
Once we were all lined up, Jill walked across us, checking our faces, height or even clothes. Judging and seeking something unknown to us.
"Swap places with that boy," she said. "Okay, right there." Then she'd move and arrange us in a different way and ask us to salute.
Two minutes the audition had lasted, in which time she had put us in different groups until she felt happy and clapped her hands.
"This five will be getting cast," Jill pointed to me and five other kids. "Thanks for coming everyone, please find your parents or guardians outside."
I saw the crestfallen faces of all the boys. Four of my auditions so far had gotten no response on the first day. Yet Jill took two minutes to cast six kids definitively without speaking. Rejected boys slowly trickled out, Jill turned away as if they were yesterday's news.
"Good job, Robert. You can go back," Jill called out to the tallest of the boys.
"Thanks, Ms. Trevellick," Robert called out and followed out the rejected kids.
"He's already been cast, so it's going to be you five," Jill clarified, opening up her folder. "I have one speaking role for multiple episodes, other four will be just a scene. Any volunteers for the non-speaking roles?"
No one raised their hand, so I did. I had a time limit and I didn't want to do too many shows. If any of my other auditions were accepted, I would have no time to shoot it. Just didn't seem right for me to accept a longer role if I couldn't perform it.
"Oh, I didn't expect anyone to take me up on that." Jill chuckled.
"I have other commitments, don't want to commit for too long," I explained.
"Busy bee, fine. Take a seat there." Jill pointed to a stool.
I climbed up on it, curious as to how the audition process would work after she had booted everyone off in such a short time.
"Right, boys. Here's the deal, you will be playing a little boy who is from a poor family and a single mother. Important point is that the family was rich before they lost it all, so he doesn't want to be poor and thinks himself unlucky to be born right when they lost everything." Jill read from her folder. I had an urge to stand up so I could see it over her shoulder.
"One day, your mother lets you go live with your rich grandfather. Suddenly your dream has come true, you're part of a rich family. You start going to the most elite private schools, riding horses and doing all the posh things." Jill let go of the folder in front and took in the kids. "Start acting all posh, get real noble and lordy. Like your breeches just aren't tight enough."
Kids laughed while I exhaled through my nose.
"Scene: You are at a ballroom dance. You have a wine in hand, you will speak Latin to impress another boy. This is your phrase, read it as you will. Doesn't matter how it sounds." Jill handed a sheet.
From my taller-than-necessary stool, I watched the boys deliver lines and exchange dialogue with Ms. Trevellick. Watching them made me realize the worst sin of acting: sounding like you're reading a line. Each and every single one of the kids read the script, memorized it, and still said it loud as they were in school. It made me think of how Mrs. Ramsdale would call on kids to read a sentence or a paragraph; some kids still struggled with that. These kids were old enough to have fully grasped reading, but they read out lines more than they acted it out.
Jill seemed frustrated, but she powered on. "Right, now we're at a dinner table. Your grandfather is telling you a story about your late father. His name was George, you don't really care because you want to drink more wine. Say these lines."
Jill then signaled for a boy to start, who woodenly said,
"Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur. That's Latin."
"There's a good private school, better than the pauper's place that woman sent you."
"I'll say," boy replied getting the tone wrong.
"Give me some claret, aunt." He added almost too eager to finish the sentence.
"Pour it out, woman," Jill shouted and called the end of scene.
I could see it in Jill's expression that she hadn't got what she wanted, so on it went again as she ran the scene with each of the remaining boys. One of them didn't do a great job but looked cheeky enough for the role of a posh kid that I knew he would get the job. I would have cast him out of the ones I had seen so far. Did Jill regret sending out all the boys in two minutes, or was the look even more important than the acting itself? So many questions to how the industry worked. A typecast was a good thing. In fact, everyone supposedly had a typecast.
"Want to give it a try?" Jill asked me, interrupting my thought.
"Sure," I agreed, hopping off from the stool.
I was handed the sheet, but I only read the Latin word so that I could say it correctly.
"Start," Jill called out.
I turned my nose up like I was smelling some grade A shit—the way the lords act.
"Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur." I over-enunciated the words on purpose, definitely incorrect Latin but something a pretentious toff would say.
One of my lips turned ever so slightly, almost a tiny smirk to show the pride. "That's Latin," I added, sharp and more final than how the other kids delivered the line.
"There's a good private school, better than the pauper's place that woman sent you." Jill chuckled.
"I'll say." I nodded, with all of my disdain and disgust for the school shown in only a tiny moment.
"Give me some claret, aunt," I commanded the empty air next to Jill. In my mind I was channeling Draco. Jill's character was my role's Malfoy Senior, and everyone else was beneath me in that scene.
Jill didn't even say her line and just looked me over. "You really don't want the job?"
"Sorry, ma'am, I can't. I get one week off every month, but I don't think your production would wait for me to film."
"Right, that's a shame. I'll cast you in something in the future, you're a natural." Jill complimented me, writing something in her notebook.
I just nodded. Gilles had done a good job in making me dial down some emotions to get them more natural. Still I knew that I was far from being a good actor. I hadn't even been in anything yet, I needed the experience. So while I felt some pride, there was no need to really linger on it. Time would tell; I just needed to keep training.
In the end Jill cast a boy called Zohren Weiss, dark-haired youth that looked the part. Shame that the cheeky boy didn't get the role, but Jill was the experienced casting director in the room. Our parents were called in to finalize our papers. Since I was a newly represented actor, Mum handed Adrian's details for the production to contact. Compensation was never discussed, as apparently casting directors never dealt with finances. I doubted the money would be anywhere near Doctor Dolittle. Being a glorified extra wasn't a high-paying gig, but it would be an experience to be on a film set.