SPEAKER_00 0:57

What are some of the mistakes that actors make in auditions that end up costing them the part?

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Well, I mean, I think the first one is just not respecting the craft, not being prepared, uh, kind of dashing it off. You know, I'm the prettiest girl in my class in high school, and so that's really all I need to be, or I'm the funniest guy in my class in high school, and that's all I need to be. I don't need to work, I don't need to care. Uh, and so that's a giant turnoff for me. And and along those same lines, you know, good manners, being respectful, being on time, uh, all of those things, uh, you know, dressing appropriately, uh, doing the performance that you've planned is never a good idea. Making the connections that you've planned is a good idea. Uh, and then letting the performance take care of itself. Uh, acting is a little bit like jumping out of an airplane with a parachute. You know, you you at a certain point you just got to pull the string and hope the damn thing opens.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Love that. And what are some of the things that actors do in auditions that either get them the job or get them high on your list?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Well, the opposite of all of those things. Being on time, being prepared, caring, uh taking it seriously, but having a playful attitude towards their work, having a let's go do it kind of, you know, this is going to be fun uh attitude towards their work, and and just bringing a spirit of life and being willing to uh stand naked before us, both metaphorically and and uh and actually eventually we get to shameless. Uh that was a quite a step.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

As actors, you um when you are auditioning, there's something you you write in the book, and you say when you are auditioning actors and you really like them, you put down simple and real.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yes. Um, I'm you know, uh for me, the greatest actors make it look so easy, and we all know that acting is not easy, it's lots of things, but it's not easy. Um the the greatest actors have the capacity to make us believe that we're seeing a real person. Uh, you know, the the Strasbourg Institute in New York when I was a kid had a sign over the stage which said, No acting, please. And uh so that was influential for me. I I don't like the in in music, the singers that I gravitate to seem to just let the song spill. And then eventually dynamics come into play. And you know, when you get mad, you gotta you might have to scream a little bit, and when you know, you might have to uh let your emotions be revealed and heightened uh when something is very intense. All of that is skill craft, but it's also connection. If you make a genuine connection to something that helps you marry with the character's circumstances, when the character is desperate, you'll cry. When the character is furious, you might scream. You know, uh I believe that that if you answer the who, what, when, where, and why, that the how will almost always take care of itself. If you do your preparation and your research and you'd make your connections and you plumb your imagination and your intuition and your experiences, you'll get where you need to be to be the character.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

I want to talk about actors who behave shamefully because a lot of times actors think that by being idiots they're gonna get the the job or that they're gonna be heard. And you actually have a story where you you you call out uh someone who was uh we we don't have to mention his name if you want to know by the book, but he was an absolute absolute idiot. And um, and you you you go on about actors who behave badly.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Well, you know, I don't I think it's um it's like these young athletes that we are uh are experiencing now, right? They're they're six feet tall and they're 12 years old and they're great at basketball, and they get treated so specially by everybody that who's surprised when they're 23 and millionaires and they misbehave. Why should we be surprised? We kind of create monsters, uh, and we do that with actors as as well. And I think that when an actor um behaves terribly, it's insecurity, uh, it's an unwillingness to embrace what there should be doing. Uh, the particular actor that you're talking about was once a star, and um he got a job on Shameless, and it's the only time that the wonderful, talented, brilliant, lovely WH Bill Macy ever said a nasty thing about our casting. Um, because this guy during the pandemic didn't want to comply with the protocols, was disrespectful to crew members, and wasn't prepared. Um uh it was uh such a waste of his talent, and it's not surprising that this that he has had a number of episodes of misbehavior in his life.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

What do you think of actors? Okay, because you you just brought something up that uh uh gave me a question. What do you think of these actors who on their first or second job they get a really big job and they continue to work and they haven't been really trained, they're they're not really prepared, and they continue to take bad habits into their job so that no one speaks to them to like say, hey, maybe you should take an acting class right now, maybe you should get some coaching. You know, this will be beneficial for your career later on down the line, and then they find themselves out of work, not able to get any more work because they didn't take the job seriously, they weren't prepared, they got the job because they were good looking, or they, you know, somebody thought they were right for it, but they were not able to build on that.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Yeah. Well, it just it just uh reinforces the notion that we've been talking about that preparation and respect and collaboration and community uh are all gigantically important. That, you know, uh uh there are a couple of pictures of me in the book, and uh I was uh uh you know, I I'm not a bad-looking older man, but I was much better looking at 23 than I am now. Uh, and I think that's probably true for almost everybody, uh, or at least by uh our uh societal standards, uh, we value youth and physical fitness and all of that. Um, you know, I mean, if you're gonna, I I've always professed that it's very important to get the long view. And and you know, Lydia, if you don't have the long view, you'll skip steps, you'll take shortcuts, and that's gonna come back and haunt you because there are no shortcuts, uh, there are no uh easy routes to success. This is a demanding profession in so many ways that if you aren't willing to do the work and do the investigation and do the preparation, eventually it'll catch up to you and kick you in the ass.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Let's talk about self-tapes. How can actors who are used to going into the room having that connection? Because I hear this all the time about actors feeling slighted. Either you have two camps. You have the actors who are feeling slighted because they can't go in and meet the casting director directly, and you have the the actors who are happy because they can shoot that that audition a hundred times until they feel like it is right. What are the good things of self-tape in your estimation and the negatives of self-tape in your estimation?

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Well, you know, the good things about all of technology and self-taping is really a function of technology. You know, it's that you don't have to drive across town, you don't have to find a parking place, you don't have to spend hours in the car, and you know, you can make a quiet decision about what you're gonna wear and all that stuff, and you can do your preparation, and then you get there and you do your work. Um, for me, the it um, you know, we're in the business of telling the stories of human beings, and to do that with less human contact seems counterintuitive to me. And I know I'm old school, and I know I like to do it the way I like to do it, and I know I'm uh kind of temperamentally opposed to change. Uh, all of those things are true of me, but I I'm getting a sense of you here on Zoom, Lydia, but I would get much more of a sense of you if we were sitting in a room together. I don't know how tall you are, uh I haven't seen anything of you other than your hair and your glasses and your face and your shoulders. So I don't have a complete sense of your physicality. I have I'm learning about your energy and your uh vitality and all of that is coming through the Zoom, but it's uh uh it's not as easy as it would be if we were in the room together.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

And what are the the positives of the self-tape in your estimation?

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Well, you know, you you say that they can do it until they think they get it right. Personally, I don't think anybody gets better after the third or fourth time. Um, I I think if you do your preparation and you do your work, you ought to, you know, acting in television is about connecting deeply and quickly. And it's not, and if you have to do 25 takes, then you're a disaster because a scene that should have taken 30 minutes is now taking two hours, and you know, time is money is an old phrase that is absolutely true.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Yes. Well, I I'm gonna agree with you there because I I had this conversation with somebody the other day, and I said the bad thing about self-tape is that actors get used to being able to do take after take after take, and they don't know how to land it in the first take, especially when you're doing TV. People don't care about you, they just want you to get in and out. We got we got stuff, time is money, where we gotta go, you know.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Yeah, I mean you know if you're if you're doing a self-tape in New York City and the subway rolls by, then do another take. You know, if if if you're doing a take here and an airplane goes over your house, well then you'll do another take. But if you've done your preparation and your work, you have to be able to hit it. It's not uh, it's you don't have the uh the luxury, and I don't believe it does even get better. It gets stale. You're reaching for a result, and uh that's never a good idea.