I don’t want to get paid to audition. But I am done paying to audition.
An earnest actor’s temper-tantrum.
The exact terms of the upcoming SAG•AFTRA strike have not yet been made public. But if one of the terms they demand is paid auditions, I have words.
I personally think asking for audition pay is excessive. If you won’t audition for free, there will always be someone who will.
However…
I am done paying to audition.
I am done paying Casting Networks $25.99 a month for the most janky-ass site I’ve used since 2003. I am done paying coaches $120 per hour and self-tape studios $30 per three pages and virtual scene partners $25 per fifteen minutes. I am done asking friends to read for free and I am done struggling to rearrange my schedule so I can return the favor when they have seventeen hours’ notice for their ten-page audition.
I am done investing in home studio gear. I never wanted to be a DP, sound engineer, gaffer, or editor; I wanted to be an actor.
I am done buying home backdrops. “You don’t need one,” casting directors say. “Just make sure you’re against a blank wall and evenly lit so we can see you and perhaps mic-ed so your iPhone isn’t picking up the louder voice of your reader—or ask them to stand six feet back.”
Um, you haven’t seen my home and its walls and all the furniture that needs to be moved away from them. You said the $189.99 ring light I bought was “too beauty shot” and I couldn’t return it fast enough on Amazon so I had to keep it and pay $120 more for a softbox light instead and can now only record between two and four o’clock because that’s when the natural light comes in best to balance out the softbox light—which takes up three feet of valuable apartment closet space, by the way. You haven’t heard my neighbor’s dog barking because I do take after take after take so it won’t add an awkward comedic sound effect to my otherwise tragic husband-is-dying scene. You haven’t heard the jackhammers outside my apartment, or the leafblowers, or seen the sweat I dab in between each take because I have to turn off my wall AC unit and shut the windows because of said dog, jackhammers, and leafblowers.
“Just a blank, well-lit wall,” they said, “with a mic so we can hear your beautiful performance.”
I am done.
I am done cooking dinner on a Friday and seeing that I have five scenes spread out over sixteen pages to submit by Monday. I am done scrambling to memorize these five scenes, tape them with a reader I have to book, and edit the footage for several hours without iMovie crashing unless I want to pay a monthly subscription for an editing app that exports files in a format it turns out you don’t like so I have to buy a new editing app or Final Cut Pro for $299.99 and learn it within hours so that I can turn in my audition in the nick of time to wonder if you’ll even watch all five scenes in the first place, or even just scene one, or the ten-second sliver of a full-body slate at the end (that I have to move my furniture for once again) that is my only chance to say hello. As me.
“Your lines do not need to be memorized,” the email says.
Bullshit.
A) That line’s there so production can apparently avoid the loophole possibility that they just might have to pay me if I decide to go diva and put up a stink.
B) What, you think I’m going to cold-read this chance to be a series regular? You think I don’t know that every other actor worth their salt will be off-book and so I’d better be, too? You think I’m going to risk letting REESE fucking WITHERSPOON see me glancing down at my sides while their pages rustle distractingly?
Furthermore, and perhaps most insultingly, you think I don’t care about my craft?
Let’s just get back in the casting room.
Maybe I’m just jaded at this point, but I never see actors being paid to audition. Third or fourth screen test? Maybe. A chemistry test? Perhaps. Push for audition pay and watch a ton of non-union actors get Taft-Hartleyed all of a sudden. The pool of offer-only’s will get bigger and the pool of new talent will get smaller, broadened only by TikTok-ers with 100,000-plus followers and the occasional Discovery of An Unknown. I remember when MTV wouldn’t audition anybody with fewer than 50,000 Instagram followers. I only had 28,000. That was in 2014.
No way. I am done.
I’d honestly be content to settle for fair streaming royalties and just not having to pay to fucking audition.
I realize this may mean I am done with acting.
I am often asked if I’ll act again. Truthfully, I’ve had an on-and-off-again relationship with acting for the past several years—and it’s been on and off with me, too. It’s as though we’re two avoidantly-attached individuals who keep dating each other as though it’ll be different next time, but no, he still picks apart my looks and says I’m too this and not enough that. I still think he’s a flake, a jerk-you-around-by-your-heart-strings, hope-dangling prick. We both still think my talent is great here but I’m too X and I’m right for Y but man did my audition suck. But oh boy is the lovemaking good when it’s good.
Regardless of whether or not I’m being paid, I’ll always be an actor. I once quit auditioning for three years but kept going to acting classes nearly the entire time. I love acting, dearly. I get to perform roles in class that I’d never even get to audition for in real life. Trying on other perspectives and embodying other walks of life is one of my greatest joys. But will I work professionally again? I don’t know. I’ve discovered other loves—writing, mainly—and I never got successful enough as an actor to get away with my big mouth, my bold pen, my tap-worn keyboard with the faded C that releases Hollywood-offending words like these into the world.
“A risky hire,” I’ve been told.
Sorry I’m a human like the broken characters you award the performances of every Oscars season.
As I’m being asked to vote on the SAG•AFTRA union strike, I want to make my solidarity with my fellow actors known: I will always side with the artists in nearly any issue up for debate. I will be voting Yes to strike.
And… And… I am boggled you think AI won’t be coming for your likeness. I am boggled you think you’ll ever be paid to audition, based on some micro-clause from the 1930s when the acting pool was a pond and studios paid actors weekly salaries. Please, prove me wrong. I would love to choke on the bittersweet caramel of humble pie. I would love to eat these words I clack out with tears clouding my eyes. Tears of grief, humor, and the sardonic shame of hope.
Babylon was my eulogy to the Hollywood of a bygone era. I’ve already laid it to rest.
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