Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Sunday, Aug. 29, 2004 - 3:26 a.m.

So, I went in for what I thought was rehearsal...and it turned out to be an audition.

Which I was not prepared for.

Which I was not given a heads up about.

Improvised.

Without words.

For a character I have not had a chance to get in touch with, with no time to prepare, because it wasn't the character I had been originally asked to play (for which I had done some homework), and with the words "So, should we go ahead and do the screen test?" echoing on repeat in my dumbfounded and panicked ohmigod-you're-fucking-kidding ears.

In front of producers.

Needless to say, I fucked it up horrendously.

In the annals of horrible, fucked up, cringingly awful, unbelievably bad auditions, this one will reign in perpetuity, for ever and ever, to the end of time.

I am embarrassed, I am humiliated, and I cried all the way home and for several hours after. Still do.

I want to punch the fucking producer/director so hard in his smarmy, pretentious little fucking nose that my fist explodes through the back of his head, dripping blood and brain cells for saying that he knew I was unprepared, he wanted me to be, because it was better "off the cuff" that way.

And then, while he's lying on the ground, with his brains and life slowly oozing away from him, I want to ask him if the girl he'd already decided to give the part to while he was making me jump thru all those fucking hoops had to jump thru them too, and how many fucking DAYS she got to prepare.

See, I knew something was wrong when right before I left the house, I got a call to ask if maybe I could get there a little early because the director wanted to talk to me. I told TB that I knew it was silly, but I had the feeling I was being fired. He assured me no, that wasn't going to happen. Then I get in the room, and we have like a 20 minute talk about the character that unbeknownst to me I am about to audition for, and then he says there's also this voiceover part, would I be interested in that? And the little voice in the back of my head said "you're being replaced," and I thought no, that can't be what's going to happen, but the little voice argued, "oh yes, it can," and before I had a chance to refute that again, the director looks at the writer, and I hear the words..."So, should we go ahead and do the screen test?" And before I can manage to turn the volume down on the completely shocked and wigging refrain in my head, there's someone in the room to do the other part, and they're giving me a credit card statement to use for a bit of business, and the actor exits and waits for action, and I'm staring down at this CapitalOne statement thinking "ohmigod what do I do now i need time to think i don't know what to do i don't know this character yet i'm not prepared for this i don't have the faintest idea what to do i'm not wearing any makeup my hair looks like shit i need time to think i really shouldn't be looking at this person's charge statement I know this guy personally and here I am violating his privacy seeing exactly how much money he charged at Starbucks and Tower last month when that's none of my fucking business I need to cover the numbers and try not to see any more I don't want to know where he spends his money," and then there's someone talking to me and the scene has started, and I'm just sitting, staring up at them looming over me, because my chair is too close to the fucking door and it's a tiny room with too many people in it already, and my brain starts shrieking at me, "ohmigod DO something you're supposed to be acting," and it was horrible and horrifying and about 100 other permutations of the word horror.

And that was as good as it got.

Peace out,
Katie

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