You’re up for a guest-starring role on a hit TV show. You learn your lines, make your choices, arrive early to the casting office, knock the audition out of the park, then tune in six weeks later and find out an A-list celebrity was given the role. And all you can think is, “I shaved my balls for this?”It’s called “stunt casting,” and it can make regular actors frustrated to the third decimal. But I’d argue it’s really not as egregious a problem as many of us seem to bitch about.
I had the benefit of learning this early on, in my first meeting with my first commercial agent. He wanted me know the cold hard truth: there weren’t going to be many roles available for me because stars were going to take all the parts. Yes, apparently Matt Damon and Brad Pitt would be gunning for that home refinancing commercial I booked soon afterward, in which I acted opposite a guy dressed as a big, fuzzy house. Thanks, agent. Good pep talk.
Police procedural shows like “Criminal Minds” have up to 20 guest and co-star roles each week, and multiplied by 22 episodes each year, that’s over 400 roles. Let’s say one or two of them go to name actors – that’s 398 for the rest of us. (You need a lot of cops and eyewitnesses to help comb crime scenes for semen stains.)
And that’s the math for just one show – there are dozens of dramas on dozens of channels on network, basic cable and pay channels. Even MTV is back to doing scripted programming. This creates stats that would have been science fiction two decades ago, when they were only four networks on the air.
I write about getting your butt to LA because I firmly believe in anyone who pursues a dream, and you’ve got the talent and Hollywood has the roles. In other words, you’ve got it up there, now snap it off.
