Читать книгу 10,000 NOs - Matthew Del Negro - Страница 16

One of these intimidating stints was on The West Wing. While I was eventually cast as Bram Howard, the advance man of Jimmy Smits's Matt Santos character, toward the end of season 6, I had auditioned for a different role two years prior. For that audition, I had made it far enough to eventually read with the show's creator, Aaron Sorkin. Despite having had a nice run on The Sopranos a few years before this, I was a bit scared. The tip from the casting director before I walked into the room was that Sorkin liked it fast, so I would need to pick up my cues and keep the pace at a fast clip. While I wouldn't have considered myself a loyal fan of The West Wing at the time, I had seen enough episodes to know that virtually every character was hyper-articulate and prone to slinging polysyllabic political jargon while marching through the maze-like halls of the West Wing or hotel corridors at a brisk pace—these “walk and talks” quickly became a hallmark of the show and a feature used by many shows since. It was intimidating, to say the least.

On top of this, while I consider myself to be an intelligent human, I have never been particularly astute when it comes to politics. With an exorbitant amount of preparation, however, I was able to successfully make it through my reading with Sorkin. Knowing that there were only a few other actors in the running, coupled with the fact that they were looking to “cast an unknown” in this role, I actually walked out of that room believing I had a legitimate shot. I was wrong. Rather than offering the role to me or one of the other handful of “unknowns,” they gave it to Matthew Perry, who was fresh off of the smash hit Friends. Such is Hollywood. I was forced to chalk it up as another of my 10,000 “no”s when Perry eventually won an Emmy for his performance.

Two years later, in 2005, while temporarily in Los Angeles attempting to score a series regular role on a new show during pilot season (the time of year when pilots, a.k.a. first episodes of a new series, are being cast for the following season of TV), I went in again for what was advertised as a one-off guest star role on The West Wing. Again, there was a mountain of political jargon to climb, and my fear of flubbing it helped me to prepare for the audition enough that I was eventually chosen for the role. Ironically, I remember feeling worse coming out of that room than I did after the Sorkin audition two years before. (How an actor feels about their audition does not always correlate to whether or not they get the job.)

Getting the gig was a victory considering the pedigree of the show. But when I went to my first fitting, I picked up an inside scoop from a member of the wardrobe department, who eventually became a friend, that raised the stakes for me considerably. He told me that my storyline was part of a new direction on the show that involved the campaign trail for Jimmy Smits's character, Matt Santos, running for President. John Wells, who had since taken the reins of the show from Aaron Sorkin, was apparently using these guest spots as a way to audition actors for a potentially longer stint on the show. In essence, my new confidante was telling me, “Don't eff it up!”