Maybe We'll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star (6 page)

“Are you sure this is the right part I’m supposed to read for?” I asked my agent. “It doesn’t seem to make sense.”

“It’s in their best interest to use you,” he said, looking at me for just a brief second before turning his head toward the beautiful garden right outside his window. “Just have fun with it. Have fun with your audition.”

Fun? I had no idea how to make the arduous process fun. To me, auditions are as uncomfortable as having to apply for college several times a month for years on end. It’s like being on a date, where they’re just sort of laughing at the things you say and there’s a long line of others right behind you waiting to charm them. As far as the odds for success, it’s like being a traveling salesman who only sells one tchotchke every few months if he’s lucky.

To make matters worse, finding my way around L.A. was not easy, especially after I first arrived. I was used to New York, where the streets are numbered and straight. I had found that the stress of being late or lost would totally defuse any preparation I had put into the audition. Many times I would drive to the casting office the night before as a rehearsal to assure myself I knew the correct path.

But often, getting to the actual studio wasn’t the end of the headache. I’d be on a big studio lot such as Paramount or Twentieth Century Fox and the parking structure seemed to be a mile away from where the audition was. The security guard would give me a map and use his yellow highlighter to outline the path to my destination. Except I’m map illiterate; they’re so complicated. And a studio lot has all sorts of little streets that aren’t really streets: “Make a left on Clark Gable Way and turn right by the monument to Mickey Rooney, and then you go through two double doors.” There’s always those double doors. And they all look alike. Inevitably, I’d get confused and find myself on actual sets only to have some assistant director wearing headphones curse me out. Once in a while, I’d get lucky and bump into another actor trying to find the same place and we would go on the maddening journey together. Once, another actor told me he was late and ran ahead when I asked him for directions. But he had that beady look in his eyes. I didn’t trust him. I don’t think he was late; he just didn’t want to help me. His odds of getting the job would improve if one less actor found the place.

Eventually, somehow I’d find the audition. It always turns out that whenever I kill myself to get to an audition, like I’m rushing to defuse a bomb, they’re a half an hour behind schedule anyway.

Afterwards I’d see other frantic actors walking around with their highlighted maps looking for their appointment. It looked like the lot was littered with actors using their little treasure maps to find their way to a pot of gold. Most of the gold on these treasure hunts didn’t come in a pot anyway. A week on a show after taxes and commission was about $3,600. When that happens a few times a year, if you’re lucky, it ends up amounting to about a thimble of gold. Not terrible, but not the biggest jackpot. A pilot, now that’s a big jackpot. That could be about twenty grand, even if it doesn’t go to series. Usually, they pay all that money to keep you off the market for other pilots.

I used to try to prepare not only my sides, but also my casual banter before and after my reading. This never worked. My acting teacher once told us when Danny DeVito auditioned for the show
Taxi
, he came in and threw down the script and said, “Who wrote this crap?” He was not just auditioning for the part of the crude Louie De Palma, he
was
him! So in ’88, when I auditioned for the part of a nervous office boy on Richard Lewis’ show
Anything but Love
, I thought I had something great to play with. The casting woman had a small dog right there in her office. I came in trembling like I was too afraid to enter with her pet there. “Is it okay, will he attack me? Will he lunge at me?” I asked as I carefully slunk into her office, walking as if I were on the ledge of a skyscraper. I could see the look on the casting woman’s face. She was perplexed, but I felt I had to stick with my failing gimmick. I was too embarrassed to bail out in the middle and say, “I’m not really scared of the dog. I thought this would show how in character I am. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe the character isn’t afraid of everything. Yup, I overdid it.” After that failure, I never again did anything before a reading that would make people wonder about my mental health.

It’s also easy to get thrown off because not only do you see all the competition in the waiting area, sometimes, if the walls are thin, you even have to hear them. This happened the time I was supposed to read for a little part where all I had to do was ask someone if I could get a ride with them. They tell me they aren’t going my way, and then I plead, “Come on. I love convertibles!” I was feeling fairly comfortable because I told myself that there wasn’t much I could do with those lines anyway. I’d just give it my best shot. They called in the guy before me and I was faintly able to hear him saying the words I was about to say next. But what I did hear clearly was laughter erupting from the room that sounded like the loudest laugh track I had ever heard on a sitcom, followed by a fervent round of applause. When it was my turn, I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think of was “How the hell could that guy have gotten those uproarious laughs with this same stuff?”

At least these people were polite. They mostly always are. It’s the bad, brutal auditions that stick with you. Once, a casting agent was leading me into a room to read for some producers of a new show. She gave very specific instructions about who would and would not shake my hand.

“Now don’t be offended that Karen, the producer, and Mark, the assistant producer, will not shake your hand, but Willie, the director, will, and so will Randy, the other producer.”

Now I’m freaking out trying to retain that information. I’m already in the room and I forget who I can shake with and who I can’t. “Okay,” I tell myself, “just make it easier and don’t shake anyone’s hand.” But then, I wonder if the people with whom I could shake would be offended if I don’t extend my hand to them. What other interview or meeting has these rules? Where else are you informed that certain people you’ll be meeting do not wish to humanize you and just want to view you as some talking matter momentarily passing through?

Sometimes an audition is just for the casting person, otherwise known as a pre-read. If the casting agent thinks you’re worthy of the next step, then you read for the producers. I have been on many auditions where the pre-read is the same day as the producers’ session. An actor will read and on their way out the casting agent asks the assistant to give him information about where the producers’ session is. I know I’m dead right away when I have auditioned and don’t get any producer session information.

When the pot of gold is the possibility of a pilot for a new series, the third and final step is auditioning for the network brass, otherwise known as “going to network.” But that’s not just one audition. I went to network for a Chris Elliott pilot after which they told me to wait outside for a while. They then had each of us auditioning for the same part come back in and read with various wives they were considering. Then we had to wait outside again and one at a time come back in and stand next to various actors, who’d play our kids, to see if we looked like we were related. All of this square-dancing didn’t matter because I wasn’t cast and the pilot didn’t get picked up anyway.

I didn’t even make it as far as the producers’ session when I auditioned for the nerd on the NBC show
Dear John
my first year in LA. Claudette, my acting coach, really laid into me for what a juicy opportunity I’d missed.

“You only went as far as casting?! Too bad I wasn’t coaching you then. That show became a hit. I could have at least gotten you to network, maybe even gotten you on the show!”

True to form, she then reassured me I can forget about
Dear John
and that the best was all ahead. She gave me knowledge and assurance and tips and everything but the confidence that I could ever tackle any kind of audition on my own. She wanted me to feel dependent. After an audition, she’d call me, and I’d have to give her beat for beat feedback about how I did each and every line. She’d reinforce how it seemed I did great and how she was the reason behind it.

And I bought it. I was convinced that if I ever so much as tried to audition without her coaching, it would be my last one. She hammered into me that without her help, if I had a bad audition, word would get around that I was a waste of a casting director’s time. I’d be blackballed and there are thousands of other actors just dying to get that shot at
Charles in Charge
.

I accepted all of this because I was like so many desperate, scared people who came to Los Angeles hoping for their shot. And she knew how to keep me more scared and more dependent. She’d always drop the names of big stars, like cast members of
Twin Peaks
who had gotten their break because of her work. She’d repeatedly point out that I wasn’t getting any younger and how time was of the essence. She’d give me tips on what to wear. She’d hint of the massive contacts with big producers she had and when I was ready, she’d set some up.

I knew something was off about our relationship, that ours was not a healthy dynamic, but I still was not confident enough to let her go, especially when something very big happened: I finally got my first acting part.

7

WORST FIRST

I
didn’t start out expecting to be a perennial guest star. In fact, my first time ever on the set of a TV show, I was going to be a series regular. The way it came about, I thought this TV business was going to be pretty easy. Instead, I nearly didn’t survive my first week.

I walked into my first network audition in April 1989. Luckily I had no idea I was going to be in front of the most famous TV executive in America, so I didn’t have time to get anxious about it. All I knew was I had passed the preliminary cut for a Mel Brooks pilot about a wacky hotel called
The Nutt House
. Now I had to be approved by network honchos. When I got to NBC studios in Burbank and looked around the room at the fifteen people deciding my fate, I recognized one right away—Brandon Tartikoff, who was so young and hip he’d appeared as himself on
Saturday Night Live
and
Night Court
and been profiled in
Rolling Stone
.

Mel Brooks was not there. I wish I could remember the lines; it was just me timidly answering a few questions from my stern supervisor. Mostly they were one-word responses. Maybe I can say what clicked is what usually makes something work in an audition. Something just connects when you walk through the door before you even read the lines. Something out of your or any coach’s control.

I didn’t get the part of the dopey bellhop at The Nutt House Hotel, but my agent said I came close and made an impression. Shortly thereafter, the casting woman from NBC showed Tartikoff my video demo reel (the one Billy Crystal didn’t want to see). It had clips of me doing my act on some cable shows and bits I did when I was on David Brenner’s show. Tartikoff must’ve liked me because he suggested me to the producers of a new NBC show,
Singer & Sons
, about a New York deli, that had received an order for four episodes. My audition was set up for the creator of the show who had previous success at the helm of the hits
Charles in Charge
and
My Two Dads
. I had just a few lines, portraying Sheldon Singer, who worked in the deli owned by his uncle.

There wasn’t much to the role. I had to be nervously explaining to my uncle that I had prepared a sandwich the correct way. I thought I’d lost the part because I wasn’t called back to audition again. Then a few weeks later when I got the call that I had booked the show, it was an utter shock. Apparently NBC was so behind me that they had pushed me through without another audition. I would be making $7,000 an episode! That was the most I had ever earned for one week of work, but my joy lasted only until I called Claudette, trying to share my good news.

“I knew all my hard work would pay off,” Claudette said. “See what coaching did for you? Do you see?”

I then heard her flipping through the pages of what had to be her appointment book.

“Okay, I’m pretty booked up, but I think I can squeeze you in. We should do at least three sessions this week.”

I was baffled. “I got the job. What do I have to come in this week for?”

And then I heard what sounded like the loudest, most disappointed sigh.

“I know many actors who got what they thought was their break only to be replaced after one day of rehearsal because they were a beat or two off,” she said ominously. “Lots of money is spent on these shows, and if you give them any reason to think they made a mistake, out you will go! You stop with the coaching now, you’re going to lose everything we’ve worked on, and you’ll go right back to what you were before we started. And you were not doing so good before you met me, were you?”

I was too inexperienced not to fall for her head trip, but I can’t give her full credit for all my fear. The executive producer of the show was doing an equally stellar job of making me feel inadequate.

Most sitcoms are a five-day workweek, but this one had a few extra days because it was a pilot and needed more time to get into shape. The first day starts with a table read (a reading of the first draft of the script), where the cast sits around a long table with the director and producers at the end. There are name placards indicating which actors are supposed to sit where, and chairs surrounding the table for network and production company executives, and anyone else involved with the show.

On most shows, before the reading begins, the director or showrunner makes a rousing speech. I would later learn that if it’s a show already in production, usually they can talk about how great their last episode was or their ratings or awards or reviews. But this was a brand new show, so the showrunner’s speech was especially impassioned. He stated that it was the start of something very special that would impact so many people’s lives. He talked about how thrilled he was that such a strong, unique ensemble cast of characters had been put together. Then each cast member was introduced to a hearty round of applause.

Harold Gould, a veteran actor who I knew from the sitcom
Rhoda
and the Woody Allen film
Love and Death
, starred as Mr. Singer, the owner of the deli, who had no sons to take it over.Esther Rolle, an African American actress who had previously played a maid on
Maude
, a character she then spun-off into her own series,
Good Times
, was once again playing a maid. This time, she was Harold Gould’s longtime, loyal maid. Her two sons would be the ones to inherit the deli. The joke was to be these black guys running a Jewish deli—a concept that was either radical and forward-thinking about race and prejudice or ridiculously contrived, depending on your viewpoint and the writing. Mitchell was the responsible single dad and Reggie was the free-spirited radical. There was also a sassy, pretty black waitress who spoke Yiddish. I was Harold Gould’s nephew, who was way too moronic to inherit the deli.