The word "exploitive" was used by more than one young actor to describe the TNT network's Dramatic Auditions (TNT's phrase, but clearly a cattle call, though not a typical one). Part of the problem was the distance the actors had journeyed for their much-hoped-for shot at glory. The time lost from their day jobs and the amount of money spent to get to New York City did not help. The hopeful actors had traveled from up and down the East Coast—a large number from the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore areas, Back Stage was told—and they stood, sat, and/or huddled literally all night near the Tribeca Grand Hotel in Lower Manhattan, where the audition was scheduled for the following morning at 9 am on Thurs., Oct. 21. And it was cold. By the time Back Stage arrived at 10:30 in the morning to see what it was all about, the line snaked around the entire block. According to TNT insiders, there were 1,500 on hand, and 660 got to audition.
"I arrived at 3 am and was No. 51 on the line at that point," recalls Juanda Jimenez, a young actress who had traveled from New Haven, Conn. "Those of us who arrived in the middle of the night were herded across the street from the hotel and we stayed there until the morning. Truthfully, I was not prepared to spend the night outside. Other actors had blankets and chairs. I did not, and by the time I got into the hotel seven hours later, my feet had turned blue and I could barely walk. My feet are just beginning to get their color back. And I still have some numbness in my left hand." Back Stage spoke with Jimenez one day after the audition.
Jimenez's difficulty was compounded by the fact that although she was No. 51 when she arrived, she was not the 51st actor into the audition, but closer to 150th. "Somehow during the course of the night, the person who was in charge of holding the list of names and numbers lost that list," she explains. "We were informed about the missing list in the morning and told to just line up around the hotel. There were now hundreds of actors waiting to get in and it was a stampede across the street and through traffic."
That said, Jimenez was one of the lucky ones. She got to perform her prepared monologue, having passed a cold one-line reading. The majority of actors were weeded out after reading their one line, which served as a prescreening tactic. All the actors arrived ready to perform a one-minute monologue on camera, in front of several judges, from one of the following TNT movies: "Stepmom," "As Good as It Gets," and "Jerry Maguire."
TNT's Dramatic Auditions, a marketing and promotion campaign, was part of a nationwide competition for aspiring actors who are neither union-affiliated nor represented by an agent. Over the past few weeks, TNT auditions have been held in Los Angeles (with 1,000 actors on hand), Las Vegas (400 actors), and New York. Actors who could not attend any of those auditions could send in a tape featuring themselves performing one of the TNT movie monologues. Each of the actors was judged on a scale from one to five in the following categories: interpretation of material, stage presence, confidence, and marketability.
Five actors with high scores will be selected as semifinalists and awarded $1,000. Their taped auditions will then be evaluated by a panel of celebrity judges headed by Dennis Franz (of "NYPD Blue"), which will winnow the group down to three finalists, each of whom will be flown to L.A. for a callback audition.
The winner, to be announced sometime in November, will be set up in a Los Angeles apartment rent-free for one year and receive free transportation, a publicist, and a $50,000 check to be used for acting classes and other career-launching expenses. In return, the winner is expected to keep a video diary of his or her life as an up-and-coming new actor during the course of that year; the tape will be aired on TNT's website. In addition, snippets of the winning audition, and those of the two other finalists, will be telecast as promotional spots on TNT.
"To our knowledge, this is unlike anything any other network has done," says Jenna Thurmond, brand manager at TNT. "This is not reality TV; nobody is tricked or humiliated. This is a legitimate contest in which actors share our passion for drama." TNT's highly touted tag line is "We know drama."
Thurmond continues, "We came up with the competition as a way to speak directly to our audience, who can relate to the idea of a contest and connect the contest's drama with our brand. What's more dramatic than getting that big break and rewarding a struggling actor?" she asks rhetorically.
So who comes to an audition like this? And why, when the odds of success are virtually nonexistent?
"Look, you just never know," says Jimenez, who has done some extra work but never attended a cattle call before. "Even if you don't win, it's a chance to be seen and it's always possible that someone will remember you for something else." She adds, "I would definitely do it again, but next time I'll come prepared with blankets."
Actress Kelly Roth, who traveled from Manchester, Md., spent $140 on train fare, and lost two days of work as a bartender, says, "I came to the TNT audition in New York in order to take my career to the next level. I've appeared in five independent films and a nonunion tour of 'Hairspray.' I thought this might be a way to move forward, even though the chances are slim. As it turned out, I didn't get to do my monologue. I was cut after the cold one-line reading. It's frustrating because I don't think a one-line reading can show what I do. If I had known, I would not have come."
Actor Mike Rand from Danbury, Conn., was also cut after the one-line reading, and like Roth, he views the reading as nonrepresentative of his work. He is especially frustrated because he had two monologues prepared, just in case the judges wanted more. Still, he is not sorry he made the effort:
"I see everything as a learning experience and I take nothing personally. I do whatever I can to appear in front of a camera. In fact, I've been at virtually every talk show in New York City that has a studio audience and I'm always the one to ask questions. It's a way for me to get on camera. If they ever have a talk show channel, audiences will be seeing a lot of me." He adds that he goes to cattle calls all the time. The major difference at the TNT audition was the size of the turnout, he says. "I take classes at TVI and my goal is to be a sitcom star."
Boston-based actor Ainsley Hunter has extra work and several commercials under his belt, and he's about to join the Screen Actors Guild. But he had never been to a cattle call before TNT's and he doesn't plan to go again. He says he felt "exploited and tricked."
"I don't know what you can judge on a one-line reading. After the one-line reading, I didn't wait to find out if my number was called or not. I just left. We were never told about the one-line reading until we got there. I'm not even sure they didn't decide to do the one-line readings at the last minute when they saw how many people showed up and they realized they couldn't see everybody."
Thurmond responds that the prescreening one-line reading had been planned from the outset. "We made the choice not to tell the actors and there's nothing unusual about that at an audition," she emphasizes. "Cold readings are able to show us if an actor can improvise and his ability to think and act creatively on the fly." Thurmond admits, however, that the large turnout made the prescreening that much more necessary, and, indeed, as the day wore on, more and more actors were cut because of time.
This is how it worked: As actors streamed into the hotel lobby, hyped-up TNT staffers, who worked hard at keeping the energy level high, divided the actors into groups of 25, gave them numbers, and shuttled them off to the first round of auditions while encouraging those actors milling about or seated in the lobby to check out the monitors, which were telecasting the ongoing monologue auditions (not the cold one-line readings). After each broadcast audition—some good, some not so good—the actors in the hotel lobby applauded enthusiastically.
When actors finished their one-line reading, they returned to the lobby to hear whether their number was called, indicating that they had passed the first hurdle and could now move on to performing their monologues at the real audition. Some waited 20 minutes; others waited much longer. Those who were called filed down a flight of stairs to the studios.
Outside the studios, some actors chatted, others mouthed the words of their monologues, while still others performed warm-up exercises, rolling their heads, shaking their arms and legs, shimmying up and down.
Inside the studio, actors were greeted by the three judges, then turned to the cameraman, who cheerfully suggested they launch right into their monologue after introducing themselves. At the end of each performance that Back Stage saw, the actor thanked the cameraman, who responded with an enthusiastic "Thank you."
Lisa Gold, one of the three New York judges who sat in on the monologue auditions, acknowledges that a number of good actors probably were unfairly dropped because they couldn't nail the one-liner. Nevertheless, she is also convinced that the majority of actors who shouldn't be in the profession at all were also cut: "Out of the more than 600 auditions that I saw, only a few were really impossible and should have been cut and for whatever reason weren't."
Gold, a former actress and the current owner of Actors Connection in New York, says that the level was "pretty good. In fact, the best performance I saw was not from an actor, but from a 'regular person' who just figured she'd give it a shot," Gold notes. "Of course, I can't be sure that she had no training or experience. But on the basis of her demeanor, I'm pretty sure she didn't. She made no attempt at being cool. It was obvious that she was just thrilled to be there doing it."
Gold adds that she believes that two-thirds of the actors she saw had some kind of acting background, "but there are variations on what that means," she points out. "Some are constantly at it, and then there are those who may have headshots and may go to an audition once every six months."
Thurmond says that "there are many people out there who continue to believe that acting isn't real work and that you don't need training or experience, just the one big break. They see that happen with reality-TV stars and think it can happen to them, too. That's why you have so many people showing up."
Most of the actors—and it was a racially diverse lot—were young: in their 20s and early 30s and in pretty good shape. And it's just as well. According to Gold, no matter how talented, "if an actor was more than 40 or overweight, he would probably receive a low score in the marketability category."