Being a Boring Actor Is a Criminal Offense

The following Career Dispatches essay was written by Brooklyn-based actor Madeline Wise, who can currently be seen starring with Pete Holmes on HBO’s “Crashing.”

There was a moment in college when I noticed that I used three different voices: one for talking to friends, one for talking to my professors, and one for talking to my parents. I’d raise my hand in class to answer the instructor’s question and heard some voice come out that felt entirely unlike the one I’d just used while shooting the shit in the hallway with my classmates. I would talk on the phone with my dad in front of my roommate and she’d tease me for sounding like a weirdo 12-year-old.

I was leaving a meeting with my advisor and voice teacher, Liz Smith (who is a goddess), when I realized, suddenly, that I was walking on eggshells around her and withholding massive parts of my personality that I’d decided must be unsavory to her. She’s a dignified British woman, fiercely intelligent, and I didn’t want her to know that I curse like a sailor and love potty humor. I wanted her to like me. But it struck me in that moment that it was a waste of both our time and effort for her to attempt to educate and advise and correct me if she was working with an incomplete version of me. It would be like giving a mechanic a janky train car, telling them to get it in working order, and then—after they’d spent four years making it run beautifully—saying, “Oh, but there’s also 11 other janky train cars that are attached to this train car and always will be. I didn’t mention that.”

READ: How to Get a Show on HBO

So from then on, I started a campaign of Being Myself All The Time, which felt awkward and horrible at first—I felt like everybody I interacted with must surely be wondering why I was suddenly behaving a bit differently than I ever had before. But then it became normal. And it was more comfortable! I wasn’t code-switching anymore. There’s that old chestnut about “if you never lie, you never have to remember the truth,” and it felt like that.

This is a good way to live, and it is a good way to be a better actor. Here’s the thing: There are so many actors in the world because no one person can play every part, and no two people will do the exact same thing with a role. We all bring our own singular freaky energy to the table. I like to use a lot of myself in whatever character I’m playing—shades of “if you never lie, you never have to remember the truth” coming back again. If you’re not fully yourself, you’re making acting choices that somebody else would, could, or did already make, and that’s boring. And being boring is a criminal offense. (This is a true legal fact. Look it up.)

I usually prep auditions with a trusted friend; he knows what I’m good at and where I tend to go astray, and he gives me great, thoughtful direction. When I got the audition for “Crashing,” though, I didn’t want to prepare with anybody. I read the sides and knew that character. I saw myself in her, and so I knew that I needed to play the part as close to myself as possible. That was the version of the character I was most interested in, and I didn’t want anybody else’s ideas to interfere. I booked that job because I came in and was me in the room. I didn’t fit the character description, but I came in and showed them a fully formed, singular human. I didn’t know if that human was who they were looking for, but it was somebody I was excited about. And I don’t think I could have done that if I hadn’t spent a lot of time muscling my way into my own personality first.