Backstage has taken actors and couch potatoes to the frontlines of the 2017 Emmy Awards race—on the airwaves! “In the Envelope: An Awards Podcast” features interviews with award-winning TV talent, including the nine contenders below who dispensed actorly wisdom to those wondering how to nail an audition and eventually win an Emmy statue themselves. Tune in to the HBO-sponsored podcast for free on SoundCloud, Google Play, iTunes, or YouTube for Backstage’s look at the buzziest contenders for the small screen’s biggest award.
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Thandie Newton (“Westworld,” HBO)
“Write, get your friends together, get your iPhones and start filming. If you can save up a bit of money to get an editing app, use it. It’s a whole new frontier and people have access now to the tools that can make movies, if that’s what you like. If you want to perform and you want an audience, busk. Get out there in front of people.... If you’re hungry, go eat.”
Jay Duplass (“Transparent,” Amazon)
“Don’t give a shit! Don’t care at all about what they want. Which is the opposite of what everyone else is doing.... Look, there have been people who come into our audition rooms and torn up an audition. And they have not gotten the role because they don’t fit in the box. And I can promise you that we have worked with that person later down the line.”
Aubrey Plaza (“Legion,” FX)
“People never know what they want until they see it. So you just have to make a big choice and completely commit to it.... Often, people try to do what they think the person would want and you just have to forget that completely and decide, This is what I’m going to do and I don’t care if they like it or not. Usually, that [attitude] will get you the part.”
David Harbour (“Stranger Things,” Netflix)
“If I rounded up all the people that I know who are very successful actors, we all have kind of one thing in common and that’s the idea that we did crazy shit. Shit that people are like, ‘No, you didn’t!’ ‘Yeah, I did.’ I went to that meeting and I just walked in and started a monologue.... It has to be your own version of that. But I feel like at the end of the day, as much as people hate it, they still admire that kind of tenacity and that kind of need and that hunger; that will take you a long way. That will take you a lot further than being respectful and sitting in your apartment waiting.”
Andrew Rannells (“Girls,” HBO)
“It’s a long game, my friends. And I think the downfall, or certainly the mistake I made early on, was not keeping my eyes on my own paper and constantly trying to compete with others. It’s a losing game. You really just have to compete with yourself and don’t get jealous over what somebody else has or somebody else is doing. It’s OK to be inspired by it, to be encouraged or have that motivate you to your next level. But I spent a lot of time being pissed about what other people had and it just didn’t serve me. I just stopped and went, ‘I can only do what I do and I’m not going to try to do what anybody else is doing. I’m just going to stick to my thing.’ And it’s no coincidence that that’s when I met Trey Parker. Because I walked into that [‘Book of Mormon’] audition and just thought, Well, I can only do what I do.”
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Elisabeth Moss (“The Handmaid’s Tale,” Hulu)
“I would say the No. 1 piece of advice that I ever received was from Jane Campion for ‘Top of the Lake’ before my audition. She said to me, ‘Don’t worry about hitting the bullseye. Just get the dart on the board.’ For me that was the greatest gift she could have given me because it released any anxiety that I felt—I was still really nervous—but it just made me feel like I wasn’t trying to win a Tony in that audition! I was just trying to give an approximation, a dart on the board of what the character might be. I think without any rehearsal, without any talking with the director, anything like that, that’s the best you can do. There’s something about that advice that releases something in you and lets you relax a little bit, lets you not try to achieve some sort of idea of what you think they’re looking for—which they may not even be looking for.”
Freida Pinto (“Guerilla,” Showtime)
“The one thing for actors that could possibly help them with auditions is to not be afraid to go as far as they want to go, and to be as wild as they want to be.... Let yourself really go. Use your imagination.”
Bryan Cranston (“Sneaky Pete,” Amazon)
“I was basing the audition and my approach to it on a false premise: I thought I was going to a job interview. Which is sensible because you have someone who’s casting for a television show or a play or a movie, and they’re hiring actors. And you’re an actor so you go in and you’re vying for one of those roles.... When I’m casting, when I’m directing or producing, you can feel when actors are reaching, needing, hungry, ‘Please give this to me.’ And with every actor who does that, the person on the other side is less inclined to give them what they want. It shows desperation and we don’t want to do that. No actor is going to get a job out of desperation. It also can throw off your game. So what I realized is I was giving up my power, giving up control, because I needed affirmation, I needed approval, I needed a job, I needed or wanted something from them. So I had this epiphany and just changed it in my head: I’m not going into that room to get a job, I’m going into that job to do a job.
“That simple change allowed me to retain my power and go, ‘Oh I’m just focusing on this character. My job is to develop a compelling character that honors the text, maybe with a couple surprises they didn’t see.’ You’re helping them with a problem they have and you’re giving them a possible option. ‘Here, I’m giving you something you might be able to use. I’ve thought about this a lot, I’ve worked on it, here’s my talent, here’s my energy, here’s my input. And I’m leaving it for you and now I’m going. Thank you for the opportunity.’ And leave. The energy is completely different! You are there to give them something, not to get something from them.”
Claire Danes (“Homeland,” Showtime)
“You have to be really present and really open and really vulnerable and really take a risk. That’s the only way you can surprise yourself as a performer and surprise an audience.... We don’t have a studio as actors. Turn [auditions] into your studio. It’s just a place where you’re working your thing out. And you have an audience which is helpful and there are some stakes which is also helpful. But that gives you an objective that’s different from just booking the job, and that reads as confidence, which is also going to help you.”
Keep an eye on Backstage’s awards coverage for more behind-the-scenes looks at the 2017 Emmy Awards race!
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