The following Career Dispatch essay was written by Nick Creegan, a series regular on the CW’s “Batwoman” who also appears opposite Christopher Meloni on “Law & Order: Organized Crime.”
When I consider the span of my career, I think about my multiple lives. Unlike many actors, my journey didn’t start in the drama club at my high school or with enrolling in a conservatory. It started with my love of journalism and the joy I got from interviewing pro and college athletes.
How to Audition for ‘Riverdale’ CD David RapaportHowever, a night out with friends—followed by a hangover—ultimately led to my decision one Friday afternoon to create a skit about oxtail gravy. The skit changed my life forever. Are you confused yet?
I always had a knack for performing. I also have an active imagination. At 7 years old, I was using the built-in voice recorder on our Windows 98 PC to interview my stuffed wrestlers on a “late-night show” I was filling in for. (The host, Jay Leno, was always absent for whatever reason.)
Those childhood dreams eventually turned into majoring in journalism at the University at Albany, then interviewing Magic Johnson, Derek Jeter, Jennifer Hudson, and more. After college, those dreams turned into on-camera jobs at ESPN, Vice, and other media outlets.
It was a wonderful time, but still, I started to feel like journalism wasn’t my true passion. Yeah, I was “performing” in a sense, but it didn’t feel like my calling.
In college, one of my extracurricular activities was theater. I had roles in two campus plays, and people would tell me, “We know you love journalism, but you were made to be an actor.” It sounded nice, but I didn’t see acting as a viable career path. Working in New York City restaurants? Going through rejection after rejection? Eh, none of it appealed to me.
By 2018, I started considering what social media had become, and I decided to start making comedy skits. I created a character who had a thick Jamaican accent (something I picked up from my mom’s side of the family), and within no time it felt like I was feeding my soul creatively by making videos and acting exclusively on my Instagram account.
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And then came that Friday afternoon, the one I mentioned that changed everything. After a night out drinking with friends, I called into my corporate job and told my boss I was sick. I then drove to my mom’s house in Westchester, New York, to see my brother Tommy, who was home from college and asked me to go buy two oxtail lunches for us. I agreed, thinking it would help my lingering hangover.
The servers made our plates of food and gave me a large container of extra gravy; for those of you familiar with Jamaican restaurants, you know that is rare. Something in my intuition—maybe it was God—told me to make a sketch in character about this extra gravy, so I did. The sketch went viral—like, globally viral.
Friends and family both here and in the Caribbean reached out—and most importantly, so did Carmen Cuba Casting. I was told, “Oprah’s writing team for OWN’s ‘David Makes Man’ saw your sketch and wants you to audition for a major recurring role on the series, which is written by Oscar winner Tarell Alvin McCraney. Interested?”
READ: How to Audition for Carmen Cuba
I went from not knowing how I would break into the world of acting straight to a recurring role on an Oprah production—all without representation.
I’ve had ups and downs since then, but finally, now, it feels like I have married my passion with my career. So I say to you: Whatever you do, stick with it. No matter how rough or how rocky your journey may be, stick with it.
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