You can feel it in the pit of your stomach. You know exactly what I am talking about.
You have a stellar audition. Hell yea.
You get a callback. And guess what, you rock that too.
{throws self a party}
And you KNOW you booked it. What a great fucking feeling!!
And then you wait. And wait. And wait.
{this was probably an hour or so}
And the wait continues. You check your phone every 10 minutes and for the first time in weeks you legit turn on the ringer (is that what that sounds like?!). You jump at the ding of an email and when the phone legit rings you could vomit.
Patience is a virtue...but Patience sure as shit wasn't an actor.
Sounds dramatic AF, but that is what it's like after a good audition.
Sometimes you get a call within a few hours, fuck yea! The part is yours! You are a champion actor one step closer to an Academy Award and yes of course you always knew this path was for you, never a second thought, absolutely all the coaching and headshots and money you spent was so freaking worth it, you earned this time to celebrate, this is the day everything changes!
Or.
You get a call a few days later. Almost more exciting because you had kind of forgotten about it by then! {haha yea right nice try, actors are elephants we never forget but we can pretend} You had just started to doubt yourself but here we go up the ladder again, what a badass, when do I film?
Or.
You get put on hold. This is it's own worthy post. I hate very few things as much as I hate a hold. I used to love them because I thought it was just a waiting period till they finalized shooting details and basically I was booked. And then one time I was sitting in an audition waiting room and the casting assistances had their doors open and I heard a whole conversation about how they were putting every actor that had a callback on hold for the time being.
That's some fucked up mind games right there.
Or.
You just never hear back. Perhaps the worst of all worlds because you just hold out hope that one of a million scenarios happened. They are holding off on filming till they get more funding but they are for sure calling YOU. They decided to make the role ethnic and you are (sorry, *I am) very white. Someone in production owed someone else a favor so it went to the other girl, but they actually liked your better. The director decided to give the guest spot to his nanny. Literally all these things run the course of my mind before the "I wasn't right for the job" actually does.
Honest story: Many moons ago in college, I drove all around the midwest when I heard of a possible film audition. I wanted to get as much experience as humanly possible. I spent one weekend in Kansas City for a callback (after submitting a self taped audition...I had NO idea what I was doing holy god I bet it was so bad) for a role in a short horror film about sorority girls. I nailed it. I left and went back to my job as a summer camp councilor. The tricky part here is that I didn't have cell service 6 days a week without special arrangements. So the worry and concern (that they would go with another girl if I didn't get back to them in time) was overwhelming. I spent a lot of camp dinners outside the dinning hall holding my phone in the air (it was 2011 ok?!) trying to get signal. And one day I finally had a voicemail from the creator saying I did a wonderful job but they were going with someone else. In retrospect, it was nice of them to even tell me this, they really didn't have to (and rarely do).
Cut to 4 years later in LA: I am at a callback for another film and guess who is chemistry reading with me? The creator of that Kansas City project. Life is kinda crazy. Anyway, we did a great job and both get cast in this film (Trace) as boyfriend and girlfriend. One day on set we're chatting and he tells me back in the day, I was cast as the other girl in that film. WTF?!?! Turns out they had to get a new director last minute and he wanted to bring in all his own actors. So I was replaced via someone else connections/demands. And I had spent so long that summer (I didn't have other auditions going on at the time so the healing process was...extended) wondering what I did wrong and what didn't set me apart. And there it was. Nothing of my concern or my control.
If you can't tell already, as I write this I am waiting to hear back about a great callback I had last week. So this is my cathartic response down on paper to self-sooth. Thanks for the free therapy!
However I think it's a nice reminder that these great pieces of work we do and then do/don't/almost hear back from have to exist on their own playing field. We have to know our hard work is not unnoticed and is not another belt notch...but another (albeit almost invisible) step in the right direction.