You don’t get to the top without a few bad auditions.
During The Hollywood Reporter’s drama actor roundtable, six Emmy contenders shared war stories from auditions gone wrong.
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Jeff Daniels (HBO’s The Newsroom) heard embellishing one’s résumé was a must for a young actor. So during a meeting with legendary New York casting director Juliet Taylor, he brought a résumé that said he studied with iconic acting coach Sandy Meisner. Unfortunately for Daniels, he didn’t know Meisner was a man.
“So Juliet is looking through the résumé, and says, ‘I see you studied with Sandy Meisner,’ ” Daniels recalled. “I said, ‘Yeah, she was great.’ And Juliet looked at me and then just kept right on going. I later told my agent, ‘Yeah, it was good, she asked me about Sandy Meisner, how great she was.’ He goes, ‘Sandy is a man.’ F—.”
For Kevin Bacon (Fox’s The Following), sheet music for the Studio 54 musical Got to Go Disco tripped him up.
“It was in a key not even close because I’m singing an octave up from Alicia Bridges,” Bacon said. “And the sheet music was like in the completely different key, the guy started playing, and I was way, way, way out of my range.”
THR’s drama actor roundtable also featured John Slattery (AMC’s Mad Men), Mandy Patinkin (Showtime’s Homeland), Dennis Quaid (CBS’ Vegas) and Corey Stoll (Netflix’s House of Cards). The discussion was moderated by THR executive editor Matthew Belloni and senior editor Stacey Wilson.
