Acting coach Aaron Marcus shares his own story of losing an ABC pilot role to someone 20 years younger, then explains why not booking doesn't mean you failed. He tells actors how to check in with agents after callbacks and why getting the audition itself is already a win against massive competition.
Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and this is a vlog about not booking the job. So whenever I do my private online coaching sessions, when I'm doing in-person workshops and people, you know, talk about the difficulties of, you know, not booking the job, what I always tell people, and I truly believe this, look, when you do the audition and you don't book the job, you can't take it personally. It's not any statement about who you are. The fact that you were brought in to read for this project is an incredible accomplishment, especially when you consider how many hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people might have been submitted for this audition. And so basically what I say is, look, you do the audition, you prepare, you do what you think is right during the audition, and then you let it go and you go on to the next audition. And let me also just say there's one other There's one piece of my explanation that I also need to add in there, and that is sometimes it feels bad. Sometimes it feels really rotten when you don't book the job, especially when it's something that you really wanted to get. And I can tell you, I guess the reason what made me think of this is I just auditioned for a pilot for ABC. And I can tell you, especially with not living in a major market, you know, it's tougher to get opportunities to audition for pilots. I mean, I do travel to New York, but, you know, to try to get them locally, you know, it's definitely tougher. And so I liked the audition, which, you know, doesn't necessarily mean anything as far as, you know, getting a callback and booking the job. But I did get a callback. And so that was exciting. This would have been a really, really good role, a very important part of this particular And it was the pilot, so it was a major part of this particular series. And now I'm in there and I'm reading for the director and the writer. And, you know, once again, they gave me some additional information. I made some adjustments to my read, and I walked out. I felt really good about what I did. And once again, still, I mean, I know that there are so many reasons why you book it and don't book it, but I wanted this job. It would have been great. It would have been quite a few days of work, Which would have been really neat, too. The other little piece of information that I wanted to add in— I know I'm kind of jumping a little bit— but typically, even though it might be on your mind— and here I've been telling people, you know, you've got to let it go, go on to the next— but look, when it's something you really want, of course you're going to be thinking about it. When the phone rings, you're thinking, oh, maybe this is the agent, and you're checking out emails. Maybe it's saying, hey, congratulations, you booked it. Even though I had this temptation, I never like calling agents to say, hey, have you heard anything? You know, because they're very busy. They're spending time doing a lot of other things. And if they're working with a lot of people who are being submitted for things and auditioning, then all day long all they're going to be doing is saying, no, I haven't heard. But if you have another reason to call the agent, then that would be a good way to kind of slide in your question. So that's what I did. Hopefully I'm not giving out some crazy secrets, but I was going to be booked out one of the days this week, and I thought that there was a possibility that if I did book the job that we might be shooting. So I wanted to let the agent know I'm booked out, and by the way, did you hear anything? Because, you know, I certainly don't want to lose this opportunity. And then she contacted the casting director, and the casting director got back to the agent, she got back to me, and she said, Hey, just wanted to let you know they decided to go Um, uh, with the character 20 years younger than you. So, uh, I, I guess if there's something to take away that felt a little bit better was that I didn't have a shot at this. You know, if they're looking for somebody who's 20 years younger than me, that's not me. So from a performance point of view, you know, it felt a little bit better, but still it felt bad. And I guess I just want to say to you, it's okay to feel bad. You know, we're humans. When you really want something, you're excited about something, something that's going to be really fun, and you don't get it, it's okay to feel bad. We're all human. What is important though is don't beat yourself up. Don't kick yourself. Don't think, well, I'm just horrible and I auditioned twice for this thing. Look, there are people who audition 4, 5, 6, 8 times for projects and still don't book it. So anyhow, I just wanted to share that story with you. The fact that you got the Getting a call to audition in the first place is a tremendous accomplishment and you should feel great about that. Anyhow, I'm Aaron Marcus. If you do have any questions, feel free to email me at aaron@howtomodel.com. If you like this, please like it on my Facebook page, facebook.com/howtomodel. Forward it to other people. If you see this on YouTube, please, you know, give it a thumbs up, you know, let other people know about it. I like to share information with people. Looking forward to talking with you again real soon.
