I’ve been lucky enough to attend lots of auditions/castings since I began my acting career, but one I had at the beginning of the year was honestly one of the weirdest half hours of my life! It was apparently a casting for actors/dancers for a dance track by a young dj- All well written and looked perfectly legit.
I traveled all the way into fucking London for this bollocks- The apartment block where it took place looked amazing- Really posh and the interior was beautiful also. Nothing fucked up there. However once I got inside, that all changed…..
I was greeted by this man and woman- Both looked presentable enough and we went into the “meeting room”. I was greeted with an overwhelming stench of cannabis and some weird tribal music playing loudly. Sprawled out on the sofa and rug were 4 or 5 more people, male and female, probably all in their mid 20’s. They were passing round a “doobie” (Thier own description of it) and were stoned out their heads at 11am! The one guy just rambled on for ages about nothing, and it soon became apparent that this was not a professional casting session….. Turns out one of them is an aspiring dj and made a remix of the Game Of Thrones theme tune and they just desperately wanted someone related to the show to hear it! (I had a small role in the 4th series). I wan’t impressed and asked why they had lied- The guy told me that in half a year he would be contacting some Chinese bloke in America with the hope he may like the track enough to have it made into a video. I told him this is completely fucking mental and not a valid excuse at all. He offered me a “puff”. I passed. (Almost passed out too due to the stench of the stuff).
The stoners seemed desperate for me to listen to the piece, and I had a cup of tea to finish, so I agreed to stay another 10 minutes. I swear to god the “song” was just a load of sped up, distorted noise and barely resembled the GoT theme tune at all! They all sat there in some sort of weird trance, occasionally pretending to head bang the sofa/air/each other whilst also pretending to shout “This is the realm” in an over the top manner. It was all just so odd and after about 7 minutes of the “music” just repeating itself over and over, I knew we weren’t getting anywhere, so I just quietly left, figuring they were too engrossed in silent moshing and mouthing gibberish at each other to notice. I was correct.
I’d gotten up really fucking early for that absolute uninspiring drivel- I have no idea whether they had intended to mess me around or not, but it made several minutes of quality conversation in the pub with my friend that evening.
Moral of this story- Be careful when applying for castings online, as you never know which silently moshing, uninspiring, time wasting hippy stoners may be lurking at the other end!