Hello, and welcome to day five of 'Three Cheers for New Years".
I am feeling so much better than I was yesterday. It must have just been like some weird 24-hour flu bug thing that I got.
That was rough.
I felt so so grim, like to the point where I
got up, hobbled
to the kitchen, because I- my whole body was aching, put the kettle on and I was like 'I can't even wait for the
kettle to boil, I need to go back to bed and lie down immediately'.
I'm still not quite right, but I'm so much better than I was yesterday,
and you know, I've managed to get up and manage to have a bath,
I've managed to put some makeup on. I've managed to get dressed! So you know, we're in a good place.
We're in a good place.
Something that's part and parcel of being in a show is doing press to promote said show. You're asked to do interviews for magazines,
newspapers, radio, TV,
you name it.
You're usually asked to be part of an interview at some point or another. And the first time you do an interview for a show,
for a new show that you've just started in, it's absolutely terrifying because you have yet to figure out what kind of questions
interviewers are going to ask. You just don't know how to structure your answers yet, but as the interviews go on, you suddenly realise that
everyone pretty much asks the same questions, and it's very rare that you get asked a question you go
'Oh, I don't actually have an answer for this yet.'
"Can you tell us what the show is about? Can you tell us how your involvement with the show began?
Can you tell us a bit more about your character?"
"What's it like working with the celebrity names that are in the show?" And lastly:
"Can you please tell us why people should buy tickets to said show?" And whilst it's such a pleasure to be able to sit and
talk about a show that you're passionate about- like I never got bored of talking about The Addams Family or playing Wednesday, because
I loved it so much.
But with that being said you do get asked the same questions and nearly every interview,
and you do come up with sort of like a rhythm and a routine of how you tell your story of your
involvement in the production and usually it works
the other way
interviewers kind of already know what your answers gonna be. But there was one question that I got asked on a few occasions where the
interviewer was really confused or baffled by my answer.
And I'm sure on a couple of occasions they thought that I was just
exaggerating, and I wasn't really telling the truth. The question would be something along the lines of:
"So Carrie, you've now played Éponine in Les Misérables, Beth in War of the Worlds, Truly Scrumptious in Chitty-Chitty-
Bang-Bang, and Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family. You've gone from job to job, to job to job,
so what's next?" Now usually when I'm asked 'what's next for you?',
I either A. don't have an answer, because I've not got a job to go to after that one ends, or B.
I do have an answer, and I do have a job to go to, I'm just not allowed to talk about it yet.
So it's always sort of very hard to answer that question anyway.
But I now have an answer that lets me dodge the question of 'what's next', because usually there's nothing to talk about, nothing
I'm allowed to talk about. My hopes is that if my answers ever printed in an interview that young aspiring actors read it and feel
a little bit more hopeful about their future careers. And so my answer is: everyone looks at my career and
thinks 'Wow, she's gone from job to job, to job to job,
it must be amazing to never ever be rejected and to always get the auditions that you go for how lucky is she?"
And yes, I am super super lucky, and I'm super grateful, but I haven't really stopped working since the age of nineteen, twenty.
It's incredible- like I'm so lucky and so grateful for everything that's happened to me in like the last five years. It's mad, but-
people don't see the flip side of it, and the thing that I'll always say that
confuses interviewers is for every one audition that I get, that I'm successful in,
there's about six, seven others that I got rejected from and didn't get. There are countless shows,
countless TV auditions, film auditions that I have been for and not got. I watch my incredibly talented
beautiful amazing friends, who are currently playing principals in West End shows
go to like three auditions a week and come back and go 'that was terrible, I'm not getting that.' Even the most incredible,
talented, beautiful,
actors and singers and performers, who you think are the epitome of
musical theater and the West End, who you think will never ever be turned down,
get turned down.
A lot. And of course, as most career sort of go,
there's a ladder to
climb, and the longer you've been doing it for and the more experience you gain and the better you get your own job, the more
doors seem to open for you, because you build a name for yourself, and a profile and an audience, and
it's slightly easier to get jobs, but that doesn't mean you get every job you go for. Now,
I know a lot of people are gonna write in the comments:
'Oh, can you tell us which parts you auditioned for and didn't get? I need a list, I need a list.' And I'm not gonna sit
here and list all of the parts that I auditioned for and didn't get, because A. that would be very depressing for me and
B. it would kind of border on unprofessional, because-
rejection is just part and parcel of this industry.
And it's not for me to complain about and I wouldn't complain about it because it means that someone else got the job- he was
far better for the job then I was. And that's just how the world works.
But the reason I'm telling you about this, is because it's so easy to look at your favourite actors and just think 'I
can never be like them, because-
I get rejected all the time and clearly they don't.' I'm here to tell you they do.
They really really do. But they persevere and they keep going until
they get that yes that they've been looking for. If you give up after every rejection you will never ever get that yes.
If you give up, you and you alone are making it a hundred percent
certain that you never get the job you want. And sure it's gonna suck, there will be rejection after rejection after rejection,
over things that you can't control. Like you were an inch too tall. or an inch too short,
or we need a redhead for this role or your eyes are blue, and they need to be brown. Like stupid things that you just
cannot control. The majority of the time,
it'll be nothing to do with how talented you are,
it will be to do with the fact that they cast a
noy, who's this tall and so they need a girl who's this tall, or
they cast a brunette boy, and so they need a girl who's also brunette, or
they need a girl who's blonde so that they look the same or different or whatever. The point is-
Don't give up. You can't give up, otherwise you're never gonna get where you want to be. Something
I always do now, that I got from my friend Matt Gillett, who played the Childcatcher with me in Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.
He lists five reasons why he doesn't want the job before he goes into the audition.
Because that way if he gets the job, 'wonderful, he's got a job, fabulous', but if he doesn't get it,
he's got those five reasons why he wouldn't have wanted to get the job anyway, and it kind of just serves
as a little bit of comfort. It's a little easier, it softens
the blow just a tad. Rejection is just part of this industry, sadly.
It's part of a lot of industries. Rejection is inevitable, no matter who you are or how good you are, it's inevitable.
So I'm just hoping it serves as some weird,
schadenfreude comfort, that even your favourite West End performers are being rejected from
roles that they really want as we speak. And every actor goes through this.
But if they can persevere and stick it out until they get that yes, you can too.
*sighs*
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*kisses*
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