Pilot Season – A Cast of Characters
Pilot season is that time of year when the networks commission a sample, a pilot, of a proposed television show that will give the networks a better idea if they should order up a whole bunch of them – a series. And, if the old adage is true that working in Hollywood is like going to war, then pilot season is Hollywood’s biggest battle.
If pilot season were a pilot, the pitch might go like this – “Okay, so once a year there are all these jobs that could lead to fame and fortune – producers are down to the wire, willing to see anyone – the film actress, the no one, the comeback, their nephew. These plucky kids come from all over, traipsing across the country, sleeping on couches, leaving their lives for a few months every year. It’ll be great, see, because there’s always a story to tell and everyone’s story is different!”
Catherine’s story is simple. She arrived in L.A. only a few days before pilot season was to begin. Committed to her craft, she was wise enough to do her homework. She made calls. She took some meetings. But “it’s great to meet you, call again after pilot season” is mostly what she got. Aware that plopping down blindly might not get her any auditions, she was still hopeful that something magical might happen. It didn’t.
Unfazed, she did what she was supposed to do. She worked hard. Met people. Made sure that whatever the coming year brought it would propel her to a better position for the next year’s pilot season. Having done well during the episodic season, she now had a manager and had signed with a small agency. She felt like she was in a good place. But it turned out the agent wasn’t – personal problems that led to a downsizing of the client list, that included her, and a manger who was now unwilling to develop her alone. Another pilot season came and went. As did a few more.
She takes a deep breath recalling those five years and her pretty face grows pained as she explains that having never been out for a pilot makes her feel horrible, like a peon, like a failure.
What is it about pilot season that can eliminate all sense of worth and pride in other accomplishments. “The lure of pilot season is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Pilot season contains an implied promise,” she explains. “There’s a potential for ongoing work. With episodic, you’re still left looking to pay the rent. With a pilot, you are employed. I think that’s really what it’s about. It’s not about you when you guest on a show, but when you’re a regular you hopefully will shine. I like the idea of going to work everyday, of playing one character in different situations.”
Her face brightens admitting, “This may sound nerdy, but I grew up with Little House on the Prairie, The Facts of Life, 90210 in my living room. I like the idea of being in someone’s life and if it’s really good TV, enlightening it just a little. The West Wing is a really good example of that.”
She continues with her straightforward talk that she’s not incredibly hopeful for the coming pilot season because she’s older and she’s stopped pursuing as rigorously, not because she “gave up, just because life happened.” She brightens briefly once again thinking of The West Wing’s Alison Janney. “She kept plugging away,” she says with hopeful awe as only one who’s plugged away can. “But can I wait that long waiting to hit?”
“You’re whole life is changing!” That’s what the head of network casting told Sophie* right after her network test. She also told her she’d been a really big fan of Sophie’s ever since Chicago. Sophie’s never lived in Chicago.
“I have friends who’d rather have an abortion or go to rehab than test for a pilot. It’s just terrifying,” Sophie explains. “You’re in such close proximity to your competition and sometimes they play mind games with you.” Testing is for a whole room filled with 30 or 40 people and “they make you sign a contract before you even go in. They want the right to refuse you.”
Sophie came to L.A. after working and struggling for about ten years as an actress. “Unless you’re already established, it’s stupid to go out. Besides, I couldn’t even drive.” But she got a play that brought her out here and it had “a lot of fancy pants people in it.” So she got seen and got in for pilot season. She has now gotten a pilot every year. They’ve gone to series.
Her whole life has changed. But it wasn’t after that audition. She remembers thinking, “Please don’t say that I’m you’re first choice until it’s official.” She went home not even having enough money to order a pizza. She called her agents, no word. She woke up the next morning and had to go to some “silly” mass commercial audition, still no word.
She didn’t get it.
She also didn’t get another show even though she “kicked ass and it couldn’t have gone better” because her agents told her she didn’t “work the room.”
But she says, “It gets easier.” When she did finally book a show, even though her $15,000 after taxes and commissions only turned out to be $3,750 and she was “still broke, in debt and hysterical,” she still says, “it was amazing!”
Ana Ortiz was also elated when she booked her first pilot, “Miriam Teitlebaum: Homicide,” a one hour dramedy for the USA network that didn’t get picked up. “I was so happy. It was a wonderful experience.”
Her first pilot season though she categorizes as “ridiculous.” There’s nothing for Latin women is what her agents kept telling her. To which she suggested, since she is half Irish, that they send her out for non Latino roles. They weren’t aggressive enough for her and that’s “necessary when you’re just starting out.” By the next year, she had different representation that “really believed in me,” had done a play that got her a part on “NYPD Blue,” and the NAACP had made a stink. Latino parts opened up and they were more willing to see her.
She’s experienced both a long audition process of having to wait almost a month after her first audition and assuming she’s “not in the running, totally out of it” to the hurry, hurry of going home and changing that day to come back in.
“The fear is what holds you back. When I put too much pressure on it, it never really works well. The moment I walk in, I have a way of psyching myself up. I read Judy Garland’s biography and she would stand in the wings and look out at the audience and say, ‘F*ck ’em’ over and over.” By the time Ana goes in the room, she is “totally electrified and on fire.” Also, “the character was confident and cocky, so I could bring that.”
It’s a good thing too, because she got lost on the way to her network test for “Kristin,” a mid season replacement. She was late and thought that she had totally blown it, but she chose to use that energy and just went for it. She found out she got it that day. She signed a contract as a series regular for 7 episodes. She’s been in 12 out of 13.
The walls were so thin and Karen* could hear that the girl in the room was making them laugh. “I’m not funny. I don’t know what she’s doing, but I know I can’t do it!” Karen was in the midst of her first pilot season and she was “entrenched in hell.” Now Karen is an experienced actress and auditioner, but she had only really been through one full pilot season because she was always off on location working. Because of the good work she had done during those times, her first pilot season found her hurrying to 4 or 5 auditions in a day. “This sounds so actory, but it feels like Lucy in the chocolate factory episode. You can’t really do the job you want to do. The process is so rushed. I can’t imagine having the time to hit it every time.” So when she found herself going back in for a show after her feedback had been – “They’d never seen anything more extraordinary in their lives. Go back and do the same thing,” a lesson was to be learned. “I was as emotional as a dial tone. So I push, which is cardinal sin #55 of acting. It went swimmingly badly.”
“Auditioning for pilots is like being thrown into an even more arbitrary feeling about acting. It’s less about the performance and more about the reaction the people have towards you.”
Karen has starred in movies, but she has never booked a pilot. She has tested though. And it was at a test that people started treating her differently, with kid gloves, as if she already had the part. For someone who has worked with top movie stars, she found this silly and sad. “That’s how people forget that they’re just somebody.”
Though there is a feeling of validation when you do get cast. That’s how Giselle* felt when she got her pilot. “It took a good two years to at least at this point be comfortable. Everybody f*cks up. I have the confidence now to say, ‘Can I start over?’ That’s something I never would have done when I first started.”
Giselle is also very zen about the whole thing. “I give myself 24 hours to stew, then I let it go.”
Giselle is the first one to talk of pilot season’s dirty little secret: lists. The way she explains it casting directors all have these lists of network approved actors, those that have guest starred and have TV recognition. Casting Directors will have no problem passing these actors along to the next level. So in Giselle’s opinion, if you’re not on the list, you’re not going to get a pilot.
When the idea of lists is brought up to everyone else interviewed, many haven’t directly heard of lists, though they acknowledge they certainly could be a possibility. “God, I hope that’s not true,” Ana says, even though she has two pilots under her belt. Robert Peters, who has been making a living as an actor for about eight years who also has two pilots under his belt (“The Madigan Men” pilot and FOX’s “The #1 Show In America: Fishing with Supermodels”) has never heard of lists either. Catherine reiterates again how important the work you do during the year is if lists do exist and Sophie breaks it down even more, explaining there are three lists – top people who need a show, supporting people who’ve been on shows and everyone else who is ‘list worthy.’
Giselle also explains the only reason she was lucky enough to book a pilot is because it was for cable, knowing she probably wasn’t on the list when she started. She offers some other advice for what she calls a “wretched process.” “Go in as you. It’s not about acting. It’s about typing. If you fit what they’re looking for. Also, I know never to enter the waiting room – too much pressure, too many cute girls.”
“There is life after pilot season,” says Julia Buchwald of Don Buchwald and Associates, a talent agency with offices in both New York and Los Angeles. “The most harmful thing an actor can do is put too much pressure on the whole thing.” She doesn’t advocate crashing an audition either, that can be very harmful and won’t be tolerated. But she does appreciate gumption. “I’m not saying go down to Dublin’s with a pen and paper and find out what everyone else went in for, but if you hear about something, look into it.”
“Always be prepared. An audition could happen at anytime. Keep auditioning skills, especially cold auditioning skills, tight. Keep looking good and fresh. You may find out at 7:30 at night that you have to go in at 9 a.m. the next day. Keep fresh.”
“Have faith in yourself,” she adds. “It’s a fast process. Don’t take feedback too seriously, because of the abundance of people being seen. Also if you get up to bat and test, it could be 4 or 5 times.”
Cold reading skills and being able to work the room, which doesn’t necessarily mean being overly charming, it could mean adapting to the situation and being gracious and quiet, are things to be good at she advises. She also offers a little more hope for the less connected, “If it gets down to the wire, they’ll see anyone.” Also, she still believes talent and experience win out. “Except for the smaller and younger roles which are more about look than training, an actor needs WEIGHT, needs to be able to carry a show.” And that comes from establishing a career over the years.
“Everybody I know has struggled,” says Hal*. Hal has written on seven different sitcoms and he is about to start casting his own show. He and his partner are about to become show runners – the boss.
Hal is very pro-actor, and having worked long and hard himself he appreciates their struggle. For everybody in this business he thinks, “You’ve got to come in with all your guns blazing. You’ can’t control everything. You’ve got to make it as good as you can, give yourself is your best shot.”
Casting will be tough he admits, but also adds that it should be fun. “With all due respect, we know these characters, these voices. We’re looking for those who want to inhabit them and learn. Actors that are open and willing to listen to us, hang out and talk about it. We have a lot of say. There’s a way to do well. We’ll work with them, so by network there’s no choice.”
Hal also explains that they are looking for unknowns, those that are “off the beaten path,” challenging all list theories and giving the Catherines and everyone else who may be questioning their paths a push to keep going. Like Hal said, everybody has struggled.
The security guard at Paramount on the Gower side has worked there “awhile.” He’s seen a lot of comings and goings. No one’s ever stormed out of the studio crying that he can recall. It’s just business as usual during pilot season except that, sure, it’s busier. He goes about his job as people come and go in what seems like a well oiled machine and where people know their place. They sign in quietly and he buzzes them through. No big secrets or drama, just the day to day business of show.
It is the actors’ stories that are frazzled and huge, but from this angle, it is not life and death. The show of show business, the actors, sometimes base their business on their Cinderella, overnight sensation hopes and dreams. But it is still a functioning business that does not fall or rise due to the dramatics of its players, it just offers more leeway than other businesses for extreme behavior.
And that’s what pilot season is, it is extreme. It is a battle where all the rules and challenges have condensed. They occur all at one time. Sometimes forgotten while in the belly of it all, is there’s always another pilot season. There’s always next year to try again, to strut yourself and have your voice heard. And that’s a good thing, because as Hal says, “All people want is to be heard, to say their thing. What’s so bad about that?”
