Aspiring actors listen up! This piece of advice is for you.
Do not walk into your audition holding the script. Itās an immediate, āNo.ā But donāt take our word for it, this advice is straight from Scrubsā actor Zach Braff.
āListen you actors, as someone who is more often a director these days,ā said Braff on his podcast Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald. āIf youāre trying to audition and you donāt have that stuff memorized and youāre looking down at your page, you donāt have a shot in hell.ā
Being "off book," or not needing a script for a rehearsal/audition, is something his former partner Florence Pugh swore on. Braff recalled that Pughās auditioning advice was always be "off book."
āI have to give Florence a shoutout for this because sheās a better actress than I am,ā he said. āShe goes, āI just canāt be present. If there is a part of me that knows I have that crutch there and I can look down, I am not present in the scene enough to perform.ā
āAnd that is coming from an academy award nominated actress,ā said cohost Donald Faison. āSo uh, I am going to be listening to that.ā
Braff said that as a director, actors who come into audition without their scripts are more present. Those who come in looking down at their scripts during their audition donāt stand a chance. But sometimes, the casting decisions have nothing to do with performance, but rather with appearance.
āYou could literally walk in and be the best actor for the part, but you look too much like somebody else,ā Braff said. āOr you are too old, or too young, or we just cast the father and you look nothing like him. Thereās so many... variables. All you can do is go in and crush and do your best.ā
In the end, it all boils down to being prepared. As both actors point out, it's impossible to control every part of an audition other than your own performance. Assume that the person who came in before you, and the one behind you memorized everything.
Check out āMy Identity Crisisā to hear the full conversation as well as a breakdown of the Scrubsā episode of the same name. Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald is working its way through the seventh season of the medical comedy, find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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