The Big Break
Natalie looked around the room to a sea of people who looked just like her. They were all brown-skinned, long-haired, slightly above-average-height women. She had never met any of them before, but she figured they too had trained under the best theater schools in the country. It was tough competition, and she didn’t know how she could stand out.
“Number One Hundred Thirty-One,” called out the casting director from a half-open door.
That’s me, she said to herself. She took a deep breath and stood up. She walked across the length of the waiting room and glanced at the others. They looked at her with the same drive and ambition that she had, and it made her anxious.
The casting room was small. There was the casting director sitting at a small table. At each side of him was a computer monitor with the livestream of another executive, remotely connected. Natalie stood in front of them and her eyes focused on the video camera that was broadcasting her audition to those in the room and who knew how many others.
“Natalie?”
“Yes, that’s me,” she said. Her anxiety had caused her voice to become soft and quiet.
“Great. I’m Callum, the casting director. Next to me is Albert and Eileen. They’re executive producers on this picture.”
“Hi,” she murmured.
“I see you have a portion of the script already.”
“Uh yes, yes I’ve been reading it,” she mumbled. Her eyes looked down at the words on her tablet. The letters were blurrier than they had been before.
“Great. You can start and I’ll fill in the other actors.”
“Okay,” she said. She cleared her throat and started to speak.
“The quantum capacitors are heating up captain! They won’t hold on much longer!” she called out with enthusiasm.
“We have to get through this asteroid belt. We cannot let the androids catch us,” the director stated flatly.
“Our best shot is to use the martian thermocouplers, but we’ll have a fifty percent chance of blowing up the ship!”
One of the monitors made a sound, like one of the executive producers was talking. She couldn’t hear what was being said, but she stopped.
“Natalie?” the director interrupted.
“Yes?”
“Can you try that again, but just lower your voice a bit? And draw out your words a bit more?”
“Sure.”
She gulped and took another deep breath.
“The quantum capacitors… they’re heating up captain! They are not going to hold much longer!”
“We have to get through this asteroid belt. We cannot let the androids catch us.”
“Our best shot is to use the martian thermocouplers… but we will have a fifty percent chance… of blowing up the ship!”
Another muffled voice came through the monitor. The director turned his attention and nodded along to what they were saying.
“Thank you Natalie. We’ll let you know,” Callum said dismissively.
Natalie nodded her head a few times and left the room. She was always bothered by their dismissals, as they would never quite say where she went wrong. She had no idea what she could improve. Her voice maybe? Even then they were not entirely clear on what they were expecting.
She exited the room trying not to form tears in her eyes. She didn’t want the others to see her fail. They were too much like her.
To her surprise she was given a callback. The director met her at the front of the office park and walked with her inside the studio.
“Natalie, I’ve gotten some good feedback from the producers, so today we’re going to go through a screen test. We just want to make sure you’ll blend well with the rest of the direction for the movie.”
“Okay,” she agreed, in an optimistic mood.
She was asked to stand in front of a green screen. Studio lights beamed down on her in all directions.
“Just stand there and we’ll calibrate your body for a moment,” the director said.
He pressed a button on some sort of console and a camera attached to a robotic arm descended from the ceiling. The arm bent forward so that the lens was focused right on her. The arm then began to rotate around the entirety of the stage as the lens continued to stare right at her.
“Can you walk a little?”
“Walk to where?”
“Just walk in place.”
She hadn’t worn shoes that could do that easily, but she tried her best to place one foot in front of the other. As she did, she could hear the subtle whirring of the robot circling her. Her head turned as her eyes stared back at it.
“Keep your head level please,” the director reprimanded.
She immediately averted her eyes and continued her awkward stepping.
“Now stand there and do a few dialogs,” the director requested.
“What should I say?”
“Just do the script again.”
“I can’t remember all of the technobabble,” she admitted.
“Well just do what you remember. Make some stuff up. It’s not too important what you say.”
“Okay… um… Captain! The quantum… thermocouplers are beginning to catch fire. We need to get going.”
The camera’s whirring became louder. Out of the corner of her eye she could see it beginning to grow closer to her.
“…we can’t let the androids catch us,” the director noted.
She realized that the camera distracted her. She tried to recall the next part of the script.
“The martian… the martian things need to be integrated. But there’s a fifty percent chance we’ll blow up the ship.”
“That’s pretty good. You can stop now,” the director said.
She turned to see the camera just inches away from her face. She nearly jumped. But it was then that the camera began to climb back up to the ceiling, hiding and waiting.
“We’ll call you back soon once I review this data with the producers.”
After months of shoots, studio dialog, reshoots, and numerous long days, the movie was finally about to premiere.
Natalie bragged about it to all of her friends, but it wasn’t until she showed the contract that they believed she was actually the star. Had they just watched the movie, they never would’ve seen her.
In fact, Natalie didn’t see herself either. She wasn’t a famous A-list celebrity that could draw in a large audience. The casting director had cast her to do the dialog and the acting, but only because she resembled Lucy Lazaro. A star like Lucy didn’t have time to learn lines or act. They digitally replaced Natalie’s face with Lucy’s, and modified Natalie’s dialog to sound like Lucy.
The strategy was common among the bigger movies, who had an ever increasing demand for star power even as their budgets didn’t grow. It was cheaper to pay Lucy just to do the marketing while Natalie did the grunt work. She didn’t entirely mind. She was still paid for her work. Not as much as Lucy, but still enough.
However at the end of the credits, she was disappointed that she wasn’t even included. Lucy got all the credit, and there was no indication that she had even existed. While this may have been her big break into the industry, it didn’t feel like she stopped being a nobody.
Still, she hoped that the movie would draw in a big numbers at the box office. If it did, she had a good chance at starring in the sequel.