Silver Medal

It’s days like this, and news like what I just received, that serves to put a lot of things into perspective for me. Let me explain:

Though I won’t go into specifics, there’s one highly rated TV show I’ve been up for and nearly booked roles on upwards of 7 times. I’ve met the show creators, producers, various directors and the casting director a dozen times or more to read. The characters have run the gamut of eras, skill sets, accents and intellect levels. Nearly every time I’ve been in, I’ve managed to get put on the board, otherwise known as ‘having a pin in you’ for the project. They check your availability. They talk to your ‘team’. They discuss amongst themselves… and all the while, you wait.

I’ve gotten second each time. This is the part that my neurosis has trouble with.

There’s nothing you can do to sway this part of the process. You’ve done your part. You walked in, looked like you did, said what you said, and played it how you played it. How they interpret that performance after the fact, whether they gave you direction or not, is no longer up to you. They can nitpick your accent or your hair, your skin tone, your voice and eyes and body. Or not. You’ll never really know. All you know is they’re sitting there, with options, looking from one picture to the next and wondering, “Well, this girl has this, and this girl did this, but is her this better than the other this…”, and so on, and so forth, ad infinitum.

And you can’t say or do a damn thing about it. Frustrating, right?

But every time I start feeling myself wanting to scream out “Wait! I have that too!”, or walk back in in another outfit just to show them another side, I realize that what I do isn’t who I am. I wouldn’t change who I am or what I wore every time I met someone new just to try to get them to say “Oh, wait, yah, I actually like you better like that!”. And the opinions being passed around in that production room may be based on what I did and how I looked, and maybe in some small part who I am, but what those people say will never end up being said during a toast at a dinner with close friends, or being written across my tombstone:

“Here lies Zelda Williams. She gave an incredible read and her accent was spot on. She did everything perfect, but…”

But. There’s always buts. But here’s the thing: We are not defined by our jobs, whether we wear uniforms or not. It doesn’t matter how badly our day went, or how many times we got passed over for someone else. Or how many ‘buts’ we heard.

At some point we all clock out, walk outside, take a deep breath and know that the rest is up to us.