First Scene of The Toys That Made Us Series

To be honest, I didn’t really want to book this one.

But I’m glad I did. I had a fun time getting into hair, makeup, wardrobe and even smoking and bunch of fake cigarettes.

Here’s a quick little rundown of what happened and some trivia bits that are probably only interesting to me. 

• The people running casting for this show were also casting for the HBO series “Westworld” and I really wanted to just get in-front of them more than anything else, so I wasn’t actually looking to book the “Toys That Made Us” project. I did one audition and a week later they asked if I could come in for a callback. I was still recovering from a cold so I had to pass. Cut to 3 days later when they called and said I had booked the role. I asked, “Are you sure you got the right ‘Mike’ since I wasn’t at the callback?” They replied, “The director booked you from the first audition.”  
• While getting the wig on, I commented that I was beginning to look like a fat Weird Al Yankovic. That got a lot of laughs. Truth hurts.
• It was a long day-to-night shoot and covered 4 different scenes. All the scenes were cut except for the one you see here. Those other deleted bits included a lot of smoking by my character, so I guess I did that for nothing. Ha.
• If you look closely at the details on the hallway walls, you can see the massive effort the art department put into the shot. The big shot of the Millennium Falcon the big studio was even cooler in person.
• Notice the red head guy behind me in the big studio? That’s fellow actor Michael Cavanaugh who I trained with at UCB. It’s always funny to see who you’ll run into even in a huge city like LA.

Check out my On-Camera Samples for more bits. And yes, if you’re casting talent for Westworld, I’d still love an audition.  

But seriously, my professional home recording studio is also used for on-camera auditions and bit roles from time to time, so let me know if you’d like to see my take on anything.

First Scene of The Toys That Made Us Series