Sometimes The Waiting Is Not The Hardest Part

Zach has been working at Nickelodeon recently reprising his role as "Quiet Chris" on "Bella and the Bulldogs". The call times have varied so he's been finishing his day on set anywhere from 3pm to 10pm.  He enjoys being there and catching up with his Nick buddies.

The only con to being on set lately was when we were trying to schedule an audition for Disney. The audition notice arrived via email on a Tuesday for a Wednesday afternoon audition. Normally this is not a problem but the audition was right in the middle of his workday at Nick.  I let his agent know this fact but the casting folks were slammed and couldn't fit Zach in at a different time.  I looked at the on-set schedule for Zach and realized there was absolutely no way he was going to be able to leave the set for any length of time to audition.

His manager suggested a self-tape session at their office to record his audition.  This was a great idea because it meant we would definitely get him submitted him for the part.

Zach finished up his on-set work on the Wednesday of the audition and headed to the office to record. The moment he got in the parking lot of his manager he received an email saying the casting directors had scheduled a new time for him on Thursday.  Could he make the rescheduled time?

It worked out perfectly since the audition was in the morning and his Nick call time was late in the afternoon.  He walked inside to tell his manager he could make the new appointment time and that he would work on the audition scene in his acting class that night.

Zach headed off to the audition the next morning feeling confident and prepared. His acting coach worked on the scene with him and also gave him some videos to watch to help him get in character. The entire audition process took about 30-minutes between arrival, waiting to be called into the office, doing the actual audition and leaving the studio lot.  In fact, Zach left the lot around 12:05pm.
The downside to auditions is the waiting!  It can  be anywhere from a day to a week to even longer before an actor finds out if they landed the part.  More often than not, an actor never hears anything about the part again (which means he or she didn't get the role).

Zach felt good about the audition but put it in the back of his mind.  He had to work that day and needed to get some lunch before going to Nick.

As I said earlier, he left the studio around 12:05pm.  Our cell phones started ringing around 12:20pm. The call was good news because he had booked the part!  We were all stunned because it hadn't even been 30-minutes since he left the audition.  No complaints here because I'm happy for him as well as proud of him for landing the gig.  I've just never seen it happen that quickly before.

Zach was thrilled by the news and put the shoot dates on his schedule.  He even had more of a smile than expected after he got the news.  I asked him why he was smiling so much and this was his answer:

"I just realized something.  I get to skip the first week of school because the shooting schedule is the same week!"

I don't know if he was more excited about landing the part or getting to skip school for a week.

The IMDb page of a very happy teen actor.