Behind the Scenes of Ainsley Cooper

I woke on Wednesday early. Like, really early. My audition wasn’t until ten, but in an effort to be on time, we left at eight, lest we get caught up in traffic going into Chicago. My parents had pulled me out of school for the day, and my mom and I arrived at the audition site with a half an hour to spare. We parked the car and scouted out the general entrance to the building, which took longer than it probably should have. The building we were at looked like a standard office building, not the same theater we’d gone to before. We ended up in some sort of lobby, and approached the front desk, not really sure what else to do. There were several doors in all directions off the lobby, but all of them were closed and probably locked. My mom, a strong believer in kids doing everything for themselves, pushed me in front of her and I waited for the woman at the desk to look up.

“Can I help you?” She was a tall woman, probably in her early forties, although I was a terrible judge of age. She was wearing a flowery skirt and a white blouse. Probably a little too young for her, but did it really matter?

“Hi. Yes. I’m here for an audition at ten o’clock.”

“Of course. I’ll need your name and a form of identification.”

“Ainsley Cooper?” I reached into my messenger bag and pulled out my wallet with my drivers license in it. She checked it briefly, handed it back to me, and typed what I assumed was my name into the computer in front of her. She stood, picking a key card up off her desk.

“You can come with me.” She was wearing heals, and they clicked on the wood floors as she walked over to a door to the right. She used the card to unlock it and through it was a long hallway. It looked a little bit like a hotel. It was carpeted with lots of closed doors off of it. As we followed the receptionist down the hall, I heard laughter from behind one of the doors. She led us four doors down and ushered us into a room resembling a lounge. “You can wait in here. They’ll come get you when they’re ready in there.” And she was gone.

My mom and I made ourselves comfortable on one of the couches. I figured this was probably called the green room, basing my assessment on the color of much of the furniture, the wallpaper, and the carpet. Starting to get anxious and knowing my audition wouldn’t be for at least twenty more minutes, I pulled my notebook out of my bag and started on my English assignment. It’d actually been due today, but knowing I was going to be absent, I hadn’t bothered to do it.

The room was so quiet that when the door opened, I jumped what must’ve been several inches. In the doorway stood a man, probably a little younger than my dad, only with much better fashion taste. His sleeves were rolled up and he was carrying a notebook with him.

“Ainsley?” I shoved my notebook back into my bag.

“That’s me,” I said with a hesitant smile.

“Hi, I’m Ricardo, one of the casting directors for the film. We’re ready for you.”

I stood, giving my mom a little wave, and followed him out and down a couple of doors. I was expecting a similar looking room to the one we’d just been in.

Walking in, I was starting to feel a little self conscious. I hadn’t really known what to wear to the audition, so I’d ended up wearing a purple and white tank top with a black cardigan, jeans, my favorite silver scarf, and purple flats. I’d worn typical make up, which for me was small amounts of eyeliner and some mascara.

The room was not very big pretty empty furniture-wise, with one table pushed up close to one wall and there were three chairs placed several feet away across from the table. There were, of course, several people in the room. There were four people sitting at the table. One was Sara Crane, who I recognized from the casting call. One of the others sitting at the table, another woman, had been there too. The third person was a very tall man in a button down shirt, and the fourth was, to my surprise, Mia Peterson, the director. I guess I should have assumed she’d be there, but I hadn’t really considered it.

And of course, sitting in one of the other chairs across the room was Nate Lopez. Oh. My. God. He was dressed pretty casually, wearing a plaid shirt over a plain tee-shirt and jeans. I wasn’t too concerned about what I was wearing anymore, but I was borderline hyperventilating. I was here. I was about to audition with a famous actor in front of a famous director. Ricardo went and sat down at the table, leaving me standing awkwardly just inside the room.

Mia Peterson looked down at her pad of paper in front of her. “Ainsley? Did I say that right?” I nodded and she laughed a little. “Sorry, you can never be sure. I’m Mia Peterson, I’m directing the film.” She proceeded to introduce the rest of the table as well, but I missed pretty much all of it. “And this,” she said pointing, “is Nate. You’ll be reading with him today. And here’s the script.” She pulled out several pages of highlighted script. “You can go ahead and take a seat next to Nate.” I walked over, trying to seem confident and probably failing miserably. I glanced over at Nate and he gave me a half-smile and a nod. Poor guy had probably read this scene a dozen times already.

“So what’s going on here is that Sam Spencer is this teen spy, but in order to stay undercover, he goes to a normal school and pretends to live a normal life. He meets this girl and he falls for her, but he has to keep her at a distance because of his job. Yes?” I nodded. “You’re reading Lilly. The context of this scene is Sam and Lilly having a moment, but Sam is getting commentary over a headset from his spy base, and because they’re watching him, he can’t tell Lilly anything. Questions?” I shook my head. I couldn’t think of any. “Alright. I’ll give you a minute to read it over and let us know when you’re ready.”

I read it over once, not wanting to over-think it. From what I could tell, it was pretty standard teenage love movie stuff, and my job was to make it better than that, more unique. I tied my hair back in an elastic so my hair wouldn’t get in the way and stood, script in hand. “Ready.” Nate stood up too.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

I stepped a few feet closer to Nate and look up into his face.

“What?”

“Lilly, I...” he backed off a little and averted my gaze. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“You’re just like everyone said you’d be. You’ll never get close to anyone. It’s true.”

“You just don’t get it.” I, Ainsley, not Lilly, hated this phrase. Why rub it in someone’s face that they don’t understand when they’re just trying to be nice?

My tone reflected this. “Whatever, Sam. You don’t have to pretend with me.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

I got in his face a little, but acted more sad than mad. “Really? Because that seems like a pretty frequent occurrence with you. When are you going to say something you do mean?”

We only read through two pages, and the time went by pretty fast. With all these people in the damn theater business, however, I couldn’t read anyones faces. I flashed a quick cheesy smile.

Mia was still writing but looked up. “Okay, I want you two to take a couple minutes, talk to each other, and then do that scene again.” Do it again? I was disappointed she asked to do it again, because I knew then she hadn’t liked it the first time, but I sat back down in the chair and looked at Nate for some sort of guidance.

“Hey, I’m Nate,” he said, holding out his hand.

I blinked at him. “No way.” He raised his eyebrows and I shook his hand. “Sorry. I’m Ainsley, but you already heard that so...” I trailed off.

“Done much acting?” he asked.

“Yes. No. Well, I mean, probably not compared to you. Nothing exciting.” I’d done community theater, and some shows at my high school, but sitting next to a movie star, I didn’t really want to talk about those.

“Like what?”

Sigh. “Um... I was in Beauty and the Beast last year. And a couple years back I was one of the von Trapps in The Sound of Music...”

He raised his eyebrows again. “I think the von Trapps would be a little upset to hear you don’t find them exciting,” he teased.

“Well. I don’t think I have to worry about them hearing, and since I’m a nobody, I doubt they’d care.”

“Everyone’s a somebody,” he argued.

“Interesting,” I said. I was surprised he’d come up with that. “So. Done much acting?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.” I’d really expected Nate Lopez to be a stuck-up movie star, but so far he seemed like a pretty decent guy.

“You two ready to run this again? Ainsley, try Lilly with more hurt if you can.” I nodded. It didn’t really seem to be going all that well, but what the hell, I was auditioning with Nate Lopez.

After reading the scene twice more and talking a little with the group at the table, I headed back to the room where my mom was. It was almost eleven and we stopped to get lunch before heading the hour home. They told me they’d tell me if I made it by October fourth, but October fourth came and went without any news. I was a little disappointed, but I pushed it out of my mind.