I drove around the studio at least 3 times, possibly 4. Before that, I sat in a nearby coffee shop twiddling my thumbs for an hour. I had given myself ample time, apparently too much, to make the drive from Atlanta to Wilmington, NC. During that solo car trip waves of nervous energy washed over my person in sporadic intervals. On a superficial level I knew I had nothing to be nervous about, at least not today. Today was the easy part. 

During the drive, I envisioned how everything would unfold. I saw myself pulling up to the gate of Screen Gems Studios and giving a no-nonsense security guard my license. Upon verifying my identity, the guard would soften his demeaner and call for someone over a walkie-talkie. I imagined a cheerful Production Assistant would drive up in a golf cart, take me by the hand, and guide me to wherever it was that I needed to be, all while talking in low tones and offering me juice boxes. At least, I prayed that’s how it would unfold as I continued to circle the place like a stalker. 

There’s no reason to be nervous, I kept telling myself over and over — during the drive, in the coffee shop, circling the studio. Today wasn’t the scary part. Today was just a costume fitting and some paperwork, yet my heart mistook it for my Broadway debut or the Oscars. Today shouldn’t be scary, at least not compared to tomorrow. Tomorrow would be my first day on set, as an actor, with multiple scenes and lots of dialogue, in a major television show. My jitters and heart palpitations for today’s costume fitting was a bad omen for what the jitters and heart palpitations would be like in 24 hours. Just breathe. 

For an average person, the drive from Atlanta to Wilmington takes 6 hours and covers beautiful Carolina terrain (both North and South). However, the journey for me took closer 9 years and spanned thousands of miles from one end of the country to the other. I was 27 years old when I booked that job, my first “real” on-camera gig. Prior to that I did some dicey student films and a web series (where I paid them).

For 9 years I worked on stage, hunted for agents, participated in showcases, spend huge sums of money on acting classes, moved to Los Angeles, attended as many workshops as possible, sold my soul for unpaid internships, went on countless auditions, got a theatre degree, moved back to Atlanta, got improv training, and shelled out money for headshots. I finally did it, though. I finally booked a job. My career had officially started. I had the proof. 

When I was 18 and fresh out of high school, I moved to Chicago to start my life as a serious actor. At that time if someone had told me it’ll be another decade before I booked my first job, I would have punched them in the face. For the young, no timeline is realistic and patience has no context. I would have scoffed at the mere suggestion that 9 years of investment was needed in order to see any pay off. That certainly wasn’t in the brochure that I read.

I remember, clear as day, sitting on the floor outside the Actors Equity Association offices in downtown Chicago. It was my very first audition in the Windy City and I was nervous to the point of vomiting. My first few weeks as a professional actor had already proven eye opening. As it turns out, merely surviving as an “independent adult” is a full-time job onto itself. Navigating that enormous city, settling into an apartment, and paying bills for the first time dominated my energy and schedule. So far, “being an actor” looked a lot like “being a boring grown up.” 

Yet there I was, sitting on the floor of a fluorescently lit hallway about to audition for Wicked. The musical was in the middle of a 4-year residency at the Oriental Theater. It was big leagues and I thought I was big leagues material. I would soon find out otherwise.  

I sat on that floor for the better part of 8 hours. Any time a wave of nerves hit me, I’d reach down and feel the smooth black leather of the Marc Jacobs messenger bag beside me, a high school graduation present from my parents. Fortunately, I knew enough about open casting calls to have gotten myself to the Equity offices painfully early that morning, the sun barely up yet. It felt like an accomplishment to get my name so high up on the list. From there all I could do was wait and look over my sheet music.

From my research, I knew that union actors got priority in a casting call such as this. After union members come Equity candidates. They’re not officially in the union but they get some privileges. The casting directors would see non-union members once all union and Equity candidates auditioned. It shouldn’t be a problem, I thought, because I got my name so high up on the list.

What I didn’t realize was that union members could roll up to the casting call at any point and be seen. One by one, card-carrying union actors walked into the office, exuding a cool confidence that my 18-year-old self severely lacked, and put their names on a different list at the front desk. After a few brief moments, they were whisked into the audition room to sing their 12 bars of music and, if asked, perform their 1-minute prepared monologue. The resentment of the non-union riffraff grew as the hours ticked by. I cursed myself for not packing a sandwich. 

The scene around me was a case study in the spectrum of bizarre human behavior. The non-union hallway of riffraff was filled with guys humming loudly, promoting themselves to other unemployed actors, rehearsing lines to a wall, doing yoga, and sleeping. It looked like a refugee camp for the clueless and desperate. As I looked around, I thought, “Holy shit, am I one of them?” 

By mid-afternoon, I was nearly comatose. An assistant came out to the waiting room with an announcement. The riffraff all perked up, like well-trained golden retrievers. The gloomy assistant said that casting was running out of time for the day and they’ll do a “type-out” for non-union actors. Some riffraff around me audibly groaned. I had no idea what was going on, but I certainly wasn’t about to display my ignorance by asking questions. Gloomy Assistant told us to put our headshots in an orderly pile. One by one we stacked our glossy 8x10s on a table. As I did this, I looked around to see if anyone was as confused as me. The assistant retreated into the audition room with a few hundred headshots and thousands of musical theatre dreams in her hands. 

I settled back onto my spot on the floor, holding tightly to my Marc Jacobs. After a few minutes, the door opened and the assistant reemerged. “Casting would like to see the following people,” she began. My heart started pounding. My nerves flared up again. I waited, time frozen in suspension. 

She called out 4 names. 

Four. 

Mine was not one of them. 

“Everyone else, thank you for coming down today. Please take your headshots with you on your way out. And just a reminder, we don’t validate parking.” And as quickly as she swooped into the waiting room, the assistant was gone again.

In a complete daze, I grabbed my headshot out of the slush pile and shoved it back into my bag. A few moments later I was staring out the window on the 22 Uptown bus watching the sun set behind a Chicago skyline. Hunger stabbed at my guts and the stress of the day made my muscles hurt. What in the hell just happened? Are they allowed to do this? Did I just spend my entire day on the floor like a cruise ship stowaway only to be sent home without singing a single note? What was all that for? Is this what being an actor is like? 

The vision of my first type-out, though infuriating, brought a smirk across my face some 9 years later. The road from that moment in downtown Chicago to circling the Screen Gems lot in Wilmington, NC was decidedly less road-like and more spiderweb-like. Cyclical moments, starts and stops, detours, successes, highs and lows, close calls, complete abandonment, and extreme focus all worked in strange conjunction. Every single piece of that 9-year-thousands-of-miles-multi-city-spiderweb-of-chaos led me precisely to the moment when I rolled down my car window, looked a warm security guard in the face and said, with as much cool confidence as I could muster, “Hi, my name is Patrick. I’m an actor.” 

Check out this week’s photo contributors:

Cameron Casey

Tim Mossholder

Alex Powell