Scrappy Little Nobody (5 page)

When my callback went well, I was asked to come in again the next day. This put a small wrinkle in our plan since my brother and I only had the clothes on our backs and a bunch of dead batteries, and by the way, we needed to get back to Port Authority by four p.m. or we would miss our connecting bus in Boston. Naturally, we told them it would be no problem and we were looking forward to coming in again the next day! My
parents had given us about forty dollars, so they faxed a copy of their credit card to a squalid hotel and convinced the hotel manager that although their children were checking in now, they themselves would
of course
be along later that day; what kind of children would be staying in a hotel room in New York City alone?

The next morning, against our parents’ explicit orders, we went out in search of the Village—specifically, Bleecker and MacDougal. Our dad had talked about that corner with affection and awe, and we could see why. Each corner of the intersection had a café that looked like something we’d only seen in movies. My dad probably meant, like, the music scene in the sixties, but we shared a plate of pancakes and figured life would never get better than this. None of those cafés are there anymore, and I don’t want to sound like one of those people who complains, “Oh, New York has changed so much, it isn’t what it used to be,” except that that’s a LIE. I have ALWAYS wanted to be one of those people, and now I am!

After our adventure, we went to my second callback. I could tell it was going well, because they were keeping me in the room for a long time. This is the only metric I have; I black out in auditions, even to this day. As my brother and I left, an assistant jogged after us. She caught up to us at the elevator and said, “You’re doing great, and we want to bring you back again tomorrow”—she swallowed and lowered her voice—“but we were wondering if you had anything else to wear? Maybe we could see you in some nicer shoes or something?”

Instead of saying, “No, bitch, I came down here on a bus and
I washed my socks and underwear in a hotel sink this morning,” we assured her that we were all over it, no problem, message received. I had no idea what they were looking for, but I knew that no matter what a casting director said, you were supposed to agree and figure it out later. It was dark out when we left the casting office, so we decided to wake up early the next day to buy me some respectable shoes with what was left of our cash.

The next morning we asked the receptionist at the hotel where to find the nearest Payless. At this point in our program, I’d like to gently remind anyone who thought that was a punch line to check yourself. Finding respectable shoes for girls at Payless is perfectly normal for lots of families. I mention it by name in this story because it makes me feel sentimental, not because it’s supposed to be ironic. To the people reading this thinking,
We already knew it was normal, don’t be so preachy
, I apologize; I have been around rich people too long and it has made me defensive.

It took almost all morning and into the afternoon to find a pair of shoes that looked dressy but left us with enough cash to get McDonald’s before we caught the bus home. Eventually, we found a pair of white strappy sandals that were a size too big, but they were on sale, so they were coming with me! I slipped them on with my wide-leg jeans and my ratty sweater and thought,
I’ve done it! I look like a rich girl!
I still looked like a delinquent who didn’t know how to brush her hair, but now I had white shoes.

I went to my final audition. I blacked out. We caught the bus home.

My brother and I kept repeating that I shouldn’t get too excited. I shouldn’t count my chickens. I was twelve, but I’d experienced enough rejection that I had a system in place for managing my expectations. Somewhere around Hartford, we turned on the “for emergencies” phone. I had a voice mail saying I got the job. We celebrated for however long it takes a busload of people to wake up and scream at you.

I
lost a Tony Award to Broadway legend Audra McDonald when I was twelve, so I’ve been a bitter bitch since before my first period. I’m very proud to have lost that Tony to Ms. McDonald. She is one of the finest talents in the theater world and genuine Broadway royalty. I also feel that if I had
won
and made a televised speech at age twelve, the delayed embarrassment would have been so severe, I’d currently be a Howard Hughes–style shut-in, but without the money for the mansion or the planes or the legion of servants to take away bottles of my urine.

Starting in theater gave me a basic work ethic that I may not have gotten if I started in film and television. I worked six days a week, eight shows a week (two shows on Wednesdays and Saturdays, Mondays off). It wasn’t so much the schedule—I worked in accordance with child labor laws—it was that I was held accountable for my work.

Once, during rehearsals, our director was playing with the shape of a musical number that involved most of the cast—which jokes should stay, where they should go, etc. He decided to try reinstituting a small joke I’d had in a previous draft, and
we started the number again from the top. I lost where we were in the music and I opened my mouth to say the line, a measure too late. He was already shaking his head and signaling the pianist to stop.

“Anna just lost a line. Let’s go back to how it was before and start again.”

Okay. Those are the rules and I will operate within them from now on. I’ll just double my memorization efforts, pretend I’m not crying, and see you all again tomorrow! Beyond tutoring breaks every three hours, I didn’t get special treatment.

When I booked
High Society
, it was unclear how long I would be in New York. My contract was for six months, but shows can go under after a few weeks of poor ticket sales. Since my dad was a substitute teacher at the time, he was able to move to New York with me, and my mother stayed in Maine with my brother.

We rented an apartment in Yonkers (“we” is accurate; he signed the rental agreement, but I was the one who paid for it) and commuted into the city each day. Yonkers was not very glamorous, but it was cheaper and I was being paid the union minimum. When you are from Maine and you get a job on Broadway, you take what they offer. Between my accountant mother and my former-banker father, I’m sure a budget was worked out, but by the time the show was in tech rehearsals, it was clear to my dad that it was not manageable.

I have no idea if Dad had been planning to say something, but one day when he was dropping me off at rehearsals, the producer walked past us and casually asked, “How are things, Will?”

“Well, Michael, not good.” My dad is plainspoken. It’s a
wonderful quality that I feel lucky to have inherited and that has gotten me in trouble more times than I can count.

“When my daughter is grown, she can make the decision to starve for her art. She can live in a one-bedroom apartment with five people and work a second job during the day, but we aren’t going to be able to make this work any longer, and I’m going to take her home unless we figure something out.”

The ultimate negotiation tactic? Be willing to walk away. I certainly wasn’t willing, but my dad was, and as he said, I wasn’t grown and it wasn’t my decision.

The producers agreed to give me a weekly per diem, and that kept us afloat while we were in New York. (When the show closed I had nothing left over, but I won the final “five-dollar Friday” draw and went home with around $250 in cash. Each bill had the name of a cast or crew member written on it, and I cherished them. I vowed never to spend them. When I got to high school, I started dipping into my stash to chip in whenever someone’s older sister would buy us booze until all the bills were gone. I know. It’s all so
Little Girl Lost
.)

It wasn’t a financial win, but the experience was incredible. The show was based on the movie musical
High Society
with Grace Kelly, which was based on the movie (and stage play)
The Philadelphia Story
with Katharine Hepburn. The plot centers on a woman who is about to marry the wrong man and the complications that arise the weekend before her wedding. I played the woman’s little sister. I had a bunch of solid lines, a funny musical number, and a great piece of physical comedy in the second act that only once drew blood mid-performance.

The cast and crew were sweet beyond words. They were encouraging and serious and they believed in me. They told me to stay focused on dance lessons, despite my apparent lack of aptitude; held half-serious competitions for crying on cue; and recommended movies and books that they felt “smart young women” should know. Lisa Banes, who played my mother, would lightly bounce along to the music before our entrance and whisper in an old-timey voice, “Let’s go do a great big Broadway show.” How great is that?!

They treated me like I was family and wanted to make sure that my real family was okay under the stress of one parent moving to New York. Once a month my dad and I would drive home to
Maine after the Sunday matinee and make it back in time for the Tuesday night show. On those days the entire cast would speed up their dialogue and cut off every laugh a moment too soon so that I could beat traffic. Only one cast member indulged in languid pauses during those performances, and our conductor, Paul Gemignani, would punish her by radically speeding up the tempo of her songs.

One of my closest friends asked me recently if I had a favorite memory from my career. I do, but it’s not my own. It’s one of those stories I was told so often that I can picture it as clearly as if I were there. The only reason I’m certain I wasn’t is because I was onstage at the time.

The first time my mom came to visit, my dad snuck her into the alley just outside the stage door and told her to listen.

“They’re almost done. That’s the curtain call music.” He leaned in a little closer to the door and held up a finger. They listened quietly. Suddenly the applause swelled.

“That’s for her.”

My mom burst into tears.

I love this story. Luckily, most of the stuff that made my mom proud didn’t revolve around me performing.

I hit the jackpot. I didn’t have to go to school (my dad was tutoring me) and I got to run around New York City all day. Sometimes I was lonely. I met most of the other kids who were in shows at the time, but as I said, child actors are crazy, and the conversations often looked like this:

“Anna Kendrick is a great name. Is that a stage name or your real name?”

“It’s my real name.”

“You got a good one. Good syllabic symmetry.”

I’d try to catch my dad’s eye and find some recognition that this was not normal preadolescent behavior.

I did make a few friends. My closest friend was Nora, an understudy in
The Sound of Music
.
The Sound of Music
kids were intimidating. They seemed like this sexy, co-ed gang (proving once again that even the dorkiest subcultures have their rock stars). Nora was the only thing I had that resembled normal preteen life. We had sleepovers and went window shopping, we sang along to pop music and show tunes, and each of us tried to convince the other that
she
was the pretty one.

Even though I was friends with Nora, we didn’t see each other all the time, and I had no other good friends. Sometimes working and commuting didn’t feel as easy as it did other days. I knew the show like the back of my hand, but I still had to do it every night.

Sometimes I would get home after a show and I couldn’t sleep. I’d sneak into the living room and watch TV until the sun came up. Then I’d sleep all day and dread going to work. I’d dread the drive from Yonkers. I’d dread putting on my costume. I’d dread warming up. I’d dread my entrance. I’d dread my first line. I’d dread my song. I’d dread the drive home.

I was so happy to be doing this incredible thing, but at this point, dear reader, I’d like to use my one “What do you want from me, I was twelve years old, tired and lonely and working the kind of job that full-grown adults do” card.

I needed a break. Just a little one. Anxiety typically only becomes unmanageable for me when I feel I have no choice, when
I feel trapped. I just needed a break in routine so I could shake out the dread.

One day, when we were halfway through the first act, I reached my limit. I needed to take a break RIGHT NOW. Don’t get too excited; this isn’t a story about me bailing on a Broadway show mid-performance. I told my dad that I didn’t want to do the show the next night. He knew I wouldn’t be asking if I wasn’t serious and kind of desperate. At intermission, we went to speak to the stage manager . . . no, it was a producer, maybe . . . I remember we were under the stage, but who the hell was in charge of that? Who did you talk to about taking a night off and why the hell was their office under the stage?
^I
At any rate, my dad told the appropriate woman that I was going to stay home and rest the following night.

“Well, tomorrow night is tough.” She winced. “It would be a lot easier for everyone if you took off a night next week.”