An Explanation of my Absence
Or why daring to dream is stupid
At 12:18 pm today an email landed in my inbox from Hatch, my agency, with the subject heading being a project I recently auditioned for. I opened it having not heard anything for a week and a half. Conditioned to accept that even a courtesy email denoting your failure is too much to ask for these days this had to be good news.
“Hi Ethan,
Hope you had a lovely weekend.”
Great start. But then the caveats started to fall like rain.
“Sadly”
“Different direction”
“Not gone your way this time”
“Next one”.
After staring at the wall for about three minutes I sent a short reply expressing mild disappointment and maybe some misplaced hope for whatever comes next. I stared at the wall for a bit longer and then reflected on how heart-breaking it is that I was actually grateful to be told no in an email rather than having to infer it as the silence extends into and beyond the proposed shooting dates.
Hi. I’m Ethan Lawrence and I have a Substack where I write about acting. And I bloody hate acting right now.
Annus Horribilis (Latin for Bad Year) (Not a Poorly Bum)
2023 fucking sucked. There’s your bold opening into the main thrust of the newsletter now that I’ve finished with the creative writing preamble.
2023 fucking sucked. After the industry blearily got itself back on it’s feet in very late 2020 after being decimated by the Novel Coronavirus, I was perfectly placed to take advantage with my enhanced role in series 2 of After Life getting positive eyes on me and projects needing a safe pair of hands to bring the funny. From December 2020 I was experiencing a career boom that I hadn’t had before. The back half of 2022 represented the best and most lucrative period of work I have ever done. I was ready to ride this momentum and finally become the type of actor I always wanted to be: busy.
2023 fucking sucked. With After Life finished, the Bad Education reunion drawing a line under further involvement with that series, two complete series of Horrible Histories banked and a mysterious new project that later released as Boat Story (available now on BBC iPlayer, go watch it, it’s brilliant) done and dusted, I was now without the relative safety net of a continuing series to fall back on. This was okay though. I had 11 years of resume to demonstrate all I was capable of and was ready to throw myself back into auditions. But they never came. The relative gold rush of the post Covid boom dried up. All the money held in reserve to make new stuff was gone. The cost of living crisis really began to bite (big thank you to the Tory party and the pin eyed gonk that leads them by the way. World leading creative industry worth billions in this country but you wouldn’t bloody know it, would you, the way they treat it!?) so belts started to tighten and with it the willingness to take a risk tightened to the point of asphyxiation. Brexit, that glacial leviathan made of frozen stupid, ensured that the additional red tape and cost of work visas required to work on the continent made British actors fall just beyond the uncomfortable side of hireable (big thank you to all the flag shagging cretins that pushed Brexit over the line too, by the way. Crippling an entire country with a golf club to the knee and robbing your children of all the benefits you enjoyed while screaming about how it’s worth it because you miss some nebulous 1950s Ladybird book version of Britain that never existed in the first place. Thanks for that.) Oh yeah, and there was a writer’s strike. And the SAGAFTRA strike. You may wonder why two creative strikes in another country would affect the working conditions of British creatives. Unfortunately, we’re so damn good we get a lot of productions wanting to shoot and work over here. We sort of rely on it in fact. I want to make it clear that I stand in full solidarity with my sibling across the pond and hope they keep fighting the good fight against the money men trying to squeeze the creatives out of making art. But I will say it wasn’t exactly great timing!
2023 fucking sucked. As the weeks turned into months I started to get a bit worried. The war chest was being kept topped up through a combination of live children’s telly and a few radio adverts here and there but the fabled big one was refusing to land. The occasional self tape was coming through but it was pretty evident scripted entertainment was on it’s arse. I took a kind of perverse comfort in the fact that the story seemed to be true amongst my peers as well. There was a significant drop off of breathless plugging and happy Instagram stories. “It’s not just me” I kept reminding myself. “It’ll turn around eventually”
2023 fucking sucked. Horrible Histories started dropping on content specific days throughout the year. I dutifully plugged it. Boat Story came out in November to great acclaim. I screamed about it from the rooftops. I called in favours from podcasters I knew (and some I didn’t) to get eyes on this show since not only did I firmly believe in the thing, it also represented the sort of opportunity I may never have again to climb another career rung ladder. Prime Time BBC1! That’s the dream for heaven’s sake!
2023 fucking sucked. Suddenly, the success paradox came into effect. It’s sometimes hard in the minds of the public to parse the length of time between something being shot and it ending up on the telly is (something I completely sympathise with because it can seem truly mad). With Horrible Histories dropping semi regularly and a big fat bingeable drama coming out into the winter season, it looked like I was doing a hell of a lot better than I was when in reality I hadn’t landed an acting job in 10 months.
2023 fucking sucked. “So what’s coming up next?” “What are you working on now?” “What’s next for you?” Well wishers who were genuinely excited to see if my work had borne fruit. They weren’t to know their words turned into little daggers when coming into contact with the sense of failure and worthlessness I was wearing like a cloak these days. “Haha, not sure at the moment, it’s a bit tough out there right now but I’m sure something will come along soon!” I would pantomime, the sound escaping my mouth but the meaning turning to ash on my tongue. What could I tell them? “I actually don’t have anything. I haven’t worked for the best part of a year and I’m having serious doubts about the long term viability of a career I fought so hard to build but can be so wildly inconsistent that I can go from one of the best years I’ve ever had to the worst.” No one wants to hear that.
No one wants to read that either. Which is a long way of explaining why I haven’t been posting on here all that much. Or at all. Anyway, that’s why.
What Was The Point of All This Then?
“Alright then Ethan, you handsome blowhard” you shriek, “Why come out of Substack retirement now?”
I don’t know to be honest with you. I just felt compelled to spill my guts in a place where everyone can see it, not for eliciting sympathy, but rather filling the soft brief of this Substack and my witterings elsewhere which is to be honest about the acting industry and how hard it can truly be.
A couple of weeks ago I had an in person audition, my first one in two years and my second in about four. I wrote before about how dehumanising and demoralising the self tape process can be so you can imagine I was very excited to be “good in the room” and really turn some heads. I assiduously learnt my lines, double, triple and quadruple checked them on the way into London and covered the script in reams of notes. This vile and eldritch shorthand includes ideas on syllable weighting, variations of specific line reads and potential ad libs (you won’t believe how much rehearsal goes into being spontaneously funny). I got in the room and for 25 minutes I had an absolute blast. We tried loads of different variants on mood, attitude and accent, working together to create a fun and dynamic tape that would be sure to wow the grown ups. The casting team were very engaged and took a real interest in what I had been up to. I later tweeted about how emotional it had all made me feel. and then I committed the cardinal sin. I let my good and happy feelings cloud my judgement about the reality of the work I do and did the worst possible thing you can do especially after coming off a run of bad form.
I started to believe.
I stopped thinking in terms of reality and started thinking in terms of having already gotten the part. I mean why not? I was perfect for the role. It was exactly in my wheelhouse and we had had such a good time in the room! I’m good in the room! (I need to stress at this point I bear no ill will towards the casting team here. They did a great job and were very complimentary in the rejection email. This wasn’t at all personal. These things never are).
Cut to 12:18 pm today and feeling grateful for the email telling me I’d not gotten the part. I had not wanted to write about acting because I felt like I had nothing to say. For what success I’ve had down the road, the further you get away from the febrile buzz of a set, the less real it seems and the sillier it becomes to call yourself a professional actor. That’s what it feels like at least. This rejection email arrived almost a year to the day since the last time I was acting on set, on a bleak blustery hill in Yorkshire, physically freezing my plums off but warm with the sense of success and achievement. I feel less warm these days. 2024 so far has been giving 2023 a run for it’s money and need I remind you that 2023 fucking sucked?
But as much as I’m kicking myself for allowing myself to believe I had gotten a part without any evidence I won’t stop daring to dream. This is a dream career after all. The subheading for this article is true to an extent. It is stupid. It’s really stupid to bet the farm on a job that seems to only consist of towering peaks and subterranean valleys. But I’ve come too far now to ever truly give up. I may find myself back delivering pizza again before long but I’ll have been a Large Actor. I always will be a Large Actor.
The last line of the email from my agency read “So sorry it’s not better news, but the next one will be yours, I’m sure"!”
Fucking bring on the next one.
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Lastly, I would love to hear your thoughts on what I’ve talked about today. Feel free to leave a comment.
Bye. Bye now.
A wonderfully written piece Ethan, I think a lot of people (myself included) don't understand the complexity that comes with acting. It's a misconception that every actor becomes a gazillionaire if they've been on TV and they live a high life through rose tinted glasses every day. I love how much this piece humanised you even more & scratches the surface on what I can only guess is an often callous and hard wearing industry. Keep going Ethan!
Good read, sad but hopeful read. Boat Story was excellent and you were terrific in it. That alone should lead to bigger and better opportunities. Good luck, looking forward to where the future takes you!