Hello readers, and welcome to my blog. This journal will be chronicling the experiences of an aspiring actress. Let’s begin the epic with a tale of humiliation: my worst audition experience of all time. It can only go up from here.

One time, and I AM NOT KIDDING, I peed my pants before an audition. No, I wasn’t a little kid. This was 3 years ago.

I had a UTI: Urinary Tract Infection. A fun one, let me tell ya! When you have to pee, your bladder feels like it’s being poked with thousands of little needles. I would double over in pain sometimes. Once you pee it’s fine, but it’s the moments leading up to relief where you really feel like your insides are being eaten by acid. (FYI, this is not an std. It’s a bacterial infection. Just wanted to set that straight. Remember girls to pee after whoopie.)

So anyway, I’m on the subway going to an audition when it the abdominal needles start poking. I seriously don’t know if I can make it, and I start to cry. I RUN out of the train to the studios and head straight for the bathroom. I make it to the toilet seat and sigh in relief. Then I realized that in my pain and frenzy, I forgot to pull my pants down.

So now there is urine all over the back of my pants, from my ass down to my knees. These were light colored pants, and wet stain is VERY VISIBLE. I walk out of the bathroom like a zombie, with my ass towards the wall, feeling a sense of mortification that cannot even be described. I walk down towards the room where this audition is being held. I don’t know why I did, I don’t think I was even in control of my legs at this point. I stand next to the sign in sheet and consider my options. I decide that I’m going to walk out of there, call the director and tell him an emergency came up, so I couldn’t make it (which is TRUE!) Then the casting assistant walks out and says “Hi, you must be Jessica Jolly. Here are your sides, take as long as you need looking them over, then come inside.”

What the hell do I do now!! I read the sides and think to myself “Holy shit I’m actually going to do this.” I read them over (standing up of course, not sitting on the nice chair provided.) Then I walk in, very slowly, announce myself and give the speech. I gave the whole speech standing like a statue, being sure never to turn to the side. See, the pants had a seam inside, and the wet part was only on the back of me, behind the seams, so if I stand correctly, I’m safe. I do the speech VERY passionately (as I am feeling nothing but fear and emotion at this point.) Then he says “Great. Now give it like your favorite cartoon character.” WHAT THE HEY?!? “Cartoon character” means jumping around and flying across the room. I’m fucked! To buy time I say “wow, that’s hard, I have a lot of favorite cartoon characters,” they laugh and say “great, take your time.” I quickly decide to do Bubbles from the PowerPuff girls. I can do the voice easily, and for movement I’ll just thrust my right arm into the air a few times and lightly kick my leg back. They loved it, so I thought I was finished. But no, now I have to do a SCENE with two of the producers. They each stand on EITHER GODDAMNED SIDE OF ME! So I do the scene only turning my head towards them, taking a nice step back so neither of them see that I just PISSED MYSELF.

Finally it’s over. The director says thank you, and I walk out backwards till I’m in line with the door which is to the right, and then sideways till I’m out. I luckily had a bag with me I could sort of drape over the wet part.

The best part of the story: I got the part. The director called me and said “We loved your audition and we definitely want to use you, just not sure which part yet. But you’re in the show if you’ll accept it.” I’m still wondering what the lesson is here. Either that I work so well under pressure that I perform best under the most frightening circumstances possible, or that I am at my highest acting notch when I am most humble, feeling like a complete ass and having all my confidence knocked out (or pissed out) of me.

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