As I read about Arlene Dickinson’s first audition
for Dragon’s Den in her book Persuasion, I am reminded that I too,
had a similar opportunity for fame and fortune on television, but the outcome
was quite different.
I’d been gaining a name as a parenting expert – my kids can
chuckle at that one – and was asked if I would like to host a parenting TV show
that was to be aired in the afternoon. I got invited for an interview which I naively
thought would just be your standard question-answer type meeting. Little did I know that this would be an
actual audition.
For a start the “interview” was right across Toronto and a
fair drive for me, which for those of you who know my fear of driving in the
city, was a big deal. So I didn’t
exactly arrive all relaxed and raring to go, more frazzled and exhausted by the
energy it took to just get there.
Immediately I was ushered into a studio where I was
presented with a script that I was expected to learn and spew out when my turn
came. As I looked around, it was like
Barbie goes for an audition. I was
surrounded by these young things, actresses, all ready to strut their stuff and
for whom the line-learning was a breeze.
Even back then my short-term memory was a challenge.
Anyway, getting more nervous by the minute, it was soon my
turn, and that was when the fun began. I
can’t remember the actual case scenario that we were to talk about in the
taping but the script was lame, to say the least, and not at all what a mom
would do or say.
So being the “expert” I was supposed to be, I felt compelled
to tell them that. In the end they let
me be taped with my own script of how I thought it should be.
Did I get the “role”?
No.
Did I get asked to rewrite the script? No.
By this point, I was past caring, after all I had the drive
home to worry about. I had already
decided that I was not destined for a life under the bright lights, and with
menopause just around the corner, maybe that was just as well. I would have been
too hot to handle.
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