EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Boy Meets World‘s Danielle Fishel Describes Her “Worst Audition Ever”. Plus: Step by Step Star Christine Lakin Talks About the Genesis of the Show
Every actor has one—or 12—horrible audition experiences, and Step by Step's Christine Lakin decided to create a show and a blog around the idea. Find out how "Worst Audition Ever" was born, and check out our exclusive video of Danielle Fishel's (aka Topanga from Boy Meets World) hilarious and mortifying story about auditioning for a horror movie. By Danielle TurchianoNow that you’ve enjoyed that hilarious clip of Danielle Fishel’s worst audition ever, check out the story below of how the blog and the live show came about in our exclusive interview with creator Christine Lakin (that’s Al Lambert of Step by Step to you!).
Snakkle: So many of your fans know you from Step by Step, but these days you’re working a bit behind-the-scenes as a producer on Worst Audition Ever. How did you come up with the idea?
Christine Lakin: I think it’s just so funny [because] as an artist you have an experience that’s really unlike anybody else’s in America. You consistently go out for job interviews that you don’t get. You are asked to do sometimes ridiculous and often unbelievable things in the name of art—art, if you can call it that. And as actors, we’re pleasers. We so badly want the job we put ourselves in these positions, and we just go about it…It’s sort of this idea that you can share in the mutual humiliation, and [at a friend’s birthday dinner] we were sort of just telling war stories and laughing, and I looked at my friend and producing partner Corri English, and I just said ‘This is funny.’ And she said ‘This should be a show.’
Snakkle: It certainly sounds like The Mortified Sessions for the Hollywood crowd!
Lakin: You don’t have to be an actor—you don’t have to be in this business—to fully get it. Whether it’s a job interview or getting up in front of the class or giving a toast at a wedding, we’ve all felt that sort of shame or humiliation of ‘Oh God, this did not go over the way I wanted it to.’ And we get other people from other sides of the industry, too. We’ve had directors; we’ve had choreographers, a stage manager, a Crafts Service person to get other sides of the business…I think what’s kind of fun and unique about it is people are able to see, especially if you get a celebrity story in there, not everybody started out where you see them today. We’ve all had a bad day, and we’re going to tell you about some of the worst in this humorous—collaborative environment.
Snakkle: Are you calling upon any old co-stars for your upcoming shows?
Lakin: I am definitely going to have to ask Mr. Duffy, of course! He did a cameo in my web series that I wrote that’s coming out in my web series on Hulu in June. It’s called Lovin’ Lakin, and it’s sort of a spoof—it’s about a girl named Christine Lakin portrayed by me, Christine Lakin, and she’s a former child actor who is just now making her comeback. She’s got this documentary crew following her around, showing others how to do it, but she really has no f***ing idea how to do it…The Patrick Duffy episode is one of my favorites because the whole thing is that my character really thinks she is his daughter, and he’s like ‘Christine, will you go away? I am not your father.’ He’s so fun to work with, and he’s definitely been one of my favorite people from that part of my life.
Snakkle: Obviously the formal audition for the producers would be considered a success since you walked away with the part, but what was one of your terrible audition stories that maybe you’ve shared with the Worst Audition Ever live show?
Lakin: You know what’s so funny is I’ve still never gotten on stage to tell it! [Laughs] I think I’ve literally had so many that I block them out or I don’t even register at the time that it was a ridiculous thing that happened in the room. I think it’s the reason why…I’ve been able to continue on so long in this business. But I do have one now, and I remembered it about two weeks ago, and I got so excited! It’s more ridiculous and odd than anything. It starts out where I had a friend who was getting married…and she had this bachelorette party, so we all got in a limo, and I made Jello shots, and we went to the Hollywood Men, and we’re all there watching these Chippendale guys…And so, behind the Chippendale guys, they show montages of them, and this one guy who was clearly the star of the show…behind him is this film playing of him. Most of the time, it’s just the dudes trying to look sexy and oiled up, but this guy is playing his actor reel. I can tell there’s one scene of him from CSI and then another from a soap opera, and I keep thinking ‘Does he think someone’s going to come to the show and go ‘You know what? You should be in my pilot!’ It was hilarious…Cut to two months later, I’m at a commercial audition, and I get paired up with this guy who wants to plan the audition, which is the worst thing for me to do. I’m an improv actor; I don’t like to plan it– so I’m like ‘Okay’ and I begrudgingly plan it with him. We go in, and he was fine, but we come out, and he’s talking me up, and he goes ‘You know, I’ve been producing a lot of my own things these days, and you’d be great for this film.’ He’s just giving me the whole Hollywood you know…and he gives me his card with his headshot on it, and I’m looking at him, and I’m like ‘How the hell do I know this guy?’ He walks away, I get in my car, and I’m like ‘Holy sh*t, it’s Chippendales!’ I called my friend from the bachelorette party and was like ‘You’ll never believe it.’ I have to find that card because literally we passed it back and forth; we’d give it to each other as a gift for each other’s birthday; it was an on-going joke for years. It was extremely cheesy and awesome!
Snakkle: We mentioned Mortified a minute ago, so do you have any plans to take Worst Audition Ever to television, as well?
Lakin: I think the reason this show thrives so well is the live nature of revealing, and the audience knows inherently by the title that it’s not going to go well! So there are so many times when someone is telling a story, and it’s going so well, you’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop. So when it finally does, the audience has great satisfaction…[But] I think we came up with a really good idea for [TV], so we’re sort of in process right now of putting that pitch together and gathering a couple of high profile people who’d want to come and tell their stories for the network executives. So clearly that is the plan, but I love being able to do the live shows…and from the live shows put little clips together to go viral to have them for people who can’t get to L.A. to see the show. They can live vicariously through [the clips]!
Worst Audition Ever, which is produced by Lakin, Alec Ledd, Corri English and Daniel A. Miles, will be performing its next live-show in Los Angeles on February 17th 2012 (but Lakin will be updating the accompanying blog with new clips shortly after, as well).
Check out exclusive photos from Christine’s career as a ’90s sitcom and film star, and read all about how she snagged the part of Al Lambert on Step by Step.