28 Days Later

It’s been 28 days since I rocked up to the BBC in White City for a music video audition with a flimsy ‘office worker turns to zombie’ storyline. I knew this was going to become another classic anecdote in the ongoing degradation and humiliation that is my acting career.

Whilst waiting patiently in the foyer I tried desperately to avoid the other actresses’ sheepish glances but was soon collared by a fellow zombie hopeful, ‘have you told your agent about this audition?’ she asked ‘nope, nope I thought I would save that little delight for the DVD,’ I replied.

Following my standard audition drill of diligent preparation/passing the time at work between stapling assignments, I You Tubed ‘zombie’, took some mental notes and then had a go in the toilet.

Having successfully prepared myself for a short and enthused rendition of a dead woman gurning and writhing, hungry for flesh, I was feeling confident. That was until I was there and the director said ‘if you want to go to the back of the room, turn into a zombie and imagine you are crawling under your desk towards us and the camera through a series of electrical wires and office detritus…just get going and we’ll stop you when we are ready. Ok? Right. Camera, action’.

So, as requested, I made my transformation to writhing, twitching dead thing and crawled slowly forward toward the feet of the director, producer and cameraman.

As their feet loomed on the horizon I continued my zombie advance toward their neatly tied shoelaces, all the while avoiding the imaginary spectrum of wires and computer cabling underneath the imaginary desk, using my imaginary claw hands to move them away from my imaginary death-struck gurning, drooling, blood-stained face.

Once I got to within a few feet of their feet it occurred to me they weren’t going to stop me. I panicked and performed a sort of circular writhing turn to bide my time before the director would inevitably save me with a ‘thanks Maia that’s great,’ but no such lifeline was offered and I was left floundering around at their shoelaces, gurn-waiting. I think anyone would agree that gurn-waiting is indeed the most humiliating of all waiting mediums.

Did they expect me to gnaw on their toes? Did they expect me to commit theatrical blasphemy and drool on the BBC’s pristine carpet? I imagined the footage of this audition appearing on a new BBC show Gullible Actors do Anything for Fame but decided that’d more likely be an ITV project.

At that point I came to my senses. I jumped up, dropped the zombie, patted my thighs panto style and said ‘righty ho that’s your lot’. Needless to say I didn’t get that audition and am still waiting for the footage to appear on You Tube.

Image by Redvers courtesy of Flickr