The Russians are coming

What I Did.

A few weeks ago a friend sent me an Open Casting Call for extras. The film being Anna Karenina. I have gone on castings in the past for adverts and theatre parts but never for a movie, so my friend and I decided to go. Even if we didn't get cast, we thought, the experience would be fun.

I started to get a little more excited when I googled the film and realised that this version of Anna Karenina was to be a big budget affair with big stars. Keira Knightly (she of the horsey underbite and porcelain skin) is cast as Anna and Jude Law as her long suffering husband Karenin. Aaron Johnson (young, handsome and scandelously married to old (journalist speak for 42!) artist Sam Taylor Wood) is to play the dashing Vronsky! Joe Wright directs and Tom Stoppard is writing the screenplay, so what I thought might be a small TV adaption, is actually quite a big deal.

I decided to get there early and woke up at 6:30 to get there for 8:30 with the casting beginning at 9:30. There were already about 60 people in the queue. I should rephrase that... in Britain and most of Western Europe, people know what a queue is and follow general queue etiquette. This was a casting for an adaption of a Tolstoy novel, therefore Russian, therefore a lot of Russians and Eastern Europeans had turned up. Russians and Eastern Europeans do not know how to queue. The first 60 of us happened to be British (obviously... early, well prepared with our coffee's and newspapers, in it for the long haul). We stood behind each other as we approached, the line slowly bending from the church entrance down the right hand side of the Church. At 9:30, the Russians began to arrive, took one look at this neat long queue and joined it at a right-angle. They joined at the bend in the line about 2 feet from the entrance! There were some very quiet (British after all!) cries of disgust and outrage and lots of harrumphing BUT we stayed silent and did nothing! I laughed as this old chap behind me said "Bloody Russians, you can't trust them!"

After about 10 minutes, the doors opened and we filed in. A woman came to the front of the queue and asked if all the professional musicians and classically trained singers could come forward. So suddenly a surge of people came forward. My early start became redundant pretty fast BUT it was also obvious that half the people surging to the front were not what they said they were, they were just queue jumping, again! The poor casting director kept asking "are you trained?" as each one came to the front and there was lots of shrugging and frowning as she realised many didn't speak much English. "I hope you're all telling the truth" she said half heartedly, laughing nervously "I don't want there to be any in-queue fights". Too late for that love!

3 hours later I was at the front of the queue, ready to meet Joe Wright himself. This is quite unusual... a Big Wig director spending time with the extras. I also think I was one of the only people to know it was him, only because I had googled him! I think if you lined up half the famous directors in front of you, you wouldn't recognise them. So there I was, in the chair next to Mr. Wright with 7 others. He turned to me first and said "right, tell me your name, where you're from and how you heard about today". I said "My name is Juliet. I'm originally from Hampshire but live in London and I heard about today from a friend at the BBC". Joe looked slightly puzzled, wrote my name next to my number in his notebook and sort of stuttered a "right, well, thanks, um, yup, thanks, ok and next". Blimey, not quite the reaction I expected. However, it became increasingly clear as he went around the room that I was the only Brit in my group. There were Polish Doctors, Russian writers, Czech singers... even a microbiologist from the Ukraine. Joe was fascinated with all of them, asking them about their countries', their hobbies and was furiously scribbling notes the whole time. Entranced he was. I thought, bugger this, and so as we left the room, I turned to him and said "It was a pleasure to meet you. You only have another 1000 or so to see" and giggled. I know, I know, I have no modesty, blatantly sucking up to the director but I thought best say something else as I was sooooooo unimportant! We then went to have our measurements taken and the costume woman said "Oh, you're English." Oh no. She then explained to me that the casting call was supposed to have gone out to Russian and Eastern Europeans only. Oh no, no wonder the director thought it a bit odd that I was Juliet from Hampshire. He was looking for eastern bloc, not home counties!! 

So, I'm not so sure I'll get a part but it was an amazing experience anyway, seeing the process and meeting a famous director. My only two saving graces are that one woman approached me speaking Russian so she must have thought I looked like one of them; the other is that most of the women there were young, tall, thin and beautiful. They must need an older, fatter average one, especially to bulk out the crowd scenes!!

Comments

Anonymous said…
I'll look out for you when the film comes out. After all, didn't the English travel to Russia in those days? xH

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