New Year's In November

Last week I was booked by the largest casting company in New York. It's my second job from them in two years. I was "New Years Eve Reveler #45" in an upcoming movie. The scene is set in Times Square at next year’s New Year. It was filmed in the real Times Square, and the producers of the movie had it blocked off for a night. The set crew decorated it like it was New Year’s Eve, then they blew a mountain of confetti on me and 200 other extras. It was even more fun than the real New Year's - because I was getting paid union overtime to be there.

There were real tourists gathered around watching us receive our props from a truck on ninth avenue. This was a block away from the set, so no one could see the cameras. They thought we were a bunch of people on our way to a fancy party, and that the truck was giving out free party supplies.

We were handed fake cocktails in those disposable plastic champagne flutes. They had even made “2026” glasses because the movie takes place next year.

A drunk man walked by as the prop department was handing out “Happy New Year” hats, and someone on the crew accidentally handed him a hat. Eventually the crew realized that he was an authentic “Times Square” type, and not an actor. But - too late! He refused to give back the hat, and wandered off towards tenth avenue.

I like to imagine that this drunk guy woke up the next morning wearing a New Year’s hat, and thought he’d been on a six week bender.

The job offer came in at 3:00 in the afternoon, with a call time of 8:30 that night. I just happened to be sitting at home with nothing to do, so I had enough time to get dressed up for the fictional celebration, then report to Times Square. If I had been otherwise occupied for a couple of hours, I would have had to turn down the job.

This sort of last-minute job offer happens a lot lately. Especially from this casting company. I was beginning to suspect that they were sending me last-minute job offers because they hoped I would not be able to do them. One of these came in at 4:30 in the morning, for a shoot happening 90 minutes later.

In 2022 I accused them of discriminating against transgender actresses, and they responded by not booking me at all in 2023. In December of 2023 I filed a complaint about blacklisting. They booked me once in January of 2024, then I didn't get another job until last week.

I try to be optimistic, and I hope that is just a series of astounding coincidences, but I can't shake the sense that this casting company is sending me job offers in the middle of the night, hoping I will have to turn down the job.

Then their lawyer can argue, "Your Honor, my client sent Ms. Battersby a dozen job offers, but she had the audacity to be asleep at 4:30 in the morning! I move that this case be immediately dismissed!"

The same day that I got the New Year’s Eve job, I had emailed a couple of high-ranking people in Screen Actors Guild at a little after 2:00. Less than an hour later I was offered this gig. It took six hours between my emails to SAG, and me walking onto the set.

So far, no one from SAG has said that they intervened. I can only speculate that someone did call the casting company. And I have to be optimistic that Screen Actors Guild was intervening on MY behalf (For All I know they could have been giving the casting company a "Heads up" that I'm forcing SAG to get involved).

If that didn't happen... Well, it seems like an unfathomable coincidence that I was booked for this job within minutes of my emails to SAG. Like I said, I'm no mathematician (And I've never played one on TV), so if anyone reading this really IS a mathematician, please run these numbers for me.

That's two days of work in two years, and the casting company, "Capital Casting" insists that my workload is "On par" with other actors. Again, I'm not a mathematician, but I think that would mean no one worked at all in 2023?

At last week's shoot, while I was in holding with other 200 actors, one of them mentioned that she had been booked the previous day on another project by Capital Casting. So she had received as much work in two days as I had in two years. Again, I'm no mathematician, but it seems like she'd been booked 365 times as often as me by this casting company (Get out your sliderules and doublecheck those figures for me).

Share

Leave a comment