A cold Toronto winter in ’02. I was living in a loft on Lansdowne Street with a girlfriend who was pretty, Jewish, and knew in her heart (as I did) that it would never work in the long-term. Money? Not a chance. I was determined to make a living as an actor, which meant racking up credit card debt, borrowing money from my parents, and pestering my agent to follow up with production companies on past-due payments. My go-to for quick cash was pawning my XBox for 60 bucks, then going over to the Future Shop on Yonge St. and purchasing a brand new one for 200 on my store card. These are the actions of a crazy person, completely reckless about the future, and the only thing I’ll say in my defense is that I really didn’t believe I had one. Work was sporadic. Doubts were constant. And the only person I could talk to had never quite forgotten the shell-shocked look on her parents’ faces the first time she’d brought me over to the house. Amidst all this, I landed a gig to record additional dialogue (or ADR) for a Showtime series called Soul Food. I trekked to the studio on foot, not wanting to waste money on the subway.
By the time I arrived, I was frozen to the core. I sat on a couch in the waiting area, rubbing my hands and trying to loosen up my jaw. There were other actors about, but I didn’t speak to them. This was par for the course: most of the faces I saw in the waiting rooms before auditions were polished, carried their resumes and headshots in snazzy messenger bags, and spoke to each other like they were members of a secret society. Did you see so-and-so in such-and-such? Did you train with Acting-Guru-of-the-Moment? I loved the electricity of working with a really good actor in front of a camera, but I just had nothing in common with these people. So it was great to note, upon glancing about the room, that there was at least one other person who seemed to share the sentiment: a skinny black kid with a baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. He was half-reading a magazine and would look over towards the door leading to the recording studio every few minutes, impatient to get it over with. His face was familiar and after a few seconds it clicked: he played Jimmy Brooks, the disabled athlete on Degrassi: The Next Generation, a popular Canadian show about highschoolers. His name was Aubrey Graham. What few people knew at the time was that he was also developing skills as a rapper, honing a unique flow that would spark interest when his first mixtape, Room for Improvement, was released in ’06. Finally, a runner came to get us and, as a group of six or seven, we were led into the recording studio.
There was a large screen set up in the studio showing the specific parts of the episode we’d be adding dialogue to. “Dialogue” is a stretch: we were adding background conversation to a party, filler. Yet the director, a middle-aged woman with weirdly bright eyes was acting like she was David Lean filming the climax to Lawrence of Arabia, endlessly reshuffling us in front of podiums with microphones hanging overhead and inciting us to “have fun”. We were all professionals and did as we were told. But as the first hour passed and we neared the end of the second with little headway, it grew tiresome. We hopped up and down. We got into mock arguments that ended in mock resolutions. Someone shook a rattle for a few seconds. And still the director kept asking for more variation, more enthusiasm. And for the first time, I started seeing what a truly ridiculous profession acting was. This was what I’d trashed my credit score for? What I’d chosen in place of comfort and security down a hundred different career paths? So some lady with a tight face and flapping hands could jerk us around like puppets on a string? My face grew hot. My voice grew quieter as those around me went to ever greater extremes. And I wasn’t the only one.
Aubrey had some actual lines to deliver, so the director homed in on him. She commanded the rest of us to stop until he’d delivered a take that was up to her (seemingly incomprehensible) standards. “More energy” she kept repeating, but you could tell that she wasn’t really talking to him. She was talking to the lowered baseball cap. The carefully neutral set to his face. The bored and irritated look in his eyes that he didn’t bother to mask. As the session wore on you could see him retreat to a place where her words couldn’t touch him. Listening to the inner voice every artist who eventually finds success lends credence to above all others. The one that says, when the whole word seems against you and critics abound, “F#$* them. They just don’t get it.” It’s what enabled Aubrey to get through that session. It’s what enabled me, after finding a modest degree of success as an actor in Canada, to pull up stakes and move to New York City to reinvent myself as a writer. And, after being dropped from the show with the bulk of his Degrassi castmates in 2009, it’s what led Aubrey to release mixtape after mixtape, tour with Lil Wayne, and emerge as a bonafide superstar:
This post was written by
Anish Majumdar – who has written 15 posts on DashAmerican.com.
Anish Majumdar is the creator of DashAmerican.com, a site devoted to the cross-cultural experience. He is of Bengali descent, raised in Canada, and currently living with his Irish-German-Lithuanian wife in upstate NY. His work has received Independent Press Association Awards and a Pushcart Prize nomination. Contact him directly with any questions, career opportunities or just to say "howdy" using the "Send an Email" button below!
