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How do actors cope with being unemployed?
FRANK: The most exciting time can be how you use the time in-between jobs. Because if you just use it to sit and stare at the phone, the next time you come back to acting you come back with a little less of your shine.
But if you use your time between jobs to fill your life with complications — with family, with a lover, with animals, with a sport — when you come back to the work, the work is going to be richer because you've led a life. Look, waiting is part of this profession. It's one of the biggest parts of it.
KRISTA: I think perseverance is part of acting; they just go hand in hand. If you want to success, you keep going. You keep running you keep looking and you keep going forward, without getting discouraged. This show is about persevering and not giving up, and going toward your dream. And everybody has a dream, regardless of what it is that they're doing.
BRYAN: I think actors have to psychologically convince themselves "this is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life," because once you start having a Plan B, then you're going to say, "Well, this is too rough, and I'm gonna go this way." Once you get a little work, it's so great that you just want more. It's like an addiction, you know.
JENNIFER: My quest has just been finding authentic ways of expression, so I've been painting and making jewelry, and all kinds of stuff.
FRANK: You stay optimistic because when the high happens in this profession, there is no high like it. We have a whole section in the show about enjoying the moment that your agent calls and says you got the job. Because those highs are extraordinary and they get actors through the times when somebody's rejecting you. The inner success as an actor, in my opinion, outweighs all the pain, and that's what keeps me optimistic about it.
And look where we are now. The four of us never knew each other six months ago. And we're in a room and we've shared hours and hours of very interesting, exciting work together. That makes you optimistic. That someone would even attempt this kind of show makes me very optimistic. And the fact that I don't have to learn any lines makes me really, really, really happy.
What kind of reaction do you expect from UNSCRIPTED?
KRISTA: Everybody that I've talked to is so excited about the show. There's a buzz, a really cool buzz about Unscripted going through this town which is kind of fun. I'm excited about it.
FRANK: I think it challenges us in ways that no scripted show ever could. I've been around a lot longer than [my co-stars] and I find it very challenging in this respect.
When you're an actor with a page in front of you and lines to learn in front of you and a character that someone else has written, you call on your talent and all those things. But when you come in the morning and there's nothing in front of you but blank, and someone just whispers, "here's a situation," you call upon all sorts of personal things and you have to get over your fear of revealing, that's the big thing. You have to get over your fear that if you do something naturally and instinctively, someone's going to find out something about you that you've spent your career hiding. We have all gotten very, very fearless.
BRYAN: You just have to enjoy it because people might respond to it, they might not. You can't really worry about that. You just gotta show up to your job and enjoy it because it's awesome and rare and cool as hell. But there's never gonna be a project like this again.
More Quick Takes »
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Downloads
Get the Unscripted poster for your computer's wallpaper.
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Community
Is this all too familiar? Share some of your own experiences on the Unscripted Bulletin Boards.
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