No Guarantees (or A Lesson From “2 Broke Girls”)

The episode of “2 Broke Girls” that aired this Monday was the episode that my mom, my aunt, and I saw being filmed at the taping we went to. And it reminded me of a truth in the entertainment industry: even if you book the job, you never know if your work will ever be seen.

There are always little cuts made to a TV show after they are done taping. Some things need to be cut for time, some things need to be cut due to Standards and Practices, and some things are cut out because they just don’t work in the storyline any more. I’ve always known this reality. TV shows don’t try to hide it. In fact, you can normally see deleted scenes on the DVD extras of a TV show or movie.

But for this particular episode of “2 Broke Girls”, 2 guest star actors had their parts completely cut out. They were both extremely funny, and one of them had an eating gag, which I can related to due to my experience with pizza on the set of this show (yup, that’s me at the end).

But there must have been some reason that that scene had to be cut out of the final product. After watching the episode, I’m not sure what they could have cut in other scenes to include it.

But I can only imagine how sad it was for those actors to see the episode and find out that they were not in it. I’m sure they told their friends and family to watch it. And I know that if it was me, my friends and family would all be watching to see me (they’ve done that sometimes when I’ve done background).

But this is the way that things are in this industry. There are no certainties for anything. You are never guaranteed the audition, the callback, the job, making the cut. I’m still nervous that I might get cut out of the music video that I shot recently. Until that video is released, I’m going to be worried about it.

But those actors who were cut out of the episode were still able to spend a week doing what they loved (and they still got paid in case you were worried about that). And I’m sure after the initial disappointment they were still happy that they got to be chosen to be a part of the show and work a dream job for that week.

I guess part of having no guarantees on anything is making sure that you are grateful for every step that you are given. Be grateful for all the auditions and callbacks even if you didn’t get the job. There are a ton of people who would love to have been given “just” an audition.

I know that I still need to work on being grateful for all the steps that I get to take,  and this was a good reminder for me to stay in a gracious mindset.

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