Woman: "You look just like Randy Harrison".
I gave her a blank stare.
Me: "Who?"
I had never been told I looked like anyone except my parents, and the only thing I could think was that perhaps she meant Harrison Ford, but he was old, and I was 16.
Woman: "Randy Harrison? He plays Justin on Queer as Folk. You don't know him?"
My face turned bright red as soon as she said "Queer". She could tell I was nervous about her insinuation that I must be gay and know every gay person in the world, but since I was 16 in the middle of Michigan and clearly no idea what she was talking about, she retreated.
Woman: "It's a TV show. He's beautiful. It's a compliment. Trust me."
Of course, as soon as I got home from work, I went straight to the desktop, waited for the dial-up to connect, and did an AOL search for this elusive Randy Harrison.
He was beautiful. A beacon of blonde, but to my self-conscious (and still closeted) 16 year old self, looked nothing like me. He represented what I could never be at 16 in the middle of Michigan.
But for years, he was the only celebrity anybody had every told me I looked like. So, naturally, I stalked his career, watched Queer as Folk in secret, and used him as my Facebook celebrity doppelganger.
You know, the usual.
And then I walked into the first day of rehearsal. There were only two seats left. The closest was next to the director and in no way was I confident enough in my acting to sit in the face of judgement. That's like sitting next to your TA in discussion when you haven't done the reading. I decided it would have to be the farther option which was next to
Randy Harrison.
As I slowly walked across the room giving a weak wave while introducing myself aloud, my heart began to beat faster and faster and faster until suddenly I was sitting to his left. Luckily, Randy was busy eating a salad (he never made it to his yogurt...must be on a diet), so I didn't bother trying to make conversation (as if I would have said anything short of disaster).
When rehearsal began, I spent the entire time wondering what the hell I was doing sitting next to Randy Harrison. And when Christian Coulson (you remember him. Tom Riddle? HP2? Possessed that poor Weasley girl?) popped in with his British accent, I knew I had to get the HELL across the table to the seat next to the director.
So, I picked up my bag and moved. Just like that.
Remind yourself this is not a lecture hall full of people across which I quietly shuffled, but rather a circle of several gays, all more famous than I, all much more welcome to take the vacant seat next to Randy Harrison should they wish since I had just risen to walk to the exact opposite side of the table.
Thank GOD Day 2 came with assigned seats or I would have been a MESS.
But as I sat and read my lines, safely at the other end of the circle from Randy, and watched these actors I had seen on TV and in movies and on stage, I found myself choking back tears. Partly because the script is beautiful and partly because
...this is becoming some weird new emotional thing I'm capable of...
Tears, because I felt like I was back in my living room and back at Cinema Hollywood in 8th grade and back in the audience where I had first admired these actors
now in the same room as them, reading the same script, a part of the same work.
I'd say it's such a beautiful feeling, I'd do it for free but...I am doing it for free.
And I wonder if there will ever come a day when some young boy in the middle of the Midwest gets told he looks like me, and he'll grow up watching my work and post my picture on his Facebook (or the revamped MySpace) and we'll do a reading together and never speak but he'll sit across the circle and think I'm the most amazing actor he's ever met (other than Cole Escola, because that bitch kills it) and write about me in his blog.
...I just remembered I write a blog...
Waiting for his manager to sue me,
TJB: Making It
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