The story of how I joined the full cast of the movie Interception

I know know that miracles do happen. I didn't know that for so long and I thought it was all hogwash till it happened to me.

I was a naïve young girl of 20 when I got the call that I had been selected to play the lead female role in the movie interception. I was elated and ecstatic. How had this happened?

Two months prior, I was sitting alone in my apartment having a lunch of vegetables and chicken with a glass of cheap red wine when the phone rang. It was my agent, Mr. Lingaro who was barely able to contain his excitement at the news he wanted to share with me. I was in the middle of lunch so I was only half interested in what he was saying.

“They are hiring”, he blurted out in haste. “They are hiring and you are perfect for the role. “.

“What role?” I asked in surprise. It wasn’t every day I heard him sound this way and I knew that it was a very important information for him to call so early.

I asked what role it was and he responded,

“The lead for interception. The female lead. They want someone, young, fresh, inexperienced but highly talented. I don’t know many young ladies who qualify over you. You’d be perfect for it and I am sending in your details.”

What would I want on the set of a sci-fi movie? I wondered. It wasn’t my genre of choice as I had only done comedy prior to that, and only small-scale. However, I trusted my agent and told him to go ahead and promptly forgot about the whole thing.

A few days later I was called for an audition and I went. I didn’t expect much. I wouldn’t get past the first round and I would head on home to sit on my couch and look for other things to do.

I was already tired of the auditions, most of which never yielded anything. My agent encouraged me to be patient and persistent but after two years of going from agency to agency, trying to land a major role, I had become slightly jaded. I know that you may think, ‘you are only 20, what do you know about jaded?’ Well, it so happens that I had left home at 16 and this wasn’t my first attempt at starting a career. I had attempted to no avail to be a worker for a manufacturing company that had just opened in the city. I was a young girl with springs in my steps and I had applied only not just to be rejected but to be told I wasn’t cut out for such work. I felt shattered. Why? Why was it so difficult for anyone to give me a chance? They might be surprised at how resilient I was.

Anyway, back to be present. I was waiting for my turn on the list of girls to be called in. To be honest, I had not even memorized or practiced my lines. I didn’t expect much so I didn’t invest much.

Just then, my name was called and I went in. To my surprise, the first thing I noticed was the set. I had expected an audition room with just a few people in it as it always was but to my amazement, it was a full-blown set. As if they intended to begin shooting immediately. I was shocked. Why would they invest all this time and money on a set when they haven’t even gotten a female lead yet?

Composing myself, I went to the spot marked X and waited to be prompted. The man who was at the head of the sole table there came to me, smiled and asked me what I like to do for fun, as a hobby. I replied,

“Mostly sitting on my couch, doing nothing.”

It was a snarky response and I thought it would express my feeling of nonchalance. Instead he smiled and told me to read a script he placed in my hand. It was an excerpt from the movie ‘Intergalactic’, also a sci-fi movie that had been produced by the same company.

I browsed briefly through the script and then proceeded to recite the lines, but I added my own flair to it. Not because I was optimistic about the part but it was just habit. If you are in the arts, it always comes out of you no matter what. So I did what I normally do, recited while interpreting. The more I did that the more I got into it and I lost myself completely in the lines.

By the end of the session I was sobbing real tears. The scene had been a sad one and I had completely gotten immersed in it and it came pouring out of me. I couldn’t help it.

At the end of the whole thing, the man, whose expression I couldn’t read, told me to hand over the script, write my name down on a sheet and leave. I did, slightly mortified that I had cried that way in front of strangers. They probably thought I was cuckoo.

I went home and that was that.

I got a call later that week asking me some more information about myself. I began to entertain the possibility that they might have liked my audition. Could it be? Could this be my big break? Ok, let’s see how this goes.

I eventually got the part. No ceremony, no fanfare. They called my agent and I got the part. He couldn’t help himself, my agent. He kept on asking on the phone,

“Are you sure?”. He was so besides himself with excitement and joy. He was a good agent.

So I am off to Hollywood in a few weeks to begin shooting. How did this happen to me? A poor lowly girl from the country with big dreams and no money. How? Well, they say that miracles do happen every now and then and I guess this was just my time.