by Naya Rivera
I called my mom to say, “I, Naya Rivera, am quitting acting.”
“You can’t do that,” she said.
“Mom, I can,” I said. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this whole thing isn’t exactly taking off. I’m drowning in debt. I have to make some money. I need a real job.”
Mom still wasn’t buying it. “Give it six months,” she said. “Go on every audition you can. Don’t be picky or think anything is beneath you. Just go, but keep going to school too. Just give it six months, and see what happens.”
I felt like I owed it to my mom. She’d put so much of herself into my acting career, and for a while we’d had a really good run. When I was sixteen, I’d told her I didn’t want her to be my manager anymore, which was just one example of how I wasn’t always the easiest to deal with or the most grateful. My career was as much hers as it was mine. Plus, she’s almost six feet tall and a woman to be reckoned with, even over the phone.
“Fine,” I told her. “I’ll give it six months.” This didn’t change how I felt inside, though, and I kept looking for apartments in New York the whole time.
STANDING IN FRONT OF YOUR FAMILY WITH NO CLOTHES ON
Mom was right about one thing: I could be picky about auditions, and that was because I secretly hated them. As a kid, I’d been super competitive about auditions and treated the whole thing like a sport. I’d sneak away when my mom wasn’t looking and go put my ear up to the door, to see if I could hear those other little girls blowing it. I would listen to my pigtailed nemesis squeak out a song and think, “She sounds awful! I’m the best singer! I’ve got this one in the bag.”
As I got older, though, my confidence became more and more shaky. Auditions are the most nerve-racking thing about being an actor, and the whole process feels like standing in front of your family with no clothes on.
The first part of an audition is a preread, where you just read lines for a casting director who doesn’t even pretend to give a shit. Sometimes it’s a taped preread, which means you’re reading lines for a young assistant with a camera and a lady who doesn’t give a shit. Woof. Good luck with your small talk.
If you’re lucky enough to make it past that initial read, you move on to a producer session. At this level, the people you read for have a little more invested in the project, so they’re cordial and want to joke around and get to know you. You can breathe a sigh of relief, because while you might still feel like you’re talking to a chair, at least that chair talks back.
When someone is looking for a certain type, auditions can make you feel like a generic clone. Say you arrive at an audition where they’re looking for a girl who is described as “a hot, exotic-looking female.” Well, crap—there are going to be twenty hot, exotic-looking girls in that waiting room, so you just have to sit there, trying to not sweat through your shirt and hoping that you’re the hottest of the twenty.
An anthropologist or psychologist would have a field day in an audition waiting room, because it is definitely a personality case study. Every comedian exits with the same line: “Well, I just killed it in there, and they told me to tell you that you can all just go on home. Don’t worry, I nailed it, so everyone can just go back to their car.”
Or all the Chatty Cathys who want to talk the whole time and then, as they walk out the door, feel the compulsion to raise their voices several octaves and screech “Gooooooddddd luuuuccckkkk” to everyone who is still waiting. It’s as awkward as it sounds, especially when you’ve been auditioning your whole life.
Or there’s someone there whose birthday party you cried at in second grade, or someone that you know, firsthand, is a horrible kisser.
So for me to tell my mom that I would keep going to auditions even though I didn’t really want to, well, it was no small commitment. After she gave me her pep talk, I went on two.
The first was for CSI: Miami, a totally cheesy show that I would have turned my nose up at before, if only because deep down I thought I wouldn’t get it. The part I auditioned for was a heroin addict who gets electrocuted. My expectations were low, and to prep for the disappointment, I reminded myself that no one would think I could convincingly play a heroin addict. But to my surprise, I got it!
As soon as I was on set, I was myself again. I still loved it as much as I had as a kindergartner. I was completely comfortable and felt at home amidst the wardrobe fittings and the dry sandwiches in craft services and the trip-inducing wires crisscrossing the floor.
In my scene, I’m ambling down the sidewalk in a miniskirt and mules when I’m abducted by a serial killer, who strangles me in the alley before he takes me back to his lair, attaches a few jumper cables to my fingers, and BRRRZZZTTTT. I was on-screen for less than a minute but made the most of it. I screamed and thrashed like a banshee; this was also the first time a part had required me to cry on command. As I walked off set, the script supervisor stopped me.
“You’re really good,” she said. “You should have your own show.”
This was the confidence boost I sorely needed at that moment. Compliments are tricky business: when the people who love you the most and know you the best tell you that you’re good at something, it’s super easy to dismiss it. “They’re just trying to make me feel better,” you can tell yourself. “They don’t really mean it.” But I took this stranger’s words to heart: she had nothing invested in me. She didn’t have to say anything.
I had gone to the CSI audition purely out of love for my mom—my heart wasn’t in it. I was finally letting go of the dreams that I’d held on to, white knuckled, for most of my short life.
My mom has always said that what’s meant for you is meant for you, and nothing’s going to change that. You have to trust the universe, and trust God, that things are going to work out exactly as they should. At age twenty, I already knew that rejection was a huge part of being an actor, but I still took it personally every time I didn’t get a part. I’d cry and get depressed, convinced that it was going to be like this for the rest of my life, even when the part I was up for was just a small one. But through all of it, I’d kept going, and that had at least kept me sharp. Even when I didn’t care half as much as I used to, I could still put on a good show for the young assistant with a camera and the lady who didn’t give a shit.
In addition to CSI, I’d only gone on one other audition. I’d cared so little about it that I smoked a cigarette right before I went in, even though I knew I had to sing. As I was walking back to my trailer after shooting the electrocution scene, still high from the script supervisor’s kind words, I checked my voice mail. I had one message, from my agent, telling me I’d booked this thing called Glee.
SORRY:
Hooking up with a married dude.
At-home highlights and DIY hair extensions: some things are best left to the experts, and hair dye is one of them.
Fried pickles. Madison, I am so very sorry.
Thinking my (spectacular) boobs were my best asset, and not my brain.
Accepting “free” money from anyone, ever.
Hooters. Everything Hooters.
NOT SORRY:
Lying on my résumé when I knew I could handle a retail job.
Listening to my mom.
Getting those “figuring it out” years out of the way early.
Being open to a back-up plan.
Getting fired—try everything once!
Three planes, a train, and two buses to get to New York. Hey, whatever it takes . . .
5
DON’T STOP BELIEVIN’
The Glee Years
WHEN I AUDITIONED for Glee, I was annoyed. This wasn’t super surprising, because at this point in my career, I hated auditions (still do, actually), but this one also involved driving out to a music store in Van Nuys to buy sheet music. Annoying errand aside, it did seem like one of the cooler auditions I’d been to in a long time be
cause it involved singing. If I booked the role, it would be really awesome to be able to combine the two things I loved the most, but that was a big “if.” I’d gotten really familiar with “if” over the last few years and wasn’t counting on anything anymore. In fact, I so wasn’t counting on it that I stood outside, smoking a cigarette, right until it was time for me to go in and belt out Destiny’s Child’s “Emotion” (my choice) with all the runs included.
The character I was auditioning for—who would turn out to be the unforgettable Miss Santana Lopez—didn’t have any lines in the pilot, so I auditioned by reading Mercedes’s lines. It was a whole bit about how hard it was to get stank ass out of polyester, and I made sure to add extra panache.
Even after I booked it, I still wasn’t that excited—it was just a small role, and in a pilot episode. There was no telling if the show would be picked up or if I would be asked back if it was. When I showed up for the first day of filming, I walked into the production office and noticed that there were Nip/Tuck posters hanging everywhere. I was a huge fan of the show, and during one of my stints of unemployment, my mom and I had watched every episode together.
“Why are there Nip/Tuck posters everywhere?” I asked the kinda cute guy (who I would later make out with) behind the desk.
“This is Ryan Murphy’s office,” he said snidely.
“Who’s Ryan Murphy?” I was clearly winning him over.
“The creator of Nip/Tuck. This is his show.” I sucked in my breath, and ran outside to call my mom. Now, in spite of my best efforts to remain cool and not get too attached to the show, I had to admit that I was more than just kind of excited.
It’s crazy now to look back and think about how much time we had to rehearse in the early days, when a lot of the cast was just getting used to doing choreographed numbers. We’d work on one song for an entire week, whereas by the final season of the show, we’d run through it just a few times and then be ready to roll. Since Santana wasn’t part of the glee club in the beginning, she wasn’t in the iconic opening number—a rendition of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” that blows their teacher, Mr. Schuester, away. The actors who were a part of that number had already been rehearsing together for a while.
I remember watching them as an outsider (much like my character would later in the show), and being kind of jealous of the bond they’d clearly already formed—they had all these inside jokes, like about how Cory couldn’t dance. My feeling like an outsider changed quickly, though, when I met Dianna Agron, who played my fellow cheerleader, Quinn, and who also hadn’t met anyone else yet. Dianna and I had all our scenes together, and we were instant friends. The trailers on set during the pilot were super small and divided in two. Dianna and I shared one, and we soon decided to take down the partition that separated it so we could make a bigger shared space.
I tried to think of ways I could make Santana stand out, even though she didn’t have any lines. I figured that if she was the bitchy sidekick, then I was going to make her a megabitch with extra kick. There was a big scene in the choir room, with a bunch of students sitting in chairs, and I was rolling my eyes and popping my neck at every joke. And I guess it must have worked! Ryan Murphy shot the pilot, and between scenes one day, Dianna and I were walking in our Cheerios uniforms when Ryan came up to us and said, “You should learn ‘I Say a Little Prayer.’”
“Okay!” I said. “What’s that?”
“A song. You might be singing it in the next episode.”
Then he walked off.
Dianna and I turned to each other, eyes open wide, but tried to play it cool. Next episode? That meant I was coming back! And not only did I have lines, but also an actual song!
At first the show used two real high schools, one in Long Beach and one in Burbank, as stand-ins for McKinley High, so showing up to shoot felt like actually going back to school, with the football fields and linoleum-tiled hallways lined with rows of lockers. When wardrobe first handed me the cheerleading uniform, I was stoked. One, because I’d never played a cheerleader before, and two, because I was relieved that I got to wear a costume that made me look hot. I remember trying it on and doing a little jump when I looked in the mirror. I had no idea that I’d be wearing that same damn uniform for pretty much three years straight! My first scenes were all classic mean-girl shit, making fun of Rachel. My first line was a snide, tossed-off “get a room” as I walked by Will and Emma talking in the hallway.
Then the rest is bitchy history.
From the very beginning, we all knew that there was something special about Glee. For one, there weren’t any huge names attached to it. It wasn’t a show that just banked on an established star’s personality, and that meant people who watched it got to know the characters first and the actors second. I think that’s why Glee resonated with so many people. The show’s acceptance of all types of characters who lived all types of lifestyles made kids in real life feel more accepted. For a lot of people, I think Glee was the first show that made it possible for them to turn on the TV and see someone who looked like them or who was dealing with the same kinds of issues they were dealing with. Plus, we weren’t just a bunch of actors playing a band of misfits on TV—we really were a band of misfits. And we were inseparable.
LIVIN’ LA VIDA LOPEZ
We were all super young when we started—like twenty-one or twenty-two, and baby Chris Colfer was only nineteen—and for all practical purposes, we were still kids. Going to work was like going to school, except we got paid to be there, and there were real consequences if we skipped. Oh, and I had people to talk to, rather than spending every free moment on the phone with my mom so I looked popular.
Our call times were often brutally early in the morning, and everyone quickly fell into the routine. Some people would be in a horrible mood because it was so early, and others would be disturbingly cheerful. As soon as we hit hair and makeup, we’d start talking to one another, and no one would shut up for the rest of the day. Actors tend to be extroverts, and at least twenty times a day someone would do something that would have me laughing so hard that I’d be red in the face and unable to catch my breath.
Some of the greatest people I’ve ever called friends.
Kevin McHale would always make weird faces. He did this one character he called Phil, where he’d contort his face until he looked weird and creepy. In the middle of scenes, Kevin would have his back to you, but then he’d turn around and there was Phil. Every time he did it, I thought Jenna Ushkowitz would pee her pants she laughed so hard. I also have video of Mark Salling skipping across the choir room, clapping his hands, and chanting, “Eat your veggies, kids! What makes you different makes you special!” because he thought our show had the morals of an after-school special.
Glee was quick and colorful, and shot in a way that was snappy and in-your-face. Everyone loves teen drama, and Glee pulled it off with a twist. All the characters had surprising sides to them, and the dialogue was laced with witty one-liners and double entendres. In what other show would I get to play an underage cheerleader who tells John Stamos, playing a dentist, “You can drill me any time”?
When the show first started, we’d have an entire week to rehearse dance numbers and get the choreography down. We’d rehearse at this dance studio on the Paramount lot called the Tin Shed, and a shed was just what it was—the AC once broke and we still had to spend two days dancing in that sweat box, rehearsing for an episode with Kristin Chenoweth. Lea Michele kept threatening to call SAG about the unsafe working conditions. For once, Lea and I were in total agreement. Zach, our choreographer, has video of me where I turn around and stare straight into the camera with sweat dripping down my face. “I hate this dannnnccccceeeee . . . ,” I growl.
“It’s not even a dance, Naya,” he says. “It’s just eight counts!”
Heather Morris and Harry Shum were the best dancers by far, since they were professionals, but it was hard to pick w
ho was the worst—because there were so many of us who were just really, really bad. Cory would get super frustrated, and I remember one year when we were rehearsing “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” for a sectionals performance, he huffed and puffed his way through it and kept threatening to throw up. Luckily for him, he was often the lead, so eventually they’d just let him stand there and sing while everyone else danced around him.
Kevin was a pretty amazing dancer, even in a wheelchair—go figure. Chris Colfer was good at picking up choreography but didn’t have the best rhythm, so he eventually convinced the choreographers to let him use props, like brandishing a sword or swinging from the rafters in a cat suit.
Singing and performing in Glee was exhilarating and exhausting, especially for me, because I still get stage fright. Being on stage was usually fine, but performing in the choir room was actually far more nerve-racking. It’s 6:00 a.m., you’ve only been awake for an hour, and you’re the first person up. Some people are still scarfing down eggs, or sleeping while sitting up, and you’re there to belt out a really emotional song. And I knew that they were all secretly judging because—duh—that was exactly what I did too.
The first major song I got to perform was a duet of “The Boy Is Mine” with Amber Riley, and the whole thing stemmed from a joke. Ryan Murphy was a big fan of my Monica impression—I’d sing the song with all the warbling sass that she had, and Ryan was always randomly walking on set and requesting that I do it.
I made him laugh enough that he finally wrote it into the script. “Do you want me to sing it like me or sing it like Monica?” I asked, and we settled on half and half. It’s still one of my favorite numbers. Long live nineties R&B.
On-screen, Santana bedded Brittany, Finn, Puck, and Quinn (though the cameras only showed them cuddling postcoitally). In the Madonna episode, Santana took Finn’s virginity to “Like a Virgin,” and seduction to a song was about as awkward as one might imagine. Cory and I didn’t know each other that well at that point, but I had to crawl up his leg and pull his shirt and throw him on the bed and start grinding. He was supposed to chase me around the bed and pick me up and spin me, but I think he was a little hot-and-bothered/nervous about the whole thing, because everything was a little off. Instead of a slow spin, he picked me up awkwardly and turned around so fast that I practically got whiplash. “Oh, okay . . . ,” Zach would say. “Let’s try that again . . .”