Challenge Accepted!

by Celeste Barber

  I still put it on in the background for company when I’m home alone.

  Then on Tuesday morning I’d get up early, get my shit together for school, and rewatch the entire episode (sans ads because they were cut out, obviously) so I could have the dialogue down pat to recite to my handful of friends who hadn’t been scared off by the bitchy, insecure vaginas. (Shout-out to Doug and Sean for being my weekly audience.)

  Some people can do the worm or roll their tongue, but not me, not this little sitcom buff. My party trick was reciting every single line from Friends, with the accents, the inflections, and the Ross-inspired dramatic exits. I can also do a mean Running Man and will do Old Lady Dancing at the drop of a hat.

  I remember getting off the bus this particular Tuesday morning and walking the usual walk down the long concrete footpath toward the massive cross as I recited the previous night’s scenes in my head, laughing at just how spot-on my accent was. I walked up to Sean and Doug and unleashed the scenes on them, so just a normal Tuesday. Only today they weren’t into it.

  They would usually laugh at my reenactments (Doug more than Sean) as we walked together to roll call. But this Tuesday was different. Doug still laughed at what I said—he was always the best audience—but Sean couldn’t even look at me.

  Oh well, maybe he was just in love with me—isn’t that what we’re supposed to tell ourselves in high school? “If he’s rude or mean to you, then he’s totally into you”?

  (NB Fuck that. I am currently teaching my boys that if you like a girl, you bloody well tell her. You let her know that her hopes and dreams—whether they are to become the first female president on planet Mars or to sell detox tea on Instagram—are VERY important to you! And if things become as serious as she wants them to be, that you will actively wear “The Future Is Female” T-shirts and respect her decision to wear and express whatever she wants, whenever and however she wants. My oldest son is six.)

  But no one was in love with me; it turned out the insecure vaginas had gotten to them, and I was on the outer. They’d cast me aside like Beyoncé did the fourth member of Destiny’s Child. This killed me—not because they had fallen victim to the cast of Mean Girls but because not even my comical attempts could cut through, even if they were uncannily like the original. This was the day everything changed—well, for me anyway. I’m pretty sure it stayed the same for the other girls, the bitchy insecure vaginas who, as Katherine Ryan would say, are “not normal but ordinary.” But for this little Ritalin-induced comedian-in-the-making, it all changed. Barber got focused.

  Quite partial to a dramatic exit, I stormed off to the drama room, my mecca, knowing that my tried-and-tested set was wasted on these now-horny ghost friends.

  When I arrived in class my brilliant drama teacher, Sharon Singleton, was a better audience than I could have ever hoped for. She always encouraged me to be weird and loud, and she made sure I kept being weird, loud, and as full-on as often as possible.

  After a successful recap of the previous night’s episode, I got ready for another excellent drama class with my even more excellent drama teacher. It was one of those lessons that started off better than you could ever have expected, with Ms. Singleton wheeling in a TV and VCR. YES! Video lesson! We all sat on the ground and watched as Ms. Singleton cracked open the video and with her back to us loaded it into the VCR.

  Then four words came up on the screen that changed my life forever. ACE VENTURA: PET DETECTIVE.

  I sat staring wide-eyed at the grainy TV and watched one of the greatest comedic actors in history, Jim Carrey, in a piece of comedy art. We didn’t just watch it, we studied it, and I obsessed over it, over him. It wasn’t until I saw Jim Carrey that I discovered what I wanted to do. It completely blew my mind.

  From that moment on I realized I wanted to be an actor and comedian, and that now I could be. It was OK to be big, loud, over the top, full-on, and brave. It was better than OK—it was fucking awesome! Something Ms. Singleton drummed into me for years.

  After the film ended Ms. Singleton asked what we thought Carrey based his character and mannerisms on.

  I threw my hand in the air like a missile, responding, “Animals! His mannerisms are like animals!”

  I remember this not only because I’m in love with Jim Carrey and this film but also because Ms. Singleton said I was right, and that doesn’t happen much (violin emoji).

  And that was that: I was sold. I had thought comedy was just a bit of fun and a bit stupid, but I realized in that moment on the navy-blue plastic carpet of the drama room at Saint Joseph’s College that I could be on TV and in movies being funny, and not just as an extra on Friends.

  So I hung up my tap shoes and got focused.

  I wanted to do more, more of everything. Mum and Dad arranged for me to do acting classes outside of school, and it was great.

  The classes were once a week and were about a forty-five-minute drive from where we lived. I would get a lift there and back with a guy named Harry who was also doing the classes. Harry was about seventy-five and bloody loved a good acting class.

  On our ninety-minute round trip Harry and I would talk about the classics. He would tell me what it was that made Shakespeare really stand out from the rest, and I’d give him my detailed analysis of why I believed that Joey and Rachel’s relationship was problematic (not that it needed much explanation [eye roll emoji]).

  The classes were a bloody hoot. Like any good acting class, we were given a number of scripts to work on, all from well-known movies that none of us were suited to or would ever be considered for. Much to Harry’s disgust, there were no Hamlet soliloquies among the handouts, so after week one he started bringing his own.

  I remember always being given the comedy scenes and loving it. I found them really easy and exciting. I always played the funny characters, the fun, kooky characters who were usually played by older, big and bold, mostly musical-theater actresses. Bette Midler in Beaches and Muriel’s sister in Muriel’s Wedding were two of my favorites.

  As I was one of only three females in a class of sixteen and the average age of my peers was forty-five, I was sometimes given the scenes for the pretty girls. They were offered to me as a promotion, which was lost on me, because I was much happier being considered perfect for the role of Karen as opposed to Grace on Will and Grace.

  I was never great at the “pretty and safe” characters; give me the meaty, over-the-top, comic-relief characters anytime, as we all know no female character who is described as “sassy” and/or “bold” will ever be the title character (eye roll emoji).

  I really loved being funny, and I seemed to be pretty good at it. Partially deaf family members always enjoyed my off-the-cuff sets at Christmas dinners, and my character-filled eulogies at pets’ funerals always hit the spot.

  But the fact that I didn’t look like Rachel, Monica, or Phoebe, or have a penis like Jim Carrey, always seemed to get in the way. (SIDEBAR: I recently had a meeting with Mr. Tom Ford [WTF!!!!!!!], and he said I would have been a great Phoebe. We will be married in the fall.) If you’re a woman and super funny but not super pretty, then you are deemed unsafe, hysterical, and full-on, and no number of Hail Marys will fix that.

  When I hit drama school I had a massive brain fart and wanted people to see me as a serious actor, not just a funny, silly comedic actor. Comedy is my safe place (and as we know, I like safe, comfortable places, such as heated rain forests), so I thought because it wasn’t a challenge enough for me, it wasn’t a challenge for anyone and it wouldn’t be respected.

  Instead, I tried so hard to focus on serious roles. I performed Lady Macbeth’s “Out, damned spot!” speech for my drama school audition, on which I was accepted, though I do believe I wasn’t accepted into the school because I nailed the monologue, rather because I was brave enough to attempt it (pity uni acceptance emoji).

  I studied at drama school for three years. Over that time, I lost my comedy spark. I struggled through the entire course because I wasn’t interested
in most of the roles I was playing. (Keep your eye out for my follow-up book, Drama School: The Greatest Mindfuck of Them All.)

  It was a crazy, exhilarating time. There were anywhere between twenty and twenty-four of us in each other’s faces, houses, beds, studios, ten hours a day, six days a week.

  Drama school was a big fucked-up family dynamic that completely shaped my self-worth and also made me want to open a vein.

  The One about Surviving Drama School

  When I arrived at drama school, I had moved out of the house from the Gold Coast to Sydney at the age of seventeen and wasn’t sure how I was going to survive.

  I had auditioned for the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and didn’t get in. It was no surprise that I wasn’t accepted, as this particular audition was held in Brisbane in November and I was balls deep into schoolies week. (Schoolies week, for those of you who are cultured and read books, is a week at the end of each year when graduating Year 12 students cut loose, and Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast is the mecca for teenagers who can still fit into size 8 jeans and want to act like Prince Harry circa 2007–2012 but expect to be treated with the respect that one would show a heart surgeon. It’s a shit fight, full of drunk teenagers crying, drinking, fighting, and crying some more. It’s also a hub for Toolies—anyone older than the graduating age looking for child brides.)

  I assured my mum that I’d be fine to audition AND attend a full week of drinking and debauchery at schoolies. A group of friends and I organized a hotel room, and most of our partying was held there. We only went out to Cavill Avenue once or twice to use our fake IDs and hopefully be on the news.

  Mum picked me up on the morning of the audition from the shitty hotel we had rented. (Even though we only lived about half an hour from Surfers, we still felt it completely necessary to hire a room for the entire week, as it was imperative that we partook in a completely plastered and underwhelming week. It was the ’90s, leave me alone.) When Mum arrived, I was awake and ready, not completely coherent, and still wearing last night’s outfit, which Mum vetoed the moment she saw me. But I was awake and ready nonetheless.

  When we arrived at the audition, I was terrible, didn’t take direction, didn’t remember any of my monologue, and I’m pretty sure when we were put into groups, every time I spoke, people took a polite step backward with their hands over their noses and mouths.

  My audition for Theatre Nepean was completely different. I was ready. Ready to smash it. Ready to show what I had. And ready to not be yelled at by my mum again for being drunk and wasting her time.

  It was a two-day audition process. Day one, we performed our prepared monologue in front of everyone, and if we managed to kick this in the dick, we were asked back the following day to do group workshops. On this first day of auditions, I met Ange and we became instant friends.

  After getting accepted into the course, I inquired about deferring for a year because I had been offered a job to spend a summer abroad teaching drama at summer camps in America. Turns out, though, you can’t defer a course that only accepts twenty-four students and carefully picks a specific group of people each year based on their ability and how they will mesh as a group.

  So I kissed my dreams of summer camp goodbye and was relieved when Ange called to tell me that she had been accepted as well and that she had found a place for us to live, if I wanted to live with her. FUCK YES, I WANTED TO LIVE WITH THIS WOMAN! I moved to Penrith (Penrith is near Sydney, IT’S NOT SYDNEY, but it’s near Sydney) and threw myself headlong into drama school.

  I had Ange from the beginning, then met Kika and an army of other aspiring actor misfits. We were all in the same year together. Kika had the voice of an angel and, from the day I met her in the library and thought her name was Marika McFace, which made her cry laughing, I knew I was safe. And then I met Sipple. Sipple was my uni gay.

  “Hi, I’m Celeste.”

  “I’m Sipple.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Sipple.”

  “Like nipple?”

  “Fuck you.”

  FRIENDSHIP!

  I grabbed on to him and from that day on I never let him go. Drama school was full of antidepressants, bad Shakespeare monologues (mine), and weird passion speeches. But Sipple introduced me to JLo and loved cars like my dad so I was sticking with him. He loved to do high kicks and I loved to watch him, and for every one step he took I took three.

  He was a serial monogamist and kept falling in love with straight guys, and straight girls kept falling in love with him. Another girl in our year claimed him as her gay, but Sipple and I know the truth: he was mine, forever. Whenever we would argue, I would always go up to him afterward and ask if we were OK, to which he would respond, “Argh!!! Of course we are. I love the fucking shit out of you.”

  We had the most ridiculous and geek-like fun together. We were studying in Penrith in Western Sydney, where it was either snowing or hotter than the sun, and Sipple and I would make the most of it. In winter, we would sit in the car with the air conditioner on as low as it could go and see who could last the longest; he would always win. And in summer, when it was so hot that the soap in our shower would melt, we would sit in the same car with the heater on as hot as possible. This wasn’t as fun, and we later learned that there are ad campaigns against people being dickheads and doing something so stupid.

  Sipple got me through drama school, and I love the fucking shit out of him for it.

  A few things they don’t tell you about drama school.

  If you cry, you pass. If you know famous people, you pass. You will not learn ANYTHING about the industry.

  You will learn everything there is to know about stitching a period costume and how to fit it on the same actress year after year.

  You will have sex with people who if you met later in life, you would report to the authorities.

  You think it will never end. EVER.

  Your classmates become your family; then you have sex with them and the end-of-year play gets weird.

  Everyone is gay for a minute.

  Everyone is tortured and misunderstood.

  Deodorant and toothpaste are kryptonite.

  If a lecturer gets cast in a show, then that class is canceled for the rest of the term.

  Whatever you experience in your childhood, no matter how traumatic, will be brought up and you will be forced to deal with it while surrounded by nonprofessionals with bruised egos.

  The One with Another Gross Man #timesup

  When I graduated from drama school I was keen as mustard to work, and I hoped that I might end up with one of those stories where I say: “Oh, it was really weird. I was just eating an ice cream in a small ice cream shop and someone came up to me in that tiny little unassuming ice cream shop and said, ‘Wow, you seem like you have amazing comic timing. I’d love to cast you in the next female-driven comedy film as well as make you head writer and regular cast member of Saturday Night Live.’” Turns out that can only happen to Natalie Portman, kind of.

  I was excited by the prospect of work after graduating, as I had realized that I’m a nicer person when I’m acting and a better and richer person when I’m working as an actor.

  Because work wasn’t coming in as thick and fast as I’d hoped, I thought I would have to hustle to really get my own Natalie Portman story cracking. I decided I’d go through the paper and reply to one “actors wanted for shitty, soul-destroying gig” advertisement a week. Hustle!

  One night, after spending the evening at my bestie Marika McFace’s house eating all her ice cream and listening to her and her roommate, Rachel, talk about the awesome kids’ theater companies they were going to open together, I was driving home and heard on the radio that a production company was looking for a funny girl in her midtwenties to audition for a new low-budget Aussie film.

  For my non-Australian readers: “low-budget film” in Australia doesn’t mean having to share a forty-foot trailer with your costar and only having a choice between Evian and
fresh baby coconuts to rehydrate you after a full eight-hour day; it’s more like bringing all the clothes you, your sister, your mum, and your weird old neighbor own and sharing them among the cast (which is usually just you and your friend, who is a trained vet but has been offered this job because she is happy to work for equity minimum) and making sure you’ve packed your iPhone charger, as the camera guy will need to charge up the camera every hour.

  Well, holy shit, I didn’t even need to look in the paper for the crappy job this week—the shitty job had come to me via my earholes and commercial radio. Look out, Star Wars, I’m on my way!

  I pulled over to the side of the road and wrote down the number the overenthusiastic radio announcer had spat out at a million miles an hour. I called the station straightaway. You’ve got to get onto these things; Bridesmaids 2 wasn’t going to cast itself.

  It was about 9:30 p.m., so the phone lines weren’t busy, and I got through and spoke to the station producer off air. I inquired about the job, and of course they didn’t know too much about it, as the announcer had just been reading a brief that had been sent in by the film producer’s assistant.

  I gave the guy my number, and he gave me the contact details of the production company. Yes! I’m in business. I continued driving home and did a quick vocal warm-up on the way, as I wanted my voice to be all warm and Cate Blanchett–like when I spoke to the film producer, who I would no doubt be thanking in my Oscars speech when I won for Best Actor in a Foreign Film the following year.

  Before I even got home, my phone rang. It was a private number and I thought this was it—they were calling to offer me the role and I didn’t even need to audition.

  I pulled over again and did one last tongue stretch and vocal trill before answering the phone.

  To my surprise, it wasn’t the producer from the film or the producer from the radio station I had just called; rather, it was the station DJ. The dude who had just been talking a million miles an hour. I was kind of puzzled but was happy to take the call.