Failing Up

by Leslie Odom, Jr.

  The four years changed me in untold ways. Conservatory training was about stretching and it was also about defining space for yourself. You weren’t always rewarded for it, but you were often asked to reach for things that felt beyond your grasp. Because of this boundary testing, we graduated from university with a strong sense of what we could do really well.

  It’s never a bad idea to take an inventory of the strengths you’ve developed as you push forward into the working world. You can lead with your strengths.

  After four years, I knew I had the ability to steady myself under pressure. It helped in audition rooms. I was usually readily empathetic. It allowed me to inhabit characters who were different from me. And I knew how to comport myself and infuse my work with a little style. It wasn’t much, but it’s what I was coming with.

  It’s not that learning stops once you toss up your graduation cap. Quite the contrary. That chapter of conventional and structured education may be over for you, but whatever your area of focus was in school, you’ll earn advanced degrees in Problem Solving, Team Building, Rebranding, Risk Assessment, Media Management, and many other subjects in life’s continuous course study. The syllabus is vague, the stakes are higher, and the multiple-choice tests can feel interminable, but the good news is: you’re the one handing out the evaluations at the end of a term. You will be the one tracking your development along the way. You can change course, extend deadlines, double the homework assignments, or cut them in half.

  When I first set my sights on New York, I had dreams of heading back to Broadway right away even though there was a growing trend that saw the choice roles going to television and film stars. Working your way up the ranks in the theater and becoming a marquee name on the strength of your work alone seemed to be a thing of the past. Nevertheless, I had my piece of paper and a dream. I figured it was gonna be tough, but I was game.

  Graduating seniors from CMU get a real entrée into the business with what’s called a showcase. It’s our version of a job fair. Most of the conservatories and drama programs will arrange them on both coasts. Students prepare a very short solo performance of some sort, and they also will perform a short scene with a classmate.

  Well-established agents, managers, and casting directors attend. The hope is to make enough reliable connections out of the showcase to get a foot in the door of the industry. If not a whole foot, a toe would be nice.

  After the showcase, you’ll get a sheet of paper that has a list of the people who would like you to contact them. There were kids who every casting director, agent, and manager wanted to meet. There were a few who, for a myriad of reasons, received little to no interest. And then there were the rest of us, who had … something. After the New York showcase results, I committed to taking the few meetings I had and making that enough.

  Other professional fields have similar ways of scouting candidates coming out of college. It is a big opportunity, but I promise you it won’t be your only opportunity. Though showcase was important, it wasn’t everything, even if that’s how it felt at the time. In the end, in a recurring theme, it was much more about what you did with what you were given than about what you were given.

  * * *

  IT IS a BIG OPPORTUNITY, BUT I PROMISE YOU it WON’T BE YOUR ONLY OPPORTUNITY.

  * * *

  I signed with a small agency in New York and made plans to move to the city at the end of the summer. The Los Angeles showcase hadn’t happened yet, and I’d already committed to New York. It’s maybe a little telling of what I thought of my chances for making it in Hollywood. Before I’d ever visited, of course.

  In preparation for the Hollywood showcase, we returned to Pittsburgh and retooled our performances. Many of us had spent the year getting as fit as we’d ever been in our lives. We’d spent three and a half years focused on craft, but before showcase … we heard that Hollywood likes ’em pretty, so we focused on pretty.

  From graduating classes that preceded us, we had seen how Hollywood could snatch you up right from the showcase and put you on a path to superstardom. Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer, Abby Brammell, Cote de Pablo—all had incredible showcase results and subsequent early success.

  I was still very much committed to staying on the East Coast, but I thought, Hey, if we’re going to Hollywood anyway, might as well take a real swing at it, right?

  Right?!

  * * *

  The Los Angeles leg of the showcase went well. Way better than I expected. After the performances, I had a handful of meetings to set and I was enjoying the city’s vibe.

  The first powerful executive I met in Los Angeles was a woman of real integrity.

  Lucy Cavallo was vice president of casting at CBS. After the showcase, she invited me to meet with her in her office in Hollywood. Her walls were decorated with posters from the many hit shows she and her office had cast over the years.

  Lucy spoke plainly and in a way that felt sincere. We had a loose and easy conversation about the training at Carnegie, my early Broadway experience, her responsibility and position at the network. Eventually, Lucy cut to it.

  “So, when are you moving to LA? I want to put you on TV.”

  We’ve all heard the cliché Hollywood stories about charlatans and rubes. The town is littered with stories that started similar to mine but ended in a very different way. Animal instinct will be your guide for some of it at the start. Honor those early bits of information sent to your brain and your senses in a first meeting. You will sharpen your instincts and good judgment over time.

  I only had good feelings and instincts about Lucy’s sincerity. But if trusting someone doesn’t work out the way you planned, don’t be too hard on yourself. You’ll only be better at spotting similar signs earlier the next time. The same is true when someone’s straight with you. You can feel it as sure as anything. You’ll learn to spot those signs, too.

  During the showcase visit, I was on my own in Los Angeles. Three thousand miles away from home, I was taking it all in, assessing for myself. When the week was up, I would have a very big decision to make: palm trees and the Pacific or the concrete jungle. It felt like the first major decision of my young adult life. The first decision I would make entirely on my own.

  As I mulled my options, I reconnected with Jacques Smith, who, like Michael, had been like a big brother to me during my time in Rent. Jacques had played Benny in the show. A Princeton grad and one of the most genuinely good-natured men I’ve ever known, Jacques was another hero. If I did decide to give Los Angeles a try, Jacques offered me the couch in his one-bedroom apartment for as long as I needed it.

  The plum roles in New York are going to television stars anyway, right?

  More and more I was thinking I should take the time to find out what was cracking in LA. If all goes well, it could turn out to be the straightest shot back to Broadway, I thought.

  I came back from LA, singing a new song about seventy-degree weather, Hollywood Boulevard, and swimming pools. I felt a surprising pull west, and I saw no reason to ignore it.

  Dad, however, had a long list of reasons to ignore it. When I got back to Philly and filled my parents in on the appeal of the West Coast, I was met with a dose of their skepticism and fear.

  I suppose it is understandable. As a parent myself now, I can imagine how difficult it must be to trust the intuition of your child. I will always be Leslie and Yevette’s child. But though they might not have been ready to admit it, I was no longer a child.

  And I’d absolutely meant what I said before when we came to our understanding over Aida. I laid claim to making the next big decision in independence. I intended to honor that promise to myself.

  Dad tried reason. “We don’t know anyone in LA. What if you run into trouble? How are you going to get home?” He tried blunt truth. “I think you’re making a mistake.”

  I respected his trepidation. He hadn’t seen what I’d seen. He hadn’t met the people I’d met. I barely knew a soul in the city, yet there was a calm in my spirit
as I explored and tried to get the lay of the land and a feel for my new adventure. I had seen the signs for myself in Hollywood, and though they were pointing in an unexpected direction, I was prepared to put my own intuition to the test.

  As a child, you very rarely get the final word on anything. But each one of us gets to a point when we have to say, I’ve got this. Making decisions is my job now.

  The disagreement over the move created a rift in the relationship with my dad for many years. It was about more than the move, of course. Our stuff went way back. But the move exacerbated it.

  Leaving home is a necessary rite of passage that should probably take us as far afield as we can possibly go. The first flight from the nest should entail some risk. The territory is expansive. Explore.

  I moved to LA at the end of the summer with a plan to give it six months. I had twelve hundred dollars, Jacques’s couch, Lucy Cavallo’s office number, some training, and a whole lot of heart. Before the move, I’d touched base with Lucy’s office to let her know I was making my way to the West Coast after all.

  * * *

  THE FIRST FLIGHT from the NEST SHOULD ENTAIL SOME RISK.

  * * *

  I had to account for the errors I was sure to make at some point. Making decisions on my own steam was new. I lowered the stakes of the cross-country move by reminding myself that New York was just a plane ride away. If those first six months had been awful, if I’d shown up and found the city and situations working against me, if I couldn’t get solid footing, or make a friend, I told myself I wouldn’t be ashamed to pack it up and try something else.

  The Universe is speaking to you always if you’re willing to listen. And I was listening. I was looking for any sign that I could get that this wasn’t some huge mistake like my folks had feared.

  On my first night in LA, I got a call to audition for a CBS series the following day. Jacques graciously agreed to drive me the forty-five minutes there and back.

  The audition went well, they asked me to return the following day, and Jacques agreed to drive me once more. I read for the producers that next afternoon, and two hours later they called to offer me the job.

  My intuition was confirmed. And I had my “sign” in about forty-eight hours.

  The role was only a recurring one-day guest star as the fingerprint technician on CSI: Miami, but to me it represented much more. It was the beginning of adulthood. My intuition hadn’t steered me wrong. The by-product of trusting Lucy was the confirmation that I could trust myself.

  * * *

  The Hollywood game is not so different from any other competitive field. Supply and demand often rule the day. You can choose to play the game and fit the demand, or you can dig deep and offer something your field has never seen before and stand out. The latter is much harder, and for a newcomer, much riskier.

  When I arrived in Hollywood, there was arguably more opportunity for black actors and for actors of color than ever before. There is even more all these years later. But there was still a tendency toward tokenism. The lure of tokenism in my business, and in any business, really, is that it’s easy. Hiring a few, or the single, minority player can keep you “safe” from a certain type of scrutiny or criticism. The one Asian on a team, or the single gay person, or the one physically disabled person, or the lone black character, can make a project appear woke or edgy because of its diversity. But I would submit that if you have a person from an underrepresented group on your team and you aren’t tapping them for their unique and varied perspectives and contributions, it may be tokenism. And if it’s tokenism, it’s always a missed opportunity.

  Tokens are window dressing mostly. They’re props. You can make a living as a token, but you’ll long for more.

  I showed up in Hollywood and tacitly agreed to play this game. More than that, while I longed for more, for some time I allowed myself to think this was all I would ever be used for.

  I’ll be the token, I thought. I’ll work twice as hard to give these stock characters and caricatures a reason to exist that goes beyond filling quotas and serving functions, but it is what it is.

  I am certain that I spoke the words at some point, but to think them was enough to make it my reality on and off for almost a decade. It was limiting and it was painful. I cast a reductive vision for myself at the outset, and it was ten years of maturation and growth before I could dismantle and demolish the pattern for myself.

  In the beginning, you audition for almost every call that comes in. If it doesn’t cross some moral or ethical line for you (remembering you must retain ownership of your yes and your no), your answer is almost always yes to a potential opportunity. There were times when I was vying against other brothers in the Hollywood shuffle to play a three-dimensional human being, but there were more times when we were in competition for the token. This process is definitely BYOD. The D stands for dignity.

  There were times when I could bend to expectations and there were times when I couldn’t quite twist myself into enough of a pretzel to make it palatable for myself or my potential employers.

  I remember testing for a pilot early on. In a scene where I was out to dinner with the two women who were my bosses on the show, I was getting the note back from producers and casting that the scene wasn’t working. “Can he be more street in that scene? We just need him to be more street.”

  Just how street were they expecting me to be at a meeting with my bosses in a five-star restaurant? The answer was: very.

  I couldn’t make it happen. It was a step too far for me in that moment.

  * * *

  IT WAS a STEP TOO FAR for ME IN that MOMENT.

  * * *

  What I have to own, what I have to take responsibility for, is the vision at the outset that over time began to do damage. As a young man, my thoughts were born out of strategy, ambition, and survival instinct—and in my initial vision, I sold myself short.

  Don’t sell yourself short. You will meet people along the way who will be lining up to place limits on you. You don’t need to beat them to the punch.

  Vulture did a popular recap of each episode of a short-lived network series I was on. Onscreen I was doing my best turn in a thoughtful, honest, and three-dimensional performance. It was sometimes at odds with the material I was being given, but I was doing the best I could.

  Still, I wasn’t prepared for the moment I read the recap following the episode in which my character was initially introduced for the season-long arc I had on the show. The author cuts to the chase and gives me a “funny” nickname that’ll be used in all the recaps moving forward: “reserving an especially loud shriek for the actor playing Token…”

  In reference to a moment of screen time I shared with a black actress and dancer: “‘I don’t think they’re doing much sleeping,’ says Token’s sister Tokenetta…”

  In front of the camera, I try to lead with my humanity. Sometimes I fall short, but it’s usually where I’m coming from. My best efforts in front of the camera didn’t matter. There was no mention of them ever. I was there to serve a function and the function came before my humanity. I abhorred the function.

  Token has no past and Token’s future is dubious, so Token’s present is threadbare.

  In my tacit cosign to gain access and make a living, it hadn’t occurred to me that “Token” wouldn’t be limited to just a function onscreen. The reality was painful enough, but when I saw the world renaming me …

  It was time to put away childish things.

  CHAPTER 5

  PERMISSION TO FAIL

  I don’t ever lose. I either win or I learn.

  —NELSON MANDELA

  I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question finally getting sick of their own bullshit.

  —ELIZABETH GILBERT

  There is space for safe and bland in every industry. I had two feet firmly planted in that space.

  Guided by instinct and faith at the start, moving to Los Angeles was the riskiest
thing I’d ever done. But in a short time, I’d gone from daring to boring. I was so busy playing the game that I forgot why any of it mattered in the first place. That was as good a reason to make a change as any I’ve ever heard.

  During those first five years or so in LA, I had gotten the hang of things. I was booking a fair number of jobs. My parents could regularly turn on their television in Philadelphia and see their son, which was a thrill for them. For me, too, I admit. But there was still a lot missing.

  Everything changed in an instant the first time I really gave myself the room and the permission to fail spectacularly.

  * * *

  EVERYTHING CHANGED in an INSTANT the FIRST TIME I REALLY GAVE MYSELF the ROOM and the PERMISSION to FAIL SPECTACULARLY.

  * * *

  Like anything worthwhile, failing spectacularly takes a bit of practice, and I had none. I look back at my college years, and this is my one regret. I made plenty of mistakes in school, but I wish the environment had encouraged and provided more room for failure. My training hadn’t included any focus on audacity. Nothing in my training encouraged or spoke to the value of taking real risks and so I wasn’t in the practice of taking any.

  The tuition came as a particular hardship for my folks, and I racked up student loans in the shortfall of financial aid. I took the sacrifice seriously. I wanted my transcripts to reflect the seriousness with which I approached my education.

  I did really well and graduated with honors from Carnegie Mellon University. I learned what was expected of me, and, in most cases, I delivered. Because of the grading system in place and quite possibly (I say in truth and with respect) the egos of some of my professors, there’s no premium placed on risk. That meant wasted valuable time, because risk is much harder once you leave campus and stakes go up. More room should be made on our college campuses for trial and error.