Today, I talked to Mike Cabellon, a comedian and actor who is the star of Tina Fey’s new sitcom Mr. Mayor. I asked Mike what it takes to get to the top of the industry as an actor, and how to book the biggest audition you’ve ever been on.
Cash: What is your current job, and how did you get it?
Mike: I’m currently a series regular on the show Mr. Mayor, which debuts on NBC next year. The show is written by Robert Carlock and Tina Fey - it stars Ted Danson, Bobby Moynihan, Holly Hunter, and myself. This is my first series regular job.
Cash: That’s a huge job. How did you prepare for this audition?
Mike: I had a first-round audition at 30 Rock. I had been to that casting office before. As an actor, you’re really only comfortable if you’ve been at that office before. When you go in to audition, your aim is not to book this role. Your aim is to impress this casting director — build a relationship with casting directors so they know who you are.
Also, if you’re unfamiliar with that creator’s work, watch their work before your audition. Take it professionally — know their work, know what you are auditioning for. You are bringing you to this role, but you need to fit into this universe. You need to bring your vibe to someone else’s table.
Before the audition, I studied both of their styles (Tina Fey & Robert Carlock).
Cash: What’s your acting style? What’s your method to prepare?
Mike: Every actor has a different personal style. For me, I like improvising and being on my feet. I’ve never been a “word perfect” actor. I don’t memorize every single line. I kind of get the gist of the script, understand the emotions that I’m supposed to hit. I’ve booked a lot of roles where I played with the words on the script.
That style works for me in particular because I’m a comedic performer. As a comedian, I’m comfortable improvising. For comedy, you can kind of take a couple of beats and play with it further. As an actor, you have to rely on your skillset. You have to find what works for you. I am comfortable punching up a script. I’ve gotten a lot of callbacks for commercials because of that skill — with commercials, the company writes half a script and wants the actor to punch up the script.
Cash: Tell us about the audition process.
Mike: In terms of advice for other actors, it’s really important to be able to take notes. In my audition, they had me do a few different takes, and they gave me notes between takes. I did the same scene 3 or 4 times. I was able to do it because I was looser with the script. Some actors will lock into certain gestures, motions - they can’t pivot when asked to shift.
Cash: What happened after the first audition?
Mike: I got a callback 1-2 weeks later. They said they wanted me to come in for another audition and a camera test.
For the callback, one of the scenes was the same, one scene was different. The sides were a little bit different for the callback.
Tina Fey was there in person. For me, my callback got rolled into the network test. For the network test, Tina Fey, Robert Carlock, Ted Danson, and Bobby Moynihan were all there.
For callbacks and network tests, you end up doing the same scenes 100 times. They want to do chemistry tests. So, they bring you and another person in — for example, they had me read with Bobby Moynihan. You end up doing the scene 4-5 different times with different scene partners.
For me, I thought of this an opportunity. I thought, “How many opportunities to come up with different punchlines do I have?”
I improvised a little bit at the end of each read. I was able to keep going at the end of the scene to try to fit in a new joke with each read.
Cash: When you left the network, did you feel like you got it? Did you feel like it went well?
Mike: At that point in the process, you try and throw hope out the window. When you get the network test, you kind of know that the network executives are judging you based on things you can’t control.
My thought process afterwards was — that went as well as it could have gone for me. Maybe it could have gone better for other actors. But, even then, if they liked me, they could write another role for me.
Cash: And what happened when the offer came in?
Mike: This was more money than I’ve ever made in my life. Shooting two episodes of this show gave me more money than I’ve ever made in my entire life.
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