The actor who refused to audition for Steven Spielberg: “I’m not doing this”
There comes a point in an actor’s career where they can thankfully leave behind the thought of auditioning. Even when it comes to the big-name directors, certain actors can sleep safely at night knowing that should the call ever come, it won’t come with a request for an audition.
There are certain directors, though, who wield the sort of power strong enough to make those actors question their immortality. Take Steven Spielberg, master of the Hollywood epic, despite his trusted devotee Tom Hanks, I would hazard a guess that most working actors would still love to work with him so much that they’ll be willing to thrust themselves into the pit of humiliation.
But one actor rightly put principle before anything else when presented with the opportunity to feature in a Spielberg epic. His 2012 film, Lincoln, followed the life of the famed American President Abraham Lincoln and how he abolished slavery and reunited his country during the Civil War.
Billy Porter was offered a relatively minor but nevertheless crucial role of a soldier. But as an African-American, Porter was keen to be given more context for the role during his audition, to truly represent the complexities of this dynamic and unpack the personal trauma that might have come with it. When he wasn’t granted that opportunity, he stepped away from the role altogether.
“I remember going in for Lincoln – I didn’t get to Spielberg,” Porter recalled. “This is back when nobody was really seeing me for shit, but I got this audition for some reason. No script, only the sides, with Soldier 1, Soldier 2, and Lincoln. So I’m reading the script, and I’m reading my sides, and I’m like, the way this soldier is talking to Lincoln is weird to me because he’s a Black man, he’s a Black soldier, but he’s so casual with Lincoln”.
Adding, “So casual, I don’t understand. So I went in, and I asked the question: ‘Well, what is the relationship? I don’t know the script, I don’t know anything. I don’t know how to prepare this because I have absolutely no information about any of it.’ That’s how we’re required to go in now.”
“So I go in, I ask this little casting director, ‘What is his relationship?’ ‘He’s a soldier.’ She had an attitude. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘He’s a soldier!’ I said, ‘Listen, I’m not doing this. We have no information!’ And I can’t remember what [the soldier] said, but it was so casual and so irreverent. I was like, ‘Do you see what this Black soldier is saying to Lincoln in the 1800s, and you’re giving me shit for asking a question about that? Never mind.’”
Concluding, Porter said, “And I didn’t even audition, I just left. It’s so great to be finally in a position where I don’t have to go through that.”
As I said, there comes a point in an actor’s career where they no longer have to audition for roles due to their stature. Their relief in that capacity is largely down to the avoided embarrassment and failure that comes with it, but in Porter’s case, it was very different and personal.
