While Hallmark Channel fans have fallen in love with “Hope Valley: 1874” and star Bethany Joy Lenz, her journey to stardom has included a few bumps along the road.
She made that abundantly clear in a recent interview, in which she recounted an audition that went about as wrong as it could go.
‘I Could Not Have Botched This Audition Worse’
During a recent appearance on the “I’ve Never Said This Before” podcast, the former “One Tree Hill” star singled out “the worst audition of my life” as her attempt to land a role in a Broadway production of “Molin Rouge! The Musical” (via Entertainment Weekly).
“I had actually done an audition that went really well, and the work session with the musical director went really well, but in the producer session, everything just fell apart,” she said of that disastrous audition.
“I forgot my words. I hadn’t rehearsed enough to get it all in my body. I thought that if I — I just didn’t prepare enough. I kind of had a false sense of security about my capabilities, and I forgot about the element of adrenaline, and nerves,” she admitted.
According to Lenz, she managed to “nail” the audition because she felt no nervousness. “I’m telling you — audition, killed it. Musical director, killed it. He was like, ‘Oh yeah, girl, you’ve got this.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I feel so good.’”
Once she found herself auditioning for the show’s musical’s producer, however, all that went out the window.
“My voice cracked, and then I forgot a move that I was going to do, and then I looked at them and I made this weird face, and then I was just like, ‘What am I even doing with my body?’” Lenz recalled.
“I forgot the direction that they had given me specifically that they wanted me to do. So I just did my own random thing… I could not have botched this audition worse,” she added.
A Valuable Lesson
Not surprisingly, Lenz did not get the part, with the role of Satine (played by Nicole Kidman in the 2001 film that inspired the Broadway musical) going to Karen Olivo.
Lenz did, however, learn a key lesson that she’s taken with her to future auditions.
“Really it is so vulnerable in those scenarios for a performer to just do that under lights in front of strangers in a lit room,” she explained. “It’s a completely different experience than being on stage. What I should have done is practice doing that with friends of mine in a living room, just practiced getting over the nervousness of singing in front of people, which sounds so crazy.”
Admitting that particular lesson may not be “super deep,” she contends that “it’s practical.”
She added: “The valuable lesson is when you have to do something that you know is going to feel vulnerable professionally, if you want to succeed, I would recommend practicing with safe people before you go and try and pull it off.”
Bethany Joy Lenz Recalls ‘Worst Audition of My Life’