I felt so relieved, I couldn’t stop smiling. Where’s my pen? Where do I sign the contract? The agent on the right, a tall man, wiped his eyes. “What play is that from?”
Oh. Uhhhh . . . I hadn’t thought of a title. I scanned the room for the answer. Okay there was a couch. Don’t call it Couch, that’s too obvious. The couch was teal. The pillow on the couch is white . . . and those are . . .
Colors.
Both agents looked a bit stumped. “I haven’t heard of that. Who is it by?” asked the woman.
It can’t be by me, right? That would seem unprofessional, right? Actors don’t write. Actors act. “By—by . . . Chris Blum.”
Chris Blum was one of my teachers in high school. I sent him an urgent email when I got home. “If anyone ever asks, you wrote a play called Colors and it’s very good!!”
The agents looked at each other, confused. “Oh! I’ve never heard of that.”
“Oh, it’s very new. Very new. New and hot.”
Looking back, I’m like, Damn. That’s right, girl. Write your own shit. I’m proud of myself. But in the moment, I thought they wouldn’t have taken me seriously if I had told them the truth. I thought actors were just supposed to act. I thought it was good to stay in my lane.
Original monologue or not, they signed me. #fuckyeah
The first audition they got me was for a pilot presentation.
Now, a pilot presentation is basically a pilot connected to a production company rather than a network. The production company will develop and shoot their own pilot and try to pitch that to networks to sell, rather than the traditional route of developing a script and shooting it through a network. It’s a different way to get your TV show made.
It was this hilarious script called Sex Ed about a group of weird freshmen college students taking a sexual education course. I auditioned for the role of a dumb model, which I had done a vast amount of research for in my past. Guess all those modeling rejections paid off, because I booked it! Suck it, Wilhelmina.
When I got to set, there was a girl there who was surrounded by people. Her name was Stevie Ryan, and everyone wanted to talk to her. I remember wondering if she was some kind of celebrity I didn’t recognize. I talked to her and found out she kind of was.
“Yeah, I make videos on YouTube,” she said to me.
“You do what? How?”
This was about ten years ago, in the early days of YouTube. What the fuck was this? I had heard of YouTube before, but I didn’t know people were doing things like this. And recording your own character sketches definitely wasn’t cool or respected at all at the time. But she didn’t care, she was just doing it. It was sort of punk.
I had never seen a comedienne like her before! She was bold and brash and smart. She embraced her femininity in a way that I hadn’t ever seen in the comedy world. She was acting and writing and creating shit that was edgy and authentic and original. Not only that, but Stevie and I were at the same management company. We were on the same pilot. It was strange to see someone so similar to me taking such command of her craft in this way. Could I do shit like this?
Ehhhhhhhh, no.
I quickly pushed that thought aside. Stay in your lane, Laura. I never thought in a million years I’d have the courage to do all the things she was doing. To put myself out there like she was. I’ll just keep performing other people’s words.
Either way, I was now a big fan of hers and we became good friends on the show. It was such an exciting time. My first pilot! My first time working with real directors and producers for a project I actually wanted to do. And I was going to be on TV!
Well, not quite. The show never got picked up.
I was so upset and confused at the time—What the hell? This was fucking funny shit. Why would it not have gotten picked up?
I had a lot to learn about the industry, like the fact that your show can be hilarious and still no network will take a chance on it. When you’re an actor, you’re very much a leaf blowing in the industry winds. Which can be frustrating, but right now it was exciting and amazing. I had loved working on this pilot, and it just served as confirmation that I had chosen the right career. I wanted more of this.
One night, I was alone in Colleen’s apartment flipping channels on the TV, and I came across a show on MTV called Disaster Date. It was this reality show where guys think they’re being set up on a blind date by their friends, but it’s really an actress who’s assigned to go on this date with them and be their worst nightmare.
Something clicked when I saw it. Hold on a second. I LOVE being people’s worst nightmares. I loved fucking shit up in public. This was the job I was training for my entire life. This was just like the time that I ran into the gas station, sobbing, in order to get free cigarettes with Jack. Or the time that my friend Andy Junk and I pretended to be a southern married couple at an open house. When I was younger, during those two nice weeks a year in Chicago when we could actually drive our convertible with the top down, I’d sing at the TOP of my lungs when we’d stop at a red light. My family would get SO embarrassed. It was awesome. See? Being a disaster to the people around me was my area of expertise.
I immediately called my agents and told them I HAD to be on this show.
I sincerely feel that when you know exactly what you want in life, you can get it. If you can be specific and visualize it and fixate on it, it can happen for you. For so many years of my life, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted. I just told myself I wanted to be an actor. But I also told myself I wanted to do drugs and get wasted. My visualizations couldn’t have worked, because I was focused way too much on using. But now . . . things were a little different. I wasn’t completely sober, but I was trying to smoke and drink less, to focus more. And whatever work I was putting in was starting to pay off.
I auditioned and got on Disaster Date. TIME TO FUCK SOME SHIT UP!!!
Actually, it was all very controlled. The producers and actors would find out all this information about the “mark” (the guy we were setting up). The mark’s friend or family member would tell us everything that annoys him, and I would become a character who could encompass all these things.
“Okay, I have to hate animals AND give out unsolicited life advice? Talk about a multidimensional character!”
On set, we would have a whole restaurant set up, complete with thirty extras lingering around eating dinner.
On the show, we’d see how long before they walked out on the date, and just as they were walking out, I’d say, “WAIT WAIT WAIT! I have one last thing to tell you . . . I’m an actor, those are all actors, those are hidden cameras . . . and you’re on MTV’s Disaster Date!” Usually accompanied by the dramatic removal of my wig.
The mark’s friend would run out onto the set, and the two of them would drown each other out in a chorus of “BROOO!!!” and “YOOOO!” and “Brooo, I got you so good!” and “Bro!! You got me!” And then they would hug. It was so fun.
As the episodes wore on with Disaster Date, I became more and more creative. In one preproduction meeting, the producer and I were chatting about a particular mark who didn’t like people who were obsessed with their pets.
The producer tapped his pen, thinking. “So, Laura, we could give you a dog to pet the whole time . . . and then you could let the dog drink water from your cup . . .”