This week, as the three kids who have been cast in the new Harry Potter TV series were announced, I breathed a sigh of relief. My son loves acting, singing and dancing, and like every child in the country who is that way inclined, he auditioned. I’m so glad he didn’t get it, for the obvious child star reasons. Now I’m wondering if I’m a bad mum for even letting him try.
square CHARLENE WHITE Don't call me a 'dance mom' - I'm not defined by my kids
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My son goes to classes at a local performing arts centre. It has an actors’ agency attached, which is apparently commonplace, and after a few years they suggested representing him. He was really excited, and, naively, my husband and I thought he’d have fun, rather than seeing it as the first step in a masterplan for him to achieve global acting domination.
“I haven’t seen you before,” she said, as if this was something I had done on purpose to psych her out. “How old’s your son, nine? He’ll be up against mine then.”
“Sam goes to the Cub Academy,” she told me. I was confused, which would quickly become my default state in these situations.
“Oh great,” I replied, weakly. “Do you enjoy it?”
Once inside, I tried to catch the eye of a mum looking anywhere near as out of place as me, and was met with blank gazes, or no gazes because they were too busy trying to smile at the casting director instead.
Flustered, we hugged goodbye, and managed between us to knock over the takeaway cup of tea I was holding. A river – nay, ocean – of liquid pooled around our feet and began to spread outwards. People stepped back, as if we had leprosy. Every single pair of eyes in the room stared at us. I cannot imagine it’s possible for a human being to feel more uncomfortable. Break a leg, son!
Our Harry Potter experience was uneventful by comparison, a self-tape rather than in-person meeting. I recorded him on my phone, standing against a blank wall, first introducing himself and then performing a short monologue. As is often the case, a while later one of us realised we hadn’t heard anything back (your agent only gets a “thanks but no thanks” if you get quite far along in the process).
A year into this, I’ve had to separate my reaction to all the rejection (distraught/vengeful) from my son’s (impressive/resilient.) He wants to keep going, although I constantly remind him he can stop any time. Sometimes I wonder if he’ll ask his Dad and I how we could have let him do this when he’s older. How poisonous is the ruthlessness and don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you-ness he’s become accustomed to?
So while everyone’s fixated on the new Harry Potter kids’ gilded cage futures – please, won’t someone think of the parents?
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