Wentworth Miller - A breakthrough to break out.



While trying to secure work during 2003 to 2004 Went reflected about the disappointment of the Human Stain.  He had learnt valuable lessons which gave him a change in attitude. “I'd been told The Human Stain was going to put me on the map as an actor, and the movie did open a number of doors for me; but when I walked through those doors I suddenly found myself in competition with guys who'd been on the covers of magazines. It's very much a name game in Hollywood, and the current trend is to stock your movie with celebrities from the leads on down to Pizza Boy No. 5. It can be an incredibly frustrating experience. But at the end of the day you have to do it for yourself.”

Went continued on and did theatre work as a stand in for William Finns musical The 25th annual Putnam Spelling Bee (a play which spoofs the contests that pit children against children to determine who has the best command of their voluminous vocabulary.)  In this version competing adults not only battle each other for the title but also battle with their past memories of parental pressure ‘to be the best.’ His English degree and love of Scrabble came in handy.

Went also did more photo shoots with big name photographers and got himself on the cover of Interview magazine and on several pages in fashionable magazines such as L’uomo Vogue and Abercrombie and Fitch’s new revamped Xmas edition.

He changed his attitude with his approach to auditioning as well, “Only recently I've come to realize that one of the traps of auditioning is walking into that room feeling as though you're a guest in someone's house, and being really careful not to spill wine on the carpet. What you have to do is walk in there as though you're the host”.

"I realized the difference between most actors and Anthony Hopkins is that most actors won't make choices about a character. There's nothing better than reading a script and getting a vision of who this character might be, how fun it would be to play and how you'll dress and how you'll walk and how you'll eat and talk and all those things. Most actors make all those choices - or as many as possible - but they do it with a question mark when they walk into an audition and there's that subtext: 'Is this right?' 'Do you like me?' 'Is this working?' And that defeats them in the end. Whereas Anthony Hopkins, when he makes a choice, makes it with a period or even an exclamation mark. That shift in attitude was critical in really helping me make the most of my audition experience."

He also observed and analysed the Hollywood system and came to the conclusion that “it's very easy in this business to be a young Tom Cruise or a young Tom Hanks. People know what to do with you because they look at you and say, 'Ahhhh, a young Tom Hanks. This has already worked so well it'll work even better this time ...'

Realising that he is different, he came to terms with his place in the scheme of things. "It's another thing to be a little bit off the beaten path because what that means is you have to go out and create something that wasn't there before."

These changes in attitude would help in securing work. He started working again on a short film called The Hour which was set in a prison by British director Ash in 2004.

Finally Went gets a break and a few months later he was called in to audition for Prison Break. "When I walked into my studio test (for Prison Break), I’d temped for maybe a third of the room," he says. "It’s like 30 network executives sitting there, and some of them recognized me from the copy machine." 

It would appear that the copy machine made him famous amongst TV executives and would be his claim to fame whenever he met them at auditions.

Went recalls the auditioning process and final securing of the role was fast.

“I hadn't worked for a year when I had my Prison Break audition and it was the easiest audition I've ever had. I got the script on Friday, went to the audition on Monday and got the part on Tuesday. I was shooting the pilot a week later. I didn't have time to be nervous - it happened so quickly. “  In the last pool of actors that the network auditioned they were getting close to the end of pre-production.

Paul Scheuring, Prison Break’s Producer said this about Went “"In Hollywood, there are only a few actors who could possibly be a leading man, and if they are really the guy, if they really have the chops, they’re already making movies,” he explains. “So when we were casting for a 30-year-old, there were all these journeymen actors — good-looking, quite clever, but had never really caught on. We saw thousands. Suddenly, Wentworth came in, and the room lit up. It was like, ‘Where has this guy been?’”

Scheuring says he had plotted 44 episodes, two seasons, but still had the two major vacancies less than a week before production began.

"For two months we were auditioning every young actor in Hollywood aged 25 to 35," he says. "They all came in, and they all had this affected kind of 'actor guy mysterious thing'.

"Needless to say it was frustrating. We are shooting on December 1. And we were thinking, 'It's November 26 and we don't have any actors. How can we make a show?' "Wentworth came in about five days before we shot. He was 150 per cent of the character, so it was this manna from heaven."

The character that Went auditioned for was Michael Scofield an inmate and a man who robs a bank in order to engineer an escape with his brother, who was wrongly convicted of murdering the U.S. vice president.

The preposterous plot is actually what intrigued Went and he said this about the character of Michael Scofield “because He's clever and ruthless and obsessed. I'm sure there'll be moments of doubt, moments of  ‘What have I gotten myself into?’ He was in a situation where his brains and his degree were no guarantee that he wouldn’t end up with a shiv between his ribs." and ... "But he's a good man with a noble cause, and that requires him to get his hands dirty. ”   "Michael Scofield is not a cookie-cutter TV hero," he said. " 'Prison Break' is so far-fetched, I had to make viewers believe that Michael is capable of making the impossible possible."

 

"I think people are drawn to prison stories because they're really horror stories, I think we're fascinated by the dark side of human nature, and prison is a place where people do terrible things."  “This is not just an action thriller, it's really a story about family: How far would one go to save a loved one? In Michael's case, it's all the way to the wall. And it's a great show in that we get a lot of exploration into family, into what it means to be committed to something... into what it means to be a man.”

 The theme of family, community and being imprisoned reoccur again in his choice of project but this time the imprisonment is literal where as with the Human Stain it was psychological and social. In Prison Break he also plays a white man caught in between the two communities of white and black prisoners in which a race riot breaks out and he is asked to take sides. He chooses not to and as a result he is hated by both sides. Does this sound familiar?

Considering his policy on his choice of roles and whether race matters in the story, Prison Break presented a personal dilemma for Went. Here he was playing a white man caught up in a race riot in which he had to choose a side. Either through good fortune or through design, Went’s character stays neutral and therefore is not involved in any racial prejudice or violence.

From late November they started filming the pilot episode of Prison Break to show to the network executives.

The fate of the show depended on the strength of the pilot. After filming the pilot the director Brett Ratner was asked by Mariah Carey to film two of her music videos ‘Its like that’ and ‘We belong together’ he agreed and decided to cast Went as the love interest in order to raise his profile. It worked and buzz once again circulated around his name.

 Many people online wondered who that ‘good looking guy was. ‘The pretty’ and started to look him up to find out more information on him. They were not sure who he was and often confused him with Hayden Christiansen and or Channing Tatum. Once again the issue of race was discussed in which online surfers noticed the connection between Mariah Carey and Went’s mixed race backgrounds and wondered whether this was the reason why he had been chosen to feature in her two videos.

In an interview Went was asked “You were in Mariah Carey's We Belong Together video. How was that?”

“It was a blast and advantageous for me. I got more attention from that video than anything else I'd done. Brett Ratner, who directed the pilot episode of Prison Break, also directed that video so I went from one project to the next.

“Is Mariah as mad as everyone says?”

“Mariah's lovely. She took care of me on set and made sure that I felt at home and was enjoying myself.”

Luck struck once again when Went was chosen to appear on the last two episodes of Joan of arcadia as Ryan Hunter the satanic type character who also speaks to God – like the main character Joan. Once again as fate would have it he was brought in to the series at the very end when the survival of the show hung in the balance. He had been in a similar situations before with Popular in which he appeared at the end of the final season before the show was finally cancelled.

Seeing him in the music videos and on Joan of Arcadia helped to raise his profile considerably so by the time the networks finally gave the green light to Prison Break many people were looking him up and looking out for his new work. While the production company were rushing around securing locations and going into pre-production Went did voice over work for a feature film called Stealth. He plays EDI an artificial intelligence programme embedded in a pilot less stealth bomber which goes bad when the plane is struck by lightening. In preparing for the role Went was inspired by Space Odyssey 2001 (HAL) "I certainly wanted to tip my hat to what is perhaps some of the best voice over work ever done, certainly when you're talking about computers gone mad."

Went also shot the pilot for Ghost Whisperer Pilot - 'A gift from eternity'.  Went acted as a spirit of a soldier,  Sgt. Paul Adams, who died in Vietnam in 1972.  This character enlists the help of a medium in order to contact his family. 

With all this exposure surrounding him, Went  left L.A and rented a home in Millennium park, Chicago near his new work place where he continued filming episodes of Prison Break.

Cheerio!  We're off to Chicago in my next blog!

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Wentworth Miller - How Do I Love Thee by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Ella Fitzgerald - "I've got a crush on you!"

One of my favourite singers and one of Went's too.

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Wentworth Miller - An outstanding performance!



Went’s agent handed him the script of The Human Stain and assured him that he was perfect for the role of Coleman Silk.  He was rather concerned about being typecast he said “I want to continue getting sent out for roles of any ethnicity.”  But his initial reservations didn’t put him off and he went to the audition.

Thank goodness Went, went (excuse the pun) for the audition and grabbed this opportunity.  You might think I’m biased (and you'd be right...she laughs) but I personally thought his performance in The Human Stain was outstanding, touching and soul wrenching.

Went met with the casting director Deb Aquilla and he told her that he thought the script had “a powerful story and one that wasn’t told very often.  I told her that I liked the script a lot because it resonated with me as a minority and I thought I knew a lot of the subtext of what was going on with this character. She was surprised”. Deb Aquila remembers seeing Went and recalls that she felt uncomfortable about asking him about his racial background. While she was thinking of a way to ask him he just smiled and “told her that my father is black and my mother is white and that I understood a lot of what's going on in this story because of my own memories and experiences.” He then told her about what happened to him at Princeton university with the cartoon sketch episode and how he can relate to the character who becomes an outcast amongst former friends and colleagues due to political correctness.

Went recalls, “We had a great talk, almost too good, because by the time we got to the actual read, I felt like the build-up was so big that I really needed to deliver--almost more than what maybe might have otherwise been expected from me from a first reading. Luckily, it was one of those situations where I had my best with me that day: I was in tears, she was in tears, we did all the tough scenes in the movie, and she brought me back in a month for a screen test with Robert Benton.”

 

Robert Benton also recalls the audition and comments that Went has the rare ability to master stillness and if he were to do a workshop with actors he would use Went as an example. In all the years (decades) of directing he can only recall two special moments he has experienced during audition. The first was with Justin Henry the young boy who plays Billy in the film Kramer Vs Kramer which he directed and Went. They were both perfect for their parts.

"It sounds weird, but they asked for proof that I was what I said I was, because an actor will say just about anything to get a role. So I literally had to go to Kinko's with the family photo album and copy the photos of the ancestors, from the great-grandparents on down. And I'm standing there at the Xerox machine looking at all these faces, and thinking about what my family has been through. And I thought, God—has all this been for me to book this role? And the answer was no, but also yes, in a strange way. It felt like just the right time and the right role and the right place." When he returned "they said, 'you're our guy. And I immediately hugged everyone in the room. And I walked out of the office onto the Paramount lot, which is where I had spent time temping over the last five years, and I thought to myself: this is such a rare moment, and I was filled with a sense of gratitude. And I called my mom."

Went carrying boxes of the copies of photos of his ancestry.

“I feel incredibly honored that I am able to bring a story to the table that my family is very eager to see -- not just because I am in a movie, but because it touches on issues that touch all of our lives”.

In auditioning and preparing for the role he once again had to think about his past and who he was, i.n.o his identity. The Human Stain “is a film that left me questioning how I perceive others and myself and further, questioning the basis for my life and beliefs”.

What an unnecessary and painful process for such a gracious and wonderful person to have to go through.

 

The character of Coleman silk appealed to him because he thought that "He (Coleman) is bright and very ambitious," "But he has been completely defined by his environment as a black man in 1940s America. It’s a prison and he decides to break out, which is a very bold, arrogant and ultimately destructive thing to do, because he lands in another prison of his own making. In passing as white, he embarks on a life which does not allow for intimacy, because he can never be completely honest with his wife. It’s also a life of fear, because every time he walks into a room, there’s the danger of someone recognising him for who and what he is."

Went felt that in preparing for the role it was important that "as an actor it's not my job to condemn or condone my character. That wouldn't allow for his complexities. Coleman feels boxed in by definitions, which are suffocating him, and he needs to break free. That's something anyone can relate to. It moves the movie beyond race."

The character of young Coleman Silk  who during his college days before he decides to deny his race as a light skinned black man and pass for Jewish, also boxed as a hobbie so Went had to train as a boxer. “It was a rigorous workout regimen. I worked with the same trainer that worked with Denzel Washington in THE HURRICANE. It was 3 months of training, 5 days a week, 4 to 5 hours a day. This was followed by a month of choreography. So, 4 months of preparation and about 12 hours of shooting turned into about 30 seconds of screen time.”

Once again his previous experience of physical training and acting roles would come in handy in preparation for this role. But nothing could prepare him for stepping into the shoes of the heavy weight A list actor Anthony Hopkins who plays the older Coleman Silk. “Very big shoes. It's an honor, but I was also like 'How am I going to approach this?' The man is a legend and I've always been a huge fan of his work. And I felt as the new kid on the block it was my place to tailor my performance to Sir Tony exclusively, rather than the other way around and to that end I went out and rented every Anthony Hopkins video I could find so I could steal little pieces of his performances and layer them into mine”.

When Wentworth completed the filming of The Human Stain memories of what happened at Princeton with the Cornel West cartoon incident came flooding back. He wrote a letter to Cornel West apologizing for what happened and informed him about his role in The Human Stain. He received no reply. Back to business, the producers decided that he should front the promotional tour for the film. This tour would involve him attending premieres of the film with his co stars in different U.S States / locations such as Chicago, Denver, New York and European cities such as London and Venice. By a rare stroke of luck, his co star Anna Deveare Smith who plays his mother in The Human Stain is friends with Cornel West who turned up to the New York premiere. “The first thing he did was give me this big bear hug, which really meant the world to me.”

 The experience of watching himself on the big screen gave him mixed feelings and triggered once again personal, painful memories. “when I saw it for the first time at the Venice Film Festival, what I felt afterwards was very embarrassed--not at all in a bad way, but in that way where you've just put something very personal up there, very private just out there--something that had just happened between me and Jacinda Barrett or something that was still very painful for me from my own life. And suddenly, all these people were just coming up to me and talking to me about it, having this dialogue with me and I'd never spoken with them about it and, for me, these things are still very personal, still very private issues that I wrestle with and come to terms with every day. I have no idea who they are, but they have ideas about me ... and I have no idea what rules of etiquette they're working with and it's frightening.”

 Despite all of these thoughts and emotions going on inside he had to continue with the promotion of the film. He did several photo shoots and interviews alone and press conferences with his co stars. The critics were confused and curious about why a young white man was being cast in the role of a character who is supposed to be a light skinned black man. Over and over again, Went had to define his racial background to avoid being mistaken as a white man. Ironically Toni Morrison - who was involved in campaigning against Went at Princeton for his cartoon sketch - would be the same person he would continue to quote. “There’s a great quote in Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved: ‘Definitions belong to the definers, and not the defined.’ I’m constantly having to define myself for other people, lest I be defined by them”.

He was also asked about his views on racism in America and his views on racial definitions. "As far as being black versus African-American, I have a problem with hyphenates, I don't want to be African-American or Chinese-American or Irish-American. My family's been in this country for generations. There is no reason in the world why I can't lay claim to just American." His nationality was also brought up in which he revealed that he had dual nationality and holds both British and American passports. Overall as far as he is concerned he is “American first, last and always.”  He was also asked about his experience of racism and his views on passing - "Obviously, passing is not something that has ever crossed my mind—it has never shown up on my radar, because I am lucky enough to be born in a generation where it's OK to be absolutely proud of who I am. But being mixed race brings a different set of challenges. Not that it's more challenging than being this, that, or the other, just different. For example, I've never really experienced the 'business end' of the race stick, as I like to call it—I've never been asked to pay for a meal before I eat it, or been pulled over for driving in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time of night. In that sense, I've been very fortunate.”

 An upsetting incident with a journalist also brought home the reality of racism and how powerful vocabulary can be. "I just had a conversation with a reporter in New York and he told me, 'So you're a mutt,' and I told him, 'You know, I find the term "mutt" deeply offensive.' So he started back-pedaling and said, 'I'm a mutt, too. I'm part German and part Irish.' "'That means you're white,' I told him. 'But thank you for playing!'

Yes, there’s that wonderful clever and sarcastic humor that I adore of his.

 Approached by mixed race viewers, Went says “a lot of them (were) glad that they're seeing a representative of themselves reflected on screen”.

In terms of acting he was questioned about who he perceives to be his greatest competition to which he answered Josh Hartnett. And his views on his future career? “I say that with the sobering understanding that if I were to wait only for roles that clarify my racial makeup, I'd be waiting for a very, very long time. I want to aspire to something like what Denzel Washington does which is try to find scripts written for white actors--or Jodie Foster who reads scripts for male actors. I tell my representatives that you can send me out on any ethnicity roles, or roles that were written for Caucasians if race is not an issue in the movie, I think the race of the actors starts to matter if race matters in the movie. If you want to do an all-Eskimo production of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ I mean God bless you, I can’t wait to see it. But if it’s an all-Eskimo production of ‘Gone with the Wind,’ that’s obviously a little more problematic.”

Once again like so many co-incidents in his life like landing his first major role (Dinotopia) at the same network where he interned and meeting Cornel West after all those years and resolving their differences, he bumped into development executives who he used to work for. "I have people coming up to me now at film festivals and screenings who are like, 'Weren't you the one used to stand by the Xerox machine?' now that I'm at the point where big shot so-and-so is laughing at all my jokes and schmoozing, I think 'You know I got coffee for people like you for six years,' so I know what's what as much as I can, because I've seen the other side." Wenworth’s advice to studio executives is that they should be nice to their lowly underlings because they don’t know when they will get one up on them with a studio deal.

Good for you Went that’s telling them. 

With the promotion and reviews the buzz was electric and nearly all the critics praised his ‘breakthrough performance’ and were sure that he should be nominated for a supporting actor Oscar award for his role in the film. Went was excited and the film was out just in time to be considered for an Oscar award nomination. The production waited with baited breath.

Two of my favourite Actors together ... what a dream come true!

Can you believe it “Nothing!”

There was not a single nomination. It would appear that what the critics perceived as the miscasting of Anthony Hopkins as a light skinned black man and the beautiful ‘skinny’ Nicole Kidman as the rough janitor was too implausible to digest. The academy seemed to think so too. Once again like with Dinotopia, Went missed out on what should have been a big break.

Not to worry Went the best is yet to come.  “All good things come to those who wait.”

Thank you all for following my blogs for Went.  We’ll follow our Went with his career path in the next blog.  Speak to you soon.

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Wentworth Miller - My Love is Where you Are!

 

If I could catch a million stars,

I know just what I'd do,

I'd arrange them on a paper,

And sing them back to you. 

If I could give you gifts of gold,

I'd have each one inscribed,

With a special memory,

That I hold, dear, inside.

I'd give you everything you'd want,

Or you could ever need,

But that would never measure,

All you've given me.

With honesty and faithfully

You are to me my dear

And when I look into your eyes,

My troubles disappear.

But, I am not rich,

Nor lucky enough to catch a star,

I can only give you one thing...

All that's in my heart.

This is something you'll never be without,

Whether you are near or far,

For it is a simple but precious gift.

My heart is where you are.

~ Paul D. Medway~

For it was not into my ear you whispered but into my heart.

 

 

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Wentworth Miller arrives in Tinseltown, California.

When Went arrived in Los Angeles to pursue his career he found the culture and environment very different from the East Coast. 

Went had to start from the bottom and work his way up.  He says “I spent most of the first year (in development) faxing and filing, changing light bulbs and filling the boss's fish pond and the usual Hollywood entry-level whatever. I was the one they would call on the weekends when the fire alarm would go off in the building.  Every weekend I would go in to the office because I didn't have air conditioning and it was hot, and I would hang out in the conference room and kinda set up camp (laughs) and raid the company kitchen. I would just watch all our footage that we had on video coming back from various production sites. And the juices started flowing, and I realized I still had this 'what if' question to answer, and I decided to quit.”

“It was scary. I walked into my boss' office, and I said 'You know, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna be an actor,' and she said 'Well, I've just been hired at one of the networks as their director of motion pictures and I want you to come with me as my assistant.' And that was like forty thousand dollars a year, that was like a corporate gig, that was the brass ring, as far as I was concerned. I went back and forth. What was I gonna do, what wasn't I gonna do? It was very after-school-special. And I eventually realized that if I went and did the corporate gig, that would be great if I was successful, but I would always wonder about the acting. And if I did the acting and was successful I would never wonder about that corporate gig. So I had to tell my boss that I was not gonna come with her. And she said 'I think you're making a mistake. I think you'll live to regret it.' But I quit anyway and started temping to make ends meet.”

Went temped at Borders Bookstore "Just average minimum wage, wearing a tie and a name tag behind the counter... I value the experience I did have behind that desk because to make it in this business, you need the soul of an artist but the pulse of a bureaucrat. If you're waiting tables, waiting for your break, and you're not willing to come home every night after a long shift at the restaurant and stuff your head-shots and resumes into envelopes to send out to agents and managers, you're not going to make it. It's not going to happen for you." When he hit really low points financially Went said  “ I would look at my CD collection every month to see what I wouldn't mind hocking to pay the rent. And I realized I needed acting like I needed air and couldn't walk away from it."

 Probably Went's CD collection.

It was during this period that Went took up acting classes in L.A for about two or three years until approx. 2002, “No kind of formal training (though)." He learned through his acting classes that “Some actors will tell you that they lose themselves in their character. I think that for me, acting is about finding yourself in your character, and exploring those parts of you that you do not allow yourself to express or are not allowed by your environment to express. I think acting classes by and large are just places where middle-class kids go to get over their middle-class upbringings; a lifetime of being told what is and is not appropriate. Of course, that appeals to me because everyone wants to be inappropriate, and why not get paid for it”.

 He was able to secure paid work on TV shows such as ‘Buffy the vampire slayer’ (1998) in which he played Gage Petronzi (the captain of the swim team who turns into a sea monster in episode ‘Go Fish’). A role on ‘Time of your life’ playing Nelson followed a year later in November 1999 (episode – Time the truth was told) then unfortunately there was no work for a year.

The instability of the acting profession made him go back after six months of temping to his old intern job in development. “she had the grace not to say 'I told you so. I mean I temped for a lot of people in the entertainment industry. I spent three months writing up contracts for other actors working at a huge agency, which was tough, but I'm glad I have that perspective. There were some people who expected you to jump right in and do exactly what their assistant did, but by and large most people simply wanted you sitting there warming a chair. And so I did a lot of reading and kinda blended in with the wallpaper. That was my main quality as a temp, which was appreciated. They don't want someone in there making waves, doing cartwheels. I sometimes think I should have been online getting a law degree. I wasted all that time (laughs)."

 Went warming the seat.

Went worked for Hill/Fields Entertainment as well as other networks and companies and is credited for TV shows such as Gone in the Night (1996), Shaunessy (1996) and Vows of deception (1996). The associate / producers working on these projects were Bernadette Caulfield, Joel Fields, Ardythe Goergens, Leonard Hill and Susan Rosner who he most likely worked with as an intern.

This time he continued to look for acting work whilst he worked as an intern. After ‘Time of your life’ he continued auditioning until a few months later in 2000 he appeared in two episodes of the TV show ‘Popular’ playing Adam Rothchild Ryan. Another job on ‘Time of your life’ reprising his old role of Nelson in episode ‘The time they got e-rotic’ followed two months later. Four months later he appeared on E.R as Mike Palmieri a high school football player who is fatally tackled during a game and is rushed to hospital with a bleeding heart.  During the same year he also appeared in ‘Romeo and Julliet a feature film by British director Colin Cox who he would later continue working with on theatre productions as an associate.

 Went in "Popular"

 Went in ER.

Went also worked as a press officer for the Asian American theatre in New York. It was  good experience for him and it came in handy while promoting his film and TV projects.

2000 turned out to be a busy year for Went as he worked in a few TV shows and a film but 2001 was very quiet.  He did a short film called ‘Room 302’ directed by Erma Elzy-Jones.  He was cast as a server (waiter) to two women who spend time in a hotel room confronting their deepest fears and resentments after the shock of the O.J Simpson verdict. It appeared that he found it difficult to find a place for himself in the Hollywood system as he says “Everyday I’m defining myself for other people lest they define me...Then you come to Hollywood and the audition process and it’s, ‘Well, how do you see me? Where do I fit in?’ which kind of runs counterpoint to everywhere that I’ve come from.”

Went says that naturally his parents were concerned "When I've had my periods of unemployment, "I'll get these e-mails from my father: 'I've read that the LAPD has a reservist program. Perhaps that's something you'd be interested in taking a look at.' " But he didn’t. He kept his parents at bay by telling them "I learned how to break down a text at Princeton, which helps me break down a script – or at least that's the line I feed my parents when they start wondering where all that good money went."

While Went was working in development at the ABC network he got a break and landed a role in the ABC network mini series Dinotopia. The same network where he was working  at the time. “It all came full circle."

"They had been looking for the two brothers for about two months. And I came in and I read for the role of Karl, and they said 'we love you, we're going to call you back this afternoon.' So I went back that afternoon and it was a mix and match kind of scenario, where they had four David's and four Karl's. And they were kind of putting them together to see who had the right kind of chemistry. So I was reading Karl for most of the afternoon. And then the director, Marco (Brambilla), said, 'you know what, why don't you try David on for size.' So I went out into the hallway and looked over the part of David for literally five minutes or less, came back, and read it with Tyron (Leitso). And two days later, we both got the parts.

I’m glad it worked out that way because even though they’re both great characters, l was attracted to the David character because he gets to fly on the back of dinosaurs.”

Went in "Dinotopia"

Went said this role was quite exhausting as he did his own stunts, fortunately his experience of playing a football player, swim team coach previously, prepared him physically for this challenging role. 

He did a lot of documentaries and interviews for the show too and this gave him the experience for future promotional work he would do in the future.

Dinotopia was one of the most costly TV mini series produced ever.  It did well when it aired on ABC.  The CGI won Emmy Awards for their effort and off the back of the success of the mini series ABC then decided to commission a full series with different actors in the starring roles. Unfortunately the series did not do well and was promptly cancelled.  

Went continued auditioning and managed to secure a role as Dr Adam Lockwood in ‘Underworld’ about vampires and ware wolves fighting each other.

Went in "Underworld"



In my next blog Went gets a chance of a lifetime or does he?

 

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