I wasn’t sure about posting about this just yet, as it is something that is still in the works, but I haven’t written in a while and this is the most exciting thing I have going on in acting. Plus there was no NDA. so I am free to talk about it.
At the end of June, right after I got home from my shoot on my first costar role in a new series (NDA signed so I am not allowed to name it or the studio), I got an email from my manager. I was already in bed and exhausted, as I didn’t get much sleep the night before, so I skimmed over the email quickly to see if it was something I needed to respond to right away or if it could wait until the morning. The words that stood out to me from first glance were: New Zealand, SAG, Netflix Series, lead role and Florence Pugh.
At 53, my eyes are slowly going out on me, so I jumped out of bed and got to my computer to see what this email was all about on a larger screen. It was a long, detailed email, but basically it was asking me to confirm for an audition in the Netflix Limited series: East of Eden starring Florence Pugh. The audition was for the role of Lee. One of the main characters. The project would start filming in New Zealand in Oct for 6-8 months. The casting director was Ellen Lewis (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Queen’s Gambit, Forrest Gump).
After replying to the email and confirming the audition, I went to Actor’s Access to confirm the audition there also. There was no cMail so I emailed my manager back to say as much. She replied, “This isn’t through Actor’s Access. We pitched you hard for this project.”
After the initial shock of getting this audition, I spent the rest of the night and the next two days preparing for the audition by reading everything I could about the character. I had never read East of Eden in school, but I had a couple of friends who had, and we discussed the character and the book in depth. I turned in my audition after the weekend, with the help of my first acting instructor. The audition went to my manager first (who loved it) and then they forwarded it to casting.
The audition due date was July 1st and have heard nothing back yet. But the point isn’t about getting the role or not (from what people tell me). It’s that my manager has gotten me into a room with one of the biggest casting directors in the country and she has seen my audition. If it was passed on to production, then Florence Pugh (Executive Producer) and Zoe Kazan (Writer/Executive Producer) have seen me. And bottom line is, getting into rooms with these people is why I got my manager in the first place.
She has pitched me for other projects, including Rosemead, Of Love and Destiny, Power, Poker Face and the new Karate Kid movie just to name a few. My agent gets me more auditions, but my manager gets me better auditions. And for this reason, I will never leave her.
You can read about the East of Eden project here.
https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/news/florence-pugh-netflix-series-east-of-eden-what-we-know-so-far/
Simon Shih 
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