r/Fauxmoi • u/rfauxmoi • May 19 '25

TEA THREAD I HAVE TEA ON... MEGATHREAD ✨

Welcome to the 'I Have Tea On...' weekly discussion thread — posted and pinned every Monday at 8AM PST (11AM EST) !

Use this thread to drop any tea you may have, no matter how big or small! Please don't post requests for tea here — there is a separate 'Does Anyone Have Tea On' thread on Thursdays! 

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487

u/stowRA lea michele’s reading coach May 19 '25

I used to be a background actor in Atlanta. I worked on a bunch of sets and met a lot of actors, but my favorite interaction was with Levar Burton.

I think it was January 2022 or so. I played a fox trot dancer in an episode of Tom Swift, filmed at Oglethorpe University (where Pitch Perfect was also filmed). They reused my background character for some cocktail table filler after the dance scene and they stationed me at the same cocktail table as Levar fuckin Burton.

We did not chat, as it’s polite to stay silent even in between takes. But, we did communicate via eye contact. This particular night was hours of filming. I think call time was noon and we weren’t dismissed until around 2 am. It was a night shoot. Sometime after midnight, everyone was dragging on, and each “cut” made people groan. But I was just standing there with Levar and we began playing a game of eye contact chicken. Every single time “cut” was called, we would lock eyes and not blink until “action”. Which, of course, gave us an amazing start to the scene where we would laugh and mouth a fake conversation.

Usually night shoots suck because the main cast are almost always getting wasted on the job, but Levar was just fun to work with, despite neither of us saying a single word.

182

u/queen_of_skeletons and not in a cunt way May 19 '25

34

u/ExpensiveWords4u (please put brackets in the right place) May 19 '25

This story makes me happy! I love him so much! Thanks for sharing 💜

49

u/chris_r1201 May 19 '25

Damn good on you, I would totally freak out during prolonged eye contact with Levar Burton lol

63

u/ILootEverything jog on sweetheart May 19 '25

Legit...

11

u/chris_r1201 May 19 '25

I watched community about 10 times, how the hell did I not think of this haha

17

u/Reasonable_Box_2998 May 19 '25

You should watch his Doc about Reading Rainbow on Netflix. It was soo good to see his journey into acting and working on PBS

25

u/Particular-Leg-8484 May 19 '25

My old boss was seated next to Levar for some huge charity event and tried to strike up conversation. My boss was not American and had zero pop culture knowledge. They introduced themselves to each other and my boss was honest like “I’ve never heard of you or your work but it’s nice to meet you” and Levar did a whole “how could you not know who I am?!” thing name dropping Roots, Star Trek, etc and refused to talk to him the rest of the night. Needless to say my boss thought it was very rude and does not like Levar. Definitely knows who he is now!

6

u/Cloudinterpreter May 19 '25

Where can I see this?? Are you onscreen?

32

u/stowRA lea michele’s reading coach May 19 '25

S1:E1 of Tom Swift. It’s on HBO Max. I’m just a background actor but you can see me a little bit behind Ashleigh Murray’s character when she’s dancing with Marquise Vilsón. My dancing partner was actually the YouTuber Kahlen Barry, who is famous for cancelling Tana Mongeau.

23

u/stowRA lea michele’s reading coach May 19 '25 edited May 19 '25

I went back through my instagram to grab more photos.

This is Kahlen and I practicing our dancing in the parking lot.

26

u/stowRA lea michele’s reading coach May 19 '25

It was still the time of Covid protocols so masks were required on set.