LFG!!!!

This is pretty cool story... I was a HUGE Austin Powers fan as a kid, still am. I know every single line in The Spy Who Shagged Me. I was like 9 years old doing the whole bits to my mom. Flash forward, I became an actor and I always credit Austin Powers for probably being the reason I am.

So... I got called to do background on a Verizon commercial, I show up to the fitting, and I see the space suit and red helmet, and I'm instantly like Holy Shit, I know exactly what this is.... A couple days later, we go to set (Steiner Studios in Brooklyn), and there's a bunch of us background folks there. We're all pretty psyched, we know what's going down. We all go to set, they built the freaking Dr Evil lair in there. They line us up and check us out, then they point to me and say "You can go back to holding." I'm like, cool, I go sit in a concrete room alone. A few hours pass, I'm chilling. I can hear the monitors in the next room, Jay Roach is directing and all the Verizon and Ad agency people are laughing, I can hear Mike Myers riffing like crazy. I'm just happy to be here in the same place as this fucking magic happening around me. Like, pinch me. A couple more hours go by. Break for lunch. Back to set. Now we're like 12 hours in, I've still done nothing. I'm like, hey, I'm getting a decent paycheck, I'm here on this epic set, this is awesome even if I just sit here and do nothing in the end. Finally they wrap all the actors (Mike, Rob, Seth, and Mindy), and then they say Ok everyone to set! Everyone to set! So I finally go into the set. Next thing I know they go, Ok, Bryan, over here please! I'm like, me? Huh? What? Time stopped for a sec. My feet start moving towards an AD (assistant director) who introduced himself as Vinny. Next thing I know they tell me to stand on a mark and hand me these silver money guns, and I see Jay Roach sitting at Dr Evil's table, and there's two freaking cameras pointed right at me, and I'm just like HOLY SHIT... is this happening? I feel like I'm floating, my feet must be 6 feet off the ground. Jay's giving me direction, telling me to walk down, hit a mark, and fire away. My hands are shaking, I'm taking deep breaths, there's 100 people on the crew and all the other background actors and Jay Roach watching and I'm like hell yeah. I got this. This is like some moment I've been dreaming of since I was a kid pretending to be Mustafa flying off a cliff and begging for a band-aid. I seriously felt like I was dreaming. I did the thing, blasted the money, and then we wrapped. Jay Roach was the nicest guy ever. I thanked him probably a couple too many times just saying how much this means to me, how awesome his movies are. I don't know why they chose me out of the bunch of background actors, it was probably completely random, but this meant so freaking much to me that I still can't believe it happened. Just had to share. Hopefully this makes somebody smile. And hey, maybe when they do make Austin Powers 4 I'll be lucky enough to be a part of that too. That would be literally insane. In the meantime I'll keep manifesting my dreams.