On Rejection: Alex Dobrenko

Very excited to show up here with another interview about rejection with writer and actor Alex Dobrenko. He’s an up-and-coming actor here in LA and also writes the very funny Both Are True right here on Substack.

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Hi Alex! Tell us about a time you experienced rejection.

I feel like working in the film industry as a writer and actor, rejection is the norm and acceptance (aka work) is the exception, so its genuinely hard to single out a specific one haha. I'd say of the maybe 300 auditions I've been on, I've been rejected for 293 of them hahaha. It's also funny because I feel like actors are often the people who have the hardest time with rejection, that is to say they have the strongest need for approval and acceptance, hence them getting into this industry in the first place.

One story stands out just for how absurd it was - I was auditioning for a Subway commercial - I go to the first audition and it goes well so I get a call back, which means I have to go back in and audition again a few days later, this time in front of the director and producers and agency making the spot (the original audition is just taped, meaning I go into a casting studio and they put me on tape to show the directors etc.)

So I go in for the callback and I think it goes pretty great too, but who knows. Nonetheless, I start my usual ritual of dissecting every millisecond in the room and figuring out everything I did wrong as I drive back from Santa Monica when I get a phone call from my agent: "Hey they need you to go back to the audition, they forgot they need to do one more thing with you."

So I'm amped - they wouldn't be asking me back unless they were interested in me. I get back to the audition studio and it's just me and one other dude there - he's tall, ginger hair, built like a high school (but not college) football player. I get called in first.

I walk in and the director goes, "Hey man we really love your read, there's just one thing we forgot to do - the bite."

The bite is a KEY part of any food-related commercial audition - they want to see how you bite into their food product  - it's really the money shot of the whole thing so they gotta know you can do it well.

Except instead of giving me the actual subway sandwich to bite, they gave a tiny piece of bread, like the size you'd throw at a pigeon, and the director says "ok go ahead and bite."

And so I bite and try to chew but not too much but I'm all in my head about it obviously when the director goes, "ok great, let's try again but can you not put all of your fingers on the bread. And let's get a smile too in the middle of the bite."

So now I'm really in my head and try doing it again, really focusing on smiling while biting which makes me look like a genuine psycho and long story short I did not book the role.

A few months later I saw the commercial on tv at the gym and there was that happy ginger, smiling away, rich as hell off of that sweet sweet Subway money.

How did you get over it?

The closer you get to booking the role, the harder the rejection is. So after the callback stage you then get "pinned" which means it's down to you and one or two other people, and they want you to keep your schedule open for the day(s) of the shoot.

Whenever I get pinned, I lose my mind - I'm SO close but still SO far haha.

But I've been doing this for 12 years now and the rejections in general are way easier than they were when I was just starting out in Austin. Back then I didn't understand that you had to separate yourself from the work, a practice that's really hard given that YOU are the thing they are deciding whether or not to hire. Like it's your face, your voice, your vibe, so when you get rejected it really does feel like YOU the human being have been rejected, are not worthy, etc.

But over time, slowly and painfully, I learned how to detach myself from the audition itself. I think the biggest thing that helped me with that, honestly, was starting to do my own work. I made sketches with my group Thanks Laura and on Twitter, and then I wrote and produced and acted in a digital series called Distance about a couple in a long distance relationship where every episode is split into two parts - his side and her side, and you as the audience get to decide which part you want to watch first.

So having that creative outlet and knowing that I can make stuff regardless of whether or not I get cast, that took away a lot of the power that the industry had over me.

But for Subway specifically I didn't really get over it, nor did I ever get better at food / drink auditions. I'm simply not a photogenic consumer of food!! 

If you could go back and tell yourself anything right before that experience, what would you say?

Don't listen to anything they say and just bite the bread normally, haha.

As an actor, have you ever not gotten a role and been thankful for that later?

Definitely! I honestly think that had I gotten some of the bigger roles I auditioned for on sitcoms or like Disney TV shows, I might have never taken my own path and made stuff that I really felt proud of. Would I have a lot more money? Sure. But would I be sitting there being like "man I feel creatively empty." Definitely.

I had a big shift with this after starting to make stuff on my own as I wrote about above. 

What are you working on now?

Last year was BY FAR my best year as an actor - I was in KIMI the Steven Soderbergh movie, an episode of NCIS: Los Angeles, and a Geico commercial that ran forever and made me some great money. Plus I have an upcoming role in the Damien Chazelle film Babylon which looks amazing.

That said, I have barely auditioned this year hahaha, and genuinely I feel like I will probably never work as an actor again (this feeling never really leaves you).

BUT I have been writing a lot more! I was hired to write a pilot script for a dramedy about a woman with OCD that has been amazing and really the first time I've been paid to write scripts, which is awesome.

And my pet obsession/project has been Both Are True, my substack. I've wanted to write on there for so so long and finally this April I decided to fully commit to it, and it's been one of the best decisions of my life. Not only am I growing an audience on there and meeting other writers / creating community (including the many LA writers like you!), but I have an outlet for exploring and expressing the many weird thoughts and ideas and feelings that are floating around in my mind, especially after having a kid lol.

You can follow Alex on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.