Former Big Brother Houseguest Matt Hoffman offers his advice and Big Brother casting tips as part of his series on “Confessions of a Layman: How a Regular Dude Can Get Cast on ‘Big Brother.'” Read on to learn how he did it.
1. YOU’RE GETTING CAST ON TV…BE A CHARACTER
Yes, ‘Big Brother’ is a reality show. I’d go so far as to say that it’s probably the most “real” of reality shows out there. But it still is a television program and, thus, it still needs “characters”.
While being able to play ‘Big Brother’ had always been a dream of mine, back in 2003 I applied to be a part of a terrible show called ‘Average Joe’. The premise was that a group of douchey unattractive men would vie for the affections of a super hot female who (joke’s on her!) thought she was going on a show like ‘The Bachelorette’ where she’d get to choose from a bunch of good-looking dudes. A few weeks into the season they’d bring in a handful of really attractive men to compete with the “average joes” so that now the lead female can either look like the superficial swine that she is by choosing a hot guy with the personality of a chimpanzee, or she can break stereotypes by choosing a less attractive guy who is smart and charismatic…
…In the end of every season, the lead always would choose one of the attractive guys, proving to insecure people all over the country that being beautiful really is the most important thing in life, and that beautiful people should only associate with other beautiful people.
The reason I applied to this show was not because I wanted to find love on television. In fact, I was dating someone at the time, and the reason I applied was to win a bet with them. I told this person that every season there was the “short guy with a good personality”, and I bet them that I could be that guy if I wanted to. As a goof, I sent in an audition video that was totally hokey and pathetic and basically focused on complaining about how difficult my dating life has been because of how short I was. I am clearly much better at lying about dating hardships than I am at lying about having a terminally ill spouse, because less than 10 days later I had locked a spot on the show.
Now I do not at all recommend flat-out falsities in your character type like I exhibited to get on ‘Average Joe’. But the point is the same…you need to have a story. Or a “hook”. Some one thing that makes you stand out in an interesting one-sentence description:
- “That’s the short guy with the good personality”
- “That’s the gay conservative republican”
- “That’s the housewife and mother who is a competitive bass fisher”
If your description is “That’s the guy in the plain shirt who works at his miserable cubicle job 50 hours a week, but is a HUGE fan of the show”, then you can bank on not getting called back.
2. MAKE A VIDEO
I’ve never been to an open call, but I’ve heard plenty about them. And none of it really seems to win favor over applying with a video… Continue Reading Part 2 >>
