Grace After Midnight_ A Memoir - Felicia Pearson [47]
“Your screen test.”
Well, I didn’t know nothing about no screen test.
“What is a screen test?” I asked.
“We’ll show you in a minute.”
It was more than a minute. It was a long goddamn time. I was sitting in there, doing nothing but making calls to make sure my shops were running smooth.
Two hours later, I’d had it. I was about to get up and leave—fuck this shit—when they said they was ready.
Took me in a room, sat me down, and said, “You don’t need to speak. Just look in the camera.”
I looked in the camera for a couple of minutes.
I got paid $150.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it,” they said.
“What’s next?”
“We’ll call you.”
They did. They actually called the next day wanting another screen test. They said they’d pay another $150.
But I was thinking that’s bullshit.
While I was getting $150 for a screen test I could be making many stacks on the block. In my business, time is money.
But on second thought, everyone thinks about being on TV, and I was no different. I started watching the show. The Wire had street characters running around every episode. I related. I liked the show. It was real.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll take another test.”
Second test happened. And a third.
Then someone came up and said, “You’re a natural. We want you on the show.”
I was a little shocked.
I didn’t really believe it.
“No acting lessons?” I asked.
“No acting lessons,” they said. “The directors will help you out.”
I was feeling weird. I was feeling happy but I was also feeling like I was dreaming. They actually wanted to put me on TV.
“How ’bout my look?” I asked.
“We like your look,” they said.
“I don’t need to change it?”
“We don’t want you to change it.”
“How ’bout the way I talk?” I talk with this heavy Baltimore accent.
“We like the way you talk.”
“It’s all good?” I asked.
“All good,” they said.
It’s too good, I thought to myself. My life don’t work this way. It’s too fuckin’ good.
FLIPPING THE SCRIPT
I knew The Wire was an HBO show for American TV, but I didn’t know it was poppin’ all over the world.
I didn’t know, at the end of the third season of the series, when I started appearing, that I’d be so relaxed around the camera.
I had no idea that I’d take to it the way I did.
Strange, but I didn’t look at it like acting.
It was being.
I just had to be.
On the show I had to be me: someone who hits the block.
They wanted me to keep my walk and my talk and even my name. They wanted me to be Snoop.
The other thing was this: Whenever and wherever we shot, I found myself in the middle of a family that loved me. All the actors, writers, and producers treated me like a long-lost daughter or sister or friend.
So there I was, doing what I’d always done: being a thug, only being a thug in front of the cameras.
What kind of crazy shit is that?
Suddenly I’m being recognized in restaurants. I’m being asked to act in other movies.
Real is pretend, and pretend is real.
Snoop is real-life me and Snoop is a pretend-life character on TV.
The script is flipped.
I wake up in the morning, get dressed, leave my work on the block to walk into a world about make-believe work on the block.
But because I ain’t that sure the make-believe work is real, I keep my real-life work. My shops stay open.
“How long can you do that, Snoop?” asks my godmother, Denise. “How long can you keep selling dope?”
So Denise starts convicting me, and my conscience starts convicting me. My brain’s spinning around and I’m getting confused all over again, just like when I was down in the Cut and learned that Uncle had been killed.
Back then I’d decided to go straight.
I’d seen the light.
But then when I got out and kept getting canned from straight jobs, the light went out.
I was drawn back into the darkness because the darkness was where I belonged. I was sure that the light was for others, not for me. I’d live and die in darkness. I’d even get rich in darkness. Darkness was all I knew. Darkness was my reality.
Now here comes all this Wire business.
TV cats talking about, “We want real people on this show. We want to