(PICTURE: The script and me at Noi Bai Airport.)
My big break finally came!!! I'm gonna be on a Vietnamese sitcom called, "The End of The Rainbow." The show -- which I had never heard of before -- will be airing on VTV3 (date and time to be announced on a future blog when I find out).
As many of my friends know from my acting premiere on Fox's "On The Lot", I'm quite an amazing actor. If you'd like to see my TV debut you can check it out on here. Admittedly I'm a terrible actor and only come across as half decent because of my buddy Sam's amazing direction.
As challenging as my last role was, my newest role was by far my hardest. On the sitcom I play an Australian businessman named Mr. Han. I'm pretty sure Han is not a native Australian name so I can only assume I'm a Dutch-Australian and perhaps even one of the bad guys from the original Die Hard.
So you're probably asking yourself, "Ben, how did you get on a Vietnamese sitcom?" Fair question. Well, my buddy Nicky has recently befriended a Vietnamese actress. Long story short, Nicky calls me one night and says, "Hey, this show need foreigners to shoot tomorrow morning. Can you do it?" Being on Vietnamese TV has been a secret dream of mine for two years now so I cleared my schedule and told Nicky I was in.
The next morning I showed up at the "production office" at 8AM. I waited there for a solid two hours before we went to set. So, yeah, Vietnamese TV is just like American TV -- the talent has to wait for hours before they're needed. The production van (a taxi) took us to the set which happened to be Noi Bai Airport. As we set up shop in the airport I thought to myself, "No chance a production crew like this could ever film at Los Angeles airport without serious permits." Nobody even asked me for an ID.
(PICTURE: My lines...which apparently got severely shortened in translation.)
About ten minutes before we were supposed to start shooting, I was handed a script. Naturally I was a little surprised when the script -- and more specifically MY LINES -- were in Vietnamese. I casually said to Nicky's friend, "Um, I'm not so great at Vietnamese." She told me to practice as if I hadn't been practicing (and failing) for 2.5 years. Luckily, right before we started shooting the director told us that we could say our lines in English. Well, let me just say I gave one hell of a performance. Here were my lines:
MR. HAN: Nice to meet you, I'm Mr. Han.
....
MR. HAN: We've been waiting for thirty minutes. You wasted our time.
We were scheduled to film a second scene today. However, the shoot got pushed back to an indefinite date. I can only assume that they've decided to rewrite the script and wrote out our characters.
