General Hospital Exclusive: Casting Director Mark Teschner Reveals the Superstar Who Almost Didn’t Audition Because She ‘Thought She Wasn’t Pretty Enough’
Mark Teschner, the legendary casting director of General Hospital, tells Soaps.com that there are no easy roles to fill. Even after seeing hundreds of fine actors, he says, sometimes “you know on a gut level that you don’t yet have it.”
Such was the case back in 1992 when the Emmy(s) winner was searching for the definitive Brenda Barrett. In fact, he came thisclose to not getting to so much as audition Vanessa Marcil. “She walked into the waiting room, and there were about five other actresses sitting waiting for their audition,” Teschner recalls. “I spread them out, but sometimes the room is filled with about five or six. Vanessa looked over the room, and she thought to herself, ‘These girls are so beautiful, I’m never gonna get it.’ She started to leave the audition!
“As she was walking out,” he continues, “I opened the door and said, ‘Vanessa.’ It was her time. She turned and saw me, and she said when she did, she knew she was gonna get the job, but if I had been a minute later to open the door, she wouldn’t have auditioned for the role!”
Needless to say, the future Emmy winner nailed her tryout. “When she started doing the audition, even though she was a very raw, green actress, there was so much going on. I thought, ‘There’s some magic here.’”
And a whole lot of irony, too. “The funny thing is,” Teschner said, “Vanessa thought, ‘I’m not pretty enough.’” But shortly thereafter, “Prince had his video out on MTV, ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,’ and she was the most beautiful girl in the world in it. So, basically, the most beautiful girl in the world thought she wasn’t pretty enough and almost left an audition.
“That’s a situation where it she got in her head about it, but — and I always tell actors — it’s not about anybody else in the room, you’re auditioning because the role has not been cast,” he adds. “So you have as great a shot as anyone in that room, whether you recognize them from the work they’ve done or not. Everybody has an opportunity or we wouldn’t hold an audition.”