ChuckDoherty.com

Over the past few months, I have been trying to build up my acting resume and looking for work both on stage and in film. This Monday I received a last-minute call from a casting company I work with, asking me if I was available the next morning for a role in the movie 27 Dresses which has been filming here in Providence and Newport for a few weeks.  This part offered a step up from regular background work, and most important, will allow me to earn some credit toward eventual membership in the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG).

We did the shoot yesterday at a mansion in Newport, where I played the role of a wealthy man from L.A.  I was given a (spray-on) suntan that would make George Hamilton look pale in comparison, wore a white suit with an open, pink shirt (my chest had to be sprayed bronze too), and some gaudy jewelery. In this scene, I was posing for wedding photos with my beautiful blonde centerfold-model bride.  She really was very beautiful, and could not have been half my age.  All of the bridesmaids were also beautiful young blondes, and all the guys in the party were much, much older, with grey hair; that was the point of this scene.  I guess that is what everyone does in L.A.  Go figure.

We were working with the very lovely Katherine Heigl, who was playing one of the bridesmaids, and the scene called for her to appear somewhat embarrassed by the general sluttiness of the other gals as well as the absurdly short and revealing pink dresses that she and the other bridesmaids were cranked into. Believe me, these things were like sausage casings.  A popped button would have shot off like a bullet and taken someone right out.

I am not on screen for very long and I do not have a line, but I am very much there in the center; you can’t miss me.  The film will be in general release later this year, or early next.  The IMDB page says it is scheduled for January release, but someone on the set said November.  We shall see.

Here’s a bit of advance trivia; one of the bridesmaids in my scene also played the part of Heigl’s dead mother as a young woman in a different scene.  That caused some concerns about continuity, but the director decided she looked different enough in each appearance for this to get by. Also; if you look very closely you can see me drive by in my car during a scene that was supposed to be on a street in NYC, but it was actually shot on North Main Street in Providence.   I can also be seen walking on the sidewalk, a long way off, later in that same segment.