James Lafferty, Stephen Colletti on ‘Ridiculous’ Auditions That Inspired ‘Everyone Is Doing Great’ (Video)
James Lafferty and Stephen Colletti drew from their own life experiences when they set out to create their independent TV series “Everyone Is Doing Great” — and we don’t just mean the good ones.
The “One Tree Hill” alums stopped by TheWrap last week to talk about their fundraising campaign for the new dramedy, which centers around two former co-stars, Jeremy Davis (Lafferty) and Seth Stewart (Colletti), who are best-known for their fictional “The Vampire Diaries”-type show, “Eternal,” but have been having a tough time being taken seriously in showbiz since it ended five years ago.
Because TheWrap got a sneak peek at the first episode ahead of our sit-down, we knew about one awkward scene in the pilot in which Seth has to pretend to, um, “make love” to a pillow for an on-camera audition. Of course we immediately needed to know what led them to that cringe-inducing plot point.
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“That particular scene in the first episode is inspired by, you know, all sorts of auditions that we’ve had over the years where you go in thinking you’re doing one thing and then you’re completely thrown for a loop and then you walk out of there going, ‘What just happened? That was not supposed to happen that way,'” Colletti told TheWrap, laughing. “And some of it is because you know they’ll throw something on you, they’ll spring something on you. And some of it is ridiculous; it’s absolutely unnecessary.”
“A love scene in an audition with an inanimate object seems outrageous — but you’d be shocked as to how many of our actor friends we showed this to, and then they turned to us and were like, ‘Were you in that audition? Did you go — did you read for that?’ Because it happens all the time, apparently [laughs]. More so than we even knew.”
Colletti and Lafferty are running an Indiegogo campaign to raise the funds to produce a six-episode first season of “Everyone Is Doing Great.” The guys are trying to hit $350,000 by the time their campaign ends on July 20, and at the time of publication had reached $145,876.
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When asked where they’d like to see the series go, should it be picked up after production, they said they are leaning more toward a streaming service like Netflix.
“I think it’s gonna come down to whoever lets us do what we want to do,” Lafferty said. “We’re really looking forward to tapping into that sort of open-mindedness of the streaming platform world where you can have a 36/37 minute episode of a ‘comedy.’ And where they really are crossing genres more in television now than broadcast is. So that would be, I think, the dream.”
Here is the official logline for “Everyone Is Doing Great”: Seth and Jeremy enjoyed success from “Eternal,” a hit television vampire drama. Five years after their show has ended, they lean on each other as they struggle to reclaim their previous level of success and relevance, awkwardly navigating the perils of life and love amidst a humorously painful coming of age.
Watch the full interview above.
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