Behind the scenes from the pilot episode

Hey everybody!  I’m Chad Hilligus and I play Dave on the show.  As an actor, the hardest part of this process is the waiting.  Waiting in anticipation to see the product of all your hard work (aka ‘the pilot’)…and waiting to see how the production team puts everything together to create a story that you, the viewers, are going to love!  That’s why this site is so great!  It gives you a chance to see what’s going on behind the scenes and what goes into bringing this show to life.  I’m stoked to be a part of it!  I really like playing Dave.  We are similar in a lot of ways…besides both of us being insanely good-looking. Read More

Tonight is our table read; the first time that all of the cast and crew will be in one place with the script. It’s a scary and exciting moment all at once. I’ve heard it in bits and pieces during auditions and have read through it in my head a thousand times, but now, it’s real. It’s really real. Not only will the script come to life as one full document, but the actors will now breathe real life into the characters. They will bring their nuances, their thoughts and their training to Jenn, Ian, Dave and Larissa. It’s also time for me to transition script and character responsibilities to Cody, the Director. Even though I’m not a parent, I can’t imagine handing off a 3-month old baby to someone I hardly know, but must inherently trust to my fullest capabilities. But, that’s what I will do. The script is “all groweds up tonight” as Double-Down Trent would say.

Given that Jenn is based on a real person, you think it’d be easy to form the basis of her character. Ummm, no. As pointed out in an earlier post, we had to balance between the reality of Jenn and the privacy concerns of someone who is working hard to define herself. In the end, the character of Jenn became a very fictionalized version of her world, her relationships and her struggles. This was all very interesting and I have no idea how writers do two-hour biographical pics. It must be very difficult to draw that line as between “what I hear and see” vs. “what the audience needs to hear and see”. In the end, it comes down to the story and what is best for that.

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