Elsie Bennett and Kaja Chan, the actors who play Split Fiction dual protagonists Zoe and Mio, respectively, almost botched their first audition by not knowing they had to literally flip the script they were holding to read the second half of the scene.
“It was a scene in a lift,” Bennett said in an interview on Hazelight’s YouTube channel (timestamped here). “We went in and we did the scene, and then, you know at the end someone says cut? No one was saying cut,” said Bennett.
“No, we were just stood there, sweating” added Chan.
“We had done the last line and it was like [extended pause], lift acting, like a lot of lift acting. Really waiting, like ‘they are really dragging out this cut,’ and then they were like, ‘OK, cut, did you not have the rest of the scene?’ and neither of us had realized that on the other side [of the script] there was like another half of a scene, and from that moment we were just laughing.”
“We lost it, but I think that worked in our favor, you know?” said Chan.
“We very quickly realized that we were of the same ilk,” said Bennett.
Honestly, I can totally see myself pulling something like this, so I absolutely sympathize with Chan and Bennett’s situation here, but it’s also hard not to chuckle at the thought of the two actors standing awkwardly in an imagined elevator, silently sweating bullets, only to find out the crew behind the scene was every bit as confused as they were. Of course, ultimately they both got the part, making it even easier to laugh at their predicament in hindsight.
