2 minute read
BACKSTAGE 5 WITH
Mignon Von
By Allie Volpe
Without representation from an agent, actor (and award-winning director, writer, and producer) Mignon Von landed the leading role of Danni on Tyler Perry’s hit BET dramedy “Sistas” through selfsubmission. The show broke barriers this summer when it became the first production to film an entire season amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, going into Season 2, Von discusses how she got cast and more.
Do you have an audition horror story you could share?
Here in Atlanta, they opened up this wonderful theater a year or two ago [with] a great endowment. In the first year, they were doing “42nd Street,” “Hairspray,” [and] “South Pacific.” I was like, I am going to go and audition! Meanwhile, my voice hasn’t been trained in years, I haven’t taken dance classes in years. I go in there, and I’m going to sing “One Night Only” from “Dreamgirls,” [thinking,] No one is going to sing that song. The pianist, he went way faster than I anticipated, so they let me do it a second time. I was terrible. The looks on their faces could be memes, the way they looked at me with these wide eyes; their mouths were agape. A girl came in after me and belted “One Night Only”—the very next girl—and she was incredible.
What’s the wildest thing you ever did to get a role?
The craziest thing I did was I did the two callbacks for “Sistas,” and I went back to L.A. and I packed up my stuff. And I moved [to Atlanta, where the show is filmed,] knowing they haven’t called and given me the part yet. And they eventually did. I did that three-day drive across the country and waited for the news out of sheer faith. This is mine; I know this is my part.
Thinking back on that time, what advice would you give
your younger self? It’s a numbers game. Because I didn’t have representation, I would check all the platforms, [like] Backstage, multiple times a day. Because I cast my own short film, I know what the casting process is like. The quicker I can get my face in front of this person before the person with an agent or manager does, if I’m possibly right for it, I might get picked for an audition. Just play the odds. Don’t submit yourself every other day; don’t submit yourself once a week. Submit yourself multiple times a day.
How did you first get your SAG-AFTRA card? Danni on “Sistas”! I was not even SAG-eligible before this, but [Tyler Perry] is a really great guy; he doesn’t care about any of that.
What performance should every actor see and why?
There are several that I’d recommend, but Colin Firth in “The King’s Speech,” because that movie is about him having to give a speech, but we don’t really focus on the fact that the speech he’s giving is, “Hey, we’re about to go to war.” The way the story is set up and the way his performance is executed, his stutter is more urgent than the fact that a full country is about to go to war. That shows you how important storytelling is. When you understand stakes and nuance and urgency and a want and an objective, you understand insecurity and humanity. A stutter can be more urgent than a war.
