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Chicopee native navigates her way through showbiz
March 7,
2013 |
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Reminder Publications submitted photo
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By G. Michael Dobbs
news@thereminder.com
Think a life in show business is easy? Just ask Chicopee native Sabina Gadecki.
Gadecki is co-starring as the female lead in the new film "Freaky Deaky," an adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel of the same name. Although she has had success modeling, being a commercial actress and landed guest shots on television series, being selected for her first prominent role in a motion picture is something for which she has worked a long time.
Speaking to Reminder Publications, Gadecki explained how her involvement in the film, which co-stars Billy Burke, Christian Slater, Michael Jai White and Crispin Glover, came about.
Gadecki recently made the move to Los Angeles, Calif., for both professional and personal reasons and when she went to the audition for the film she was impressed by the sheer number of actresses in the room.
"I looked at every other girl and I wondered how the heck I'm going to stand out from everyone else," she said.
Her answer was to be prepared for the audition as best she could.
Gadecki was trying out for the role of "Robin Abbot," the ex-con and political radical who is looking for revenge. She read for the part and then took a flight to Brazil to attend a family wedding.
What she heard next from her agent was both the best and worst news she could receive: the filmmakers wanted her to come back in for an additional audition.
She had just arrived at her hotel when her agent contacted her and flying back to Los Angeles wasn't an option. Gadecki explained that she always carries a small video camera and tripod. She asked her agent to email her the pages of the script she needed and had them printed out. She then took a look around the hotel room for a blank wall with a neutral color. The only one she could find was in the bathroom.
She set up her laptop, contacted her acting coach through Skype who read the lines for the other characters. Five hours later, she had a videotape of her performing the character that she sent to the producers.
She didn't find out until weeks later that she had been selected for a role, but not for the one she thought. Instead of the bad girl, she received the female lead part of "Greta," the woman whose plight drives the plot of the film.
She said that originally Brendan Fraser and Matt Dillon were cast as the male leads. Eventually, Burke, one of the stars of the NBC series "Revolution," was cast in the role of the police officer who befriends Greta instead of Fraser and Slater as the pyrotechnics expert that Dillon was going to play.
She didn't learn of the changes until she flew to Detroit, Mich., where the film was going to be shot. For the first four days, she was the only cast member there.
"[On a film] you don't know how many changes are made at the last minute," she said.
The shoot took two and a half months and at first the cast, although cordial to one another, would retreat to their trailer between takes. Gadecki said the cast started to warm up to one another and as a group did everything in their time-off from going to art galleries and museums to the local casino.
"It organically happened," she said, adding that she really appreciated both Burke and Slater for "looking out for me."
"I was very, very nervous," Gadecki said. "They couldn't have been more professional."
Glover, who has been known for eccentric roles on camera, was the actor that Gadecki knew the least at the start of the shoot. She said he was very kind to people, but very professional about the role and the work.
"He took the process to seriously," Gadecki recalled. She added that Glover frequently suggested bits of business to director Charles Matthau, whom she also praised.
The old line in the film business is that "you're only as good as your last picture," and Gadecki has been hard at work finding roles during "pilot season," the time during which television networks produce pilots for potential series.
Although she would prefer working in movies, Gadecki has been busy auditioning for television series. She said getting a comedy series would send her "through the roof," as she loves comedy.
Gadecki came very close to landing a role in a comedy pilot for ABC. She said that 40,000 actresses submitted their resumes to the shows casting directors. Out of that pool, four actresses were selected to make a screen test and Gadecki was one of them. Out of that four the decision came down between her and another actress and they chose the other performer.
"I didn't get it. I was so upset," she said.
Her agent pointed out to her that she had accomplished a lot by coming so close.
Despite the disappointment, Gadecki is undaunted. She said all of her professional experiences have led her to her current status in show business.
In 2007, she was the host for the "World Poker Tour" series and while she said she was grateful for the opportunity to be a television host, it "was just not for me." She noted the difficulty she had when interviewing poker players who had just lost millions of dollars.
"No one wanted to talk to me," she recalled.
As a model she is represented by Ford Models, but she said at age 30 she is "getting older."
"I've worked really, really hard to be a trained actress," she said. "Modeling and hosting has helped me a lot but acting has always been number one."
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