Too Much Is Not Enough: A Memoir of Fumbling Toward Adulthood by Andrew Rannells

Author:Andrew Rannells
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2019-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

Broadway Adjacent

When I got back from the theater barn, I knew I was capable of booking professional work—albeit work that was contingent upon my willingness to also clean the urinals in the men’s room—and yet here I was starting another semester at a school I wasn’t happy with and spending time, energy, and my limited funds on a degree that I wasn’t sure was necessary for my future. Most of the people I had just worked with in summer stock had college degrees and were making the same $150 a week I was. Did I need a degree to be an actor? Was it something that I had to have to work? Was I really learning anything useful?

Making things worse, my teen modeling savings were nearly gone. My tuition was paid for, but I still had to pay for room and board and general living expenses, and New York had proven to be way more expensive than I had planned. (He said to the surprise of no one.) I started classes again and went through the motions of being a student. I was waking up with financial panic attacks almost daily, and I was skipping most of my classes to make time for work, which, looking back, seems insane since I was skipping the thing that I was trying to pay for.

I had two part-time jobs. The first was at Equinox gym, as a front desk clerk. I took this job mainly so I could get the free membership that came with it. It was easy work; I just had to check people in as they entered. It was pretty uneventful, except for the occasional entitled Upper East Sider who would burst into the gym with no membership card and no ID, and insist that I should remember his or her face and name. In those instances I would usually fold and just let the person in, but depending on my mood, I would sometimes punish those rich people by making them spell their names very slowly for me while I searched for their membership folder. I have to say that a real highlight of that job was that every once in a while Isabella Rossellini would come in. She never had her ID, but she was always incredibly polite and would voluntarily spell her first and last name so I could check her in. And she always apologized for not bringing her ID card. I will always love her for that.

My second job was more soul-crushing. I was a greeter at the Warner Bros. store. “Why was that so bad?” you ask. I’ll tell you. The Warner Bros. store was eight floors of merchandise packed into a sterile high-rise on the corner of 57th and Fifth Avenue. T-shirts, hats, flatware, glasses, jewelry, DVDs—anything any Warner Bros. fan could dream of—even Tweety Bird mud flaps. (That is not a joke. We sold those.) All I had to do was stand in front of the entrance and welcome people into the store by saying, “Welcome to the Warner Bros.

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