We present to you a great vintage article taken out of the amazing O.C. Insider Magazine. You will find a ton of never before released behind the scenes info and much more! You'll never guess who the real goofball on set was OR who played guitar in their dressing room! Enjoy!
Text version:
“For every minute of footage (that you see on TV) there’s
probably 45 minutes of in-between time,” Chris Carmack (Luke) explains. “That
gives us a lot of downtime to deal with.”
Dressing Room
Downtime
Each actor has a person dressing room located in a building adjacent to the sound stages – that’s where they spend what Chris refers to as “downtime.” Each dressing room door is labeled by the O.C. character’s name – not the actor’s real name.
Inside they are all furnished identically, with a phone, a
couch, a side table, and a coffee table. “It’s so funny,” Adam says. “All of
the guys’ rooms are so sparse and all the girls did up their room like it’s
their home. The girls have blankets and pillows and candles and posters on the
walls and my room looks like it did the day I got assigned to it.”
Micha agrees laughing, “I’ve been trying to press Adam to
decorate his room. He needs some serious help in there. It’s beginning to look mildly
depressing.”
Micha continues, “Rachel decorated hers and so did I. I have some Beatles and Rolling Stones and Clash posters. There’s big cushions and candles and incense. I decorated my room with an eclectic mix of things I like to have around me and things I find comforting and soothing. I tend to read a lot or listen to music when I’m there.”
Music is a common O.C. theme. On any given day you will hear
several different kinds of music coming from the actors’ rooms. Usually Ben is
listening to Lyle Lovett or Willie Nelson while Rachel might have her stereo pumping
out some hip-hop. Micscha likes to listen to faves like Radiohead once in a
while, and Adam generally cranks out the latest tunes from his favorite indie
bands. Chris makes his own tunes, practicing guitar in his room.
All of this activity is observed not-so-quietly by Josh and
the other producers. Over the first season little bits of the cast’s respective
personal tastes and interests have found their way into O.C. scripts.
“I like to listen to what people talk about,” Josh says. “I try to make the actors feel as comfortable as possible with their characters because I hope they’ll be playing them for a while. So if I hear somebody say something funny I try to put it in the show. Rachel and her friends all watch The Golden Girls and I thought that was funny so in one of our episodes I had Summer and Anna bond over watching The Golden Girls and talk about which character they identify with. It’s made them very guarded and wary around me.”
The Munchies
During breaks, the cast often hits the “craft services” –
Hollywood speak for food buffet table. The meals provided are generally easily
prepared for the dozens of folks working on set at any given time; usually
sandwiches, salads, soups and pastas are available. Throughout the day the cast
can graze on healthy fare like fruit and fresh vegetables, or snack on
not-so-healthy items like M&Ms and Red Vine licorice.
“Our set is really relaxed and friendly,” Ben says. “We’re
not all working together on set all the time so it’s sort of random groups of
people at different times. We go to lunch together or some of the guys play
music together on the set at lunch.”
“You literally know how well your show is doing by how well
the craft services table is stocked,” Tate Donovan (Jimmy) says. “The first
couple of episodes the pickings are really slim. You get, like, a couple pieces
of licorice and that’s it. If the show’s a hit you get Krispy Kreme doughnuts
instead of some store brand. We’re doing pretty well because they brought in
these sandwiches called Thanksgiving sandwiches. You know at midnight on
Thanksgiving you go to the fridge and you’re starving and you make a sandwich
that has turkey, cranberry sauce and stuffing and lettuce? Well, that’s what we
had and the crew went nuts. All work stopped when those sandwiches arrived.”
Bonding – and Tattling
– Like Family
Wonderland is the name of O.C. producer McG’s production company.
It could also be a way to describe the euphoric state the actors are in now
that the show is a bona fide hit. As corny as it might sound, the cast has become
very close.
“We really lucked out because none of had met each other before
we came to do this project,” Mischa says. “People must think we look so dorky because
were hanging out together and we look like the lame-o cast from The O.C.”
Lame-o? Hardly, though Josh does have a few inside
observations about the cast to share.
1. "Adam has never seen a movie he’s liked.”
2. “Ben is a total goofball – he tries to be
brooding but he’s pretty funny.”
3. "Rachel is into Springsteen and Peter will sing
show tunes at the drop of a hat.” (Note: Peter Gallagher is an award-winning
Broadway stage actor and singer – check out the cast album to the musical Guys and Dolls.)
4. “Tate is an extraordinary athlete and a true
ladies’ man.”
5. “Melinda is much younger and nicer than her
character.”
6. “And Kelly, well, I would never eat any food
that she eats – it’s all this sort of wheat germ stuff.”
Because most O.C. scenes are
pretty intense, “There’s not much time for us to joke around socialize during
the workday,” Mischa says.
Still, Adam finds a way to
lighten things up. “Adam is always trying to make everyone laugh, which he does
all the time. He’s kinda like that little brother that’s always making jokes in
front of your parents. It’s like you’re supposed to be serious but you can’t
help yourself,” Ben says, “Basically any time he does something funny we have
to do two takes because the first time I laugh like crazy and the second time I
know what’s coming.”
“We’re really tight and we’re all
really good friends,” Mischa says. “We had so much publicity stuff to do when
the show first started so we were all together all the time.”
The time together helped the cast
bond tight friendships with one another early on. “We hang out, we go to
parties or movies,” Ben says.
And it’s not just the young
actors who have bonded.
“It’s a different vibe here than
other places I’ve worked,” Adam says. “Everyone really gets along. I love Peter
(Gallagher, who plays Sandy Cohen). Everyone knows and loves Peter. I have the
ultimate case of ‘my dad is better than your dad’ because I feel like he’s the
best. I think of him as sort of a father figure so when I see him and Kelly do
a kissing scene it makes me feeling kind of weird. I mean it’s cool but I’m
kind of watching my parents make out and it grosses me out.”
“I really admire Peter,” Ben
says. “The thing I picked up from him right away is his attitude. He’s humble
and hardworking and friendly. He set the tone for the rest of the cast because
he’s the most accomplished name actor attached to the cast. He’s been
incredibly sweet so there’s no room for the kids to be jerks.”
But there’s plenty of room for the
kids to have fun. “This year the cast and I all went to a Halloween party,”
Mischa says. “I dressed like Catherine-Zeta Jones from Chicago, Adam dressed up as Ben Affleck, and Rachel was J-Lo. We
had so much fun and we acted like kids. It was a good excuse to pretend we were
somebody else for a night and good excuse to fool around. Not that we need
that.”
Rachel, Mischa and Samaire often
get together and go to the movies or go shopping and grab lunch.
The guys Ben,
Adam, Chris, and McG all play on the same entertainment basketball team. Every
weekend they bond over a friendly game of hoops, though Ben admits their team
isn’t faring so well.
“We are 1-3 right now. We definitely need the practice,
especially Adam and me,” Ben says. “Chris is really good. He’s a natural
athlete. We had to shoot a golfing scene on the show and neither of us had ever
golfed before. I was barely hitting the ball 100 yards but Chris was crushing it.
He was driving his ball 200 to 300 yards. He’s gifted.”
Presents and Pranks
Speaking of gifts, “We try to
make a big deal out of birthdays, with cake and presents. Nobody’s big day goes
uncelebrated,” says Mischa.
When Rachel turned 22 the group had
a little celebration on the set. Adam is generally known as the wordsmith of
the bunch with his quick and witty one-liners. But after Rachel’s 22nd
birthday, he’s now known as the prankster.
“We were filming in the bio lab
where there were real dead frogs for the scene where we were dissecting frogs,”
Mischa explains. “Rachel had a bunch of presents in her dressing room and –“
“- I took out the present I got
her and put one of the dead frogs in the box,” Adam picked up the story. “And
then put her real gift in another box. So we all said good-bye when she left
and she was carrying all her bags and she didn’t know she had a dead frog with
her. Then she got home and she was, like, showing her friends her gifts and she
opened up the box where there’s this dead frog. She was pretty freaked.”
“She called me, screaming, “We
have to get Adam back!” Mischa says, laughing. “We tried to get him back. We
put fake blood on his dressing room door, but it didn’t work. It’s difficult
because the boys are ruthless once they get going. They’re always one step
ahead of us.”
Another prank involved Ben,
Rachel and Mischa. When the show airs, the cast often goes to McG’s Hollywood
Hills home to watch it together. One night Ben surprised the group with a
little video he put together. Mischa remembers, “It had all of these
embarrassing moments of Rachel and me on film. He had me in Notting Hill and The Sixth Sense and the clips were cut together to look really
strange, like flashes in a weird music video. We all thought we were sitting
down to watch an episode of the show together and everyone was waiting and
suddenly this reel comes on.”
“That kind of camaraderie makes it
so much easier to work together,” Mischa says. Ben Mckenzie sums it up best. “This
show is amazing. It’s like I’ve been handed this really great job and some
people I can be friends with. How great is that?”
