That time I was in a Greek chocolate commercial
The double-edged sword of being a different type of DEI hire
Five years ago, when I lived in the old city of Nicosia, Cyprus, I would park my Honda Jazz in a dirt parking lot atop one of the Venetian battlements. A lot of people parked there — truck drivers, tourists, visitors, and there were no restrictions on leaving your car overnight. After all, in this country, people parked on the sidewalk, so I was actually doing the city a service.
One day, as I walked from my apartment to my car, headed out to buy groceries at the supermarket, I was approached by a Greek Cypriot woman wearing Apple headphones, the old-fashioned wired kind. She introduced herself as a casting agent, and she insisted that I must appear in a commercial she was producing, suggesting I film an audition tape in a nearby office building.
What followed was my brief encounter with the strange contours of a peripheral film industry.