For those of you who don’t know, The Clone Wars, was nominated for 4 Annie Awards and I had the honor of attending the awards show last night with 50 other members from our cast and crew. I’ll answer your question right away, we did not win anything last night. We were nominated for Best Animated Show for Television, Best Writing and Corey Burton and Nika Futterman were nominated for Best Performance by a Voice Actor for their roles as Baron Papanoida and Asajj Ventress. I’ll be honest, it was definitely a bummer that we did not win. I am an extremely competitive person and I want to win and be the best. However, the experience last night reminded me how honored and proud I am to be a part of our show.
In my business, you have to get used to rejection. It’s a numbers game. You’re going to get told no, more times than you are told yes. People ask me all the time, how do you deal with the rejection? For me, it’s not about how I deal with not winning, it’s how I prepare for the opportunity. I try to go into every audition, every interview, every job, every day of work fully prepared. I give each opportunity 100% so when I put my head on my pillow at night, I know I did everything I could, instead of staring at the ceiling wishing I had worked harder. To give myself that peace of mind I need to move on after being turned down or rejected, I have to know that there was nothing more I could’ve done. Some things are out of our control and I truly believe everything happens for a reason, but I can control my actions and performance, and with that I can move on knowing in my heart that I did my best.
This leads me to my experience on Saturday night. I was truly honored to be sitting with a group of people who have the same philoshopy as I described above. There are hundreds of people who work on our show and each person goes to work everyday trying to exceed expectations, raise the bar, and give their all to create something that has never been done before on Television. They give 100% because they don’t know how to work any other way. We are a team, all working towards the same goal day in and day out and we can all put our heads on the pillow at night, with or without an award, knowing the the proof is in the work.
There was a sense of natural frustration as we all walked out of Royce Hall at UCLA empty handed, but that frustration soon turned to joy has we all realized that we didn’t need an award to reaffirm our hard work. There were smiles and hugs and winks that said “keep going” because we all knew that we had done our best! There was nothing more we could’ve done, (except fill our stomachs with In and Out Burger, which we did right after the show) and celebrate five years of hard work and dedication. I felt like a winner on Saturday night and I hope that every single person involved in the making of The Clone Wars did too.
Ashley 😮
