29 - The Blacklist List

February 17, 2022·49 min·2 clips

Actor Geoffrey Bean had to sew fake eyelids onto a living man's face with a real needle while a mortician on set told him he should be wearing gloves — because 'not everything on a dead body is dead.'

So, the list keeps getting longer. The host opens with the odd feeling of being cast on a show he had already circled through six separate auditions. He had not watched it. Preparing for the role means taking in nearly eight seasons of a dark network drama built around Raymond Reddington's criminal Rolodex. Then old parts start popping up. Lines, characters, and scenes feel familiar because they came from earlier chances that never became jobs. The show turns into an archive. His email backs it up: six Blacklist auditions, six different characters, and six quiet endings before the later small role arrived. Bruce's story gives the whole thing a sharper sting. He remembers the costume person treating Bobby J like someone who might come back, which made the silence afterward harder to read. No call ever explained it. The guest calls that familiar acting weather the yawning void of nothing, where hope has to fade out on its own. He watched with expectations. When the episode aired quickly, he told family and posted online as if Bobby J's arc had only started. It was already over. The host connects that letdown to his own Hawkins audition, a promising three-episode possibility that eventually became Hedy Hawkins. Aida Tutoro comes in next. Her appearance matters because the host knows her from work he already recognizes, another strange overlap in the Blacklist maze. Even the credits drift around. The closing beat keeps the show's old obsession alive, following Tom Hanks toward The Love Boat, 1883, and finally Road to Perdition's hat-wearing criminal world.

As heard by us

A small TV role becomes a sharp, rueful map of rejection.

Dead Eyes turns a small NBC part into something wry and quietly painful. Starting at the end and moving back through six auditions and six rejections gives the episode a clean shape, while the host's deadpan self-mockery keeps it from feeling too neat.

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Why you'd press play

When one guest role turns into six auditions and six rejections, you get the long version of rejection.

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