Today we’d like to introduce you to The Read Twinz, Rachel Read and Autumn Read.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Rachel and Autumn. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
The entertainment industry in Maine is basically nonexistent. So, when we made the decision to become actresses in the 8th grade, everyone was just waiting for us to come to our senses. Throughout high school though, our vision never changed. On the contrary, it expanded to include a circus, stand-up comedy, and modeling. We shot short films on our school computers that had budgets, sets, scripts, stunts, and actors. We started doing trade-for-print photoshoots to build our modeling portfolio. We starting attending open mic nights to test out our comedy. Our junior year, we attended a summer circus arts program at NECCA College. Though this was a really great start, it was still unclear as to where we were supposed to go. We knew we couldn’t stay in Maine, as much as it broke our hearts, but Hollywood seemed like this magical fantasy world that existed in a floating bubble. How do you discover how to pop a bubble that won’t even stay in one place?
The Summer of our junior year, we went to NY to tour some acting colleges. While there, we got to spend time with Actor Ethan Phillips of Star Trek: Voyager! He was the first real actor we’d ever met and an unknown family friend. We talked about school, agents, and his experiences. He even walked around New York with us and bought us our first Monologue book! The summer of our senior year, we were chosen for an in-person audition for Universal Studios Japan. If we booked this, we would be playing Hogwarts students in Japan for a year! We went back to New York for the audition and the casting directors said, “We all absolutely loved you two… but we don’t have an open position for the both of you. Positions are limited. We just can’t break up the twins.”
The trip wasn’t a total loss though. While there, we received a phone call from the casting department of Melissa McCarthy’s new movie Life of The Party. That night, we booked a flight to GA for the next morning.
Other than the fact that we got to meet with Melissa McCarthy, it was the worst trip ever! It was the first one we’d ever taken alone as adults and everything went wrong. Couldn’t rent a car. Didn’t know what Uber or Lyft was. Hotel was so sketchy we left crying at 2:00 a.m. and wandered the streets of an unknown place for hours. A stray dog followed us. We got harassed for the first time, which was terrifying. We found out you can’t get a hotel unless you’re 21 and we were 18 at the time. The whole fiasco was a learning experience, to say the least, but in spite of this trip, we learned how much of the industry was in Atlanta! It was new and it was growing!
After graduation, we packed up our car and drove 24 hours to the Hollywood of the South! We lived in an Airbnb for a time, moved back home, re-gathered our funds, and then ultimately moved back to GA and got our very first apartment with our best buddy, Annemarie K Morse!
It’s been a year since then and a lot has changed, and we appreciate all of the love and support from our family and friends back home.
Has it been a smooth road?
I would be tentative to say anyone in the performing arts industry has had a smooth road. It’s not the career to be pursued if you want something easy. It’s interesting for us because a lot of people think that we have an “easy in” because we’re twins, and that can definitely open different doors, but it’s also proven to be a disadvantage. We’ve lost out on a lot of roles offers because they found out we were twins and “didn’t want to ruin that [partnership].”
Being only 18 when we moved from Maine to GA, we learned the hard way how difficult it was to find work to pay bills, find an apartment that would rent to us having had no rental history and an entertainment job, finding friends in the industry, and how to make connections.
Also, when we moved from Maine in October, we had been doing stand-up comedy and we were on fire. When we got to Georgia, we were booked at the Vortex and Laughing Lounge. We were thrilled! But our age proved to be a detriment. We were unbooked from both venues because we were only 19 at the time. It was a bummer. We had to make the decision to take a year off from comedy and getting back into it when we turn 21 is going to be like starting over.
We’re slightly reluctant when it comes to giving direct advice, only because we’re still figuring out new things every day and learning along the way. However, if there’s one thing we’ve learned this last year, it’s this. Though we love acting, constant rejection and auditioning can be taxing to our spirit and I think a lot of advice out there right now is, “work, work, work,” but you’re allowed to take a break! Honestly, just keep in mind that your career is only part of your life. You have a social life, and your health is just as important, too. Take time to foster social relationships and practice self-care. You have time.
Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
We act, model, circus-perform, and do stand-up comedy! Though we have taken a break from comedy, for reasons outside of our control, we do have a love for it and intend on getting back into it. The same with circus.
Interestingly, we do a lot of weird twin roles… who’d have thought! We’re definitely popular around Halloween, I’ll tell ‘ya what. However, even as individuals, we took the time to learn about performing from multiple spectrums. We chose not to just specialize in one thing, but to explore multiple avenues of the performing arts. Even singing, though all evidence of that has been destroyed, thank god.
Our brand is unique. We are just as strong individually as we are together. However, we are heavily branding ourselves as twins cause, “what the hell, play the twin card!” To not use it would be a slight to our birth. We figure it would be easier to break out of a type cast and be IN the industry. It’s a struggle no matter which way you slice it, but you have to use your own uniqueness to find your way in.
So much of the media coverage is focused on the challenges facing women today, but what about the opportunities? Do you feel there are any opportunities that women are particularly well positioned for?
We’ve only been in the acting industry for a year and a half and in our experience, especially as twins, a majority of our auditions are for roles like strippers, girls being kidnapped, a dumb blonde girl being killed, or dating shows with 30 horny young single twins in one house for two weeks…
We think women are well positioned for anything that pertains to the human experience, not just what specifically is the female experience. The roles that men and women play in media are so binary, they all fit into the neat little boxes that are set out for us. But men and women alike have a lot more to offer storytelling, it doesn’t have to be masculine, angry, fighting, power revenge-based things that are usually roles picked out for men, and it doesn’t have to be sweet, sex and/or love, motherhood, homemaking, or even “stereotype breaking” roles for women. I think men have a lot to offer media without playing roles restricted by what is seen as manly, and women also have a lot to offer media without playing roles that are all about how we are women in a world that wasn’t created for us. We can offer so much more if we are posited as humans and tell interesting stories that maybe don’t have anything to do with rigid gender roles. Taking those out gives so many opportunities for new, interesting, and accessible storytelling.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thereadtwinz.com
- Email: thereadtwinz@gmail.com
- Instagram: @thereadtwinz
- Facebook: @thereadtwinz
Image Credit:
The third image where we are both wearing black tank tops and not smiling : Adelle Drahos, The I’m with stupid photo: William Conant, The close up headshot with a black background: Chris Bolduc, The photo of us as creepy nurses is from Season 1 Episode 13 of The Resident on Fox where we were hallucinations, The black and white circus shot: Chris Bolduc, The photo with the bright blue background where we are back to back: @makeup_muva and Byron Arnold
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