Jake Epstein Reminisces On His Audition For Degrassi: The Next Generation
It’s been 20 years since Degrassi: The Next Generation, but Jake Epstein still vividly remembers his audition to play Craig Manning.
“I remember it because they had they had me audition so many times,” Epstein told me during an interview on the Pop Culture Planet podcast. “I remember going in the first time and Linda Schuyler, who's the creator and the producer of the show, interviewed us on camera. That was sort of the bulk of the audition. I think we had a monologue so I had a Craig monologue and she gave me some really great notes. I was really nervous. I was wearing a Colorado Avalanche kind of dorky sweatshirt, my hair was just like… I was just very underwhelmingly presented. [But] they gave me a call back.”
Craig Manning was a new character introduced in season 2 as the step-son of Degrassi Junior High’s Joey Jeremiah, brought to life by Degrassi veteran Pat Mastroianni who has been playing the role since 1987. But as much as Degrassi Junior High was a teen classic, Epstein wasn’t familiar with it… or Mastroianni. “I’d never really seen the show before,” said Epstein. “[Pat Mastroianni] was there in the waiting room. I thought he was just the reader. You know, they’ll hire a reader, someone to come in and read for the audition. There was a bunch of guys who all kind of looks like me, like dark hair, looking a little bit nervous. [Mastroianni] pointed at me and was like ‘You want to run lines?’ and I’m like ‘Sure,’ thinking like, oh, the reader wants to run lines, great, not realizing like that’s Joey Jeremiah from the show. So we ran lines, we joked around a bunch, and then I went in and slowly realized who he was and that was such a gift that we practiced beforehand.”
“I have no idea why he asked me to run lines with him beforehand. It’s like one of those weird things. I asked him afterwards and he said I looked the most nervous of everyone,” Epstein revealed. “He’s like, ‘You look so nervous so I just thought I’d run lines with the nervous kid.’ And then this kid ended up getting the part, so it’s you know kind of crazy.”
After an extensive audition and screen tests with other actors, Epstein said he was “elated” to get the call that he was cast as Craig. “[It] was such an exciting role for me. I was a child actor, but I’d never really done anything with any kind of meat or any kind of substance and here was this really misunderstood kid in this really troubling circumstance. He had an abusive father and he was really likeable,” he said. “I really liked him. I never really auditioned for anything where I felt like I connected to it in such a deep way and I found it really moving. I thought he was cool, like he was cooler than me, so I also found that really exciting.”
Epstein was joining the show in its second season, but felt that was the right time for Craig to surface. “I don't know if they were sort of ready to to write a character like that in the first season, so I think it was kind of a gift that I never auditioned for any of the [other characters],” he shared. “I don't know who I would have auditioned for in the first season. Probably Spinner or Jimmy or something like that.”
Craig made huge waves when the character was introduced in that two part season 2 premiere. “It was kind of like an indie film. There was a whole story and I was this new character. No one knew anything about me. The director for those episodes was a guy named Bruce McDonald who was known in Canada for making these really cool indie films. One of them was this movie called Hard Core Logo and Hugh Dillon who ended up being cast as my abusive father was the lead of Hard Core Logo and I was a huge fan of it,” said Epstein. “So I really felt like I was on a movie set, even though it was like a couple episodes of Degrassi. They really took it seriously and Hugh Dillon was such a good actor and was so scary on camera. The whole experience was just kind of out of body. Then people really took to the character and the writers congratulated me after we shot it. They thought I did good work and they wanted to keep writing for the character so it was just really exciting.”
Jake Epstein opens up even more about Degrassi and his experience on the iconic teen franchise in our episode of the Pop Culture Planet podcast, above.
