The Apple TV+ drama “For All Mankind” takes an alt-history approach to the space race and one of the key astronauts since the beginning has been Danielle Poole, the first Black woman to lead a mission and the first American to step foot on Mars. Played by Krys Marshall, she’s often the most levelheaded among her more temperamental colleagues.
But the way Marshall landed the role is as unusual as they come.
She was at a casting office auditioning for a different show. “And as I’m leaving, the casting director says, ‘Hey, would you mind reading a thing about NASA?’ And that’s like asking, ‘Hey, can you quickly do this brain surgery?’ — no, I don’t know anything about NASA! There are 10 pages of audition material that would easily take me a week to prepare, and now I’ve got 10 minutes to work on it. I was immediately overwhelmed.
“I went out to the parking lot. I was pacing back and forth and I said to myself: All right, there’s no way you know anything about science or technology or engineering — the things that it takes to be an astronaut — but what you do know is how to tell a story. And I came back in and probably improvised 60% of the audition and walked away like, well, that was terrible. And then a few hours later I got a call saying, ‘They want to book you for this role. Are you available for a costume fitting tomorrow?’ And I was like, ‘What? This is so crazy!’ The next day was the costume fitting, and the day after that was my first scene in Mission Control. Talk about trial by fire.”
In addition to starring in “For All Mankind,” Marshall also hosts the official podcast about the show.
When asked to share a cringey moment from her career, she joked: “I should bill you for the therapy! Talking about cringey moments?”
My worst moment …
“The reason why this moment is so cringey is because it was so recent. It’s easy to talk about something you did at 17 and laugh about it, but not so easy to talk about something that happened last year!
“So anyway: I threw my back out in dance class. That’s a quick way of telling you I’m in my 30s. It’s the most uncool thing you could ever do in a dance class. But luckily I had a few days off from work. So I was just laid up in bed. My back was killing me. And as I got closer to going back to work, it was still really painful and I was like, how am I going to work this way?
“So I called my doctor and she called in a prescription for a muscle relaxer.
“Now as a sidebar about me: I am such a square. I don’t do drugs and I fall asleep after a glass of wine. And I told her, ‘I work in TV, will this be OK?’ and she said, ‘You’ll be fine. Take it the night before work, you’ll be great the next day.’ And I’m like, sure, great — whatever it’s gonna take. I have to work. This was right before we were shooting Episode 8 of the most recent season.
“So I take my muscle relaxer, per doctor’s orders. And I wake up — and I’m saying ‘wake up’ in finger quotes because this is not ‘wake up.’ I really felt like the walking dead. I felt like I was in a zombie body.
“I go to work and the whole day I’m like: You gotta get it together (laughs). You really gotta get it together. I just kept feeling like I was underwater.
“We came to the scene where it feels like there’s a Mars quake and there’s a landslide and it’s really high stakes stuff. We discover that something has gone awry, and my lines are like, ‘Hey, grab these spare batteries, grab extra food, let’s go.’
“And I am like ‘Weekend At Bernie’s.’ I could not get my words out! The connection between my brain and my mouth no longer existed. Normally I’m pretty with it at work! The director comes over and is like, ‘Is everything OK?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m great.’ I don’t want to tell anybody that I took a muscle relaxer and I’m all zonked out.
“But I could not remember my lines. These were lines that I had memorized for weeks. So the props department had to write my lines on cue cards and put those cue cards out of frame so I could cheat and read the lines, just so I could get through the scene.
“This was the most mortifying experience of my life. And thankfully our cast and our crew are so sweet and gracious and they were like, ‘You’re probably just having an off day.’
“Afterward, I’m driving home and I call my husband and just burst into tears: ‘It was the worst day ever! The muscle relaxer was too strong!’ And my husband was like, ‘Even the very best players in baseball only hit four out of 10 balls. You can’t be so hard on yourself. You’re an all-star player and even all-stars have hiccups.’ He said it’s OK to have the yips. It’s OK to have a bad day.
“The lesson I had in that moment was that hard work pays off, but also have grace for yourself — I’m a human being, I’m allowed to make mistakes, I’m not beyond reproach and I’m still a good person.
“And looking back at that episode, I think it looks great! It doesn’t look at all like I’m out of sorts, or I’m zonked out and underwater. I look like myself! I look like Danielle Poole is telling a story.
“I didn’t tell anyone why I was struggling that day. This conversation is the first time I’m saying this out loud to anybody other than my husband.”
So much of this anxiety is about the pressure to bring your A-game.
“Absolutely.
“I think back to my very first job on TV. I played a hooker on ‘Criminal Minds.’ It was just one scene. I was fresh out of school and got the job within two weeks of coming to L.A. I played someone who has information that the detectives need to help find the girl who maybe is dead. It’s the classic kind of scene that you see in every procedural.
“I was so nervous. I was young. I had never worked in TV before. And we’re shooting on Skid Row. My call time was 11 p.m. and we were going to shoot the scene until 4 in the morning and I’m wearing a terry cloth, very skintight — with the cutouts on the side — little sexy outfit. And I’m standing there shivering.
“And it was so fast-paced, nothing like drama school where you have weeks or months to work on something. So you just get in there and start. And I don’t want to mention his name because I don’t want to ding him, but one of the actors was not very nice to me and reprimanded me when I messed up one of my lines. He really barked at me because I had botched my lines, and I remembered feeling so humiliated and so embarrassed and anxious.
“Of course, after having been barked at, from that point forward I continued to have the yips.
“And now? Part of me does feel like, you’ve come a long way, you should be beyond this point where you have bad days. And when you are at the top of the call sheet, you do feel really guilty for holding up the day and not giving your best performance and you feel responsible.
“But for me, in that moment on ‘For All Mankind,’ it was really humbling. I’m not perfect.
“Reading some of your other columns, with Matthew McConaughey and Salma Hayek and all these other wonderful actors who I really admire, in my mind I think, well, they don’t make mistakes. But then when you read these stories it’s like, oh my gosh, everyone is going through this same journey.
“It was very humbling and freeing to talk about it and let myself off the hook.
“So the muscle relaxers worked on my back but ruined my ego (laughs).”
The takeaway …
“I can blame it on the dance class, but we shoot long seasons and it’s a lot of work and long hours, so it doesn’t surprise me that my body began to buckle. The spacesuits that we wear are 72 pounds with all the gear. I’m only 130 pounds so I’m carrying more than half my body weight!
“So there is a natural sort of decline that happens throughout the season. You’re in these harnesses and suspended by wires (to simulate weightlessness) so you have to use your core. It’s very exhausting work.
“But I think for me, the lesson is forgiveness and compassion. Just reminding myself: You are a whole person, it is OK that you had a tough day and you’re going to move through it and bounce back.”
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