A Day in the life of an Academy Award winning movie extra

#1 Set your story on a film or tv set, starting with someone calling “Cut!”

By Monica Mattioli

"A Day in the Life of an Academy Award-winning Movie Extra"

CUT! Between 6AM and 10PM on the day of my debut as a movie extra, I heard “CUT!” at least a dozen times during the filming of just one scene.

Just on a whim, I had landed a gig as an extra in what turned out to be an Academy Award-winning movie. Here’s the scoop on what that was like.

It was my upcoming birthday, along with a random Facebook post, that triggered the occasion of my involvement as an extra in an Academy Award-winning film – The Eyes of Tammy Faye. This motion picture gleaned two awards: Best Actress: Jessica Chastain and Best Makeup and Hair Styling. Let me tell you about my experience with hair styling. Stay tuned.

 I was excited to do something unique for my birthday that year and “movie extra” felt like the perfect opportunity.

How does one get a movie extra gig? Talent agencies search for folks to fill roles, usually in the background to provide group settings, people on the street, and in this particular case, to be cast members of the “PTL Club”, the television show hosted by Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker during the 1970s and 1980’s upon which the Academy Award-winning film was based.

 PTL = Praise the Lord. The quite popular religious television program ceased airing upon discovery of Jim Bakker’s unfortunate decision to engage in a brief tryst with an employee. At that point, the wheels came off the PTL bus. Jim Bakker furthered that already bad decision with hush money, was criminally charged, and served a prison sentence.  Tammy Faye divorced Jim and mostly removed herself from the public eye.  She has since passed away. Having remembered the program from my childhood, how could I not grab the opportunity to participate in this project? Little did I know it would turn out to be such a success!

My movie extra day began dark and early with a drive to an appointed location where we extras parked our cars. That was nowhere near the movie set location, but rather was a large lot miles away that could accommodate dozens of cars and buses. The company offered a breakfast set up there to get our day started. It was there that I made a friend who was an experienced movie extra and took me under her wing for the day as we were shuttled to the main staging location in Charlotte.

When filming a movie, certain attributes are necessary to get hired for a particular day. With no aligned talent to contribute, I played the part of an audience member on the day they filmed a choir segment. At that point, most of us were just sitting around, snacking and chatting, awaiting our turns for hair and makeup.

Despite my humble role, hair styling was definitely a major part of the activities for me. That is not as simple as it seems. Even cast as one lowly audience member among dozens of others, it was still most necessary to the authenticity of the film for each of us to truly look the part. For me that involved extensive hair and makeup work, along with a small wardrobe change, thus rendering me a believable 1970s person. With that accomplished, most of the rest of my morning was spent hanging out with the other, more experienced movie extras, who were very helpful in terms of orienting me to how the day would probably go. Having gained that understanding, I made myself comfortable while chatting with my movie extra colleagues, hearing about their various and sundry movie extra experiences, meanwhile partaking in the provided snacks.

A significant amount of waiting goes along with movie extra work. The company does provide lots of food and beverages. There were dozens of extras to be dealt with and every extra had his or her own adjustments to be made. Along with hair, makeup, and wardrobe for every individual contracted extra, also coverage of any tattoos or piercings that would be incoherent to their particular role and era is also necessary. In my particular case, the team decided to change the color of my era-compliant turtle neck sweater. After hours of waiting, I was summoned to hair and makeup where I spent a very long time in the chair, with my back to the mirror, as stylists applied layer upon layer of cake makeup, teased my hair to within an inch of its life and doused it in gobs of hairspray. Once finished, I was turned back to the mirror to see the results.  To borrow from another Academy Award-winning film, Home Alone (1991, Best Original Score), I silently screamed “Oh No!” I looked just like a 1970s version of my mother! Talk about jarring…that came as a shock.

The waiting finally ended once all the extras were dressed, made up, and properly prepared for the actual filming. It is well to note that the filming location and the prep area were kept secret from the general public. This is written into the movie extra contract. There was publicity about this particular filming to happen in Charlotte but no precise filming locations were disclosed. Frankly, I was brand new to Charlotte and wouldn’t have been able to tell where we were under any circumstances.

Once the preliminaries with the extras were done, we were gathered together and marched to a secret location suitable for filming a choir scene. The choir was an important element of the PTL program that always featured Tammy Faye positioned adjacent to the swaying choir members, while enthusiastically singing praise songs, usually in tears. I was not in the choir. I was far back in the audience and did not make it into the finished movie.

The afternoon consisted of the star portraying Tammy Faye (Ms. Chastain) in the role of singer, along with a choir behind her whose toughest job was to sway to the music in unison. That might sound simple, but I assure you, it is not easy. Coordinating a large group of background singers with the star’s lead singer performance is quite difficult. Eventually, the background singers accomplished the necessary swaying cadence and coordinated with the star to nail down the scene. Meanwhile, we superfluous extras broke for a sumptuous catered lunch. After a very long day consisting of several takes, the star and the choir finally managed to coordinate. The filming day then came to a close.

By the time we extras marched back to the staging area, it was pitch dark and raining outside. Upon arrival back at home base, we then returned to the tents and were then tasked with completing and verifying our necessary payment paperwork, returning any loaned clothing to dressers, and retrieving any original clothing we came with.

At that point, several buses began circulating to transport us, soaking wet, back to the lot where our cars had been parked for the day. I was glad to have reached the conclusion of what turned out to be an exhausting but thrilling day. Once transported back to the holding lot, I was most anxious to get home. I would estimate that it took nearly an hour of hair washing to fully remove the extreme amount of hairspray used to create and ensure my “beehive” look. I was exhausted!

As you might imagine, I am delighted to have been a small part of “The Eyes of Tammy Fay”, as it received recognition with two Academy Awards in 2021.

 Would I “extra” again? Maybe…It’s a tough gig, but I wouldn’t rule it out.