This couldn’t be real. I called Philip and asked him to look up the guy’s name. “See if you can find anything on him. Does he really work for Mark Burnett? This is probably just a prank call from a friend who knows I sent in a video.” Philip quickly confirmed that the guy calling did in fact work for Mark Burnett. I texted my friend: Gonna be late. Then I took a deep breath and, with my hands and my voice shaking, called the guy back.
You know that feeling from before cell phones and caller ID when the landline would ring and your heart would stop for a small eternity because the person who answered might be that boy you really liked from school? (If you’re a parent reading this book, you’re probably old enough to know that feeling. Congratulations, our kids already think we’re dinosaurs.) Well, that’s what making this call felt like. The production company had probably made a mistake and called the wrong Kristina. This was going to be an awkward conversation.
But they hadn’t made a mistake. When the casting producer picked up, he said, “Oh my God, Kristina, I just watched your tape multiple times and we’re all cracking up in here. Your video is one of my favorites! I don’t want to get your hopes up, but I’m gonna be shocked if you don’t make it to the next level.” I could barely think straight as he walked me through the paperwork I’d have to fill out to move forward in the competition. By the end of the call, I felt like the air around my entire body was buzzing. Did this just happen?
The next few months were even more surreal. I kept advancing further and further in the competition, until eventually I found myself in a hotel near LAX with the other top forty entrants, waiting to be interviewed by Mark Burnett himself. At first, I was a pile of nerves. But I’d done a lot of theater work back in grade school and college, and I found that if I pretended I was walking onto a stage every time I walked into a meeting room, things didn’t feel so scary. After all, I’d forgotten lines in plays before and improvised, and the shows had gone on without a hitch. If what had caught these producers’ attention was my video, where, thanks to Brian, I was shown being completely myself, then I just needed to continue being completely myself. Nothing more.
Somehow, it worked. Out of the remaining competitors, Oprah handpicked me, along with nine others, to compete on her reality show. I don’t remember my exact reaction when I received that phone call from the casting producer. All I can remember thinking was, OPRAH KNOWS WHO I AM. She would recognize my face in a lineup! If someone mentioned my name to her, she’d casually reply, “Oh, yeah. I know who that is.” The real competition was about to begin, but I already felt like I had won more than I ever expected to win in my life.
Just a few years earlier I’d been so broke I had to borrow money from a friend to buy myself a box of tampons. I had been sure I was going to be alone, poor, and miserable forever. There were people in my life who were close to me who believed I’d never amount to anything, and I believed it also. I was certain I was always going to be someone others looked down on, someone people pitied. Fighting my way through that dark place and meeting and marrying Philip already felt like I’d stumbled onto more than my fair share of good fortune. I had a wonderful husband. My kids were healthy. What more could I ask for?
When I entered that competition, I wasn’t looking to have a TV show, not really. What I wanted, what I needed more than anything, was for someone to look at this new little dream I had poured hours and sweat and tears into and tell me that it was worth dreaming out loud, that I did have something worthwhile to offer to the world. Now here I was in the top ten of Oprah’s Search for the Next TV Star. I knew that I’d never win the contest and I didn’t need to. I was beyond grateful and thrilled to