Parents just don’t understand

It is a typical morning before school for 12-year-old Kennon Kepper—except it isn’t. But it is supposed to be. It’s just that he has actually skipped school, he’s in a strange house, and he’s calling a middle-aged man “Mom.”

He enters the den over and over. “Peanut butter and jelly again?” Kepper asks.

“It’s your favorite,” says Wayne Pere, seated at the dining room table.

“It was last week, mom,” Kepper replies.

Pere is the award-winning director of Kink, but today he is Kepper’s acting coach, tasked with prepping the Dunham School seventh-grader to audition for a series-regular role in Drop Dead Diva producer Josh Berman’s new TV pilot in Atlanta.

The show’s casting director requested that Kepper read for the part, then local talent agent Brenda Netzberger called his father, and now Kepper is rehearsing two scenes of dialogue with Pere, all in less than 24 hours. This is it. Go time. This one audition could change the lives of everyone in the Kepper family.

Kepper’s father Kirk is an actor and producer who encourages his son’s blossoming interest in acting. Together they develop characters and throw lines back and forth on set and at home, like other fathers and sons might toss a baseball in the backyard.

“I’ll ask my dad if what I’m doing seems a little off or if it’s good,” Kepper says. “We go over things a lot and work on the different characters until we get it right.”

Kepper is just one of many young Baton Rouge actors finding success in the film industry. But after earning roles in studio films Jonah Hex, The Green Lantern and I Love You Phillip Morris—as the younger version of Jim Carrey’s lead character—and making comedian Mike Epps double over laughing when they practiced improv together, he happens to be one of the most promising.

Kepper is growing up fast in a business now more prevalent, with the inflating movie industry opportunities across the state. While shooting Remnants in New Orleans, he played a young blind boy and had to imagine what his life would be like if he lost his sight. He mostly hung out with the adults on that set, he says. One of his favorite shows is The Sopranos. Already he has a girlfriend in Los Angeles. Grown-up stuff.

“He really gets it,” Kirk says. “He’s focused on being an actor, not trying to be a movie star. I think that’s why he lands parts.”

Casting agent Brent Caballero encouraged Kepper to audition for the first time, and he says the most important thing young actors can do is to listen.

“We don’t cast kids to be actors,” Caballero says. “We cast kids to be kids, and to be natural with all these pressures going on around them. You’ve got moms there, agents there. They have to know where the camera is. But when a kid gets it and those child-like characteristics come out, it’s a beautiful thing to see.”

Kepper is natural and almost breezy on camera now, but he admits that first audition for Middle of Nowhere was wracked with anxiety. For one thing, he had to curse at Susan Sarandon’s daughter Eva Amurri.

“I was really nervous at first,” Kepper says. “But from the moment I was in the scene, I knew I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.”

Actress Debby Gaudet has made it her mission to help young actors like Kepper overcome the nerves that can fray during an audition. The New Orleans native workshops character development and modified Method-acting techniques with groups of teens and child actors in weekly classes held at Celtic Media Centre.

This fall, Gaudet’s daughter Madeline is using money she earned by acting to help pay for her freshman semester at the University of Texas at Austin, so Gaudet knows firsthand the value of landing even small roles as a young actor. As a parent, she understands the risks and the challenges of bringing a child into the industry. Her students learn self-discipline, respect for the filmmakers and proper set etiquette.

“Parents of young actors need to talk to other parents of actors,” Gaudet says. “Kids need to be able to break down their upbringing in a way. Everything inside of them needs to be easily accessible in the moment.”

Gaudet refers to her students as “my kids,” and showcases those ready for more substantial roles in a binder with headshots and photos taken on set with stars. The acting coach wants her actors to be real, to think for themselves, and to draw on past experiences to build layered characters and improvise quickly and creatively.

This process can do remarkable things for more introverted children.

“Acting has helped Carol socially,” says Angel Wells of her 11-year-old daughter, who recently acted opposite Jason Segel in Jeff Who Lives at Home. “Before, she was shy and reserved, but lately—well, I’ll just say that on a movie set she was not the same child I brought to acting class.”

Most importantly, though, Gaudet makes sure her students are there for the right reasons.

“I do screening, because I want to make sure it’s the kid who wants it, not the parents,” Gaudet says. “I have red flags all over the place when it comes to stage moms.”

Given his love for the business, Kirk Kepper says he often has to take a step back and make sure he is enabling his son to pursue his passion rather than pushing him into a career.

“I do want him to study the business side of acting, but it’s always a fine line between me pushing him and him pushing himself,” he says.

Carter Hunt is one of Gaudet’s newer students, and the 12-year-old landed a featured role in The Green Lantern earlier this year. He was cast as a kid jumping on a trampoline based solely on his headshot. A chance meeting with actor Johnny Messner—who was shooting Death Games in Baton Rouge with Samuel L. Jackson—piqued Hunt’s interest in the movies, and he soon appeared in a local PSA for fire safety. Then Hunt’s father Matt signed him up with several casting agencies. An appearance in The Green Lantern followed suit.

Like Kepper, Hunt was inspired by his experience on the blockbuster film. Also like Kepper, Hunt finds it difficult sometimes to balance schoolwork with acting.

After having to miss so many days of class at St. George, Kepper transferred to The Dunham School, where administrators have catered a curriculum that works around his sometimes-hectic filming schedule.

Hunt maintains a 4.0 GPA at St. George and wants to make sure the roles he accepts are worth the time they take him away from school. “If something comes along, and it is big and a speaking role, I’ll do it,” he says.

Unlike Kepper’s industry-savvy dad, Hunt’s father is a software consultant adjusting to the film business right along with his son.

“He has really learned how to interact with adults, how to carry himself, and especially the value of money,” Matt Hunt says. “Kids grow up fast when they get involved in this, and the parents, we learn a lot, too.”

Young actors learn a lot when they earn a role, and they learn things, too, when they are passed over for someone else. Kepper did not get the television pilot he tried out for—the producers liked his audition but went another direction. That both Keppers, father and son, have learned to be okay with that is a sign that they have become seasoned veterans in the business.

“You work on it so hard, right? I mean, you really work on it, and if you don’t get the part, it kind of makes you upset, but it still gives you more experience,” Kennon Kepper says. “You’re just not the right fit for the part.”

Life onscreen and off goes on for Kepper with school and football practice and new scripts to study. He has his entire life ahead of him, and plenty of other characters to try on, too.

“I’d love for Kennon to do what I wanted to do when I was out in Los Angeles: To live the life he wants while doing something he loves to do,” Kirk Kepper says. “Acting is something that, if Kennon embraces it, he can make a very good career with, but he has to stay focused, and it has to be something he wants to do for the right reasons. He has to love the art of performing and the thrill of getting cool characters.”