BUCKFIELD —The night before auditioning for the trio of celebrity judges of “America’s Got Talent,” performers Jason and Matthew Tardy watched the show’s audience get a lesson in booing.
“They really encourage the audience to be mean,” Jason Tardy said. “They’d say, ‘Make sure you boo real loud. Tell them to get off the stage, and yell.'”
The Buckfield brothers, who’d been asked to audition by producers for the hit NBC show, were appalled. “We were seeing this and thinking, ‘What the heck did we get into?'” Jason said.
The big day came in March, but the brothers couldn’t talk about it until Thursday, after the show finished televising the last of its auditions.
“It was fun in some ways and dreadful in other ways,” Jason said.
When the guys were called in March, they’d begun putting together a new act. Wearing jumpsuits with electronic triggers sewn in, they combined comedy, acrobatics and the music they’d been performing for several years as AudioBody.
But when the show called, they were looking for jugglers. The duo had performed at the White House and across the country as jugglers under the title Two.
The brothers drove to New York and met with producers. There, the Tardys sold them on AudioBody.
A few days later, Jason and Matthew returned to New York to appear on stage for 2,000 people. Among them were judges Piers Morgan, Sharon Osbourne and David Hasselhoff.
For the uninitiated, the show works simply. Performers have 90 seconds to impress the judges.
Each judge is armed with a red button. When all three are pressed the lights go dim and the performance ends. However, if a performance goes the distance, the three judges vote on whether to send the act to the next level. The show’s winner will earn $1 million and a regular gig in Las Vegas.
Back stage, the performers are treated “like pieces of meat,” Jason said. There are long lines and little courtesy. “You feel like a cow and they are herding you around.”
When they finally made it on stage, the pair stirred the audience. Almost immediately, people clapped.
Seconds later, Morgan hit his red button. The guys kept going.
“People were standing up and clapping,” Jason said. “They were really into it.”
At about the minute mark, Osbourne and Hasselhoff hit their buttons. The performance ended and the judges commented.
“Sharon said, ‘I don’t understand what you’re doing,'” Jason said.
Had the performance been televised, the brothers hoped to use the comment in advertisements for their upcoming shows. The brothers are slated to perform Friday at Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield and on Sept. 12 at the Great Falls Performing Arts Center in Auburn.
“We were almost relieved when it was over,” Jason said of the audition. “We did nothing wrong. In a hall auditorium of 2,000 people, we entertained 1,997 of them.”
dhartill@sunjournal.com
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- Brothers Jason Tardy, right, and Matthew Tardy of Buckfield auditioned for ABC’s "America’s Got Talent," earning cheers from the audience but puzzled vetoes from the celebrity judges.
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