Adam Ray Sent In A Fake Resume For His Welcome To Chippendales Role
If you want to succeed in business, you just have to fake it 'til you make it. That's age-old advice, right? Well, it's not necessarily the best advice.
Susan O'Brien, writing for Forbes, thinks that the adage needs a bit of an adjustment and that one should be careful to only fake behaviors, not their actual level of competency. "So, when is it not ok to fake it?" O'Brien asks. "When the 'it' refers to your core skills or abilities. You can't feign competence like you can confidence. The unfortunate truth is that simply wanting to be better at something isn't going to make the slightest difference — you either know how or you don't." Thus, no amount of can-do spirit will give one instant job skills that they haven't cultivated with time and energy.
Actor Adam Ray seems to have gotten away with faking it quite a bit. In an interview with "Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum," Ray explained that his role as Vince McMahon on "Young Rock" was due to his friendship with Dwayne Johnson, which largely came about by Ray simply pretending to be friends with the wrestler-turned-actor already. Ray tweeted a joke about Gwyneth Paltrow's famous Goop candles that smell like an intimate part of the female body and joked about who would produce the male equivalent, tagging Johnson in the process as if the two were friends. Johnson played along by responding with a joke, and the two became friends.
While it's one thing to fake a friendship, it's another to fake a skill entirely. With the new Hulu limited series "Welcome to Chippendales," Adam Ray eventually had to learn how to roller skate.
Adam Ray pretended he could skate
Adam Ray is one of the stars of "Welcome to Chippendales," the new Hulu limited series created by Robert Siegel and starring Kumail Nanjiani as Somen "Steve" Banerjee, the real-life entrepreneur who founded the all-male strip club Chippendales. In an appearance on Adam Carolla's podcast, "The Adam Carolla Show," Ray explained how he ended up sneaking his way into a role that was supposed to require him to know how to roller skate. "[Siegel] hit me up when I was in Australia doing 'Young Rock,' and he was like 'Hey, can you roller skate?' I was like 'Yeah, dude.' And I sent him like this fake resume of all these tournaments I'd won. And he was like 'Is this real?' I was like 'F*** no dude, I haven't been on skates since the '90s.'" This is probably not a good strategy for anyone else to follow in their own lives, as most people's bosses would frown upon being lied to and then mocked for believing that lie. Ray offered no further details about the conversation he had with Siegel about the skates, but perhaps it was their existing rapport, along with the fact that Ray admitted to his ruse straight away that the comedian got away with it.
Roller skates are a surprisingly crucial part of Chippendales' iconic image. David Henry Sterry's tell-all book about his time working at the club is entitled "Master of Ceremonies: A True Story of Love, Murder, Roller Skates & Chippendales." The roller skates were referenced because Sterry would perform his duties as the club's emcee while roller skating. It's likely that Ray's character was loosely inspired by Sterry himself.