From ‘Dinner’ Guest to Regular

It’s the stuff that show-business dreams are made of: Unknown actress lands job as understudy for name actress, name actress drops out of the production before opening night, and understudy is given the biggest opportunity of her life.

It may be a show-business cliche, but that’s what happened to Anette Michelle Sanders, who joined the cast in the second preview performance of Neil Simon’s “The Dinner Party,” which premiered at the Mark Taper Forum earlier this month.

Sanders, who grew up in Huntington Beach and has spent a decade acting in little theater productions throughout Orange and Los Angeles counties, is part of an impressive ensemble that includes John Ritter, Henry Winkler, Edward Herrmann, Frances Conroy and Veanne Cox. She replaced Rita Wilson, wife of actor Tom Hanks, who left the play after its first preview, reportedly a “mutual agreement based on artistic differences.”

Sanders’ good fortune is even more impressive considering this: As of September, she was working full time as a marketing associate for the Center Theatre Group, where her primary function was coordinating invitations and seating arrangements for opening nights at the Taper and the Ahmanson Theatre.

“This is the kind of thing that every actor would love to have happen, but it never happens,” said Sanders, 32. “It’s incredibly unusual for an understudy even to have a chance to go on, but to have an opportunity to take over a role is such a rare occurrence. It’s one I’m hugely grateful for.

“People in the costume shop call me Cinderella, and I feel like that.”

Ritter, who plays rare-books dealer Claude Pichon in the comedy set in the private dining room of a Paris restaurant, praises Sanders’ performance as his acerbic ex-wife, Mariette Levieux.

“The first night she went on, it was as good as you can possibly dream an understudy to be,” Ritter said. “I couldn’t believe it. Everybody loved Rita Wilson, but now it’s like Anette was the champion. She sort of saved the day.”

Charles Johanson and Kevin Cochran of the Grove Theater Center in Garden Grove are familiar with Sanders’ versatility as an actress, having worked with her in two plays.

“She can do Shakespeare, she can do comedies, she can do serious plays--and she has a lot of stage presence, which is something you can’t train,” said executive director Johanson, who has known Sanders 10 years.

Sanders’ Cinderella story began in June when Ritter arrived for his audition with the Taper’s casting director (the late Stanley Soble, who died in July), Simon, director John Rando and Taper artistic director Gordon Davidson.

The problem was that the actress who was supposed to read with the auditioning actors had failed to show up due to a scheduling mistake. So Soble, who was familiar with Sanders’ stage work, sent his assistant to the marketing offices in a trailer in the parking lot to ask if she’d fill in.

“I said, ‘Oh yeah. Give me a few minutes,’ ” Sanders recalled. “Then Stanley himself ran in and said, ‘No, honey, right now.’ ”

Sanders had no idea what play she would be reading for, and she didn’t expect to see Ritter waiting outside when they arrived at the audition room. Because she had coordinated two openings at the Ahmanson and an opening-night party the day before, she said, “I had really dragged myself to work that day. I was thinking, ‘I can’t possibly be meeting this person because I look dreadful.’ ”

But she didn’t really have time to worry about how she looked. After quickly scanning part of the scene she and Ritter would be reading together, they went inside.

Sanders said things happened so fast, in fact, that she didn’t pay attention to who else was in the room until after she and Ritter had finished their reading.

“Someone was paying me a very nice compliment, and when I looked up I realized, ‘Oh, my God, that’s Neil Simon!’ ” Sanders said.

While walking back to her office after a reading with half a dozen actors, she recalled, “Stanley stopped me and said, ‘Honey, we really like you.’ I thought, ‘Great! What a nice thing.’ He said, ‘You don’t understand. They’d like you to understudy two of the roles.’ ”

Sanders’ original plan was to take a leave of absence from her marketing job once she and her fellow understudies joined rehearsals in early November. Then, once the play opened, she’d do her marketing job during the day and be at the theater at night. As an understudy for Wilson and Conroy, she said, “I just needed to be there should anything happen.”

Sanders, a 1990 graduate of Cal State Long Beach, where she majored in theater, has always had “a day job” while pursuing her acting career.

She worked for the Walt Disney Co. for 12 years, first performing in shows and parades at Disneyland and then as a parade stage manager. She later served as senior coordinator of house seats and charitable donations for Walt Disney Theatrical Productions. When she was chosen to be an understudy, she had been working at the Center Theatre Group for two years.

But in September, she said, “I made a decision that if I was going to pursue an acting career, this was the time to do it. I took a leap of faith and quit my job.”

As for what happened next, she said, “I was just incredibly lucky.”

Wilson left the show after appearing in the first preview. Sanders played Wilson’s role in previews the next two nights and, on the evening of the third preview, she was told she would be taking over the role.

“That I went on as understudy the other two shows was plenty, but to find out they were actually giving me the role was phenomenal,” said Sanders, whose strawberry-blond hair was cut and dyed dark brown for the role.

Sanders said Wilson, whom she had gotten to know during rehearsals, called her at home in Van Nuys to wish her well.

“She wanted to let me know she was happy for me and that she was just thinking good thoughts for all of us,” Sanders said. “She’s just the most gracious, classy woman I think I’ve ever encountered.”

Sanders said she feels a “special bond” with Ritter because he was the first cast member she met, but the play is “very much an ensemble piece, and they’ve all been so wonderful. Everyone has gone out of their way to make me feel part of the cast, which I completely do.”

“It’s very exciting for somebody like that to step into a major role,” said Simon. The playwright has replaced actors in his new plays about a dozen times over the years, but almost always during rehearsals, which makes casting understudies very important, he said. Because he had been so impressed with Sanders’ work when she filled in as an audition reader, Simon said “we knew she was capable.”

And he wasn’t disappointed the first night Sanders took over the role during previews.

“What was wonderful about Anette, she was not only up on every line of the play, but I was in the midst of putting in a new scene that night,” said Simon. “She learned it that afternoon and she gave, I thought, a flawless performance.

“I guess we watched her do two shows and I said, ‘I don’t think on such short notice we could find somebody better than Anette.’ ”

Simon said Sanders plays her role “pretty much the way I heard it in my head. She’s very witty, and she does something you always hope an actor or actress would do, which is to bring something to the part where you don’t have to constantly tell them what this is about or ‘You should do this.’ ”

Sanders, who is engaged to a dermatologist, Gary Rosen, is unsure what impact being in a new play by Simon in one of the country’s most respected regional theaters will have on her career.

For the time being, she said, “I’m enjoying it for what it is.”

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“The Dinner Party,” Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Ave., (213) 628-2772. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2:30 p.m. Also Thursday, Dec. 28 and Dec. 30, 2:30 p.m.; Monday and Dec. 27, 8 p.m. Dark Friday-Saturday, Dec. 31-Jan. 1. Ends Jan. 16. $33-$42.