8th grader Simms May recently won the Squealer Award for Orwellian Persuasion, a performance competition stemming from the 8th grade English curriculum, requiring creativity and skillfulness. However, this is far from the first time Simms has been in the spotlight. Simms was also a star in the April 2023 movie Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, as the comedic relief character, Norman Fisher. Gifted in the ways of improvisation and letting words flow, Simms has won acclaim as a very talented performer.
May started his trade all the way back in 2018, beginning acting lessons and instantly becoming accustomed to the art of performance. Then in 2020, May’s acting coach Julia Jones helped May land an acting agent to help him find movie auditions—and then five days later the world shut down for the COVID-19 outbreak; while the pandemic added challenge to May’s auditioning, this turn of events is also what ultimately made May’s first true acting job unique.
After finding a virtual audition for Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, May received five callbacks for the role of Norman Fisher, a side character with a pivotal role in Margaret’s character progression. May was asked to improvise many of his lines in the movie, an acting challenge that is much different than what many other roles require.“They wanted me to improvise nearly my whole script, so they wanted five hour-long sessions each with the director, writer, and the whole team of me just improvising,” he says.
May was flown out to Charlotte, NC, in 2021, deep into the global pandemic, and immediately fell in love with the friendly atmosphere of filming with the cast. “Yeah, it was amazing, especially for a first role,” he says. “They treated me as though I was one of the main characters . . . everybody was amazing.” Even James L. Brooks, a highly acclaimed producer of many popular series, couldn’t help but crack up at May’s humor during rehearsals.
May was pushed from his comfort zone while playing Norman. “I played the weird kid . . . The most awkward part was the kiss [on the cheek] . . . The kiss was definitely the most awkward because I had just met this person.” However, May still loved the entire acting experience, using this first step into his acting career as a stepping stone to playing larger parts in movies.
This experience clearly showed when he won the Squealer Award, an award given to the 8th grader with the most convincing and cunning speech on a typically outlandish topic. By taking advantage of his talent for public speaking, wit, and control over an entire audience, May easily took first place in both his English class and the entire grade. May says he did not struggle to perform in front of an audience live. “Performing comes naturally to me, so it was not very hard for me, which I think increased my chances of winning.”
His speech, a clever rant on why the school should have its own Subway restaurants, was full of acting flourish. 8th grade Grade Chair Catherine Zidow says that May is “a good, natural performer” who “had the whole class into it.” The only aspect of the speech May wishes he had done differently was to make his speech longer so as to meet the length of other students. “[I regret] the time that my speech took . . . mine was only one [minute]. I didn’t think that I would win after I heard how long and thorough others’ were.”
No one can find difficulty in saying that May has a bright acting career in his future, and May himself doesn’t doubt it either. “I love being in front of an audience; it’s very fun to interact with a crowd.” He currently plans to keep auditioning for and hopefully acting in movies so that he can further hone his skills in the art of performance, live and recorded alike. “I’ll never experience [filming the movie] again. I’ll never feel the way I felt on that set again because it was my first time.”