Austin actress takes on 'Friday Night Lights' role

Austin actress Angela Rawna (raw-NAY) has been on "Friday Night Lights" for a year, but most of us haven't seen her. Because of the deal struck between broadcast network NBC and satellite television provider DirecTV to keep the show on the air, the latter has already shown Season 4 of the locally shot football drama (Season 5 is already filming), while those of us who subscribe to other providers or rely on over-the-air signals won't see what's been happening in fictional Dillon, Texas, until, well, Friday night, May 7.

Even then we won't see Rawna portray drug-addicted Regina Howard, whose troubled son is given a choice: prison or football. Her character is introduced in the new season's second episode, "After the Fall," airing May 14. But a week is a short wait when we almost didn't get to see her at all.

"I originally wasn't going to go to the audition," Rawna explains. "When I first got the breakdown and the (script) from my agent, I really paced the house, just really trying to figure out, OK, is this really something I want to go and do?"

The actress hesitated for two reasons. First, she was worried that the character — drug addicted, African American mom, husband in jail, son in trouble with the law — might be taken as a stereotype. And she admits to being afraid. Rawna boasts a sheltered, middle-class childhood, growing up as a "daddy's girl" in a San Antonio military family.

"I was quite terrified, I guess, of what that world would be like to live in during the duration (of filming). My thought process was ‘Do I want to go and exist and live in that world? Am I willing to go do all the research and the backstory in the way that I have been trained? Was I up for that task?' "

After a private session with her acting coach during which he encouraged her to go after the part, Rawna still wasn't convinced. "I just really wasn't sure if I wanted to go into an audition and look that way and feel that way and go to that place." But before she arrived home, she'd made up her mind. And now Rawna is one of those overnight success stories that was actually a lifetime in the making. She had big dreams, but although she had appeared in elementary and junior high drama productions, those dreams didn't include Hollywood.

"I thought I was going to be a professional volleyball player, I really did," she explains. "I thought I was probably going to make it to the Olympics. I'm such a sports fanatic, all kinds of sports. And I ended up playing volleyball in college and really thought that as I proceeded forth I probably could do either the pro beach circuit or possibly even do the Olympics."

But then "reality set in," she admits. "My body, honestly, was giving me signs of breaking down. And then the other thing, too, is that I really wasn't as talented of a volleyball player as I thought I was. Let's just put the truth out there."

As Rawna set out to reassess her life and determine her calling, she slowly returned to acting. She came to Austin, where she got her feet wet appearing in University of Texas student films and appearing as an extra in movies such as "Miss Congeniality." Rawna's had plenty of formal training but, like the best in her profession, relies heavily on keen powers of observation.

"I think, honestly, to watch someone work — particularly as an actor watching another actor — seeing how they operate is magnificent to watch," Rawna says. She talks about practically stalking "The Closer's" G.W. Bailey when they appeared together in "Sonny's Last Shot," a political satire staged at the State Theatre in 2005.

"I just marveled and loved to watch G.W. Bailey on stage or in rehearsal and just fed and learned and took meticulous notes," she recalls. "I don't even think to this day he's aware of how much I studied him." She calls her experience as a "walker" (a kind of stand-in) for Anna Deavere Smith during rehearsals for "Let Me Down Easy" at Zach Scott "a crash course in just seeing someone work. It was fabulous."

Also fabulous: Rawna's work ethic. To bone up for the demanding "Friday Night Lights" role (the actress had difficulty coming up with more than a few broad similarities between herself and her character) she spent a good amount of time at Recovery Austin, an addiction treatment center.