Scrappy Little Nobody(45)

I will also sometimes have to fake the use and subsequent effects of illegal substances. Sometimes that is not difficult because I’ve . . . got a good friend I can ask about it. Other times, it’s a drug for which I have no point of reference outside of other actors depicting it on film.

I had to do several lines of fake cocaine in a heavily improvised film, so I asked around about how it would alter me. I’ve been around coke, I’ve been at many a party where I was the only person not doing coke, but I’ve never tried it myself. I once secretly rubbed some residue on my teeth because that’s what people do in movies, but I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t have much to go on. Luckily, most people in LA had experience with it (and lots of places, actually; I remember conferring with other Maine expatriates after the first month of living elsewhere and confirming in disbelief that this was the norm. “Do people do coke where you are? I know!! Who does coke?! Have they not seen ANY movie?!”).

It wasn’t hard to find someone on set to walk me through it. So here’s what I’ve got: cocaine makes you feel like the most important, most interesting person in the room. Why the hell would anyone do this drug? No, listen, it’s your time on earth and I’m not here to judge anyone in this life (except people who don’t like dogs—how do you not like dogs?), but that drug sounds horrible. Self-doubt is healthy! Self-doubt keeps me in check! It’s the rare social interactions when I DON’T hate myself that keep me up at night.

Oh god. I just remembered the time in middle school when I thought I could pull off a wallet chain. I’m just—I’m just gonna crawl under the bed for a while.





Exploding Pig


Jake Szymanski, the director of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, liked to call out direction during takes so we could work quickly and keep things spontaneous. One night, around four thirty in the morning, everyone in the cast was collectively covered in fake pig guts. The scene didn’t make it into the film, and explaining the setup would take forever, so you’ll just have to go with me here. It had been a long day, it was getting cold, and I don’t know why, but the fake pig guts smelled awful. It was like someone tried to cover the smell of rotting garbage with a full jar of nutmeg, but it didn’t quite work. Luckily, we were supposed to appear disgusted by them, but they really were rancid.

Jake was yelling out increasingly horrifying suggestions from the safety of his director’s chair. They were all hilarious. But when he yelled, “Zac and Anna, get some of the chunks of pig guts in your mouth so you can spit them out!” Alice took over.

Hang on. A note about Alice, my character in Mike and Dave: I don’t usually “take my characters home with me,” which is a method-acting thing, not a sex thing. If it were a sex thing, I would do it. But Alice was a force to be reckoned with. She was hard to control. Maybe it was because we were doing so much improv or because Alice said the things I wasn’t brave enough to say or because she’s such an idiot. I like playing idiots. I tend to play smart, because I look smart. Let’s be clear: it’s not because I AM smart, I just “read” smart on camera. The two things are unrelated in actors.

I let Alice have free rein a lot during that shoot. When the “real” Mike and Dave Stangle came to visit the set, I spotted them across the lobby we were shooting in and yelled, “Get your dicks out!”

When they introduced themselves two days later, I pretended to be embarrassed about it, but I wasn’t. Alice made me reckless and unflappable. So I was not going to be as docile as Zac.

So we’re about to eat the fake pig guts— Hang on. A note about how sweet Zac Efron is: while we were making the movie, I was reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Zac struck up a conversation with me about my book and shared some stories about his Polish family coming to America during World War II. Then he took a breath to tell an anecdote he’d just remembered, but he stopped himself, like he’d thought better of it.

“I was going to tell you about this thing, but it happened toward the end of the war, so”—he smiled like a schoolboy with a secret—“I won’t tell you yet.” I followed his gaze down to my bookmark, nestled around the hundred-page mark.

“Zac, you know I know how it ends, right?”

“Yeah, but it’ll be better if I wait.” What a sweetheart.

So we’re about to eat the fake pig guts— Hang on. A note about The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: it’s a tome of a book, an absolute monolith. Now, the title has an air of legitimacy, intellectual curiosity, even gravitas. However! Displayed on the cover of this beast, far more prominently than the title, is a huge, angry swastika. After a week of toting it around, I realized having a Nazi symbol clutched to my person everywhere I went looked . . . less than great. I got some electrical tape to cover it up and tried that for a day. Within an hour the tape started to peel off, and a small but unmistakable corner of the emblem emerged, like a shameful secret, which was SO MUCH WORSE. Kids, it’s not the scandal; it’s the cover-up.

SO we’re eating fake pig guts, and by that I mean Zac is putting the fake pig guts in his mouth. What a trooper. I, on the other hand, get in full Alice mode and scream bloody murder across the pool at Jake.

“Why don’t YOU get over here and put this putrid f*cking mystery meat in YOUR mouth, you PIECE OF SHIT!”