Scrappy Little Nobody(49)
The trickiest parts were the constant assurances that I was having a great time. I’m not an idiot. I knew what was happening was positive, it just got . . . disorienting. I don’t mind hard work—I love a challenge!—but pretending everything is wonderful when it’s not makes me feel mentally ill.
I was expending all this energy, but I wasn’t creating anything, I wasn’t learning anything, and my job became convincing the world that I was off having the adventure of a lifetime. I did it well enough that my own mother bought it. When I stopped answering her calls she got upset with me. She assumed I thought I was too cool to talk to her now. In reality, I couldn’t pick up the phone because I knew the second I heard her voice I’d finally let go and burst into tears.
Once I talked to my mom (and did indeed break down crying), she completely understood why I hadn’t been in touch. That didn’t stop her from guilting me into taking her to the Oscars. When the show was over she looked shell-shocked. “I can’t believe you’ve been doing that for six months. I’m never doing that again.”
The highs and lows were so extreme! Just when I’d reach a tipping point—convinced that I’d become nothing more than a commodity, disgusted with myself for taking this artistic experience, which had been so fulfilling, and packaging it up to be sold in pieces to people who couldn’t care less about me—something amazing would happen. I was trudging up the steps to my apartment when I got an email with the subject line: Dreams Do Come True. I walked through my door and onto my tar-stained carpet and opened it. It was Peter Travers’s review for Rolling Stone. It read: Kendrick is a revelation. I stood on that tar stain and wept.
I was a revelation, but I was still broke. At the end of one New York press tour I asked Paramount if I could stay in a less expensive hotel on the next trip and . . . keep the difference. They said no because “that’s not how it works.” I wanted to know why that wasn’t how it worked, but I could tell I’d already embarrassed myself, so I dropped it. Then I stole a roll of toilet paper out of the bathroom and put it in my suitcase because I knew I wouldn’t have the time or energy to buy any when I got home.
When reporters asked how I was handling my “new fame,” I tried to make a joke of it. “Well, I still go to sleep in the same bed as before this happened.” It always sounded like a platitude. Like “I still put my pants on one leg at a time” or “My friends and family keep me grounded” (yawn). But I literally meant, Nothing has changed. In fact, Mr. Journalist, the insecurity I feel about the Grand Canyon–size gap between my real life and people’s expectations is giving me relentless anxiety, so if we could just cool it, that would be great. I stole a roll of toilet paper this week. You can see how “fame” wouldn’t be going to my head.
If I’d been allowed, even once, to say, “Hey, I’m having kind of a shitty day,” I think I would have been fine. If my dad had been there to give me that look like, “These people are crazy,” I would have been able to handle anything. But admitting that I was lost and overwhelmed felt so ungrateful. Imagine if during final exams, everyone in your life was saying, “Finals are here! This is the best your life is ever going to get!” On top of being exhausted and grumpy, you’d feel guilty about your own, very human emotions. (And probably in crisis because Dear god, what if this IS the best life ever gets?!) This is why we talk about our feelings!
About a week before Oscar nominations were announced I went to New York to do a talk show. Afterward my brother and I walked around the city in the dark for a while. I knew he wouldn’t judge me, so after a while I said, “Everyone keeps telling me that I’m gonna . . . which I feel like they shouldn’t, you know . . . because . . . I mean, am I going to wake up next week disappointed that I’m not an Oscar nominee? ’Cause I’ve been not an Oscar nominee my whole life and I’ve been okay.” Saying it felt better. Then just for good measure I added, “And you know what, some of these other people look VERY at home being feted and adored and it’s creepy and I think they’re f*ckin’ charlatans.” Being a little bit petulant felt better, too.
The very last piece of press I did for Up in the Air was in Tokyo. The movie was released in Japan several months after the US release and a little while after the Oscars. I got to run around Tokyo for a day, which was INCREDIBLE. The following two days were jam-packed with interviews. During one roundtable, the lone English-speaking journalist said, “I’ve been following the press that you’re doing and it seems like different publications are writing their own version of you. You know, you’re like the overwhelmed newcomer or the independent, serious artist or the mainstream, commercial star. Do you feel pressured to play along with what they want? Do you ever feel like you’re lying?”
Maybe it was because it was the end of my tour or because he was a fellow American in Japan so I was having a bullshit Lost in Translation moment, or maybe because if I’d suppressed the crazy for one more second I would have ruptured something.
“Honestly? Some part of everything I’ve said in the last six months has been a lie.”
He laughed. “Including that?”
“Yes,” I said, totally serious.
Fame Changes Everything, a.k.a. I’m in Vogue but I Still Don’t Have a TV