I'm Glad My Mom Died(59)
60.
“YOU’RE LOOKING GREAT.”
“You’re really starting to blossom.”
“You’ve never looked better, but I’d stop where you are. Any more and you’ll start to look bad-thin.”
“Your body looks outstanding.”
These are all comments spoken to me over the past few weeks by producers, agents, and crew members that I work with. I have gotten more positive—and creepy—comments on my body over these past few weeks than I ever have before.
I have over a decade’s worth of eating disorder experience at this point. There were the anorexic years, the binge-eating ones, and the current bulimic ones. The more experience I’ve got, the more I recognize that the body is hardly a reliable reflection of what’s going on inside it. My body has fluctuated frequently and drastically throughout this decade, and no matter how it’s fluctuated, no matter whether my body is a kids’ size 10 slim or an adult size 6, I’ve had an issue underneath it.
People don’t seem to get that unless they have a history with eating disorders. People seem to assign thin with “good,” heavy with “bad,” and too thin also with “bad.” There’s such a small window of “good.” It’s a window that I currently fall into, even though my habits are so far from good. I’m abusing my body every day. I’m miserable. I’m depleted. And yet the compliments keep pouring in.
“I’ve gotta say, when you’re doing run-throughs and you walk out the door for a scene, it’s really hard for me to not focus on your ass. I hope it’s not creepy that I said that. I meant it as a compliment.”
61.
IT’S MONDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY of the work week for two reasons. The first is that this is our shortest rehearsal day. The second is that every Monday, when we come in for the table read, we get an updated schedule dropped on the table in front of us so we can see episode titles, directors, and shoot dates for upcoming episodes. And each time that schedule is dropped in front of me, I get to see my name there on one of the episode titles as director.
I signed on to do the spin-off mostly to placate Mom. But I also did it because The Creator promised me this very thing—a position as director on one of the episodes. Sure, directing one of The Creator’s shows is not exactly the best way to flex your creative muscles, since The Creator is ever-present during the shoot, adamant about his own ideas, and not very receptive to anyone else’s. But getting to direct an episode of television is a chance to make the industry finally see me as something more than just a kids’ TV actor. It’s a way of showing that I have value outside the box I’ve been put in. I really want this.
The dates of my directing job have been pushed a few times, but I’ve repeatedly been assured that this is just because of scheduling conflicts with other slated directors. I’ve also been assured that the newest dates that I’ve been given—dates for one of our final episodes—are locked. I’m set to direct.
I grab my coffee, sit down in my chair, and watch as our production assistant drops the updated schedules in front of each person at the table. Come on, Bradley, let’s pick up the pace here.
“Here you go,” he says as he drops the salmon-colored sheet in front of me.
I pick it up and look down toward the bottom of the page to the place where the final episodes are listed. The place where I should be seeing my name in one of those little “directed by” boxes.
But instead, I see two letters: N/A. It must be a typo. I look around to meet anybody else’s eyes, but there are only a few crew members in here so far, and our ever-sewing wardrobe person isn’t gonna know a thing about this.
My breathing gets weird and rapid. I look around for any of our producers who might know something about this, but none of them are in the room yet. I can’t believe it. I feel like I just got the wind knocked out of me.
Executives and producers start filing in. I lock eyes with one of them, the one I trust most out of these people I don’t trust.
We’ll talk about it later, he mouths.
No. I don’t want to talk about it later. I want to sort through this now. What the fuck is happening? They can’t possibly expect me to sit here and be a professional and do a table read when they’ve just taken away the one thing that I wanted out of this whole process.
I fight back tears as I realize that I’ve been foolish. I believed that these people would do what they said they would. Give me what they’d promised. Now that I’ve shown up to work every day, been a professional, swallowed my anger, and carried a show for almost forty episodes, now that they’ve gotten what they wanted out of me—they’re taking away the very reason why I was doing all of those things in the first place. I feel betrayed.
After the table read I call my agents and managers and they advise me to play ball, to be the “good sport” I’ve always been. But I’m so fucking tired of being a good sport. I don’t know how much longer I can be one.
* * *
It’s Friday of the same week. A shoot day. It took an hour and a half for Patti—my makeup artist but also one of my dear friends in this crew— to do my makeup because I couldn’t stop crying. I’m a mess. I’m distraught. I feel deceived and hurt and angry. I’ve told Patti what’s going on, so she’s even accompanied me a few times to various producers’ offices as I try and garner a conversation with them, but each time I’m rejected. No one will speak with me. Everyone is tight-lipped. They’re clearly all in this together, and not in a fun High School Musical clap-it-high kind of way.