This Will Only Hurt a Little(71)

Busy,

I want to let you know that you’re everyone’s first choice on the Party Down team. All the producers’. Adam Scott’s. The casting director’s.

I loved your audition.

I’ve also been a huge fan since Freaks & Geeks.

The cancellation of that show hit me harder than the cancellation of my own show, Cupid, a year earlier. I knew that “small story” television died along with F&G, and I’m a writer who likes small stories. I got my start teaching high school, then writing Young Adult novels. I’d always wanted to do a pure-character, non-soapy teen show, and once F&G went away, I realized I wouldn’t be fulfilling that goal, so I tried to sneak a teen character study into Veronica Mars. I gave them “big story,” and I got to wedge in a story about a counter culture teen girl. But back on topic—

The slow arc friendship between Kim Kelly and Lindsay Weir is one of the most-earned, most-rewarding friendships I’ve ever seen executed in the medium. It’s the sort of thing television should be really good at, but no one has the patience for it. By the time Kim and Lindsay get on that micro bus to go follow the Dead, tears were streaming down my face. I was so pleased when I met the woman who would become my wife, because she’d never seen the show, and I got to watch the entire season over with her. (Yes, I purchased the special exclusive collector’s edition with the yearbook, and everything.)

In the case of Kim Kelly, I went to school with several. I have a cousin who is a Kim Kelly. You absolutely nailed that type. It was a phenomenal performance. You gave so much soul to a role that in -lesser-hands could have been a stock antagonist.

So that’s how I feel about you and about your audition and our desire to work with you.

The bad news, I’m afraid, is that the network doesn’t see it that way.

Our thoughts regarding the pregnancy weight were virtually identical to yours. We could embrace it. (My son just turned five months; I’ve got a real visual appreciation about the weight-loss speed we’re probably talking about.)

The network is unwilling to go down that path.

If you saw the list of actresses the network wanted us to consider, you’d understand what we’re dealing with.

In the past few years, I’ve either worked with or met several of your F&G castmates: Samm, Seth, Jason. I picketed for a few days with Paul Feig, and I had a bizarre email exchange with Judd Apatow. With each, I’ve just gushed like a complete fanboy. So now it’s your turn. Your agent passed along your email. He may have intended to pull your email address off of it, but he didn’t, so it may be slightly out of line my addressing you directly, but I wanted you to know that, at the very least, you had our entire team in your corner.

I genuinely hope we get to work together someday.

Congratulations on the new baby.

Rob

I cried for five days and then Marc told me that he had talked to Lizzy and she was going to do the part, but not until after another actress friend of ours had also been rejected by the network for not being “fuckable” enough. I never could figure out which was more insulting—being deemed too fat or not fuckable.

I took it as a challenge to lose most of the weight before pilot season started. Lorrie Bartlett had me come into ICM and talk to the TV agents about what I was looking for. I was not fucking around: “I want to do a single-camera, half-hour comedy where I can be number two or three on the call sheet. A show with a big-name star that will do most of the press and a show that for sure is going to get picked up to series.”

I read the script for Cougar Town and told Marc that it was the show I was going to do. He told me to calm down. That night, we went to a restaurant for dinner and ran into our old friend Kate Walsh, who was having dinner with Steve McPherson, who was the (then) president of ABC. I turned to Marc as we left. “See? It’s a sign. I’m getting that part.”

“Buddy? You have to audition first.”

DETAILS.

I wore two sets of Spanx under my most flattering green DVF dress that had little white polka dots on it. I belted the waist as tight as I could and went to my audition. I still didn’t have a nanny or help, but sometimes our cleaning lady could watch the baby for a few hours while I ran out. I knew Bill Lawrence, who had cowritten the pilot, and his wife, Christa Miller, a little through a mutual friend of Marc’s. Christa was so intimidating, and mostly what I knew of them was they were super fucking fancy (they had flown private to our friend’s wedding!) and they were really well-liked and Bill made hit shows. I auditioned for the role of Laurie Keller in front of the casting directors, Courteney Cox (MONICA!), Bill Lawrence, and his cowriter Kevin Biegel.

I went to dinner with Abby and Phoebe and Marc and Birdie that night and got a call from my wedding planner, Jo Gartin. “Busy! Courteney just called me! They love you for that part and she wanted to ask me how it was working with you for the wedding—you know she and I are really close!”

I didn’t know that, and I was grateful that I had been a very easygoing bride and that Jo liked me. It was funny getting that information from my wedding planner before even talking to my agents, but that’s what happened. I was asked to test and told by my agents that it seemed like everyone really loved me for the part. It certainly felt like I was the favorite. I wondered to Lorrie if I should talk to them about the additional ten or fifteen pounds I still had to lose or if we should just let it go. What I didn’t know was that Bill had initially written the part for the actress Eliza Coupe, who had been on the final few seasons of Scrubs. At my studio test, there were about five actresses but that afternoon, for the network test, it was me and Eliza, whom I had just met that day but instantly liked. Bill is an incredibly magnanimous person and wants the best for everyone, truly. He is also married to an actress and understands the pressures and annoyance of testing and jumping through hoops. So when I tell you what he did right before the test, which was hands down one of the weirder things I’ve ever experienced at a test, know that it came from a place of trying to ease tensions for both of us, even though it came off a little weird.