This Will Only Hurt a Little(77)

Wait. WHAT THE FUCK? I hadn’t gotten any scripts yet. So they wanted me to get into a hot tub and have a sex scene in a shower four weeks after giving birth??? Motherfucker.

I marched up to the writers’ room and busted in. “Hi guys! What the fuck? I’m not getting in a fucking hot tub. You’re not even allowed to take a bath for six weeks after giving vaginal birth, because your cervix isn’t closed up all the way and bacteria can get up in there! So that’s not fucking happening.”

Blake mumbled, “Yeah. I mean. We kind of thought for the hot tub you could just, you know, be up to your boob level? I didn’t know that about baths after giving birth. The . . . bacteria or whatever.”

“Yeah. Well, maybe someone should have checked. And I’m not doing a fucking sex shower scene next week with Dan Byrd.”

“Yeah. It’s just that Courteney broke her wrist and we have to explain it, so that’s what we came up with.”

“Oh, cool. Well, we can shoot it in two months, when I’m not bleeding from my fucking vagina and unable to wear a tampon.”

Poor Blake. I don’t think he really had considered that dealing with a hormonal new mother would be a part of his big new job promotion. Also, I truly prided myself on being generally very easygoing as an actress, but I couldn’t just be chill about this. A few weeks into shooting I saw Brian Van Holt walking around with the AD for the following week’s episode. Ian Gomez told me that Brian was prepping an episode as the director. And that Josh was going to do one later in the season.

“Ugh, dudes get to do everything,” I lamented to Marc later that night. “Why do they get to direct? They don’t have any idea what the fuck they’re doing.”

“If you want to direct an episode,” he said, “just ask. I’m sure they’ll let you. I mean, I feel like they would have to.”

I didn’t particularly want to, but I didn’t like that the guys on the show were doing it and I wasn’t. In fact, in my many years as an actress working in TV, I had been directed by many, many former television actors who had turned to directing once their acting careers dried up. In all my years, I had only been directed by one actress who had done the same. Actresses just weren’t given the shot. But why? I asked my friend Sarah Chalke, who had been on Scrubs. All the male actors had directed episodes—why hadn’t she or Judy Reyes?

“I don’t know,” she said. “I never asked. I also wanted to make sure if I directed that I really, really knew what I was doing.”

But she had been on television for twenty years. Didn’t that count? I understood what she was saying, though. I don’t ever want to do anything unless I’m certain I’m going to be the best at it. Aside from my film 101 class at LMU, I hadn’t gone to film school or anything. I didn’t know the names of camera lenses or shots. But this was one of those situations where I thought I needed to just do it and then if it sucked, I wouldn’t need to do it again. Besides, it wasn’t like the men were waiting until they were experts. They just did it. So I would too.

Courteney was directing almost half of the Cougar Towns at that point, so I asked her first. She told me that of course I should direct an episode if the show was picked up for another season. Since we were already shooting, the directors were hired and scheduled for the current season. Plus, as much as I wanted to do it on the principle of the thing, I did just have a baby and there was no way I needed to take on a whole new project, something I’d never done before. Bill Lawrence agreed to ask Disney and they approved it. If the show got picked up, I could direct an episode. I felt triumphant in my quest for equal rights.

As we were gearing up to shoot the last and final season of Cougar Town I sent an email reminding everyone that I would be directing an episode. THEY HAD PROMISED. I was put on the schedule. I called my friend Jason Winer, who had directed the pilot of Modern Family among other things. He gave me some advice, but he basically said I would be fine. I knew what I was doing. I knew where the story was, where the jokes were, how to talk to actors and writers and keep it all together. And he was right. Marc told me I should make a shot list, which I did. The thing is, of course directing is something I’m good at. I love making decisions and my episode was actually really fun to direct. There was a whole caper subplot that I got to shoot like one of the Ocean’s Eleven movies. Our DP Sylvan never made me feel like an idiot for asking what kind of lens we were on and was able to give me exactly what I had asked for. Overall, it was a really fun and exhausting and invigorating week. One of the grips waved me down at the end of the episode. “Hey. Just so you know, we all think you were the best at this, of all the actors. Other than Courteney, of course. No one was sure what to expect this week, but you killed it, girl.”

That’s all I ever want to hear. That I’m the fucking best. I thanked him and drove home, windows open and music blasting. After that, I told my agents that I for sure wanted to be put up for more directing jobs, especially since Cougar Town was ending. I had one meeting with a lower-level executive at Fox who basically told me it would be nearly impossible for me to get hired on any other shows. Cool. Cool. But at least I’d done one.

? ? ?

As Cougar Town was ending, I had no idea what I was supposed to do next. I could jump on some new network TV comedy pilot, but that didn’t seem quite right. I wasn’t sure what was to come for me, honestly, which can always be a little unsettling.