The Charm Offensive
Alison Cochrun
For Heather, Meredith, and Michelle—because everyone knows the female friendships are the best part
THE FIRST NIGHT OF FILMING
Pasadena, California—Saturday, June 5, 2021
20 Contestants and 64 Days Remaining
Dev
Dev Deshpande knows the exact moment he started believing in happily ever after.
He is ten years old, sitting cross-legged in his living room, staring up at the television in awe at Ever After. It’s like the stories he reads before bed, tented under Star Wars sheets long after his parents have told him to turn out the lights—stories about knights and towers and magic kisses. It’s like the movies he watches with his babysitter Marissa, stories about corsets and handsome men with dour faces and silent dances that say everything. Stories that make his heart feel too big for his small body.
Except Ever After is better than those stories because it’s real. It’s reality television.
On-screen, a beautiful blond man extends a jeweled tiara to a woman in a pink dress. “Are you interested in becoming my princess?”
The woman sheds a single tear as music swells in the background. “Yes. Yes!” She claps her hands over her mouth, and the man rests the crown on the woman’s head, gold against her golden hair. The golden couple embrace with a kiss.
He’s mesmerized by this world of horse-drawn carriages and ball gowns and big romantic gestures. The foreign travel destinations and the swoon-worthy kisses against brick walls while fireworks go off in the distance. This world where happily ever afters are guaranteed. He watches, and he imagines himself as one of the women, being waltzed around the ballroom by a handsome prince.
“Turn off that anachronistic, patriarchal bullshit,” his mother snaps as she comes into the house carrying two grocery bags, one under each arm.
But Dev didn’t turn off that anachronistic, patriarchal bullshit. In fact, he did the opposite. He joined it.
“A toast!” he declares as he sloshes the rest of the champagne into the glasses held in eager, outstretched hands all around him. “To beginning the quest to find love!”
He is twenty-eight years old, sitting in the back of a limo with five drunk women on the first night of filming a new season of Ever After. There’s a former beauty queen, a travel blogger, a medical student, a software engineer, and a Lauren. They’re all beautiful and brilliant and masking nerves with copious amounts of limo champagne, and when they finally arrive at the castle gates, the women raise their glasses excitedly. Dev takes an obligatory sip of champagne and wishes for something slightly stronger to dull the current aching of his too-big heart.
For the next nine weeks, these are the contestants he’ll coach for the cameras, guiding them through Group Quests and Crowning Ceremonies, helping to craft their perfect love stories. If he does his job right, in nine weeks one of these women will receive the Final Tiara, the proposal, the happily ever after.
And maybe then Dev will forget that in his own life, happily ever afters are never guaranteed.
He plasters on his best producer smile. “Okay, ladies! It’s almost time to meet your Prince Charming!” A chorus of shrieks fills the limo, and he waits for it to die down. “I’m going to go check in with our director. I’ll be right back.”
On cue, a production assistant opens the limo door for him. He steps out of the car. “Hey, babe,” Jules says condescendingly. “How are you doing?”
He slings his handler bag over his chest. “Don’t patronize me.”
She’s already pivoted and started her brisk march up the hill toward the castle. “If you don’t want to be patronized, I guess you don’t need these”—she pulls a bag of mint Oreos out from under her arm—“to stave off your crippling depression.”
“Crippling is a bit much. I like to think I’m sort of dabbling in depression.”
“And how many times have you cried while listening to the same Leland Barlow breakup song in the past twenty-four hours?”
“Fair point.”
Jules smacks the Oreos against his chest without breaking stride. Then she shoots him a sideways glance, almost like she’s searching for evidence of his epic cryfest in the shower three hours ago—and again in the Lyft on the way to the hotel ballroom to pick up his contestants. Her eyes fall to his outfit. He’s wearing his standard first-night uniform: cargo shorts with deep pockets, a T-shirt—black, to mask the pit stains—comfortable shoes to get him through a twelve-hour shoot. “You look like an Indian Kevin James in an ‘after’ weight-loss photo.”
He puts on his charming Fun Dev smile and plays along with this little game. She’s wearing corduroy overalls and a Paramore concert T-shirt with her giant Doc Martens, a fanny pack across the front of her chest like a sash, and her thick hair in its usual topknot. Jules Lu is every twenty-four-year-old LA transplant with mountains of student debt, settling for something less than her delusions of Greta Gerwig grandeur. “You look like the sad old person at a Billie Eilish concert.”
She flips him off with both hands while walking backward through the security gate. They both flash their badges to the guard before immediately having to dart to avoid a golf cart carrying two set runners. They skirt the jib, which captures establishing shots from twenty feet up, and run directly into the first assistant director, who accosts them with pink revised call sheets. Dev has always been a little bit in love with the chaos and the magic of the first night of filming.