Leaning back in his chair, Pierre eyed me for a long moment before he spoke. “It’s about our mother,” he told me, quietly, then pulled up the arm of his tee to show me the part of his tattooed sleeve that was normally hidden.
Eloise Perry spelled out on her own marquee, like his father and grandfather.
“She was an actress. Lots of really quiet, melancholy indie stuff,” Pierre explained, with a wistful smile. “She never really wanted fame – she avoided it, actually. She just had a passion for it, so she did it, and that was how she and my father met. She was already a Perry – no relation – but he was like… you already have my last name, you know you’re supposed to be my wife, right?”
“That is incredibly smooth. I probably would’ve had to pull like ten generations worth of ancestry data to make sure though,” I laughed.
“She did,” Perry chuckled. “I really wish I had them telling this story on video or something, cause it’s hilarious. And this was before like… sending off your DNA and stuff, there were digging up old family bibles and stuff with the birthdates written in the front before she would even let my father take her on a date.”
I smiled. “Wow. So you’re a Perry on both sides?”
“Yep. The whole family really got a kick out of that too. Like I said, I don’t have them telling the story of how they met on film or anything, but I’ve got boxes of footage of us with my mother. We would write scripts and act it all out like they were real movies – we’d send them to my Pops, and he loved that shit. They loved us, and they loved each other. El was little when she died, but she was always obsessed with those fake movies growing up. And then when she got older, she would watch mama’s stuff. Today was the first time I ever heard that she wanted to be like her though.”
I nodded. “Yeah… I guess y’all talked about it though?”
“A little bit. I’m gonna get up with her tonight to tell her she got the role… and apologize again, for trying to blow her off.”
“Good,” I agreed. “She probably needs to hear it. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”
Pierre’s gaze came up to mine, locking before I could look away. “I get the feeling you’d know.”
“Your feeling is right,” I confirmed, with a wry smile. “I’ve never gotten my apology for being brushed off, and then killing something people thought I couldn’t accomplish. And I mean… I’ve come to live with it. I’ve accepted that it’s probably not coming, but still… It would be nice, you know?”
“I appreciate you speaking up for the underdog,” Pierre said, clapping a hand on my knee – no innuendo either, just a friendly gesture. “I was being an asshole.”
I smirked. “Yeah, you kinda were. But I get it, that’s your little sister. You know her better than most. And… I’ll admit, I was rooting for at least giving her a shot, thinking maybe we can get her some acting classes, start her in an ancillary role, something like that. I was not expecting that to come outta her.”
“Yo. Listen. I…” Pierre sat back, shaking his head. “I had no idea. Like no clue. She hadn’t even said anything to me about coming back out to Vegas period, let alone that she was studying the role. And then she came in and murdered that shit, like… like it was nothing. And you know who she looked like – who she reminded me of?”
“Who?”
A little grin spread over his face, and he nodded. “Our mother.”
“Talented ass family,” I laughed as I stood from my perch on the desk. “Do you need me to do anything? Dinner reservations, a congratulatory gift, any of that?”
Pierre closed the top on his laptop and stood. “Nope. El likes to shop, so in addition to my apology, I’m gonna submit myself as her personal bank account and bag holder for a couple hours at the mall.”
“Top tier apologizing,” I laughed. “I really couldn’t have crafted anything better myself. Should I take that closed laptop to mean we’re done for the day?”
“As far as I’m concerned, yeah – I’ve gotta go take a nap or something so I can hang with El’s young ass,” Pierre laughed. “Ay – was everything good with the crew contracts? I know you wanted that handled before we moved on with the cast.”
I blinked, remembering Anthony and his flirting for a moment before I nodded. “Yes, everything is settled there. We’ll be ready to move forward.”
“Good. So… I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asked, prompting me to nod again, offering quick goodbyes before he left me there in the office by myself, trapped by the sudden buzzing of my phone.
We need to talk – Daddy.
I pushed out a deep sigh as I stared at the message on the screen.
“You good?”
“Oh shit!” I whispered, startled by the sound of Pierre’s voice. “I thought you were gone.”
“Yeah, I noticed you didn’t follow, so I was making sure I hadn’t missed something. And now you look pretty stressed out.”
“It’s nothing,” I lied, shaking my head. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell him what was going on, I was just… trying to preserve some sort of boundary between us.
Especially since his whole I broke his celibacy revelation.
Sure, it only happened because I was messing around when he came to check on me, but still…
That was so much to process.
Even if he insisted it wasn’t a big deal.
Maybe because the way he’d described it, as this very natural thing… as nervous as I’d been once it was clearly about to happen… it felt the same for me too.
Which was low-level terrifying.
I wasn’t – usually – the kind of girl who operated too largely on my “feelings”. I liked logic, and concrete things I could reach out and touch, and… neat boxes.
What he was talking about – what I’d felt too – was messy.
I wanted nothing to do with it.
Luckily, he didn’t seem pressed.
“Well… when you decide you wanna talk about ‘nothing’… you know my ears are open, all that,” he said, thankfully not pressing.
I smiled. “I know. And thank you.”
This time, I joined him in heading to the elevators, and he walked me to my car before we parted. He was going to deliver good news and make amends with his sister.
I… was going to pick up wine and sushi and try my best to ignore my phone for the rest of the night.
14
Pierre
It just didn’t seem good enough.
As much as I heard and was doing my best to accept Nick’s assurances about the quality of the script after we’d spent all those intense days going over it in rewrites… there was something I couldn’t get off my mind.
Even though I was just a kid, and hadn’t really understood what she meant, I remembered my mother chastising my father that no matter how much critical review he got from his sycophant peers, his scripts were only as good as the care they took of the women who appeared between the pages.
Heroines and villains alike, they deserved more than flat characterizations that only existed as a complement to the men who were – typically – the “real” focus.
Again, back then, as a kid I couldn’t really understand it. Now though, when I saw my mother’s movies, and thought about the work my father had done since then, I could very clearly see it.
There was a difference.
Without looking up a single word from the creators on social media or watching past interviews, however the creator of a movie presented women on the screen was a clear indication of how they felt about them in real life.
And when I did see them in action, read their interviews, whatever… well, the assumption panned out with near 100% accuracy.
It was important to me to not become another part of my own statistic.
So I called Sienna.
Well more accurately I called Sienna, and she didn’t answer, which I took as a sign from God, attempting to protect me from myself.
But then, instead of calling me back, a few
hours later she shot me a text saying that she was already about to get on a plane from LA to Vegas for something else she was already working on. Instead of hashing it out over the phone or email, we would just meet and talk about it in person.
I… didn’t love the idea.
But if she was already on her way anyway and would be in town… maybe it was for the best. Depending on what her schedule was like, it – maybe – wouldn’t be too big an imposition to hire her for some script consultation work.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Shit.
Shooting was due to start in exactly two weeks. If nothing else, maybe she could lend her experience with the creation of one of this past summer’s hottest Black shows to my first episode, at least. Whatever insight she could offer – specifically from a woman’s perspective with her added expertise as a writer – would be enough for me to apply to the rest of the script.
Whatever happened, as it stood now, I did not feel prepared for that first table read. So between now and then, something was going to have to happen.
I could not blow this.
Especially after seeing how phenomenal Elodie was in the Tracy role. If she shined despite a bad script – which I was pretty confident she would – it would make my failing of our parents look even more drastic in contrast.
I really, really did not want that.
I downplayed it when talking about it to Logan, but what the media had taken me through in the wake of my father’s death contributed to an even worse downward spiral than I was already on. Yeah, most addicts were under the mistaken impression that they had it under control, but the traumatic, dramatic way in which my father left me, paired with the intense scrutiny, judgment, unmerited commentary, and overexposure from what felt like the whole world at the time… honestly, I still had nightmares about it.
Sure, I felt like I was pretty well past that now.
On a day to day basis, at least.
But there was still the fact that a common refrain amongst the media had been that I was supposed to overtake my father’s legacy, but I didn’t actually have the tools to do so.
I was a drunk; I was supposedly a druggie.
According to “sources” I was nothing more than a big dick and a pretty face, nothing between the ears, no comparison to the legend that was my father.
I knew I shouldn’t give a shit about proving them wrong, that making this show wasn’t about that. It was about honoring a legacy, doing something I was passionate about – and maybe even good at.
I wanted to create something my parents would be proud of, if they were here to see it.
And I wanted to prove the naysayers wrong.
So I would do what was necessary.
When Sienna arrived for our unscheduled meeting the day after I’d called her, it was with big hair and a bigger smile. She was very touchy, very flirty, just like she’d always been.
I’d hoped to have Logan here, even though I hadn’t told her about this meeting. I’d put enough on her plate and didn’t want to throw her off. Still, her keep this shit professional energy would have been a great buffer for Sienna’s fuck work, let’s play mentality.
Instead she was off being productive, still dealing with contracts.
So many contracts.
There was a contract and hiring paperwork, waivers, and non-disclosures and all sorts of other shit for every single person that would step foot on our set.
It was a lot.
And I was glad as hell she was on it, instead of me.
“P-Threeeeeee!” Sienna gushed, rushing to wrap me in a hug as soon as I met her downstairs at the security desk. She went from talking Freddy’s ear off to looping an arm through mine, not stopping to ask what it was I’d even called her for before she started chattering away about everything that had been happening in her life from the major to the minutiae.
I let her.
Because it really had been a while, and despite my reservations, it really was good to see a familiar face. For better or worse, Sienna reminded me of home, and my memories of LA were by no means all bad.
She was present for some of the bad though.
“Okay,” she said, once we were seated in the lounge area in my office, and she’d rambled for another twenty minutes. “Tell me what’s going on, what did you have me hop on a plane for?”
My eyes went wide. “Well… you hopped on a plane because you had something else going on here in Vegas I thought?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s always something going on somewhere, right? What did you need me for?”
I sighed. “Well, I’m making the show.”
“Oh right,” she exclaimed, grabbing me for another hug. “I heard about that, but you’ve been a little stingy with the details – nobody knows anything! I can’t believe you haven’t gotten a press run started yet.”
“We haven’t even started filming, which is part of why I wanted to talk to you. I—”
“Nooo, you do not want to wait until you start filming to build a buzz! What kind of people do you have around you that don’t have your marketing together? Do you need me to call someone?”
“I’m good on that front,” I told her, even though… should I already be doing that? I’d have to run it past Logan. But in any case – “I was calling you because I wanted to have you take a look at the script for me. Everybody was talking about The Common Room, like… I couldn’t have avoided it if I wanted to. You killed it.”
Sienna beamed. “Well, thank you – and thank you again for the congratulatory bouquet, it was beautiful.”
“You’re definitely welcome – gotta hold it down for our old crew, you know? I remember how we were all just trying to make our shit happen.”
“Right,” she huffed, crossing her arms. “Until some people got too good to hang around us anymore…”
Yeah.
I should’ve seen that coming.
“Don’t do me like that, Sienna. You know why I left.”
“You didn’t have to go all the way to Blackwood for it though. You could’ve just told me you didn’t want me anymore – didn’t have to go allll the way over there. I’m a big girl, I could’ve taken the hint.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Really? Cause we definitely weren’t on any serious shit when I left, which was mutual, I thought?”
“Okay, you’ve got a point there,” she smirked, leaning in. “That was then. What about… now?”
“Now, I’m trying to get my show made, and I could use your expertise – like a consult or something. Paid, of course,” I added, trying to make it as clear as possible that this would be a professional collaboration – nothing more.
She sighed. “You’re not as fun as you used to be. But… fine. Tell me about the show and explain what you think is the problem.”
I spent a few minutes giving her a basic rundown of the show, then shifted into my concerns for Tracy. To Sienna’s credit, she gave me her full attention the whole time, nodding along as I made my points. And then, when I finally stopped, she asked to see the script for the first episode – which included the audition scene Elodie had murdered.
I… wasn’t expecting her to frown so much though.
This was exactly why I didn’t typically hang around when people consumed my work – I preferred not to be present for the reaction. But I’d asked for this, so I forced myself to peck around on my phone until she was done, and ready to give her feedback.
“So… she’s like a Black manic pixie girl trope with a decent vocabulary or something, huh?”
Well damn.
“That… wasn’t exactly how I intended it,” I said, still cringing over that framing. “She’s definitely different from what Jason is accustomed to, but she never gave me… manic?”
Sienna waved that off. “Okay maybe not manic, but she’s giving me overly-woke vibes. I mean, what is this reference here, about people walking away… ? What does this even mean? This is the kind of highbrow sh
it that turns the audience off.”
“I’m aiming at a highbrow kinda show,” I explained. “It’s not a comedy, it’s not light.”
“Right, it’s a drama. But I’m telling you, if you can connect the millennial crowd with your heroine – they either wanna fuck her or be her friend or both – then you’re golden. You’ll get the show trending, everybody talking, you’ll be the main topic every week. But Tracy is too… confident. She’s too certain, too focused, to together. And she’s not pressed about Jason. She’s not relatable enough – audiences want messy, insecure women they can relate to.”
I frowned. “Logan called her aspirational. Inspiring.”
“I don’t know who the fuck Logan is, but they don’t know what they’re talking about,” Sienna assured. “Remember, The Common Room is my third hit show – I know what I’m doing. Send me the script – all the episodes. I’m gonna get this fixed for you.”
She had all the confidence in the world in her tone, but… I wasn’t nearly as certain. “I’m gonna run it all past Nick, and after that, we can talk about your compensation and all that. Cool?”
“Nick Davison? Of course he’d connected to this – I see his lofty fingerprints all over this,” Sienna grunted, rolling her eyes. “I bet he’s trampled your original script, hasn’t he?”
“Nah,” I chuckled. Sienna and Nick were never exactly the best of friends – they tolerated each other when they needed to because of their shared connection to me. Nick was never into the drinking and partying – it wasn’t really his personality for one, and his sickle cell disease made it potentially dangerous anyway.
Sienna was always about that life and tended to be very vocal with her opinion that people who weren’t were boring.
So yeah… that wasn’t exactly a match.
“Eighty-percent of this is my words,” I explained. “Maybe more than that, just guided by his advice, and he definitely has a lot of outright input too. Don’t forget – Nick is an award-winning filmmaker. You can’t sleep on his talent just cause you don’t really fuck with him.”
“Yes I can,” she sucked her teeth. “Anyway, enough about that – this little reunion right here,” she purred, suddenly shifting energy back to the flirty shit as she practically crawled into my lap. “Where are we going to celebrate?”
Behind the Scenes Page 14
