“Yeah, well, I don’t see too many photos of leading ladies in ripped black jeans and engineers’ boots.”
I became self-conscious of my black clothing. No one else in the store was wearing heavy black boots or a black T-shirt. They were wearing summer prints and skirts.
“You could use some lighter colors for summer. Do you need skirts?” Kali was looking me up and down like I was more of a project than a friend.
“I guess so. I don’t know. Do I?”
She smiled at me sweetly and handed me the two shirts she was holding.
“Why don’t you start with these and I’ll find you some pants. Do you like Capri pants?”
As I wasn’t certain that I knew what they were, I shrugged my shoulders and took the shirts. I found a dressing room with a full-length mirror and tried on the shirts. I tried the white one and then I tried the other white one.
As I waited in the dressing room for Kali to bring Capri pants in a color palette that would make me more palatable, I looked at my body. I looked at my big thighs, the fat around my knees. I looked at my hips and how they formed a triangle where my butt hit the top of my legs. It wasn’t the first time I was critical of my body. I’d spent my life trying to change it, but I was overcome with the feeling that it would continue to beat me—that I could never win the game of successfully changing its shape. I thought about the time when I was eighteen and got stoned and stared at my reflection in a sliding glass door, sobbing, “I will always look like this.” Or when I met the voice when I was twelve and a modeling client asked me to turn around so she could see my butt. She asked me to take down my pants, turn around, and face the wall so she could see my ass. I faced the wall with my pants around my ankles for what seemed like a long time before she asked me to turn back around to face her. “I’m surprised your butt is so saggy for such a young girl,” she said in a friendly, inquisitive tone. “Do you work out?”
You need to work out. That was the first thing the voice said to me. It was a very deep, male voice that was so loud and clear I wondered if the other rejected models in the elevator with me could hear it. It continued to ring like a shock wave long after it had delivered the message. And standing in front of the mirror in Banana Republic, I was ashamed to think that at twenty-four, it had to keep giving me the same message.
“What size are you?” Kali’s innocent question sent me into a mild panic. Not because I thought I was fat other than the parts that needed reshaping, I just didn’t know how sizes ran in the States. In Australia, the perfect size to be was a size 10. But in the States, what was the equivalent to a 10? I’d only ever shopped at thrift stores or at Urban Outfitters with their “one size fits all” clothing since coming to the States, or I wore the same old jeans and T-shirts I’d always had.
“What size should I be?”
“What do you mean?” She looked at me with an inviting smile on her face, like we were about to play a game. She had no idea that her answer to my question was going to change my life.
“What size are models?”
“Well, a sample size is usually a six.” Kali knew a lot of things like this.
“Then I’m a six.” As it turned out, I actually was a 6. Mostly. The Capri pants that were a size 6 were too tight, but I bought them anyway as incentive to lose a few pounds. It didn’t occur to me to go up to the next, more comfortable size because as far as I was concerned, a size 8 didn’t exist.
As I left the store with my new buttoned-down wardrobe I felt immobilized with anxiety. I sat down with Kali on a concrete bench in the outdoor shopping mall, bags strewn around my feet, feeling overwhelmed. I had a few days’ worth of acceptable clothes, but what would happen after that? I would have to keep shopping for this new personality or else people would figure out who I really was, and if that happened, I would lose my career. Nobody would hire a lesbian to play a leading role. Ellen DeGeneres’s TV show had just been unceremoniously canceled after her decision to come out, and there had never been any openly lesbian “leading lady” actresses—ever. In the three years I’d lived in LA, I’d realized that in Hollywood, there were really only two kinds of actresses: leading ladies and character actresses. The character actresses wait around all day in a toilet-sized trailer for their one scene, and they get to eat from the craft service table for free, while the leading ladies get the story lines, the pop-out trailers, and dinners with studio executives at The Ivy. Oh, and the money. No one I could think of in the history of acting had ever been a leading lady and a known homosexual, and being revealed as such a person would mean sudden career death. Of that I had no doubt whatsoever. After I explained this to Kali in order to convince her how stupid her suggestion to “just be myself” was, I was able to collect my new things and head to the shoe store for some high heels—something to wear with my size 6 clothes. As I walked across the mall wondering if the way I walked made me look obviously lesbian, my mind switched to thinking about how much weight I’d have to lose to fit comfortably into those Capri pants. And so I gave myself a goal. I would wear those pants on my first day of work.
The diet was a very simple one. It was the same diet that I had gone on six to eight times a year since I did it to get ready for my first fashion show. Instead of eating 1,000 calories a day, which seemed to be the recommended weight-loss calorie consumption for women, I ate 1,000 kilojoules. I was Australian, after all, and turning it metric was only right. It was a pun with numbers that I thought was funny. As 1,000 kilojoules was approximately 300 calories, I embarked on my 300-calorie diet with the goal of a one-pound weight loss per day and I would do it for seven days. I knew how it would work because I’d done it so many times before. The first three days I’d lose a pound each day, and then days four and five I’d see no movement on the scale, then day six I would lose a satisfying three pounds, and the last day I’d round it off with a one-pound weight loss to total seven pounds. It was a no-fail diet, and losing weight just before starting my new job seemed like the professional thing to do. Not only would it make me look fit and healthy, but because being thinner always made me feel more attractive, psychologically it would help me to feel confident and ready for whatever acting challenge I’d be given. And then of course, there was the imminent wardrobe fitting. If I could lose weight it would make the costume designer’s job easier, since she could pick up any sample size for me and know that I’d fit into it. Losing weight was the silent agreement I’d made with the producers, and I was ready to keep up my end of the deal.
4
AS I pulled into my parking space out front of a sound stage on Kelley Land, aka Manhattan Beach Studios, I was dizzy with excitement and nerves. It was my first day at work on the set of Ally McBeal. I got out of the car, smoothed out the wrinkles in my comfortably fitting Capri pants, and looked around. It was a very austere and sterile lot. It had been built recently and accommodated David Kelley’s production company, and it appeared that the final touches that would make it look habitable still needed to be done. The studio lots I had worked on in Hollywood and in Burbank were bustling with people walking in and out of a café or from a newsstand manned by a colorful employee who knew every actor and producer who went there for Variety or the LA Times. But there were no people at Manhattan Beach Studios, only cars. There was no commissary, no park where you could read a novel at lunch under a tree. In fact there were no plants or trees. The buildings were huge, monolithic peach rectangles with no overhangs for shade, so the sun bounced off the clean white pavement and onto the windowless structures making the whole lot look like every corner was lit by a spotlight. In Kelley Land there wasn’t a shadow in which to hide. It looked like headquarters for a research and development company where scientific tests were conducted under the intense scrutiny of plant managers, unseen by the outside world. Either that or a minimum-security prison.
I walked out of the late-morning summer heat and into the hallway of the air-conditioned building looking for the dressing room with my name on the door. The f
irst door read Peter MacNicol, next was Greg Germann, and then there it was: Portia de Rossi. I had arrived. It was the nicest dressing room I’d ever had. There was a deep green sofa and matching chair, a desk with a desk chair, and a bathroom with a shower. Everything was squeaky clean and new. No actor had ever been here before, it was a sterile environment, and that was comforting and yet also somehow disquieting. No actor had rehearsed her dialogue, paced the room in anticipation of a scene, or smoked cigarettes out of boredom or nerves in this dressing room. There were no memories or stale cigarette smoke trapped in these walls. It was just going to be an alternately anxious and bored Portia de Rossi wanting to smoke but unable to smoke, looking at her flawed reflection in the full-length closet door mirrors.
I threw my bag on the sofa and checked my watch. It was 10:30. I was early. At 11:00 I had a wardrobe fitting and then at 12:00 I would begin makeup and hair. The reason for wanting to be early was less about first-day jitters than it was about my appearance. Despite being told as a child model to show up to shoots with a clean face and clean hair, I have never turned up to a job with a freshly scrubbed face or just-hopped-out-of-the-shower hair. I just got better at concealing it. I loved concealer. The magic oily stick of beige makeup was as essential to me as oxygen. I could have half my face covered with the stuff and still look like I was clean and naturally flawless. Of course, this careful application of concealer was painstaking and time consuming (trying to cover up shameful secrets always is), and it was for this reason I arrived a full half hour early. Naturally, before leaving home, I’d made the first pass over my red, blotchy skin, dark circles, blemishes, and scars of blemishes, but the drive across town was a long one, and I had anticipated that I would need to patch the areas where the heat had melted away my artistry. After I was satisfied that I’d done all I could to be the attractive, new actress that the wardrobe girls were no doubt expecting to meet, I headed over to the wardrobe room. It was in another building quite far from my dressing room and I roamed around in search of it for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, I was intercepted by a production assistant and escorted the rest of the way.
The PA wore shorts and sneakers. She looked flustered and told me that she’d been frantically looking for me. She told me that she was scheduled to be waiting for me at my parking space at 10:45. The more she talked (who feels confident enough about their legs to show them off without the help of high heels?) the more stupid I felt for arriving so early and for leaving my dressing room before a PA came to get me. Damn it. All I had to do on my first day was appear to be professional, to know what I’m doing, and I have already given myself away. By the time I got to the wardrobe rooms, I had a knot in my gut. I was dying for a cigarette. What was a lesbian doing here on this show playing an ice-cold attorney in the courtroom who would, no doubt, be hot in the bedroom in an upcoming episode? Would I fit into a size 6 suit?
I hovered at the doorway of the costume designer’s office, waiting for her to acknowledge me as she sat at her desk. When she turned to find me standing at the door, I could see that she was on the phone.
“Come in,” she mouthed, gesturing for me to enter. I walked across the threshold and into the rooms that would be the main stage for the drama my life was about to become—a drama in which I wrote, directed, produced, and played all parts: my very own one-woman show. I stood in the middle of the room since racks of clothing flanked the walls and took up most of the space, leaving only a small, carpeted square in the center like a tiny stage, but instead of facing an audience, it faced a large, full-length mirror.
“Hi. I’m Portia.” I extended my hand and smiled at her as she hung up the phone and walked toward me from her desk.
“It’s nice to meet you in person. I’m Vera. Welcome to the show.”
Vera and I had met over the phone when she asked for my measurements.
“Thirty-four, twenty-four, thirty-five.”
That sounded better than the truth, which started at around 32 and probably ended up around 38. I stopped measuring after my first interview with my modeling agents at age twelve when they told me to call them with my bust, waist, and hip measurements when I got home.
“Thirty-two, twenty-seven, thirty-seven,” I had told the Team Modeling booker.
“Are you sure?” A long silence followed, then my next instruction. “Well, just tell people you’re thirty-four, twenty-four, thirty-five, ok? We’ll put those measurements on your card.”
Now I stood center-stage in the Ally McBeal fitting room in front of the mirror, dressed in a pinstriped suit with a nipped-in waist and a large, rounded lapel. All the suits I had tried so far had fit. I was relieved. After all my anxiety preceding the fitting, I felt relaxed. I admired my reflection in the mirror. The suit I was wearing was my favorite for no other reason than it was a size 4. I was almost giddy with excitement. For my first episode of Ally McBeal, I would wear a size 4.
“Ugh. Take that off. That’s horrible.”
As I began to reluctantly take off the size 4 suit, Vera walked to her desk and picked up a large folder. I could see that the script inside had colored tabs and notes all down the margins.
“I think your character would only wear monochromatic suits. Conservative. Do you think there would be a hint of sexiness to her—like, say, a slit in the leg of a pencil skirt?”
“Umm. Sure.” I thought Nelle should have some sexiness and I guessed a pencil skirt was really the only way to make a business suit sexy. I was worried, though, that my hips looked big in pencil skirts.
“What do you think she’d wear on weekends?”
I attempted to sound like I had given the character’s costumes a great deal of thought, but it was immediately obvious to me that Vera’s exploration of my character was far more extensive than my own. To my surprise, her preparedness was the only unnerving part of the whole fitting. I was so busy trying to fit into the size 6 suit, to be the perfect-looking addition to TV’s hottest legal show, I’d forgotten to think about the clothes as an expression of the character I was about to portray, potentially for years. She closed her folder and walked back to her desk.
“Well, we’ve got a pretty good start. Let’s just go with what we have for this week and we’ll figure the rest out later.”
I put my Capri pants back on, thanked Vera, and headed out. I left the fitting and was escorted by the PA to the makeup trailer in a state of mild shock. I was amazed that I could ever walk out of a fitting feeling ashamed for something other than my imperfect body. Still, I had passed my first big test of fitting in, and in the case of clothes, fitting into a sample size, and I was on to my second. My body had passed the test, next was my face.
As I shook the hand of the makeup artist, Sarah, and looked her in the eyes, I registered her pupils dilating to begin their scan across my face. Could she see imperfections? Discoloration? Makeup?
“Are you wearing makeup?” The question was straightforward, but her tone was slightly incredulous. Enough to make me feel very embarrassed.
“No.” When attacked, defend by lying.
“Sit down. Let’s get started. Is there anything I should know before I start?”
“No. You’re the expert. I’m sure it’ll be great.”
The truth was, I wasn’t so sure. Practically every time I sat in a makeup chair, I’d look worse at the end than I did before we started. But I had never really learned what it was that made me look bad, plus even if I had, I didn’t feel it was my place to tell a makeup artist how to do her job, much less the head of the makeup department for Ally McBeal. As I was shuffled back and forth between the two chairs due to the hair and makeup artists alternately being needed on set (God, what was going on in there in the scene before mine? What was I about to face?), I applied a similar philosophy of trusting the experts in the hair department to do their job. After we collectively decided that Nelle Porter should wear her hair in a bun, how my hair was pulled back and all other decisions were my hairstylist’s business. After all
, I was the new girl. I didn’t want to make a scene or stand out, I just wanted to fit in. I wanted everyone I met to think of me as quiet and professional. I wanted the headline to be “how the new character melted seamlessly into the ensemble cast.” And now that I’d left Portia on the floors of the hair, makeup, and wardrobe rooms, it was time for Nelle Porter to meet the cast.
5
CAGE
Everyone. I’d like to introduce the newest member of Cage and Fish. Please welcome Nelle Porter.
ELAINE
(to Ally and Georgia)
Just so we’re clear, we hate her, right?
ALLY AND GEORGIA
(nodding in agreement)
Uh huh.
“Cut. Back to one.”
I stood on the stairs of the law office set staring out into the crowd. There they were. Ally, Billy, Georgia, Elaine, Fish—assembled on the floor of the office foyer, looking up at me standing midway down the staircase preparing to deliver a speech about how I was going to breathe new life into the firm and shake things up around the place. I hadn’t even met them yet. I just stood on the staircase smiling awkwardly at each cast member as they tentatively smiled and waved, sizing me up just as their characters were directed to do in the script. I was meeting the lawyers as Nelle Porter for the first time, and I was meeting the cast as Portia de Rossi in the same way, from the same step, and we were all carefully and awkwardly smiling and waving. How ironic that my character was supposed to be intimidating to these people, and yet I was too scared to hold a script to check my lines because I knew the shaking piece of paper would give me away—the trembling hands that were supposed to encase nerves of steel, the hands that belonged to “Sub-zero Nelle,” the self-assured woman whose only purpose in the show was to be the antithesis to insecure Ally. I worried about meeting them. I worried that I would say something that would show them that I wasn’t going to be the outstanding addition to the cast that they’d been told by the show’s producers I would be. What if they could immediately see that I wasn’t exceptional and special, that I was merely an average girl?
Unbearable Lightness Page 3
