We knew the show wasn’t doing well in the ratings. While we were shooting, no one in the industry seemingly cared about any of us, or even knew WHAT Freaks and Geeks was. (By the way, I am publicly calling bullshit on all the people who claim they loved it when it first aired on TV, because guess what? If everyone who claims they watched it in 1999 actually did, we’d be on season 17 by now!)
It was pretty clear we were going to be canceled, so as a special treat for all of us kids on the show, Judd took us to the Man on the Moon premiere, starring his good buddy Jim Carrey, which in and of itself was insanely impressive. But it also starred COURTNEY FUCKING LOVE. Now, you have to understand, I had been beyond obsessed with her in high school. I had every picture of her from every magazine plastered on my bedroom walls. I wore red lipstick, Wet N Wild, obviously. I painted my nails black and cut bangs and wore baby-doll dresses with fishnets and my Doc Martens. Courtney Love was literally the coolest, most badass woman in entertainment, and I not only wanted to be her, I wanted her to want to be my best friend.
In my head, I thought that a giant movie premiere would be the perfect place for me to introduce myself to Courtney Love and that obviously, she would recognize me for the true star I was on the inside and she would want to be my friend and that would fucking be it. So, I got a few vodka cranberries in me at the after-party and I spotted her table and made my way over to introduce myself. I walked up and smiled nervously.
“Ummm. Excuse me, Ms. Love? Hi! I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Busy Philipps. I’m an actress and I just thought you were so great in the film and actually, I’ve, like, been such a fan for such a long time and I just think you’re so—”
Her look literally cut me off. She narrowed her eyes at me and said, “This is my friend Paul. Isn’t he hot???? Don’t you want to FUCK HIM?”
I was so mortified that I barely looked at her friend. I muttered something like, “Oh, ha ha, yeah? You seem really nice . . .”
I slunk back to the corner with the rest of the Freaks and Geeks crew, and Samm Levine pointed out that the guy she was with, the one she asked me if I wanted to fuck, was Paul Rudd. Ugh. Of course. Obviously, in retrospect, I couldn’t have asked for a more Courtney Love encounter. She didn’t give a fuck that some blond teen actress from a TV show no one had ever heard of idolized her. I felt so dumb. But I shook it off and promised myself I would be cooler in the future.
All of us, minus Franco, would hang out after work or on the weekends, going to a diner called Swingers and getting breakfast burritos at 10 p.m., or to Jason Segel’s condo in Westwood to hang out and smoke pot. Colin and I still hung out all the time, though we’d broken up the year before, and Gabe Sachs told me not to be an idiot and just be Colin’s girlfriend officially. Everyone loved Colin. I mean, he is a super-lovable guy but I always weirdly felt jealous of that. I felt like people preferred him to me and that if they had to choose (why would they, btw??), they would pick him. After a picture of us from a movie premiere was printed in the Hollywood Reporter with the caption “Colin Hanks and GF Busy Philipps,” I remember being so annoyed that I was reduced to being his girlfriend. Like why didn’t it say “Busy Philipps and BF Colin Hanks”? I was wildly insecure about it.
But eventually, we became official boyfriend/girlfriend again. We would hang out with the other actors from Roswell and some of the actors from That ’70s Show, Wilmer and Danny and Topher. Those kids seemed like they had it made. They were on a hit show, their jobs were secure, and they always knew what clubs to go to. I became friends with Rashida Jones and Jason Schwartzman after their respective guest starring roles on Freaks. Jason and I went to a party together at Rashida’s place in Hancock Park and I thought it was the most beautiful apartment I’d ever been in. It was the bottom floor of a Spanish-style duplex, with hardwood floors and a real fireplace. I couldn’t imagine ever having enough money to afford something that seemed so lavish. My gross apartment—which was in the flight landing path of LAX—hardly cut it. My roommates and I threw a party at our place one Saturday night, and I invited all of my new friends to come. With the exception of Linda, who had gone to LMU and knew other people living in the complex, I could tell that my TV friends were slightly horrified by where I lived.
As the season was wrapping up, it became clear that we probably weren’t going to get to do a second one, even though Paul and Judd weren’t told that officially. They wrote an ending for the season that could work either way, just in case. It didn’t seem like a great sign when NBC put Martin Starr, who played Bill Haverchuck in Freaks, on a TV pilot they were producing that starred Newman from Seinfeld. I asked my agents and Lorraine about pilots, but they said there was nothing we could really do until we knew if Freaks and Geeks was getting picked up or canceled.
Judd and Paul threw a prom-themed wrap party for all of the cast and crew. I wore the Betsey Johnson dress I’d worn to my real prom with a hot-pink wig. Linda wore her mom’s prom dress and an amazing beehive wig. The boys all wore cheesy tuxedos. Seth and Martin got their diplomas from high school in the middle of the party—they had finished high school with the on-set tutor while we were shooting.
Afterward, Colin drove me back to my shitty apartment, and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed the whole way, drunk and sad and scared that I was never going to work again. Somewhere, in my cardboard boxes of photos, I have a picture that I took in his car from that night. It’s me, looking directly into the camera, pink wig slightly askew, tears and makeup streaming down my face. A selfie years before I would know what it was or where to put it.
I have a confession. I’ve never seen all the episodes of Freaks and Geeks. People are often truly shook when I reveal this. Especially those hard-core fans who own the commemorative “Yearbook” DVD collection and have all the lines memorized. But the reason is simply that I wasn’t home most Saturday nights! I was out partying with my friends. And DVRs obviously didn’t exist then. In fairness, I was given VHS tapes of the episodes while they were airing, and I later got the DVD collection too, but it always seemed weird to just sit down and watch a show that I was on. I mean, I was there while we were filming it, right?
It’s not often that a show finds its audience after it goes off the air, but it’s been wild to see the impact that Freaks and Geeks has had on people over the last ten years. So I’ve decided that when Birdie turns thirteen, I’m going to watch the entire series with her.
I can’t imagine anything better than both of us watching it all for the first time, together.
I DON’T WANT TO WAIT
(Paula Cole)
After Freaks and Geeks was officially canceled in May, I started auditioning for anything I could. I did a small guest spot on Malcolm in the Middle, but other than that, work was far and few between. I hadn’t made that much money for Freaks and Geeks, and in spite of the fact that the show had been critically acclaimed, it didn’t seem to be translating into anything career-wise. James was off to play James Dean and seemingly become a movie star. Linda was doing a new show for AMC. Jason was shooting a movie I had auditioned for like four times and not gotten. I felt like a loser. And I was running out of money.
Emily BB graduated from Wesleyan and got a job working at an ad agency in L.A., and we moved together to an apartment near Brentwood—a sort of neither-here-nor-there part of town generically called West L.A. She was feeling conflicted about moving to L.A. because her college boyfriend, Chuck, had wanted her to go to Boston and live with him. She almost backed out the month before we were supposed to move in, and we got into a huge fight on the phone about it. I had put down money for this apartment and had told my current roommates I was moving out. I knew she loved Chuck but come on! She had a job offer! I had an apartment for us!
She agreed with my logic and moved across the country. She and Chuck knew long distance was probably impossible, so they broke up, although they still talked almost every day. And we ended up having a lot of fun, making dinner every night when she got home from work on
our George Foreman grill and doing weird arts-and-crafts projects. We didn’t want to pay for cable but we had a DVD player so we would walk to the video store and rent Sex and the City DVDs. We probably watched the first several seasons of that show at least three times.
Eventually, we became friends with the girls who lived next door, law students at USC, who did pay for cable, and when Sex and the City started back up, they would have us over on Sunday nights to eat dinner and watch the show with them. One of the girls was named Stephanie, but Emily and I decided that she seemed more like a Penelope, so we started calling her that.
In June, Colin flew me to Toronto, where he was shooting a movie with Kirsten Dunst. I remember hanging with Kirsten while Colin was doing a scene, when Harvey Weinstein came in to her trailer and sat down to talk to her.
“You know,” he said, “you have a really unique talent and ability, NKAY, and you’re clearly a beautiful girl, but it’s not always just about that, NKAY. You should really look at how we’ve shaped Gwyneth’s career, NKAY. I mean, first Shakespeare and now we’re having her do this movie where she’s a flight attendant, NKAY, and it’s amazing to see her in this new way, NKAY. That’s what’s possible for you, and you just need to remember that we’re here for you, NKAY. Like I always say, you know, do one for them and one for you, NKAY??”
If you’ve spent any time with Harvey Weinstein—and I unfortunately have—he would always say “nkay” in the middle of his sentences, almost like a tic or how some people say “like” a lot. I remember that it didn’t feel creepy to me, him coming into her trailer, just SCARY AS FUCK. Like this is the MAN WHO RUNS HOLLYWOOD. I was sitting there while he was talking, not sure what I should be doing, if I should leave or stay, so I just stayed there, eating Doritos on the leather sofa. I was secretly hoping he would notice me, and say, “You know, YOU should be a star like Gwyneth too, NKAY?”
• • •
Obviously, I didn’t know what I was spared in that moment, that he didn’t see me, or see an opportunity to, you know, cum on my leg, NKAY. I wouldn’t know for years. Even after I’d gotten to know him fairly well and had worked with him, I wasn’t aware of the depth of his depravity. But in that moment, I will tell you for certain I would have gone to his hotel room to talk about my career without thinking it meant something gross. I was twenty. I wanted a job. I wanted to work. I would have met anyone anywhere. Thank God I didn’t.
In August, I was about to apply for a job at the department store Fred Segal when I got an audition for an MTV movie called Anatomy of a Hate Crime, which was the story of the murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming. I was cast to play Chastity Pasley, who was the girlfriend of one of the murderers and an accessory after the fact. Ian Somerhalder played my character’s boyfriend, one of the killers.
MTV was making a lot of these made-for-TV movies back in the late ’90s and early 2000s, but only a few of them were dramatic. Most were comedies, and there were a few musicals (Beyoncé even did a version of the opera Carmen). I took the job very seriously, feeling the weight of the true story of Matthew Shepard’s death. We all did, really. We filmed in Calgary, Canada, which was freezing, but when I wasn’t working, I liked wandering around alone and shopping (I was pretty good at burning through my per diem). Colin came to visit me, and so did my manager, Lorraine. It was fairly low-budget, so the shoot wasn’t too long and we were finished before winter really hit.
Back in L.A., Colin and I were still dating, and still hung out with all of our college friends, so it was weirdly like we hadn’t stopped going to school. Colin and I had both moved farther from campus, but we would still go to all the parties on the weekends, and were essentially living the lives of students who just happened to have real jobs. Meanwhile, I signed up for some classes at Santa Monica College, credits that could transfer to LMU if I ever wanted to finish my degree—I took Women’s Studies, and another pottery class. (Luckily, this one was less than twelve thousand dollars.)
My auditions were going pretty well, even though I kept getting really close on things and then not getting the part. Weirdly, auditions have always been one of my favorite things. Many actors hate them, or say they hate them. But I love it. When you’re an actor for hire, you don’t get a lot of chances in your daily life to act. And I LOVE ACTING. So, to me, there’s nothing better than going into a room with someone’s material and getting the chance to perform it. It’s fun, or at least it should be. And look, most of the time, you’re not going to get the part. That’s just statistics. But if you can let go of that expectation, then you can just enjoy the actual doing of the thing you love.
I auditioned many times for an independent movie called Home Room about two girls becoming friends after surviving a school shooting. Mass school shootings were a relatively new concept. Columbine had only happened a year and a half earlier. Erika Christensen was cast as well. She was coming off her part in the movie Traffic and was very highly sought after. To be honest, I think the writer/director was hoping to get a bigger name for my part, but after all the actresses he offered it to turned it down, he offered it to me.
It was emotionally really difficult. Independent films often have a shorter shooting schedule than bigger-budget movies, and many times you only get one day off a week. That was the case with Home Room. The subject matter wasn’t easy either, not to mention that my character’s backstory was that she had a baby when she was fifteen that died. I mean. I was in a terrible mood most of the month we were shooting, exhausted and sad and panicky, and Emily was just about over it.
Colin was in England working on the Band of Brothers TV show and as soon as I wrapped, I went over to see him for Thanksgiving. I was only there a few days, but it was so much fun. We ate yakisoba noodles (I’d never had them before, and I don’t know, they made an impression on me), he introduced me to a new band that hadn’t hit the U.S. yet called COLDPLAY (I’m not kidding), and we hung out with all the guys and their wives and girlfriends from the show and had a big Thanksgiving feast together. (I packed Stovetop stuffing in my suitcase and felt like a real hero.)
Right after the holidays, I was offered another movie for MTV, a terrible “comedy” called Spring Break Lawyer. But it was a job and I needed the money and it was being offered, so I couldn’t turn it down.
Finally, pilot season started again, and I went out for everything. This time, I was getting asked to test for a ton of them. I tested for nine pilots that year, and every single one of them I went to studio and network. That’s an absurd amount, just so you know. That’s eighteen of the most high-pressure auditions you can go through as an actor. And every single time, I thought, “THIS IS THE ONE.”
Of all the shows I tested for that year, I can remember two of them very clearly. One of the pilots was called Close to Home, and I was testing to be the best friend of the main girl. In the script, the writers had written in what songs would be playing over the scenes, and it was all the same indie rock that my roommate from college Diana and I listened to nonstop. So in my audition, I commented on the music. It was a writing team, a guy and a girl who seemed like they were adults but were probably just a few years older than me. The guy writer smiled when I brought up the music. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s me. I like to put the music in so you can get a feel for the tone of the show.”
I didn’t get the part, but at least they knew I had good taste.
Another pilot that season was called The Education of Max Bickford. It was starring Richard Dreyfuss and I was testing to play his daughter. It was between me and an actress named Katee Sackhoff, but I was positive this was my part, not hers. Turns out I was wrong. I still remember the phone call I had with my agent Greg, “Honestly, Biz, they said you were wonderful. They said you both were. They said it was basically an arbitrary decision. It could have been either one of you.”
It was ARBITRARY? WHAT THE FUCK? It didn’t FEEL ARBITRARY TO ME, FUCKERS. I was heartbroken. I sobbed and sobbed. I called Colin, who was working
on another movie. He couldn’t believe it and said he was so sorry.
The premiere for the Kirsten Dunst movie was actually that night, but it turned out he’d be stuck at work, so he said I could just skip it if I didn’t feel like going without him. But I thought, “No. This is what we do. We don’t get parts sometimes and life goes on.” So I got dressed up and went.
At the after-party, Emily and I were getting some vodka sodas when Katee Sackhoff walked up to say hi. I couldn’t believe she was there, but I hugged her and congratulated her on the part. She was so excited: this was her very first show. And I was happy for her, really. It’s just that I was sad for myself. I knew I had been good. I’m a good actor. And I knew I was supposed to be doing this. So why was it so fucking hard to get a job? What was it about me that wasn’t enough? Or maybe, more accurately, what was it about me that was TOO MUCH? I didn’t know how to be anything other than what I was. What if no one wanted that again? What then?
I am not a quitter. I don’t quit anything. All I could do was continue to audition and have meetings. Colin was working nonstop and I was seeing him less frequently. Not because he didn’t want to see me, but truly, his schedule was crazy and he was so tired. Jake Kasdan, my director from Freaks and Geeks, gave him the lead in his movie Orange County. I auditioned for Jake too, but didn’t get a part in it. WHAT ELSE IS NEW?!
• • •
A few days later, I was driving over the 405, on my way home from YET ANOTHER AUDITION, when my phone rang, I knew it was Emily’s office from the number, so I picked up, expecting to hear her voice. But instead it was her boss, who sounded shaky.
This Will Only Hurt a Little Page 13
