This Will Only Hurt a Little

by Busy Philipps

  “Ummm. Busy? Hi. This is Susanne. I—I’m um Emily’s boss? Can you come to our office right now?”

  “Hi. Yeah. What’s going on? Is everything okay?” I knew it wasn’t. I could tell. My stomach started sinking.

  “You know Chuck? Emily’s Chuck? I—He’s dead. He, uh, died and . . . she . . . ummm . . .”

  My heart fell. “I’ll be right there. Susanne. Fifteen minutes, okay? Can she talk?”

  There was a pause. “No.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I hung up. Chuck was dead. Chuck was dead? What? WHAT?? When someone dies young, out of nowhere, it doesn’t make any sense. Ever. I didn’t ask questions immediately, because it didn’t matter. How? Why? Who fucking cares? Chuck was dead. Emily’s Chuck. Her first love. Her only love. I loved Chuck too. He was the greatest. So funny. So cool. So weird. So punk rock. So smart. I called my mom and started hysterically crying, repeating, “Chuck died, Mom. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do—”

  “Busy. Busy! Stop! Listen to me. This isn’t about you right now. Okay, honey? I’m so sorry. You need to go get Emily. I’ll call her mom and have her call you. You have to stop crying, okay, honey? You need to just go get her and take her home and put her in bed. And get her water and cold washcloths for her face. And just be with her. But you have to get it together right now.”

  I did what my mom told me to do. Emily couldn’t talk. She couldn’t stop shaking. Her face was already puffy and red and there was no end to the tears. I talked to her parents and helped make a plan for her to go back to New Jersey for the funeral. Chuck had died of a seizure in his sleep. A freak thing. I sat with her while she talked to people on the phone and cried. It was a lot to handle by myself. But that’s what you do, right?

  I remember feeling relieved when she left for New Jersey, because I knew she was going to be with people who had loved Chuck as much as she did, and they could grieve and cry together. My heart was truly broken for her. I knew how much she loved him. I knew she thought that if she had just moved to Boston with him and not to L.A., he wouldn’t have died, which of course wasn’t true, but I felt like I was the one who forced her to move to L.A. It was so, so beyond horrible. When she came back from the funeral a few days later, she went straight back to work. She had to. Life goes on, even when you don’t want it to. But Emily was different somehow; there was a weight that she couldn’t shake. She still carries it with her, I think. Even all these years later.

  Right around then, Craig had decided to leave school in Chicago and move to L.A. to see if he could break into the business. We started hanging out a little, even though I was dating Colin and he was still dating a girl in Chicago, long distance. Brett lived in L.A. now too, so he and Craig and I would go out dancing to ’80s nights or go to Manhattan Beach and get coffee and walk along the beach. It felt like we had never been apart. Like the three of us were still in high school, best friends in the theater department.

  One Saturday night, my old roommates were having a huge party. Craig and I were sitting outside, drinking and getting high. I can’t remember if Colin didn’t want to come, or was too tired, but he wasn’t there. Craig and I walked back across the courtyard to his apartment together so he could get cigarettes and as soon as we got into the stairwell, we started kissing.

  Well. Okay. I know. This is a thing with me, maybe? A, WHAT DO YOU CALL IT . . . PATTERN?! Yes. It is. But you know, I’m not a quitter. So I think in terms of relationships, I often have a hard time ending them when I think I should, and instead I just sort of move on to another thing, and then that ends up being the decision that’s made for me.

  We both felt like shit the next day. Not just from the hangover, obviously. We both had significant others. Colin and I were planning a huge trip to Europe in a few weeks. We hadn’t been seeing much of each other, but I knew he was really looking forward to going away with me. I was such a fucking coward. But hooking up with Craig was the thing that made me realize that Colin and I weren’t working at all.

  So I broke up with him. When I told him I wasn’t going on the trip, he was fairly (understandably) upset. I didn’t even tell him about the Craig stuff. I didn’t have the guts. (Even though, you know, he didn’t have much room to talk, since I had cheated on Craig with him only a few years earlier.)

  It would be years before Colin and I would be able to be friends, but eventually, he forgave me and we moved on. Now, Colin and his wife are two of Marc’s and my closest friends and our kids all go to school together. I sometimes think how amazing it would be to go back in time and show the two of us a flash of the future: all of our kids playing together, his wife, Sam, and I having wine and laughing, Marc and Colin talking about bands and artisanal coffee places. Recently, I found a birthday card Colin wrote me after we broke up the first time. In it, he wrote, “I love you and know we’re going to be in each other’s lives for a long time.” He was right in a way neither of us could have predicted at nineteen, but I am so much better for having him in my life today and feel so lucky that my kids get to know him too. He’s really just one of the best people I’ve ever known, and I’m sorry I was such an asshole to him but grateful he understood and forgave me.

  • • •

  After Colin and I broke up, Craig and I started dating right away and were pretty much inseparable. I liked that he would spend every night at my house and was up for whatever I wanted to do. I didn’t even mind that I almost always had to pay.

  In June, I got a call from Jake Kasdan’s little brother Jon, who had written on Freaks and Geeks. He and I had become good friends in the year after the show. He’d been hired by Tom Kapinos, who was the showrunner of Dawson’s Creek, which was now going into its fifth season.

  “Hypothetically speaking,” he said, “If we added a roommate for Joey at college, would you move to Wilmington, North Carolina????”

  “Jon,” I told him, “I tested for nine fucking shows this year and didn’t get one. I would move wherever the fuck you asked me to.”

  He laughed. “Okay, okay, okay. That’s what I thought. Tom’s a huge fan from Freaks. We’re writing this part and it’s perfect for you.”

  Not that I didn’t have to audition and test for it. I did. But Audrey was my fucking part. I remember going into my test at Warner Brothers, and seeing the girl they were testing against me, who was obviously super talented. But all I could think was, “Good luck, girl, but you may as well just go home now because this is my part. I’m due for it. IT’S MINE.”

  IS THIS IT

  (The Strokes)

  A few nights before I left for Wilmington, North Carolina, Craig and his brother Jeff and Emily and I went out to dinner at Islands, a burger chain with a Hawaiian theme. I was feeling nervous about leaving Emily but also about leaving Craig, who I was newly in love with (again). Not to mention, I wasn’t sure how much I was going to be able to fly home. In my deal I was only guaranteed a plane ticket back to L.A. if I wasn’t in an episode.

  We were talking about the show at dinner. None of us had ever seen it. I knew kids in college who really liked Dawson’s and Felicity, but my friends and I weren’t really into it. I mean, obviously I knew what a big deal it had been when it premiered, how hugely popular it was. The Rolling Stone cover with Katie Holmes swinging on a tire swing was iconic, but I think I thought of the show as something for teenagers, not me. Craig looked around at the table and kind of laughed, “We don’t have to, like, start watching it now, do we?”

  The way he said it was so mean, and so seemingly out of nowhere. I didn’t yet understand that Craig had a hard time being happy about any of my success since his own feelings were that he was already a failure at age twenty-one. I jumped up from the table and ran to the bathroom in tears. (This was long before I became perfectly comfortable openly crying in restaurants.) He followed me to the ladies’ room, where I sobbed in the stall.

  “Busy. Hey. Hey. Come out. I didn’t m
ean it. Of course we’ll watch you on it. I just—Come on. You know what I meant.”

  I did. Sort of. But I also had the feeling that there was no way he would be watching me on the show. I felt like even my friends thought this huge job was lame and somehow not good enough.

  On the plane to Charlotte, I randomly sat next to Linda Hamilton, the actress from the Terminator movies. She was going to visit family in North Carolina. I felt like it was a good sign that she was my seatmate. She said “bon appétit” to me when our meals arrived, and I was impressed with how fancy she was and wondered if I would ever be that fancy.

  Chad Michael Murray and Ken Marino were both on my flight too. Years ago, I got a lot of shit for saying on a Paley Center panel that I thought Chad was a douchebag, but honestly, HE WAS FINE. He didn’t do anything wrong—his vibe was just not for me. He was a real MALE ACTOR, and I have a hard time trusting dudes that are that good looking and know it and somehow try to prove to you they’re so much more. I sound like an asshole, I know. I’m sorry. He just reminded me of a guy on the football team who carries around a guitar so people think he’s deep but really he just knows the G chord. Like how Franco carried Dante’s Inferno around on set. It’s like CALM DOWN WE GET IT YOU WANT US TO THINK YOU’RE HOT AND SMART.

  The South is unbearably hot. And I say this as someone who grew up in Arizona, where we would play softball in a 105-degree heat. But North Carolina in the summer is a whole other thing. The heat smacks you in the face like a hot, wet wall. I was not prepared for it. We were all put up in this funny little boutique hotel off the main drag of downtown Wilmington. The hotel was “movie” themed, with a little kitchen and rocking chairs on the front porch. My room was Some Like It Hot, which apparently was also the room Michael Pitt had stayed in. As we were all checking in to reception, James Van Der Beek popped out of one of the rooms. Obviously I hadn’t thought the main cast members were staying there; I’d assumed they’d all gotten homes when they’d relocated to Wilmington. But James was at the hotel for some reason—I think his house was under construction—and it seemed like he’d been waiting for us.

  “Hey! I’m James!” he said. “You’re Busy, right? Jon Kasdan said we’re going to be friends. This is my fiancée, Heather!”

  She popped out of their room and I shook her hand. I couldn’t help but notice her enormous ring. I was like HOLY SHIT. People our age get rings like that when they get married?? He looked past me, over my shoulder.

  “Oh, look,” he said. “Michelle!”

  I turned around to where he was looking, and across the street at the mini-mart, Michelle Williams was walking out. I’d been prepped by Jon Kasdan that Michelle and James would be my friends, I guess because Michelle and James were his friends, and he and I were friends. Michelle walked over to say hi and introduce herself. She was tiny and adorable, her perfect face makeup-free. She was carrying Fig Newtons and water. She asked if I wanted one, and we walked over to her room and sat in the rocking chairs so I could smoke. We started talking about bands we liked and books we were reading. I liked her immediately: Jon was right, of course. She talked quietly, as if the things she was saying were just for me, but I loved when she would have moments of laughing loudly or shrieking in agreement at something I had said. She was wearing the most beat-up Converse I had ever seen, and I made a mental note to get a pair of Converse and start wearing them in ASAP. She told me that she was going to be moving to the beach in a few days but her house wasn’t ready yet because there were still summer vacation renters in it.

  “You don’t own a house here?” I asked, and she shook her head.

  “No. No. I just rent houses. And honestly, I wasn’t sure if I was going to come back this season. I sort of asked if maybe I could leave. I was thinking of trying to go to college this year but . . .”

  I nodded as she trailed off. “Well. I’ve been to college. Trust me, you’re not missing out on much. And I feel like most college students would be super stoked to be on a TV show so . . .”

  She laughed. “Yeah. You’re probably right. Are you hungry? Want to go get dinner? There’s this place that we eat at a lot. It has the best steak.”

  We all ended up at Deluxe, a super fancy restaurant within walking distance of the hotel. She was right. The steak was fucking amazing. She and I realized that we had just missed each other the year before when I was in London visiting Colin. She was there shooting a movie and was staying in the same hotel, at the same time. I remember seeing her costar from that movie in the lobby, but somehow I never saw her.

  I started work the next day with a wardrobe fitting, and I also met the hair and makeup teams. Wardrobe was really disheartening. The woman looked at my body skeptically.

  “Hmmm. I think the trick with you will be to just accentuate your chest and push up your boobs and maybe show your legs, and then just try to hide from here”—she pointed to right under my boobs—“to here.” She pointed to right above my knees.

  I was confused. There needed to be a trick? My body was a problem? I hadn’t realized that yet. I just assumed because I’d gotten the part, they wanted me the way I was. I didn’t know there were parts of me that should remain hidden. But I would be learning a lot, I guess.

  The makeup department was no better. “So, I guess we have to cover all these moles? What have people done in the past about it??”

  I looked at the makeup artist in confusion. “What do you mean? No one has ever asked me that.”

  “Oh, honey, okay. Yeah. I guess the network and producers don’t like all these moles on you, so we’re supposed to cover them up. Although I’ve never had to do that, and it seems insane.”

  It seemed insane to me, too. I called Lorraine, and she agreed to get to the bottom of it. But in the meantime, I needed to just do what they wanted. Which I could do. After all, this was my job. But I was so offended. The network and producers don’t like my skin? I’d gotten the job on Freaks and Geeks and was fine the way I was, but clearly the message here was a little different.

  The hair department was a hilarious mother/daughter team. The daughter, Tracey, seemed like she was only a few years older than me, with a short asymmetrical haircut that was dyed purple. She was smoking when I walked up to the trailer.

  “HEEEEYYYYY!” she said. “I’m doing your hair! Wanna smoke?”

  I knew right away that we were going to be friends.

  I met Katie Holmes my first day on set. She’d been shooting another scene and was coming to the other location to rehearse and shoot my first scene with me. Right away, she jumped out of the transpo van and hugged me. “Jon Kasdan told me you’re wonderful!”

  Thanks, Jon! He really did pave the way for everyone to be extra nice to me. I wished I had more scenes with Michelle, but she and I hung out when we weren’t working. We drank a lot of wine and went out to fancy dinners, spending money I hadn’t yet started to make, a real theme to my life. She told me all the good places to go in town, like the local indie record store, CD Alley, which was owned by an amazing man named Fred, a soft-spoken Southern man in his late thirties who loved indie rock and would sometimes convince bands to take a detour from the real venues in Chapel Hill and play in his loft apartment in Wilmington. I saw a lot of great bands there, and would spend much of my free time hanging out and buying records.

  With Dawson’s, it was immediately clear to me that I wasn’t walking into a situation like we had on Freaks and Geeks, where everyone hung out all the time. Maybe that was how it had been when the show first started, but by the fifth season, when I showed up, the main cast didn’t really hang out together that much and they obviously had some fairly intense dynamics going on. It was clear that Joshua Jackson and James didn’t really like each other, and while Katie and Michelle were friendly, it didn’t seem like they were very close. Kerr Smith was sort of friendly with everyone. Josh really fancied himself “one of the guys” with the crew. The Creek’s very own mini George Clooney! He’s a good guy and just wanted to be well-li
ked but I wish I’d known the term “mansplaining” when I met Josh. His ability to turn a conversation into a dissertation was incredible. Katie was very sweet, but we didn’t spend that much time together. I knew she worked out a lot. She didn’t seem to like to drink very much, and while I knew she’d sneak a cigarette every once in a while, she wasn’t really like a hang-out-and-smoke kind of girl. I went over to her house a few times and she showed me some artwork and arts and crafts she was working on, since she knew I did that kind of stuff too, but I had a hard time really connecting with her. She’d been going out with Chris Klein for a while, and he came out to Wilmington and spent a good deal of time there, so she was mostly off with him. I mean, also, look . . . by the time I got there, those kids had already been thrust into a very specific kind of fame—a kind I wasn’t used to. And they’d all lived there, with each other and the crew of the show as their only friends, for the majority of the previous four years.

  The second weekend I was there, Michelle and I both had a Friday and a Monday off. She told me she was flying back up to New York and that I should come with her. So I did. She was newly friends with a guy I’d done the Oxford School of Drama with (Zach Knighton, later on Happy Endings), and he came over and we drank wine and hung out. She took me shopping in SoHo, and I remember seeing the price tags on the vintage Levi’s and not being able to imagine spending that much on jeans. She had books everywhere in her apartment in TriBeCa. Stacks of them, against each wall. She was never not reading at least three at a time. But it didn’t feel forced or pretentious. She was a girl who had been working since she was a child, so she’d missed out on traditional school and had decided that she needed to educate herself beyond what on-set school tutors were capable of.

  We met some of her friends in Central Park on one of the days, an artist she knew and Gaby Hoffman, who had just returned from backpacking around Europe with friends. She took me to the Guggenheim because there was an exhibit she wanted to see. We met another friend of hers and sat outside at a café in the early afternoon and were served wine, even though Michelle was a month shy of twenty-one. Everyone seemed so worldly. They lived in New York. And New York was magical. I had never really spent time there as a grown-up, only doing my Barbie job, which was mostly just work and hotel and work. But those four days I really fell in love. I guess with both the city and Michelle. She’s easy to fall in love with; anyone who really knows her will tell you that. And probably some people who barely know her will tell you that, too.