As Marc and I had gotten more serious, I tried my best with Abby. But it actually wasn’t the easiest thing for me. I would try not to feel jealous of their relationship and late-night calls, but it was hard. Of course, I knew she was already engaged to someone else and was about to get married. But they were older than me, and a lot of times, I would feel like I was this little kid tagging along with them. I had traded one enmeshed relationship that I could never penetrate for another. Well, at least I have a pattern! Not to mention, all their friends were the same friends that he had when he was engaged to Abby. In fact, most of them, he had met through her. She and I had a few run-ins where we were less than kind to one another. At one of Marc and Abby’s friend’s bachelorette weekends that I’d been invited to out of obligation, all the girls were drunkenly talking about their respective boob sizes and teasing one another when Abby piped up about her own bra size. I shrieked with laughter across the table, “WHAT?! ABBY! You DO NOT wear a C! YOUR BOOBS ARE SO SMALL!!!!!”
She glared at me. “You know, Busy, I think you’re kind of a bitch.”
I got up to smoke outside and cried as I looked out over the sad little winery hills in Temecula. I hadn’t meant to be a bitch. I was just trying to join in with all of the friends. Later, at that same dinner, I got Marc’s age wrong and she corrected me in front of everyone. I laughed and corrected myself, but as I looked at her I thought, Well, whatever, you’re all so much fucking older than me, what’s the fucking difference? When I got back to Los Angeles, I told Marc I couldn’t do this. It was her or me. He looked at me and sweetly kissed me, “Oh, Buddy. You have my heart, I promise. You already know me in a way she never has. But she’s my writing partner, that’s how I make a living. And that’s not going to end now.”
Abby had a really beautiful destination wedding in Napa Valley in December. Marc and I had been dating for about six months at that point. Since I had to tape Love, Inc., I couldn’t go up with everyone on the Friday morning to be there for all the hiking and massages and golf and activities before the rehearsal dinner that night. I had to fly up right after the taping, on the last flight out of LAX to Oakland. I was super nervous about attending the wedding for many reasons. There’s the obvious thing that like half of the people invited to this wedding had also been invited to the wedding Abby had been supposed to have with my now boyfriend. It felt very fraught to me. Emily helped me pick out a new dress to wear—a really tasteful tea-length, light-bluish-green dress with a built-in corset.
By the time I arrived at the hotel that night, Marc was drunk and going on and on about how the rehearsal was the best thing he’d ever been to—all the speeches were incredible, he couldn’t believe I missed it, oh MY GOD! The speech Paul gave was the BEST SPEECH ANYONE HAD EVER GIVEN EVER AT ANY WEDDING EVER. So, needless to say, I was feeling a bit left out.
So I guess, maybe I went into the wedding a little hot. Like, I think I had a cocktail in the lobby of the hotel and then we got on buses to take us to the winery and there were those little Sofia Coppola champagne cans and I think I had one of those and then when we got there I had another drink. Really just trying to soothe my nerves and catch up to the fun time everyone had the night before. The ceremony was beautiful. I cried. The vows her new husband, Jason, wrote were perfect.
Afterward, we found we’d been seated at one of those random tables, as happens at weddings, so we weren’t with anyone we really knew or any of our friends. I was super bummed. As soon as we sat down, Marc got up and went outside with some of his friends, leaving me alone. The older woman sitting next to me turned to me and smiled. “Bride or groom?”
“Oh well, my boyfriend is Abby’s writing partner.”
Her eyes went wide and she looked me up and down. “Oh! Oh! OHHHHHHHHH! You’re Marc’s new girlfriend!”
It was the third oh that really pushed me over the top. I flagged the waitress over. “I’ll have more wine please!”
It was one of those places where the staff is incredibly well trained and there are like ten million waiters so your wineglass never gets below half full and you have no idea how much you’ve been served. I think if I had to guess, I was served at least two bottles myself. But I wasn’t uncomfortable anymore! I felt great! Marc is one of those guys who say they don’t dance, so I hit the dance floor with a similarly overserved friend of his. We were dancing UP A FUCKING STORM. I mean, this guy Paul was dipping me and twirling me and I started having the best time ever—also I started just, like, pulling moves on my own, spinning and whooping it up. I saw Abby kind of half dancing toward me and I danced back at her like, “YES, girlfriend! You’re married now! I won’t be threatened by your weird work-but-also-talk-all-the-time relationship with my new boyfriend slash your ex-fiancé!!!!!!”
She danced right up to me and then SHE GENTLY TUCKED MY ENTIRE LEFT BOOB BACK INTO MY DRESS. Apparently, the renegade boob had been out for quite some time. So long, in fact, the wedding photographer had to find her to tell her to come put my boob back in because he was having a hard time shooting around it. I was mortified. I tried to play it cool and stumbled off the dance floor to go find Marc, who was of course nowhere to be found. As soon as I found him, I got so mad at him that he hadn’t been there to stop me from getting so drunk and embarrassing myself and then I just got really sad. I desperately didn’t want to do the thing—I mean, I couldn’t be the ex-fiancé’s new girlfriend who first had her boob out and then started crying at the wedding!!! I couldn’t DO THAT! But that’s what I wanted to do. So I made Marc leave the party with me early and I sobbed the entire way back to the hotel, thinking how much Abby was sure to hate me now. How I had ruined all those amazing dance-floor photos with my stupid left boob. How I shouldn’t have even gone in the first place. I didn’t belong with a bunch of grown-ups at a million-dollar wedding in Napa Valley. I COULDN’T EVEN KEEP MY FUCKING BOOB IN MY DRESS! He reassured me that everything was going to be fine. That it was actually pretty funny that my boob flew out and that maybe someday I would feel that way too. And that of course I had to come to her wedding because he loved me, and he needed me there.
Which was all true, of course.
Meanwhile, Love, Inc. was far from a success, but it was a job and we did an entire season of it. Aside from one scathing horrible review of my performance in particular, I was sure no one knew or cared that I was on it. The exception being Quentin Tarantino. Brokeback Mountain had come out in the fall, shortly after the birth of Matilda, my beautiful and perfect goddaughter. Michelle and Heath were invited to every party and both were nominated for every award (well deserved, by the way). Since they were both nominated, they each were able to bring a guest and Michelle asked me to join at every event, which was obviously incredibly thrilling for both of us. That’s basically the origin of me joining Michelle at all the ceremonies for all the awards she’s been nominated for. It’s hard to even describe the insanity and magic of how much fun that time was, with the two of them so in love, in love with each other and life and their work and this new perfect creature that we all were trying to figure out how to take care of.
After the Oscars, for which Brokeback ridiculously lost Best Picture to Crash (don’t come at me, Crash sucks), we picked up Marc in our limo and headed out to all the parties starting at Vanity Fair’s. We had been there no less than ten minutes when I noticed Quentin Tarantino looking at us and making his way over. I stepped to the side so he could come into our group and congratulate Michelle, as I’d grown so used to doing. A few times, even, it was assumed I was their publicist and people would ask me if it was okay to talk to them. At one party, a well-known actor asked me to go get him a drink before Heath intervened and spared me from being the dude’s cocktail waitress.
“Uh. Actually, Busy’s our friend,” he said. “She doesn’t work for us.”
So, obviously, at the Vanity Fair party, I expected Quentin to be coming over to talk to M or Heath, but instead he beelined for me.
“You’re Busy Philipps!” he s
aid. “I fucking love you, man.”
Flabbergasted, I laughed nervously, and Michelle smiled and put her arm through mine protectively. “Ummm. Yeah?” I said. “You’re Quentin Tarantino, obviously.”
“Man, can I just tell you? I’m fucking obsessed with you! You’re such a badass! I LOVE Love, Inc.! I’ve seen every episode, I had my assistant get them for me on DVD.”
I mean. What do you say to that? Except to call bullshit, which is what I did.
“No,” I said. “You didn’t.”
He shook his head. “No! Really! I love it! The whole thing with Mike Smith and then the other Mike Smith, man? Genius!”
Now he was referencing specific story lines. He wasn’t fucking with me? I mean, from knowing who he is I probably don’t need to tell you that he then went on and talked at great length for some time about Love, Inc. and then Freaks and Geeks, which he said he found AFTER Love, Inc. since I was on that show, as well. He told me about a project he had coming up and that he wanted me to audition for it. I was over the moon. What?! Quentin Tarantino wanted me to audition for him?? It seemed crazy but I was beyond flattered and couldn’t wait to call Lorrie Bartlett in the morning and tell her the story.
M and Heath basically had to move to L.A. during the awards season, which thrilled me and made Michelle uneasy, since Los Angeles has never been her favorite city. The traffic and paparazzi and perceived superficiality always made her feel unsafe. But being there with her new family and me and being recognized for her talents in a real way for the first time allowed her to be able to have fun. One afternoon, Marc and I were hanging when my phone rang.
“Are you and Marc at his house?” she asked.
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“Heath wants to go to this fancy sushi place. We can’t bring a five-month-old in there. Can we drop Matilda with you for an hour or so?”
Next thing you know, Heath and Michelle handed us the baby and zipped away to get sushi. Marc and I spent the next two hours playing pretend parents with my sweet little Matilda, making her laugh, giving her a bottle, and swaddling her up in a towel because we didn’t have a blanket. I knew she liked to be swaddled—I had watched Michelle and Heath expertly do it a hundred times—but it would be a few years until I would have to perfect my own swaddling.
Even though the show wasn’t the greatest sitcom of all time (Quentin Tarantino’s review notwithstanding), I was grateful for the weekly paychecks from Love. Inc. since I was in the middle of buying my first house. My business managers were attempting to get me to stay under a certain number on the house, but of course I fell in love with a home way out of my price range that I forced them to make happen for me. In retrospect, I should have held off on buying altogether, but I had already started looking when Marc and I began dating, and it seemed silly not to go through with it simply because I had a new boyfriend who owned his own house, even taking into consideration how serious we already were. Plus, I thought I should live alone as an adult before I got married, not that Marc and I were engaged. We weren’t, but it seemed like it was heading in that direction. I mean, I had already made the decision and all of his friends were in the middle of friend wedding season—you know, those two years where seemingly every single person in a friend group gets married and every weekend is another wedding. Weddings were in the air for Marc and his crew. But for my close friends, too. Michelle had Matilda, and my best friend from high school, Kate, had been married for a year already.
After Love, Inc. was canceled, I decided I’d had enough of my breakup-trauma red hair and slowly started getting it back to blond. My birthday was coming up again, and I thought maybe Marc and Lizzy and I would all just have the party together, since his birthday is a week after mine. He was super weird about including me in their big party that they had at the Chateau Marmont together every year. At first he tried to say that it would add too many people, then he said that it wasn’t really even up to him, he’d have to ask Lizzy. And then he said, don’t you just want your own party?? My feelings were hurt, but what could I say? The joint birthday party predated me, so I didn’t really have any right to get mad about it. But I was. Heath and Michelle offered to host a party in their new house in Hollywood for me, with Heath hiring a DJ he liked and a bouncer to keep Hollywood party crashers out.
As promised, Quentin Tarantino called me in for his new movie, titled Death Proof. There were very specific instructions that actresses were to come in cutoff jean short shorts, a tank top and flip-flops. Every girl I knew going in for it rolled their eyes at the request but we all obliged, a waiting room full of scantily clad clones, looking like we were ready for a day at the beach. Quentin read all of the parts opposite me, which was a bit eccentric but obviously what he liked to do. After I did the reading, he explained to me that I was such a badass but this part wasn’t right for me. Because he had written another role with me in mind, the part of Jungle Julia, the African American heroine of the picture.
I scrunched my nose up, confused, “But. I mean, obviously, I can’t play that part because . . .”
“I KNOW! THAT’S THE PROBLEM HERE!”
“Well, is there a way we could talk about me getting this part??”
“I just don’t see that, man. You’re Jungle Julia, through and through. Although, you know, like not.”
I thanked him for giving me the opportunity to even audition for him and left, hoping that he would think of me for something else. When the Harvey Weinstein stuff started to come out and #metoo picked up steam and then of course Uma Thurman made her statement against Harvey and Quentin, I still felt like Quentin was a weirdo, certainly, and very particular, maybe even a bit creepy, but not a bad dude. Plus, I loved his movies! I was horrified by his spitting on actresses and choking them himself for shots, but I thought his response was thoughtful, and Listen! ALL FOR THE ART, RIGHT, MAN? But a few days later, I read an article on Jezebel, which had dug up his Howard Stern interview from 2003 where he defends Roman Polanski’s drugging and raping of a thirteen-year-old. I was ill—actually ill—listening to it. This was ingrained misogynistic behavior, something he believed in deeply. That a thirteen-year-old girl “wanted to have it,” as he laughed and made light of child rape. Even Howard Stern, the original shock jock, seemed shocked. My daughter is ten. I know thirteen-year-olds. I couldn’t help it. I took to Twitter, angrily, as we all do nowadays, and fired off a series of tweets condemning him and his stupid art and anyone who ever works with him. Fuck that guy. You don’t get to exist in this world anymore, dude. But then he DID issue an apology for that interview, which I guess is all he could do. And so he gets to exist for a while longer, I guess. His movie about the Manson murders is about to be filmed. With Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie and other stars. I’m sure it will be mesmerizing. Probably a hit. I’ll skip it.
• • •
A few weeks after my birthday, I was on the Pilates reformer with Candi—she was getting her certification to be an instructor and I was getting free Pilates in order to be her guinea pig—when my phone rang.
“Hi, Busy, please hold for Mark and Lorrie.”
Wait. What? I wasn’t up for any jobs. Why were they calling me?
“Hi guys! I’m not up for any jobs, why are you calling me?!”
Lorrie laughed. “Ummm, Biz, why don’t you let me tell you? Apparently John Wells is making good on his word. They want you to come do some episodes of ER.”
A few years earlier, I had auditioned a million times to play a new nurse on ER; the part had ended up being played by my friend Linda Cardellini. In fact, since she and I had the same agents, I knew that for a minute it had looked like her deal wasn’t going to work out and that it would come to me next. But obviously, they worked it out and I was fairly bummed about it, buoyed only by the amazing John Wells reaching out to say that he would find a place for me on one of his shows and that we would work together someday. I guessed, on the Pilates reformer, that day was today. I was offered the part of a new med student named
Dr. Hope Bobeck, and I would be joining on a recurring basis, since they liked to try people out to see how they were able to handle the medical jargon and action. I had watched ER with my mom when I was a kid; in fact, I distinctly remember watching the pilot with her. My mother was excited about a show that took place in Chicago and could finally replace Hill Street Blues as her favorite.
My first day on set was in the first episode of season 12. I was excited to work with Linda again and to meet John Stamos, who was joining the cast as a new regular. My very first day I had a trauma scene, in which Mekhi Phifer, Scott Grimes, Goran Visnjic, and I are trying to save someone’s life, walking down a hall with a gurney and yelling out orders at one another. It was a long tracking shot, all done on Steadicam and if one person fucks up, you have to start all over. Keep in mind this is season 12, so most of the cast had been on the show for no less than five years. We did the first take and on my line I froze.
“Fuck! Sorry!!!”
That had never happened to me before but THIS WAS ER. THE ER. Goran was really nice but also fairly intimidating. We went again. This time I got the line, but the medical consultant said I didn’t pronounce one of the words correctly, so we had to go back and do it again. They were about to call action when Goran looked at me over the gurney and said, “You get it right this time, right?”
I didn’t think he was being a dick. He was just telling me that I was either going to get it right on the next take or my days on ER were numbered.
Not only did I nail it, I remember the line to this day, “Succinylcholine as a paralytic and etomidate for sedation.”
I was living in my new house in Hollywood, a house that felt like it had been handed down from actress to actress, because it actually had been. I bought the house from Rachel Bilson, who had bought it from Rose McGowan. I loved my little house, which wasn’t so little, but felt right for me. Marc and I split our nights between our two houses. Mine was much closer to Warner Brothers, so on days I was working, we would stay there. We had started to really talk about getting married, like sooner rather than later, because what would be the point of waiting? But we were having a hard time figuring out what kind of wedding we wanted and where. We had been to a bunch of destination weddings, which were fun but didn’t really feel like us. Marc and Abby had planned to get married at a big wedding venue in downtown L.A., and before they called it off, they had done all of the typical wedding things, like engagement showers and bachelor/bachelorette parties, and he didn’t think he particularly wanted to go through all of that again. Not to mention, we had two houses full of shit already; I didn’t need another mixer.
This Will Only Hurt a Little Page 19
