by Ian Harding
The first thing we did was chop up frozen mice carcasses to feed to a couple of crows that were being treated at the center. We hadn’t had coffee yet, and already we were chopping off mouse heads. A volunteer showed us her tried-and-true method for efficiently dismembering them.
We fed the mice to the crows and then headed over to the main animal holding area. By the entrance was a massive floor-to-ceiling whiteboard. A grid was drawn on the board—each box in the grid represented a cage, and a number was written inside each of the boxes. The numbers were followed by letters: initials to denote species.
One of the boxes had WSO written after the numbers. I decided to hazard a guess.
“Is that one a western screech owl?” I said, pointing.
Ali nodded. “We got him in a few days ago. He’s still in quarantine or I’d let you see him.”
“What do the numbers mean?”
Ali smiled. “All of the animals here are numbered. It helps us resist the urge to name them.” She pushed open the door, and we stepped into the enclosure. On each side of us were pens holding injured animals. Mountain lions that had eaten rat poison, bobcats that had stepped into traps, abandoned baby skunks that were so cute it hurt to look at them.
We passed a cage with a kiddie pool inside it—there was a pygmy hippo splashing about in the water. Yvonne said they’d rescued the hippo from Beverly Hills. Some millionaire’s idea of a funny gift for his kid.
As we walked, Ali explained the volunteers’ relationship with the animals. “We’re all here because we love animals, of course, but sometimes that’s the problem. A lot of these animals are here because they got too close to humans. They weren’t properly afraid of us. People want to nurse sick animals back to health, but that can actually be really bad for them. The last thing we want is for the injured animal to imprint on us. We’re here to help them be independent again. So no names, just numbers. We try to touch them as little as possible, and our attendants are instructed not to talk to them either. We’re like ghosts.”
“Is that hard?” I asked. “What’s it like being surrounded by animals and having to actively ignore them?”
Ali’s response came quickly, almost like a mantra. She’d had to answer questions like this countless times. “Part of loving animals—truly loving them—is caring about what’s best for them. Often that means removing yourself from the equation.”
The red-tailed hawk we were going to be releasing wasn’t in the main enclosure. He’d already been transferred to a separate holding area to get him ready for his transition back to the wild. We hopped into a couple of Jeeps and drove out to the field to meet him.
A handful of volunteers were standing in the field. On a table, there was a small blue box—about two feet long and eight inches wide. Judging by the wide berth everyone was giving this blue box, it was clear that the hawk was inside.
As we pulled into the field, Yvonne turned around in the front seat to face me. “So what do you think, Ian?” she said. “Want to release it by yourself?”
I froze. I must have been smiling because Ali glanced at me in the rearview mirror then let out a deep guffaw. Yes. Yes, I wanted to release it. Holy shit, yes.
Then a thought ran through my head. This might all be an elaborate prank—and I’d been pranked before.
A couple of years ago, my costar Lucy fooled the hell out of me. She knew I was really into street art, and she convinced me that she had a connection to Banksy—the famously anonymous graffiti artist. She asked me if I wanted to meet him, and I jumped at the opportunity.
Lucy took me to a parking lot late one night to meet him. I tried to play it cool, doing my best not to let on how excited I was.
It turned out the whole thing was an episode for the show Punk’d. I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.
Sitting in the car now, out in this field on a wildlife preserve, my mind flashed back to that night in the parking lot. I turned to look at Torrey. Was Torrey pranking me right now? Would she do such a thing? With Lucy I’d totally expect it. But Torrey isn’t like that. Torrey likes classical music and nature conservatories. But could I be sure of that?
I swallowed and turned back to Yvonne. I nodded. “Yes, please.”
“Cool,” she said, and we got out of the car.
This wasn’t a prank. This was real.
Ali informed one of the attendants that I would be releasing the hawk. He came over and showed me how to handle the little blue box. Hold it at arm’s length, he said, with the door tilted away from your body. Then kneel down low, tilt the door toward the ground, and pull this switch to open it.
“The hawk will do all the rest,” he told me. “You just hold on tight.”
We went over to the table, where Ali was holding the box.
“Have fun,” she said and handed it to me.
As I walked out into the open field, the hawk started to rustle inside the box. I glanced through one of the slats on top. A single, massive pupil stared back at me.
The hawk stopped moving. It opened and closed its beak silently.
A couple of months back, the bird had been brought to the shelter after it flew into a power line. Its wing had been badly scorched. It had taken weeks just to get it to move its wing again. But now it was strong. Strong and hungry.
The hawk hadn’t been fed that day. They wanted it to be hungry when it was released so that it would immediately fly off to hunt. It was eyeing me like I was food.
I knelt in the middle of the field, holding the box out at arm’s length. I angled the door down and away from me. I turned back to look at the small crowd waiting expectantly back by the cars. Torrey gave me an enthusiastic thumbs-up. I waved, took a deep breath, and turned back to the box. I steadied myself, making sure that I had a firm grip. I grabbed the switch, pulled it, and felt the door swing open.
Nothing happened.
The hawk didn’t budge. Not even a little bit. It just sat there, at the bottom of the box. I could see the sunlight hitting his beak, illuminating its razor-sharp edges.
I looked back at the crowd of attendants. Nobody moved.
I turned back to the hawk. I tilted the box a little higher and gave it a light shake. This immediately seemed like a bad idea. Who shakes a hawk?
The bird remained where it was, refusing to move an inch.
At that point, curiosity got the best of me. Like Elmer Fudd with a jammed rifle, I lifted up the box and turned the door to face me. The red-tailed hawk and I stared at each other, his face not two feet from mine.
I blinked. The hawk didn’t.
Then it let out a bloodcurdling shriek.
I don’t know if any of you have ever heard a red-tailed hawk shriek. Actually, I take that back. You definitely have. If you’ve ever seen a movie that has a bald eagle in it, you’ve heard a red-tailed hawk. Actual eagles sound like they’re whimpering, so, in Hollywood, eagles are always dubbed over with the sound of red-tailed hawk screeches.
It’s a majestic and inspiring sound. Unless it’s inches from your face. Which this was.
The hawk pushed its feet against the box and rocketed out toward me. Its wings brushed my hair, and it flew out low over the field, flapping to try and gain altitude. I ran back to join the crowd around the table.
The hawk flew about a hundred feet then crash-landed into the brambles at the far end of the field. It stayed there, staring at us. We all stared back.
Then Ali let out a growl. She set off sprinting toward the hawk, arms waving, yelling.
Torrey leaned over and whispered into my ear: “This is always the hardest part for me. They have to scare him away. He still thinks they’re going to feed him his dinner.”
The hawk looked dazed. It stared at Ali as if confused. She picked up a clod of dirt from the ground and tossed it in the bird’s direction. As the dirt landed, the hawk spread its wings and took flight, disappearing over a stand of eucalyptus trees.
Ali slowly walked back to join us, wiping the dirt from her hands
on her khaki shorts.
“That’s so sad,” I said to Torrey. Ali heard me. She smiled and shook her head.
“It’s the only way. If we did our jobs right he won’t ever see us again. There are no warm goodbyes in this line of work.”
LIFE IN THE WINGS
Probably the least “Hollywood” part of my life as an actor is actually being on set. The press junkets and the parties can be glamorous, but when we’re shooting Pretty Little Liars, I wake up and drive to work every morning just like most people.
Sometimes work starts early. If my call time is at 6:00 A.M.—which it is if I’m in the first scene of the day—I set my alarm for 5:07. Even though I wouldn’t call myself a superstitious man, seven is my lucky number, and I believe in starting the day off right.
I’m usually the first actor to arrive on set. I grew up in a military family, and I inherited my dad’s deep, almost panicky respect for punctuality. He believes that unless you are literally caught behind enemy lines, you need to be on time.
Two seasons ago the producers installed a shower in my dressing room. Originally, I thought it was a gift, but then Lucy told me it was put in because I always smelled really bad. I like to think she was kidding, but either way, I make sure to take a shower before work. I almost always use my on-set shower instead of the one at home, because I don’t want to wake up Sophia or the dogs.
After I get cleaned up, I usually eat breakfast on set. There’s a craft services room at the back of one of the soundstages, complete with an unlimited supply of bacon. Most of the cast and crew stop by in the morning, and it’s where I usually run into people at the beginning of the day.
The person I run into most often here is Troian Bellisario, who plays Spencer on the show. Troian, like me, is compulsively early. She’s constantly moving and constantly working. She’s an actor, yes, but she also writes, produces, and directs. She even directed a recent episode of the show. It’s fortunate that she isn’t evil—otherwise she’d easily take over the world. In the meantime, she makes a great breakfast buddy.
The only time us actors avoid craft services is when we have to shoot a sex scene. On those days, you’ll find me drinking coffee and doing push-ups in my dressing room. When it’s a sex-scene day, we’ll all avoid craft services so that we look nice and svelte when the cameras start rolling. All of us, that is, except for Keegan, who walks around eating entire pizzas before he has to take off his shirt.
Around my third plate of bacon—it’d be a shame to let it all go to waste—I’ll usually get a text from Lisa Hoggett, the set PA, telling me to get my ass over to hair and makeup. I’ll grab an apple on my way out so I at least keep up the appearance of making healthy choices.
Hair and makeup is in one of several trailers set up between the sound stages. We call this area “base camp.”
On my way over, I’ll stop by the PA trailer to say good morning to Matt Buckler. Matt and I have been affectionately trading insults on a daily basis for several years. He and his wife are both lovely. (She had a guest spot in a recent episode of PLL.) Matt makes sure all the actors have their sides for the day.
“Sides” are a compact version of whichever parts of the script we’re shooting that day, and each actor gets sides for just the scenes they’re in. We have to review them carefully: there are often last-minute edits and revisions to the version of the script we were sent the week before.
Sides are handed out every morning, then collected again at the end of the day. The producers are strict about this because the episodes have to remain secret until they air on TV. Nobody wants even the smallest of plotlines leaked. At the end of each shoot day, we hand our sides over to Lisa, and she promptly destroys them. If we ever accidentally took them home with us, I am confident that Lisa would hunt us down à la Rambo: First Blood.
Once I get my sides from Matt, I’ll quickly read through them to refresh my memory and see if there are any new lines I need to memorize, then walk up the steps to the hair and makeup trailer.
Inside, the first person I visit is Cindy Miguens, who’s in charge of the hair and makeup department. Cindy sits me down, closely examines my face, asks me why I can’t take better care of my skin, then proceeds to cover my face with a hot towel before I can answer.
Cindy says the towel is good for my pores, but I can’t help but think she might just be trying to smother me. I regifted the NutriBullet she gave me for my birthday a couple years back, and she’s never let me live it down. In my defense, I gave the NutriBullet to my mom, so I still use it every time I go visit her. It’s still in the family.
Also, Cindy and I share the same birthday, September sixteenth. Apparently we were both conceived after Christmas parties.
Not long after I regifted the NutriBullet, Cindy was planning a whitewater rafting trip, so I gave her a small plastic travel potty. She now uses it as a container to grow herbs in her backyard. I regifted, she repurposed—it all evens out.
After the hot towel, Cindy shaves my stubble to whatever length it needs to be that day. It’s a little embarrassing, but I’m not allowed to shave myself. If I happened to nick my face, it could delay the shoot and cost the studio a lot of money. I’m not about to put up a fight on this rule, though: I’ve been shaving my own face for well over a decade, and I still haven’t gotten the hang of it.
After the shave, Cindy puts on makeup to hide any blemishes and make my skin look like I’ve never had a zit before. Around this time, the coffee kicks in and I (a) wake up, and (b) start sweating, which is my natural state of being. Cindy sighs and begins to powder my face so that I don’t sweat off all her hard work.
On mornings when Cindy is working on one of the other actors or actresses, I’ll go over to Rebecca Wachtel-Herrera for my makeup instead. Rebecca is extremely efficient. She has a lot of people to get through each morning, usually in quick succession, so she’s really good at getting people in and out of the seat quickly. She knows that I am really, really bad about sitting still—I constantly turn my head back and forth to take part in different conversations, and I’ll say hi to anyone who walks in—so Rebecca has perfected the art of applying makeup to a moving target.
Also, her husband, Christian, is a fellow bird lover. Once, when I was over at their house for dinner, Christian and I saw a pair of red-whiskered bulbuls fly through their backyard. Red-whiskered bulbuls normally live in Asia, but there’s an established population here in Los Angeles, which probably got its start from a handful of escaped pet birds. We sat around outside for half an hour, waiting for the birds to come back, completely forgetting about the food we’d left on the grill.
For hair, I either go to Kim Ferry or Valentino Agundez. My hair naturally forms into a tangled bird’s nest, like Jonah Hill’s in Superbad, so there’s a fair amount of taming that needs to be done before they’ll put me in front of a camera.
Kim is like a ninja with a straightening iron. I’ll be horsing around with Shay or Troian and won’t even notice Kim working. All of a sudden, she’ll say, “Done,” and I’ll look up and my hair will be perfect.
If Kim’s working on someone else, I’ll go to Valentino’s station at the far end of the trailer. Her chair is up in a raised side room—it’s like a tree house. Valentino and I could talk for hours if they’d let us. We’ll go on about everything from our dreams to race relations in America to whether or not humans will ever evolve to lose their pinky toes. It’s hard to sit still when I’m talking to her, and I often end up jumping out of the chair to demonstrate a point or act out part of a story.
Once hair and makeup are done, I head to set. We film in the soundstages around base camp, and walking onto the stage I’ll often bump into the head of electric, Eric Forand, also known as E4. I’ll say hey to E4 and also to the assistant director, who is almost always around. It varies from episode to episode, so the AD will either be Arthur Anderson, Jenn Anderson, or Laura Sylvestor. The Andersons aren’t related.
At this point, we’ll do a quick rehearsa
l of the scene we’re about to film. Depending on who the director is—almost every episode has a different director—the rehearsal might be a full run-through of the scene, or it might just be blocking to figure out where we’ll be sitting or standing in relation to the camera. Once we all feel like we’ve got a solid grasp on the scene, the actors are excused from set and they call in our stand-ins.
Tyler Maskell has been my stand-in for years. I pester him, and he plays along, sometimes feigning tears from all the abuse I give him.
The stand-ins are brought in so that the crew can adjust the lights and camera and set pieces around them. When I first started filming the show, I tried to help out. One time, the director said, “We need that lamp moved six inches to the right,” and I was standing nearby, so I reached over and moved the lamp six inches to the right. I should’ve been yelled at, but a producer was nice enough to pull me aside and explain that actors aren’t allowed to touch set pieces. It’s against union rules. If I try and help out, I could get somebody fired. In college I worked crew on shows all the time, and the “don’t help anyone” rule took some serious getting used to.
After the stand-ins are brought in, I’ll often swing by Video Village to chat with the writers. Video Village is a collection of chairs and monitors set up directly next to wherever we happen to be shooting. Writers and producers gather there so they can watch the scenes as they’re being filmed without bumping into set pieces or peering over the director’s shoulder.
The writers on PLL are fantastic. They’ve juggled dozens of storylines over seven seasons. On top of that, they always make themselves available to us, and are willing to answer any questions we might have about the scenes we’re shooting that day. There’s rarely any improvising on the show, but the writers are open to word or line changes if we’ve got a solid argument for them.
When lighting and sound are ready to roll, Lucy and I head to stage and find our marks. I say Lucy because, as her on-screen love interest, most of my scenes are with her. Sometimes we’ll rehearse again with lighting and sound in place, but we’ll usually film the rehearsal. We try to be as efficient as possible with our scenes because we know everyone has families or other things to get to. We’ve learned that being overly precious with a scene doesn’t help the performance—it just takes up time people could be spending with their kids.
