Mark was with some mutual friends and we were chatting, and with a stomach full of cheap white wine the color of a UTI I asked him the dreaded question you must ask when in a foyer: “So did you like it?”
To which he responded, “Not really.”
Right. Good. Yep, I like honesty, and Mark was the Godfather of honesty.
I also become a glutton for punishment in these hellish foyers, trying to prove that I’m down to earth and really open to suggestions and criticism (which no actor wants ever; I don’t care how hard we try to convince you that we want your honest feedback, DON’T FUCKING DO IT, it’s a trap, you will be bitched about in dressing rooms and shared green rooms for the rest of time).
Me: So not even the lyrics that we changed from the Backstreet Boys song “As Long as You Love Me” to “As Long as You Fuck Me”?
Mark: No. Not really.
(Silence. Where the hell are those spring rolls?)
Mark: You were awesome.
Me: Pardon?
Mark: The show was really bad, but you were great. You’re really funny and have great comic timing.
Me: Shut up!
Mark: What?
Me: I’m not great with compliments.
Mark: I can tell.
And that was that. We spent time with each other at work after that and became best friends for life.
I loved working with him. He challenged me and scared me, he put me strongly in my comfort zone and then would fuck with me, and it was the best. He taught me to leave pages of my script all around set and attach them to the set and props (e.g., medical charts, underneath beds), and because we worked on a medical drama and the scripts were so full of medical-speak, I learned to just read the lines from the secret stash of scripts or disguise it as reading someone’s medical history.
He would come over to my place in Balmain in the middle of the night with a dodgy movie camera in his cross-body bag and a shit-eating grin on his face, wanting to shoot something, anything, and I couldn’t resist. We would write and shoot stuff all night, and it was awesome. As we wrote we would laugh at each other and couldn’t get enough of it. We didn’t need an audience; we just loved making each other laugh.
He is the main person in my life who made me realize that not only was I funny, but I also had an understanding of comedy that could take me really far. He gave me space as a comedian. He thought I was great, and he will never know how great I really thought he was.
In TV Land there is a lot of waiting around; I’m pretty sure War and Peace was written in between scenes on the set of The Golden Girls.
The downtime—the time when people would go over their lines, go to the bathroom, carry on affairs in dressing rooms—was when Mark and I would get busy. We would play around with ideas to prepare for him coming over to my house and filming that night. I doubted myself a lot, and it would annoy him.
Me: I don’t really know if that’s funny.
Mark: You’re being boring.
Me: What do you mean?
Mark: I don’t know why you do this. It’s really boring.
Me: What?
Mark: Doubting yourself. You’re really funny and know exactly what you’re doing.
Me: Thanks.
Mark: So can you just stop it? It’s really fucking annoying.
Mark changed everything for me. He was my best friend, and him not being around anymore is a big bag of not-so-funny comedy dicks. I loved him so much as an actor and a fully qualified dickhead. I would just be in awe of his love and aggressive support of me.
When Mark got sick it broke me. I saw his dark thoughts come in and surround him and make him sicker and sicker, but I didn’t focus too much on it because he said he was fine, so he was fine.
Api had to move out of our Balmain palace to take care of his daughters full-time, so I had a spare room, and Mark asked if he could move in. I said no. I worried that it would have been too full-on and I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. I said I had someone else moving in, which was a big fat lie.
Truth is, I wish I’d been honest with him. If I’d told him I was worried about living with him, he would have been fine with it, because he loved me. I mean, he would have yelled at me first and called me an idiot, but he would have been fine. He understood himself and his impact on others more than anyone, and I wish more than anything I hadn’t lied to him six weeks before he killed himself. I should have been a better friend to him. It wouldn’t have saved him; he just would have known how much I loved him when he died.
Mark had the fragility and wit of Jim Carrey. Which makes my heart sing. And I hold on to this when I unintentionally stumble on The Big Bang Theory in a stoner’s haze and think comedy is dead.
The One about Thomas
I fell in love with my gay best friend in a way that one would see only in a Shakespearean play or on Will and Grace (the old episodes—the reboot is too predictable).
I had seen him on a documentary about what it’s like to study acting at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). A film crew would follow him and three other first-year acting students around, asking them about their “process.” All the actors featured had something unique: one was loud, one was pretty but annoying, and Thomas was an amazing character actor who happened to be born without a left hand. So in classic drama school style they completely exploited him and filmed him as he went into prosthetic hand appointments that were organized and paid for by the drama school—so they happily informed the viewer.
We met at a call center: an obvious place to set a love story. The first time I saw him I yelled across the room, “I know you!” He was shocked and startled and scared that he was in trouble. Traits that over our subsequent fifteen-year friendship I have realized are his go-to emotional states.
We hit it off straightaway. I was overbearing and charming as hell, which is what I do when I meet someone I like and want to show them that I’m cool and they can be themselves around me, when really I’m dying inside, wishing I’d stayed at home and cried myself to sleep.
He was funny, kind, bitchy, smart, talented, and insecure: everything I was looking for in a gay husband. Only I didn’t know he was gay! I thought I had finally met the bestest man ever and we were going to have babies together, or just adopt dogs; either situation I was happy with so long as it was with him.
I was so sad when I heard he was gay that I thought bitching about him to a mutual friend was the obvious thing to do.
Me: Um, do you know that Thomas is gay?
Friend: Are you serious?
Me: Yep.
Friend: Wow!
Me: I know, I couldn’t believe it either. I was sure he was flirting with me.
Friend: Oh my God!
Me: It’s kind of a shock, right?
Friend: Um, no! I can’t believe you didn’t know. He is so gay.
Me: What?!
Friend: Not only is Thomas gay, but he has been voted the gayest man in the world by all the gays.
Me: Fuck.
After getting over the heartbreak that he would never fully choose me in the way I wanted him to, I got so excited for our future together: Thomas and Celeste, the gay and the former child dancer! I fell deeply in love with him in a much more practical way, and we’ve been family ever since. We have written bad sitcoms together, he’s the godfather to my children, he’s in my favorites call list, above my manager but below my husband (of course).
In 2007, Thomas and I decided to travel around America together for a month, and we still talk about every element of the trip to this day. I was excited for America to meet us as a duo. It was one of the greatest and most traumatic experiences of my life.
We neglected to discuss our hopes and dreams for the overpriced trip, which started with us arguing about who got the aisle seat on the 6,738-hour flight over. And our first day in the States was highlighted by Thomas checking in to our accommodation, kissing me on the cheek, and heading to his first midday orgy.
One night in Ne
w York we went to an excellent gay club, where no one looked like they “should,” everyone used whatever toilet they wanted, and Thomas told me after enjoying fourteen free-pour vodkas that if he weren’t gay he would marry me (salsa dancing plus heartbreak emoji).6
We saw the Rockettes do all the jazz steps in the world. Thomas is a musical theater FREAK, so he was determined to see every goddamned show that had ever been mounted, remounted, made into a movie, recast, then remounted again while we were in New York. I was more about walking along Fifth Avenue pointing at all the tiny dogs and lollypop ladies with big hair.
On Christmas Eve, we went to a club with musicals playing on the big screen. It was a Monday, and they named it “Musical Mondays.” (See what they did there?) We sang all the show tunes in the world, Thomas flirted, and I was the BEST wingwoman ever. Every time things started heating up, I would take myself to the bar and buy drinks, only to return to Thomas standing alone asking me where the hell I had gone. After a solid four hours of singing out of key, I wanted to go home with my best friend Thomas, looking at Christmas lights on the way and just generally making festive memories. Instead, Thomas walked me out the front, got my jacket on the way, called a cab, put me in it, and waltzed back into the club ready to open up shop.
We had planned the trip so that we were in New York for Christmas and got the fuck out of there on New Year’s Eve to bring in the New Year in Vegas. Thomas decided I would organize and pay for Christmas activities and he would organize and pay for NYE debauchery.
So I booked a restaurant in NYC after seeing it on an episode of Sex and the City (hello, child of consumerism!). We went with two other friends who were in New York at the time: Mark and Kate.
SIDEBAR: As you already know, Mark was one of my closest friends and greatest supporters. He made me laugh and challenged me every day we spent together up until his death in 2008.
Kate Mulvany is by far the most gracious, kind, and inspiring person in my life. If I’m doing a show and I know she’s in the audience, I look forward to her after-show text (which she ALWAYS sends) nearly as much as I look forward to my postshow wine. She is one of the greatest playwrights the world has seen, and I thank Mark every day that he brought her into my life.
Now, I love Mark and Kate a whole bunch, but nothing accelerates a friendship like seeing your mates on the other side of the world while it’s bloody cold, the Macy’s Christmas windows are in full flight, and you’re about five beers deep.
All four of us lost our minds when we met up on the corner of Let’s Get Drunk in NYC Avenue and West FUCK YEAH! Street. We jumped and screamed and couldn’t get to the Christmas dinner I had organized quick enough.
Charlotte (me), Samantha (Thomas), Miranda (Mark), and Carrie (Kate) all made our way uptown to the super-chic, super-fabulous SATC restaurant ready to make some serious memories. Turns out you can’t believe everything you see on TV! I know, right—WHAT?! The food was overpriced and undercooked and could have fit in the palm of Trump’s tiny little stupid hand.7
The four of us sat and pretended to eat for the assigned twenty-three minutes we were allowed to be there, drank, pushed our full servings of crumbs around our expensive plates, drank, then left. We went to a local diner and ate burgers and fries until 3:00 a.m., when we decided to go on a horse-and-carriage ride around Central Park, where Mulvany thought she had found her long-lost Irish uncle, Thomas and I continued to argue, and Mark filmed it. All. Of. It.
Then Thomas and I left Mark and Kate in New York and headed to Vegas for New Year’s Eve, and it was Thomas’s turn to underfeed us for a hearty fee. Only he totally stepped up: he had arranged for us to go to TAO Nightclub for a party that was being hosted by the one and only Mariah “Don’t Light Me from Above” Carey. It was free drinks and sushi for the first two hours; then we had to pay after that.
So in classic Thomas fashion, we got there as soon as the doors opened at 6:00 p.m. and decided that he would stand in the drinks line and I would stand in the sushi line (he also loves a plan), and we drank and drank and drank and ate and drank for the first two hours like our lives depended on it.
By the time Mariah came out at 11:59:55 p.m., I couldn’t feel my knees, and Thomas was so excited that he started crying tears of vodka. Mariah was on a platform above the crowd (obviously), pretending to sing something, and everyone had their hands up screaming her name—well, everyone except Thomas, as his 453,920 drinks had kicked in and he was the only person facing the back wall wondering what all the noise was and screaming “WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE?!”
Our American trip came at a time when we wanted different things. Thomas was always wanting to be out meeting with the boys, while I wanted to skip around the city hand in hand singing “New York, New York.” This wasn’t a recipe for the best time. But there is no one else in the world I could travel with, fight with, and still want to share a platonic bed with.
Thomas is my most bestest friend. I do have to share him with other ladies as well, and that’s fine, but he’s mine. Whenever I am in the city for work I stay with him. He calls me wife (along with his other ladies), and we share a bed when I’m there. He is one of the greatest actors and always makes me want to be better and braver in my work.
I have vowed to love him forever and never go overseas with him ever again.
That was, until we got drunk and booked our next trip.
We are about to embark on a three-month tour around America. Be sure to buy Thomas’s follow-up book, She’s Not that Funny in Real Life, to see if we survived.
6 Dear America, your current president is an arse-hankie and your guncontrol laws (or lack thereof ) are bullshit, but well done on the free pours. They really are one of the only things that keep us coming back—well, that and Erika Jayne.
7 Sorry for saying the T word.
The One about My Love for the LGBTQI Community
Dear gays,
I’m sorry, I’m really sorry that you are treated the way you are. It’s a bag of dicks, and not in the good way you and I wish it was.
Australia recently had a $122 million plebiscite to determine whether you should have the right to marry. I can confirm three things: I have no idea of the definition of a “plebiscite,” I don’t even know how much $122 million is, and this is all a big sack of shit. For some reason our dumb and embarrassing government thinks that us straighty-180s should be able to vote on what rights you excellent gay folk are allowed to have.
For the record, I voted a resounding YES. A big, fat “fuck yes,” and I’m proud that most people that I surround myself with—aside from the odd homophobic second-removed cousin from my husband’s side of the family proclaiming “it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”; after a few wines and many attempts from my husband to keep me away from him I yelled, “It can be Eve and fucking Maude if it wants to be!” (not my finest hour)—did the same. We are all loud and proud and gay on your behalf.
I have always felt so loved and supported by the LGBTQI community; you guys and gals allowed me to be loud and confronting and all the while helped me with my posture and eyeliner. From being the love interest of a number of lesbians (a career highlight, if I’m going to be honest) to sharing a bed and cuddle with my gay boys because they got me more than anyone else, I never felt like I needed to be something else when around you.
I voted Yes! YES! because equality, YES! because love, and YES! because YASS! I bought equality stickers to put on my car and computer, and I called everyone I knew to make sure they would do the same, and I’ve been watching Brokeback Mountain and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on a loop in support.
There were a lot of campaigns supporting the no vote (and there still are, even though they lost!), and for an unwarranted reason I took much offense to these bullshit campaigns. There were ads on TV featuring “concerned mothers” with bad hair and what looked like a prickly stick up their arse saying that if “we” allowed gay couples to marry, then there would be more same-sex role-playing in schools. I wish!
I would LOVE my boys to be taught about equal rights as opposed to the bigoted bullshit that gets shoved down kids’ throats.
There were skywriters simply writing the words “Vote No” over Sydney. This was done by the same company that wrote “Trump” in skywriting during the pro-women marches,8 so it just seemed like a rich dickhead who wasn’t getting enough attention at home wanting to cause some harm with his plane.
I’m sorry for this. You deserve a lot more, especially as you have given so many of us weird, dramatic straight kids such confidence and support and valuable advice on what a nip and tuck can really achieve over the years.
I love you. I’m with you.
C x
8 Sorry.
The One with #hothusband
I have had only three serious boyfriends in my life, and I married one of them. I’m one of those annoying people who knew I was going to marry my husband as soon as I met him.
#sorrynotsorry.
My first boyfriend was when I was in Year 7, and he was excellent. We were so into each other, we were the It Couple of the year (well, that’s what I tell my husband if we have a fight and I’m trying to make him jealous; I’m pretty sure no one else in the school even knew we were together). He was so passionate for a thirteen-year-old. He would sing all the lyrics of Boyz II Men “I Swear” and bought me the single “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” He even wrote my sister a letter about how lucky she was to be related to me. He’s only human. We planned our wedding: we would have all our family sitting on one side of the aisle and all our friends sitting on the other side, and as soon as the clock struck midnight, we would ditch the family and hit the clubs with our mates, because we were crazy yet considerate.
Challenge Accepted! Page 9
