The extra series 1, p.3
The Extra Series, #1, page 3
“You must surrender to it, stalk it, take—” he stops, turning his icy blue glare to me. “Who are you?”
I am about to say that I’m just a student who showed up really, really late to my Italian Renaissance class and duck out, but Anna-Marie senses my impending flight and grips my arm tightly. “This is my roommate Gabriella, Mr. Dryden. She’s been interested in acting for some time, and I told her you allow one free class. To . . . see if she’s a good fit.”
Despite that small flicker of hope from earlier, I can already tell I am not a good fit and so apparently can Mr. Dryden. He sniffs loudly. Then, as if I don’t exist anymore, he resumes his speech about the art. I only barely pay attention, wishing they had some donuts to go along with the coffee. Of course, this being a class for wannabe stars, I would be far more likely to find a tray full of celery and organic quinoa.
While Mr. Dryden rambles on with a shocking number of sexual metaphors for what one should do to the art, my thoughts make their way back to Will, who is here in a classroom very similar to this one, possibly teaching his students about how to make love to writing.
I fail to hold in a giggle at the thought, though I’m pretty sure Will could never be that pretentious, and I wince as Anna-Marie pinches me on the arm. Peter Dryden clears his throat, and for one panicked moment, I think he’s directing it at me specifically. But no, his eyes sweep the room. “We need one more volunteer for this first exercise.”
Anna-Marie starts to pinch me again, but I bat her hand away. I don’t need to be pinched into action. I’m perfectly capable of actively screwing this up all on my own.
Come on, Gabby, I coax myself, you’re here now. There’s no harm in trying. At least you won’t start anything on fire.
I suck in a breath and raise my hand. Peter motions me and four others—including Anna-Marie, who’d apparently volunteered when I’d been daydreaming about Will—to stand by the chalkboard. His expression is already weary, even though the class has just started.
The scene we are supposed to improv starts in a bank. I’ve done all my banking online for years, and so I’m immediately uncertain what to do as the customer I’m assigned to be. Do I just stand in line and look at my phone? Pretend to fill out a deposit statement?
Fortunately, my confusion about whether I should just approach Anna-Marie, who is the bank teller in this scenario, is interrupted. One of the other “customers”—a short red-haired man with more freckles than pores—pretends to pull a gun from his waistband and waves it around wildly, shouting, “Everybody down! This is a robbery!”
Well, that makes my decision easy. I drop to the ground and crawl under the nearest desk, putting my hands over my head. I assume the others are doing the same, but I am staring at the floor like a good little hostage.
“No, no,” barks Peter, and when I glance up I see this time it is directed at me, his forehead creasing as much in frustration as the Botox-stretched skin will allow. “You need to add something to the scene, not suck the very life from it!”
My cheeks flush, and Anna-Marie looks to be already regretting forcing me into this. Isn’t acting about portraying things realistically? So why on earth, if I were caught in a bank robbery by a gun-toting fanatical actor hopeful, wouldn’t I just do what he says and slide my phone over to him and sit silently? Every movie I’ve ever seen has informed me that trying to be a hero in this kind of situation ends badly for anyone who isn’t Liam Neeson. Hell, Peter should know this sort of thing from five seasons of Cuffs.
The other three actors are still standing too, each looking like they’re holding guns as well. Was I the only real customer in this bank? Or was I supposed to be a robber, too?
Anna-Marie saves the scene—or at least turns the attention away from me—by cleverly turning her banker character into some unholy mix of an ex-CIA operative and Jessica Rabbit, distracting the robbers with a sexy saunter and a few slick kickboxing moves from her Tae-Bo DVDs.
Just as she prepares to battle the final robber, he turns the scene into a musical, and Anna-Marie plays gamely along, crooning back at him and copying his dance steps in nearly perfect precision. The other robbers climb back to their feet and do the same, and suddenly I’m huddled under a desk with my hands over my head while the rest of the troupe appears to be auditioning for High School Musical 5: Community College Edition.
“Is this still a robbery?” I can’t help but ask, wondering if this is some kind of test. “Should I be pretending to call 911?”
The musical stutters off at my words, and everyone stares at me. Anna-Marie shakes her head, but I can see she’s trying to hide a smile.
“Cut,” Peter Dryden says.
I last through two more torturous exercises in what appears closer to utter insanity than anything resembling acting, and then slip out to my car to wait out the rest of the class. I unwisely haven’t brought anything to read and my phone battery is practically dead, so I thumb through the community education catalog I cut myself on earlier.
Finances. Musical instruments. Photography. Stress Reduction. Foreign Language. Much like when I flipped through my college course book every semester for three years, nothing really speaks to me. I wonder, not for the first time, if I am fully without a talent or passion for anything other than locating amazing desserts at dive restaurants. I wonder where I should start applying for my next short-term job.
The class ends a half hour later, and Anna-Marie comes out with her acting friends, laughing and giving several of them hugs. She wasn’t wrong about the cute guys, though I think most of them were far more into each other. She climbs into the car.
“Sorry,” she says, as I pull out of the parking lot. “He’s usually not that bad.”
“No big. It’s not every day I get to be called an ‘atrocious waste of time’ by a second-rate TV cop.”
She winces, and I feel bad. I know she was just trying to give me some practice before I have to pretend to be held up by hot doctors having nervous breakdowns in hospital cafeterias in front of actual rolling cameras.
“Honestly, Anna, I’m fine,” I say, tossing the booklet into the backseat. “I’m just better informed now of what songs to sing should I be caught in a bank robbery.”
She chuckles, and we sit in silence for a moment. I debate telling her about Will, but there’s nothing to tell, really. A cute guy who fired me two years ago actually remembers who I am and didn’t actively avoid saying hi to me. And he has a single, perfect dimple when he smiles.
Maybe it’s worth at least a mention.
My phone buzzes from the cup holder, and Anna-Marie picks it up. “It’s a text from your brother.”
Thoughts of Will flutter away and I sigh. “What does he have to say?”
“Mom says you’re avoiding her again. You should call her.”
“Et tu, Brute?” I murmur as I switch lanes. Felix usually takes my side of things, or at the very least, stays as far from our family’s usual drama as he can. He moved to the other side of the country, and I’m not convinced his music scholarship was the only reason why.
In my peripheral vision, I see Anna-Marie chew her lip pensively and I worry I’m in trouble. “Don’t tell me you want me to call my mom, too.”
She shakes her head. “You know, Gabby, you weren’t really that bad tonight.”
Before I can respond, I slam my brakes and honk at a red Ferrari that blows a red light and nearly t-bones us. We both jerk forward and back again to the seats. My heart feels like it’s jumped up to my eyebrows, while my stomach has settled somewhere near my ankles. A brief flash of a middle finger from the Ferrari driver’s window, and the car is off weaving at a breakneck speed down a side street. I wonder which celebrity I’ll see featured in a mug shot on TMZ in the morning.
We start driving again, my breathing stabilizing. Anna-Marie hardly seems fazed by our near brush with death. She only really freaks out at this kind of thing when she’s the one driving. For all the things Anna-Marie is good at, driving is not one of them. She’s been especially terrified of driving in LA ever since the first month she arrived and was hit by one of those Tours of the Stars Homes buses while making a u-turn.
We have a good system worked out: she pays gas and way more than her fair share of rent, and I drive her to work or wherever else she needs, as long as I’m available. I consider this both a financial win and a public service to the good people of Los Angeles.
“I wasn’t that bad?” I say. “You were in the class, right?”
“Okay, so improv isn’t your thing. But you played the scenes themselves in a realistic way. When you placed your coffee order with the barista who had Tourette’s Syndrome, you were really convincing.”
“I think Mr. Dryden called it ‘masterful.’ Oh wait, he followed that with ‘lack of creativity.’”
Anna-Marie nods. “Okay, yeah, maybe for the improv exercise. But for actually ordering a cup of coffee—that’s what extras do. You’d be great at that. I know it.”
I can’t help but think that she’s probably right. We drive past Fong’s All-American and I wish I could settle in for another round of the Breakup Tub. But I live in the land of salads and juice cleanses, and while I don’t necessarily buy into all that, I’m health conscious enough to save my total nutritional meltdowns for special occasions.
And if my foray into acting is any indication, I’m sure I’ll be celebrating one of those again soon.
I let out a sigh as we’re walking up the stairs to our apartment. “Okay, Anna-Marie,” I say. “You can stop the hard sell. I’ll do it. I’ll apply to be an extra.”
She lets out a little squeal and hugs me so hard I nearly fall down a step. Anna-Marie doesn’t do things halfway, even enthusiasm. “It’s going to be So. Much. Fun,” she says, emphasizing each word as if I’m either hard of hearing or she’s trying to brainwash me into believing it.
And maybe the brainwashing works. Because when I repeat the words “So. Much. Fun” back to her in an exaggerated Valley-girl accent to make her laugh—which works, as me doing that accent always does—I can’t help but think maybe it really will be.
Four
I’ve been dropping Anna-Marie off at work on Lot C of Sudser Lane (the nickname for the studio where four of the major daytime soaps are filmed) for nearly two weeks now. Today, however, I’m actually parking and walking in with her on the way to my own job, which is an admittedly surreal experience.
She smiles and waves at various people—mostly crew members, though we spot a few of her co-stars. She’s been telling me stories about these people for weeks, but even an LA-born-and-raised cynic like me feels a bit star-struck when I spot the legendary Bridget Messler in the flesh, chatting with a slender blond woman wearing a crew member baseball cap. Bridget’s been on Passion Medical since the show started, I’m pretty sure. I have a few memories of seeing her on it when I stayed home sick from school as a kid—or at least walking in on my mom watching the show. She always quickly blamed our housekeeper for leaving it on, even though I’m pretty sure sixty-five-year-old Ingrid had about as much an idea how to work our complicated TV setup as she did NASA flight controls.
Back then, Bridget was part of this soap super-couple that everyone loved—she plays Sondra and the guy is . . . Sam? Simon? The name escapes me. I realize I don’t remember seeing him the last few times I’ve watched the show with Anna-Marie.
I suppose I’ll have a chance to find out where he’s gone (perhaps into witness protection, waiting to reappear as an evil twin?), now that I’m working on the same set as these people. I still can’t believe I passed the initial—and, as it turns out, only—test for becoming an extra at Passion Medical, which consisted of a twenty-minute-long Skype conversation with a bored-looking bottom-tier casting assistant. I’m guessing Anna-Marie’s recommendation spared me an actual screen test of some sort, but maybe not. Extras are fairly expendable, after all. If one you hire sucks, you can probably poke your head into the commissary Starbucks and find twenty more to replace her.
I hope to at least collect one day’s worth of wages before this happens.
Anna-Marie gives me a quick tour of all the locations for the Passion Medical’s fictional town of Hartsburg, Oregon. We walk through three-walled sets of various homes (which in typical soap opera fashion are comprised of mostly living rooms and, of course, bedrooms), the local coffee shop where gossip is slung and faces are slapped over Hartsburg’s finest brew, and of course, Passion Medical itself. She practically bursts with pride as she points out the hospital room where she shot her first scene and where within days her character Helena both deflowered the teenage son of Passion Medical’s town villain and framed him for murder. She’s been busy in Hartsburg.
Though I’ve never been a regular fan of the show like Anna-Marie, I admit that it is pretty cool stepping onto these sets in real life after having seen them on TV. I pick up a stethoscope from a cart and wonder for a brief moment if it’s the same one Dr. Katarina Gunn recently used to playfully examine Hot Doctor when he complained of heart palpitations being around her. Right before they—
“I asked for more instruments for this cart, but I don’t see any,” a female voice with a crisp British accent says from behind me, causing me to jump and drop the stethoscope with a clatter onto a metal tray. I whirl around, hoping my cheeks aren’t as red as they feel. Unfortunately, my embarrassed flushes never resemble an attractive glow as much as a sudden patchy rash.
The woman standing behind me raises an eyebrow. She’s the tall blonde I saw speaking with Bridget Messler earlier. With her high cheekbones and delicately pretty features, I might have mistaken her for one of the show’s stars if she wasn’t wearing the black baseball cap labeled “crew” in big block letters under the Passion Medical insignia.
“You’re with props, right?” she asks, as I look around for Anna-Marie, who has abandoned me for the craft services table to chat up the actor whose character she deflowered in this very hospital bed.
“Uh, no, sorry. I’m a new extra.”
Her lips purse in brief irritation, and she swears under her breath, but then she shakes her head. “No, I’m sorry. I think props is trying to repay me for making them redo Ryan Lansing’s bedroom set four times. He’s supposed to be a doctor, not a bloody bordello owner.” She flashes a quick smile, which I’m sure is meant to be reassuring, but mostly just makes me feel uneasy. “But that’s not your fault, is it? I’m Sarah Paltrow, no relation to Gwyneth, though I appreciate when people think it.”
She sticks out her hand and I shake it. “Gabriella Mays.”
“Well, Gabriella, I’m the director’s right-hand woman. Good luck with the new gig.”
“Thanks,” I say, starting to warm to her a bit.
“A word of advice to sticking around that I tell all the extras. Keep your hands off the props. And the actors.” She stalks off without another word, her shiny blond ponytail bobbing down her back with each step.
“Yikes,” Anna-Marie says after Sarah storms past her, yelling for someone named Mark. “What did you say to her?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Oh, well, don’t sweat it. She’s not called The BB for nothing.”
“The BB?”
“British Bitch. Here, have a cronut. I’ve only ever had a bite of one, but it’s amazing.”
I taste the proffered pastry, and while it’s no Breakup Tub, it’s pretty good.
A voice over the intercom starts calling off names needed for the first scene to be shot, and while Anna-Marie’s is not among them, she practically dances with giddiness. “Time for makeup and wardrobe! And we’ve got to find the wrangler.”
“The wrangler?” I didn’t realize the show featured cowboys. Then again, anything is possible in soap opera land.
“The extras wrangler. He’ll tell you what scene you’re in, get you set up.”
I’m not sure how much I love needing a “wrangler” and the comparisons to being cattle that it brings, but I am surprisingly eager to get started on my new job. The lure of TV stardom is strong, even for one who has resisted it as long as I.
Anna-Marie shows me the makeup and wardrobe areas, and seeing all the racks of gorgeous clothing—one marked specially with her name—I can understand her love for this particular room. Who doesn’t love what essentially amounts to free high-end shopping on a daily basis? Not to mention having a professional do one’s hair and makeup. I find myself hoping that extras get their turn in one of those chairs as well.
Just before she disappears to become more gorgeous than she naturally is (oh, the unfairness of it all), we find the extras wrangler. His name is Clint, and he actually does look like a cowboy who went through a mid-life crisis and fled the ranch for a lifestyle exactly opposite. He is big and burly, and instead of the ubiquitous crew member black baseball cap, he wears a wide-brimmed Stetson, black and crisp as if it’d just been pulled out of a hat box. His neatly trimmed brown mustache comes down past his mouth as if it means to become a goatee but can’t cross the gap of chin in between. I expect a guy like Clint to be carrying a beer and speaking with a Texas drawl, but instead he’s drinking a VitaminWater and speaks like he’s from somewhere in the upper Midwest, nasally and fast.
“Gabriella Mays, huh?” He checks his clipboard and makes a mark. “You’re in group A today, the hospital team. I’m sure your friend told you about the extras massacre from last week? We lost another yesterday because he kept looking straight at the camera. Stick to your assigned task, don’t try to be a star, and you’ll do great. Maybe even get a line someday.” He says this with enough significance that I assume this is the carrot ever dangled tantalizingly before extras—be a good little extra, chat silently and inanely in the background, don’t draw attention to yourself and a chance at actual stardom may someday be yours!
