Emma hearts LA (10 page)

We drive along the Pacific Coast Highway back to Santa Monica and then up towards the Hollywood Hills to see some celebrity homes. The guide talks all the time and slows down outside huge, impressive houses, but most of the time all we can see is the gate and a bit of the roof. It’s interesting, though, just seeing how the other half lives. The houses are much closer together than I would have expected. I don’t suppose Leonardo DiCaprio waves to JLo as he picks up his paper at the gate, but he probably could if he wanted to.

Opposite one house there’s a crowd of paparazzi, some of them leaning against a wall and some sitting on the ground, looking bored.

‘Whose house is that?’ the Australian woman asks the driver.

‘Oh, that’s a new star,’ he says. ‘Young and very famous.’

We all wait for him to tell us the star’s name, but I’m not sure he really knows. ‘Like Robert Pattinson from the
Twilight
films?’ he says.

‘Robert Pattinson?!’ Bex shrieks. She had a poster of him on her wall in the old house.

‘No,’ the driver says. ‘Like him, but not him. He’s in a TV show and he rides a motorbike in space—’

‘
Alex Hall?
’ the Australian girl yells, almost leaping out of her seat. ‘I love him!’

‘Yes! That’s him!’ the driver says, looking back over his shoulder and grinning.

I swivel round in my seat to try to get a good look at Alex Hall’s house, but I can only see the roof and a bit of an arched window. Not bad, though, considering he’s not that much older than me. I wonder what he’s really like. He seemed nice enough in Emily’s office, but we should get a better idea when we go to the studio. I just hope he’s nice to Bex.

A couple of minutes later, the driver announces that we’re passing UCLA.

‘Is that where Mum is?’ Bex asks us.

Oscar nods.

Bex and I both crane our heads to look out over the campus. All I can see is trees and some terracotta-coloured buildings. The driver is talking about how many students attend and the size of the campus. It’s big, basically.

‘Have you been there?’ Bex asks Oscar.

He nods. ‘It’s pretty cool. We should definitely get them to take us up there one day, have a look around. They have some events on sometimes too. You know, presentations and stuff.’

Bex is still looking over at the university when the driver starts yelling that there’s a celebrity in the car next to us. We try to peer through the darkened windows, but can’t tell who it is.

‘Is it Taylor Lautner?’ Bex says.

‘Yes!’ the driver yells. ‘From
Twilight
!’

‘I don’t think it is,’ Oscar says, and I’m not sure it is either, but the driver and Bex seem pretty convinced so we don’t argue.

The next stop is Grauman’s Theatre and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Bex is beside herself, getting us to take photos of her posing with her hands in the imprints of various stars. She gets a bit tearful at the Marilyn Monroe plaque and then just stares in awe at the Meryl Streep one. Bex adores Meryl Streep, mainly since
Mamma Mia
, but she’s watched a lot of her older movies on DVD and once said she’d love a career like hers. She’s ambitious, my sister, I’ll say that for her.

Oscar makes us laugh by putting his hand inside Arnold Schwarzenegger’s gigantic prints – Oscar’s hands are about half the size, as are his feet. My hands are the same size as Emma Watson’s. Oscar takes a photo of me posing next to Cary Grant’s plaque and I text it to Jessie. She and her mum love an old film of his called
An Affair to Remember
, which is about Cary Grant’s character arranging to meet a woman at the top of the Empire State Building, but she doesn’t turn up because she gets hit by a taxi. It’s supposed to be romantic, apparently.

Bex tells me she’s sending her Meryl Streep photo to Dad and I scroll through my phone and find his number. Even when Jessie and her mum weren’t getting on, they always watched old films together, so they had that to talk about. I wish I could text Dad something casual as if he never left, as if everything was fine, but I just can’t. Not yet. I lock the keyboard and put my phone back in my pocket.

We walk down Hollywood Boulevard, looking at the stars on the pavement. I knew about the Walk of Fame, but I’m surprised at just how many stars there are; there’s one every other step. Bex hops from one to another like the opposite of not stepping on the pavement cracks. When we ask her what she’s doing, she says it’s good luck. I don’t know if she’s read that or just made it up. The stars are pretty cool, I must admit, but it’s kind of weird to see people just walking down the pavement as if there’s nothing unusual. Is it really such a great honour to have your name on the ground for people to walk over? I’m not so sure.

All along the road, people are dressed up as various characters and posing for photos for money. They’re all rubbish though. There’s a tiny guy dressed as Spider-Man, but his costume’s badly fitted and frayed. I’ve seen better Spider-Men at kids’ parties. There’s a woman who I know, by the green dress and the toy frog, is supposed to be the princess from
The Princess and the Frog
, but she’s about twenty years too old and she looks really pissed off. We dodge a rather chubby Captain Jack Sparrow and an equally unconvincing Marilyn Monroe and nip into the Kodak Center to get away from the pavement crowds.

‘What’s this place?’ Bex says, turning in a circle and looking up at the ceiling lights.

‘It’s just a shopping centre with a cinema,’ Oscar says, ‘but it’s pretty cool. I thought we could get a coffee or something.’

We follow Oscar through to an open courtyard which has multi-coloured fountains in the centre, plaster elephants on plinths, twinkly lights everywhere and a massive
X Factor
billboard featuring Simon Cowell.

‘One day that’ll be me,’ Bex says, staring up at the billboard.

‘What? Too-white teeth and trousers up to your chin?’ I ask.

She flaps her hand at me. ‘No. My name in lights.’

Cowell’s name’s not actually in lights – it’s just a billboard – but I don’t bother to correct her. Who knows, she could be right.

Jordan, Alex’s PA, meets us at the studio gate and gives us visitor passes.

Bex is so overexcited I think she’s lost the power of speech, but her facial expression could be described as ‘ecstatic’ and has been that way since she spotted the Warner Brothers water tower from a couple of wide leafy streets away.

‘I’m just going to walk you over to the soundstage,’ Jordan tells us. He’s tall and skinny with small, round-rimmed glasses and a very preppy outfit – chinos and a white shirt. ‘Alex is filming right now, but I’m going to show you around a bit and then we can get lunch. After that, if you’re interested, I thought you might like to take the studio tour. Does that sound OK?’

‘That sounds wonderful,’ I say.

We start walking and it seems utterly surreal to be here. The huge, square, windowless buildings seem incredibly familiar and there actually are people zipping around in little golf carts. It is absolutely and utterly what I imagined a movie studio would look like.

Bex grabs my arm and points at the corner of the beige building on our left. Next to the door, there’s a plaque:
THE FRIENDS STAGE
.

‘Ah, you’re
Friends
fans?’ Jordan asks. ‘Yes, they filmed there for eight out of the ten seasons. For the first two, they were still using that soundstage for
The Facts of Life
. You know that show?’

We both shake our heads and Jordan grins. ‘Yeah, it was before my time too. But George Clooney was in it!’

I look back at the steps leading up to the door to the studio and imagine Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston and the rest walking up there on their way to make my all-time favourite TV show and I can’t believe we’re really here.

We walk diagonally to another beige building and then in through a huge roller door, like a garage door.

‘Hey!’ Jordan shouts to a woman further down the building. ‘You know this door’s open?’

She nods and shouts something that I don’t catch, but Jordan’s not impressed. ‘These doors are always meant to be kept closed,’ he mumbles. Once we’re inside it reminds me of backstage at theatre shows Bex has done in the past. The plain wooden backs of scenery and the same smell – of dust and make-up and lights. Bex squeezes my hand. My stomach is flipping with excitement so I can’t imagine how she must be feeling.

Jordan turns and puts his finger to his lips and we follow him down the passageway and then out into an enormous room, one side of which is a set that I recognise as Alex’s – or rather Luke’s – bedroom in
Stellar Highway
.

‘Ah, it’s OK,’ Jordan says. ‘They’re on a break.’

I look up at the lights and metal tracks running around the roof. This place is huge.

Jordan shows us over to where Alex is sitting, fiddling with his phone. He looks up and grins and I feel my legs wobble. ‘Hey, you made it!’

‘Thanks so much for letting us do this,’ I say.

He smiles. ‘No problem. Was the ride in OK?’

‘Great, thanks,’ I say. A man named Jem picked us up in a smart black car with tinted windows and one of those glass dividers between the front and back. Like a taxi, but fabulous.

‘You OK, Bex?’ Alex asks my sister.

I look at Bex. Her mouth is open, but she still hasn’t managed to speak.

‘I think she’s a bit overwhelmed,’ I tell Alex.

‘I was like that the first time I came here,’ he tells her. ‘I was shaking so much the camera picked it up. And Jordan here had to keep me supplied with lemon slices to stop my lips from sticking to my teeth.’

‘I’ve done that!’ Bex says. Probably because it’s so long since she last spoke, it comes out pretty loud and we all laugh. ‘In panto,’ she adds, more quietly.

‘You’ve done panto?’ Alex says, grinning. ‘I’ve read about that. It sounds crazy.’

‘It was pretty great,’ Bex says, smiling.

‘So Jordan’s told you about the tour?’ Alex asks.

‘Yes. It sounds fantastic,’ I tell him. ‘Thank you so much.’

‘No worries. Jordan’s the man – he’ll look after you.’

He touches me on the arm and I get that tingling feeling again. It’s so strong that I want to look down and see if his fingers have left a mark, but I contain myself.

Someone yells for Alex.

‘Back to work,’ he says, still smiling.

Jordan offers me Alex’s seat and I sit. It’s still warm. Bex and Jordan sit down too and, for the next hour, we watch Alex filming.

When we watched the show at home, I would have said the character was pretty similar to Alex. Watching him now, I see him change when the cameras are on. I start to see a difference between Alex and Luke. Luke seems older, more intense, even his body language is different. It’s so interesting. And a little bit weird. It must be hard to get used to flipping between personalities like that. The scene they’re filming is between Alex – I mean, Luke – and his roommate. The character’s called Jason, I’m not sure about the actor.

Jason is trying to get Luke to tell him how he keeps getting such fantastic scoops and obviously Luke is struggling to work out what to tell him. Jason’s also on the paper and if Luke has got some sort of fantastically reliable contact, Jason wants to know why he won’t share it with him.

The guy playing Jason would probably be considered incredibly good-looking if he was in his own show – he’s tall and kind of lanky with cropped hair and really sharp cheekbones – but next to Alex he only looks OK. I can see, looking at Alex, what people mean when they talk about presence and charisma. You can’t not look at him.

And after staring at him pretty constantly for about an hour, it’s pretty weird when they wrap the scene and he walks over to us, says, ‘Lunch?’ and claps Jordan on the shoulder.

It’s almost like seeing someone walk out of the TV screen (which I always thought would be really cool).

We follow Alex through to another room within the same building, where a huge table is set out with all sorts of different food on it. It’s like a buffet at the best wedding ever. There’s smoked salmon, pasta, pizza, various salads, baked potatoes, doughnuts, chocolate, pretzels, sushi, plates and plates of sandwiches – basically everything you could possibly want to eat for lunch.

We follow Alex and grab some food. There’s actually so much choice that I find it really hard to decide.

‘The sushi’s really good,’ Alex says, turning to smile at me.

I grab a dish of sushi and a bottle of mineral water. Bex has got mainly salad with some nachos and a can of Coke.

‘I usually eat in my trailer,’ Alex tells us. ‘Is that OK with you guys?’

‘I’m coming too,’ Jordan says, grinning. ‘No scandal.’

We follow Alex to his trailer, which is almost exactly like the trailers you see in films – white on the outside with a couple of little steps and like a flash caravan on the inside with shiny wood and white surfaces.

‘You’re so tidy!’ Bex says, as Jordan gestures for us to sit down at the table.

Alex laughs. ‘Not what my mom says. I think someone tidies for me while I’m working.’