Happy Accidents (20 page)

I loved creating a temporary home in Charlotte. I had my routines, my friends when I wanted them, and most important, my puppy dog. I had no other worries or cares: I’d left those behind in Los Angeles. When I arrived, I’d brought only Olivia and one huge suitcase. By the time I left, I had accumulated six boxes full of stuff: clothes I had purchased while mall shopping, as well as the home comforts I’d acquired, including sheets, a featherbed, candles, and even throw pillows.

It seemed I had a new compulsion to add to coffee and paper straightening: I was purchasing with abandon. But like my drinking before, it was never bad enough to take me down. I could afford what I was buying, but I could tell the behavior was controlling me, rather than the other way around. I had a low threshold for discomfort, so while it didn’t destroy my life, it did nag at me. As fate would have it, and in the form of what seemed like a happy accident, one of the new friends I met in Charlotte was a financial advisor at a local securities company. Marcia, a no-nonsense, straight-talking Southerner, would take me on as a client and become extremely instrumental in getting me to mind my finances and become conscious about my compulsive spending.

A week before we wrapped
Talladega Nights
, I flew back to LA to shoot my three days for Chris Guest’s new movie,
For Your Consideration.
We shot at Culver Studios, the old MGM, and I shivered with delight knowing Greta Garbo had shot every movie of hers I’d seen on this very lot.

I was teamed up with Fred Willard, this time as TV co-anchors of an entertainment show called
Hollywood Now
. Fred is a national treasure. He has more trivia, statistics, and useless information in his head than anyone I’ve ever known, and he knows just how to jumble it all up. Using this, he can hold forth on any number of topics, sounding fully confident while confusing all the facts.

Me and Fred Willard on the set of
Hollywood Now.

Photo from
For Your Consideration
© Shangri-La Entertainment, LLC. Licensed By: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.

For this movie, the pressure was almost completely off me, as most of my scenes were not only scripted but displayed for me on a teleprompter. From having watched entertainment shows for many years, I’d noticed that the female hosts stand at a sort of a forty-five-degree angle from the waist down, with shoulders squared to the camera, giving the impression of having a tiny waist, long legs, and a small ass. If you hold that pose and speak A LITTLE LOUDER THAN NECESSARY, you’re golden. So that was my plan.

Fred had another plan, completely unknown to me. The first scene we shot, the only scene Fred and I had to improvise, we were to interview the cast of
Home for Purim
, the movie within our movie. For the first take, Chris had told Fred not to allow me to finish a sentence or get a word in edgewise.

Fred asked him, “Shouldn’t we tell Jane?”

Chris said, “No.”

So while Fred was talking over me and cutting me off, I was getting more and more annoyed and thinking
I wonder if Fred is going to let me talk in this movie.
After that first take, Catherine O’Hara pulled me aside and said, “You’ve just been Willard-ed.”

But of course, it wasn’t Fred’s fault, it was Chris’s—he wanted me to be genuinely frustrated, and it worked. Fred is not only a genius but a real gentleman, so he rushed up to me right away to fess up. He hated the thought that I would think he’d done such a thing on purpose. By the end of
For Your Consideration
, Fred Willard and I were pals.

B
y the time I hit my mid-forties, I had done
guest spots on countless television series. I really enjoyed many of these gigs: I’d be on the set for a day, do my thing, and then be off to the next one. But they were kind of like one-night stands: in and out, no strings attached. I approached the TV pilot season every year with the hope that I’d land something that might give me a steady paycheck and a place to call home for a while. But my lot seemed to be that of the grateful hired gun. But then one show came along that I wanted to be a part of so much that I actively made a play for it.

The L Word
was more than just a hit Showtime series: it was a television revolution for lesbians. For the first time, a lesbian couple (Bette and Tina) were the central characters in a serial drama. Not only that, the show was cast with phenomenally talented—and attractive—actors. Shortly after I’d lost a day to a marathon DVD viewing session of the first season, I went to a panel where the show’s creator, Ilene Chaiken, was appearing with Jennifer Beals, Mia Kirshner, and a few of the other actors. I didn’t want to be obvious or to set myself up for rejection, but I
really
wanted to be on that show and I wanted to let Ilene know.

The place was packed with lesbians, and after the panelists finished, half the audience crowded around to meet them. I managed to find Ilene, and shook her hand and said, “I
love
the show.” She asked me if I would consider doing it, and I answered, “In a New York minute.” It felt like an offer, and I sure hoped it would happen.

I was elated, and I became fixated on imagining how she was going to fit me into the series and what kind of character I would play. Before the script arrived, Ilene called and told me I would be playing Joyce Wischnia, a feminist lesbian lawyer hired by Tina (Laurel Holloman). Ilene explained to me her (more than a little bit idealistic) notion of who Joyce Wischnia was. Yes, yes, she was cocky and full of herself, and yes, she did try to seduce a pregnant client in her first episode, but Ilene saw her as a trailblazer, and a fighter, not just for lesbian rights, but also for human rights. Joyce wanted to be the big daddy and take care of people, to be their savior. A perfect life partner for Joyce Wischnia wouldn’t be a wife so much as an assistant.

What thrilled me the most (and titillated me almost shamefully) was that Ilene wanted Joyce to dress like a fifty-year-old male lawyer at a successful firm. This meant that I would get to wear tailor-made suits accessorized with cuff links, pocket squares, and tie clips.

The first time I put on the outfit, it took me back to those childhood days when I would lock my parents’ bedroom door and put on a suit and tie from my dad’s closet. I half-expected someone to burst into my trailer and cry out in shock, “Jane?
What are you doing?
” Despite feeling a tiny bit embarrassed by how much I loved dressing in male drag, I was absolutely thrilled to get to do it. And this time, all the clothes would be made especially for me so I wouldn’t look like a girl wearing her father’s clothing.

As I looked at myself in the mirror, all decked out, it occurred to me that I’d never really understood or had much empathy for men or women who felt trapped in their bodies to the degree that they wanted to switch sexual genders. I realized, standing there in front of the mirror, feeling
good
in this suit and tie, that I lacked this empathy because I had never accepted and loved the part of myself that felt more than a little bit male. I nodded appreciatively to my inner fella there in the mirror, and once again I felt broadened as a person by a role I was playing.

Despite all the TV and movie roles I had done, I’d never kissed anyone on screen. That changed in
The L Word
, where the unofficial rule was that everybody gets to kiss somebody. In my first three episodes, a pregnant Tina hires Joyce to be her lawyer during her separation from her partner, Bette (Jennifer Beals). Joyce, being Joyce, tries not only to assist the lovely Tina in her legal battle but also to seduce her. In full-on smarmy seduction mode, wearing a smoking jacket and having just shoved a piece of tuna sushi down my throat, Joyce leans in for a kiss with the words, “Don’t worry. I’ve been with a pregnant woman before.” She forces a kiss on Tina, who pushes her away.

You always hear actors say that love scenes are not at all exciting, but are instead really uncomfortable and embarrassing, and I’m here to tell you it’s true: there is nothing sexy about shooting them, even though they may end up looking pretty hot on the screen. But somehow, despite this, in my last take of this scene, my natural make-out instincts had kicked in a little. I felt I had to find Laurel Holloman to apologize.

“I’m sorry, I seem to have slipped in a little tongue there at the end,” I said.

She looked up from the magazine she was reading. “Oh, that’s all right,” she said, returning to her reading. For her, it was just another day at the office on
The L Word
.

In the early days of my run with the show, I worked mostly with Laurel and Jennifer. Acting in a scene with Jennifer Beals is like driving a Porsche; you don’t grasp the extent of its power until you hit the gas. At different times, Joyce Wischnia represented each of them in their legal actions against each other, which made real-world legal ethics people crazy (I was forever telling lesbian lawyers who cornered me at parties, “I don’t write the stuff”) but made for great drama.

Instead of a “one and gone” spot, I had a recurring role on this show. I’d do two or three episodes a season, and I couldn’t wait to get the scripts in my PO box. I’d open them up right away and read all of them standing there in the post office.

I jumped up and down and whooped audibly on the day I read that Joyce was to get together with Phyllis, played by none other than gorgeous television icon Cybill Shepherd.

I had worked with Cybill briefly before, in a guest spot on her sitcom,
Cybill
. Although she had no memory of me from that time, we hit it off during our filming of
The L Word
.

In our first real love scene, we were lying in bed, postcoital, her head on my chest. Hidden by the covers was the fact that we were wearing boxer shorts and pieces of tape over our nipples. This kept the camera and crew from seeing any of our lady bits. The young stars of
The L Word
showed nipples and butts all the time, but no one wanted to see us middle-aged broads naked.

Cybill had played love scenes in the past, but had never kissed a woman, either in front of the camera or in real life, so in this instance I was the veteran. I could tell she wanted me to lead the way, and so I prepared to summon up my inner Joyce Wischnia: I could not let myself be frozen in fear by the thought
I am about to make out with Cybill Shepherd
. But I needn’t have worried.

She snuggled into my armpit, and I made a joke about how well we’d shaved our underarms for each other. When it came time for the kissing, in her spirited attempt to get past the discomfort, Cybill wound up taking the lead and dove in with enthusiasm, cutting me off with kisses before I could finish any of my lines. I appreciated her commitment, but I did need to get my lines out, so we eventually had to map out the scene, planning each kiss.

My stints shooting the
The L Word
in Vancouver were usually for only a day or two between other guest spots and commercials back in LA. I loved being in Vancouver again and tried to make the most of my time there, walking through Stanley Park, biking the seawall, and eating great food before returning to California. But although it was a pleasant little trip to make periodically, after a while I found myself becoming envious of the women who were regulars on the show, who had a gig with a steady paycheck, who knew where they’d be from week to week.

I was having a great time and loved being that one recurring character, but overall I was starting to tire of the hectic pace of my career, mostly going from one set to another with different faces and different rules; I felt I was an eternal guest rather than someone who had a “work home.” It was still more of a “wham bam” feeling than one of being a central part of something.

I had really started wishing for the same thing in my love life, too, but although I was in my forties, I was still having the same issues with women that I’d always had. Every year or so, I’d play out the same cycle: I’d fall hard for someone, projecting onto her all kinds of fabulous traits she didn’t actually have, and declare my love. After we’d been involved for a short time, I’d find myself horribly disappointed when I realized I had created an image that didn’t really match the person, and so I’d break up with her. I didn’t know how to fall in love with an actual person, but boy could I create a great one in my imagination.

I really did want to break this pattern, but no amount of processing, journaling, or inner child nurturing seemed to help. I had good strong friendships; why couldn’t I translate that ability into a love partnership? Why was I still ordering my own birthday cake? I was a smart girl, but I had no clue what I was doing wrong.

Along about the time that I was seriously starting to wonder if there was something wrong with me in the romance department, I was offered a part that would make me look a little further into this particular shadow of my self. The part was in a new TV comedy called
Lovespring International
, and I was to play a character who had no relationship skills. The joke was that my character was to be the head of an exclusive matchmaking service, like those you see advertised in airline magazines, that provided ridiculously bad service for thousands of dollars a pop.

At first I had no interest in the project and was going to pass on the audition. Like other work I had done, it was to be improvised from an outline of a script, and my experience had shown me that in the wrong hands, improvised shows could be truly awful. I didn’t have much information, but I did know it sounded half-assed, the pay was not good, and it would be on the Lifetime network, a channel I’d always thought of as a home for schlocky dramas about abused women and reruns of eighties sitcoms. Other than Eric McCormack of
Will and Grace
fame, I didn’t recognize any of the producer/writer names. Frankly, I was no longer that hard up for work.

But they persisted, and called to say they would just like to have a meeting and I wouldn’t have to audition because they knew I’d “knock it out of the park anyway.” I was still a sucker for flattery—I hadn’t completely changed my stripes—so I relented. Eric was engaging and charming and took charge of the meeting, while the other producers, including the director Guy Shalem, sat quietly in the background. They showed me the fifteen-minute pilot they’d already shot as a rough example of what they were going for in the show. The first face that popped up on the screen was that of Sam Pancake, an old colleague from a show I’d done when I first came to LA called
Baby Jesus and His Holiday Pixies.
Sam is sharp and quick, and a real Southern gentleman, who had escaped from West Virginia to come and live in Hollywood with the other homosexuals.

Although I found the pilot kind of sloppy and all over the place, it looked like it could be fun, so when the part was offered to me, I said yes. I was delighted to be hooking back up with Sam and had been looking for a place to hang my hat. Now I’d found one.

I got to name my character, and I chose Victoria Ratchford because I thought it sounded patrician and almost violent at the same time. I would be the hard-edged business owner with a very large soft spot for her incompetent staff of relationship counselors. Though she threatens to fire them on a daily basis, she loves them and can’t live without them. She also knows her business is a sinking ship, as the online dating sites, the match.coms of the world, are starting to take over.

No one on staff at
Lovespring International
, including Victoria Ratchford herself, had any business dabbling in other people’s love lives. Sam created the relationship counselor Burke Kristopher, a severely closeted gay man married to a frumpy woman frequently mistaken for his mother. Wendi McLendon-Covey played another counselor, Lydia Mayhew, who had dated the same married man for twenty years. Jennifer Elise Cox was our daffy and deadpan receptionist, Tiffany Riley; and Jack Plotnick was Steve Morris, the agency psychologist and a war veteran suffering from PTSD. Finally, Mystro Clark was the videographer with Hollywood ambitions.

Our first day of work was a “rehearsal day,” which sounded to me like a complete waste of time and, sadly, was. If you’re going to do an improv show, just set up the cameras and shoot. My old inner diva emerged and I was rather intolerant of the entire process; we did long, directionless improvs in which it seemed like everyone was just trying to top one another with funny lines. We did the kind of “acting exercises” that I had hated even back when I was in school. I was rolling my eyes like crazy and being more than a little bratty. The biggest problem, though, was that we had two directors, Guy Shalem and Jack Plotnick. Guy was laid back and didn’t say much, and Jack was high energy and talked too much and was also an actor in the cast. They gave conflicting direction and I was fit to be tied. I pleaded to Sam, “Please tell me it’s not going to be like this.”

It wouldn’t be. With Sam and me leading the charge, the powers that be agreed that there would only be one director and it would be Guy, who had also created the series. Jack graciously stepped back, returning full-time to acting his part.