I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night. Not because I can go All. Night. Long. or anything, but because our flight left at like six in the morning and that meant getting up at 4:30. This was awful because I’m terrible at sleeping on planes. At least, that’s what I thought.
So Andy and I got on the plane and went to our seats. We weren’t together, and mine was almost all the way at the back. I got there and found someone else already in my seat and no open seats nearby. We did the comparing-tickets dance, and it was 5:45 A.M. and everyone was awake and not asleep the whole time, and we all wanted to die, but our boarding passes said the exact same seat. I showed the flight attendant, who was more awake than I have maybe ever been in my life, and with the biggest smile ever he informed me that I was now a first-class human!
So they brought me back up to the front of the plane and I plopped myself down next to a middle-aged balding man, which is what first-class humans seem to mostly look like. I got a mimosa before we even took off, but the little TV built into the seat in front of me was broken and just showed a bunch of numbers and colors. I tweeted a picture of it:
@AprilMaybeNot: On my way to LA and got bumped to business class. My little plane TV is broken though, so I want the money I didn’t spend back!
I was virtually a social media celebrity now, and so I had to let the entire world know every time I experienced any inconvenience!
Shortly after liftoff I discovered that I do not have a hard time sleeping on planes; I have a hard time sleeping in uncomfortable chairs. This chair turned into a literal bed. Business class was all dreams, baby.
We landed just a few hours before the shoot, so we had to rush through the airport, which became impossible when a group of students came up to Andy and me and every one of them wanted to get a separate photo.
Andy’s dad finally dragged us out of the knot of kids and toward the baggage claim. One of those guys in suits was standing at the base of the escalator with a sign. The sign read “Marshall Skampt” (Andy’s dad), which was a little disappointing. Still, I definitely snapped a picture of him to Maya, realizing I hadn’t yet texted her in all the hubbub since we landed.
The drive to the studio was overwhelmingly composed of Andy being extremely excited. He was just a lot more into this whole thing than I was.
OK, that’s not entirely true.
Andy was into the spectacle of it. He believed in entertainment culture in a way I never have. There’s an appreciation that stretches beyond enjoying content and into worshipping all the bits that come together to make the content. I still saw it mostly as a necessary chore. I wasn’t excited by any of it, but I was interested in what it could do for me. Our different outlooks started to cause some friction.
Here’s a scene from the greenroom of that late-night talk show.
“Y’know, you don’t have to hate everything, April.”
“Have you ever seen the way I look at cheesecake?”
“You know what I mean. Like, this is the only time in our lives anything this cool is ever going to happen, and you look mostly like you need to poop.”
“Stop thinking about my poop.”
“So many people would kill to be on TV . . . to get to do all the things you’re doing. Just look at it objectively, you’re getting treated like a VIP and flown around the country and we’re basically famous and you’re determined to hate it!”
“Andy . . .” I paused to compose myself. “I don’t watch TV. I have never watched TV. I do not know anything about this man we are about to talk to. But more than that, I haven’t slept more than five hours at a time since Before Carl, I don’t like planes, luxuries make me uncomfortable, and my life is so upside down that I fucking forgot I was getting my period so I had to ask a stranger for a tampon just now.”
“They didn’t have tampons in the bathroom?”
“I didn’t even think to check because I’m NEW AT THIS.”
And, like that, we were laughing again.
“I’m sorry, Andy, I just don’t know what I’m doing. I feel like I’m being asked to be something I’m not. Why, of all people, are they asking me about this stuff? I’m barely anything. But I also like it, sometimes. I like it that people think my opinion matters. It’s just . . . I don’t know if it does.”
Andy thought about this for a long time before he said, “April, I think you’re doing a good job.”
I looked him in the eyes and almost said something dumb and snarky but then instead just said, “Thanks, Andy.”
* * *
—
This was the night it all changed for me. After that conversation, I realized something: I wasn’t ever going to love the entertainment industry the way that Andy did, but he was right that it was an amazing opportunity. And my lack of interest gave me a kind of power. I honestly didn’t know that there was a difference between being on cable news and being on network late night. To me, TV was TV. I had no idea that what I was about to do was a big deal. For all these reasons—the practice of the week before, my immunity to its power over me and the pull of the power it offered—I suddenly became pretty good at television.
Here’s how things went that night. (It’s fun to be able to recount some of the conversations I had verbatim because of how there were, like, twelve cameras pointed at me while I had them.)
“Everyone! April May and Andy Skampt, the discoverers of New York Carl!”
We walk out to applause. We had mostly been doing more newsy stuff, so this is a bit different.
“How’s life been for the last week?”
I tended to do most of the talking, so I start out, “Pretty weird, Pat. Pretty freaking weird.”
“My name is not Pat.” Pat laughs.
“Honestly, I’ve just started calling all the newspeople Pat because I can’t keep you all straight.”
Andy chimes in here, “April is new to the institution of television. She’s spent her entire life being entertained by novels from the 1860s.”
Chuckles from the audience.
“Not true, my friend! I have spent a fair amount of my life being entertained by cheesecake.” The callback to our previous conversation was intentional. There’s some more robust chuckling from the audience.
The host gets back in the game here. “So the saga of New York Carl keeps getting weirder. Estimates are saying that, if it’s a marketing campaign, it had to have cost more than a hundred million dollars to pull off.”
Andy answers, “Yeah, setting off an EMP to knock out security cameras isn’t just expensive, it’s illegal.”
“There are reports that the Carls in China have been closed to the public. Do you think there’s anything for people to be worried about?”
“When you’re faced with something you don’t understand, I think the most natural thing but also the least interesting thing you can be is afraid,” I say. And then I change the subject because I’m bored and pretentious. “Does anyone else think Carl is beautiful?”
You actually do preinterviews with these people. They tell you the questions they’re going to ask—they even sometimes prewrite jokes for you so you don’t come off looking like a total doof. The hosts are great at improvising, but guests usually aren’t, so they want you to keep to the script.
If you look at the tape, you can actually see Andy’s eyes get big when I ask that question. He’s panicking.
Pat doesn’t bat an eye. “Maybe when the light hits him just right?”
The audience laughs.
“I just mean, even if it was done for marketing, they are remarkable sculptures. It’s easy to forget how much time goes into things like designing giant fighting robots for movies. It feels cookie-cutter, but thousands of person-hours go into their creation. We love them because they’re beautiful, and they’re beautiful because of hard work.”
Pat nods approvingly before changing the subject: “Has life changed much for you two?”
Andy is so relieved to be back on script and says, “Well, for me it’s very weird to be recognized on the street for this video that April and I just thought was a joke. It’s not like we’ve got a nighttime talk show.” More chuckles.