WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10
“They loved you!” The call comes at seven a.m. a day and a half after my first audition. My agent Michael is calling from his car on the way into the United offices in Beverly Hills. His voice is bright, full of excitement. “Anthoni loved you, and he’s—well, he can be—tough sometimes.”
I can imagine.
I towel off my morning swim hair with my free hand as Michael continues. “So they’re probably going to want to screen-test on that next week. You and two other actresses. That’s the early word. This is a great start, Mia. One hundred percent hit rate so far.” He cheers.
No pressure then.
Today’s first audition is for a Mars terra-forming expedition that goes wrong. The meeting is in a small casting office in North Hollywood. I set off early, local talk radio on low in the car as I mumble out lines like “Check the O2 regulators, we’re losing isotopes through the main coolant vents. The whole system’s degrading.” Rose Atwood is a British biochemical engineer with a love of horse riding and ballet—I know, what a well-rounded character I hear you cry. But hobbies like that make for fun pre-production prep.
The satnav blasts me up the 101 highway, through the hills, the sun high in the spring sky, the traffic blessedly thin. Once I’m off the highway, I wind through the palmed and leafy boulevards—the skyscrapers of Downtown far behind me. It’s easy to forget that, outside the vast industrial studio complexes and soaring glass towers, people are just living their lives out here.
North Hollywood has a different feel, more lived in, realer, somehow. Out of the car windows I see people out walking, coffees in hand, dogs in tow, women in high-end athleisure wear with neat ponytails, $500 sneakers, and rolled-up Pilates mats.
Cynthia texted me a link to a Daily Mail article this morning. The subject line: A Heads-Up. The article was a sidebar puff piece with candid shots of George and Naomi grabbing coffee together in New York. His arm pulling her close, a peck on her cheek. Wool hats, gloves, and rosy-cheeked smiles. The news is out. George and Naomi Fairn are a couple. The texts start rolling in from back home. And I thank my lucky stars that Cynthia has a Google alert on my name.
On Instagram my post has over three thousand likes and my followers are creeping up at just over 16k.
There’s no way of knowing if George has seen it, to know if he’s checked to see how I am. Actually, there’s no way of knowing who’s been checking to see how I am at all. I think of Shaun, my theater stalker from back in London; he could be following me under any name and I’d never know. I wouldn’t even know if my stalker was stalking me on here.
When I get to the casting address there’s on-street parking and I gratefully pull into the only free space as another car leaves. Before I head in I promise myself that I will stop thinking about the article and the happy couple.
The casting suite is a block of units encircling a fountain courtyard. I follow the CASTING ROOM signs up some wooden stairs, hoping the place won’t be as depressing a venue as yesterday’s scratchy carpeted office space. But as I open the door I realize the inside definitely doesn’t live up to the promise of the beautiful courtyard below. It’s just another rented office space hired out for pilot season.
Straight-backed office chairs line the waiting room. There are five actors here already, spaced out around the seating, three of them women, all brunette, all my age, all potential Rose Atwoods. We all look weirdly similar. Of course that’s the point of castings, but for a second it throws me how similarly we’re dressed too. Tight jeans, silk blouses, hair up. I guess the character of Rose Atwood isn’t exactly hard to dress for. The two men waiting are both tall, thin, wiry, both awkwardly perched on too-small seats as they pore over their lines. I’m guessing they’re reading for Marcus, the coms specialist who’s on the autism spectrum.
A notably attractive receptionist works on, unfazed by my arrival as she sorts through stacks of sides and résumés. Judging by her model looks I’m guessing she’s an actor too, although currently in her second job. I make toward her but she heads me off. “Sign in over there.” Without looking up she points a thin tanned arm back in the direction of the door where a folder lies open on a chair near the entrance containing two sad crumpled pages.
“Right, okay,” I say as her thin arm falls back to its task. “Thank you.” One of the Roses looks up at the sound of my accent, clocks my expression, and lets out a snort of conspiratorial laughter.
Suppressing my own giggle, I head over to the tatty sign-in folder to do as I have been told. Squatting awkwardly in front of it in order to write, I add my own halfhearted scrawl to the other completely illegible names already present. What possible use this record could be to anyone I do not know.
Behind me one of the two audition room doors opens and another gangly Marcus exits the audition room, his expression deeply troubled. I dodge as he strides purposefully past me, eyes firmly fixed on the door, shutting it loudly behind him. A few startled eyes follow his progress past the window as I take a seat next to the friendly Rose.
“Well. I wonder how that went then?” I whisper to my new friend.
She blurts out a laugh again, the ebullient sound so incongruous in the space that even the surly receptionist looks in our direction.
As if on cue the other audition room door opens and a Rose Atwood exits. Her audition clearly has gone better than the last Marcus’s. She throws us a supportive smile as she gathers her things, and after a moment a casting director’s head pokes out of the audition room she just left, scanning the remaining Roses.
The casting director frowns. “Is there a Samantha?”
The Rose nearest the receptionist desk rises hastily, smoothing her tailored trousers and grabbing her script. “Uh-huh. That’s me,” she says brightly before they both disappear into the audition room.
The waiting room noticeably relaxes as the door closes behind them. I check my watch; my time is meant to be twelve fifteen but it’s already twelve twenty. I have another audition across town after this one. I do the math. There are still two more girls waiting ahead of me. Let’s say they each take twenty minutes. I should be done in about an hour. I resign myself to the wait and dig out my mobile phone, keying in my passcode. But I promise myself no social media. Just email and texts. The girl beside me shifts and when I look up, she too is on her phone hastily tapping out a message.
Another Marcus is called into the other room and I find my mind wandering back to George. I need a distraction and for some reason the story that Miguel, the apartment building’s porter, told me yesterday comes to mind. That story about the sign keeps coming back to me in bursts and I can’t help but wonder how much of what he said was fact or if it’s all just generic Hollywood mythmaking.
I tap the words British actress and Hollywood sign into Google and read.
Turns out it’s true—the actress jumped after Katharine Hepburn got her part. This actress could have been Katharine Hepburn, could have had her career, if things had gone differently. The British actress had given up everything to travel to Hollywood, alone; no friends, no partner, she’d bet it all, and she’d almost won. I shiver at the gruesome details of her death, unsure why I am so fascinated. Thinking she’d been laid off, she left her belongings neatly stacked beneath the sign, climbed the service ladder on the letter H, and leapt out into the night sky.
Her carefully folded suicide note read:
I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. P.E.