be some kind of Cyrano action, one of the girls hiding somewhere, feeding the other one her lines? He’d nod silently, or not nod, holding still, and we’d all try again and try harder, until we came up with the idea or scene or bit of dialogue that finally got him to smile.
When we have our own show, it’ll be different, Rob would tell me when I’d mention, in as non-whiny a tone as I could, that there was something deeply suspect about a show about women,that starred women, that purported to tell women’s stories, and was written almost entirely by men. That’s a one-percenter, he’d say quietly after the yeast-infection joke I’d pitched was met with groans and grimaces instead of laughter (a one-percenter, in writers’ room parlance, was a joke that only one percent of viewers could be expected to understand). Rob and I were united in our desire to change the world, or at least our little piece of it; unwavering in our belief that we could write something more true, more funny, more meaningful than the soap-opera antics put on every week by The Girls’ Room, a show that depended largely on love triangles and a Mysterious Stranger from the Past showing up. In the three years the show had aired, all but one of the four starring girls had learned she’d been adopted. One of the writers’ room jokes was that the show should have really been called Which One of You Bitches Is My Mother? We shared a common distaste for Taryn Montaine, the beautiful, stupid, black-hearted, and abusive star of the show.
“You know, she did porn,” Rob told me, straight-faced and matter-of-fact, at the end of three painful hours the writers’ room had spent rewriting a script after it became obvious that Taryn, like the presidents Bush before her, could not, under any circumstances, pronounce the word nuclear.
“She did not,” I said.
“Well, not porn, exactly. Soft-core stuff. Like on late-night cable.” Rob turned his laptop around to face me, eyebrows raised in a wordless challenge, and we spent the next hour online, slipping down the rabbit hole of blurry close-ups of what may or may not have been nipples. “That,” he would say, tapping the screen with the cap of a Sharpie, like a historian reviewing the Zapruder tape; “that is, conclusively, her ass.”
“How would you know?”
“Because she flashes all the boy writers whenever she can. You know that, right?”
I nodded. I’d never seen firsthand evidence of Taryn’s much-discussed penchant for coming to her dressing-room door wrapped in just a towel (which would ride up or slip down) or showing up on set in tops that were low-cut, see-through, or both, but I’d been around long enough to know that it had made her a great favorite with the show’s carpenters and electricians.
“Also, her name used to be Terry Mastrontonio.”
“Shut up.”
“Check it out,” he said. “Next time you print the budget, take a look. We’re still cutting checks to her name. And,” he continued gleefully, “she’s got a mustache.” Fingers thumping over my keyboard, he logged on to TMZ and pulled up a picture of Taryn on vacation, sprawled on a beach in a remote part of Mexico, miles away from civilization and, evidently, her waxer.
“Oh, dear,” I said, looking, as my heart lifted. Whatever was wrong with my appearance, facial hair wasn’t one of my problems.
I knew it was ungenerous and unkind; that picking on Taryn made me no better than the people who stared at my face and whispered behind my back; but the truth was, it felt good to be part of a conspiracy of two writers bonded by their mutual loathing of an overpaid and undertalented TV actress. Rob and I could riff for days on Taryn’s shortcomings . . . or, rather, Rob could riff, and I would laugh, all notions of sisterhood and solidarity abandoned because, really, would Taryn have defended me if the tables had been turned? Doubtful. This was a woman who hadn’t bothered to learn my name; a woman
When we have our own show, it’ll be different, Rob would tell me when I’d mention, in as non-whiny a tone as I could, that there was something deeply suspect about a show about women,that starred women, that purported to tell women’s stories, and was written almost entirely by men. That’s a one-percenter, he’d say quietly after the yeast-infection joke I’d pitched was met with groans and grimaces instead of laughter (a one-percenter, in writers’ room parlance, was a joke that only one percent of viewers could be expected to understand). Rob and I were united in our desire to change the world, or at least our little piece of it; unwavering in our belief that we could write something more true, more funny, more meaningful than the soap-opera antics put on every week by The Girls’ Room, a show that depended largely on love triangles and a Mysterious Stranger from the Past showing up. In the three years the show had aired, all but one of the four starring girls had learned she’d been adopted. One of the writers’ room jokes was that the show should have really been called Which One of You Bitches Is My Mother? We shared a common distaste for Taryn Montaine, the beautiful, stupid, black-hearted, and abusive star of the show.
“You know, she did porn,” Rob told me, straight-faced and matter-of-fact, at the end of three painful hours the writers’ room had spent rewriting a script after it became obvious that Taryn, like the presidents Bush before her, could not, under any circumstances, pronounce the word nuclear.
“She did not,” I said.
“Well, not porn, exactly. Soft-core stuff. Like on late-night cable.” Rob turned his laptop around to face me, eyebrows raised in a wordless challenge, and we spent the next hour online, slipping down the rabbit hole of blurry close-ups of what may or may not have been nipples. “That,” he would say, tapping the screen with the cap of a Sharpie, like a historian reviewing the Zapruder tape; “that is, conclusively, her ass.”
“How would you know?”
“Because she flashes all the boy writers whenever she can. You know that, right?”
I nodded. I’d never seen firsthand evidence of Taryn’s much-discussed penchant for coming to her dressing-room door wrapped in just a towel (which would ride up or slip down) or showing up on set in tops that were low-cut, see-through, or both, but I’d been around long enough to know that it had made her a great favorite with the show’s carpenters and electricians.
“Also, her name used to be Terry Mastrontonio.”
“Shut up.”
“Check it out,” he said. “Next time you print the budget, take a look. We’re still cutting checks to her name. And,” he continued gleefully, “she’s got a mustache.” Fingers thumping over my keyboard, he logged on to TMZ and pulled up a picture of Taryn on vacation, sprawled on a beach in a remote part of Mexico, miles away from civilization and, evidently, her waxer.
“Oh, dear,” I said, looking, as my heart lifted. Whatever was wrong with my appearance, facial hair wasn’t one of my problems.
I knew it was ungenerous and unkind; that picking on Taryn made me no better than the people who stared at my face and whispered behind my back; but the truth was, it felt good to be part of a conspiracy of two writers bonded by their mutual loathing of an overpaid and undertalented TV actress. Rob and I could riff for days on Taryn’s shortcomings . . . or, rather, Rob could riff, and I would laugh, all notions of sisterhood and solidarity abandoned because, really, would Taryn have defended me if the tables had been turned? Doubtful. This was a woman who hadn’t bothered to learn my name; a woman
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