“Get back to work!” the floor manager shouted behind her.
Riley’s whole body twitched and she hurried her steps, hoping against hope
that her day would improve from there.
The lead makeup artist gave her a significant look when she came into the trailer, but to Riley’s relief the crew seemed more interested in making up for lost time than in further humiliating her.
“This is the look we’re going for,” the makeup artist at her chair said, showing Riley the concept picture. It was impressive; Riley thought she wouldn’t even be recognizable after they were done, which was exciting. When she sat down in the chair and the artists converged on her, Riley told herself that it would take time, and she would have to be patient.
Within an hour of sitting down, however, her headache began to set in. Riley kept her face carefully neutral, opening and closing her eyes on command, tilting her head one way and then the other, remaining as still as possible as one stylist pulled her hair tightly back and then began to weave it into a complicated style. Riley’s legs went numb from sitting as one hour became two; she got a brief five-minute break as the artists gathered up more supplies, but then she had to sit still for another hour for them to finish.
Three hours after first sitting down, Riley emerged in costume, unrecognizable. Her head felt heavier than she would have imagined possible, weighted down with strands of extensions, and pieces of latex. Her face had been reshaped until the sight of herself in the mirror had startled her—she was almost unrecognizable.
She left her bag in the trailer but took her copy of the shooting script with her onto the sound stage; she knew that she would have to wait a while—her scenes in the film weren’t prominent, and the director would want to get into the meat of the shooting as quickly as possible—but Riley told herself that they wouldn’t have put her in full costume and makeup if they didn’t intend to shoot at least some of her scenes that day.
A few hours later, it was a belief that she’d come to regret; the costume made it difficult to sit down, so instead she spent hours standing around, watching the shooting progress. At first, it was exciting to see major celebrities at work, absorbing the way that they got into character, and watching the way the crew moved around on the set. She was too anxious to eat very much during the lunch break, but she managed to chat with a few of the other actors, comparing makeup and costume sessions in a playful competition to see who had it the worst.
“All right—we need to get these scenes done today, people,” the director told the cast and crew as they came back after the break, everyone taking up their positions. Riley found the most comfortable position she could, but her head continued to pound throughout the rest of the shooting day, and when the director announced “Anyone not in scenes three, five, twenty-four, or eight, you’re dismissed; we won’t be needing you today,” she trudged back to the makeup trailer to have all of the work she’d submitted to that morning undone—and all without having been in a single scene.
Walking back to her car, Riley thought about the offer that Alex had made her the night before; between the speeding ticket, the lack of sleep, the dressing-down she’d gotten from the floor manager, and everything else that had happened to her that day, she felt as if she’d wasted an entire day to get next to nothing in return. Resigning herself to an uncomfortable decision, she took her phone out of her purse and found Alex’s number as she climbed into her car.
Closing the door behind her, she took a quick breath to steady her resolve and tapped ‘call.’
“Hey Ri-Ri, how’s the first day of shooting going?”
Riley scowled at the knowing sound of Alex’s voice. “I’ll take the offer,” she said quickly.
“Whoa, that was fast,” Alex said. “Just to clarify—you’re going to take which offer?”
“Both of them,” Riley replied. “I’ll feed you whatever information I can about the production in return for the five hundred thousand and the movie role.”
“Excellent,” Alex said. “Good to hear it. You won’t regret this, Ri-Ri.”
Riley finished the call as quickly as she could, feeling as if she’d been coated in grease. As she pulled out of her parking spot and turned towards the freeway to go home, she thought with chagrin that a year before, she never would have thought she was capable of breaking her first big movie contract less than a month after signing it. Maybe I’m finally getting the hang of the way they do things in Hollywood, she thought, trying to soothe her stinging conscience.
EIGHT
“Thank God it’s Friday,” someone said a few feet away from Riley’s elbow.
Riley smiled briefly, turning her attention onto the food spread out in chafing dishes and on platters. She yawned, wincing at the way the movement pulled at the skin along her hairline. I have never been more aware of the muscles in my face than I have this week, Riley thought absently.
As she browsed the table, Riley thought about how different her first week on set had been from her expectations. Having been on sets before, albeit for TV and advertising, she’d known that she would probably spend a lot of time standing around waiting, but in the entire first week, she had shown up early each morning, sat through hours of hair and makeup, and found herself spending the entire shooting day with nothing to do but wait around. She tried to tell herself that at least it was a step above the lower-budget productions she’d been on, where minor talent was expected to help out the crew; but the difference between being a star on Galaxy Wars 3 and having a minor role was no less glaring.
Beyond the stress of grueling makeup and hair sessions every day, the early calls, and the strain of standing around in costume, waiting for the possibility of one of her scenes coming up in the schedule, Riley’s anxiety had grown daily thanks to near-constant calls from Alex. In such a small role, so early on in the production, she was in no position to gather any information that would be remotely useful for her ex-boyfriend. Still though, at least nine times a day her phone buzzed in her pocket, and during her breaks she saw not only missed calls but text messages. What have you got for me? You picking up any good gossip?