Vanished Years (12 page)

Suddenly everything goes quiet because Jeff Zucker arrives. He is the head of NBC and has given me my deal. We all stand to attention. He is a small dark stocky man with piercing eyes and a biting tongue, one of the most important men in Hollywood. He is very clever and will make the most sensible comments throughout these last days of ‘the process’. More introductions are made. Meredith, overlooked, or underlooked, watches furiously from
between everyone’s legs. Soon we sit down and read the appalling script.

I would bore you with the tragic details – luckily for the most part I have forgotten them – but, just to give you an idea of how TIRED
Mr Ambassador
is, in the first scene I am late for work at the embassy and Derek is complaining about me to Megan, the secretary, because I have apparently spent all night at a party with Jennifer Lopez. Yawn.

‘How was her bottom?’ asks Derek when I finally arrive.

‘Absolutely delightful,’ I reply, launching into a far-fetched yarn about going back to her hotel and ending up in a jacuzzi with her and some other celebrities.

After the reading Victor disappears with Jeff Zucker, Benny and Marc.

‘It isn’t that funny, is it?’ I ask Derek, whose head sinks slightly into his shirt as he eyes me suspiciously.

‘But darling, wasn’t it your idea?’ he asks carefully.

‘Yes, but then it was hijacked by Victor.’

‘Oh!’ sighs Derek, not wanting to get involved. ‘It’s all a little bit over my head.’

Victor returns after about half an hour. His face is ashen and drawn. Benny takes me aside.

‘Jeff Zucker is furious,’ he whispers.

‘Oh, good. Why?’

‘He says it isn’t funny.’

‘Well, hello!’

‘We’re going to rehearse anyway and then they are going to do a rewrite tonight after you all go home. Don’t tell the others.’

‘Hopefully it won’t be a case of out of the frying pan into the fire,’ I say, looking at Victor now in a huddle with all the gag hags. They don’t look very funny.

‘Let’s hope,’ says Benny.

We start to rehearse. The sets are all marked out in tape on the floor. It is like doing a play. There are yellow lines for doors and some
actors like to mime opening them, which I always find hilarious, particularly now when Merrylegs bustles into the room for her first scene. She clomps to the yellow line, stops dead in her tracks and then – on tiptoes – laboriously mimes grasping a big door handle and pushing open a door, peeping through and then clomping on. It’s very Marcel Marceau and totally wasted on Victor, who is biting into a giant overflowing jelly doughnut.

‘What are you laughing at, asshole?’ she snaps.

‘Your door-opening technique is flawless.’

She raises a finger. ‘Sit and spin.’

Victor is snappy and mad-eyed all day, like the nutty professor, and at about five o’clock we call it a day.

We get back in at ten the next morning. Victor and the scribes have been up all night and look crazed.

Derek, on the other hand, bounds in looking fresher and jauntier than yesterday.

‘Darling, sorry to have been a bit piano yesterday. I was feeling absolutely exhausted.’

‘How’s your jet lag?’ I ask.

‘I passed out at nine but then of course was sitting bolt upright from three on.’

‘Oh God, poor thing. What did you do?’

‘Actually it was rather useful. I just sat up and learnt the whole script. So now I feel on top of things.’

‘Oh, good,’ I reply cautiously.

As if on cue, Victor arrives with an assistant holding a huge pile of scripts and gives us both one. I make a quick getaway to the other side of the room because I know what’s going to happen next. Derek puts on his glasses and settles down to peruse the new script. It is the last pastoral moment he will know this trip. He leafs through each page, his jaw dropping by degrees, his face turning from pale to pink to purple. He looks as if he is going to faint. He stares out at the room, locates me and rushes over.

‘Dear heart. They’ve changed the whole script. Every word!’

‘I know.’

‘But I just learnt the whole fucking thing.’

‘I know. Me too.’

Lie.

Things go from bad to worse and Victor begins to lose his hair. It falls out in clumps on his signature white shirt. Every day we get a new script. The actors are exhausted, verging on hysteria, and Victor looks grim as Derek nearly slams the latest script down on the table. I say nearly, because actually he doesn’t. He is a mild-mannered, gentle creature, but we have pushed him to his limit.

‘I don’t really understand this joke. I mean … is it
really
funny?’ He strains every nerve to sound reasonable. He looks around the table for support. The rest of us regard him mournfully.

‘No. It’s not funny,’ says Meredith finally.

The stooges turn on Derek like a row of hungry dogs, ears cocked and earnest eyes. Will they lick him or eat him?

‘Oh yeah. I mean, I think so. Potentially really funny,’ says one.

‘Oh definitely. And with your delivery …’ says another.

‘You are sweet, Brandon. It’s just that I really don’t know if I can learn any more.’

He is almost crying but Victor ploughs on regardless and in a few minutes we are up and rehearsing the latest version, which involves a meeting with some Russian businessmen where Derek has to mime behind their backs the answers to their questions, which I misinterpret. It’s like the word game, and just as ghastly. Derek makes big circles with his arms, tweaks at his ear, and strikes extraordinary poses with bulging eyes. He gives it all he’s got, poor darling, but there’s no denying that it’s a long downhill slalom from
I Claudius
to this. Everyone watches our antics listlessly from chairs around the room. Benny sits in the corner. He is now size zero, like a balloon that has blown away and finally fizzled out on a chair.

Suddenly a fight breaks out. Meredith is in a stand-off with Victor. He towers over her, wagging his finger, and she is grabbing at him with one hand and waving her script at his crotch with the other.

‘I can’t take any more,’ she screams and bursts into floods of tears.

‘What did you do to her?’ I storm up to Victor.

‘I just told her to do it a bit faster.’

‘No,’ seethes Merrylegs between heaves. ‘You have been patronising to me ever since I arrived.’

‘I am just trying to get the show up and running before we move to the studio.’

‘If you didn’t keep rewriting the scenes we might be able to get it together.’

‘It’s normal. It’s a part of the process,’ screams Victor. I am about to grab him by his starched white collar. Benny and Marc stand up.

‘Put the brakes on, sir,’ says Benny evenly.

‘I am sick of your fucking process, Victor.’ I am screaming now. Benny and Marc stand either side of me, ready to restrain. ‘I want to learn my part. I want to rehearse it and be sure about what I’m doing. That’s it. I don’t want any new fucking jokes that aren’t funny. I just want to do the job and get out of here.’

Silence in the room apart from muffled sobs from Merrylegs. Victor says nothing.

‘You know, he is right!’ reasons Derek finally. ‘We’ve
got
to know what we’re doing.’

When Corky hears that Victor is losing his hair, she is ecstatic.

‘This is great news. Get me six of them and we do a leetle work on him. There is a veery good Brouharia with hairs. Don’t give up hope. It’s going to be great. The Yipsy told me.’

‘I wish the Gypsy was directing,’ I joke.

‘She could. She first came to me when I was on tour.’

‘I bet she did.’

A small spell sounds just the ticket so I brief Merrylegs later that night on the phone. The next day while I am bickering with Victor in the rehearsal room, I see a tiny little hand appear from behind his back where a long black hair lies waving on his shoulder. I hold my breath as two little fingers delicately lift the hair off the shirt and then
disappear. A moment later Merrylegs herself materialises behind Victor, holding the hair in her hand, and marches nonchalantly off to the loo. During the next coffee break she sidles up to me.

‘It’s in a Kleenex in my pocket. I nearly peed myself.’

‘We need six,’ I whisper.

‘Six? Don’t make me go through it again. I’ll have a coronary. You do it. I’m not established like you. If they find out … Imagine a dwarf in a black magic scandal. I’ll be dead in the water. I’ll never work again.’ She is ranting now.

‘You’re never going to work again, period. None of us will.’

I decide on a more direct approach.

‘God, Victor! We’re making you so miserable, you’re losing your hair,’ I say breezily, brushing his shoulder with my hand, and hairs fly off like autumn leaves falling. Actually I am feeling quite sorry for Victor by now. He knows we all hate him. He is exhausted. I am exhausting. And I have to hand it to him. He is tenacious. He will be there with Cher and the ants after the nuclear war.

‘Yes, you’re killing me,’ he says wryly. ‘OK, let’s try it again.’

We all drag ourselves from our chairs while Merrylegs discreetly crawls across the floor on all fours, hair-hunting.

‘I got at least ten,’ she whispers.

That night I race off to Corky’s after work and present the girls with the hairs. Miguelina’s leaving and her bags are packed. She is taking the red eye to Miami and then on to Santo Domingo. She holds the black strands up to the light, chuckling.

‘You’re not going to kill him, are you?’

‘Yelax, Roopi. We just give him a leetle smack.’

‘That’s what the mafia say when they are going to break someone’s legs.’

‘Oy, Roopi. Is a spiri-uh-ahl smack.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘We got two candles blessed by Father Gabriel – very important – and we plait them together and now we burn the hairs. Leave us. You gonna see.’

Nothing happens.

The next day we are on the set in the studio. It looks just like the embassy. There are three sections: the ambassador’s office, another office for Merrylegs and Megan the other secretary, and then Trey’s boiler room at the end. Facing all this is a bank of empty seats, and above it hangs a firmament of follow-spots and klieg lights. When Derek arrives he clutches his chest.

‘Oh, Christ,’ he says, looking at his watch. ‘In five hours this place will be filled with screaming and disappointed people.’

‘It already is! Look over there.’

Victor is having a heated discussion with some NBC executives. They have begun to assemble, like ghouls, watching the proceedings silently, huddling and pointing in small groups, as technicians focus the lights and push around the vast cameras, which look like Daleks, blinking and gliding. Victor is now ensconced in a control room at the back of the studio and has been reduced to a voice. He talks crisply to us over a loudspeaker, like God or Oz.

And so there we are, Sir Derek and me, cowering on the other side of the door. The audience are screaming. Corky and Gladys are there. They are both wearing their giant rosaries. My LA agent Nick has disappeared – an ominous sign. Everyone from NBC is in the house. Jeff Zucker has shaken my hand and told me how happy he is to have me here at NBC. I feel idiotically chuffed. Again, I think – maybe this is enough. It doesn’t matter what happens next, if he isn’t that happy for very long. Backstage we all hug one another – even me and Victor – with the hilarity of condemned men. Finally Derek and I are alone. And the countdown begins. I want to say sorry to Derek. But it just doesn’t come out.

‘Darling,’ he whispers to me instead. ‘Would you think it so very awful if I say to you that I hope to fuck we don’t get picked up?’

And action.

The first scene goes pretty well. The audience are trained and laugh if you drop a teaspoon, so that by the end of it we are all
feeling a bit giddy. The Daleks circle and scrutinise us with their black inhuman eyes. Derek and I possibly overdo it, and play and arch at them as if we were Gloria Swanson at the end of
Sunset Boulevard
, wild-eyed and shrieking. Why not? The audience seem to love it and only when we get to the second half of the show does it all begin to fall apart.

I have hardly had time to learn the new scene with Megan and in the middle of it I stop dead, scouring my mind for the next line, but it is nowhere to be found. The world literally stands still. The audience – so animated until a second ago – watch me silently on the edge of their seats. They have to laugh again and their mouths are open like baby birds craning to be fed. I feel as if I am going to puke at any moment. I try to speak. Nothing comes out. I look at Megan. She stares love and support at me, and mouths the text, but I can’t hear. A chasm has formed between us. Tears prick at the back of my eyes. Faces from the shadows stop what they’re doing and look. Merry watches from the wings. Everyone in this fucking studio is watching me. Silence. Just the whirring of air and electricity.

‘Sorry,’ I say finally.

There is an almost palpable exhalation of despair from the viewers as I rip down the fourth wall between us. The tension gone, people converge upon me from all corners. Make-up. Hair. Producers. Writers. All with some instruction or other. Tears begin to leak from my eyes. The first assistant circles me, talking into his headphones to the control room.

‘What do I tell him? OK. I’ll tell him.’

‘Can we go back a bit? I got lost,’ I whisper, but nobody is listening.

A brush whirls out and powders all the sweat that is dripping off me into a kind of mudpack on my face. The witch on the end of this mini-broomstick scrutinises me with undisguised horror.

‘Wait,’ she screams. ‘I gotta redo him.’ She prods the circling assistant with the brush.

I squint with horror towards the control room. ‘No. I’m fine. Honestly.’

‘Really?’ says the lady, considering. ‘No! It’s a total redo. He’s sweated the whole thing off.’

I am bundled backstage and the warm-up artiste rematerialises. As the witch fixes my foundation I look at the script but it’s just words now. I can’t take any of them in. Within minutes I am back on the floor. The warm-up artiste is much funnier than I will ever be and the audience is reassured and laughing along again, like a baby who has had its nappy changed. The technicians leave the stage and we start the scene once more. It goes OK for about a minute and then I lose the thread again. I stand there for a moment with my hands on my hips, trying to keep it together, but it feels as though I am about to pass out.