Did people look at me and think, “She’s let herself go?” Did my actress rivals look at me and smirk, satisfied that my weight gain rendered me powerless to steal roles, scenes, or lines? As I pulled into my parking space, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe it was not just increasing familiarity but my nonthreatening physique that was the reason everyone had seemed a lot more comfortable around me lately. My presence no longer prompted them to ask themselves, “If this happened, then what’s next?” as another actress, Lucy Liu, had joined the cast and answered that question. I was no longer the new girl, and I had proven to them that I wasn’t a threat to their status on the show. With the weight gain, I wasn’t exactly the hot blond bombshell that Cage and Fish talked about almost daily in their dialogue to each other. I cringed to read their lines and how they would talk about my character as being “hot” and “untouchable.” While I wanted to be considered attractive, it made me uncomfortable to be thought of as being sexually desirable to men. But mainly the dialogue made me uncomfortable because I knew that reality didn’t match up to the character David Kelley had written.
“Hey, Porshe. Haven’t seen you in awhile. How were your days off?” Jane passed me in the hall on her way to set.
“Great, thanks.”
“See you out there.”
I walked into my dressing room and threw my bag down on the sofa.
There was a sharp knock on my dressing room door.
“Good morning, Portia. Makeup is ready for you.”
“Be right there.”
I walked around the desk to look in the mirror. The fat that I’d felt on my way there didn’t really show under my sweater. At least not when I was standing. I lifted my sweater so I could see my bare stomach and the fat that I remembered feeling. But I didn’t see fat. My stomach was flat. I stared into the eyes reflected in the mirror. They were smiling at me as if to say, “Oh, Porshe, what the hell are you worried about?” For a brief moment, I felt relief. But it didn’t last long. As I opened the wardrobe and looked at its contents, a wave of panic passed through my body; a hot, rolling rush of panic beginning in my stomach and ending at my head. Hanging on the bar were ten, maybe fifteen, sets of bras and panties. They were the kind of bras and panties that are intended to be seen, not the plainer flesh-toned kind that I was used to finding on the rack. Attached to the first pair was a note:
“For next episode. Please try on at your convenience. Thanks, V.”
Shit. Shit! The next episode was eight days away. There was a knock at the door. I jumped out of my skin.
“Portia. Can you go to makeup, please? We’re going to get to your scene in less than an hour.”
“Alright! I’m coming!” As usual, the people who deserved it the least get the brunt of my anger. The person who deserved my anger the most was my fat, lazy, self. I had been in complete denial. I’d decided that rather than get off my fat, lazy ass and accept responsibility for my job, rather than seizing this amazing opportunity and using every scene as a showcase for my talent, I’d just sit around drinking beer and eating Mexican food. I stormed out of my dressing room and walked toward the makeup trailer, the voice in my head berating me.
You can’t eat again until that scene. You need to work out. You’re such an idiot for thinking you could get away with bingeing on Mexican food and not working out when this kind of thing could’ve happened at any time.
For a brief moment, I was aware that Peter MacNicol had passed me in the hallway. I’m sure he said hello, but it was too late to reply. The underwear scene probably had something to do with him. Our romance had been heating up and I bet there was some kind of love scene in the next episode. Maybe that’s all it was. Maybe it would be a shot of me lying down on a bed in my underwear, or a waist-high shot of me unbuttoning a shirt to expose the top part of one of those pretty, lacy brassieres hanging in my closet.
“Hey!” My makeup artist gave me a hug and with a guttural laugh she said, “Did you read the next episode? You’re doing a striptease, girl!”
I pulled the script from her hands and with a cold, emotionless expression I looked at what she’d been reading. I didn’t want to give her any more enjoyment at my discomfort than she was already having. Of course, I didn’t know if enjoyment was what she was experiencing for sure, but given the way we talked about our weight struggles almost every day, I couldn’t imagine that she wasn’t enjoying my discomfort a little, if just in that way that people are grateful they aren’t dealt the same fate. The “better you than me” comment that is always delivered with a weird laugh makes it seem like they’re ready to pull up a ringside seat for the ensuing spectacle. The script read: Nelle waits in her office for Cage. Cage enters. Nelle begins to remove her clothing. Cage is flustered. Nelle, in underwear, walks toward him. He runs out of the office and down the hall. At that moment, I would’ve done anything to run out of the makeup trailer, to my car, and out of this ugly studio with its square buildings and its one-way windows. I would go home and pack my suitcases and take my car to the airport, get on a plane, go back to Melbourne, Australia, and just start the whole damn thing over. Start my whole damn life over. I’d go to law school, a studious, serious girl who wasn’t bopping around from photo shoots to lectures, having earned a place there after attending the local high school where I was the richest and smartest girl in the class. I would never have modeled, and so I’d think I was attractive just as I was, and I’d live in this blissful ignorance with my mother and father, because maybe for some reason he’d still be alive, too, and he wouldn’t need me to go out and prove I was pretty and special, because he’d know that I was pretty and special, and he’d tell me that anyone who thought I wasn’t the prettiest and smartest girl they’d ever known was stupid. Or jealous. Or both.
“Wow. That’s really exciting. That’s great for my character.” When attacked, defend by lying.
I sat in the makeup chair staring at my reflected image as it was transformed from a hopeful twenty-four-year-old to a beaten down, emotionally bankrupt forty-year-old; the thick foundation covered my pores, suffocating my skin, the heavy eye shadow creating a big, deep crease in my eyelids, the red lipstick drawing the eye to my thin, pursed lips. Until now, it had looked to me like the mask of a character. No matter how scared or insecure I was, there was always a glint in my eyes underneath the thick eyeliner that reminded me that this was just a character, that I was young and exciting and had a life away from this world where there were no trees and no one to talk to. But sitting in the makeup chair at that moment, watching the transformation, the lines were blurred. It seemed like less work to create the defensive, cold character. It seemed like we were just putting some makeup onto my face. We were just defining my eye, giving color to my pale lips, covering up my imperfections. The fat was back, too. The fat that I’d felt in the car, spilling over the waistband of my jeans, was visible through my sweater, and I knew that everyone in the trailer was looking at it, wondering how I was going to get it off in eight days. But no one was wondering more than me.
I joined a gym. It was close to the studio, so if I had a break during the day I could just hop in the car and onto a treadmill. That was part of how I got the weight off. The other part was just not eating, which is a highly underrated strategy as zero meals a day works just as well for weight loss as six small ones. The only problem was I was so hungry and weak I limped to the finish line, no longer caring how I was going to stand in my underwear, or which angle would most flatter my body. I stopped caring to the extent that after the rehearsal, my hunger wrestled with my common sense and like a diva I demanded that a PA go to a Starbucks and bring me back a bran muffin. But if that kind of behavior is ever justified, it was at that moment when the script called for an extreme situation and I was just expected to comply. There was no question in David Kelley’s mind as to whether I would do that scene. He demanded that I do it, and so I made my demands in retaliation. “Let’s see the new blonde in her underwear!” Well then, I said, “Get me a muffin!” Actually, demanded is the wrong word. I asked. But it was so unusual for me to ask for anything, it replays in my mind as being a little harsher than it was. It was very common for actors to ask PAs to get them food or to mail a package or to put gas in their cars, but I always felt quite disgusted by it. I always felt that actors were just testing the limits of what someone would do for them just to see if they’d do it. I hate entitlement. But more than that, I hate that someone else in the same position as me feels entitled when I just feel lucky as hell.