The PA wore shorts and sneakers. She looked flustered and told me that she’d been frantically looking for me. She told me that she was scheduled to be waiting for me at my parking space at 10:45. The more she talked (who feels confident enough about their legs to show them off without the help of high heels?) the more stupid I felt for arriving so early and for leaving my dressing room before a PA came to get me. Damn it. All I had to do on my first day was appear to be professional, to know what I’m doing, and I have already given myself away. By the time I got to the wardrobe rooms, I had a knot in my gut. I was dying for a cigarette. What was a lesbian doing here on this show playing an ice-cold attorney in the courtroom who would, no doubt, be hot in the bedroom in an upcoming episode? Would I fit into a size 6 suit?
I hovered at the doorway of the costume designer’s office, waiting for her to acknowledge me as she sat at her desk. When she turned to find me standing at the door, I could see that she was on the phone.
“Come in,” she mouthed, gesturing for me to enter. I walked across the threshold and into the rooms that would be the main stage for the drama my life was about to become—a drama in which I wrote, directed, produced, and played all parts: my very own one-woman show. I stood in the middle of the room since racks of clothing flanked the walls and took up most of the space, leaving only a small, carpeted square in the center like a tiny stage, but instead of facing an audience, it faced a large, full-length mirror.
“Hi. I’m Portia.” I extended my hand and smiled at her as she hung up the phone and walked toward me from her desk.
“It’s nice to meet you in person. I’m Vera. Welcome to the show.”
Vera and I had met over the phone when she asked for my measurements.
“Thirty-four, twenty-four, thirty-five.”
That sounded better than the truth, which started at around 32 and probably ended up around 38. I stopped measuring after my first interview with my modeling agents at age twelve when they told me to call them with my bust, waist, and hip measurements when I got home.
“Thirty-two, twenty-seven, thirty-seven,” I had told the Team Modeling booker.
“Are you sure?” A long silence followed, then my next instruction. “Well, just tell people you’re thirty-four, twenty-four, thirty-five, ok? We’ll put those measurements on your card.”
Now I stood center-stage in the Ally McBeal fitting room in front of the mirror, dressed in a pinstriped suit with a nipped-in waist and a large, rounded lapel. All the suits I had tried so far had fit. I was relieved. After all my anxiety preceding the fitting, I felt relaxed. I admired my reflection in the mirror. The suit I was wearing was my favorite for no other reason than it was a size 4. I was almost giddy with excitement. For my first episode of Ally McBeal, I would wear a size 4.
“Ugh. Take that off. That’s horrible.”
As I began to reluctantly take off the size 4 suit, Vera walked to her desk and picked up a large folder. I could see that the script inside had colored tabs and notes all down the margins.
“I think your character would only wear monochromatic suits. Conservative. Do you think there would be a hint of sexiness to her—like, say, a slit in the leg of a pencil skirt?”
“Umm. Sure.” I thought Nelle should have some sexiness and I guessed a pencil skirt was really the only way to make a business suit sexy. I was worried, though, that my hips looked big in pencil skirts.
“What do you think she’d wear on weekends?”
I attempted to sound like I had given the character’s costumes a great deal of thought, but it was immediately obvious to me that Vera’s exploration of my character was far more extensive than my own. To my surprise, her preparedness was the only unnerving part of the whole fitting. I was so busy trying to fit into the size 6 suit, to be the perfect-looking addition to TV’s hottest legal show, I’d forgotten to think about the clothes as an expression of the character I was about to portray, potentially for years. She closed her folder and walked back to her desk.
“Well, we’ve got a pretty good start. Let’s just go with what we have for this week and we’ll figure the rest out later.”
I put my Capri pants back on, thanked Vera, and headed out. I left the fitting and was escorted by the PA to the makeup trailer in a state of mild shock. I was amazed that I could ever walk out of a fitting feeling ashamed for something other than my imperfect body. Still, I had passed my first big test of fitting in, and in the case of clothes, fitting into a sample size, and I was on to my second. My body had passed the test, next was my face.
As I shook the hand of the makeup artist, Sarah, and looked her in the eyes, I registered her pupils dilating to begin their scan across my face. Could she see imperfections? Discoloration? Makeup?
“Are you wearing makeup?” The question was straightforward, but her tone was slightly incredulous. Enough to make me feel very embarrassed.
“No.” When attacked, defend by lying.
“Sit down. Let’s get started. Is there anything I should know before I start?”
“No. You’re the expert. I’m sure it’ll be great.”
The truth was, I wasn’t so sure. Practically every time I sat in a makeup chair, I’d look worse at the end than I did before we started. But I had never really learned what it was that made me look bad, plus even if I had, I didn’t feel it was my place to tell a makeup artist how to do her job, much less the head of the makeup department for Ally McBeal. As I was shuffled back and forth between the two chairs due to the hair and makeup artists alternately being needed on set (God, what was going on in there in the scene before mine? What was I about to face?), I applied a similar philosophy of trusting the experts in the hair department to do their job. After we collectively decided that Nelle Porter should wear her hair in a bun, how my hair was pulled back and all other decisions were my hairstylist’s business. After all, I was the new girl. I didn’t want to make a scene or stand out, I just wanted to fit in. I wanted everyone I met to think of me as quiet and professional. I wanted the headline to be “how the new character melted seamlessly into the ensemble cast.” And now that I’d left Portia on the floors of the hair, makeup, and wardrobe rooms, it was time for Nelle Porter to meet the cast.
5
CAGEEveryone. I’d like to introduce the newest member of Cage and Fish. Please welcome Nelle Porter.
ELAINE(to Ally and Georgia)Just so we’re clear, we hate her, right?
ALLY AND GEORGIA(nodding in agreement)Uh huh.
“Cut. Back to one.”
I stood on the stairs of the law office set staring out into the crowd. There they were. Ally, Billy, Georgia, Elaine, Fish—assembled on the floor of the office foyer, looking up at me standing midway down the staircase preparing to deliver a speech about how I was going to breathe new life into the firm and shake things up around the place. I hadn’t even met them yet. I just stood on the staircase smiling awkwardly at each cast member as they tentatively smiled and waved, sizing me up just as their characters were directed to do in the script. I was meeting the lawyers as Nelle Porter for the first time, and I was meeting the cast as Portia de Rossi in the same way, from the same step, and we were all carefully and awkwardly smiling and waving. How ironic that my character was supposed to be intimidating to these people, and yet I was too scared to hold a script to check my lines because I knew the shaking piece of paper would give me away—the trembling hands that were supposed to encase nerves of steel, the hands that belonged to “Sub-zero Nelle,” the self-assured woman whose only purpose in the show was to be the antithesis to insecure Ally. I worried about meeting them. I worried that I would say something that would show them that I wasn’t going to be the outstanding addition to the cast that they’d been told by the show’s producers I would be. What if they could immediately see that I wasn’t exceptional and special, that I was merely an average girl?