For some reason, I don’t remember the audition for my favorite Rice Krispies ad, but I do recall loving the actual shoot, because I was asked to play an upright piano that made no sound as a make-believe Snap, Crackle, and Pop danced along the ledge. I really had to use my imagination to pull this off, instead of simply memorizing lines, since I talked to three invisible cartoon men who danced on soundless keys while singing, “It’s fun to put Snap, Crackle, Pop … into your morning!” The animated characters and the piano music were added in post-production.
The commercial aired a few months later, around the time that my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Tresham, had a baby. Although she was in her thirties, I fantasized about being her best friend—she was pretty, kind, and really young compared to the frumpy old schoolmarms who stalked the halls at Cherry Avenue Elementary. When she was out on maternity leave, all of the students, especially the girls, couldn’t wait for her to get back and tell us about the new addition to her family. It was a huge event in the life of a seven-year-old.
The day Mrs. Tresham returned, she called me to her desk after class.
“Melissa, I’ll never forget seeing you on TV while I was in the hospital having my son,” she said. “Your smile really helped me get through labor!”
As an adult who’s given birth three times now, I can’t fathom having a warm association with anything that happens when you’re in that much pain. But as a child who looked up to Mrs. Tresham, I remember feeling so important to be part of such a big, happy moment for her. My hobby was actually special enough to help someone I really liked, and she first recognized me on the television and then acknowledged me in real life. The kids also gave me the adoring nickname “Rice Krispie Girl”—which I guess you could say was my first “character name,” long before I’d become known as Clarissa or Sabrina. It was my Romper Room dream come true.
Chapter 3
THE DAY MY TIPSY DAD WENT PUNK AND HIT MY MOM (OR, MY YEAR IN TV MOVIES)
Though cereal commercials and magazine ads made me a local celebrity among teachers and friends when I was young, my reel truly started to fill up when I did a succession of TV guest appearances, movies, and miniseries from 1985 to 1986. I think the TV movie and miniseries genres were particularly significant to boosting my early career because they played such a big role in mid-’80s television. Back then, Sunday was the most popular night for TV watching for families, and the miniseries and made-for-TV movie formats were all the rage.
I’m no cultural historian, but I suspect the reason for this was twofold (at least). First, both genres were self-contained stories, even if told over multiple episodes. Studies say sixty million households had cable in 1985, 88 percent of whom subscribed to an extra cable service like HBO or Showtime and already tuned in to prime-time soaps like Dallas and Knots Landing. So the notion of a movielike experience on TV was more popular than a Rubik’s cube in study hall, especially since they covered dramatic topics like eating disorders, kidnapped children, and murderous teens. Second, one 1986 poll said the average American household had their boob tube on for seven hours a day, so sinking into a network movie or series was a welcome part of their routine. As a busy mom of three who loves to DVR Grey’s Anatomy and Friday Night Lights, two of the closest shows we now have to a popular miniseries, I can relate.
Personally, these genres meant a lot to me for less thinky reasons. Unlike when I shot commercials in New York, a lot of guest roles and TV movies and miniseries let me travel, and this was when I began to appreciate hotel rooms for their free soaps, chlorinated pools, and pillows that felt like a piece of heaven. Traveling also allowed me to eat a lot of ice cream. No matter where we went, Mom and I explored the sweet shops in every new city we hit.
Remember racing home from the bus stop to watch the ABC Afterschool Special? They had serious and often controversial story lines that dealt with big-deal, coming-of-age topics like drug and alcohol abuse, divorce, bullying, interracial friendship, and teen pregnancy. They also had ridiculously dramatic names like Just Tipsy, Honey; The Day My Kid Went Punk; My Dad Lives in a Downtown Hotel; and Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom. Well, on Saturday mornings, ABC also aired the much lighter ABC Weekend Special, a half-hour series for kids. Unlike their more emotionally charged big-sister shows, these episodes were all based on innocent storybook and literary elements or characters—and, hold the phone, I was in one with Drew Barrymore.
In 1985, Drew and I starred in The Adventures of Con Sawyer and Hucklemary Finn. (Who wrote these titles?) This was basically a female take on the classic Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn tale, only here, two teen girls try to prevent a robbery and get into lots of rambunctious trouble in the process. Drew won the main role as Con Sawyer, while I was a character named Cindy, who was Con’s spoiled, bratty younger stepsister. About 75 percent of the cast were kids, so it didn’t take long for us to have our own adventures on location in Natchez, Mississippi—with Drew, of course, as our real-life Huck.
Though I was only nine at the time, Drew was ten and still in her contentious, wild child, dope-smoking stage. She was an intrepid little girl with an audacious personality who’d yet to grow into the sweetheart we all love now. One day, she took the group behind our motel to watch her give a French-kissing lesson with costar Kimber Shoop, who went on to play the title role in The Ted Kennedy Jr. Story (yup, a TV movie). I’m bummed to report that she didn’t let me come watch her wiggle her tongue in Kimber’s mouth, because I was a year younger than her, but she did teach me how to backstroke in the motel pool and ask me to her room to watch her on TV in Firestarter. All I remember is her enormous earring collection laid out by the motel sink. She had these dangling skeleton ones that struck me as a little daring and creepy for a ten-year-old.
Drew also planned a trip to the mall to see Desperately Seeking Susan with the rest of the cast. It was during this field trip that I caught a small but telling glimpse of how Drew likely ruled her family’s roost, when she wasn’t controlling our set. As moms and their kids piled into vans to catch Madonna’s 7 P.M. film debut, Drew announced that she wanted to do some shopping first, so we’d all need to see the 9 P.M. show instead. A lot of the moms were thrown by this little spark plug’s audacity, but of course, it was my Long Island mom who spoke up.
“My daughter has to learn her lines and then get to bed at a reasonable hour, so she’ll need to see the 7 P.M. show,” insisted Mom in a firm but rational way.
“What a bitch!” yelled the star of our movie, once Mom was out of sight.
Though Drew’s mom tried to calmly explain that my own mom was just looking out for me, Drew didn’t apologize or look ashamed. I would’ve had a bump on my head the size of the Appalachian Mountains if I’d muttered such an ugly word at that age. She just got back to gossiping with the other, older girls. She also didn’t realize I was in the back of the van, and that I was upset that she’d called my wonderful mommy the b-word. I’m sure she’d take it back now, if she could.
Much more glamorous than shooting on that backwoods Mississippi lot was a job I scored soon after Con Sawyer, a CBS miniseries called Kane & Abel. It was about two strangers who share the same birthday—and while one comes from a privileged background and the other a poor one, they both get filthy and serendipitously rich in New York City. I appeared in one scene of this movie, but it mattered for two reasons. First, we shot it in the middle of the night, from 11 P.M. till 6 A.M., and I wasn’t even allowed to stay up this late during slumber parties. Even more exciting was shooting in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria, one of the grandest hotels in New York City.
Though I was nine at the time, I played Abel’s daughter, named Florentyna Rosnovski, during her seventh birthday party (I always played younger than I was). In the scene, my “dad” and I look out at the elaborate room—with its marble floors, glittery chandelier, and black-tie guests—as he reminds me that the night is “all for me.” I wore a flowing pink party gown, and as a child who couldn’t even afford multiple audition dress
es, I could hardly contain myself. I was so excited to be in such a fancy room, wearing a fancy gown, in the middle of the night, that there was no need for me to act when the director cued me to show Florentyna’s enthusiasm. For seven hours, I was a mini-Cinderella at an elaborate ball designed all for me—at least until sunrise.
As a break from all the dramatic roles, I also liked guest starring on popular TV shows. Two that I loved were The Lucie Arnaz Show and Saturday Night Live, which I appeared in three episodes of, with hosts Jim Belushi, Roy Scheider, and Billy Crystal. Working on SNL came with the best perks of any project I’d taken on so far. I was allowed to stay up late (again!); met musical guest Billy Ocean, who performed my favorite song, “Caribbean Queen”; and took home a Barbie Dreamhouse from the set (they no longer needed the prop, which meant I really scored).
My all-time favorite guest role, though, was for the cop drama The Equalizer; I couldn’t get away from the heavy stuff for too long. This hit was the Law & Order of its time and starred stage and screen actor Edward Woodward. Between Mr. Woodward’s sophisticated British accent and dashing silver hair, he was like a warm and fuzzy 007. No wonder he became a hero to little boys everywhere. For my part, I played Laura Moore, a young girl who’d hired the Equalizer to help me and my mom, played by Caitlin Clarke, escape an abusive father, played by Kenneth Ryan. This was my first real taste of an episodic show’s demanding schedule, since we worked long days for about two weeks, on multiple locations around Manhattan.
I enjoyed every minute of it, particularly watching how fast the stunts and dramatic physical performances could turn into bloopers, some of which were never reshot. For example, in one scene, Kenneth hits Caitlin’s character with a right-hand slap, but instead she falls to her left; this is so obvious, they redid it. But in another, Kenneth kidnaps me and then carries me up an on-ramp to the West Side Highway and dangles me over it. I felt so bad for the actor who had to lug my body up an incline and then hoist me into the air that I decided I’d help him try to kill me. If you ever catch the scene, you’ll see that as soon as we reach the railing, I throw my feet up on the edge to relieve some of my body weight. My mom held her breath down below, as she watched her baby hang over an eight-lane highway, without a stunt double. After this harrowing experience, she became much stricter about what I was and wasn’t allowed to do on a set.
At the end of my one-year TV blitz, I couldn’t have asked for a better finale—a month in Vancouver shooting a terrific television movie called Christmas Snow with my mom and new baby sister, Emily, who traveled with us. This was the first time I’d ever traveled outside the country for work, and I couldn’t wait to get my passport stamped. If you get the chance to see the movie, it’s about a mean-spirited landlord who goes missing during a snowstorm but learns how to be happy when a woman and her kids, me included, rescue him from the bitter cold. The movie stars Katherine Helmond, aka Mona from Who’s the Boss, and the unforgettable comic legend Sid Caesar, who I’d adored since he played Coach Calhoun in Grease. Sid was the only star I’d ever worked with who I recognized. The first time I saw him, I was intimidated for sure, but I found him to be serious and kind. We didn’t have a lot of scenes together, though I did with Katherine, who was lovely.
I spent most of my time on the set of our TV family’s candy store and dressed in 1920s costumes. If it wasn’t thrilling enough to wear old-fashioned clothes and watch the crew make falling snow from bubble machines, Mom took me and Emily to the World’s Fair on weekends, and I got to ride the log flume as much as I wanted.
Another thing that really stuck with me about filming Christmas Snow is how quickly and effectively it rescued me from feeling the impact of my first career-related rejection. I was lying on the floor, watching bad Canadian TV, when Mom got a call that I’d been cut from a scene in Crocodile Dundee in which Paul Hogan magically fixes a cut on my knee. I’d shot in Central Park, just weeks earlier. When she told me, I didn’t lose sleep or stop eating my bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips. I shrugged my shoulders and put on a pout, and then got distracted when Mom asked if I wanted bubble-gum ice cream from the shop down the street. I can’t believe how quickly I bounced back as a kid, and how little it took to get me there. But I was in the middle of a tremendous run, and even at their worst, my childhood blues couldn’t keep me down for long. They were nothing compared to an Afterschool Special.
Chapter 4
COMING OF STAGE
Like most preteens, I spent my middle school years trying to figure out how I fit in and who I fit in with. But for me, this went beyond wondering if the football star wanted to “go out” (he didn’t) or if the popular kids would ever ask me to sneak out of flute practice to smoke with them in the hall (they did, once, but I guiltily looked over my shoulder the whole time like a nun taking a pregnancy test). While these tween worries were real, they were compounded by the fact that I was living two parallel and very different lives—one in suburban Long Island, and one among Manhattan’s theater community. In retrospect, it was probably good practice for straddling my two worlds today in suburban Connecticut and Los Angeles. Except now I’m trying to impress soccer dads with my orange slices and fight Hollywood’s It girls for roles.
On Long Island, I loved school but had trouble finding my niche. Though I was outgoing, social, and admired by my peers in elementary school because my face constantly popped up in commercials during The Care Bears and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, in middle school, my previous classmates were mixed in with kids from two other large schools. That meant four hundred students, few of whom knew me or cared about my reputation, were tossed together like a salad—and I somehow became the raw onions that get pushed to the side. My closest friends began hanging out with girls who snuck out of the house for make-out parties in the woods and had wittier attitudes than mine, so I was rarely invited to bonfires or to play spin the bottle. And while I excelled at impressing teachers, handing in homework on time, and getting good grades—my sharp memory and that Hart family tenacity helped me through trickier subjects—it wasn’t effortless, so I couldn’t claim “the smart kid” as my identity either. I did excel in math and science, and being on Student Council and playing flute in the band made me burst with pride. But in my quest to become a “nerd,” I fell off around “dork.”
Consequently, I did my own thing and kept a few friends from elementary school that I’d see at lunch or on weekends. While most of my peers experimented with beer, pot, and blow jobs after 3 P.M., I went into Manhattan every day. I’d moved on from commercials by age twelve, so the distinguished arena of Off-Broadway theater became more and more my thing. Few of my classmates knew about my other world. The stage was where I began finding my people, and it was soon more interesting to me than anything the kids on Long Island could come up with. Let ’em have their cliques and near-miss attempts at popularity and dating. I had a whole secret life, filled with eccentric and smart adult role models, and an audience’s applause every night.
Theater was a different beast than commercial work. The lines were obviously meatier, but the hours were long, budgets were meager, and the critics’ expectations were elusive. It’s similar to being in an independent, extremely low-budget film, where everyone pools their talents to make a piece of art that they hope will resonate with an audience. It’s not like theater is a great moneymaker for actors either, especially Off-Broadway. I think it actually cost my family money for me to do so much stage work, since we put about a hundred miles a day on our car, paid for gas and tunnel tolls, and then hired a wonderful English au pair named Sarah to spend time with my siblings while Mom was with me at most rehearsals and performances.
When I was around twelve years old, I began working with big-name actors, directors, and writers. Three performances stuck out as having the most impact on the person and actor I was becoming. The first was a small lab reading of The Valerie of Now, written by Peter Hedges and directed by Joe Mantello, for the prestigious Circle Repertory Company. F
or those who don’t know, a lab reading is like a one-week rehearsal and performance for theater members, to decide whether the funders want to produce the play—kind of like a TV pilot, but for the stage.
In The Valerie of Now, I played a little girl who “rides” a bike (it was attached to a contraption that let me pedal in place) while performing an emotionally gutsy monologue. It was about twenty minutes long and included a lot of ’70s songs like “Stand by Your Man” and Minnie Riperton’s “Lovin’ You,” which I had to listen to over and over to learn the lyrics. (As a twelve-year-old, I’d have much preferred to spend QT with Bon Jovi.) So as I biked down the street/stage, I talked and sang to myself and to the neighbors I passed. It can be hard enough to walk and talk on a stage, but try riding a bike that’s going nowhere, while delivering lines and hitting all the right notes to music you’ve never heard before—including the falsetto in “Lovin’ you/I see your soul come shinin’ through…” I mean, thank God I don’t do musicals.
This was also the first time I worked with serious artists so clearly destined for great things. After our lab, Peter went on to write the novel What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and adapt it as a screenplay, receive an Academy Award nomination for adapting About a Boy for film, and cowrite and direct the poignant and hilarious film Dan in Real Life—among other admirable coups. As for actor and director Joe Mantello, he’s perhaps best known for his work with Wicked, Take Me Out, and Angels in America, and is one of the great theater directors and actors of our day.
Melissa Explains It All: Tales from My Abnormally Normal Life Page 3