Shortly after the lab, I moved on to a full-length play called Beside Herself for the Circle Rep, which gave me more of an education in the arts than I could’ve received in a decade at Juilliard. Beside Herself had a small cast of six, including Lois Smith, Susan Bruce, Calista Flockhart, and William “Bill” Hurt. I threw myself into weeks of rehearsals, while watching celebrated talent and directors “find the character” and “explore the stage”—two things every actor needs to understand. It was also intense and intimidating to be around people so focused on their craft, especially since at thirteen years old, I didn’t have any real sense of anxiety or pressure. I just went in, followed the experts’ leads, and looked forward to my daily Snapple-and-Smartfood snack when I needed a break. I especially liked watching the cast center themselves with pre-show rituals—especially Calista. She’d do a series of yoga-like breathing and stretching exercises, and every night before the show, I’d do them with her behind the stage. It helped me find a few calm, pensive, and reflective moments to quiet and focus my mind before performing in front of such an enormous and daunting crowd.
I’ll be honest, Bill Hurt could’ve benefited from our de-stressing techniques. During the show’s run, he battled in a very public custody trial with the mother of his child, and there was a constant mumble about this. The paparazzi that hung outside the theater day and night, waiting to pounce with questions and cameras, were actually my first encounter with these shutterbugs. I found it fascinating to watch people whose job was to watch people.
And though Bill was even-tempered to me and my family—he taught me how to blow enormous bubbles with a soapy wand and showed my brother Brian how to shoot rubber bands—he could also be unapproachable and serious. A lot of his conversations were way over my head, especially as a kid whose favorite activity was making mindless mix tapes. I remember telling my mom that I didn’t understand what he was saying half the time, which prompted her to ask Bill to speak to me with a more simple vocabulary. He shot back that if I wanted to be around adults, I needed to learn to talk like one. And that was the end of that.
My mom did her best to be a team player during my Beside Herself run. Four times during the play, Lois Smith’s character entices Bill Hurt’s character into her house with a fresh pie. So to help the play save money, Mom offered to bake four homemade apple pies, for nine shows a week. (We needed fresh pies for each performance because Lois pulls pies out of the oven four times during the show for Bill to eat.) That’s thirty-six pies a week! So between baking pies and coordinating schedules for me and my siblings, Mom was busier than Snooki on Cinco de Mayo—though sometimes we left the pies sitting on the kitchen counter due to our hurry to beat rush-hour traffic and make it to the theater by my call time. One time we were an hour into our drive into Manhattan when Mom had to make a U-turn to go home to get the pies she forgot on our kitchen counter. And though she spent all this time playing Betty Crocker, Bill never thanked Mom for her pies. He just complained when they were slightly burnt or said all that sugar was starting to give him a spare tire.
Bill’s occasional gruffness did teach me a valuable lesson about how to interact with fans. One weekend, I invited six Long Island girls to come see the show. I’d just told them about my theater work a few weeks earlier, so it was new and fun for them, and for me, to see how my two worlds would mix. Most of the girls had strict requests from their parents to get Bill’s autograph on their playbill, and while he did this for five of them, he accidentally skipped my shyest friend, Nicole. When I told Bill that he missed her, he said that if Nicole wanted her playbill signed, she had to ask herself. This made Nicole feel even more timid. I’m not sure whether my friend ever got that autograph, but Bill’s reaction left such a big impression on me about how not to treat young fans. Since then, he’s famously proclaimed, “I’m not a star, I’m an actor,” and while I get where he’s coming from, being an actor doesn’t excuse you from being a good person. When kids are terrified to approach me and struck mute, even though they’re fans, I call it “The Santa Effect”—and like the jolly character, I reach out to them more often than not. Rob Lowe has said that “the effect famous people can have on other people’s lives is not to be underestimated”—and I’m sure his fans are more rabid than mine and Bill’s put together. Our industry has given us a larger-than-life presence to a lot of people, and it’s not okay to let them down or be dismissive when they’ve helped us attain the status and privilege we have. As an adult, I do admire Bill for his incredible body of work and efforts to keep his private and public lives separate and am grateful for his lessons on professionalism, but I really hope he’s found a way to take life less seriously. After four Academy Award nominations, I think we’re all aware that he’s “an actor.”
Perhaps Bill’s unpredictably stern and aloof presence throughout the show is one reason I was so surprised when he handed me a note, written on the play’s stationery, at the end of our run. He did this with all the cast members. Mine said:
Dear Melissa,
It’s been swell, swell, swell … working beside you. You have an angel in you. Not just pretty but also strong and wise … I see she will be there for you when you need her … [May] happiness and serenity visit your days abundantly.
Bill
I had no clue what most of this maturely worded note meant, even though Mom told me it was meant to be sweet. I’m sure Bill thought he was doing me a major favor by talking to me like I was a member of Mensa, and I wonder now if Bill had a softer core than he’d originally let on. Of course, the note was also his idea of a wrap gift while the rest of us handed out thoughtful jewelry and candles, so any points he gained for benevolence were kind of lost for being cheap or forgetful.
* * *
While Bill was no doubt an uncertain figure, I felt most at home with the beautiful women in our cast. Backstage, in the privacy of our group dressing room, it was lady central, and I loved it. Every day, I put myself to work with little tasks, while the women applied their makeup and all kinds of hair products. My favorite job? At a long mirror, in a room no wider than a railroad track, I’d slip between Lois, Susan, and Calista and collect any flower arrangements that had begun to droop. I’d then hang the flowers upside down for a few days until they dried perfectly straight. Finally, I’d put them back into their original vases, their beauty forever preserved.
It was among these women that at the age of thirteen I developed my first girl crush. I was mad about Calista, who was twenty-four at the time, the way young girls are when they look up to their prettiest babysitter or their most awesome camp counselor. Beyond teaching me how to physically and mentally prep for public performances, Calista became the big sister I always wanted, since I was the oldest of five at the time and needed a break from being a constant role model myself. She was honest, trustworthy, and open-minded, and she made me want to be a better version of me. As a young teen, the best way I knew to do this was to emulate her. On the non-school days that we rehearsed or performed, I spent the night at Calista’s Manhattan apartment with its view of the Empire State Building. Every time I drove into the city with my siblings, we competed to see who could see the skyline first, but out Calista’s window, it was always within reach and I never had to share it.
Calista also influenced my style a lot. She gave me her funkiest hand-me-downs, including a pair of black leather lace-up Kenneth Cole flats that she called “fence climbers,” since they had extremely pointy toes. Mom and I usually shopped at Daffy’s on rehearsal breaks, where I tried to channel her style. Back then, the discount clothing store carried the best designer stuff for kids and adults, so we really cleaned up. Daffy’s clothing was also a big difference from my usual preppy gear from Kids “R” Us. So much of a tween’s identity is linked to her clothing, so Calista’s suggestions and validation mattered more to me than she knew. Spending time with her felt like I was hanging out with Molly Ringwald in a John Hughes flick—complete with us as self-doubting, mildly neurotic character
s and a Simple Minds soundtrack in my head.
When we had time to kill before a matinee, rehearsal, or evening show, Mom, who was only nine years older than Calista, came with us to Seventh Avenue and Bleecker Street for our favorite pre-show meal at John’s Pizzeria. This place has been famous for its brick-oven pies since 1929. I thought their pizza had the most delicious thin crust, rumored to taste so good because of New York City’s tap water. Mom, Calista, and I could each eat a whole pie by ourselves. Years later, when Calista was rumored to have an eating disorder, I was tempted to leak shots of us surrounded by some big ol’ pizza pies to prove the gossipers wrong. I suspect she’s always been thin because she has a lot of nervous energy, and every time I read about a study that links fidgeting to weight loss, I think of Calista. Sometimes when she focused on a scene during rehearsals or listened to a director give notes, she crossed her arms around her body and rocked back and forth. I’ve always had a lot of energy myself, and if people diagnosed kids in the ’80s with clinical conditions as thoughtlessly as they do now, I’m positive I’d have been labeled ADHD and prescribed some serious meds. Though people just said I had “excess energy” back then, Calista’s rocking still looked appealing to me, so yes, I started to mimic her. Once she noticed it, she told me to stop, and said I shouldn’t rock like her. She never explained why.
Looking back, I realize that Calista probably felt nervous and insecure about her first role on Broadway. She was always hard on herself and concerned about other people’s impressions of her. On the night our New York Times review came out, she was particularly anxious. Mom drove Calista home most nights, since she lived near the Midtown Tunnel, which we took to Long Island. In the car, she was really concerned that the critic Frank Rich’s feedback could negatively impact her career and the show’s run, since his was the only review that seemed to matter. I remember how Calista’s adrenaline was pumping, and how confused she was about his review. It said:
Among the younger alter egos, Ms. Flockhart, in her New York debut, shows unusual promise. She brings consistent emotional clarity to messy post-pubescent effusions, not the least of which is the line, “No wonder this place is such a slushy dung heap of a horror!”
Impressive, right? Mom told her this, over and over, but I could tell from my mother’s insistent and strict tone that Calista’s nerves were on overdrive. Maybe Calista needed to hear how good she was from my mom, whom she admired, in order to believe it herself. I thought Calista was perfect, but nobody asked the thirteen-year-old in the backseat.
* * *
While my own reviews on stage were top-notch, my peers at home gave me questionable ones about who I was becoming, and what I began looking like, without their influence. As my wardrobe gradually took more cues from Calista’s closet, mixed with influences from our show’s young and punk backstage crew, Long Island didn’t celebrate my inner riot-grrrl. I’ll never forget when one chick came up to my locker to let me know that my black tulle skirt with red felt polka dots clashed with my black-and-red-striped shirt. She was so sure that dots and stripes were a bad mix, but I was so secure in my NYC-inspired outfit that I wore it again the very next day.
Of course, this faux pas was nothing compared to the ridicule I faced for wearing a pin on my jean jacket that said “Latent Thespian” among all the Hard Rock Café and George Michael buttons that covered its pockets. A theater friend gave it to me as a joke, but my dumb schoolmates didn’t know what a “thespian” was and assumed I was coming out of the closet. The truth is, I wanted to go completely goth or punk, but it always seemed like too much work to wear so many layers, all that makeup, dread my hair … so I settled for a leather coat, tight jeans, and a big, heavy, black men’s watch that I scored during a reading of For Esmé—with Love and Squalor for Broadway’s Circle in the Square. It was a prop, but the director let me keep it as a memento.
Yet despite my notice-me looks, most of my classmates were clueless about my second life, minus a small handful of friends. Once when I was miserably failing French class, I tried to translate, from English to French, “Jacques fell off the windsurfing board,” and this kid named Karl, who’d been a friend until middle school, decided to pick on me. After I did my best “Jacques est tombe de la planche a voile,” he called me out in front of everyone as being terrible at French and then tacked on the line “… besides, you’re a has-been. I haven’t seen you in a commercial in years!” Karl was right that I no longer did commercials, but I was also the youngest honorary member of the Circle Rep Company, so I didn’t feel like a has-been until he said this. It was a weird moment for me, because while I enjoyed spending time with adults who gave me respect and made me feel like a princess, I was still a tween, so I also wanted to impress the hormonal dipshits. Karl’s comment stuck with me for many years after, as I continued to be a sweaty, blubbering mess around people my own age.
It was always adults, especially creative ones, who had my back. They didn’t care if I wore men’s shirts, combat boots, and a scarf at the same time—in fact, they encouraged it, because they valued self-expression and being a good person. I’m so grateful that I didn’t feel the need to give in to every bit of peer pressure at school, because I had other role models to show me who I could become. It frightens me a little to think who I’d have turned into without them.
During middle school, theater gigs happened at breakneck speed: The Valerie of Now lab was in the spring of 1989 and Beside Herself began that fall. In the winter of 1990, my monologue from Peter and Joe’s The Valerie of Now became a thirty-minute intro for the Off-Broadway play Imagining Brad at the Players Theatre on MacDougal Street. Our “pilot” was picked up!
Rehearsals for The Valerie of Now monologue were much more relaxed and enjoyable than those for Beside Herself. And what an incredible acting exercise for a thirteen-year-old. Since a monologue by definition is one actor on stage performing solo, I spent most days in a room with just Peter and Joe—and we had a really good time. For this performance, I’d moved from the bike during our lab to a sofa now, explaining what was about to happen in the play by pretending to talk to myself and to friends on the phone. They cut all the songs except “I Am Woman,” probably because they weren’t impressed with my vocal skills. Here, I burst into Helen Reddy while jumping up and down on the sofa as the lights faded. (I made couch-jumping a thing, before Tom Cruise did it on Oprah.) This ending was different from what the guys had originally written, which was me making out with a pillow as if it were a boy. But as a kid myself, I was too embarrassed to perform this in front of two older men, much less an audience. I shyly confronted Peter and Joe about my trepidation to kiss a pillow onstage, and they listened to my fears and changed the scene so I’d feel more comfortable.
I learned my entire monologue so fast during rehearsals that Joe and Peter needed other interesting ways to fill our time. We did great acting exercises, similar to the ones I’ve heard that you learn at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. I ran around the room saying my lines as lots of different characters with all kinds of voices. The intention was to loosen me up and help me feel free and comfortable with the words I was saying. I repeated my lines as a baby, as Oscar the Grouch, as Jessica Rabbit … so fun.
Another clever activity was supposed to get rid of my harsh New York accent. For this, Joe and Peter asked me to repeat the phrase “calling all dog daughters” over and over again for days, until it went from sounding like “cawling awl dawg daaaawters” to the stripped-down, nonregional diction that’s become natural to me ever since. Well, once in a while, I do slip up. Years later, on the set of Clarissa Explains It All, the word “paranoid” always came out as “paranawd,” and on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, I once said “Santa Claws.” If you catch me after four tequila shots or cut me off on the 405, my inner New Yawker also rears its ugly accent. Then again, my diction is easily malleable. Because I married an Alabama man, I often speak with a Southern lilt. I basically went from Fran Drescher to Delta Burke—with a theatrical r
espite in between. But no matter how much my husband tries to correct me, a Florida orange will always be a “Flarrada awrange.”
In the eventual performance, my monologue in The Valerie of Now came across as the very grown-up and humbling text it was, but I couldn’t have done it without the skilled and inspiring support of my industry role models. My monologue was about how I’d gotten my period for the first time and had no idea how to handle it except to “stuff a bunch of tissues up there!” This was a pivotal line in the piece, because after my best Helen Reddy, the play went on to portray my Valerie character all grown-up and married to a blind man with no arms as a way to deal with her father physically and sexually abusing her on her birthday, when she got that first period.
I was secretly mortified to talk about menstrual blood and abuse implications like this, but I pulled it off with maturity. In fact, Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times, “Melissa Joan Hart delivers a precocious comic monologue with the worldly showbiz verve of a stand-up comedian more than twice her age. If she’s not careful, someone may write her an Annie 3.” This review, plus word-of-mouth buzz, is one of the things that helped me score my Clarissa Explains It All audition that summer, just a few months later. In fact, Mitchell Kriegman, Clarissa’s creator, joked that one reason he hired me was because his vet saw The Valerie of Now and named his stray dog after Valerie. I’d like to think that in a few years, when I went on to understudy three roles in The Crucible at the Belasco Theatre on Broadway with Martin Sheen and Michael York, this part played a role in getting that job, too.
The most surprising thing to me about the people who impact us most, especially during an influential time, is how long their imprint lasts. In 2001, I bumped into Calista at Madison Square Garden, when we were both performing in Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues V-Day fund-raiser to end abuse against women. I’d only seen Calista once since we worked together, when I briefly ran into her as she was walking her dog. But here we were again, backstage for a show, and it felt surreal. We hugged and then bolted into a tiny bathroom to have a smoke. We were both jittery about being on the same stage with Meryl Streep and Glenn Close while reciting lines about orgasms and rape.
Melissa Explains It All: Tales from My Abnormally Normal Life Page 4