Cybill Disobedience

by Cybill Shepherd

  People can be really dumb about a twin pregnancy. No woman who’s given birth would ever say chirpily, “That’s the way to do it: get it over with all at once.” Dr. Phelan had a more experienced take. “I wish twin pregnancies on my enemies,” he told me sympathetically, acknowledging the difficulty of dealing with twice the hormones, twice the heartburn, twice the discomfort, twice the nausea, twice the risk. I was not going to be a radiant bride.

  I have a photograph of my mother and stepfather, Mondo (they had married eight years earlier), holding a shotgun at my wedding to Bruce, who made a happy adjustment in his thinking about parenthood. A rabbi pronounced us man and wife in the shortest ceremony possible that was still legal. My gown was an antique ceremonial silk kimono, cream-colored with gold and orange fans. It was a wedding gift from my friend Kaori Turner (her mother had worn it), who also procured a black kimono for Bruce and a pink one for Clementine. The dining room of our house had been made into a Japanese tearoom, with rice-paper walls and tatami flooring. No shoes, which have always seemed a form of bondage to me, and no rings--I’ve never been big on jewelry.

  Helicopters were circling over the house, trying to get a shot of us or celebrity guests. (There were none, just twenty close friends. My father couldn’t be in the same room as my mother, my sister didn’t want to travel, and my brother and I weren’t talking to each other because we had a dispute about money. The photo exclusive went to David Hume Kennerly, who was one of Bruce’s friends and had won a Pulitzer for his Vietnam War coverage and had been the White House photographer during the Ford administration. A tiered white cake with a porcelain bride and groom and two baby carriages followed a steak dinner--ironic, since I had been fired as a spokesperson for the Beef Council because a journalist wrote that I was trying to eat less red meat. My mother, who knew me to lick the steak platter before I washed it, had exclaimed. “Are they crazy?” and threatened to write the council a letter. But my attorney later told me that the real reason was because I was pregnant before I was married, a highly publicized fact.) I was asleep by seven o’clock. The next morning, I reported back to the set, and Bruce went into his office, working underneath an eight-by-ten glossy of me from my days as his patient, inscribed, “Dear Bruce, I’ve seldom had such a laying on of hands. Love and thanks, Cybill.”

  My pregnancy further widened the chasm between me and the producers, who reacted as if the news was a thoughtless inconvenience. Other television actresses had been allowed to work real-life pregnancies into plotlines and production schedules. When I suggested a similar approach to Glenn Caron, his response was a tepid, “Well, you don’t leave me much choice.” Despite the fact that I developed gestational diabetes and was forbidden to work during my last trimester, I occasionally went to the studio against doctor’s orders. But Glenn continued to act as if I were personally, purposefully screwing him over (and would later claim that my pregnancy had destroyed Moonlighting). He attempted to accommodate the situation by having Maddie meet a short, stocky man on a train and marry him three days later. When I strongly voicd my objection that the character we had created in Maddie would never do such a thing, Glenn said words to the effect of “Just shut up and do your job, you’re not producing this show.”

  I had doctor appointments every few days to ensure that the twins, whose welfare was compromised by the diabetes, were healthy and developing on schedule.

  Eight-year-old Clementine, who had been begging for siblings, announced that she wanted to be present for their arrival. My midwife put together a slide show of some of her other births to prepare Clem for the noises Mommy would make, the presence of blood, and the fact that I would be in pain. After only two slides, Clementine put up her hand and said, “I don’t want to see anymore, Mommy. Just call me when the babies are cleaned up.’’

  Soon thereafter, she announced, “I’ve changed my mind. I’ve decided I don’t really want a brother and sister.”

  “Well, what should we do when they’re born?” I asked calmly. “Should we throw them out the window?”

  She frowned. “Nobody ever asked me about this, you know,” she said.

  A few weeks later, she came to me with a proud plan. “When we get home from the hospital,” she said brightly, “I’d like to put the babies in the washing machine.”

  “Really, honey?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Because,” she said, “I’d like to see them go around and around and around.”

  By my third trimester, I was so huge I began to resemble Marlon Brando. I could no longer get up off my futon on the floor, so I had a large platform built at the height of a normal bed. I still had to crawl to the edge and then push myself up. One early morning, I was awakened by an earthquake and in terror I stood straight up and jumped off the platform, running to see if Clementine was okay. She was, but my groin was not. I felt like I was walking around carrying two bowling balls between my legs. Every night I prayed, “Please God, let me get over this pain before I go into labor.”

  A few weeks before my October due date, Mother and Mondo drove out to California in a motor home. Every night, we’d sit in the yard taking a moon bath, soaking up the beams and watching the waxing crescent get fatter and brighter. The moon affects all bodies of water, I figured, and my babies were floating in their own private pool. On October 6, 1987, the moon went full at 12:03 A.M. My water broke at 12:08. I listened to a tape of Kathleen Battle singing “Ave Maria” as Mother, Mondo, Bruce, and I drove to the brand-new California Medical Center downtown..

  Molly Ariel and Cyrus Zachariah were born thirteen hours later, both named for their great-grandparents but known by their middle names, with a hyphenated Shepherd-Oppenheim. But those thirteen hours were harrowing.

  In transit down the birth canal, Ariel had pushed Zach out of the way (a very determined female from the get-go), and he turned sideways. Something, probably his foot, lodged up under my ribs and felt like it was pulling me apart one bone at a time. At this point, I began begging for drugs and screaming, “Kill me! Kill me! Cut the babies out!” A few moments later, and before any drugs could be given, Ariel was born (five pounds, eleven ounces) followed by Zachariah (seven pounds, two ounces).

  My entourage took over almost a whole floor of the hospital—Bruce, Mother, Mondo, Clementine, Myrtle, the midwife, three nurses, and a bodyguard. (I had forgotten to include the doctor’s name on a list of people to be allowed admittance, and he had trouble getting in to see me.) I guess this was the most famous I’ve ever been. There were two photos on the front page of the New York Daily News, accompanying the headline: “ROBERT BORK LOSES/CYBILL’S TWINS DOING GREAT.” This was great news all around. Not only were he twins healthy and happy, but the anti-choice Supreme Court nominee had been defeated. The paparazzi had been waiting at the front door of the hospital since before the babies were born, and everyday the guard caught someone who managed to sneak through with a camera. I knew that the best way to get photographers to stop swarming around me was not to try to run from them, but Bruce was afraid of flashes going off in the sensitive eyes of our newborns. We arranged for his brother to leave the hospital with a nurse in a blond wig, holding two Cabbage Patch dolls, while we attempted a more private exit out back. No one was fooled, and Bruce and I almost crashed into a lamppost when one photographer jumped on the hood of our car--a small risk, he probably considered, since photos of the babies were said to fetch up to $100,000.

  Going from one to three children felt like going from one to ten; the effort and responsibility involved in parenthood increases exponentially. Before going back to work, I bought a forty-foot motor home, with plenty of room for the twins and their paraphernalia, including Bruce Willis’ gift of a teeter-totter and Glenn Caron’s two giant pandas. Beloved Myrtle kept insisting that she could handle the nannying single-handedly (she’d had thirteen children herself), but I didn’t want to put that much of a burden on her, and finding capable, trustworthy people for child care is the challenge of every working mother. I hire
d one woman who seemed to have impeccable credentials, only to discover that she kept a bottle of rum in her purse. Another simply disappeared and was apprehended a few weeks later in Scottsdale, Arizona, wandering nude with pictures of Ariel and Zack in her hand, saying she was looking for her babies.

  THE YEAR 1988 BEGAN PROPITIOUSLY WITH A ceremony in which I was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and it only cost me $4,322. Bruce Willis sent a telegram saying, “Sorry I can’t be there, but one of us has to work.” During this season of Moonlighting my dissatisfaction grew with the inimical atmosphere and changes in the way my character was written. Not only was she a virago, but she was starting to act bipolar. In an episode called “Yours Very Deadly,” Maddie urges a female client to continue a correspondence with someone who has been sending the woman threatening letters. Maddie actually goes to this man’s apartment, unarmed, pounding on the door, even though she knows him to be deaf and believes him to be a murderer. “No sane person would encourage a woman to engage with a harasser,” I told Glenn, “and people who have experienced some fame are particularly sensitive to the dangers. I know that, and as a former model, Maddie Hayes would know it too.” But Glenn was adamant that we keep to the story, and I gave it my best shot: the character acts bipolar, but with conviction. The next episode, “All Creatures Great and Small,” dropped the little bomb that Maddie is an atheist. So. not only is she a cold bitch but she doesn’t believe in God. My character could go no lower: a feminist atheist.

  Or so I thought. When Glenn came to talk to me about his idea for an episode called “Atomic Shakespeare” that would satirize The Taming of the Shrew, my first question was “Who’s going to play the shrew?” I was serious when I suggested some contemporary gender bending, making David Addison the termagant. Glenn was not amused. When I read the script, I found that my Elizabethan character was to be bound, gagged, and married off against her will while a whole town cheered, as part of her husband’s bet with her father. Kate aka Maddie aka Cybill was made to be an impossibly unsympathetic character so that Petruchio aka David aka Bruce could score. I was certainly aware that Moonlighting was entertainment, not a political treatise, as I was aware that some women are aroused by bondagecouragedie was definitely not turned on. In this case, binding and gagging was a symbol of violence against women--even Shakespeare didn’t tame his shrew with ropes.

  “Atomic Shakespeare” won more awards than any other episode, including Emmys for directing, editing, and costume design. I wore a sleeveless black velvet evening gown and Day-Glo orange high-tops to the ceremony, fully intending to change into pumps. It’s a long ride to the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, and I had time to consider the prospect of an evening in pain. As my limousine pulled up to the curb, the driver said, “I’ll wait for you to change your shoes.”

  “You can open the door now,” I said. “I’m ready.” I knew what I was doing--it was my personal rebellion against the tyranny of high heels--but people reacted as if I were naked. Actually, I felt that half the women there were cheering “Right on, sister,” and half were muttering “You bitch.” To this day, people are always checking out what I’ve got on my feet and seem disappointed if I’m in anything fancier than sneakers.

  Bruce Willis was nominated again that year, but I was not. I went to the ceremony thinking: I’ll be okay as long as he doesn’t win. (Nice team spirit.) He won. I smiled and applauded. I understand that many actors have done good work for years and not gotten awards for it, but this felt like a slap in the face, as if he were the motor that drove the show, as if I were dispensable.

  In the episode “Big Man on Mulberry Street,” when David Addison’s former brother-in-law dies, he goes to New York, and Maddie, in a show of support, crashes the funeral. In a moving scene, David recalls marrying his pregnant girlfriend and hoping that he won’t end up in a blue Sunoco uniform with DAVE stitched over the pocket, then trying to keep the marriage going after his wife miscarries, only to come home one day to find the census taker on top of her, “getting all kinds of pertinent information that isn’t on the form.” When David’s ex-wife admits that this infidelity was not with another man but with a woman, Maddie’s reaction to this jaw-dropping news was cut. Even if the intent was to showcase Bruce, it would not have lessened the impact of his performance to see Maddie’s reaction, and it hurt my character because it didn’t show her humanity. The mutual sovereignty of the characters, the conflict between fully realized equals, was compromised. When I registered my complaint, Glenn told me I hadn’t played the scene very well. The unspoken message was that I was a bitch; the salt in the wound was the news that I was a bad actress.

  “Big Man on Mulberry Street” also had a musical number beautifully choreographed by Stanley Donen, the legendary director of Singing in the Rain, with a soundtrack by Billy Joel. It was supposed to be Maddie’s dream, but to me it looked a lot more like David’s fantasy. Glenn said that he wasn’t interested in my opinion, and when I approached Donen with my reservations, I saw him go absolutely cold, almost as if he’d been prepared for my being impossible. As I left the set after a rehearsal, I was so frustrated that I picked up a director’s chair and threw it at the wall. The tabloids reported that I had heaved the chair at Glenn. (If I had wanted to hit him, I wouldn’t have missed.)

  The distinctive door slamming that became a leitmotif of the show was something I learned from Ernst Lubitsch movies, and studio carpenters had to rebuild the Blue Moon Agency doors every season because we slammed them so hard. But one of my most painful memories revolved around the door slamming in “Symphony in Knocked Flat.” The script called for Maddie to arrive at work and slam her way through the office in a rage because she had a boring date the night before. I didn’t think that a boring dp ohe night before was enough motivation for a hysterical tirade, and I ignored the stage direction, playing the scene more thoughtfully. I got away with it that time, but my next scene that required rage brought Glenn and Jay down to the set. We did it over and over, each time Glenn repeating, “That’s not angry enough. Do it again.” I felt so humiliated and upset that I began forgetting the lines I had known perfectly well when we started.

  I watched the “Symphony” episode again recently and came away proud that I had followed my instincts and underplayed those two scenes. Though I still cringe at the thought of Glenn’s and Jay’s bullying, I’m so glad I defended the integrity of my character, Maddie, in the face of public embarrassment. That episode represents truly wonderful work on everyone’s part. And besides, how many people get to work with The Temptations and perform “Psychedelic Shack,” like I did in the prologue to that episode?

  Bruce became disenchanted with the classic David Addison smarminess, sometimes throwing a script across the room and calling it shit. Actors make a mistake when they act superior to the material. Good acting is like a tennis match. But somewhere along the way it felt like Bruce disconnected from what I was doing. It seemed as if he had already figured out all the moves, and it was far less exciting when the match between us was over.

  One April day in 1988, I arrived for work fifteen minutes late to find an all points bulletin out for me. An assistant director approached my car as I drove onto the lot and said, “Cybill, don’t bother getting out.” Then he told the driver, “Take her right to Glenn’s office.” I felt like an intractable student summoned to the principal after sliding down the school banister--a bad acid flashback, and I’d never even taken acid. Jay Daniel and several people I didn’t recognize were sitting in Glenn’s office; Glenn was standing in front of his pinball machine and his jukebox loaded with 1960s rock and roll and every song by Tammy Wynette.

  “You don’t give a fuck about your work,” he screamed the moment I walked in the door. “Your standards are down, and your ideas are crap.” I could hardly respond, his rage was so vehement. And while he screamed, Jay sat silent, not uttering a word in my defense.

  A few weeks later, when we came to the end of the shooting season, I wrote Glenn a
letter. “I want to do everything in my control to help the show,” I wrote. “But I need you to know that for me to work effectively, it is absolutely necessary to avoid another performance like the one you gave when I was summoned to your office several weeks ago to hear your diatribe--all in the presence of complete strangers. I have enormous respect for the work you have done and for the show you have created, but I do not respect that behavior and I will not willingly be subjected to the kind of abuse that you unleashed at that meeting. I take my share of responsibility for some of the problems we have had in the past and will do everything I can to correct those problems.”

  During the hiatus I made a film called Chances Are, a fantasy about a woman who remains devoted to the memory of her dead husband and falls in love with him again, reincarnated in the form of Robert Downey Jr. The producer was a pal of Ryan O’Neal and lobbied for him to play the family friend who’s really been in love with my character all along. Considering our history, Ryan was the last person I wanted to work with. “Casting him is a great way to ruin this movie,” I warned. But everybody else kept turning down the role, so we got him by default. (Turned out I was wrong. He was terrific.) I had avoided a love scene with him in real life, but I couldn’t stop my nervous laughter when I had to kiss him on-camera. The director, Emile Ardolino, took me aside and whispered, &lquo;Could you please stop giggling? It’s upsetting Ryan.” Not an unreasonable request, and I stopped laughing by thinking of deaths in the family and biting my upper lip.

  I thought the script would have been improved by dispensing with the reincarnation storyline and exploring a romance seldom seen on film between an older woman and a younger man, a relationship I’ve often played out in real life. The first day of rehearsal, Downey didn’t show up or respond to phone calls. Somebody from the production office got the manager of his hotel to open the door of his room and found him in bed with a woman, sleeping off a bad night. It was apparent that he had substance abuse problems, and he was told that if he was ever late again, he would be fired. A monitor in the guise of a “trainer” was hired to keep him out of trouble for the remainder of the shooting schedule. I relished the experience of working with Emile Ardolino. As a director he pushed me beyond what I had thought of as my “dramatic limits” as an actor. Some years later, Emile stopped returning my phone calls. This is a common occurrence in Hollywood but hardly what I would have expected from Emile. About six months later, a mutual friend called and told me the sad truth: “Emile died of AIDS today.” Now, whenever I cry as an actor part of my motivation is always the thought of Emile and missing him.