At 3:50, I went upstairs to Lee’s office. He wasn’t there yet. I sat and waited for him. A few minutes after four, Lee walked in. He was over six feet tall with hair that scraped the ceiling. He was holding plastic bags in both hands.
“Guys, I have cake! I brought back cake from Brooklyn!” he announced. “Pineapple upside-down cake! Anybody want some cake?”
It was like a fairy tale! He was exactly what I thought he’d be and he had cake! I was soon sitting across from him at his desk. Behind him on the wall were headshots of the actors already cast in the film. There she was. Mo’Nique’s picture was on the wall. Mo’Nique was playing the mother. The same role Mom had turned down, saying Mo’Nique should play it. Typical. Yet Mom won’t say on record that she’s psychic.
Lee offered me some cake, but in my new tradition of going against my instincts, I declined. He asked if I’d ever acted before. I told him about Peter Pan and Glinda the Good Witch. He remarked in a kind voice that he was very impressed with my audition. I held on tightly to the script in my hand. I was sure he was just seconds away from asking me to deliver a scene. He asked me if I was in school. I said I was. He asked what I would do if I got the role.
I said, “Something would have to give. The opportunity to be in a movie doesn’t come along every day.”
We kept talking. I was losing my patience. I just wanted to get this last audition over with. All of the idle chitchat was making me nervous. Lee finally said, “You’re really smart.” Oh, great! Another person thinks I’m smart! Can I stop listening to guys beg me to make them wear panties over the phone now?
“Thank you.”
“I want you to be in my movie.”
“As what?” I asked, never one to believe a stranger wanted to do anything but hurt me. (I gotta stop that shit.)
“As Precious,” he said. It was quiet. I think. I also could’ve been screaming. I’m not sure. I had auditioned on Monday and now it was only Wednesday and the prophecy of fame was finally being fulfilled. I was going to be a movie star. It couldn’t have been that easy but it was. Now I was nervous. I cried like a little girl, and Lee grabbed my hand and walked me around the production office and introduced me to everyone by saying, “This is Gabby! She’s our Precious!”
That night, Lee drove me home. On the way, he asked if I had a boyfriend.
“No, but now that I’m going to be a movie star, I’m gonna get pregnant by a basketball player and lock down that child support,” I answered. He laughed hysterically.
He had asked me earlier in the day in his office what I did for a living. Since by then I had already gotten the part, and I had also seen Shadowboxer enough times to know that he would think my being a phone sex operator was a riot, I told him. Now in the car he wanted to know about my most disgusting callers. I shared stories of men who called to be abused by dominant women who would force them to be with black men with huge dicks. He laughed and laughed, and said, “We won’t tell Oprah that story.”
“You think I’ll get to do Oprah?” I asked, excitedly.
“Of course you will! Oprah will live for you!”
He asked if I’d ever read the book Push. I told him that I had and that my mother had given it to me when she was asked years ago to audition for the role of Mary. He was surprised and asked who my mother was. I explained that she wasn’t an actor and that he wouldn’t know her unless he takes the subway a lot.
“Wait a minute! Is your mother a singer? Is she the one who sings all the Whitney Houston songs?” he asked.
“Yeah. That’s my mom.”
“That’s your MOM? Honey, she’s EVERYTHING! I wanted her for this movie! I wanted her for Mary! That was years ago! You are her daughter?” He couldn’t believe it. Neither could I, really.
We started shooting three weeks later. Filming lasted about three and a half months. It wasn’t until the last day that I learned how many girls had auditioned for the role of Precious. Around four hundred, I’m told. There was even an acting summer camp where they put about twenty plus-size black girls in a house together, and every week there were auditions, and every week a girl was cut and sent home. It was like American Idol or something. Apparently, there’s footage of this Precious Camp, but I’ve never seen it. At the end of summer, the production was down to two girls, but they still weren’t sure they’d found Precious yet. (So many Sabourey Gidibes and still no Gabourey Sidibe!) That’s when they held the last open casting calls and found me. I had no idea how many things had to go wrong for me to win that role, but I decided by then to stop paying attention to what might have gone wrong and start being grateful for all the things that had gone right instead. A year and a half later, Oprah saw the film before it was released and, along with Tyler Perry, came aboard as a producer. Oprah asked me to be on her show, but first she wanted a camera crew to follow me around for a day. I insisted that the Oprah crew follow me down to the subway to see Mom perform. I was determined to get footage of her subway performance on Oprah. My one and only appearance on Oprah happened to be the show when she announced her retirement. I had made it just in time for all of the psychics to be right. I cried like a bitch throughout the entire show. Emotions yo!
How many psychics does it take to convince a sad little girl that she can be much more than the world is telling her she is? None. She’s got to be able to convince herself to show up for her own life. I still don’t see any real value in fame. Sure, I skip most lines. I get plenty of free clothes and jewelry, and at restaurants, as we’ve seen, the chef sends out free desserts. But fame isn’t what gets me out of bed in the morning. It’s purpose. I’ve found my purpose and this is it. I love what I do. I’m grateful to be a two-time college dropout who finally believes in psychics. I’m not recommending it, but I’m not not recommending it.
15
Head of Household
I’m a girl in a world in which my only job is to marry rich.
—Angelica Schuyler (Hamilton)
I WAS TALKING TO THIS GUY I know about how he grew up in a poor family. I didn’t know him that well and he was also really handsome, so I immediately turned the conversation into a competition. This is how I deal with handsome men I’d like to bone. I become aggressively weird and freak them out. That’s my move. Anyway, he said, “My family was really poor. Really poor!” I, having played the “my family’s so poor we can’t afford to pay attention” game many times in my life, countered with “Oh, yeah? Your family ever wait in line for government cheese?” Then I smiled as though that memory were a shiny trophy. He made a noise like duh! and rolled his eyes. “Of course, man! We were severely poor.” He rolled his eyes at me and called me “man”? Clearly, he was into me, but I also realized that I was losing this poor-off. My parents were poor, but I don’t think I would’ve categorized us as “severely poor.” My only choice was to become even more aggressive. “Oh, God. What? Did your family have to live in a fucking car or something?” With his face showing the appropriate amount of distaste for what I’d so flippantly asked, he answered, “Actually, we stayed in a shelter.” That’s it. I was officially beat. My family has never stayed in a shelter. I thought about bringing up the BCW and foster-home business, but that wouldn’t have lent anything to the argument. I thought about bringing up having to use food stamps, but shelter beats food stamps. I didn’t know what to say because I’d asked a terrible question and forced a terribly personal and sad answer out of someone I barely knew. So I doubled down on my invasiveness. “Whoa! What was that like?” Why won’t I stop asking questions? He told me about how for Christmas college kids would come to the shelter and hand out toys and candy and stuff. That it was the best day ever. He said that he decided as a kid that when he was an adult and had money he would do the same as those college kids. He’d buy toys and give them out at homeless shelters. I asked if he’d kept his word. He said that he did and still does. I was slain. He won at being poorer than I had been and he won at being a better person than I was. Game over.
; My family was poor when I was growing up. Just not shelter poor. But I spent the bulk of my childhood in fear that neither of my parents could afford to raise me.
As an adult, I know I fucked up my childhood. I see I didn’t have to worry about not having enough money. I wish I could have learned from Biggie. He said, “Mo money, mo problems.” And I had none when I was a kid. That means no problems, right?
For Precious, I didn’t yet have a manager. Because it was my first acting job, I made scale, about $2,500 a week. A month after we started shooting, I still hadn’t received a check. Other people were getting their paychecks on set, and I asked where mine was. The production manager said it was at the office and wanted to know if I could wait for it until the following week. My bank account had a negative balance of more than a hundred dollars. I asked the production manager to send someone to get the check for me immediately. A part of me was afraid that I’d be called a bitch. Another part of me was proud for having demanded to be paid on time for all of the work I’d been doing. Sixteen-hour days for weeks and I was broke! I was in the hair-and-makeup trailer when the check arrived. Lee Daniels and the film’s producer, Sarah Siegel-Magness, came in and said, “Gabby, we have something for you.” Sarah was recording us on her iPhone. Lee handed me my first film check, and Sarah screamed, “You’re rich now, baby!” I opened the envelope, and said, “Oh, cool. Thanks.” The check was for $2,500. I most certainly was NOT rich now, and it surprised me that they thought I would be super excited to have worked that hard for so little money. Was it the largest check I’d ever seen with my name on it? YES! But I’d made $1,600 on my best week down at the phone sexery, which was a steady job. I wasn’t able to see that film check as being part of a bigger picture. All I could think about was how the shoot would be over soon and that more than likely I wouldn’t be able to get another acting job until the film came out in a year or so. What was I supposed to do until then? Hoard and worry. The starry-eyed girl I was supposed to be when I opened my first film check that day in the trailer was already dead.
When the filming was done, I had made a bit more than $30,000 before taxes. I think. Coupled with the income I’d made as a phone sex operator for the bulk of the year, I had earned more than $50K. My mother and I got our taxes done at the same office, and our tax guy announced to us both that I was now the “head of household.” I had made more than double what my mom had. Head of household was not a term I’d heard before. I didn’t like it. My mom was still a subway singer, and I was now the star of a movie who’d had a steady job in addition for most of the year. I should’ve seen it coming, but I was faced with the same feeling I had when I was told that the light bill was in my name. Too much responsibility! What’s more, I felt guilty for having outearned my mother, an official adult in my eyes. I was just some dumb phone-hoe child who had tripped and fallen into a starring film role. Later that year, while still waiting for Precious to be released, I was bored and broke enough to want to get a job. After shooting, I didn’t go back to phone sex—while I was away filming, the company had gone out of business. Also, yeah, right! Like I’m going to go from shooting a movie back to pretending to slap myself in the face while some guy pretends he’s ejaculating on double D tits. I was officially too fancy for that. (You are, too, by the way. But if they’re your tits and you’re into it, do your thang, boo.) My mom said that I could go back to school or just hang out while waiting for the release. She said she’d take care of the bills for me; I think she thought that once I was rich and famous I would pay her back in spades. But I handled my bills and portion of the rent with that $50K. It was going fast. Though I had made $50K, I really had only about $10K in my bank account.
Months after Precious premiered at the Sundance Film Festival but months before it would premiere to the world, I was experiencing fame without being rich. That’s got to be the worst thing ever! I started to get invited to premieres and parties, but I had no fancy clothes to wear, no hair or makeup artist to help, no cute clutch purses for the red carpets. And no limo—I was taking a train or bus to every event. None of that was going to stop me from going, though. The first big Hollywood premiere I was officially invited to was Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail. Fancy! Tyler Perry had just signed on as executive producer of Precious, which meant I’d be meeting Tyler Perry and Oprah! The premiere was at the Loews Theater at Lincoln Center, which had been on my bus route between home and school. Plenty of times I’d pressed my nose up against the window to see if I could see any stars. Now I was going to be a part of the party!
The morning of the premiere I woke up to a commotion in the living room. My mother opened my bedroom door in tears. There were two men in our apartment, the front door was wide open, and they were attaching some sort of notice to it. We were being evicted! Ahmed was looking over some court document, and my mom was crying hysterically and telling the men it was a mistake and begging them to not do this to us and begging me to do something. Me. Everything was moving slowly but very fast at the same time. Me?
My mom doesn’t cry much. She’s generally collected, levelheaded. I’ve been the crier in the family. I was always too sensitive. Easily hurt and always afraid of everything. A catastrophic thinker. Sometimes my mom would quote a children’s song to me: “It’s all right to cry. Crying takes the sad out of you.” But mostly she would encourage me to stop, to get over my feelings. In this moment she was panic-stricken and looking to me to be the adult. I wasn’t crying, but I was far from being the rational parent my mother suddenly needed me to be. “Gabourey, call Lee! Call Sarah!” She wanted me to call my rich friends. These were the last people I’d call. But for some reason she was looking for me to call them so that they could provide . . . advice? Money? A better apartment to be evicted from, maybe? I wasn’t sure, but I wanted her to stop crying. I wanted these men to stop evicting us. I felt terrible for not yet being the kind of rich and famous actress who could afford to buy my family a mansion we wouldn’t be evicted from. With my mom in hysterics, her face wet with tears, begging me to call my rich friends, I just did what she asked. I was head of household, after all.
Sarah and her husband, Gary, both producers of Precious, lived in Denver. While I was waiting around for the film release, Sarah would often fly me out to Denver to spend time with her and her family, and spoil me with gifts. She never wrote me a check and I never asked her to, but she and Gary were very sweet to me. I was also the lead actor in their film. I was a business expense and an investment. Precious would eventually make millions of dollars for the producers. Our relationship was personal and it was business. I wasn’t naïve about that. Even as I dialed, I still didn’t know what the use of calling was except to embarrass the shit out of me. I couldn’t ask Sarah to pay my family’s rent. I never would. Accepting a laptop from her as a birthday gift was one thing, but asking her to support my grown-ass family was out of the question. On top of that, not paying the rent wasn’t even what was having us evicted. It turned out to be a clerical error; a check wouldn’t have fixed that. But my mom was still crying, and I had a premiere to go to that night. I was going to meet Tyler Perry and Oprah.
I left a message. Maybe I was crying by then. I don’t know. I packed my dress for the premiere in a bag along with shoes and a brush for my hair. I was going to go get my hair done with my friend Crystal that day, so I called and asked her if I could spend the night at her house after the premiere that she was not invited to.
In a few minutes Sarah called me back. Our conversation was short and quiet. I wasn’t crying.
“Gabby . . . what’s going on over there?”
“Um . . . something happened. We’re being evicted.”
“Why? How much is your rent?”
“I . . . no. It’s not that.”
“What is it?”
“. . .”
“Did you tell Lee?”
“No . . . I don’t know why I called you . . . We’re going to that premiere later.”
“Gabby. You have
to tell Lee.”
“. . . ”
“Gabby. What do you need from me?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. My mom just won’t stop crying. She asked me to call you. I don’t know what you can do! It’s not even money! I don’t know what’s happening!”
“Gabby. You have to get out of there!”
“I know! The man said an hour!”
“Do you need a hotel?”
“No. I’m going to my friend’s house. I have to go.”
I hung up. A few minutes later as we were all about to leave the house, Lee called. Talking to Sarah was one thing; she was my friend. Lee still felt like the Wizard of Oz except I couldn’t ask him for anything. I wouldn’t even know what to ask. I didn’t want him to know that my family was being evicted, but he knew. I was ashamed. Our conversation was shorter and even quieter than the one with Sarah.
“Gabby?”
“. . .”
“Gabby.”
“. . . Yeah?” (Now I was crying.)
“What’s happening?”
“Um . . . we’re kinda being evicted?”
“Precious . . . What happened to all of your money?”
“It’s complicated. I don’t know why I called Sarah. My mom! She has to go to court. I don’t know.”
Neither of these conversations accomplished whatever my mother thought they should have, if she even knew what that was herself. I was disappointed and angry at her for letting this happen to us. Maybe the clerical error wasn’t her fault, but it was her fault that . . . rationally speaking, I wasn’t sure why I was mad at her, what to blame her for. So I turned the anger on myself. Here was my chance to save my family from poverty, and I wasn’t ready to be the hero. I was twenty-four years old, and I’d made more money than my mom that year, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t stand up with my family standing on my shoulders. I wasn’t ready for head of household.
This Is Just My Face Page 17