“Yes, you’re that great nanny,” she said warmly. “You’re the one who diagnosed Michael Ovitz’s youngest son with meningitis.”
Excuse me?
There isn’t much that’s missed in Hollywood. Except for the truth, which would make the story much less interesting.
“Oh that. I didn’t actually diagnose him. In fact—”
“Yes. Michael’s our agent,” she interrupted, beaming at her husband. I could read her thoughts: This is great. Michael only settles for the best, so this girl must be outstanding.
Good grief, this wasn’t looking good. Not only were they clients of Michael’s but there was also the ever-so-small matter of the location. These people lived ten doors down from my former residence. I ask you, in the huge metropolis of LA, what were the statistical chances of that?
“Tell us about you,” she continued.
I mumbled something halfheartedly. Why bother? You’re not going to hire me after Mr. Überagent gets a hold of you.
I knew Michael would tell them not to hire me, but I couldn’t figure out what possible explanation he could find. Maybe that I quit after I accepted the Christmas bonus check. Of course he could always talk about the time he almost suffered a public humiliation when I tried to wear that hideous NASA jumpsuit. But really, what else was there?
I tried to think positively, and the rest of the interview went well. I could tell they liked me. They gave me a tour of their elegant home, which had been featured in Architectural Digest, and then showed me the room I would live in. When they walked me out to my car, both smiling from ear to ear, they said they thought I would fit in perfectly with their family.
As I started my car, I told myself that I had just been paranoid. It apparently hadn’t bothered them at all that I’d worked for Michael. The more I thought about my previous concern, the more I convinced myself that the king might not even bother to take a call at his office from a couple seeking a reference.
But then the agency called and told me very nonchalantly that the couple had decided to pass on me. As if they were playing Monopoly and decided not to buy Baltic Avenue.
“They’re passing on me. I told you!” I reminded her. “They must have talked to Michael.”
“I checked it out, and you’re right about that,” she said calmly. “But I talked with Michael at length today, and I think I managed to work a deal with him.”
Oh, really? What kind of deal? I can tell by your voice he has you running scared, lady.
“I can send you on any interview I want,” she said, “as long as it isn’t with someone who works in the entertainment industry.” She said this as if it was just a minor detail, as if it didn’t matter at all that the clause to which she’d agreed cut out 90 percent of the population who might have a nanny job available.
The paranoia came crashing back. How far did his influence reach? If I went back to Oregon to start college, was he going to put a bad word in with the dean? Okay, that was probably ridiculous, but I could not believe that intelligent, talented, professional people were so afraid of him that they had to bow down to his every edict.
But they did. Oh, so many of them. I interviewed with a couple who had never worked for or with Michael, but they knew him socially, just like everybody else in town. Despite a great interview that ended with smiles all around, two days later they called and declined.
I knew that a person with my experience was in great demand in Southern California. The majority of Hollywood types wanted a nanny who was intelligent, hardworking, and devoted to children. But the unspoken, politically incorrect reality was that they also wanted someone who was thin and spoke English as a first language. I fit all categories, but it was starting to look like the word from the Ovitzes trumped everything. And it was clear that Michael didn’t mind using his valuable time to sink me. If I wasn’t going to work for him, he didn’t want me working for anybody.
Michael’s blackballing made me angrier as the days passed. How could he possibly justify his behavior? He had begged me to stay, and now here he was telling everyone in LA what a terrible nanny I was. If I was so unfit, why had he tried so hard to get me to finish out the year? How far was he really going to take this silly vendetta against a nineteen-year-old? I was broke and completely powerless in Hollywood. What kind of joy did he get from making sure I stayed that way?
Since the placement coordinator—Ms. It’s Fine, I Worked Out a Deal with the President of CAA—suddenly wasn’t returning my phone calls, I decided to take my résumé to a place called Malibu Mommies. I didn’t have much hope, but maybe this agency would be a little more understanding. Malibu Mommies sounded so wholesome and friendly. I began by telling them about my stint at the Ovitzes. Surprisingly, Malibu Mommies didn’t run scared. They said that they’d be willing to work with my situation because they had seen it happen to many other nannies, quite a few times, actually. In fact, so many employers gave their nannies bad references when they wanted to leave that the agency now recommended that all nannies get a written review of their work every six months, some proof on paper that their bosses really had been happy with them—at least until they had the nerve to inconvenience them by quitting.
To my great relief, two days after I applied at the new agency, they called to say they had a nanny-hunting parent—with one infant boy—who was okay with the fact that Michael wouldn’t give me a glowing report. Such a person really existed? I was beginning to think that no one could have that kind of independence in this town.
I found the address off Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, just a few miles from the Ovitzes’ beach house, on a quiet little street with a front gate and a hedge all the way around the property.
Large and unpretentious, the house seemed welcoming. Seconds after I rang the bell, a barefoot Debra Winger greeted me with a hearty handshake. “Welcome, Suzy,” she said in a familiar husky voice paired with a big smile.
Although I had never seen her big hit Urban Cowboy, I loved Terms of Endearment, and I had watched the Academy Awards the night she was nominated for best supporting actress. Her on-screen presence gave me the feeling that she might be a person who hadn’t let her fame affect her. When we finally sat down, I discovered my intuition had been right. She seemed genuine and unassuming, and her home reflected this attitude. There were no Chinese artifacts glued to tables or famous paintings on the walls. An alarm system existed, but she rarely used it.
Debra offered me tea, and I dove in by explaining my unhappy departure from the Ovitz house, making a point of how hard it was to leave the children. She listened and seemed genuinely compassionate. Her only response was “Well, that Michael, he is a shrink’s dream.… Or maybe would that be nightmare?” She laughed. I stayed silent. I didn’t want to open up that can of night crawlers. She said she’d tell the nanny agency she didn’t need a reference from him. Besides, she had already called all my Cottage Grove and practicum family references, who had raved about me. I was pleased but puzzled by her lack of deference to the king.
I soon learned that Debra was one of the few clients in CAA’s history who had jumped ship. Since I knew all too well how much Michael hated the word no, I could only imagine how he reacted when she told him she was leaving.
“I like Michael, but I couldn’t continue to work with him,” she explained. “It was as if I knew my boss was dumping toxic waste into a playground; I couldn’t sit by silently and do nothing.” Michael’s response, she later told me, was to threaten to tell the media she was pregnant. Before her son Nolan was born, she’d suffered a miscarriage. Devastating in itself, being in the public eye and having to tell her fans only made the tragedy worse. Once pregnant with Nolan, she decided to wait a little longer to reveal her news. Michael had gone right for her jugular with that threat—though he had never actually carried through with it.
Just nine months old, Nolan still woke up and cried several times during the night, and Debra was exhausted. Debra’s husband, Timothy Hutton, insisted that she hire
a nanny; he couldn’t help out much since he was in Baton Rouge working on a new film. Debra herself didn’t really think that she needed a nanny. After all, she was home all day. Didn’t most stay-at-home moms handle things themselves?
By now, this seemed like an alien concept to me, the idea that a woman wanted to take care of her own child by herself. But Debra breathed some normalcy into Hollywood. She told me she had hired a baby nurse for a short time after Nolan was born, but it hadn’t worked out. By the time the nurse figured out that the baby was awake and crying in the middle of the night, Debra had already been in his room comforting him for five minutes. So she had let her go after two weeks.
This story reminded me of what I’d heard about English nannies. Shows like Supernanny and Nanny 911 wouldn’t be hits for some time, but Hollywood always seems to be ahead of the trends, anyway, and then it was all the rage to have a proper British baby nurse for the first months of a Hollywood baby’s life. These descendants of Mary Poppins were made of much sterner stuff than their American counterparts—they believed in letting babies “cry it out” until they would eventually sleep through the night. I could see that this would not work for a hands-on mom like Debra.
I felt at ease with Debra immediately, and I sensed that I had entered a different dimension. This was the kind of relaxed environment that might be ripe for leisurely lunches and girly shopping trips. During the interview, Debra even asked me if I would be interested in reading scripts for her. Her agent sent her so many, and she asked if I could give her an idea of what the story was about. Could I? Of course! The prospect of some secretarial/assistant work thrilled me, and I told her so.
Debra wanted me to start right away, so we quickly made arrangements. I liked my new quarters on the first floor, a plain, comfortable bedroom and connecting bathroom, with an enormous bed that sat so high off the floor I nearly had to get a stepladder to climb in. A dried flower arrangement was the only decor, but the room felt warm and homey.
But before I left the interview, I had to complete one more hurdle. Money. This time I was determined to assert myself regarding salary. The consequences of not speaking up at my last job haunted me, but that wasn’t all. Living in LA for a year had soured my opinion of the rich and their millions. Jaded didn’t even begin to describe how I felt about how poorly the wealthy paid the staff who made their lives easier. I’d come to see salary as an expression of value, and celebrities constantly sent the message that nannies were worth merely pennies. For example, I knew a nanny who worked for a socialite who spent all day every day trawling boutiques to feed her ravenous shopping appetite. The nanny got so fed up with her boss never being home that one night she looked through the day’s receipts. Just one couture dress that her employer wore to an event for a few hours cost more than the nanny made in two years.
“Do you think you should be paid less than at the Ovitzes because I’ve just got Nolan, not three kids?” Debra asked.
She had a point, and I’d never thought of it that way. Hmm. This had never been discussed at nanny school. Then she said, “Or do you see the pay as compensation for your time, regardless of the number of children you are caring for?”
Her clarity and fairness amazed me.
But I was through playing the part of the naive young nanny who let employers take advantage of her. This time I would be paid well to work twenty-four hours a day.
“I don’t really want to make less than my last position,” I told her. Then I blurted out, “I want to net four hundred dollars a week.” Why I threw in the net thing, I have no idea.
She agreed, and suddenly I’d negotiated myself a huge raise. Okay, so I had once again neglected to bring up the issue of a contract. I know, I know. But this time I was too embarrassed. Debra seemed so casual about everything, and I didn’t want to offend her with the formality.
I love Debra! She’s so cool, so completely real. And yet she lives and works in this town. Amazing. But when my interview was over, I realized that I would be working about half the time I did before, and yet I’d be making more money. Maybe I drove too hard a bargain. It isn’t her fault that I’ve been a doormat. She shouldn’t have to “make up for it.” She said we could work out what the gross amount would be later. How the hell did I come up with the net thing? She seems so easy to talk to; I have high hopes that this will be a great working relationship.
Mom called me tonight to tell me she ran out and rented all of Debra’s films, and then she proceeded to give me a blow-by-blow of each movie. Finally I had to cut her off and tell her it really wasn’t necessary for me to know the plot. I informed my mother that I wasn’t going to be given a movie trivia quiz to get the job.
Note to self: Try not to be so hard on Mom. She deserves to have a little fun with all the Hollywood hoopla. That’s more than you can say for yourself so far.
Cindy happily helped me move all my stuff from her cramped apartment into Debra’s house. Poor Cindy. Not only did she still share the place with her two original friends, but one of the girls had taken in Pedro, a sweet fellow employee who was down on his luck. Cindy would relish the breathing room, and I knew she was glad that I had found such a nice new boss. She, of course, was still working for a not-so-nice boss. Her immediate supervisor had told her that in the wake of my sudden departure from the Ovitz home, Michael had wanted to terminate her from CAA as well. But since her work was excellent, they had no legal grounds to fire her, so she remained at the agency. I was sure her presence was a thorn in Michael’s side—a reminder that he didn’t always get his way.
I soon discovered that working for Debra was the polar opposite of working for the Ovitzes. For one thing, she loved being a mom so much that she spent far more time with Nolan than I did. The original plan had been for me to start waking up with him so that she could get some much-needed rest. But Nolan and Debra had bonded, and he wasn’t too sure about this other person living in his house and coming into his room in the middle of the night. So we had to back up and work on getting him used to me. Debra would coo and cuddle him while I’d just stand there, willing my presence to be familiar.
I found myself with a strange nanny dilemma. When I comforted Brandon at all hours of the night, no one else was even awake, so it didn’t matter what I was wearing. But it now seemed inappropriate to report to work with no bra on. How do you maintain a professional appearance when you’re standing next to your employer at 3 A.M. in your pajamas?
“You must be Suzy,” said a male voice when I answered Debra’s phone on one of my first mornings.
“Uh, yes I am.”
“Oh, hi! This is Tim calling from down in Louisiana.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “How are you?”
“Doing great. I’m so glad you’re there,” he said cheerfully. “Debra didn’t think she needed anyone. But I know she’s tired with Nolan getting up so much in the night. And I wanted her to have some help while I was gone. I really miss those two. I look forward to meeting you when you all come down here to visit the set.”
“Yes, it was nice talking to you, and I hope I can help Debra get rested up. Let me find her for you.”
A most cordial conversation. One marital partner concerned about the other. There was even an indication that they valued the childcare provider. It was freaky. Abnormal. It had taken me just one short year to reach this level of cynicism.
In addition to my help, Debra employed a cook and a housekeeper, both live-out. The cook dropped by a few nights a week to make dinner, preparing the rest of the meals for the week in advance and tossing them in the freezer with heating instructions. She also whipped up an amazing thousand-calorie-per-slice cheesecake. Debra loved it. She told me that when she was preparing for a movie she forbade it in the house. At those times she had to ban everything high-calorie from the premises. But since she had just finished a film, the “no sweets” rule didn’t apply, and she liked to indulge herself.
Thrilled, I indulged right along with her. No need for sneaking ho
memade cookies, looking over my shoulder the way I did at the old place. Not that Judy kept a cookie count—it was Carmen who watched me like a hawk. After she had found out who was gobbling down her creations, she restricted me to two a day. If I exceeded my limit, my cookie-eating punishment was to help her make another batch. Remembering this made me miss Carmen, Delma, and the kids so badly that I ordered myself to put the entire situation out of my mind. The whole thing just hurt too much.
I did place one last call to Sarah, though. “You’ll never believe who I’m working for,” I blurted out as soon as I heard her familiar greeting. “Apparently someone Michael hates.”
“Suzy, it’s so good to hear from you!” Sarah said. “ Hmm … you’re not working for Spielberg, are you?”
“No! Debra Winger,” I said, and we both laughed. It was good to talk to her again, but I knew she didn’t have much time to chat.
“They really hate me, huh?” I said finally.
“No, they don’t hate you, Suzy,” Sarah said. “You made their life convenient, and leaving was an inconvenience. And you know how they hate being inconvenienced. But you personally, no, of course they don’t hate you.”
The conversation made me feel a little better, and I decided to close the book on that chapter of my life and enjoy my new job.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that Debra deeply valued her principles—she was well-known in Hollywood for being “difficult” and unwilling to “play the game.” I found out that she had moved from California to Israel when she was just sixteen to live in a kibbutz, even serving time in the Israeli army. After she came back, she got a job at Magic Mountain, where a serious accident left her in a coma. Partly paralyzed and blind in one eye for several months, she told me that the accident had given her plenty of time to think long and hard about where her life was going; it had been at that point that she decided to pursue acting.
Debra took things such as the environment very seriously. If I’d been paying more attention, I could have guessed that from our first conversation. She based many of her personal decisions—what she bought, where she shopped, what she ate—on how it impacted the planet. No pesticides—not even when ants invaded my bedroom. Organic baby shampoo for Nolan. No disposable diapers. Once she tried them, in place of her standard cloth ones, when she and Nolan flew somewhere. When he got a horrendous rash, she researched what the absorbent material was made of and vowed to never use them again. And then one day she told me a story about her parents, who had just phoned to tell her about their harrowing flight from hell. Their plane had to make an emergency landing, and her parents feared their lives would end in a fiery crash landing. Standard operating procedure in such a situation is to dump all the excess fuel out of the fuselage before landing, which the pilots did. “Imagine all that toxic fuel polluting the air and landing all over everything, Suzy, can you believe it?” she asked. I couldn’t, but I was a little more worried about her mom and dad.
You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny Page 23