by Jessi Klein
Truth be told, we’d been nominated for writing the year prior, but due to a tangle of boring rules, our category’s award was presented during what are called the “Creative Arts Emmys,” which are held the week before the “real” Emmys and are untelevised. The categories are primarily technical, as evidenced by the number of awards we watched being given to the editors of the reality show Deadliest Catch. The ceremony is usually hosted by some hot B-level actress, who is thrown as a kind of ironic bone to the nominees to apologize for the fact that they themselves are too unfuckable to put on TV. So even though I’d technically been an Emmy nominee the year before, I’d still felt like dogshit. And we lost, which sealed the dogshit feeling.
But this year we are nominated for the real televised Emmys. Yay! We are not dogshit anymore. We are going to be Prinzessez.
I, however, have one major curveball in all this, which is, I am twelve weeks out from having given birth. You might be saying wait, what? You didn’t tell me you were pregnant. Well, that’s how long it takes to write a book. I wasn’t pregnant when I started writing it. Now I have a baby. More on that later. The point is, at the time I’m going to go buy my dress for the televised cool-people Emmys, I am still thirty pounds overweight and I basically have the body of a bodega honey bear. Even my feet have gone up a size. So the Prinzezz fantasy is already facing a major obstacle.
A month before the ceremony, I hand the baby to Mike and run top speed out the door to Bergdorf Goodman, because I only have a few hours before I have to return home to milk myself pump. In my head I’m picturing that perhaps I can wear some kind of gauzy, tent-like dress. I’d seen something online in this vein that I thought might work, and texted the picture to a friend, who immediately responded “u can’t go to the Emmys looking like Mrs. Roper.” I was bummed because I’d really been relying on that look.
At Bergdorf, I grab a few of the most promising-looking tents and try them on. Even in the largest sizes, nothing is fitting correctly. I look around the floor for a salesperson with a gentle aura and land on a delight of a woman named Jennifer. (Jennifer, if you are reading this, yes you are a DELIGHT.) I explain to Jennifer that I am nominated for an Emmy and this is my chance to be a Prinzezz, but I’m post-baby and I have the body of a mozzarella ball. Jennifer finds a short black dress with a fringe cape that drapes across the front so my newly formed fupa (Google it) is hidden from view. Somehow, it looks kind of great. I cannot believe I have been able to find a dress in under two hours (see: wedding dress chapter) but moreover I am giddy that my red carpet fantasy is back on track. I briefly get nervous about the fact that the dress is too short to be appropriate for a black-tie event, but then I Google “short Emmy dress” and see that Julia Roberts once wore a knee-length dress to the Emmys. If Julia can do it, I can do it, I think to myself, even though that is 100 percent not a true thing to think and actually the opposite is true.
Still, I am amped to walk the red carpet. At Saks I buy a pair of satin Manolo Blahnik shoes with a Swarovski crystal swoosh along the arch. My friend, who has come along as my shoe wingwoman, takes a picture of me holding the shoe box with the MANOLO label, as if I am a tourist standing in front of a local landmark, which in some sense I am: I am a tourist in the land of aspirational footwear that costs as much as I used to pay in monthly rent. I have no plans to move here, but I am enjoying a vacation from my country, the land of Toms.
I fly to Los Angeles. The network is paying for me to fly business class, so the Prinzezz feeling is off to a good start. As I drink my pre-takeoff champagne and adjust my seat into a bed (a BED!), I watch the sad Others stream past me into coach. For most of my life I have been one of them, trying to keep my head high as I walk past the smug few, sprawled out in their ample seats, their warm handtowels already crumpled in front of them, waiting to be discreetly tonged away by the sky-help. You cannot help but hate all those people a bit, as you struggle past with your bag, waiting for your fellow hoi polloi to mash their suitcases into the overhead. But now that the tables have turned, and I am the one sitting in business class eating (free) (warm!) nuts, I can’t help but feel a pang of survivor guilt. I want the people walking past me to know that I’m one of them. My ticket is being paid for by a corporation; I could not afford it on my own. In my heart I am a coach person. But if I were really a coach person, would I be feeling such joy at perusing the menu I have been handed, with choices of appetizer, entrée, and dessert, as if we were on the ground? Perhaps; but I am also aware that this joy has a shadow over it, which is the sense that I am an imposter in these big fancy loungers, and my grip on these amenities is tenuous. For the next five hours my brain vibrates between pleasure and anxiety as I contemplate my commercial flight identity. I look around to see if any of my fellow passengers are experiencing similar feelings.
Everyone is either asleep or watching Bravo.
On the ground, I carry my garment bag over my shoulder through the airport. Just carrying a garment bag feels pretty special to me. Who am I, the Queen of England?
Or maybe…
I AM A PRINZESS.
The next morning is Emmy morning. I have booked a hair and makeup artist to come “glam” me “up.” The woman who appears at my door is lovely and very kindly pretends not to notice the fact that I am drinking a glass of white wine at eleven a.m. I joke, “It’s eleven fifteen somewhere!” She is super nice to ignore this. When she asks if I have any thoughts on a look, I have the embarrassing task of showing her a Pinterest page I’ve made of celebrities with smoky eyes and side buns. I blather for about five minutes about how I do not expect her to actually make me look like Cate Blanchett. She is a champ and so she lets me splash around in my puddle of low self-esteem without telling me to chill the fuck out, which she would absolutely be within her rights to do.
Two hours later, I do not look like Cate Blanchett, but I have to admit I look nice. I look as nice as I’ve looked in the three months since a small boy emerged from my vagina. I am wearing my fringy dress and my crystal shoes and even sparkly clip-on earrings.1 Also I am wearing a pretty ring that Mike bought me for my fortieth birthday. Can a Prinzezz be forty? I look in the mirror and am just starting to feel like maybe I’m pulling this off when I realize the Spanx shorts I have on over my underwear are creating a huge panty line. Prinzezzes don’t have panty lines. Prinzezzes probably have perfectly smooth plastic non-genitals like Barbie. I thought the Spanx would smooth out the panty line. Now I have to consider whether these Spanx can be worn without underwear. Am I disgusting? I take off my underwear and sausage myself into the Spanx.
Then I begin the sad task of packing up my breast pump, which will be coming along with me to the Emmys. I have a black canvas tote bag with mesh pockets on the sides meant for holding the kind of giant steel thermoses guys from Colorado carry whenever they leave the house.
I have a pang of regret about not having purchased something fancy in which to carry the breast pump. What kind of hayseed dipshit walks the red carpet with a canvas tote bag in her hand? I had briefly considered buying something sequined and fun to use as an ad hoc pump bag, but then I felt embarrassed. Not wanting to walk the red carpet carrying a breast pump felt like the worst kind of petty vanity. Shouldn’t I just be happy to be there? Am I already the kind of person who can’t carry my own stuff around? Do I seriously think I’m the Queen of England?
No.
But the dirty secret is, I do want to be a Prinzezzzzz. I can’t let go of the fantasy, the image of myself as one of those perfectly poised palomino ladies, every detail, every lash, in place. It’s not so much that I want to look the way they look as that I want to feel the way I imagine looking that way feels. I guess this feeling would best be described as, how do you say, “deserving”—a sensation so foreign to most women that L’Oréal was able to sell one dillion lipstick tubes just by having a spokeswoman say the catchphrase, “Because you’re worth it.” Four words that penetrated to the core of the female mind, like Luke Skywalker’s final shot that detonated th
e Death Star.
I panic and text a producer friend at the Emmys asking if a production assistant could maybe meet me at the entrance and take my breast pump to the designated dressing room where it’s been arranged for me to pump after the show. Even though my producer friend says it’s no problem, I feel like I am already a cliché—the temperamental Hollywood asshole who throws an inappropriately foamed latte at some nice young person’s head. “You’re being too hard on yourself,” some tiny voice from within says. The self-loathing part of me throws a latte at that voice’s head.
Tote bag in hand, I get into a white stretch limo with my colleagues at around two p.m. The interior is outlined with disco lights, and there’s a giant decanter of brown booze, which means we are officially having Fun!
That afternoon, the temperature is hovering around a hundred degrees. We exit our car and step into the glare of the Los Angeles sun. Within seconds we are soaking in sweat. There’s a short pre-red-carpet red carpet into the Staples Center, where servers are offering platters of champagne. There is also a free makeup station where a young girl of about nine is getting a touch-up. Edie Falco walks past me. EDIE FALCO.
Emmys!
By the time I find the nice young lady who is taking my breast pump from me, the champagne people have vanished and the bars have, unbelievably, closed. I’d been relying on booze to help me ignore the pain being caused by the Manolo Blahniks. (I was expecting them to be uncomfortable. We’ve all heard people talk about suffering for fashion, but I was not expecting them to be excruciating to the extent that even just sitting with them on—not walking or standing—is agonizing.) Oh well. I will just have water, and drink booze later. I’m parched, as most of my body’s moisture evaporated on the walk from the car to the lobby.
But there is no water to be found. The Emmys seem to have run out of water bottles. I look to see if Edie Falco has any water, but she has vanished.
Oh God, please don’t let Edie Falco dehydrate.
I cannot dwell on this because an announcer tells us over the loudspeaker that it is time to head to the auditorium, which means it’s Walk the Red Carpet o’clock. Prinzezz Time. Fancy Go Time. Fantasy Perfect Lady Time. I am so glad I am not carrying my canvas tote. I take a deep breath and join the glittery wave of sequined and tuxedoed humanity clippity-clopping toward the doors that are being held open for us by Emmy elves. My writer colleagues and I cross the threshold and blink for a moment, blinded by the blistering sun. When I open my eyes, I see that there is a velvet rope parting the red carpet, like the sea of the same color, into two paths. To my left there is a barrier, behind which hundreds of random onlookers gawk and take photos. And to my right, illuminated by a lightning storm of camera flashes, are the celebrity nominees, flanked by their attendants.
If I had any doubt about the pecking order, it’s quickly erased when I spy a friend of mine on the fancier side of the rope. We squeal and run toward each other with outstretched arms to hug over the partition, when suddenly a giant security guard jumps in front of me and practically body-checks me to the ground. He barks at me to move along. My friend looks at me helplessly as we are forcibly parted. I’m embarrassed. I look for a bottle of water and still can’t find any. My colleagues and I end up sharing one mini bottle of “Emmy”-label water that is lukewarm from the heat. We sip each other’s backwash as we make our way to our seats, with security occasionally yelling at us to hurry up. I feel a familiar pit pitting around in my gut.
How is it possible I still feel like dogshit?
This was supposed to be the one moment in life that would make up for the thousands of times I looked at red carpet photos of Angelina Jolie and Cate Blanchett and even Selena Gomez at awards shows and felt like they were creatures from another planet. I’ve never been able to shake this niggling little masochistic compulsion to look at these images, even though they always have given me a small pang of sadness. It is the same pang I felt when I saw the movie Amélie and first gazed with awe at Audrey Tautou—this perfect feminine confection with her bangs and her emerald midi skirt and that perfect little bow of a mouth. For weeks afterward I had this unshakable melancholic ache whose cause I couldn’t put my finger on, until I realized it was an irrational sense of loss over the fact that I would never, no matter how hard I tried, look like Amélie.
But if I were ever going to taste it, today would be the day.
Instead, having made it to this bizarre little Oz, I find that I am not on the yellow brick road but rather a parallel side street. The Emmy urban planners have created these corrals so that everyone knows exactly, and literally, where they stand. And in my case, it is between the red carpet with the Prinzezzes, who are being treated as such, and the huddled masses of fans on my left, yearning for a photograph of anyone famous. Even when I think I have reached the top, I am still stuck in the middle. My friends back home are barraging me with texts asking, “How do you feel?” and the truth is that even though of course I am grateful to be here, because I’m not a complete asshole, I am getting yelled at by a security guard. And that is disappointing. I am as close as I will ever get to the Prinzezzes, and yet I am still not one of them and in fact large professional bouncers are making sure I do not get too close. Oh well, I think. Of course.
So then once we are inside, something bananas happens: We win the Emmy for best sketch show, and suddenly I am standing on the stage looking through the television screen which I have always watched from the other side. Holyshitholyshitholyshit. In the sixty seconds we are up there, I experience a rush of discoveries. I discover that when you walk onstage at the Emmys, you start shaking uncontrollably. I discover that when you win an Emmy you are seized by the hope that all your ex-boyfriends are watching. I discover that when you exit stage right, you are ushered into a VIP lounge where there is finally (FINALLY) booze, as well as a giant stack of doughnuts and sushi.2 Viola Davis is sitting by herself waiting for a drink. Mel Brooks is in the corner smiling and chatting with friends. I order a glass of white wine and head for the food, where LL Cool J and I both shove salmon sashimi into our mouths. The entire situation is surreal, as two thoughts jostle shoulders in my mind: (1) I have won an Emmy; and (2) I don’t truly belong here.
This carousel of anxiety only halts because I look across the room and see a handsome man with an adorable smile and terrific blue eyes talking to an equally stunning woman. I am wearing contacts, so my vision is a little loopy. But this man looks familiar. I squint, squint again, and then realize, holy shit: It’s Ben McKenzie.
Ben McKenzie! You know, the lead of The O.C., my favorite TV show from 2003 to 2007. He played Ryan. Ryan who was from the wrong side of the tracks but whose life changes when he is taken under the wing of his public defender, Sandy, played by Peter Gallagher (Jewing it up to great effect). Sandy lives with his family in tony Newport Beach. It is the fanciest place Ryan’s ever been!
It was such a fucking awesome show. My friend Kate and I were obsessed with it and watched every single week and then hopped on the phone immediately afterward to discuss. We would have texted but the show existed pre-texting.
I can’t believe I am in the same room as RYAN!
I’m just drunk enough to know that I need a photo with him, but I am also sober enough to be worried that he’ll be annoyed by this random fan asking for a picture. I am sure people bother him all the time because he is famous and he played fucking RYAN. However, I figure if Amy Schumer asks if she can take the photo, he will be okay with it. I tell Amy that I need to borrow her famousness and she is immediately on board. We walk over.
The woman he is with, on closer inspection, turns out to be Morena Baccarin, the gorgeous doe-eyed angel who played Brody’s wife on Homeland. I have never seen a woman less troubled by another woman approaching her boyfriend than Morena Baccarin was by me going up to Ben McKenzie.
I tap him on the shoulder and say “Hi” and then Amy jumps in and says she wants to take a picture of us. He looks at us quizzically but smiles (my heart s
tops) and says “Sure” and then he puts his arm around me.3 Just as Amy is about to take the picture, he turns toward me with a slightly worried look on his face and says:
“Hold on, wait. Is this some kind of in-joke between you guys?”
I study his face. He is serious. He’s genuinely concerned that our interest in taking this photo is ironic. That we are somehow making fun of him.
And that is when it dawns on me:
Even Ben McKenzie feels a little bit like dogshit.
But how could this be possible? He was the star of The O.C.! He was Ryan! He is also on some show now called Gotham that I have never watched but I am sure is wonderful because he is in it. And yet, as he chats with his girlfriend, beauteous Brazilian gift-from-above MORENA BACCARIN, in the VIP EMMY LOUNGE, he is insecure enough about his stature that he’s worried he’s the butt of a joke. That maybe he is being compared to his former O.C. self and found lacking.
Even Ben McKenzie does not feel like a Prinzezzz.
Ben McKenzie, who has everything.
Years ago, I read an interview with Nicole Kidman where she talked about winning her Oscar for The Hours. At the same time that she was at the peak moment of her career, arguably of anyone’s career, she was also going through her divorce from Tom Cruise. She said that after she won, she found herself back at her hotel room early, by herself, feeling as alone and sad as she’d ever felt in her life. I remember liking Nicole Kidman very much for revealing that information, but also not totally believing her. Surely, I thought, even when Nicole Kidman is sad, she can’t ever be that sad. And of course it is a cliché that the very rich and very beautiful and very famous can be miserable, and Marilyn Monroe committed suicide, and Owen Wilson tried to commit suicide, and we are all human. But it was hard for me to imagine having those feelings while holding that golden statue. Surely there must be some protective magic in it, at least for a little while.