by Emma Dibdin
‘That’s not a problem. I can get it done. I’m already pretty familiar with his work.’ All my energy is focused on staying calm, keeping my voice steady, not revealing what is happening inside me. Do not seem like anything more than a rookie eager for her big break.
‘Great. So here’s my one tip for you: go in with a headline already in mind. It can change, of course, but don’t walk in there without an angle. You may be there for Nest, but you’re still a reporter.’
‘A headline?’
‘I know, it’s probably anathema to everything you’ve been taught. Never decide what story you have before you have it, follow the facts, all of that. But we have so many restrictions on this that I’m concerned we’re going to end up with nothing. Clark Conrad is a star, obviously, and we want this article to have breakout potential beyond our regular audience. I want people to read this piece even if they don’t care about interiors. So go in with an angle – something good, something people will click on even if they don’t care about Clark Conrad – and then whatever non-answers he gives, at least you’ll know how to direct the conversation.’
Again, I bristle. She’s so certain that I’ll get nothing, that Clark Conrad will play the PR game and I won’t have the skills or the guts to draw anything out of him. But I smile, and thank her, and leave with headline possibilities already bouncing around my mind.
Back home, I try to settle in for a normal evening, a quiet evening, but I barely remember how. This is the first free night I’ve had in weeks and it’s only free because I forgot to respond to the editor who asked me to cover a red carpet. This would normally drive me crazy, the idea of missing out on an assignment, but now everything feels distant and I’m still not quite allowing it to sink in, the reality of what I am doing two days from now.
I run, finally, because it’s been a couple of days and my muscles feel twitchy and tightly coiled. I do not miss a workout, not ever, not until recently when there haven’t been enough hours in the day, and I have to find a way to make it work because without exercise, my thoughts spin out and become uncontrollable. I know this, have learned this, but still it’s an effort. Three years in LA and I still haven’t adjusted to how much planning it takes to go for a run here, how the sidewalk drops away unexpectedly to remind you that this is a city built for cars, not for people, not for human movement. Being so reliant on mechanical cocoons to get around makes me anxious, and so I opted for Echo Park, with its relative walkability and its lakeside running loop.
A popular myth holds that the Echo Park lake used to be full of bodies – murder victims from back when gang violence still had a strangle-hold on this area. I believed it for most of my first year here, until l looked more deeply into the local lore and learned that while there’s a lick of truth to it, the bodies were mostly drownings and suicides. Now the lake is my favourite thing in the city, a picture book gem dotted with sailboats and lotus flowers and palm trees, a perfect view of the downtown skyline spread out behind its glimmering surface. Some days, it’s the only thing that makes living here bearable.
After seven laps of the lake I feel wrung out and blissful, and finally I allow my thoughts to go to him. Clark Conrad. Back in my apartment I start streaming Loner, the beloved NBC drama which brought Conrad his breakout role, and after five seasons gave him the springboard to become, against the odds, a movie star. I have every boxset on my shelf, of course, their cardboard corners tattered from years of use, but nothing to play them on since my DVD player finally died last year.
Loner centred on a seemingly amoral, ambitious lawyer who moonlighted as a do-gooder vigilante. It was essentially a superhero show before they were in vogue, though the network would never dream of selling it as that. Loner was ‘a lawyer with a dark secret’, defending scumbag suits by day and saving lives by night, aided by his otherworldly ability to sense death around him. He could sense if someone was about to be hit by a car, or killed by a mugger, or burned alive in a fire, and wherever possible he would intervene, save them, always in disguise to avoid any link between his two lives.
Of course, there was a tragic backstory driving him to do all this saving, a horrifying childhood trauma that left him an orphan, and my favourite episodes were always those that delved most deeply into the angst of his past. There’s something comforting about a hero who has endured unthinkable pain and survived in spite of it.
Loner is probably no longer the role that most people know Clark Conrad for; he’s been a bona fide movie star for more than a decade, one of the few actors whose name alone can still get a film financed. But to me this will always be who he is. Loner by name, loner by nature, and yes, of course this tagline is absurd, almost as absurd as the fact that the character’s literal name was Richard Loner. The kind of thing TV could just barely get away with in the nineties. People talk about this show now with affectionate scorn, as a corny oddity, but there’s a reason its fans have stayed so engaged and are still clamouring for a reboot. The thing is there’s nothing insincere about Loner, and after a few moments of watching Clark’s performance you forget the silliness of its concept.
Netflix reminds me that I’m midway through an episode – season three, episode twenty, the episode I’ve re-watched enough times that I can probably recite it – but I opt to begin the entire show again from the beginning. I watch his face, the face that has been an endless comfort to me through so much, listen to the voice that has been a mainstay when everything else in my life is collapsing, and think about what’s to come. What I’m going to ask this man. How I can possibly communicate, in the space of twenty minutes, what he has meant to me, how he came to represent for me the idea of what a good man looked like. Most people get over their teenage crushes, but he is my exception.
Not that I’m there to communicate any of this to him. I’m there to ask him the kinds of questions that will prompt newsworthy answers, because I am not a fan, or rather I am no longer just a fan. I’m a reporter.
I know I should be taking notes because there are ideas coming to me, questions, angles, but I’m too tired to hold my head up. I’m out cold before the sun has even gone down, the words of the show circling my mind as I’m drifting off, Loner’s dry one-liners following me into my dreams. This is not the first time he has lulled me to sleep.
2
‘Angela! Angela! Turn this way!’
‘Towards me, Angela!’
‘Angela, what happened with Jason? Are you guys getting back together?’
‘Angela! To the left! Angela!’
‘WE LOVE YOU, ANGELA!’
‘Hey, Angela, five minutes for Us Weekly? Angela!’
‘Angela, what’s your perfect breakfast?’
‘ANGELA! ANGELA! ANGELA!’
‘Angela, right over here! Over your shoulder!’
There are few things more soul-destroying to me than a red carpet. Angela Jackson, a twenty-something TV actress currently in the tabloids for breaking up with her co-star, is posing for pictures as photographers, reporters and fans vie for her attention, their demands overlapping each other until it’s all a meaningless din. But she’s a pro, she keeps smiling and posing and turning even as the photographers shout conflicting instructions at her, begging her to grace their lens with one perfectly sellable angle.
My editor specifically wants me to get a quote from Angela but I have too much dignity, or fear, to scream at the top of my lungs to try to attract her attention, and in any case it’s pointless. I suspect the reporters who do this are just trying to feel less useless, because if the star’s publicist doesn’t want them to speak to you, they will not speak to you. I flag down the only publicist I know here as she barrels by, a phone in either hand and a clipboard under her arm, and thankfully her face lights up in recognition.
‘Jessica, hey, do you want to speak to Logan?’
And within a few minutes he is there in front of me, the baby-faced supporting actor with a rabid teenage fanbase, and I’m trying desperately to get him to say anyt
hing interesting about this film we both know is bad. I ask him softball questions, the fundamentals in any PR training exercise (what drew you to the role? Who’s your biggest career inspiration?) and watch him with a sinking heart.
‘Yeah, you know, it’s just a really exciting project to be a part of, and obviously Bryan is such a legendary director, it was a no-brainer for me.’
‘What was the most challenging aspect of the role for you?’
He furrows his brow, evidently not having prepared an answer even for this.
‘You know, I guess it was all challenging, in terms of the work, but I had such a great team around me that it was just a real honour to be there every day.’
I’m going to get nothing from this guy.
‘Great! Thanks so much for your time.’ I smile, and he is ushered along to the next hopeful. The carpet is winding down now, the four big-name stars of the movie all whisked away at once in time for the start of the premiere, and already the sense of anticlimax is settling in. A group of fans across from me brought homemade signs declaring their love for the franchise’s leading man, who glided straight down the carpet without a second glance at either them or us, completing a single interview with Entertainment Tonight before disappearing into the movie theatre. One of the fans is crying now, being consoled by her friends who are clearly still recovering themselves.
My feet are aching from hours of standing, but this isn’t the end of the night. The carpet was a wash, but I’ll try my luck at the afterparty, maybe sidle up to Angela with recorder in hand and get her talking. The art of the cold approach is something I’m still learning, but if I start drinking now, I should be in the right frame of mind when the time comes.
The party is not due to start for another hour, at a hotel rooftop across the street from the theatre, but the doorman waves me into the lobby and I slip into a booth there, relishing the darkness and the relative quiet. I text the social media editor of the site I’m here for tonight, send her a couple of carpet clips I think could make good Instagram fodder, then pull out the notecards on which I’ve been trying to perfect my questions for Clark. The interview is tomorrow, and I should have spent this evening preparing, should have said no to this assignment. Anxiety is fluttering softly at the edges of my throat, not constricting but just unsettling, making it hard to think straight or to sit still, and I steady myself by reading over my questions again, the draft version of them. How many questions can I ask in twenty minutes? How long will his answers be? How much time should I allow for follow-ups, for unexpected tangents? These are the calculations you always make before any interview, but this is not like any other interview.
I order an Old Fashioned from the bar just off the lobby, and on an empty stomach it takes effect almost instantly, slowing things down just enough for me to plan.
We had our final pre-interview meeting today, myself and Justin and Jackie and Eleanor and the videographer and the photographer, during which all the things that I can’t ask about were impressed upon me again.
‘Nothing about Carol or the divorce, nothing about the bad reviews for The Silver Circle, nothing about his personal life—’ Justin interrupted himself, reading from the publicist’s email. ‘Basically, you can ask about the house and you can ask about his work, but only the well-reviewed stuff.’
‘I liked The Silver Circle,’ I said, though this isn’t entirely true. It was a misconceived adaptation in which Clark played a hardened CIA analyst who’s drawn into a supernatural adventure involving a prophecy and a cult of hooded demons. He was miscast, but still mesmerizing.
‘Will Skye be there?’
‘Yes, but just for the photographs. We’re expressly forbidden to ask her any questions, like we even need to. If we want to know what she thinks about anything, we can check any one of her fifty-six pensive Instagram posts this month.’
‘Is she still dating that terrible boyband person?’ asked Jackie, with the confidence of someone who knows she’s out of touch and doesn’t care.
‘Of course! Their love is indestructible,’ Justin replied, drily. I tuned out at this point, as I tend to from any conversation about the world’s most exhaustingly omnipresent pop star, Brett Rickards. In truth I don’t have much interest in talking to Clark’s younger daughter Skye either, though I know she’s a tabloid mainstay, a socialite ten years too late for that to be an actual career path, a nineteen-year-old already infamous for her nightlife and her striking transformation from good girl to goth. I should try to get something from her, something I can sell to People or Us Weekly and make enough to pay my rent for a month, but I simply don’t care. Skye Conrad is not who I want to write about.
The lobby bar is beginning to fill up with glamorously dressed guests, the first arrivals from the premiere across the street, all of them heading towards the elevator to the roof. I join the throng, wishing I’d had the foresight to bring a pair of heels to change into, wishing my dress were longer and less clearly from H&M, wishing I could blend.
Upstairs, the line for the bar is already insane, the space too small for the number of attendees, guests and their plus ones jostling for attention. It’s clear that this is not the real afterparty, this is the pre-afterparty where everybody important makes an appearance before departing to find the real action at Soho House or the Chateau Marmont or, more likely, somebody’s mansion. Even behind the velvet rope, there are always more ropes.
‘Oh my God, Tom?’
I could be hallucinating, except that I finally had a decent night’s sleep last night, and no, that is definitely Tom Porter grinning and striding towards me, one of my oldest friends from back in London inexplicably here at this glossy, half-empty party.
‘Hey, Jess,’ he murmurs into my ear, squeezing me tight, fitting against me like he always has.
‘What the hell? How long have you been in town? Why didn’t you call me?’
‘I emailed you, a couple of weeks back. Don’t have your US number, so I just thought…’
And yes, now I remember, the email landed in my inbox on some breathless afternoon in between a junket and a CrossFit class and coffee with a publicist I’ve been trying to befriend for months, and there was no room for it. I read it and immediately failed to retain it, not because Tom is not important to me but because I don’t know how to process him any more.
‘Ugh, you’re right. Sorry. This month has just been completely insane, with work.’
‘I assumed. Are you still doing eleven jobs?’
‘Just two. Plus freelancing in the evening, hence this whole situation.’ I gesture around at the room. ‘How come you’re here? Please tell me you finally made the big move.’
Tom has been talking about moving to LA since we were at university together, seven years and a different life ago. I made the move myself without telling him, without telling almost anyone, keeping the goodbyes to a minimum when I packed as many clothes as I could into the largest suitcase I owned and booked a flight, never looking back over my shoulder for fear I’d be frozen in place.
But unlike me, Tom had something to leave behind in London. An actual career, albeit an inconstant one; stints at the Globe and the RSC; a supporting role in a West End musical; most recently the lead in a six-part BBC adaptation that got enough attention from its Stateside airing that he’s of interest to casting agents here.
‘Are you here for pilot season?’ I ask, as a passing waiter refills our glasses with more champagne we could never afford.
‘So many auditions.’ He nods. ‘And so. Few. Callbacks. They say ninety per cent of an actor’s skill-set is absorbing rejection, so I’m just honing. But I’m going in for a studio test tomorrow on this new teen drama for The CW, the one about the twins.’
‘Oh yeah, they’re hot twins and one of them’s a ghost, right? So you’d have to play two roles?’
‘Yeah, y’know, I thought I’d start out with something low-key and easy.’
‘Well, congrats on passing their hotness test. That is a
high bar.’ The CW is a network traditionally geared towards young female viewers, and its actors are known for being a particularly ludicrous kind of hot – there’s regular pretty and CW pretty, and there is no mistaking the one for the other. Tom is not what I would call CW pretty; he’s always been unconventional looking, with a long face and longer hair that he refuses to cut shorter than shoulder length. Back home he was perfect for Shakespearean roles, and got cast as a lot of grunge rockers, but he’s never going to be a leading man.
Still, no woman has ever managed to pin him down for longer than six months, and our run lasted less than two; two winter months in which I flung myself into his orbit and abandoned my own and let myself think I was in love. Two months of huddling together in the cold dawn as we lined up outside West End box offices for cheap day seats, of running through torrential rain from the tube station to his house, of kissing hard outside stage doors. He is still the closest I’ve ever come to falling comfortably into a relationship, the way I’ve seen people do around me throughout my life. The only time I’ve woken up in someone’s bed and stuck around for breakfast instead of slipping out at dawn was with him. He’s the only person I ever thought of a future with, but that’s long in the past.
LA may not have seasons, but it’s still January and still night-time and I forgot to bring anything to wear over my dress, so Tom lends me his suit jacket. As it turns out, he shares an agent with Logan, and seems unsurprised when I tell him how boring he seemed on the carpet.
‘Wait a minute, this is off the record,’ he tells me, interrupting himself right before an anecdote is about to get juicy. ‘Do I need to watch myself around you now? Are my bitchy stories going to end up on TMZ under a pseudonym?’
‘I would never. Come on.’
And so he tells me how Logan is a nightmare to work with, how he showed up late and high and had to be fed his lines on this film we’re all here to celebrate, and how he would have been blacklisted by now if it weren’t for his social media following.