I did have one very concrete connection to the show, but I didn’t want to tell anyone about it. As I walked out of the wardrobe trailer to the van with the blacked-out windows that would drive me to the set, I prayed that Chace Crawford (who plays the show’s handsome sheepdog, Nate Archibald) would not be in it. Five years prior I had sat across from Chace at the Empire Diner in Chelsea because a men’s magazine had sent me to profile him. I held a microcassette recorder purchased from RadioShack for the occasion, and I watched him order an apple. A whole apple on a little plate. The magazine strongly encouraged me to make him address rumors of his having a romantic relationship with a former NSYNC member. I waited until the end of the interview and, not quite being able to pull the trigger, abruptly asked him to play “fuck, marry, or kill” with three men, one of whom was in a certain boy band, one of whom I can’t recall, and one of whom was Burt Reynolds.
“I can’t do that,” he laughed. He was eager to set the record straight, but not that eager.
“Well, it’s that,” I said, gesturing at a bulldog tied to a tree outside, “or I ask you to kick that dog.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, I’m just trying to think of something you’d rather not do. Sorry again.”
“I’m not going to kick a dog, though,” he deadpanned.
As we parted ways, I went to hug him. Realizing that ours was not a hug-appropriate relationship, I squeezed his arm instead, using the hand with the tape recorder. It dropped and broke in front of him.
That was the end of the interview.
* * *
When I crawled into the van, Matthew and Kelly were already running lines with each other. Kelly twisted around in the front seat and said hello; Matthew was instantly charming from the back row. I felt like we were all about to go on a field trip. For the briefest of seconds I forgot where I was and thought, Good god, these people look familiar.
“You’re the author, right?” said Kelly.
“I’m an author,” I said, stating the facts. “I’ll be one on the show.”
“You write books, though?”
“Yes,” I said. “I did.”
“But you don’t anymore?” Matthew’s voice came from the backseat.
“No.” I could feel myself being unnecessarily confusing because of my own inability to say the words. “I will. I am. I’m a full-time writer.” So I clarified that, yes, “I am the author.”
It was the first time since quitting my job that I had said it with such authority. Or at all. I imagine it’s the same frame of mind women are in when they tell their manicurist they’re pregnant before they tell their own family. Here is a safe space to test out who you are, to see how it sounds. By leaving my career in publishing, I assumed that if I simply eliminated one reality, the remaining one would take over by default. But it turns out that identity is one of those things you have to fight for, even in your sleep.
“So, do you want to run lines with us?” Kelly asked.
“Sure.”
“I like your glasses,” Matthew said. “I’m in the market for new glasses.”
“Who’s in here?” came a perky female voice from the open passenger-seat window, saying, “Hi hi hi bye!” before it bounced down the street.
“Who was that?”
“That was Leighton,” said Kelly, referring to Leighton Meester, who plays Blair.
I almost stole your bra, Blair.
* * *
I was immediately at ease upon entering the apartment. This was because it was shockingly well scouted, a real ringer for a space in which one might hold an old-school book party. Especially one for a buzzy book. It was a large four-bedroom Upper West Side apartment with lots of quirky oil paintings and dark bookshelves and beat-up area rugs. It looked like the kind of place the editor in chief of an independent publishing house might have bought for $100,000 in 1970. We were ushered down a paper-taped hallway as extras and crew members pressed their backs against the wall. The rest of the actors were already stationed in the living room.
Leighton wasn’t in my scene. Nor was Blake Lively (who plays Dan’s ex, Serena) or Jessica Szohr (Dan’s childhood friend, the biracial daughter of Vermont hippies, whose mom is a dead ringer for Maya Angelou) or, thankfully, Chace Crawford. But Ed Westwick, the stylish Brit who plays Chuck, was. During the long breaks between takes, in which the women lay on the master bed like mummies, lest they ruin their makeup, Ed chatted with concern about riots in London that had been dominating the news. Then he showed me a video of a horse being hit by a truck on a country road. The truck plows beneath the horse’s legs and the horse goes flying over the hood of the truck. Magically, he lands on all fours and trots away. It was violent and horrible and unexpectedly funny. I laughed disproportionately. It’s possible I said the words Oh, that’s so wrong. Kelly opened her eyes on the bed and raised her eyebrows at me.
I couldn’t help it. They were all just so nice, asking me where I was from, what I wrote, and where I lived. They genuinely wanted to know about me, a path of conversation that ran in direct opposition to my understanding of the day—that I wasn’t quite me.
“Are you working tomorrow?” Ed asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m on deadline.”
He studied my face. What he meant was: Was I coming back to the set? It was a lovely misunderstanding, one that made me feel as if I had temporarily transcended my walk-on complex. Was I one of them? A natural after all?
By two o’clock we were halfway through filming and I was starving. In a last-ditch effort to do what a real actress might, I had skipped breakfast. I assumed Breakfast Pastry Heaven would await me after
