Babylon Confidential

Dodi lived in another world that just happened to intersect with mine. You don’t need to travel to an alien planet if you want to see another form of sentient life. You don’t need an interdimensional transporter to visit a parallel reality. You just need a few billion dollars and the whole world changes around you.

* * *

When I got back to L.A. I fell in love with a house in the Hollywood Hills but was $25,000 short of the amount needed to settle. I signed the contract anyway, not knowing where I’d find the money. The next day I opened the mail to find a residual check for a little over $25,000—my cut from the sales of Ivanova merchandising. Everything seemed to be going my way.

Back on set John was waiting for me with open arms. Neither of us asked any questions or offered any answers. We just started up where we’d left off.

Dodi and I talked on the phone as often as we could. Whenever I had a break from Babylon 5 he flew me (first class, naturally) to meet him. During the production hiatus Dodi and I had been able to drink and dine with abandon, but while I was shooting the series I maintained a healthy diet and drank lightly or not at all. The one time I did drink too much, while at a friend’s birthday dinner, John noticed it immediately the following morning when he was lighting me for a scene.

“What did you do last night, baby? Your eyes are all puffy.”

I was so embarrassed I never did it again.

For all the fooling around we did, in the trailers and on the set, John and I always took the job seriously and maintained our professionalism. I didn’t drink much at all in those years, even when I wanted to, because I had respect for the gift I’d been given. I was on a hit show, working with so many people I loved. The very thought that I could let my colleagues down and disappoint the fans by indulging myself with a drinking spree in my off hours was unthinkable. My drinking was still at the point where I could control it.

* * *

In 1995 I celebrated my thirtieth birthday with a party attended by the Babylon 5 regulars. I noticed throughout the night that Jeff Conaway was acting a bit off. By the end of the party he was completely wasted and holed up in the bathroom doing lines. A mutual friend told me that Jeff was having a bad night—his wife was about to leave him because she couldn’t handle his addictions anymore.

“Addictions? What addictions?”

“Cocaine, alcohol, painkillers, you name it.”

I was stunned. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t seen any sign of that, because on set Jeff was a consummate professional. He was always on time, he’d have his dialogue down, and he was always friendly and sober. The only behavior that had ever stuck in my mind as being unusual was that he used to carry around supersized bottles of vitamins. I thought it was pretty cool that he had all of these pills, potions, and unguents in his trailer, so one day after an exhausting shooting schedule I asked him what I should take.

“Here, take a niacin tablet. That’ll pick you up.”

I brought it home and tried it. My skin turned bright red and started burning. I rushed into the shower and turned the cold tap on full force. That stopped the burning, but when I tried to get out of the shower I was hit by a dizzy spell and ended up lying on the floor feeling as if I’d just been through the spin cycle in a washing machine. The next day I went into work and tracked him down.

“What the hell were you thinking giving me that stuff?”

“Oh. You can’t take the whole niacin pill. You have to build up a tolerance, so you should just take a little bit. I guess I should have told you that.”

A few years ago I saw Jeff on TV. He was in a reality show called Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. It broke my heart watching that. He looked like a frail old man, not the handsome, talented guy I knew.

He had a girlfriend who was bringing him drugs during the show, which ended up getting him kicked off, and then he’d come back and then get kicked off again. They were getting him to talk about his past, his tortured childhood, trying to get him to confront the fact that he was an addict, but it always puzzled me that no one did anything to treat his biological addiction. The more you drink or take drugs, the more the neuro-pathways of addiction and compulsion in the brain are strengthened. Why weren’t the doctors on the show treating this instead of just the psychological component? Addicts attract other addicts, for comfort, for mutual justification, or, as in this case, just to help feed the addiction. I thought it was sad that there seemed to be no one there for Jeff. Maybe he’d burned through his friends and family, broken one promise too many. Most addicts do. I know I did.

Jeff, like many people I know, was an opiate addict. He had an accident early on in his career on the set of the movie Grease, while shooting the “Greased Lightning” scene, that left him with chronic neck and back pain. Most opiate addicts start their addiction after going to a doctor and complaining about back or neck pain; some of the painkillers that they’re prescribed are derived from the same source as heroin.

Jeff had multiple surgeries to try to rid himself of the pain, but by then he was addicted to painkillers. One addiction led to another until they finally claimed his life at age sixty in May 2011. It was a tremendous tragedy that Jeff died so young, battling his demons to the end until his body wore out and couldn’t take it anymore. In the aftermath I got the impression that the media were very blase about his death. They even left him out of the Emmy memorial photo montage.

Jeff was fifteen years older than me. At the time, the news of his addiction was tragic, but I didn’t see that it had any relevance to my own life. I had no inkling that before long the same monster that haunted Jeff would come knocking on my door, and I’d be designing my own detox-vitamin program. I was too busy living the life I’d always dreamed of.

* * *

These were the halcyon days. I was developing a strong fan base (and boy, are sci-fi fans loyal—I’d never seen anything like it). I was in constant demand at conventions, so I hired an assistant named Holly Evans to help manage the bookings. Holly is ex-military, loyal to the bone, and has stuck with me through all of the highs and lows. She’s one of the best and brightest angels in my life.

When the Los Angeles Times ran an article asking people to choose the next host of the Oscars, Holly took up the challenge and contacted my fans, letting them know where to vote. From the Los Angeles Times, December 13, 2000:

The ’01 Oscar Host: You Voted, We Counted

And you thought the presidential election results were confusing? In the wake of Billy Crystal taking himself out of consideration to host the next Academy Awards, we asked readers to nominate their candidates to replace him—and the wide range of responses made the margin of victory in Florida, whatever it might be and for whomever, look like a landslide…. The biggest draw, thanks to an apparent write-in campaign by her fans, was Claudia Christian of Babylon 5.

I got over 6,000 votes and left Jim Carrey and Steve Martin for dead. I’ve got my dress picked out in case the Academy decides to call. It doesn’t matter if they don’t—fifteen years after my last appearance on Babylon 5, I’m still in demand at conventions around the world, and Holly is still making the bookings. You can’t beat loyalty like that.

Unfortunately, there is a point at which loyalty crosses the line and becomes obsession.

* * *

I’d been receiving crazy-colored, hand-knitted items from a fan who claimed to be a postal worker. He would send me packages containing homemade tea cozies and doilies that he’d knitted himself, and I sent back thank-you notes. Then he wrote to say that he was finally going to meet me at a convention in upstate New York. He had a gift he wanted to give me.

I was sitting at my table signing things for folks and having a pleasant time when I saw something large and furry out of the corner of my eye. I looked up to see a giant tribble (a furry alien creature from Star Trek) waddling toward me. The tribble stopped at the table, identified itself as my postal worker fan, and held up an enormous black plastic garbage bag. From out of it, he drew a hot-pink, lime-green, and purple afghan large enough to cover a California-king-size bed. If it were the ’60s and I were on acid and living in a commune, I’d have appreciated it. But since I hadn’t eaten a trunkload of magic mushrooms that morning, I had to draw on decades of acting experience to conjure up convincing superlatives.