Melissa Explains It All: Tales From My Abnormally Normal Life (10 page)

Sarah Michelle Gellar might as well have been known as “most likely to be my professional doppleganger.” She was a year younger than me and though we always got along at auditions and commercial shoots, I wouldn’t say we were super close. We began our careers at around the same time, and hung out during commercial auditions, but rarely crossed paths at PCS. Our lives went on to mimic each other’s and still do. When I shot
Clarissa,
she dazzled on
All My Children
as Susan Lucci’s daughter. I used to randomly turn it on and feel proud that I knew her. Then about six months after
Sabrina
first aired, Sarah began slaying vampires as
Buffy,
and a decade later when I began shooting my third sitcom,
Melissa & Joey,
her third show launched, too. The tabloids have kept me posted on similarities in our personal lives as well. We got our first tattoos around the same time, got married a year apart, and seem to have timed a few of our pregnancies simultaneously. Isn’t that strange? Whenever I hear something new about my cosmic twin, I stop to wonder if I’ve had, or will have, similar experiences in my own life.

Then there’s Tara Reid. She was a lively and naughty friend. Unlike the skin, bones, and boobs she is now, Tara was a plump young thing in high school. And the wild side that’s made her infamous? You could say she honed her rebellious skills at PCS. Any trouble I got into in tenth grade can pretty much be traced back to Tara, though I rarely did anything wrong. One time, we both got scolded for her copying off my test (my teacher thought we were in cahoots), and when she smoked cigarettes on the church steps near our school and I went with her, we both got in trouble for it, even though I hadn’t lit a cancer stick. One of my favorite memories of Tara was when we both quit an acting class after just one improv skit. We could both be outgoing, yet neither of us had the nerve to invent a workable scene on a whim. It was too much pressure to be funny without a script and not embarrass ourselves, especially in an artsy school.

Like most teenagers, I began to really collect and covet my friendships during my teen years, though I didn’t form many long-term relationships from PCS, since I felt so invested in the time and energy I spent working on
Clarissa
for most of the year. That said, fans always want to know if I stay close with past costars after wrapping a show or movie. I rarely do. Most actors’ lives are a traveling circus that isn’t conducive to regular coffee dates. I’ve worked everywhere from Surfers Paradise in Australia, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Provo, Utah, and up into Calgary, Canada, for weeks to months at a time. Actors also live in really close quarters, sometimes six days a week, so it doesn’t take long for us to get a little tired of each other. We see each other in the makeup and hair room, at the craft services table, and on set. But our top priority is to work. I know this may be disappointing to hear, but when you see actors getting along in a scene, don’t assume that they’re best friends in real life—more often than not, they’re just acting. They’ve probably had some nice chats between takes, or maybe gone to lunch, but they’re not talking late into the night about their hopes and dreams (or at least, I’m not). I’ve simply grown to trust that some people just come into your life for a lifetime, a reason, or a TV season, and I’m grateful for every experience.

I did become very tight with a lot of people from the
Clarissa
crew during my high school years, and I think this is because of my background. I’ve always had more in common (at least I think I do) with the grips, camera department, makeup, hair, and wardrobe people, boom operator, sound guys—the technical folks who get their hands dirty. In the business, people like to say there’s an imaginary line that separates those who influence the creative direction of a film’s story from those who perform duties related to its physical production (this line is used for matters related to the show’s budget). “Above the line” people are those who guide creative direction, including your screenwriters, producer, director, casting director, and actors. The crew is said to be “below the line,” since they perform the physical production of a film. The first group was always more interested in who I knew, what I could do for them, and what car I was driving, but the second group reminded me of my family. They wanted to work hard and then head home to what was really important. They never had time to chitchat or feed my ego when they had recitals, graduations, and basketball games to get to. In fact, I always thought befriending the crew was much harder, but more gratifying, than trying to win over a network exec, producer, or actor who was always too quick to compliment a day’s work. To me, there’s no better feeling than having a dolly grip run into me at the craft service table and say, “That scene was hilarious!” I appreciate that the crew is the first to arrive and the last to leave; they’re the ones who do the grunt work for no credit and little pay. And they don’t care who you are or what you have done, because they’ve worked with The Best, and this is just another paycheck to feed their families. They also know your every tantrum, mentally record every minute you’re late to set or delayed from lunch, and are well aware of sex- or drug-related antics, since they empty your garbage at night. So if they love you in spite of all that, that’s saying a whole lot.

*   *   *

When
Clariss
a wrapped in December of 1993, so did my atypical high school experience. It’s a wild thing to work through adolescent growing pains while playing a character doing the same. I think living out Clarissa’s dramas—in which every problem comes with a solution—kept me from feeling like I had to experience a lot of them on my own. And some situations, like when Clarissa obsessed over what to wear for her school picture, were so outside my reality that I didn’t relate. I did, however,
really
understand Clarissa’s unrelenting desire to drive a car. I shot so many episodes about Clarissa itching to get behind a wheel when I was fifteen that because of her need to experience horsepower, I wanted this, too. I’d like to say it lifted when I got my license, but my need for speed continued well into my twenties, when I graduated to race car driving (more on this later).

Rather than revel in the fact that I played the lead in a sitcom, which means my world literally revolved around me for four years—a teenager’s dream come true, right?—I somehow came out of these years feeling more responsible and introspective than smug and insufferable. I was also totally exhausted. Seventy-hour workweeks, spending tons of time in airports, changing schools, my parents’ divorce, shifting friendships, studying for the SATs, and then finally applying to New York University made me eager for a fresh start. Of course, I’m leaving out perhaps one of the biggest energy-sucks of all—boys. But they’re up next.

Chapter 7

STRAIGHT FROM THE HART

Teen girls are like Hormone CNN: all guy thoughts, all the time. I was boy-crazy back then like everyone else, but I was also an underdeveloped pixie. Most dudes barely noticed this people-pleaser with a late-bloomer’s body—particularly when there were other gals around, flaunting their self-confidence and burgeoning curves. To young hornballs, hanging out with me didn’t feel like headline news, though I did hit a few make-out milestones like everyone else.

At fourteen years old, it felt like I’d waited forever for my first kiss. Most of my friends had already played tonsil hockey, and I wanted to do the same. But for my big moment, I wasn’t going to settle for any zit-faced kid with a tongue, so I held out until I had a real crush to make a memory. Enter Chris, a grade younger than me and skater-boy cute. He had dark, straight hair that was combed over to the right side of his head and revealed a shaved scalp beneath. For ’90s teens, this was as popular a cut as the Bieber style was for a bit. And like most boys his age, he gave me just enough attention to keep my hopes up, but then pushed me away, which held my interest.

The pilot for
Clarissa
had just been picked up, so I was about to shoot thirteen episodes in Orlando and embark on a grueling and unfamiliar schedule. I knew this first kiss would take planning, but I could handle it. My closest friend that summer was a girl named Jessica, so I asked her to have a one-on-one talk with Chris. She told him I really wanted him to be my first, and that I’d be in Florida for the rest of the year, so I wouldn’t want to “go out” or anything.

Chris agreed to these conditions and met us in Gillette Park, a popular spot for locals to carve their names into picnic tables, attend our town’s annual Oyster Festival, and make out like nobody’s watching (though they usually are). On this big day, however, it was all about my Bonne Bell strawberry-flavored mouth. While Jess disappeared with the other boys, Chris and I awkwardly sat on his skateboard, trying not to slip off, and shared an amateur and sloppy kiss that was over in a flash. I don’t think I ever ran into Chris much after that, but with my first significant smooch out of the way, I was free to make out to my Hart’s delight.

Though my first real kiss went smoothly enough, I can’t say the same for my first
on-screen
kiss. The professional rite of passage happened during an episode of
Clarissa
in 1993, when I was sixteen, with a character named Paulie. This was also the first time I had to lock lips as Clarissa, so the show’s producers were careful to let me know, before I read the script, that I’d be puckering up that week. I was really afraid it would be embarrassing and awkward to do this in front of hundreds of people, including the crew I’d grown close to. I also knew I’d have to do the scene over and over, until we got it “right.” It’s not like I’d kissed a ton of boys in my own life so far. Frankly, we could be at this all night.

Though the producers said I could help choose Clarissa’s “love interest” from three head shots, when they laid them out I suggested we go with anyone but an actor called James Van Der Beek. (Oh, come on. I know people think he’s dreamy, but I never got the appeal.) This was five years before he began getting naked with most of the cast on
Dawson’s Creek
. But despite my objections, guess who they cast? Yup, my opinion didn’t weigh as heavily as I’d hoped. On top of not being hot for my costar, I was dating my first serious boyfriend, Mike, at the time (more on him later), so I had to overcome a nagging feeling that I was about to cheat on my man—in public, with a stranger, for all to judge and watch.

During rehearsal, James and I both got really uncomfortable as I went in for the kill on the Darlings’ sofa. And then, before I could reach his thin lips …

“My girlfriend is not going to like this!” he blurted out.

“Neither is
my
boyfriend!” I shouted. I said this in a snotty-teen-girl-rolling-her-eyes way I’d learned from my sister Trisha; she always pulled off more attitude than I could. It’s not like
I
wanted the kiss to happen! I needed to make it clear I wasn’t happy with this. He was no Mike.

I’m sorry to say that I don’t remember a lot about the kiss itself. I think I buried that memory in a deep, horrified place reserved for times I passed gas in school and flirted to get out of speeding tickets. But to this day, I still have a small panic attack—call it PTSKD, Post-Traumatic Screen-Kiss Disorder—when I read a kissing scene in a script. Even if I swish with Listerine and use a lip stain coated with Chapstick to avoid a mess—a trick I learned from the makeup gals on
Clarissa
—it’s rarely a sexy thing. In fact, in my newest show,
Melissa & Joey,
Joey Lawrence uses enough lip balm for both of us, creating such a thick barrier that there’s hardly any skin-on-skin contact. It’s hard to get turned on when it feels like you’re kissing one of Madame Tussauds’s wax statues. Not smoking or eating onions at lunch is also a kindness. On a recent episode of
M&J,
one actor had to bite into a chicken leg and then mack on me. He really housed that bird and, with a mouthful of greasy flesh, immediately swooped in for the kiss. I was disgusted by the scene and couldn’t understand why he didn’t take a tiny, fake nibble for my benefit. Meanwhile, Joey chuckled off to the side, the thought of it making him reapply his Carmex, I’m sure.

At least Van Der Blah and I got it right in six takes. In a film, a director and DP might ask you to do it twenty-five times, to get the most beautiful shot. It requires choreography.
Put more light on your lips
.
I need your face toward the camera
.
I need more space between your faces while you kiss.

Then there’s the question of whether to use tongue, and how much. When I was single, I went for it—but seeing that I’m now married with little boys who’ve watched Mommy’s work, it’s super embarrassing to act like I’m into the kiss when I know my spouse and kids are going to watch it while sitting right next to me on the couch. I don’t even want to consider what my mother-in-law thinks of all this. So I just try to throw myself into the character and push everyone else out of these racing thoughts.

It’s also hard to do a passionate, open-mouthed kiss without tongue, yet scripts call for it all the time. It feels like you’re eating an ice-cream cone with fish lips. Mario Lopez still swears I got frisky trying to do this in the final scene of our movie,
Holiday in Handcuffs.
When the director yelled “Cut!” Mario jumped around yelling, “You slipped me the tongue! She slipped me tongue!” The more I protested, the louder he got—not unlike the way my six-year-old throws a tantrum over a candy bar at the grocery store checkout. The way I see it, either A. C. Slater deviously slid his slinky Latin tongue into my mouth, or we accidentally “bumped” into each other. As for my best on-screen kiss? Balthazar Getty and I had some wild and spoof-worthy make-outs in a pilot we did called
Dirtbags,
but the suave Adrian Grenier (my costar in
Drive Me Crazy
) tops the list.

Though some girls might have taken more advantage of going to a high school with famous actors, I usually kept my mouth and legs closed to them. I was so busy making new friends, keeping my grades up, traveling south all the time, and working on
Clarissa
that I didn’t really make time for PCS boys. Plus, the ones I crushed on—like Donald “Shun” Faison and Dash Mihok—treated me like a sweet little sister, so I never let myself get too caught up in daydreaming about them. Now the big, strong electric guys on set who saw me the same way? They took over my dreams day
and
night. I was hot for men in their twenties who lifted heavy stuff. Maybe it’s a Freudian thing, since Dad owned a construction company, or a Long Island thing, since everyone drinks beer from the can—God forbid they get caught with a frosty glass.