On a tv/film production, the word ātranspoā is used to refer to the transportation department, which has a huge role in the life of the show, one of itās many jobs being to transport the actors at pretty much all times- to and from the airport, to the actorās hotel or home, to and from set, to and from basecamp, etc. Giving actors rides to and from work was established long before I began my career, but I heard that one of the reasons they offer the service is because a productionās biggest asset is its actors, so making sure they get to and from work and home/accommodations safely each day is very important (they also like knowing where we are at all times of the work day- productions tend to treat their actors like they are uncontrollable children, which grated on my nerves at the beginning of my career, before I actually started working regularly with film actors and realizing that many of them ARE uncontrollable children š„“).
Anyways, this show was no different, so you can imagine my surprise when, at the very beginning of shooting in nyc, I wasnāt being offered rides. Me and my manager/agents were confused and figured it was just a weird oversight that we would have to figure out. I thought it would be cleared up in a couple days, so I quietly got myself to our studio each day, in queens. From brooklyn, where I lived. Via the subway. Which was utterly ridiculous. Because if you know anything about brooklyn, queens and the subway system, you know that there is no easy way to get between the two boroughs. If you know that there is the g line, the only train that runs north/south between queens and BK, then you also know that that line is out of service 99.9999% of the time. As unreliable as the subway system is, the g train is itās own personal hell- at that time, it usually took passengers no more than 4 stops before telling them to disembark and take a bus to finish getting to where they needed to go. So for me, that was obviously a no-go. Instead I had to take a train into Manhattan, take another train to Times Square, and then take another train to the studio in queens, which was about a 10-13 minute walk from the train station depending on the weather. Door to door it took between an hour and a half and an hour forty five minutes. One way. In addition to this, I had to do my own hair before I got to work because, although the ladies in the hair dept were dreamboats, they were not competent with my curls. At the time, my hair took about an hour and a half start to finish (Over the years I have amended my hair routine so that I wash it at home and diffuse it at work in the HMU trailer, which shaves some time off the process, but is still not comparable to the experience of coworkers of mine who roll out of bed and into the transpo van, and then get completed revived in the HMU trailer). Anyways, do the math- its not good. I was routinely waking up 3.5-4 hours BEFORE my call time, then spending up to 18 hours a day shooting (our ridiculously long and expensive production days are one of the reasons they moved the show out of NYC for season 2). I was exhausted, and confused, because we were going on week 2, week 3, and I think even a week 4 and no one had figured out why I was not getting rides to work yet.
The reason this was so confusing to me and my team was because all 6 of my coworkers were getting picked up from their apartments all around the city and driven in to work. It was also confusing because, strangely enough, the direct route from my home in bk to the studio in queens was about 20 minutes with good traffic. Thatās nothing compared to the hour and a half I was spending on the train in the morning (would like to also remind yāall that uber and lyft didnāt exist at this time- yes thatās how old I am lolā¦but even if it did, why should I have to pay for a ride to work when everyone else is getting them for free??)
This is where the gaslighting started. When I talked to the producer in charge if the transpo department, her excuse was that it āwasnāt in my contractā. I was baffled by this because my contract was standard and I recalled being told by my manager that I would indeed get rides. My mngr looked it over again and said he couldnāt figure out what she was referring to. A few days later I went back into her office and told her that we were confused- I had the same contract as at least one or two others on the show and THEY were getting rides. This time she changed her story, said itās not about the contract, but something about the networks transport standard- that people who already live in the city of a production (meaning they didnāt have to relocate for work), are required to get themselves to and from the production, and people who HAVE had to relocate for work WILL get rides from transpo. Now this is actually true- in certain circumstances- but not the ones we were in. Yes, actors who have flown in from somewhere else to work temporarily on a production are always given rides to and from work, for example, if someone who lived in LA booked a guest spot on our show in NYC, they would be picked up at the airport, taken to the hotel, picked up for work, yada yada. But the difference is that MOST of our actors were relocated- if they didnāt live in NYC already, they were given a stipend to move themselves to the production city and then considered ālocal hiresā. I know, the details are weird and boring probably, but they are important to why this experience was so outrageous. Only two people in the main cast, me and someone else, already lived in NYC, and the other five actors came from LA and overseas. However. The other NYC actor on the show? I watched her climb out of that van every day she was scheduled to shoot. So even if the whole ānetwork standardļæ¼ā WAS true, I was still being treated differently.
My manager finally got a hold of the producer on the phone and tried to figure out what was going on with the transport situation. This woman said to him, āIām not sure what youāre talking about, none of the actors here get rides from our transpo department, she is mistakenā. I must also inform you, dear reader, that not only was this an era before ubers, it was also an era before cell phones with video capabilityā¦or at least before MY cell phone had video capability. If this happened today, I would easily be able to stand outside of the studio and film the transport vans dropping my co workers off after picking them up from all around the city, and shove it in this womanās face (and prove to my manager that I wasnāt making it up), but alas, I had no such ability, just my own eyes and brain and memory which I knew I could trust. Funny enough, it was just that morning that I was walking to the studio from the train station a half mile down the road and I landed at the building at the same time as one of the transpo vans. One of my coworkers got out and joked, āoh wow, you walk to work?ā Most of them had no idea I wasnāt getting rides becauseā¦I dunno, I guess I was embarrassed, and I didnāt want to burden them with my weird ādramaā. I only confided in a couple of people about it, mostly asking them questions about why they were getting rides in hopes that I could figure out why I wasnāt.
So like I said, this is going in for weeks. Iām terrified by this producer woman now because Iāve never knowingly had someone lie about me so blatantly. If she will lie so easily about something as provable as actors getting rides from transpo, what else is she capable of? At this point, I am an absolute wreck. We are shooting at what feels like every hour of every day and every night. I am exhausted and not getting enough sleep (I can only imagine how the crew was suffering that season). This was my dream job- I had worked hard to finally get this position, and now that I was a series regular on a huge network show, I was faced with an awful truth: there is no guarantee that your dream job will actually be a dream. Mine was turning out to be miserable and we had barely been filming for a month. I sucked it up, I trusted that it would all right itself eventually and I just focused on being professional and learning as much as I could and doing a good job for all those directors who couldnāt even bother to get my name right.
I finally broke one night when, after a particularly long day, one of the ADs came up to me and asked if he could pull my call. Pushing or pulling a call means they need to change an actor or crew members call time (call time = time they have to report to work the next day) and make it either earlier or later. But when itās pulled, production has to get permission from the actor to do so because it means they wonāt get their 12 hours of turnaround (generally, union rules protect actors by making sure they get a standard 12 hours of rest between each work day). Of course I was tired and not looking forward to yet another pulled call, because even though we all normally had a standard full 12 hours of turn around, once you subtracted my up-to-three hour commute each day and having to wake up extra early to style my own hair, my 12 hours quickly dwindled to less than 7. And now they wanted to make it even shorter. I said āyes, you can pull my call if you give me a ride to work tomorrowā, and he said āIām sorry, we canāt do that, we told you, itās the network policyā, and I just went OFF. and by āoffā, I mean I broke down in tears š
I am not comfortable expressing anger with other people but my god those tears came flooding out, uncontrollably. And I was horrified by them because although I feel comfortable expressing sadness and frustration, I never want people to think Iām using my tears just to get what I want (itās a fear that a lot of girls have growing up I think, the fear that we are crying for attention or to get our way). I had no reason to believe that crying would get me āmy wayā since talking like a regular person to the producers hadnāt worked. My tears were unstoppable, and the AD (a guy in his thirties) was so uncomfortable that he immediately walked me into the closest office he could find, which happened to be that of another producer. I think his name was bob. Bobās eyebrows raised up high when he saw me and he asked āwhy are you crying??ā I tried to explain what was going on and as soon as he heard āā¦because production refuses to give me ridesā, he said āoh is that all? You just want rides? We can give you rides! Done!ā. part of me was relieved and another part of me was like, WHY DID I HAVE TO BE PUSHED TO HAVE A DAMN NEAR EMOTIONAL BREAK DOWN AT MY PLACE OF WORK FOR SOMEONE TO BE WILLING TO HELP ME??? I hated that it was that easy for him to change my quality of life so quickly, with just a snap of his fingers, but I was also grateful to him, and I appreciated him and his generous, easy-going attitude for the rest of the season. He was fired at the end of season 2 I think. I have no idea why. The producer who lied to me and my managers faces was also fired, halfway through the first season, but not because of me- I guess if youāre lying in one area youāre probably lying in others, too.
That was such a rough month for me, emotionally and physically. Unfortunately this experience at the beginning of the first season was just foreshadowing of what was to come, but I had a good support system to help me through all the bumps. I will say that this show was like an abusive relationship. Which I never realized you could have with a job, until I did. When it was all done, I felt so insecure and talentless and unlikeableā¦almost as if a show would never love me again, lol. It sounds ridiculous but I really did feel this way- how could I fall in love with work again when it was so easy to get mistreated at every turn? All I wanted to do was work and do my job, I didnāt know I was gonna have to fight so hard (naive af). But I learned how to stand up for myself, and I learned not to let people, even famous people, even wealthy career makers and breakers, take advantage of me. It was a lesson I didnāt realize I would have to learn, but Iām glad I did. And I DID find love again with my work, thankfully! And again, just a reminder- I donāt write my history so people will pity me or because I want to start drama or make people hate this show or anything like that. I just have to get it out, share that this mistreatment is sooooo common in Hollywood, and happens across so many different marginalized communities. To remind yāall that the shows you see on tv are one world, but there is an entire other world, a more important world because itās REAL, that is lived simultaneously to what you watch. One thing that breaks my heart is that I know Iāve been treated so much better than others in this industry, others who have stories way more upsetting than mine. I think about Nicole Beharie a lot. We donāt know each other but I think I experienced a fraction of what she did. We all deal with trauma and hurt in different ways. Some people lash out and try and give it back while nursing their own wounds. I internalized mine and blamed myself. There is no right way to survive it, you just do the best you can. Gaslighting is a bitch.
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