PORKFOLIO: Emily Britson Biography
Honor Chenowith-Britson (1941-)
Robert Britson (1933-2011)
Paula Bradford (1978-2020)**
*Extant in the GTA:W universe
**Deceased, formerly extant in the GTA:W universe
Available in future editions:
Jaymes Hopkins, Shao Badman
Honor Chenowith-Britson is a British-American television producer and socialite. She is known for closely working with Fanny Cradock for over 20 years, most notably as the producer of Ms. Cradock’s 1975 Christmas Specials. Robert was a consummate businessman, charisma flowing out of his ass. He was affiliated with another Robert, last name Maxwell. Honor never liked that. Her intuition was unmatched. She knew Maxwell was up to no good, and apparently it runs in his family, as in, Ghislaine.
Honor Chenowith met Robert Britson in 1968. Both had no plans to have children at all, until sometime in the mid-eighties when they were both contemplating their mortality as any successful, aging married couple would. Perhaps they were even bored. They tried to conceive day in and day out. Add a crude joke about men discovering viagra and going in and out of their poor, dried out old wives that they’re gonna end up setting them on fire. Honor actually canned one of her alternative medicine/holistic healing staff after overhearing her uber casual discussion with a friend on the phone - the staff member jokingly describing Honor's vagina as her “rotting lady fruit”, among other things. Eventually, Honor got knocked up anyway over some Chaka Khan playing through their Hi-Fi. Robert followed the outro rhythm of “I Feel For You” and climaxed just as Chaka’s backing vocalists belt out “I think I love you!” to end the track.
Honor Chenowith-Britson went into labor as a woman aged 45. No longer young and supple, she struggled through natural birth. Nevertheless, she popped out that healthy baby girl like a German-made pez dispenser. Robert was nowhere to be found. He was probably attending one of those bi-weekly seminars again - that cliche of old.
Honor Chenowith-Britson, 1974
Emily grew up in New York and London. Honor, understandably enough, was quite overprotective of her little cherub. She grew up on the song Pretty Baby by Blondie, Honor singing it to her as much as she can. Weirdly enough, Emily never got tired of it. At the age of 12, being the inquisitive gal that she is, she went through the address book of her father who was busy doing some housework at the pied-a-terre, or so he says. She found a curious entry named Annie, written behind the cover. Naturally, Emily calls the number listed with the entry and eventually found out that Annie was a half-sister of hers living in the same city. Not wanting to get anyone in trouble, she managed to sneak out one afternoon to take a bus, after much correspondence with Anita over the telephone.
They hit it off right away. Anita gathered that Robert was too much of a wuss to introduce both parties and promptly relayed it to Emily once they had met. They are half-sisters. Robert had a child born out of wedlock with a local neo-soul artist some London concertgoers and critics pegged to be the next Sade or what Lauryn Hill ultimately became in the late 90s which didn’t really go well for her, but nonetheless, she felt sheer contentment and joy and love for Anita. Robert being the walking noir film of a train wreck that he is, would from time to time visit mother and daughter apart from the monthly stipend he provided without fail. The only difference is, their relationship was actually surprisingly sustainably amicable. The only Pandora’s box in Robert’s collection was Anita meeting Emily because of his perceived repercussions of this event. The opposite happened though. Anita and Emily instantly became great friends. Going to Glastonbury and Montreux among other treasured events, they appreciated music and art on a fundamental scale. This is how Emily met Paula, eventually. The three of them were virtually inseparable.
Anita Weston dressed better than royalty for a costume party, 1996
Emily and Anita remained close. Anita would visit New York whenever Emily wasn’t in London, and the same went for Emily. Anita would become pregnant with David after some crazy night at a bachelorette party for a mutual friend of theirs. She didn’t wish to involve the man in their lives as Anita felt that having a mother is more enough to feel loved, derived from her own experience as being the daughter to such a devoted person. It wasn’t like he was THAT interested, to begin with. Emily went to Juilliard for her BFA program. She met Sabine Arceaux, her seemingly forever frenemy and confidante. Frenemies who never betrayed each other’s confidences, kind of paradoxical in a way but nonetheless very genuine. Sabine’s career never really took off. Something about her innate inability to completely let go, like Madonna when she was trying to be an actress.
Meanwhile, Emily’s love for the craft and exploring human behavior and the human condition further propelled herself into brighter prospects inside and outside Juilliard. Being unafraid to get her hands dirty also helped. Emily has always been cognizant of how critical show business can be when it comes to appearances, but she tried her best to remain in some sort of middle ground. She’s had non-invasive surgical procedures done to her face, sure, but she always made it a priority to be able to express herself still. It’s very paradoxical though, don’t you think? People want great acting and great storylines but they also want the actors to look larger than life and to possess some kind of glamour to a huge extent. Emily succumbed to these pressures and even enjoyed them, but she was never afraid of being exposed and vulnerable as well when it came to her work at the same time. Sabine did not possess the latter. She wanted to bank on her youth and good looks as they were, instead of really getting to the meat of her profession. A lot of actresses have gotten away with Sabine’s schtick but she wasn’t one of the lucky actors who made it this way - whether or not she was special enough or due to her own shortcomings and lack of drive.
Upon graduation, Emily did not spare a single moment. She began tirelessly going to auditions for films, tv shows and of course, the theater. Her first successful role was on Broadway, playing Sally Bowles in the 2004 revival of Cabaret. It ran for four weeks. Critics were kind but a bit divided towards Emily’s age at the time of the production, deeming her to be too young and even sunnier than Liza Minnelli in the play, which is known to be frowned upon by some due to Sally meaning to be portrayed as older, frailer, basically a wreck with oodles of delusions of grandeur. It is said that the movie isn’t faithful to the production that way and Emily carried it over and for good reason, she and the director both loved the film and bonded over how transformative it was to both of their lives, so their artistic aim was in complete alignment, come what may. They knew more than enough people loved the movie and my god, Liza won the Oscar, among other brilliant things she’s accomplished through the film and through her portrayal. In 2006, Emily landed her most successful TV role to date: BBC America’s The Wind In The Willows, about the band with the same name, but ultimately shifting its focus on Debbie Harry in her early years before becoming the star of Blondie. She played Debbie, of course, but unfortunately the series did not meet its full potential. It was canceled after the first season.
Emily was devastated. She did not leave her house for six months. David was quickly growing up and her focus shifted on him and Anita after she went to visit Emily out of worry. She felt as if that role was one of the few that was genuinely written and made for her. The Wind In The Willows, as of 2021, is approaching cult classic status, but not quite yet. It is usually watched in the UK, or Luxembourg, according to the statistics, but only being known to some uber obscure forum-goers and TV junkies in the US, among others. Emily recovered, and in 2007, she starred as Louise in the Broadway revival of Gypsy. She didn’t like playing the role, but she had to do something. She was grateful for her talents being appreciated especially since the world of TV ended up horribly for her. It is worth noting at this point that most of her income is funded by a trust, set up by her parents to be opened after Emily received her degree, to a sum of about $2,000,000. She lived well, because she could. She was made keenly aware of this, even passive-aggressively, by some of her peers in Juilliard and throughout various places she’s worked. She didn’t appreciate it but she also understood where they were coming from.
Emily enjoyed her wealth but was very grateful indeed. After Gypsy and having worked quite a fair bit for a person her age, despite the six month break, Emily decided to again spend more time with David & Anita.This time, with Paula tagging along, they focused on what New York has to offer, on a much more profound scale. They made it a ritual to go fishing in Staten Island every weekend. David was a natural, of course. Sabine came when she wasn’t having a meltdown over a boy or another day job she bungled after her father squandered their fortune betting on Hollywood Video instead of Blockbuster. In 2010, Emily began taking in a flurry of minor roles in television to keep her mind active, these actions led to her after being passed on to cast Amanda Seyfried in Letters to Juliet. She’d had about enough at this point. Emily decided to move to London for the duration, to live with her mother. She was met with critical acclaim in the West End after two successful runs of The Miracle Worker.
She continued to live in London for many years. Not being particularly financially zealous, she kept living off of her trust fund while earning a pittance compared to her daily expenses. Living well was her priority. In 2017, she starred as Blanche DuBois in another West End revival, this time, A Streetcar Named Desire. Emily somewhat came full circle playing a role that was way beyond her years, age-wise, but making it her own nonetheless. Vivien Leigh was one of her biggest muses and she wanted to show the West End that she did possess all the versatility and the piercing sense of what it’s like to be somebody unhinged and without anything to lose, which was a foreshadowing of what the upcoming years will be for her.
She later found out that her apartment in New York was really under her mother and father’s name despite them reassuring her plenty of times that it’ll be taken care of. Her father, being the crook he is, cooked the books for both his workplace and his family’s finances. The IRS caught up to him, albeit posthumously, in 2015. Honor had an out of sight, out of mind approach to this entire ordeal as long as she had her creature comforts. Robert died in 2011 and Honor unknowingly took all his debt, dwarfing her own nest egg in comparison, which she was using for daily expenses, as well as her pension. Honor ended up going into house arrest for being an accomplice, somewhat, which permanently fractured her relationship with Emily.
Personal Descent (Slide into…)
After years of legal battles. Emily’s apartment was foreclosed. This time she’s decided to leave all of it behind, the good and the bad, to drive cross-country to Los Santos with all of her luggage and her odds and ends packed tightly in her car. She could’ve done a lot of things differently but now it’s all about playing the hand she’s been dealt. She moved in with her nephew for the time being, the apartment being somewhat of a frat house with all men bunking together except for a mild-mannered woman and mutual friend turned actual friend called Lilith, whom Emily shared the only bed that wasn’t on the floor. She liked how things were going, despite the rancid odor of man meat wafting through the cramped space round the clock. Having had a career as a theater actress predominantly, getting recognized by the general public was never a huge issue, especially in LS. She found that to be quite comforting due to the fact that she’s going to allow herself to relax and just be ever so slightly unkempt during this unseemly period in her life. Of course, she still strived to dress nicely, but just not all the time.
After spending some time feeling sorry for herself, Emily picked up the slack. She got a job at Torwald Pictures as a working actress in one of their upcoming plays. She also went ahead and got down and dirty, working for a local Deli on a managerial capacity to save up some money, capitalizing on the fact that she didn’t have to pay rent where she was staying, and as long as she was pulling her weight around, nobody would probably question it. Either way, she grew fond of all of David’s friends. Living well was something she was used to, but she understood that as long as she was alive and healthy, this hurdle will just be something she’ll laugh about someday.
Home-cooked dinners at their place was a regular thing. Emily soon found out that at the pace she’s working alongside liquidating some of her already dwindling amount of assets that owning her own shoebox bistro downtown was a feasible prospect. Her love of cuisine and bringing people together through good food and good conversations was something she wanted to work on more than reviving her acting career. The theater work was enough. Suddenly, everything made sense. Managing the Deli was done on a whim but she ended up realizing that this line of work was for her, alongside setting her roots in Los Santos. Once Emily puts her mind into something, laser focus sets in. She opened her own bistro on Christmas Day, 2021. I know, this sounds pretty condensed and sudden, but epiphanies are a part of the human psyche, so I wouldn’t question it, sis.
Emily’s cousin, Seomra Rowland, was a moderately successful fashion model in the 90s and early 2000s. She had the opportunity to work with the top Haute Couture designers such as Karl Lagerfeld, Isaac Mizrahi and Yves Saint Laurent. She experienced more success in the catwalk than anywhere else, although she had a very lucrative ad campaign with Prada that Emily always thought should’ve gone to Cindy Crawford, instead; Making this a constant anecdote and point of bickering between the two, whenever they cross paths. She fooled around with Sylvester Stallone’s body double during a high point in her career and one cream pie led to another, as they say. She ends up pregnant with Benny and Olivia. Olivia being a few minutes older than Benny and seemingly less deprived of the essential building blocks of growth, like folic acid and oxygen. Anyway, Seomra’s once taut stomach ended up resembling more like string cheese rather than a toned washboard. It depressed her on a fundamental level, since modeling was all she knew how to do at the time.
She started becoming addicted to amphetamines like Ellen Burstyn’s character on Requiem for a Dream, obtaining it through the gray market borne out of being shortsighted and not really being mentally there to make the right decisions at the time. Finding employment as a 30-something mother of two who never reached Supermodel status basically ended any kind of brighter prospect for her in her line of work. She would soon decide to do commercials on the side, then slowly devolve into mail-order catalogs, then finally to off brand Playboy magazine publications. The lowest point she had was being a greeter for a water park wearing a one-piece swimsuit trying to emulate Pamela Anderson. She didn’t even have lifeguard duties. She just stood there with a plastered smile across her surgically modified visage. Benny and Olivia decided to move out of Portland to come live with Emily after Seomra had relapsed a few times. Olivia decided to stay a little bit longer, having had some misplaced faith in her mother until she inevitably drained it clean, at least for the time being, which Emily found utterly surprising since Olivia has always shown signs of being more independent and in control of her feelings for Seomra.
Well, she has big plans for her bistro, Britson’s Restaurant and Bakery, which people will come across eventually. She just has to iron out some logistical stuff first. For now, she’s busy taking care of her two pseudo-children and figuring out how to enjoy the city a little bit more now that the dust has been settled. She doesn’t speak to her mother that regularly, who is still living in London albeit at a more dire quality of life. They both agree that they have a deep affection for each other and admiration for what they’ve collectively achieved and above all a heightened sense of post family drama respect, but they lead fundamentally different lives at this point.
