NATASHA (NAT)
9:58 A.M.
Man, I love my job!
Not very many people can go to work every day feeling like this is exactly where they are supposed to be. As a kid growing up in San Diego, I had always dreamed of being a TV writer. And now, at thirty-two, I am the head writer for one of the top-rated game shows of the season. I even won an Emmy last year.
How many people can say they are excited to get out of bed in the morning? On tape days, I don’t even hit the snooze button once.
I am standing at the judges’ table on the set of the game show Million Dollar Genius! feeling fantastic in my new purple cashmere sweater. (At the beginning of a tape day, most people on the crew wear a sweater or a jacket, because the lights have not heated the place up yet, so the set is beyond freezing. I’ve been on sets in August watching a two-hundred-pound cameraman shiver in a wool peacoat.) I’m sipping a large vanilla cappuccino made especially for me by the craft services guy (who also made me my favorite bacon-and-cheese burrito earlier; gotta love tape days—Free food!) and am going over a few questions with our host, Cordelia Mumford, a beautiful former CNN reporter who accidentally got into game show hosting, and my producer, Marc Winslow, a handsome Brit who accidentally got into game show producing.
The contestants are still squired away in a soundproof greenroom in back, but we keep our voices low so that the audience can’t hear us as we hunch over the table, poring over our scripts.
“Okay, we switched out the six-hundred-thousand-dollar question in this game so that we didn’t have Kafka as the answer twice in the same week,” I whisper to Cordelia. “Here’s the new question.” I point to a pink paper square that has been glue-sticked onto her white script, which she silently reads.
“As long as the answer is never Kardashian, I’m a happy camper,” Cordelia quietly jokes.
I chuckle, then continue. “And by the way, for the million, it’s the South Sea Bubble, not the South Seas Bubble. If they say ‘Seas,’ we’re going to have to rule them wrong.”
“Frankly, I think if they know the name of a market bubble from another country three hundred years ago, they deserve a million dollars,” Cordelia tells me.
“That’s because you’re not from England,” Marc, who’s from London, politely tells her in his perfectly lilting English accent.
“No. That’s because I spent my college days getting drunk and under an assortment of frat boys and football players. Far better use of one’s time,” Cordelia counters playfully.
“Yet here you are, the maven of American trivia,” Marc says, rather flirtatiously.
“I know. Life’s weird,” Cordelia says, lightly folding her script in half and pulling away from our table. “Did I tell you that I got invited to the White House?”
“That’s awesome,” I say, surprised. “I didn’t even know you were a fan of the president.”
She leans in to me to cheerfully confide, “I’m so not. Plus, I was in the middle of a transcontinental move that year and couldn’t even figure out where my polling place was.” Then she walks to the middle of the stage and breaks into a huge smile as she booms to the audience, “Thank you guys so much for coming! We are going to have a great time today! Isn’t our warm-up guy Jerry amazing?!”
Marc and I take our seats as judges while the contestant coordinator escorts the first three contestants to the stage. Cordelia walks to her podium, then stands patiently as the makeup artist presses her face with a powder puff and does “last looks,” which is exactly what it sounds like—the last look the makeup person gives before Cordelia is ready for the camera.
I forget about work for a second to clear my mind, look around the room, and savor the moment.
There is no better feeling than being on a set right before a show begins. When all of the hard work is done: the writing, the rewriting, the arguing with your nerd staff about whether or not the average American knows the difference between the national debt and the national deficit, or explaining that Jean Patou was a French parfumeuse, not the inventor of pâté à choux pastry.
That moment when you get to just bask in the glow of a happy audience, a crew filled with people who worked their butts off to get to where they are, and that rare feeling of being exactly where you’re supposed to be, working on something you’ll want to be remembered for at your funeral.
Okay, that last point may be a bit dark. Let’s just say rest home. I’ll be proud of Million Dollar Genius! at my rest home.
I smile at Marc next to me, and rolling begins. The first assistant director announces to the crew, “And we’re on in…!” He puts up his left hand and fans out his five fingers, “Five!” then ticks back one finger at a time, “four … three!” and then he goes silent as he folds down his ring finger for two. Then one. Then he points his index finger toward the host.
“Welcome to Million Dollar Genius!” Jerry Winters, our show’s announcer, belts out in his smooth baritone voice as Marc slips me a sheet of paper. I open it with a serious look on my face, and read:
You look so bewitching in that sweater. It makes your olive skin glow. It’s taking all of my self-control not to slide my hands under it right now. And that red lipstick? I want traces of it smeared all over my body from your kisses.
I try to suppress a smile as I earnestly scribble a note back:
Well, the only way your suit would look better is if it were beside you in a heap on the floor.
I fold the note and pass it back to him. Marc opens it to read. No smile, just a stern note back:
Meet me at the top level, northwest corner of parking lot two at lunch.
Oh, yeah. There might be one downside to my job. Small detail. Hardly worth mentioning, really. I’m kind of, maybe, sleeping with my boss.