Darrien Lancaster:I was Harper’s date to the Oscars. I didn’t clock how subdued she was—even when she won. And then at the after-party we started hearing rumors of that other actress getting into an accident. She didn’t evenactcalm about it. She got through to her publicist, who got through to the other girl’s publicist and confirmed it wasn’t a life-threatening crash. And then she switched the fun Harper act back on.
Stephanie Cameron:I had to talk her out of sending flowers. I mean, come on Harp. I’m all for taking the high road, but this girl had been nothing but awful to her. But that’s just the sort of person Harper was.
Darrien Lancaster:An Academy Award nomination is as big as it gets. But I saw more emotion from Harper in those ten minutes of circulating rumors than at any other point in the night.
Ivan Drozdov and Nadine Heywood leave a hospital, his arm shielding her from the waiting cameras.
Ivan Drozdov:I’ve seen the press do a lot of cruel things to Nadine, but that ranks amongst the worst.
In that hotel room in London, Nadine plucks at a stray thread on her dress, her eyes lingering shut for just a moment before she looks up into the camera.
Nadine Heywood:I wasn’t jealous of Harper. But the press? The hounding? That was it for me, the moment that made the rivalry something towin.The point of no return.
January 1999
MALDONHELPED GET EVERYTHING BACK ON TRACK. I WAS serious Nadine once more, the thespian who wasjusthot enough for her devotion to the craft to not be too irritating to bear.
Ruchi had proposed gathering my team for an expensive meal at a restaurant on the Santa Monica coastline on the day we were expecting to hear about the Academy Awards. Harper had mobilized a small group around her—Kayla Alexander and Stephanie Cameron, a model and a party-girl heiress respectively. She’d started leaning her direction in such a girl-power, yay-friendship way that my isolation was starting to come across as unfeminist. (Though, of course, that’s not a word I can say aloudnow, let alone five years ago).
So Ruchi had this idea of positioning me as both a devotee of the finer things in life but also a salt-of-the-earth girl who knew the power of hard work and saw no job as beneath her and no person as unimportant. Harper could party with millionaires, but I was the actress you wanted to work for.
And indeed, she got the call while we were there, and that’s the shot—me screaming and jumping, Lana’s hand clasped in mine, Amos punching the air, Ruchi with the phone pressed to her ear and a delighted smile on her face. Even Victor was there—who was an excellent agentbecausehe was apart from us all, out at lunches or in his swanky office getting me roles, but in the photo he’s clapping a hand on my shoulder and beaming as I heard the news.
Best Actress.
Far better than a Supporting Actress nod.
I couldn’t wait for Harper to find out.
———
This time I pondered the idea of winning. I’d sat with it during a long, solo lunch, course after course at a divine brasserie a little farther along the Santa Monica coast. I was ravenous that day, one thought ringing in my mind:I might actually win this—it could happen.
I’d begun to worry I only wanted it to one-up Harper, that she might have buried herself so deeply within me I would have to extricate her to find my childhood hopes and dreams once more. But the opposite was true. I was jumpy, ecstatic with energy I hadn’t felt in years, kept picking at the bronze beads of my dress because I couldn’t sit still.
And then they read my name and …
It was like everything I’d ever wanted arrayed itself before me: roles, acclaim, adoration. There wasn’t an ounce of Harperin the mix, a moment entirely without her, and I vowed to myself to cut out the noise, to refocus on the job I loved and pursued with such determination.
I didn’t want to be a better actress than Harper; I wanted to be a better actress than anyone in the whole world. I wondered if my parents were watching only briefly, and then decided I didn’t care, because this dream never belonged to them—it wasmine.
I cried the moment I stepped offstage and theMaldoncast rushed to hug me—though Sasha couldn’t make it because she was filming in Phuket. They were genuinely happy for me. And with the trophy tight in my hand, wrapped in their embrace, I didn’t feel half as alone as I did most of the time.
———
I met with Victor the next day, pushing past the hangover with renewed vigor.
“I deal in dreams, Heywood. You got your Oscar. What’s next?”
What indeed? I’d been so focused on potential award winners—arthouse films and big-budget dramas. Now I could put my attention elsewhere.
“I want something stupidly commercial,” I decided. I wanted mass-market, butts in seats, something that centered around fun. I wanted to give people a good time.
(And though it wasn’t the only reason, I’ll admit it did cross my mind: I’d beat Harper in the awards. Now I wanted to do it in the box office.)
“I’ll see what I can do.”
I went to so many auditions. A lot of those sorts of casting people didn’t see me as a fit for roles like the ones I was trying out for. But I could do it. I wanted charm and charisma. I wanted to rebrand, I suppose, as someone who cared about the art of it all, yes, but someone who thought that art was expansive and available to everyone, not limited to those who could sit through a three-hour-long speculative “masterpiece.”
