A FATAL FEUD
Jasmine McKenna:The press weren’t particularly kind to Nadine at that time.
Kayla Alexander:Like, what was she expecting? If you don’t want the headlines to drag you for being a burned-up druggie don’t do drugs? It’s that easy.
Clips roll of TV anchors tearing into Nadine, flashing those pictures onto the screen as they discuss what sort of impact this will have on the youth of America, on how disappointed they all are by their icon and pondering whether the Academy will rescind its award. They finish with commiserations for her loss.
Ivan Drozdov:Nadine fought for her recovery. I can’t even imagine the strength that took.
Nadine Heywood: I finished the program at the end of June. But I was using the drugs to self-medicate and the things I was using them for, well, that’s goingto take time. Now I had other ways to work through it. And one of those was work—Ineededto be back on a set, but casting directors weren’t exactly queueing at my door. Harper helped—she got in touch with roles she couldn’t fit into her schedule and put my name forward for opportunities. I resented her for it—what I perceived as pity. I was so relieved when my break came from a source other than her.
Jasmine McKenna:It was something we wrestled with. We’d obliterated Nadine in the press, but we wanted more headlines. We didn’t want her to stop being relevant. So there were huge swaths of people behind the scenes suddenly rooting for her because no one wanted their consistent headline seller to vanish into obscurity.
Nadine Heywood:Penelope Lutz had an actress drop out of her upcoming filmIn Your Own Waydue to scheduling conflicts, and there I was with my schedule wide open. In September, I won a Tony forHedda Gabler.Which shocked me as much as it did everyone else. And thenRiggedhit television screens and was being warmly received. All this to say, I suppose, that the ground beneath me may have been shaky, but I had landed on my feet.
Jasmine McKenna:Somehow, Nadine had achieved the impossible and looked to be clawing her way back in. Then we cut to Cannes. And it’s such an escalation of what we’d seen before. Harper attacking Nadine? I honestly still can’t believe it.
Nadine fidgets with her microphone and looks down, taking a breath. When she looks back up, her eyes lock onto the camera.
Nadine Heywood:Harper didn’t attack me. I told you, the ground beneath me was shaky. That wasn’t enough for me. I knew the easiest way to fix everything was to rekindle the feud and to make Harper undeniably its villain. So I made up a story.
May 2001
I DID NOT HAVE A FILM AT CANNES BUT, LIKE I HAD nearly a decade ago, I needed to network, to rebuild connections and seek out opportunity.
By that point my hair had grown to my chin and flicked outward at the edges in a way that felt flirtatious and fun—not quite the classic look we’d always gone for, but those days were over.
“Sweet, innocent, a young orphan girl who lost her way,” Amos had said. “Is that what you want me to work with?”
“No,” I said with a wrinkle of my nose. That might make me better received with the public, but it wouldn’t get me roles. I’d known this might damage my career—but not quite how drastically. Parts hadn’t just dried up, they’d vanished. We didn’t even find out about them until they were cast, which pissed Victor off, and he was too big an agent to ignore, so we then encountered a string of artfully worded descriptors of what casting directors were looking for likea new talentorsomeone understatedora homegrown actress, all of which clearly excluded me.
“It was never the maturity people liked,” I added. “It was how that was offset by the Harper rivalry. So let’s lean for that. I’m not perfect. I’m interesting. I’m someone who might get their hands dirty.”
So Amos decided to create something of his own. Mostly, he enjoyed styling—sourcing designers, pairing pieces, crafting a look. I was no longer his only client in that regard, but I was his priority, a partnership whose success was undeniable.
But more and more recently he’d begun to turn his hand back to designing, and this is what he made: a mountain of taffeta, nipped and stitched into long trailing tendrils, rough and soft at once. It gave me the impression of a debutante escaped from a mansion aflame, or Alice clawing her way back through the looking glass.
I graced the red carpet on the arm of Anton Moreau, who was sour-faced and sullen about the whole affair. His agency had obviously decided I would be an excellent way to boost his profile—though from the glances he and Amos were sharing I suspectedand he needs a beardwas also on their agenda.
As soon as we reached the carpet, Anton was a captivating smile and a dozen doting glances, so I couldn’t complain.
I didn’t see Harper and Joel until we reached the theater at the top of the stairs, where a large drinks reception was taking place.
They were standing to the side, wrapped up in each other’swarm embrace, and I turned away, my stomach churning just as I caught Harper’s hand reach for a glass of champagne from one of the circulating trays and Joel swat it away.
Oh. One of those bastards. And I’m sure there was plenty to unpack about what had just occurred and what it might signal between the two of them—things I had been hoping for only a year ago—but all I could think of was the appearance of it all, of a man who might be more wary of his wife being drunk in public than of being seen laying a hand on her like that.
But it was Harper’s business, and I had people to meet. I wasn’t supposed to touch alcohol for the first year of my recovery, so as everyone else sipped champagne, I focused on getting the job done.
Anton and I worked the room for an hour or so before I turned and there he was, right beside me: Joel.
“Hello,” I said, startled. “Lovely to see you again.”
“I know Harper leaked those photos,” he said, keeping his voice quiet but his eyes drilled into me. “Too little far too late if you asked me, but it’s been a wonderful reprieve. So, by all means, attempt to worm your way back into this world, but stay away from my wife while you do it. You’ve seen what she’s capable of—youdon’twant to see what I am.”
My teeth felt stuck together, ground so tightly it took effort to work my jaw free. “Is that a threat, Joel? Because that really wouldn’t be a very good look for either of you.”
His eye twitched, but he wasn’t looking at me anymore—his gaze darting around the room like he had other places tobe—other people to intimidate. Was this the sort of chivalry Harper cared for? “You don’t threaten a disease, Heywood. You eradicate it. God knows you’re like an infection when it comes to Harper, and she has more important things to focus on than the petty schoolground bullshit between you both.”
