Nadine Heywood Files Restraining Order Against Harper Moore Following Cannes Assault
Heywood Declines Opportunity to Press Charges Against Moore: “I just want her to leave me alone”
I was gathering quite the little collection. Meanwhile, parts were not exactly flooding in, but certainly there was a steady trickle. Some people wanted to avoid the drama altogether. And some wanted to cash in, and now that it was clear Harper was the worse of the two of us, I was their option. Thankfully there were a few thousand surgeons in LA who specialized innose jobs, and one had rebuilt mine withLeave a Light Onfor reference. So I was working again within weeks.
And I wore that old necklace everywhere, just in case she saw (she would, of course she would) to know I was rubbing all this in her face.
Not everyone bought the story of the attack—some thought I’d tripped and fallen. Some suspected a relapse. Some that I had to have provoked Harper somehow, done something worthy of such an act—after all, I was the one fresh from rehab.
I blocked her number so god only knew where she stood on the matter. I just hoped she was miserable about it.
Then I got that call:Riggedhad dominated the Emmy nominations. And there I was: Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.
The Tonys were nice, but only a select few took notice. But this?
This was how I got back to the top.
———
Harper, it turned out, was nominated too. Maybe it was intentional—maybe they knew it would make an awards show no one could look away from.
There her name was, right beside mine. There was uproar from my fans and rigorous support from hers—that no one could prove what happened, and, anyway, it didn’t change that her performance inThe Dark Beneathwas extraordinary.
I wasn’t too upset. A strange part of me missed her. Another feared whatever she was planning without my overview.
But our court date had been delayed twice and was now pushed to early 2002, so there was little I could do but acquiesce and perform the bigger person whenever a journalist asked: “As nothing has yet been proven I can’t fault anyone. I can only hope that when the time comes Harper accepts the order with as much grace as I’m accepting our dual nomination.”
I wondered if Harper’s team knew about the nomination, and that’s why they’d had the court dates pushed. Foolish of them if so—the restraining order was unlikely to be successful given the “attack” happened on foreign soil. It was mostly just a statement to the public; one she was letting linger on.
I took vicious glee in destroying her as she’d destroyed me, but as the day crept closer I felt hope bloom in my chest in a way that felt vulnerable and tender. Iwantedthis.Riggedwas the last thing I’d filmed before rehab. What a beautiful way that would be to rebuild my life.
Amos wanted to pay homage to the dress I’d worn to my first Oscars—all that gold I’d decked myself in.
And he was determined to design it himself this time—a risky piece, hazardous materials, but showstopping, if executed well, which I had full confidence it would be.
But I had to practically be wrestled into it.
The dress was basically metal, a long cylindrical tube of it with enough bend to pull together its two sheets into a tightlyfitted minidress, strapless so that the bindings had to be tight to avoid flashing the watching crowd.
“Have you put weight on?” Amos growled as he heaved the hook-and-eye clasps together.
“I’m sorry I’m not as thin as the sample-size models you worked with last time you designed clothes,” I growled, bent forward to allow him to pull tighter.
“I can’t reshape this in time; it’s too complicated. You’re going to have to slim down.”
“You can’t reshape it in time, but you expect me to reshape my entire fucking body to fit?”
“Not all of it,” he said, with a pat at my side. “Just the newer parts.”
I didn’t eat for two days before the ceremony, and I didn’t even risk drinking water the day of.
I squeezed in, just about.
Old tricks got me through the red carpet, that ability of my mind to just slip away from my body. I barely even noticed as I passed Harper, not until Joel tugged her back, viciously muttering, “Haven’t you done quite enough? Don’t be stupid. Leave her alone and don’t make this fucking worse.”
His words rang like a bell in my head all the way to the auditorium, breathy and dizzying, and I couldn’t tell which of us he was speaking to. The echo was relentless. As the room swayed around me, his snarls lurched too, up and down before splintering entirely.
By the time I sat down, I could barely breathe, until finallyI had to run to the bathroom, my vision darkening around the edges.
