Lana pressed a phone into my hand the moment the ceremony finished.
“What the fuck did you do?” Amos hissed. “I swear if you ruined my styling to cover a mid-Emmy hickey, I’ll—”
“Design a better dress?” I snapped. The cameras were rolling even out here for the behind-the-scenes shots, so I hid myself with my hair and spoke out of the corner of my mouth. “I told you I couldn’t breathe. The clasps broke, and I would have been crawling out of there shirtless if Harper hadn’t offered me her shoelaces.”
“Harper?”
At her name, she emerged, laughing outrageously, tapping Joel’s arm like she couldn’t believe he was real.
The flames of my anger might have been extinguished by my hope, but they still smoldered and smoked—and this fanned those embers. How dare she play this bubbly role, smiling and laughing and flirting for the cameras like she wasn’t just half-garroting me in the bathroom?
“Yes, her.”
I should have expected this, sooner or later. But we’d had a good run, longer than I ever would have thought when we settled in the same flat in Bethnal Green.
Amos could not admit a mistake, and when he knew he’dmade one he’d lash out. Normally, I could suffer it with an eyeroll. But I was humiliated, my win dampened by the knowledge I hadn’t won where it counted.
“Don’t take that tone with me, Heywood,” he snapped. “If you hadn’t gone up a dress size then—”
“You’re my stylist, Amos, you’re supposed to make clothes that fit me. Not the other way around.”
“And I had your measurements so—”
I couldn’t argue, not fully, not with so many people watching.
So I simply fired him instead.
Nadine Heywood and Harper Moore: Friends at Last? Stars Trade Fashion Accessories at the Emmys
Nadine Heywood Drops Restraining Order Against Harper Moore After Emmys Reconciliation
Harper Moore Announces New Fashion Line in Collaboration with Amos DuPont
A FATAL FEUD
Amos DuPont: The reconciliation was classic them—friends and then enemies and then friends again. We’re giving a lot of airtime to what is, effectively, two very petty women who don’t know how to regulate emotion. And I should know, I’m probably the only person who’s worked with both of them.
On a catwalk in Paris, Harper waves to the expectant crowd, her arm looped through Amos DuPont’s. She wears a gown made of gradating crystals, one of his most iconic designs.
Ivan Drozdov:Nadine eventually told me that she lied about what happened in Cannes. She felt so guilty that she must have seized the Emmys as her opportunity to rectify it.
Stephanie Cameron:Harper saw a girl in need—a girl who was smearing her name, taking her to court,making up all sorts of wild things. And she saved her anyway.
Nadine Heywood:What? Fine. I’ll admit it; she helped me. I’d framed her for assault, and she saw me hyperventilating at the Emmys and came running. That’s just the sort of person she is, I suppose. It doesn’t mean I appreciated it.
Kayla Alexander: Harper didn’t care about the rivalry—if she ever had. Maybe she enjoyed the challenge when she was younger, but she was married, her and Joel were trying to start a family, and there’s Nadine, clinging onto this pettiness. After the Emmys, Harper wanted nothing more than to put it behind her, and for the first time, that year, it seemed maybe Nadine wanted that too.
Harper sits at Ascot. Nadine attends a fundraiser. Harper reads lines on a set. Nadine watches a playback on a studio lot. Harper and Joel dine on a ski break in Aspen. Nadine attends the premiere ofStarborn. For the entire year, from what we can tell, they do not see each other.
Jasmine McKenna:The rivalry had always beenabout point scoring. But that changed in Cannes. Suddenly it was about hurting each other, about winning in a way that would become definitive. There was a sort of quiet before the storm—and then a feeling that it would have to end, one way or another. That there would be a winner and a loser by the time it was over.
December 2002
MUCH LIKE LA ITSELF, 2002 WAS SCORCHING AND relentless. Rehab had given me tactics to deal with the urge to turn to pharmaceutical soothers but not to cope with the anxiety itself. For that, I had what I always had: work. Amos knew a great many of my secrets, so I expected those to turn against me, Harper at my door, or my name in the papers. When they didn’t, that was worse, like it might come the second I dropped my guard and hurt all the more.
So I filmed and I networked and I graced every single carpet I was invited to. I became the sort of star who could survive a scandal like mine: I dated up-and-coming celebrities, I tipped the press off on made-up scenarios, I went to A-list parties in skimpy outfits, and I made sure I was seen with the right people.
I was exhausted.
