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The yelling, which had subsided slightly with Dana’s focus on me, resumed, and I took my coffee and followed the sound, curious at what was going on.
I was stepping over a thick tangle of cords between the kitchen and dining room when a carrot flew by my head, the point narrowly missing my eye. I paused and followed the source of the projectile.
Marissa wore more makeup than a clown at a kid’s birthday party and was dressed in a red negligee and four-inch heels. She pointed at the carrot. “You’re trying to KILL US. You think we can’t taste chemicals? Is that how stupid you think we are? I—Hey Cash—I’m not touching another thing in that fridge unless it comes from Blue Farms Baby.”
A production assistant rapidly nodded as she took notes on a pad. A crew member went to reach for the carrot, and Dana yelled at him to stop.
Eileen, who was sitting at the large round table behind a Versace china bowl filled with Fruit Loops, waved her milk-covered spoon at me. “Welcome to the circus.”
I nodded at her and wondered where, in all of this, Emma was.
“You’d think, with all of the cameras, that it’d be impossible to lose a person, but we lost Emma all the time. After the first episode, Dana had us put a tracking device on her car and then, when that didn’t work, in every purse she had. It was funny. As soon as filming would start, and we’d know that Emma was busy, we’d run around and plant trackers on everything of hers that we could find. Was it a violation of privacy? Maybe. But MTV had, at that point, a very sizable investment in the show, and that show really… especially by the end, was one hundred percent focused on her and Cash.”
Glorya Lane, Production Assistant, House of Fame
“I knew, early on, that Cash liked Emma. I mean that he really liked her, not just what you saw on the show. His eyes would move to her, wherever she was. And if she wasn’t in the room, then he was looking for her. It was really sweet, but I was the only one who caught on to it. Everyone else… maybe even them, thought that they hated each other.”
Paulette Reyes, Camera Operator, House of Fame
40
#quietontheset
CASH
Ninety percent of every reality show is scripted. Complete fabrication. Not the lines, they let us ad lib those, but the scenarios and drama are contrived. The remaining ten percent of the show is natural interaction, chemistry and fireworks—which is why the cameras ran on us all the time, hoping for something.
“Okay, this is simple, so don’t screw it up.” Dana stood in the middle of the living room, her clipboard in hand. “Cash answers Emma’s phone, takes a message for her, doesn’t give her the message and she freaks out at him.”
She looks from me to Emma. “Got it?”
“What am I doing when he answers my phone?”
“Pool or shower, it’s up to you.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and mentally voted for the shower. Not because I needed to see her in a towel, but—okay, whatever. I’m a guy. I wanted to see her as close to naked as possible.
Her gaze drifted to mine, and I adopted the best bored look I could muster. “Pool.”
I shrugged as if I didn’t care.
“Okay, let’s get Emma in a bathing suit and Cash in the living room. Emma, where’s your phone?”
She glanced off set, and a thin guy with a pencil mustache emerged from the group. “This is the phone we’re using. I can be the person at the other end, if you need someone.”
“Sure, whatever.” Dana took the phone and turned it over in her hand. “This is the same case as Emma’s?”
“Same case and cover pic,” the guy said smoothly. “Ringtone also.”
I stole a look at the phone, which was a Nokia—a guaranteed product placement because iPhone never paid. Still, I was surprised she couldn’t have swung a Samsung or LG sponsor. Nokia was the bottom of the barrel of influencer packaging, but maybe that’s what you got at twenty million followers.
We walked through the setup during the fifteen minutes it took Emma to change, and I almost missed the moment she walked back through the living room and out the French doors.
Almost. I’d have to be a blind man to miss the view of her in a string bikini, her hair loose and down around her shoulders. I stopped mid-sentence and watched as she eased out the door and stepped into the sun.
I called her white trash once, but it wasn’t true. Emma had always had an air of class about her. A smooth fragility. At the party, it had been hidden behind a baggy sweatshirt and defensive posture, and now it was cased in wit and confidence—but the vulnerability was still there, softening her rough edges.
