Hungry Girl

Looking back at the first episode

Tommy and me :)

Oh dear, I thought, as I watched the pilot. Here we go. The show is so good, so totally confident, Athena bursting from Aaron’s head, fully formed and galloping. But to feel these feelings and try to sift through them, the memories, the stories, like returning to your childhood home or that box of letters from your ex, I just don't know, good god, if I want to do that. I’m happy in my life. In general, motherhood and family have taken the reins in the decades since the show. I've worked hard to feel ok not having the career I wanted between then and now. I worry that the sacrifices and stumbles, the things beyond my control that I have made peace with, will wake up and scream at me again. If I shined too much light on that time, would the narrative that I have painstakingly cultivated, that got me to this place, unravel?

But I remember her suede pants. Julianna Margulies, so glittery and famous, stopped in from ER, the massive hit she starred in and filmed on the soundstage next to ours. She sat talking to her friend, Brad Whitford, in the makeup room. It was my first day on the pilot. I was just a weekly player, quiet in the room, but already intent on staying forever. Julianna sat on the counter, stretched out in her creamy supple pants with a tiny bit of white skin exposed above her belt. I had my ten-year-old hatchback in the structure, my shift at the restaurant waiting for me that weekend, and I just wanted to be her. She took my hand and said I had pretty skin.

It was a dream.

And so I worked on my bedroom floor late every night as if I had a thousand lines instead of twenty. Do you notice watching the pilot that I, with my ponytail swinging, was in every background shot, standing behind Brad in every meeting with my folder? I was curious if I had engineered that, casually slipping into every scene, or had they already sensed that this relationship was a thing. I didn't know we had chemistry back then, although I can see it now clearly. As I watched Josh and Donna crackling, the connection already so layered, who wouldn't want more?

The first scene I shot was with John Spencer. I remember asking Tommy Schlamme, our director, if I could have a yogurt at my desk. He gave me one second of consideration, barely stopping his loping stride, and said, “No.” I followed him behind the camera (such a Donna move), sure that this was an excellent idea, sure that this natural activity would be a tiny brush stroke in the tableau of morning ritual and asked him again. He looked at me with a quick sigh and said, “Fine, just don't eat it.” With these small choices, I made the few minutes I had on camera as vivid and undeniable as possible. John said after we finished the scene, that I would be there until the curtain came down.

I remember lying on my mom’s bed when I was a teenager, telling her I wanted to be better than Meryl Streep. She wisely counseled me to just be as good as I could be. She read her book in the warm light as I writhed around thinking about my acting career, talking about my ambitions. I had stayed in that night, as I had most Saturday nights, to wait for my future, not wanting to waste it on teenage frivolity. She told me to, good lord, go out with my sisters, that no one would discover me that night.

I felt prickly and hesitant as the end credits rolled, watching the show, thinking about it. I thought about the character actors I used to see gathered at Starbucks by my house in Studio City. My neighbor, Allison Janney and I would walk our dogs down the hill, gossiping, and I would study them. All from different TV shows, the cop, the lawyer, the gangster from the various giant series we all knew, sitting in a loose circle. I would hear them reminiscing about the good old days as I waited in line for my soy latte and vowed never to do that.

I didn't know when I read the pilot in my bathtub seventy-five years ago how good it was, how excellent it would be. It changed my life in a moment, made it more alive than any choice, small or large, that I could have made then. But we can go back and visit, right? Even though, no matter what, we will always be exactly where we are.