Three years ago
“Just a few more weeks and then you don’t have to deal with him ever again,” my makeup artist Suze reminded me as we sat in the costume trailer between takes.
Since I’d set foot in British Columbia, Canada, and met Eddie Coltrane, he’d been a pompous arsehole. I was the Bonnie in the Bonnie and Clyde–style indie movie I’d signed on to as soon as the second season ofYoung Adultended.Young Adulthad been my big break. We’d started filming when I was nineteen and I’d moved down to London to do it. My big brother Lewis was at college in the city, so he kept an eye on me. The show was a dramedy about a group of eighteen-year-olds who’d left school and started—or floundered about starting—“adulthood.” I played Mikayla, a foster child who grew up in London’s East End, a talented artist, and a drug addict.
The show was funny, emotional, harrowing at times, and even though none of us had known each other before, our castgelled. And so the show took off in a way none of us could quite believe, becoming number one on the streaming platform. My Instagram followers went from a couple hundred to a hundred thousand in a few days. Now I had over a million followers.
To my agent Danny’s delight, the offers came flooding in after that first season ofYoung Adultaired. Feeling like I needed to keep the momentum going, I’d filmed a movie last autumn before filming restarted for the show, and now I was on set of another movie the following summer. I’d flown home to see my family at Christmas. But that was it.
And I missed them.
The missing them had grown into something approaching unbearable.
Being on set with someone who made me feel as uncomfortable as Eddie Coltrane pissed me off because I could be home in Ardnoch with my family instead of acting opposite this douche canoe.
The Clyde to my Bonnie was played by my fellowYoung Adultcastmate, Jasper Richmond. Jasper was one of my on-screen romances on the show. He was bisexual in the show and in real life, and we had great chemistry. But off-screen, that chemistry felt more familial. There had never been anything romantic between us, despite media and fan speculation.
Eddie Coltrane, however, was an actor I’d not met until now. He was playing a “friend” who betrayed us. To be honest, Jasper and I were playing very similar roles to what we played on the show, but that’s why the production company wanted us.
Suze, whom I met onYoung Adult, had become my go-to makeup artist. I liked having her with me whenever possible. Someone familiar. My life sometimes felt like a nomad’s, surrounded by new people on every production. That had sounded exciting, like a dream, when I was a teenager. The reality of it was very different. Very isolating and lonely. Youspend all this time with a cast on a movie, every day with them, growing close with them, and then once the movie wraps, everyone goes their own way. These people who had become your family for a few months go back to being almost strangers.
I found it disconcerting and upsetting, and I didn’t think I’d ever get used to the highs and lows of that part of the experience. Maybe that’s why this time, I had walls up. But that wasn’t my issue with Eddie.
Eddie had proven himself an arsehole from day one.
Suze was the only person to notice my reticence with Eddie. Usually, I could flirt with a lamppost. It was kind of my nature. I couldn’t help it.
But the first day I stepped on set and Eddie made it clear he thought I was an untalented nepo baby, I’d distanced myself from our costar.
I’d confessed to Suze about how I’d flubbed a line and Eddie had whispered in my ear I should switch to modeling because I was too stupid to act. I’d been so shocked, I hadn’t responded. Or told anyone but the makeup artist, who was well known as a trusted confidante.
If I told anyone else, they’d probably laugh it off and say it was merely Eddie’s weird sense of humor. And I didn’t want to delay finishing this movie. I was tired, I missed my family, and I wanted to get away from a set where one of the actors seemed to enjoy watching me fuck up. His negativity was stressing me out and getting in my head, and so I was flubbing more of my lines than usual. That pissed me off because I shouldn’t be letting him get to me.
But it was just bad timing.
Two days ago, my management team had contacted me about creepy fan emails addressed to me. I had received weird fan mail in the past. Most of it they filed away in a folder they kept for reference (and evidence). This person was one of them,but they noted lately there had been an increase in the number of emails this person was sending. They’d decided to forward them to the police, but honestly, there wasn’t anything the police could do unless creepy fan-mail person made a physical move toward me. So I was a little on edge about that, though I felt safe on set. We had plenty of security.
But mostly, I was spiraling about something else.
Because what I hadn’t confessed to anyone was how much social media was chipping away at me mentally and emotionally.
“Do you think if I take a ten-minute nap, my makeup will smudge?” I asked Suze as I crumpled my sandwich wrapper and tossed it into the rubbish bin.
“You should be fine. Just come back here if you need it. You’re on set in twenty minutes,” she reminded me.
I nodded, pushed up out of the chair in front of the light-adorned mirror, and pressed a kiss to the top of Suze’s head. “Thanks, doll.”
I stepped out into the baking heat. Locals told me this kind of heat had not been normal to the area during summer. But climate change was showing its ugly face, and the once-moderate summer temperatures of Vancouver had been overruled by record-breaking temps.
I smiled at crew members I passed as I made my way to my trailer. At twenty-two years old, I felt at least twice that. Which was probably why daytime naps had become a regular thing for me. Anything to escape my own mind. Normally, while filming, I was fine. I was in the character and I enjoyed playing someone else.
But off set, a weary emptiness plagued me. And when that didn’t plague me, the nasty comments on social media did. You know, most of them were great and lovely and I had the best fans. However, there were a goodly amount of shitty comments about how bad of an actor I was, how my cockney accent coulduse some work, how I was such a bitch for cheating on a fictional character, how I should kill myself, and I wasn’t even that pretty, but also how they wanted to fuck my mouth.
My DMs were filled with unsolicited nudes, messages of love interspersed with messages from organizations trying to “save” me, viewers sending me articles on addiction and mental health as though I were really the character I played on the show. DMs berated me for my lifestyle. And my acting. Messages filled with hate and jealousy. I’d even been sent an article on how to commit suicide.
It was shocking. I was exhausted.
And that level of intensity on social media happened to me overnight. There was no buildup to it.
