“Eyelines.”
“Plus, you’re jumping from the opening scene to the climactic finale, to random scenes in between—and I can see you physically recalibrating, figuring out where that is on your character arc and going there. When you watch it, it’s one coherent journey. I had no idea it was so fragmented.”
Griffin turned onto a narrow, palm-lined road. He found himself relaxing as they headed to the Hills. “I’ve learned to do my homework on that. You can’t wing it—you gotta think it through—but even then you never feel like you do as well as you could have, and you can’t usually go back and fix scenes you’ve filmed earlier. I’m glad I don’t do the kind of roles that get Oscar nominations. I’d hate to have the pressure to actually be good.”
“You realize you are good, right?”
“I try not to get too hung up about that. I just escape into my characters and try to make them real and enjoy the process. I know actors—plenty of them—who believe, consciously or subconsciously, that anything less than universal acclaim and blockbuster success is failure. Recipe for depression, if ever there was one.”
“My dad is an artist—a painter. He goes around saying, ‘What other people think of you is none of your business.’ But then he gets worked up about what people do or don’t say about his work, so…”
“That’s a hard road to navigate. I just hope someone enjoys what I help to make, you know? Escapes from their own world for an hour or two. Besides, you’d hope by now I was good at what I do, since it’s all I’ve ever done. I grew up on sets and soundstages and backlots watching my parents work—and now I spend sometimes eighty hours a week on set. You’d expect that someone who’s been a builder for a decade or more and grew up in the family business knows their way around a set of tools. But I’m well aware that I’m primarily here because of the family I happened to be born into.”
“Don’t shortchange yourself!”
“You’re sweet, but there’s no escaping that I’m a nepo baby. Countless insanely talented actors come through this town and work their asses off and don’t get a single role. If that were me, who knows if I’d have gotten lucky.”
“No one’s gonna hire you for something as big asGods and Mortalsjust because of who your parents are. Not if you suck.”
“Well, yeah, you gotta bring something to it. But I’m aware that I have a name that’s not one hundred percent mine. And I still have to constantly prove myself—while not putting a foot wrong.”
“Ever wondered if you care too much about what people think? Like that Big Bird thing? Serious question—not accusing you of anything.”
“Problem is, what people think—the stuff that gets published, even the gossip—it does have an impact on my life, my career, the people around me. There are roles I’d have loved that I didn’t get because of some bullshit story doing the rounds. And I like to get up every day and go to a job I love—I don’t know who I’dbe without that. I don’t have a backup plan. Besides, it’s not just about me,” he said, as they crossed Sunset. “My public image could be the difference between a movie crushing it or tanking, and too many people have too much riding on this. Look atGods and Mortals. A whole ecosystem—not just on set, but also the supporting industries, all the flow-on, the families who depend on that income.” He frowned. “I have no idea why I just spouted all that.”
“We’re sharing. It’s what humans do.”
“They do?”
“I believe so. And now you’re looking at me like you’re worried that I genuinely think I’m an alien.”
“I’m looking at you like that because I’ve always felt likeI’mthe one who doesn’t fit. But here you are, a seemingly regular person, and you don’t feel like you fit.”
“You have this fixation with me being a regular person. Hate to break it to you, but…”
“Everyone wants to fit, right?”
“576.82”
“Roget’s Thesaurus?”
“Darwin. The urge to fit into our communities is strong, equal to the urge to pair up. Protection and reproduction—survival of the species. You have to override your programming to truly go your own way.”
Oh, he was feeling some basic human programming. “You fit in your library, don’t you?”
“I do. But a lot of us are a little different. All that time spent in other worlds.”
“Aliens?”
“Books!”
“Maybe that’s my problem too. I spend my days playing make-believe. Do you have a backup plan if you suddenly couldn’t be a librarian?”
“There are some things I could try. Like a social media influencer for books! I’d need more than six followers, though.”
“You could tell everyone about that life-changing book no one’s heard of.”
“That would seriously change the world. But I do like what I do. I believe in what I do. Purpose, like you say, even if I don’t have the impact on the world that you do.”
