Page 19 of Unscripted

“Poppy, I know this is a lot, and it’s all happening very fast, but if you need to take a walk or get air or do anything you just have to ask me. I’m not here to make this harder for you, I’m really not. I want you to enjoy this whole experience,” he said.

“I will, I promise.”

“Now, upstairs and in your room, please.”

I didn’t wait for him to tell me twice and hurried over to the door that led back to the lobby. As I pushed it open, I snuck a quick glance back over my shoulder.

It was no use.

Callum was already gone.

11

Iwas kept in my hotel room for two more days.

That was two days of pacing the room and flipping through local channels on the small, dated hotel TV. I had initially thought it would be a good way to learn some Italian, but by the third hour of daytime soap operas, I gave up on trying to figure out what they were saying.

Harry did let me have lunch and dinner out on the terrace. Production must have realized that keeping ten young people locked in their rooms all day would not be good for morale heading into the villa. One by one, so I was told, we were all allowed out of our rooms for meals. That often meant that I was eating either very early or very late, but I wasn’t complaining. Anything beat the four walls of my hotel room.

In a surprising twist, my view of the parking lot turned out to be my saving grace. There, production had set up a mini base camp. Nothing was going to shoot at the hotel, but they were staging crew check-in and production meetings in the lot. Even without being able to open the window to hear what was going on, there was a certain comfort in watching the buzz of an impending shoot. It was familiar to me; it was what I knew.

On the morning of the third day in reality television jail, I was woken by a knock on the door. It was still dark outside and the clock on the nightstand let me know it was just after 5:00 a.m.

Confused, I threw back the covers and padded over to the door. Looking through the peephole, I found Harry on the other side.

“If this is how early breakfast is today, I think I’ll pass,” I said to him as I opened the door.

Harry leaned against the door frame, smirking at me.

“It’s time,” he said.

“It’s time?”

“It’s all happening!” Harry sang out, clapping his hands together in glee.

I stood there, still groggy from sleep, my brain taking a moment to catch up to what he was saying.

Suddenly, I wasn’t so eager to leave the hotel room I had previously been so desperate to get out of. I would actually be happy to stay another week locked in here, with no lunch breaks, instead of starting to film.

If Harry noticed my hesitance, noticed what I was sure was a look of sheer panic on my face, he didn’t let on. He charged ahead, rattling off the plan for the day.

My head spun at the sudden turn of events. I knew, in theory, that I would only be in the hotel for a couple of days before entering the villa. That’s what Harry had told me when we arrived, and it made sense, conceptually.

But emotionally, I was digging in my heels, not wanting to move on from what had become a weird sort of safe space. The hotel room was my own little bubble of avoidance, and the thought of having to leave it so suddenly overwhelmed me.

I tried to focus on Harry in front of me, still babbling away.

“—you’ll get hair and makeup done downstairs in one of the hotel’s conference rooms. We’ll then shuttle you over to the villa where wardrobe will meet you. They've already picked out something for you to wear, so don’t worry about that.”

If there was one thing I hadn’t been worried about, it was what I was going to wear. It hadn’t even crossed my mind, that part of the whole experience. But it finally dawned on me that an entire world of people would see me, what I looked like and what I was wearing, every day for up to six weeks.

A whole new wave of panic washed over me, but all I could do was nod along. I had been in this mental space—the one where I wanted to quit and call it all off—so many times over the last few days that I knew all I could do was focus on one moment at a time. One minute and then the next until the panic simmered.

Just keep nodding, I told myself. Keep moving. Keep pretending you have some sort of grasp on the situation.

“Sound good?” Harry said, blinking at me expectantly.

“What?” I said, having zoned out his words during my mental pep talk.