Melissa Explains It All: Tales From My Abnormally Normal Life (7 page)

A lot of fans tuned in to see what Clarissa wore every week. Her clothes were original, playful, and not at all provocative—Keith Haring graphic tees, scarves, peasant tops, and more vests than you could find in Diane Keaton’s closet. Most of her outfits included layers of color and pattern, paired with colorful Doc Martens or Converse sneakers. The stylish ragtag look was a skillful mix of Punky Brewster, Cyndi Lauper, and the sweeter side of urban punk. I think our show’s designer, Lisa Lederer, did for trendy teens what Patricia Field later did for fashionable twenty-somethings who watched
Sex and the City.
(In fact, I think Lisa did some shopping for the show at Pat’s store.) To this day, people still tell me that Clarissa inspired them to work in the fashion industry or revamp their wardrobe. I could never follow the character’s unpredictable style, so while I loved her clothes, I never duplicated the looks in my own life. I could rock dangling earrings and army boots, but forget the psychedelic leggings and painted jeans. I did keep a lot of custom-made wardrobe pieces like a blue paisley vest, mix-matched pajamas, and any Betsey Johnson piece I could get my hands on. My friend Michele, who worked in wardrobe, made me a great keepsake picture, constructed from many pieces of fabric and material that were used to make some of my clothes. It still hangs in my office at home.

Like Clarissa’s personality, her look was elaborate without being flashy, and liberating without seeming pretentious. I wasn’t made to look like today’s girls on
Hannah Montana, Lizzie McGuire,
or
Wizards of Waverly Place,
who wear a full face of makeup, hair extensions, and daring clothes. I’m floored to learn that some of them are younger than I was when I started on
Clarissa
. In fact, Mom insisted that my character never wear mascara or have tweezed or groomed eyebrows; she hoped to preserve what little-girl charm I had left in my big-girl world. (This is how she earned her nickname, “Dragon Lady,” around the set.)

Because the show was about a preteen’s life, and I was a young teenager,
Clarissa
’s writers occasionally turned to me for input and help shaping Clarissa’s character—albeit in small, but significant, ways. Right off the bat, Mitchell made They Might Be Giants Clarissa’s favorite band, with their posters on her set wall, even though it wasn’t the most popular group at the time. He’s also said that he wrote in slang I used in real life—like “obee-kaybee,” which some of my girlfriends and I used back home, and now there’s an
OBKB.com
fan site dedicated to the show. Clarissa also always had a plan—and five backup plans, if those didn’t work out—which is exactly like me, though I’m not sure if that was art imitating life, or vice versa.

When any television show gets the green light for its first season, the showrunner, who’s responsible for day-to-day decisions, typically sits with the actors or sends them a questionnaire to learn about their passions, hobbies, and interests. This way, story lines can benefit from the actor’s real outside pastimes and talents. Because I’d played the flute since fifth grade, our writers penned an episode about Clarissa’s nerve-wracking flute recital. That said, they didn’t always take advantage of my interests. In our third season, I told one writer that I wanted to write an episode about Clarissa babysitting the biggest brat in the Northern Hemisphere, inspired by my little sister Emily’s antics. I helped flesh out the idea in the writer’s room, and then one of the people on the writing staff took over and within a few weeks, my idea became an episode. This was bittersweet for me, though, since I wanted to help develop the episode further and my sister wasn’t cast. I did get to meet the talented and sweet Michelle Trachtenberg, who played the little horror, so that was fun. My ego never got in the way of remembering that the show had writers and producers for a reason.

As such, Mitchell was hugely instrumental in making my time at
Clarissa
so great. He created a show about a girl who stood up for herself, went after what she wanted, and did things her own way. I’ve always been grateful that he saw enough of that in me to let me play her. He is a brilliant man with a bit of a kooky mind, which is exactly what you need to be a success in his business. He also treated me like a daughter, and I needed that. Mitchell was very protective and very concerned about my money being put away for college and my future. He made sure my guardians and the crew and network were treating me well. Whenever he came to Florida for a taping (after the first season, he mostly worked from New York), Mitchell took me to my favorite restaurant at Universal Studios and let me order anything on the menu—lobster, steak, chocolate ice cream, you name it. It was great to be in mature company, and at a nice establishment for a change, since I ate most meals at the commissary among characters from the Universal theme park. It’s hard to enjoy your burger with Beetlejuice flinging boogers at you.

Nickelodeon was also very conscientious about making sure I didn’t miss out on big moments during my adolescence, and I have to think that a lot of this was Mitchell and my mom’s doing. During the last season, Nickelodeon rearranged our shooting schedule so I could be in New York for my sister Alexandra’s birth, and then again for my boyfriend Mike’s prom since I didn’t have one of my own to attend. The network and crew also gave me a private graduation with a podium, “Nickelodeon High School” diploma, cap and gown, and six-foot cold-cut sub. They invited my family, including my six-week-old sister Alexandra and my boyfriend. Mitchell gave a commencement speech. After being named valedictorian in my class of one and voted “most likely to have her own series,” I gave a talk, too, with funny anecdotes about the cast and crew. I can’t tell you how much it warms my heart to remember the lengths they all went to in order to ensure I had as close to a typical adolescent experience as possible. Years later, on the
Melissa & Joey
set, I duplicated the graduation idea for my young costar, Taylor Spreitler, who was also homeschooled and didn’t have a proper graduation. She was as moved by the gesture as I was. It’s good to pay it forward.

On set, I also wasn’t oblivious to the fact that adults put me on a pedestal because I was the show’s lead. They laughed at all my jokes and answered every lame question that crossed my mind. They let me be a curious kid and turned my incessant queries into lessons. When the camera wasn’t rolling, my favorite part of being on set was learning the ins and outs of TV production and realizing how many skills went into putting twenty-two minutes of script on air. The crew’s talents were also personally handy. If my earrings broke, props fixed them. If my jeans were too long, wardrobe hemmed them. If I needed pictures hung in my dressing room, the grips helped, and for random needs, hardworking production assistants, or PAs, were on call.

I remember running amok between shots and on rehearsal breaks, too. One time I chased down a crush who worked in promos because he stole my popcorn, but when he made a sudden 180 at the end of the hall, I rammed my nose into his forehead. This gave me my first and only bloody nose, and he swears he still has the tissue; I’m waiting for it to show up on eBay. I also flirted with the lighting guys who taught me how to properly dim an Inky or Tweenie—giant industrial spotlights used on Hollywood sets—and let me lower the baton so they could adjust a lamp. I liked goofing around with the directors and asking them to explain how they knew what camera should be looking at which actor, and when to switch cameras for the edit. They occasionally let me work the cameras and sound booms during rehearsals. I would have loved to help create the replicas of the
Enterprise
from
Star Trek
sets, or mix the colors for
Double Dare
’s slime, but those were a big deal.

Outside the studio, I wasn’t as crazy about the attention I received. Around the start of our second season, I began getting recognized for the first time, and I didn’t like it. Nothing bad ever happened to me, but I felt generally uneasy about being approached by strangers in public. Cable television was still new-ish to some Americans, the paparazzi wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is now, and nobody had cell phones for videotaping celebs or snapping their uncensored pics, so I didn’t have much experience interacting with fans the way teen stars do now. I also hated when people mangled our show’s title to
Clarissa Tells It All,
which happened all the time and still does.

*   *   *

As much as I truly loved the work on
Clarissa,
my shoot and travel schedule made it a real challenge sometimes. I worked seventy-hour weeks with a laser-like focus. I shot in Orlando for three weeks straight, traveled home for two weeks, and then came back for three—until we’d completed ten to fifteen episodes in a season. My workweek began on Saturday night, when I read the latest script, given to me on Friday. Then with the cast, director of the week, writers, and producers, I spent Sundays at the table reading for that week’s episode in our enormous, dark, and damp soundstage. The good lights didn’t go on, and the thermostat wasn’t regulated until we started shooting on Wednesday. I often got strep throat and colds from the stage, and there was never time to heal completely. A few hours after I’d be sent home by the doctor, I’d get called back to rehearse, shoot, or go to school. Sunday table reads were the first time the cast and crew heard the script read aloud, as we noshed on bagels and coffee around a plastic folding table. After our reading, we dove into rehearsals scene by scene, and worked out the blocking (how we moved around the set). If any of the three kid characters were not in a scene, we were sent to the schoolhouse trailer attached to the side of the stage to work on our academics. This was the only time of day we saw sunlight, unless we ventured offstage for our one-hour lunch break.

Besides my hectic work schedule, I was frequently wiped from the intense energy I had to exert when we rolled tape; subscribing to the Nickelodeon school of acting was no stroll in the park. We’d have long, twelve-page scenes that we arduously rehearsed, and when it was time to shoot, we’d easily work on them for another hour and a half. I’m sure you’ve noticed that child actors on kids’ networks are abnormally peppy and overly expressive. My
Clarissa
peers and I were already energetic kids with a ton of personality, yet for some reason, this was never enough to satisfy directors. They wanted us to act like we were hyped up on nondrowsy cold meds. One of my favorite directors, named Chuck, was great at getting us pumped after ten draining takes by joking around, and if that didn’t work, telling us to “Shoot this one out of a cannon!”—as in, the scene—which became known as “Cannon take!” for short. Every time I heard those words, I had to blast ’em with more pizzazz than what felt natural. No wonder I had a hard time transitioning to more subtle and serious roles later in my career.

The cast and crew worked six days a week, but only rolled cameras on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. When it came time to shoot, I was terrified that I’d mess up the five long monologues my character had to deliver, straight into the camera, every week. Because of this shooting style, there was no room for error, and if I made a mistake, we couldn’t do pickups, since monologues can’t be spliced together in editing. I had to get every single word correct or start over. That kind of pressure, in front of seventy-five-plus adults just watching and waiting to go home to their families, was intimidating. And though the monologues scared me, I also loved the adrenaline rush of nailing them in one or two takes. It was a welcome challenge, and I never back down from a challenge. I took great pride in knowing my lines, blocking, and even knowing other peoples’ lines; and I rarely, if ever, went blank when the cameras were rolling (or when I was up on stage earlier in my career, come to think of it). I also really loved shooting the flashbacks and dream sequences, since they let me act a little ridiculous, take on another character, and learn only a half page of lines, as opposed to the usual ten-page scene.

*   *   *

My
Clarissa
cast and crew made it a memorable place to spend four years. I’ve always been so lucky to work on shows that have a close-knit group. It sounds clichéd, but like a lot of actors who spend years on a hit television show, I thought of my
Clarissa
coworkers as a second family. They were all warm, caring, and loving to me in a way I’ll never forget. When you spend more time with over seventy-five new friends than your eight-person family, it can either be really special or really horrendous—and
Clarissa
was definitely special.

We worked hard, but we also knew how to have a good time. Our young, mostly single crew went to a bar called Florida Bay nearly every Friday night, which gave me the social life I craved. Though I was underage, the bar let me tag along with my coworkers once they realized I wasn’t there to get wasted, not that I could convince anyone to sneak me some booze anyhow. It wasn’t until the show was about to end that my friend and dresser Michele, and her fiancé, David, ordered me my first tequila shot at Florida Bay. It was my drink of choice for years.

Sean O’Neal, the actor who played my friend Sam, was a particularly good sport and sidekick. His role on the show was to be my close friend, and because Mitchell didn’t want him to go up the stairs or through the front door and talk to her parents every time, he made him come up a ladder through the bedroom window so we could start interacting faster. Sam was one of the first sitcom buddies who refused to use the front door, besides Vinnie on
Doogie Howser, M.D
. Joey on
Dawson’s Creek,
Bruh-Man on
Martin,
and Shawn on
Boy Meets World
soon followed. That ladder was only three rungs high and attached to hinges on the cement floor, so poor Sean had to lie flat on the floor with only a furniture blanket to cushion him, with the heavy and awkward ladder lying across his belly, for as long as it took us to get to his part of the scene. When his cue came, he’d throw the ladder against the windowsill, wait about three seconds, and then slowly crawl to his knees and eventually up the three rungs, over the sill, and into the room. If Sean was not a young able-bodied teen at the time, I doubt he would’ve been able to do this for four years without a lot of wear and tear to his body. And no, we never hooked up in real life, though I may have had a minor crush on him when we first started. Of course, after two days of working together, I knew we were more like brother and sister.