The more I thought about it, the more I realized that David Kelley had made a mistake by casting me as the new hot lawyer on a show about hot lawyers and their romantic entanglements. When I met Mr. Kelley to discuss a possible role on The Practice, a show I had watched and liked, something I did—like flicking my hair off my shoulder or the way I crossed my legs—made him say, “I see you more for Ally.” And with that I was Photoshopped into a poster of the cast, squeezed into the show’s trademark unisex bathroom. He had made a mistake for sure. Apart from not being that fun and flirty leading-lady type that I knew the character had to be, I just wasn’t good-looking enough for the role. I was okay at certain angles, but my profile was ugly (I knew this from years of modeling), and my face was very large and round. Plus the character itself was a stretch. Playing a commanding, intimidating professional brimming with self-confidence was going to be a challenge. While I would eagerly accept such an acting challenge for a movie, the thought that I had to play this powerful woman who was so vastly different from myself year after year on a television show was daunting. How was I going to stop my head from tilting in deference to the person I was talking to like I did in real life? How was I going to always remember to stand with my weight evenly balanced on two high-heeled legs when I usually slouch over my left hip in boots? Because I would need to fight every natural instinct to act out the character, I decided it would be immensely helpful if I could change my natural instincts. I would teach myself to stand straight and listen with my head straight. I would practice sounding self-assured and confident. I would stop sounding Australian and always sound like an American when I spoke. It was too late to get out of it, so I had to change myself significantly in order to get into it.
I needed to shed my old self and step into this new role. And not only did I have to become the role of Nelle Porter, I also had to play the role of a celebrity. But what did celebrities do? Did they go to parties, get spray-tanned, become philanthropic? Did they get their hair and makeup done when they went to the supermarket? Did they go to the supermarket at all? Becoming a celebrity felt like a promotion to me. The problem with thinking that being a famous actress was an upgrade from being just an actress was that I wasn’t given a new job description. As an actress, I learned my lines, interpreted and performed them. But there was no actual profession that went along with being a celebrity. After observing Elizabeth Hurley’s meteoric rise from actress to celebrity, I knew, however, that becoming a celebrity had a lot to do with clothes. As I didn’t read fashion magazines or care which celebrity wore the same gown more elegantly than her counterpart, how was I going become the fashionable celebrity that the new cast member on Ally McBeal was expected to be? I was given this promotion but then left alone to guess how to do the job.
Either that or I could ask an expert.
When Kali wasn’t painting, she was absorbing fashion. I say “absorbing” because watching her hunched over a Vogue magazine, her arms protectively wrapped around it, her body still and focus intent as she traced the outline of clothing with her eyes, you’d swear she was recharging her life source. You couldn’t talk to Kali when she began to read the new issue of W or even talk to anyone else within her earshot. One summer, a houseguest of Mel and mine saw a plastic-wrapped Vogue on the stoop next door, unwrapped it, and was discovered by Kali reading it in the courtyard. After finding out that this thief who had robbed her of the great pleasure of being the first and only one to handle her subscriber’s copy was a friend from my modeling days in Australia, Kali stood in our living room in a state of shock quietly repeating, “Who would do something like that?” Mel and I were forced to take sides: My husband, who leapt at the chance to argue with Kali, told her she was overreacting and took the model-friend’s side. This argument was one of many that created the state of melancholy in which I lived, as there was a lot of tension between Mel and Kali. Naturally, I took Kali’s side. Since she was a creative genius, whatever inspired her was obviously important. It didn’t matter that I didn’t care for fashion magazines.
With only one week before I had to begin work, I called Kali in a panic. Kali told me not to worry about buying new clothes and becoming someone else. She told me that they hired me for my uniqueness. She told me to be myself.
“A lesbian?”
Kali agreed to meet me at Banana Republic that afternoon.
Dressed in a vintage Iggy Pop T-shirt, faded black denim jeans, and a pair of perfectly worn black leather engineers’ boots, I walked across the outdoor mall in the heat of a Pasadena summer toward Kali, who was waiting for me in the store. She was going to help me put together a new, casual, everyday look that I could wear to work. I chose Banana Republic, because I figured that I could find clothes there that would help me smooth out the sharp edges and make me look more like an acceptable member of society. Or at least less like an outcast.
I saw Kali among the racks of white and beige dressed in a uniquely cool vintage dress that made her stand out in the store designed to help you blend in. My face must have conveyed the anxiety in my head because Kali just skipped the “hello”s and hugged me, wrapping her arms around my waist, each hand clasping shirts on hangers that dug into my back.
“Thanks for doing this, Kals.”
“It’ll be fun. I don’t know if you need me, though, Pickle. You have a great sense of style.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t see too many photos of leading ladies in ripped black jeans and engineers’ boots.”
I became self-conscious of my black clothing. No one else in the store was wearing heavy black boots or a black T-shirt. They were wearing summer prints and skirts.
“You could use some lighter colors for summer. Do you need skirts?” Kali was looking me up and down like I was more of a project than a friend.
“I guess so. I don’t know. Do I?”
She smiled at me sweetly and handed me the two shirts she was holding.
“Why don’t you start with these and I’ll find you some pants. Do you like Capri pants?”
As I wasn’t certain that I knew what they were, I shrugged my shoulders and took the shirts. I found a dressing room with a full-length mirror and tried on the shirts. I tried the white one and then I tried the other white one.
As I waited in the dressing room for Kali to bring Capri pants in a color palette that would make me more palatable, I looked at my body. I looked at my big thighs, the fat around my knees. I looked at my hips and how they formed a triangle where my butt hit the top of my legs. It wasn’t the first time I was critical of my body. I’d spent my life trying to change it, but I was overcome with the feeling that it would continue to beat me—that I could never win the game of successfully changing its shape. I thought about the time when I was eighteen and got stoned and stared at my reflection in a sliding glass door, sobbing, “I will always look like this.” Or when I met the voice when I was twelve and a modeling client asked me to turn around so she could see my butt. She asked me to take down my pants, turn around, and face the wall so she could see my ass. I faced the wall with my pants around my ankles for what seemed like a long time before she asked me to turn back around to face her. “I’m surprised your butt is so saggy for such a young girl,” she said in a friendly, inquisitive tone. “Do you work out?”
You need to work out. That was the first thing the voice said to me. It was a very deep, male voice that was so loud and clear I wondered if the other rejected models in the elevator with me could hear it. It continued to ring like a shock wave long after it had delivered the message. And standing in front of the mirror in Banana Republic, I was ashamed to think that at twenty-four, it had to keep giving me the same message.