I was once doing a TV show and took its star out to dinner. Executive producers are supposed to do this sort of thing with the stars of their shows. Though to be honest, I had an ulterior motive. I needed to have an awkward conversation with him. We went to the priciest, most high-end steakhouse in Beverly Hills. “I’ll have the rib-eye steak,” the actor told the waiter, “and the souffle potatoes. And the creamed spinach.”
”Wait a second,” I said to the waiter. “He’ll have the small filet mignon, the steamed spinach, and no potatoes. And please take the bread basket away from the table.”
The actor was surprised, but I had used my do not mess with me tone of voice, something that every effective Hollywood producer has or should have, so it lasted barely a moment. The waiter wrote down what I told him. “What’ll you have, sir?”
“Oh, I’ll have the rib-eye, the potatoes, and the creamed spinach,” I said.
When the waiter left, the star leaned in. “Are you trying to say that I’m fat?”
“I’m not trying to say it,” I said. “I am saying it.”
The words just tumbled out of me. I had expected this to be a difficult conversation, but it turns out that it’s kind of fun to tell a young actor that he’s getting tubby.
He protested. He weighed himself daily, he told me, and he had barely gained 6 pounds since the beginning of production. Did I know how hard it was to keep trim on a television set?
Of course I did, I told him. Each set has something called a “craft services” table — a continuously replenished buffet of all kinds of snacks and sweets and fattening treats.
“You look like you’ve gained a bit yourself,” he said to me, in what I interpreted as a defensive lashing-out. I shrugged. “I have,” I said. “But then, I’m not on screen. I can be as fat as I like. You can’t. And don’t forget: The camera adds at least 20. So you’re actually 26 pounds heavier.”
I was doing him a favor. He had started the series as a slender and trim young man. That’s the person I cast in the role, and that’s who audiences expected to see each week. So it may have hurt his feelings when I told him that he needed to hit the gym more often, hire a trainer, and stop grazing on the craft services table, but he understood the point. And naturally, it was easier, and probably less legally actionable, for me to have that conversation with a man rather than a woman.
As “woke” and sensitive and inclusive as Hollywood has become, it’s still basically OK for a male producer to tell a male actor that he’s looking chunky.
Once, during a long casting session, a young actress started to read, then stopped suddenly in the middle of a speech. Tears welled in her eyes. “You don’t want me!” she sobbed. “You want somebody a lot thinner.” She was correct, sadly. We were casting a romantic lead — someone whom the male lead, and the audience, would need to find utterly beguiling. The actress in the audition was maybe 40 pounds heavier than “beguiling.” At that point in her career, about the only believable romantic relationship the actress could have onscreen would be with a chocolate croissant.
But we couldn’t say that, of course. “No, no, no,” we reassured. “You’re doing great! You’re doing terrific! You look fine!”
“So can I keep going?” she asked, after a moment. “Of course!” we said encouragingly.
She finished the audition. She did pretty well, but we were shooting the episode the following week, which wouldn’t give her time to join SoulCycle and go full-on keto. That is, had we felt comfortable telling her the truth, which we hadn’t.
As she left, we reassured her some more. But I looked at the sheet in front of our casting director, a no-nonsense veteran of television casting, and in front of the actress’s name, she had penciled a note to herself: the number 2 and the letter “F.”
Too fat.
Which is a lot less helpful to a performer than taking her out to a fancy dinner and reordering her meal for her, though I guess it’s a lot more “sensitive.”
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
