On the set of "Nurse Jackie"

(Jan 30, 2009)

Late night on Thursday I get a call out of nowhere from Todd at Central to see if I wanted to work on "Nurse Jackie" starring Edie Falco. This was actually great because they shoot this show over at the Kaufman Astoria studios which is walking distance for me.

That was fine and all though when I got there the wardrobe people were SO picky about wardrobe. They made me change into over 10 completely different outfits. You would think that I would have a line for "project Runway"!

They had me in Business outfit to Business casual to "Mother Type" to Upper east sider to regular person walking down the street. It was absurd how many changes I had to go through. Normally I bring black pants, a grey jacket and other mute colors which I have never had any problems with and NEVER had to exchange my voucher in for wardrobe.

This time I had no choice and really couldn't debate as the "Gay" wardrobe guys were adamant that I had to wear grey striped pants which barely fit me. In fact when they asked for my size, I nearly cringed and had to whisper my size to him to avoid embarrassment. The only thing I wasn't shy of was my shoe size. Yes they also gave me a pair of shoes to wear which turned out to be a hindrance later on.

So the final outfit I got was such a pain in the ass to walk and breathe in. I barely made it up to the holding are up those flights of stairs with those shoes on and then I sat in those "theater" type seats and had to "lean into it" with fear that I was going to split the seams of those pants for barely fitting into them. My crotch was aching and I had a case of Camel toe. It was gross but I could not get out of it this time.

Of course all that detailed wardrobe for absolutely no point at all. Ended up sitting in the "make-shift" holding area for 5 hours until the PA from Porto Rico, announced it was Lunch. She is actually really cool and she sat beside me and offered me gossip magazines like People, US, and Star. Trashy but entertaining. that managed to kill 2 hours out of the five siting there.

When Lunch was announced, she, the PA, was actually surprised as well that it was a walkaway lunch at Astoria Kaufman studios. For one thing they have a cafe downstairs and plenty of food at all times. Well NOT this time. Since I knew the area well and my watering hole is just around the corner, I went to the Swick and got an order of Mozzarella Sticks and had two light pints of beer. Yes, my pants were barely holding on at this point.

I got back to holding after the hour long walkaway and of course they were still far from shooting the next scene. A couple more hours went by and they took all of us to set. Basically we were led from one holding area to another holding are. This one was in a "make-shift" corridor of the Hospital setting which was around the corner from the main set, so we had to be quiet like mice!


After about twenty minutes of speaking like "Church mice", the third AD named Angie, who is someone I don't like, and acts very sarcastic and condescending, comes around to pick people for the scene. I of course don't really care about being a "walk-through" for this scene. In a way I lucked out b/c the shoes that wardrobe gave me, were "too loud" and I couldn't be used at all! Gee what a shame. I tried to explain to Angie that wardrobe gave me these "noisy" shoes, though she didn't want a part of it, bypassed me and picked other people instead.

Since she couldn't use me because of the "noisy shoes", I was on the sidelines and sitting on a hospital gurney waiting for this dreadful day to end. Finally near the end at the very last scene, the PA called me to go into the waiting room and sit down as if I'm waiting and pretend that I'm helping out a friend who banged up his head. That last for about a minute, and then the Non-union were wrapped.

It is just SO depressing how it's bad enough that I'm not SAG, but to not even be AFTRA, is even more embarrassing considering how easy it is to get into AFTRA.

What's even more humiliating is that Greg was there, this guy who I started out doing this kind of work and now he is in both unions and I got nothing.

I was just happy that the day ended and barely held up my head and left the building and walked home. The was the only good part about the entire day,was the location.

Sigh :(