May 2, 2007: Julie and Eric's Baby
Our first birth on the show is tonight! Or last night, if you're reading this Thursday.... I missed my deadline, and well, you know how that goes lame. Me. Not TV Guide.
Shooting the hospital scenes for this episode gave me a
lot of appreciation for all those who don scrubs on
Grey's Anatomy. It's one of my very favorite shows, and I now understand why they get paid the big bucks. They're not paid to act - they're paid to shoot hospital scenes that take forever. Especially if all the principles have lots to say around a body on a table.
There are, at one point, five of us in a scene and we're all standing around mom-to-be
Melanie Paxson's hospital bed. So we had to do several scenes in the same room, and instead of shooting each scene individually, we did each scene directionally. What that means is that the camera stayed in one spot through a taping and then it was moved to another spot and we shot the scene all over again. Still nothing?
OK, the point is it made for a very long day with m'lady Melanie Paxson's legs up in a rather vulnerable position. And wouldn't you know it she insisted on not wearing any underwear. That coupled with the fact that
Barry Sonnenfeld directed - so every cool shot imaginable was in play - meant we were there shooting from 7 am to 4 am the next morning. (We get breaks our
amazing crew does not. Yeah, think about that. They are
good people.)
It was 11:30 pm.... We had said the lines so many times I actually forgot my words - on my close-up. On my personal fancy-shot time. Completely blank. Which, if you've ever worked with me, you know I
never give up.
Ever. That is a grotesque lie. I feel as if I'm always one step away from breaking into a monologue from
Tartuffe that I've buried
way back in my brain from college in order to say something
anything. My waking actor's nightmare. Let me tell you it's not fun, nor is it pretty. It's actually horrifying and ugly when
90 people just want you to get it right. Flop sweat starts happening to the actor, and writers start thinking, "How the crank can we cut down this already incredibly easy phrase?" Luckily, I got it together just in time, but I fear the pressure from the day and mental gymnastics I had to do to stay fresh gave me the stink eye.
I didn't actually get the stink eye; I just got a broken blood vessel. Again, not pretty. So, un-pretty that Barry Sonnenfeld famously gagged at the sight of me. In one of the upcoming episodes they had to digitally remove the red from my dead eye. No joke. Expensive. I love Warner Bros. and ABC.
It's 2 am and we've finally finished the hospital-room scene, and Melanie has finally put on her underwear. We move into the elevator for the balloon scene! I'm smashed in the elevator with almost 80 balloons and a helpless couple trapped in the scene with me. Barry said that this scene is one of his favorite. It turned out quite funny, if I do say so myself. It's a quick gag and only took us an hour and a half to shoot. First, the balloons weren't falling correctly, and then I went up on my lines. I had one line. OK, I'm kidding, but I needed a good out.
