Nanny for the SEALs by Cassie Cole

34

Heather

I rehearsed my lines on the ride over to the filming location. It wasn’t hard. I only had three lines. But damned if I didn’t read those lines a hundred more times.

We were shooting on location at a high school football field. I got out of the Uber and walked across the field to where everyone was waiting. But on the way, I ran into a familiar face leaning against a tree and scrolling through TikTok on his phone.

“Maurice! What are you doing here?”

He rolled his eyes at me. “You think I would miss my bestie’s first role? Nuh uh, honey. You are sorely mistaken. I need to be here watching every single moment!”

He hugged me, and then we walked toward the site together. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. It doesn’t feel real yet.”

Maurice looked sideways at me. “How the hell did you get this part, anyway? Didn’t you bomb the audition?”

“I’m just as confused as you are. Maybe my half-assed attitude at the audition came across as teenage angst.”

“Lucky you,” Maurice muttered. “Five auditions this month and I haven’t gotten so much as a callback. You’d better nail this one, honey. For both of us! Then I can ride your coattails into the sunset!”

I started to doubt myself as we neared the set. Other actors were working their butt off to get parts like this, and I sort of stumbled into it without trying. It made me doubt if I was good enough.

The set was a roped-off area around the football bleachers. There was a security guard checking IDs, so I introduced Maurice as my agent so he could get on the set. I was whisked into a makeup trailer, where a stylist teased my hair for a few minutes, added a fake nose ring, then applied makeup.

I was impressed when she was done. I actually looked like a teenager who was wearing her mom’s makeup.

A page girl led me out to the set, where I met the director. He looked and sounded like Woody Allen’s smaller, whinier brother. I met the other two actors at wardrobe, and then we took our places.

The scene was about as stereotypical as you could imagine: I was playing Bad Girl Number One, who was smoking underneath the bleachers with her friend. I was even wearing a leather jacket to go with my nose ring, just in case it wasn’t obvious how bad I was. The third girl—GG in the script, for Good Girl—would walk by the bleachers. You could tell she was a good girl because she was carrying a handful of books, because apparently this commercial was being shot in a world without backpacks. My character would offer her a cigarette. Good Girl would then politely—but firmly—inform us that smoking causes lung cancer.

I would laugh at her, and then came my big line: “Screw off, nerd.”

That’s right. My acting career was beginning with the Shakespearean prose, screw off, nerd.

Try to hold your applause.

Anyway, the director was taking this commercial very seriously. He gave stage instructions to each of us individually before we started filming. The way he talked to me, you would have thought he was imparting the meaning of life upon an eager disciple. But I was an actor, so I smiled and pretended like everything he said was the one true gospel.

I just wanted to get this over with so I could get back to nannying. And playing with the dads, of course. Tonight, Brady and Asher were both home, and I was hoping for a reenactment of the fun we’d had in the man-cave a few weeks ago.

The director sat in his little chair, he waved to people, and then just like in the movies, he shouted, “Action!”

The first take went smoothly. The two camera crews circled us like buzzards, capturing the scene from different angles. This wasn’t something I had practiced for, but I was able to tune them out and focus on the part.

I don’t want to brag, but I totally nailed it on the first try. Sure, it was only a couple of lines, but I rocked them. For twenty-six long seconds, I became Popular Girl Number One. The teenage angst was off the charts.

When the scene ended, the director nodded emphatically. “Excellent. That was an excellent practice run. Now let’s try it for real this time.”

I gave a start. “Practice run?”

The other girl grimaced and lowered her voice. “They always do a lot of takes.”

“How many is a lot?” I asked. “Three? Four?”

She laughed, then frowned at me. “Wait. You’re serious? Is this your first commercial?”

“Actually, yeah. It is.”

“Well, I’ve been doing this for three years,” the girl told me. “The directors who do these commercials? They take it way too seriously. We might be here a while.”

I groaned.

We did another take. Once again, I nailed it. And once again, the director got all fussy afterward. He critiqued our hair, so the makeup artist came out and made adjustments. After the next take, he told us to wear sunglasses. An hour into shooting—I had lost count of takes by then—he complained that we didn’t look young enough.

If you wanted high schoolers, maybe you should have cast real high schoolers, idiot.

I should have been ecstatic to be doing anything related to acting, but I couldn’t bring myself to muster any excitement. This commercial wasn’t going to slingshot my acting career. Rogan’s industry connections would.

“Let’s take it from the beginning,” the director said. The other actors and I rolled our eyes.

This time the director nit-picked how enthusiastic we were. On the take after that, he said we weren’t enthusiastic enough.

After four hours, the director called a break. “I think we’ve got enough for today.”

We all sighed with relief.

“We’ll continue filming tomorrow at noon,” he added, “so be here at eleven for wardrobe.”

I gave a start. “What?”

The director was already walking away. His assistant, a chipper young man in a cardigan, came over to us and marked his clipboard with a pencil. “Can you confirm your availability for filming tomorrow?”

The other two actors nodded. “I guess, but I wasn’t expecting it to last two days…”

“Perfect. We’ll see you at eleven sharp.”

Maurice was hopping up and down with excitement. “You got to do so many takes! I’m jealous!”

“You’re jealous I had to do the same three lines a billion times?”

“It’s practice,” Maurice insisted. “Real practice, unlike what we do at Mr. Howard’s class.”

“Yeah, practice,” I muttered as we left.