Royal Screw Up

You know how actresses are. We starve and moan and complain between roles, then jump and cheer and dance when we get one, then suffer the consequences until it’s over.

I’d been out of work for 22 months. Part of that was the strike, and part of it was my management team, which I fired in month 17 after the resumption of production was a year old and still nothing came my way. I may sound conceited, but I have an awards shelf that’s not empty. I should at least be given things to do between meaty, artistic parts. Villains or cameos or thankless leads in scale-budgeted indies. Instead, I watched my bank account and friend group dwindle waiting around for any offer at all.

My personal assistant, Keith, got an acting gig before I did. I clenched my teeth behind my closed-lip smile when he asked for (and received, I’m not a monster) two months of leave for the shoot. I don’t know what movie it was. Probably something nobody will ever hear of with a wreath on the poster celebrating acceptance into a film festival in Kansas. It didn’t matter. Keith got to work. I spent two months buying my own groceries.

Which is fine. I grew up normal. I know how to buy groceries. I’m just making a point here.

Anyway — do you need more wine? no? water? okay — I gave my new agent a command to get me working on anything pronto. I wouldn’t audition, but I would obviously be happy to screen test, if he got my drift. I just needed a chance, a line on IMDB. I’m childless, so I don’t need a pregnancy gap on my resume, you know?

That’s how I got the part. Big enough, first name on the poster. In fact, my attachment got the thing its green light, even though some men came on later with nominally bigger industry sway. So that was nice. But even nicer was my confidence that the script, the budget, the concept, and director were all seemingly calculated to make this thing go under the radar. Wreath for a festival in Kansas stuff. Keith stuff. So it didn’t seem like a risk?

Because I know I’m black, okay? I know that. Dark-skinned. It hadn’t escaped my notice. I didn’t forget. I wasn’t thinking, while I read it, “being black won’t be an issue in this role,” right? The whole thing arriving my way was confusing, and even seemed like a prank at first, or maybe some kind of misguided … well I guess it was misguided, in the end, like a white writer-director trying to say … something. I never asked. I didn’t dare. And he seemed scared to tell me. Which should have been a red flag! But 22 months of no work is a long time.

I also kind of expected more chaos in the casting, you know? Like I said, I was the first one in the door, the one who secured the bag from the studio subsidiary, the one who convinced everyone else to take the chance. So I had a reasonable expectation that the project would be shaped to, I don’t know, explain? Me? But of course this idiot cast the rest of the movie with complete historical fidelity, right down to the bone structure of the actors’ cheeks matching the old daguerreotypes. It was just me, first name on the poster, the sore thumb, the attention grabber.

But I wasn’t going to back out of the contract, meager as it was. I really don’t think I had done anything to earn my almost two years of exile — sometimes people just get forgotten for a while in this business — but I certainly wasn’t going to make my “return” a story about being difficult or expensive or troublesome or anything like that. So I was game, okay? I was game the whole time. I smiled. I learned crew names. I took young day players under my wing. I worked up pretty good chemistry with the male lead. It even said so in one of the kinder reviews. I took every note in stride and the shoot was, once I got going in it, really smooth and kind of fun. If it was a big enough project for a full press tour, I would have been able to convincingly smile through it and say how wonderful everyone was to work with, you know?

Instead, a trailer dropped before a release date was even set, and the internet noticed it. And so help me God, nobody involved was prepared for the firestorm of a black woman playing Queen Victoria. Especially when the trailer made it quite clear that it was just … that. Not a reinterpretation or fantastic reimagining of British history. Just a straight, somewhat stuffy rehash of one kind of forgotten aspect of her life. Just with me — tall, black, and skinny — at the center of it all, doing my bloody best.

Everyone called me with condolences: the actor who played Prince Albert, the young ingenue who played Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the hairdresser who gamely put me in powdered wigs that somehow didn’t look ridiculous, the PA who brought me coffee and sides each day. Everyone but the damn director. I had to call him.

“I’m going to have to say something,” I told him, after he told me not to worry and it would all blow over. “I need to explain, or you do. So tell me. And I’ll agree. Just tell me. Why me?”

And that’s when I found out I had the same name as an older white British actress. One who wouldn’t automatically get the film a green light, though. One who wouldn’t generate buzz among casting agents. But certainly one who looked like goddamn Queen Victoria. The whole thing was a mistake. A. Mis. Take.

I know! “So what do we do?” I yelled at him. And I say I yelled but I promise it was without anger because I still needed to come out of this without a reputation. I tried to sound more surprised than angry, but let me tell you right now, I was mostly angry.

And he said let’s call it a metaphor. Queen Victoria came to power just as slavery was ended in the British Empire. The story is of her relationship with little Sarah. Ride it out as metaphorical to that — a Queen in a new age of race relations bonding with a rescued black girl from Dahomey and taking her and her family directly under her wing.

So he wanted me to vibe it. I was vibes.

The rest, you know. It did not work. It became a meme. Black people hated it. All the white people you’d expect, especially in Britain, hated it. People who make YouTube videos pretended to hate it for the clicks. And audiences who ate up the trailer in viral amounts refused to see the movie because — well, maybe because it wasn’t a good trailer nor a good movie and it looked, and was, rather boring — but really because the movie was already a joke before it even had a distribution plan. I still get Google alerts about Twitch streamers running mocking commentary of it now that it’s on streaming.

I had stumbled into my first Bad Movie.

Still worked, though. People remembered me now. As soon as the firestorm hit, I got a call from a producer I worked with in the early days who was very sympathetic and put me in a part as a mom for a young black director with an all-black cast, and I think it was that movie, even though it wasn’t a blockbuster or anything, that let people know this wasn’t my fault. And I haven’t seen that writer-director do anything ever again. So I came out okay. The blame got assigned correctly.

But I hate this little stain on my work. I just needed a job, and when I got one, it was by an accident everyone was too scared to correct. I’ve never told this story in the press because, well, because I thought I was a damn good Queen Victoria. Better than that little old British lady may have been, even. But she doesn’t deserve to be pulled into the orbit of this meme. Maybe she’s a doll. Maybe she’s one of the kindest people treading the boards in jolly old England. Maybe she’s a bitch, I don’t know, I’ve never looked her up. But nobody’s put two and two together and I’m not spilling the tea first. Let someone else make excuses. I made art, to the best of my ability.

So please, keep this to yourself. Keith always did. I know you’ll be a good assistant, because your references are glowing, but to fill his shoes you’ll need to keep the same secrets he kept, and that’s the big one, okay? No gossip, no boyfriends, and definitely no selling this to TMZ. It’s my story to tell, and I’m letting it go untold. The only reason you know is because you’ll be working with everyone else who does know, got it? But if it gets leaked by anyone, ever, I’m blaming you. So not only are you keeping this to yourself, you’re making sure everyone else who knows it does, too, by being polite, deferential, and following my lead. I don’t need an assistant who pisses off my business manager to the point where he decides he’s cutting ties and starting a PR war, got it?

More wine? No? Okay, good. Let’s get to work.