Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 109783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
If I told anyone else, they’d probably laugh it off and say it was merely Eddie’s weird sense of humor. And I didn’t want to delay finishing this movie. I was tired, I missed my family, and I wanted to get away from a set where one of the actors seemed to enjoy watching me fuck up. His negativity was stressing me out and getting in my head, and so I was flubbing more of my lines than usual. That pissed me off because I shouldn’t be letting him get to me.
But it was just bad timing.
Two days ago, my management team had contacted me about creepy fan emails addressed to me. I had received weird fan mail in the past. Most of it they filed away in a folder they kept for reference (and evidence). This person was one of them, but they noted lately there had been an increase in the number of emails this person was sending. They’d decided to forward them to the police, but honestly, there wasn’t anything the police could do unless creepy fan-mail person made a physical move toward me. So I was a little on edge about that, though I felt safe on set. We had plenty of security.
But mostly, I was spiraling about something else.
Because what I hadn’t confessed to anyone was how much social media was chipping away at me mentally and emotionally.
“Do you think if I take a ten-minute nap, my makeup will smudge?” I asked Suze as I crumpled my sandwich wrapper and tossed it into the rubbish bin.
“You should be fine. Just come back here if you need it. You’re on set in twenty minutes,” she reminded me.
I nodded, pushed up out of the chair in front of the light-adorned mirror, and pressed a kiss to the top of Suze’s head. “Thanks, doll.”
I stepped out into the baking heat. Locals told me this kind of heat had not been normal to the area during summer. But climate change was showing its ugly face, and the once-moderate summer temperatures of Vancouver had been overruled by record-breaking temps.
I smiled at crew members I passed as I made my way to my trailer. At twenty-two years old, I felt at least twice that. Which was probably why daytime naps had become a regular thing for me. Anything to escape my own mind. Normally, while filming, I was fine. I was in the character and I enjoyed playing someone else.
But off set, a weary emptiness plagued me. And when that didn’t plague me, the nasty comments on social media did. You know, most of them were great and lovely and I had the best fans. However, there were a goodly amount of shitty comments about how bad of an actor I was, how my cockney accent could use some work, how I was such a bitch for cheating on a fictional character, how I should kill myself, and I wasn’t even that pretty, but also how they wanted to fuck my mouth.
My DMs were filled with unsolicited nudes, messages of love interspersed with messages from organizations trying to “save” me, viewers sending me articles on addiction and mental health as though I were really the character I played on the show. DMs berated me for my lifestyle. And my acting. Messages filled with hate and jealousy. I’d even been sent an article on how to commit suicide.
It was shocking. I was exhausted.
And that level of intensity on social media happened to me overnight. There was no buildup to it.
Suddenly, I was everywhere.
I couldn’t go into my favorite coffee place around the corner from my London flat without people recognizing me. A lot of people called me Mikayla, as if I were the character from the show.
I could not be more opposite. Mikayla was abandoned, broken, an addict. She had a good heart, but she was so desperate to feel loved and special, she trampled over people’s feelings. The last season had ended with her cheating on Jasper’s character with a fellow artist she’d befriended. A guy who had made it his life’s mission to get Mikayla sober. I knew the writers well enough to know that was not going to go smoothly in season three.
I’d need to gird myself for how the audience would react to the next round of chaos Mikayla incited. Problem was, I wasn’t sure I could brace myself for any more of this.
Tired, so tired, and needing something to boost my energy, I stepped into my trailer with thoughts of a power nap. The trailer was about twenty years old, in need of an update, but I didn’t care. The bed in the back was comfy.
Then my phone buzzed in my pocket.
Sighing, I took it out and slumped onto the end of the bed. I had a Google Alert set for myself and members of my family.