Now Wilhelmina
Now WILHELMINA
W e finally wrap To the Stars in October after a few weeks of coming in to re-record audio and trying on costumes for our last scene.
Typically, movies don’t film scenes in order. But it was important to Greg that we make this scene the very last. The set is green screen with practical props, a Ferris wheel they’ve built just like the one we rode months ago in South Carolina.
Fall in LA is like that game The Floor is Lava, except it’s also the air that’s lava. Most of the rest of the country is pulling on sweaters, but on this last day of filming, I’m sweating my ass off every second we’re outside our soundstage.
The stage is dressed like the South Carolina pier we spent so many summer nights on, and the scene is fucking gorgeous. It’s not a dream sequence, it’s not Heaven, it’s... I don’t know.
Peace, I guess.
Lila goes on to live a life that is full and adventurous. But she lives it without Nick, who dies in that tent in the middle of the war. This is the part that kept me up crying when I first read the script. Why does that feel like ten million years ago? Staying up through the night, clutching that fucking script like, if I wasn’t careful, I’d fall in.
Knowing that the next morning, I’d be doing these scenes opposite Daxon.
I’ve never known a script to smack me in the face like that.
Lila learns to fly an airplane. Swims the English Channel. Protests for women’s rights, among a hundred other incredible things. After Nick, she never marries. Never has any kids. And it isn’t because she’s sad about him being gone; it’s because she feels like the life they imagined together was better than anything she could make for herself without him.
She passes from cancer in her late sixties. But at the end of the movie, Lila is young again. Seventeen. She walks the boardwalk alone, looking for something. It’s not in the game booths. It’s not down on the shoreline. It’s at the top of the Ferris wheel. Descending slowly towards her. Seventeen and whole again.
Grinning, full of love, a hand extended out to her.
She climbs into the seat next to Nick, and they ascend to the stars, together...
“That’s a wrap on To the Stars , everybody!” Greg’s voice calls across the set into a megaphone. The cast, the crew, everyone packed into this soundstage screams with joy. I run up and hug him.
“Sorry for the hell I put you through,” I say. There’s still this boiling hot guilt in my stomach. I can’t believe I walked away from this. Even for a short time. Here was a line so solid and clear and perfect and I bolted across it without looking where my feet were going.
Greg laughs. “Forget it,” he says jovially. “We’ll start post next week. Wil, you killed this. When I’m done with this thing? Get ready to launch.”
On those words, I meet Dax’s eyes.
He’s holding back, his newsboy cap in his hands, hair a mess. And he’s looking at me like I’m a priceless work of art. It makes my stomach drop. My heart flutters. Stop , I beg them. Because I can’t. I can’t feel that much for him, let it drown me the way I know it will.
I’ll be auditioning, hopefully daily. Submitting tapes, taking meetings. When I’m not running around Los Angeles, I’ll probably be learning lines or even doing photoshoots. Interviews. How do you squeeze a boyfriend into that?
Daxon smiles at me, and it’s a victorious, happy, warm-as-the-sun smile. It’s done. Our movie. This story. Something that started out seeming so unreal, so terrifying, but turned out to be exactly what I needed when I needed it, is over.
He takes a few steps forward. So do I. Magnets . We are magnets. We meet in the middle and hug, desperate at first, then sweet and rocking, laughing. We laugh so hard our eyes fill with tears.
“We did this,” I say.
“We did,” says Dax.
“Did we do this?”
“You did. I helped.”
We laugh until we remember the world. Our hairdresser comes to remove my wig.
“What’s next for you?” she asks me.
“No idea,” I say. “How about you?” I turn the question on Dax.
“I’m gonna be in a play in New York. Off-Broadway.”
“You mean you won’t be singing?” I tease. Dax is without a doubt the most terrible singer I’ve ever heard in my life.
“You’ll have to see for yourself,” he teases.
My eyebrow quirks upwards as I’m freed of my wig and pull the cap from my head, beginning to fish for the pins. Feels like six minutes ago, we were right here. At the end of something huge. Me, pulling out my wig pins. I almost miss his words and have to replay them in my mind.
You’ll have to see for yourself.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You’ve got a ticket. Fourth row, orchestra. Best in the house.”
My heart is skipping. New York . An off-Broadway theater, small and intimate, Daxon Avery center-stage. Suddenly, my heart’s tripping over its own feet. I won’t survive it.
I can’t go.
There’s no way.
But I hear myself say, “I’m there!”