In-Person Interview—Faye Blanchet, Gina Ross, and Sally Schumacher
In-Person Interview—
Faye Blanchet, Gina Ross, and Sally Schumacher
Madeline: Let me just prop it here, out of the breeze. This place is gorgeous, by the way.
Faye: My late husband, Claude, was a banker, but he hated the city. We wanted to retire someplace quiet, so we came out here fourteen years ago.
[She motions at the landscape, in the direction of a vineyard we passed on the way here.]
Madeline: Do you find it tough to be immersed in French culture, which is so centered on wine, given your history?
Faye: There was an adjustment period, along with everything else.
Maybe that made it easier; the upheaval was a fresh start to stop doing the things that were harming me.
But there’s this concept in recovery circles that you have to treat the central urge or need or hurt or whatever it is, or everything you do to stop habitually drinking or using is going to continue to be a white-knuckle battle.
Gina: “Central hurt,” that was Bobby for you. He was the real issue, and everything else stemmed from that. In my opinion.
Faye: Bobby, but also fame. With both, I was in a difficult position. I couldn’t figure out how to escape, and in my youth and my panic, I tried all sorts of things to free myself.
Madeline: Does it bother you that your legacy is wrapped up in drugs and alcohol?
I’ve always found it reductive, this narrative that it happened in a vacuum.
Like it was preordained, instead of a direct result of the environment you were dropped into.
They did it to Janis Joplin, too—sold this idea that she was weak, somehow.
Tragically flawed. It takes any blame off the industry and the men that surrounded her.
I’ve always seen that in your story too. That was my angle for this piece.
Faye: I think that’s interesting from a critical perspective, but in terms of me, looking back on my own legacy?
I don’t pay any attention to it. Neither good nor bad.
I’m being very honest when I say that. The thing about fame is that everybody knows everything about you.
I hated that. It wasn’t the only issue in my life, far from it, but it held a magnifying glass up to everything else.
I felt like a burning ant. I wanted people to know nothing about me.
So in a way, if the public has a gross misconception about my life, that’s preferable.
It means they don’t really know me at all, which is what I wanted all along.
But I can now understand that there are people out there, like you, Madeline, who are driven by wanting to arrive at real truths. And I respect that.
Sally: It’s been a long road, holding on to all this.
Faye: I know it has. For me as well, but you two, still being in the middle of it all in a lot of ways…that’s part of why I said yes to today. It’s too much. Forever is too long.
Gina: Listen, I was prepared to keep going. I was even subtle about Bobby.
Madeline: You were more subtle about Bobby than he himself was.
Faye: Bobby is disarming, though. People trust him implicitly.
Madeline: I mean, he is charming, in a way.
Faye: I think he probably believes everything he’s told you.
I don’t know what he said, but I’m sure he’s convinced himself that this was our past, our love story, that there was no shadow on it besides, you know, my death.
Because that’s what narcissists do. They rewrite the story the way that best suits them.
Madeline: Gina said sociopath, but would you say he’s a narcissist?
Faye: I don’t say anything about him, and that’s the point. I got out. Thanks to this one.
[Faye reaches out and takes Gina’s hand.]
I will tell you, I loved Bobby. For the good parts of him: his earnestness, his brilliance. That’s what made it harder to pull myself free. But it was almost textbook, what he did to me. I was so young. I didn’t know about relationships; I believed everything he told me.
I didn’t intend to get so deeply involved with him.
I was used to seeing Sam and Kent and Stevie flirting with everything that moved, and I thought, “Well, he’s cute.
Why not accept his invitation?” Just a date, right?
But gosh, Bobby was adorable. We had very different backgrounds, but he acted as if any similarity—not being close with our parents, for example—was an earthshaking synchronicity.
And he was so complimentary. I was brilliant.
I wasn’t just beautiful, I was from another world, an angel, it hurt his heart to look at me!
He gave me gifts—I would mention my affection for park squirrels, and two days later, I’d find a squirrel brooch wrapped up for me in my office.
Generous sexually, too. I wasn’t a virgin when I met Bobby.
There was a boy in college I’d slept with a few times experimentally, then fled when he wanted to call it a relationship.
Now, that poor guy from my undergraduate psychology course was not particularly impressive in bed—I certainly hope he’s improved since then—but Bobby was different.
Older, more experienced. He’d been married, for goodness’ sake.
Madeline: I did want to ask you about that.
Faye: Did I know Bobby was married when we started dating? Yes and no. He told me they were estranged, finalizing their divorce. She was crazy, it was unhealthy, he was trying to extricate himself as gracefully as possible.
I didn’t expect to meet Yuna—she moved out before I ever stayed the night—but then I was walking to One Astor one day, late October, Halloween costumes everywhere, and this woman steps out, walking backward to block my way.
At first I thought it was some sort of performance art.
Times Square, you never knew. So I’m smiling along, trying not to be rude, and it takes me a while to understand what she’s saying through her accent.
“You’re the new me. He’ll get sick of you too and leave you with nothing and nowhere to go.
Hope you’re happy now, you little slut, because you won’t be for long. ”
By that point I had reached the front doors and security had taken note.
I was obviously very rattled, but I felt for her.
Her heart was shattered, and I was culpable, clearly.
But then a few months later, she stopped me again outside Bobby’s place.
He wasn’t with me—I think she’d have run off if she’d seen him.
She grabbed my arm, that’s what frightened me, but when I replay it now, I think I overreacted.
There was a painting up in the apartment that had been her grandmother’s and she wanted it back, but I was too flustered to listen.
Believe it or not, it was a street-corner vendor who broke it up.
He grabbed her, I ran inside, and the doorman called the police.
Later, Bobby encouraged me to file a restraining order.
Turns out I filed it on the wrong person.
Madeline: She’s doing well, for what it’s worth. I spoke with her. She’s married to a diplomat and works for a nonprofit.
Faye: Thank you for telling me that. I’m really pleased to hear it.
The Yuna situation, the restraining order, it was an entry point for Bobby to become worried about me.
Protective. And then in short order, overbearingly controlling.
If I pushed back, said I did not need an escort or to report my every movement to him when we weren’t together, he accused me of being immature, na?ve about the dangers of the city, a country mouse, essentially, that would have already been eaten by a cat if it weren’t for him looking out for me.
And this was a smart tack to take, because there was a lot about the city that terrified me.
My landlord, for one, who today we would call a stalker, and better yet, one with a key to my apartment.
But it wasn’t just the city. I was…fundamentally unprepared for the changes that success in the public eye would bring.
It had happened so quickly, like an amusement park ride, too much of a blur to think, “Where are we going? What does this lead to?” When people started to recognize me, to ask for autographs, write me fan mail and wait outside the studio so they could take a photo, I was thrown completely off-kilter.
This was the goal for Sam and Kent; it was what they’d dreamed of.
Fame and success. I was happy for them. I felt like they needed me to keep being a Townie so they could climb even higher.
[She sips her water. Then she laughs. Shakes her head.]
No, that’s bullshit. And also reductive.
I got caught up in the game of it, too. As much as I disliked the notoriety, I loved the internal starting gun and sprint from those Monday-morning pitch battles to Friday night, seeing who would come out on top.
I used to play league chess in high school.
The competitiveness of that writers’ room activated the same part of my brain.
It took me a few weeks to cotton on to what you needed to do to stay relevant and make it to air, and that if you had a week of not having your ideas make it, you’d have to fight twice as hard the next episode and so on.
I hadn’t seen it clearly at first. Kent and Sam and Stevie and me, we came in as a team. But one week, I pitched an idea, and it was sort of…gently stolen from me. Pried out of my hands, given to Kent and Sally instead. And I thought, oh. Maybe I do need to fight a little dirty.
Madeline: The potato sketch.
Gina: We talked a lot about that one, actually, for a variety of reasons.