In-Person Interview—Faye Blanchet, Gina Ross, and Sally Schumacher #2
Faye: I’m still really proud of that one.
Obviously, TMS has done just fine without my input, but that’s the direction I would have taken the show myself, had I been at the helm.
More of a Kids in the Hall type of comedy.
Do you know them? Pure absurdism, less topical satire.
It is interesting, though, that the bulk of the surrealist troupes are male only.
Women are the feed. Only men are allowed to be ridiculous.
Of course there are exceptions, like Miriam Margolyes in Blackadder… oh, but I’m rambling.
[She may be rambling, but I can see a glimmer in her eye that wasn’t there a moment before. A certain professional authority.]
All this is to say that after the potato sketch incident, I started writing with Gina.
Gina: You and Kent as my writing partners might be the most fun I’ve ever had. Until I left to do screenplays with Sal, of course.
[Sally leans over and gives Gina a kiss.]
Faye: It was fun, wasn’t it? It felt more like what improv had offered me creatively.
More immediacy, tossing everything out there, upping the ante.
But I actually think the fact that you came from stand-up, which relies on a great deal more preparation, made our writing more interesting and balanced.
You could rein me in a little. In a good way.
Gina: Offer’s still out, anytime you want to work on anything. Under any pseudonym you want.
Madeline: From a fan’s perspective, that would be amazing.
Faye: No, that’s all behind me. And I’ll tell you why: I became such an asshole. Even Sally would admit that, wouldn’t you?
Sally: Oh, I have! I love you, but you were never some perfect little princess.
Faye: Nor did I want to be.
Gina: Cohen and I talked a lot about that, too.
She made a pretty decent point about archetypes.
Looking back at our old crew, we were polarized.
The bitch, the Rapunzel, the slut. I’d argue there’s actually a wide variety of flavors out there when it comes to female funny, but once the audience has decided what you are, it’s next to impossible to break out of that.
I don’t think that’s true for white guys.
I mean, look at Bobby’s whole career. He gets to play anything he wants.
Faye: That’s why I pulled the stunts that I did, to undermine the way everybody saw me.
To be flagrant and get called out. But nobody ever called me out!
Poor Stevie. I lifted ideas from him all the time.
Talk about punching down. They weren’t even great pitches.
I felt this rot growing in me. I used to get ulcers and chug Pepto-Bismol the way you guys drank whiskey.
And then, of course, I started drinking whiskey too.
One of the gang. From there, it snowballed fast.
Madeline: Was Bobby into the party scene?
Faye: He pretended to be. He would fake being drunk, going toe to toe with everyone, but he’d pour his drink out when no one was looking and observe.
File things away for later use. Same with weed, same with coke.
He did not like being out of control. He liked me to be out of control, so he could be forced to take care of me and then judge me for it.
And the more he judged me, the more I wanted to do it, these knee-jerk micro rebellions.
We’d all be out downtown and he’d be watching and I would feel his condemnation like a hair-dryer blast, and then I’d look the other way and total strangers would wave at me, as if we’d met before, and I just felt the strongest desperation to run.
But it was coupled with near-total paralysis.
Like I was physically trapped by this life, by the choices I’d made, by my love for my boyfriend and my job, and I knew, of course I knew, that I should be grateful for it all.
How many people would have killed to be in my position?
So I ran in small ways. Sniffing and pill popping and then, God help me, injecting.
Although that, I think, was different. At that point, I did not fully wish to be alive.
Bobby had systematically stripped away my confidence, any core sense of who I was underneath all the fame nonsense and the day-to-day frantic scramble to be the most influential cast member of The Midnight Show.
So when he tossed me an impossible ultimatum—quit acting or we’re done—then kicked me out of that house in the hills, I felt like I was already dead.
Like…I simply no longer existed without him there to tell me who I was.
Classic coercive abuse, I now know. He was very good at it.
Whenever he pushed too hard, he backtracked, groveled, debased himself, begged for forgiveness.
I’m not sure whether this was something he learned from his mother—I know they had a difficult relationship—but I stopped analyzing him a long time ago.
He’s a damaged person, and he can only find peace within himself by terrorizing the people he purports to love.
Gina: Or through enlightenment. Don’t forget, he’s achieved Nirvana.
Madeline: When did you realize the truth about him? About your relationship?
Faye: Some part of you knows what’s happening while it’s happening, but you’re too afraid to face up to it, because, first of all, acknowledging the truth means admitting you’ve been scammed.
Dealing with heartbreak is difficult enough, then add to it the logistics of extricating yourself from a life with someone, which was terrifying for a young person with limited knowledge of how to be an adult.
But once it was done, and Kent and Gina, these angels on earth, got me through the worst of my addiction recovery and back on a plane to New York, I woke up and realized that I was lucky to be clear of Bobby Everett.
And Nolan, bless his memory, he was a godsend.
He kept everything so light, upbeat. I’d want to relapse, I’d tell him, and he’d laugh, say, “Right on schedule, Lillie. You’re doing great!
So what you do now is just have a cup of coffee with me and get on with the rest of your day instead.
” The itch to use started to feel like this petulant little imp in my brain that would have a temper tantrum from time to time, and I learned to ignore it.
Lovingly. Playfully. That was Nolan’s way, and it worked for me.
[She pauses, emotional.]
I hope I didn’t hurt him too badly, doing what I did.
Sally: I don’t think you can draw a line between your death and his, Faye, and I’m being serious when I say that. I’ve played it out over the years, and I think he was sick for a lot longer than we knew.
Madeline: So what really happened on the night of…well, your death?
Faye: I’ll start with what almost happened. I very nearly threw myself off the Williamsburg Bridge. Just like everyone thinks.
Gina: Not everyone. You should have heard some of the theories this one came out with—
Sally: Let her talk, Gina!
Gina: Yeah yeah yeah, I’m the worst. [She mimes locking her mouth.] Old habits die hard.
Faye: Thank God for your big mouth. It’s what saved my life.
After what Bobby did that night—well, that whole week, really—I was petrified.
He’d been back not fifteen minutes before he had me almost completely back under his control.
Back in his bed, at a hotel this time, happy, but in a sickened way, hating myself for how much easier it was to just let him take the steering wheel again.
And then the stunt on camera. The wedding.
[She’s gripping the arms of her patio chair very tightly.]
I didn’t know if it was real or not. It was a gag, clearly, but I had met that man before, the reverend, and when we both left the stage, he said, “Best wishes to the bride” to me, as if it were real.
And Bobby, right before I was about to go on for a news reporter bit, pulled me into him and whispered, “We’ll be together forever now. ”
I went to the bathroom between setups and vomited.
I don’t know how I got through the rest of that episode.
It was a nightmare. And I thought—I knew—Bobby would never release me.
I wasn’t Yuna. We were this beautiful famous couple that America was in love with, and he was never going to let that go.
It coalesced from that point. The Winthrop’s after-party.
I went outside. He followed. I told him I didn’t want to be married, that we needed to get an annulment if the marriage was real, and he laughed at me, called me an idiot, said of course it wasn’t real.
Then it got nastier. I was ungrateful, unworthy, stupid, a child.
Kent broke it up, but only physically. Not in my brain.
I ran off with all that scrolling through my head like ticker tape.
I was worthless. I needed to escape, forever.
From comedy, which was making me monstrous, from fame making me terrified, from him.
And what else was there? So a full escape it would be.
Two things saved me. One, it was a beautiful night.
Cold but clear. There was a reflection of the moon on the East River, snow on the banks.
I stood in the exact middle of the walkway on the Williamsburg Bridge and looked out.
I thought, “I’m going to miss this.” Not life, as in me making my way through it, but the water.
The air. The rippling moon. Everything around me that wasn’t me, that had nothing to do with me at all.
I stood there for a long time, taking one last look.
I wasn’t even gathering my courage. I wasn’t afraid. Just so…sad.
The second thing that saved me was Gina Ross’s unparalleled bullheadedness.