A FATAL FEUD
Amos DuPont: The reconciliation was classic them—friends and then enemies and then friends again. We’re giving a lot of airtime to what is, effectively, two very petty women who don’t know how to regulate emotion. And I should know, I’m probably the only person who’s worked with both of them.
On a catwalk in Paris, Harper waves to the expectant crowd, her arm looped through Amos DuPont’s. She wears a gown made of gradating crystals, one of his most iconic designs.
Ivan Drozdov: Nadine eventually told me that she lied about what happened in Cannes. She felt so guilty that she must have seized the Emmys as her opportunity to rectify it.
Stephanie Cameron: Harper saw a girl in need—a girl who was smearing her name, taking her to court, making up all sorts of wild things. And she saved her anyway.
Nadine Heywood: What? Fine. I’ll admit it; she helped me. I’d framed her for assault, and she saw me hyperventilating at the Emmys and came running. That’s just the sort of person she is, I suppose. It doesn’t mean I appreciated it.
Kayla Alexander: Harper didn’t care about the rivalry—if she ever had.
Maybe she enjoyed the challenge when she was younger, but she was married, her and Joel were trying to start a family, and there’s Nadine, clinging onto this pettiness.
After the Emmys, Harper wanted nothing more than to put it behind her, and for the first time, that year, it seemed maybe Nadine wanted that too.
Harper sits at Ascot. Nadine attends a fundraiser. Harper reads lines on a set. Nadine watches a playback on a studio lot. Harper and Joel dine on a ski break in Aspen. Nadine attends the premiere of Starborn. For the entire year, from what we can tell, they do not see each other.
Jasmine McKenna: The rivalry had always been about point scoring.
But that changed in Cannes. Suddenly it was about hurting each other, about winning in a way that would become definitive.
There was a sort of quiet before the storm—and then a feeling that it would have to end, one way or another.
That there would be a winner and a loser by the time it was over.