13 Africa
THIRTEEN
Africa
“Oh look, she’s back,” the girl in my eighth-grade class said after giving me a heaping plate of what Mom called the hairy eyeball. I’d returned to school after filming an episode of Malcolm in the Middle, and—once again—I was the odd person out in the cafeteria.
“Hi,” I answered. “Yeah, I got back last night. I’m exhausted. Now if only I could find a place to sit so I can eat.”
My classmate was part of a group that for some intangible reason rose to the top of the middle school social hierarchy. She wasn’t really a friend, but I knew her well enough to want to sit at her table. Plus, beggars can’t be choosers when you’re in the lunchroom. I was hungry and needed to eat.
“You can sit with us,” she said, then scanned the table to look at the rest of her group. “In fact, I’ll get your chair for you.” The other friends scooted a little closer together, and my classmate left and returned holding a chair.
“Thank you,” I answered as she pulled it out and motioned for me to sit. I put my tray down and did as she instructed.
Thud.
She’d pulled my chair out from under me, and I landed on the dirty floor as the girls began to laugh.
Starting in middle school, the warm embrace I’d felt from people my age in Snedens Landing faded.
In its place came bullying. Every few months, someone passed me a note in the hall or class, and I opened it, hoping it was gossip or an invitation to a sleepover.
It almost never was. Most of the time, the note read something like, “You’re not better than anyone else here,” or “Your acting sucks.” These words always stung me, but I never threw the notes away.
Instead, I slipped them into my backpack, and when I got home, I put them in a binder under my bed.
At times, I pulled out the binder to look at them, letting them serve as a constant reminder to feel shame.
These notes fed that seed of insecurity I’d carried since I was born.
They held the fear that gave me stage fright.
Later, they embodied the anxiety that made me drink.
People were nice to me one-on-one, when they didn’t have to pretend or act out for someone else. When they weren’t part of a group, people could form their own opinions or decide to take a chance. Otherwise, I was miserable at school. Everywhere I turned, no one seemed to want me.
Dad assumed I was unhappy because of acting, so one day he pulled me aside and leveled with me.
“Look, Hayden,” he said, “I think we need to take a break. How about you just stay home and be a kid for a while? Your mother and I don’t care about acting. We care about you.”
I burst out in tears, but not for the reason Dad expected.
“Daddy, I love what I do,” I said, sobbing. “I don’t want to quit.” What I didn’t tell him was that—to me—quitting was failure. Acting was where I got praise. Acting was where I got love.
Dad looked shocked. He thought he was riding in to save his daughter from all the craziness, but the craziness was saving me from feeling alone.
It was school I hated, not acting. I loved my family, my job, and the few friends—like Madison—who made me feel safe.
But as far as school was concerned, I just wanted to run far, far, away.
In eighth grade, I got my wish. Far, far away was South Africa.
Racing Stripes is a family movie about a zebra accidentally left behind in Kentucky when the circus leaves town.
After being rescued by a horse trainer, he moves to a farm next to a track, and—believing he’s a horse—begins to dream about racing.
Stripes gets his big chance when the trainer’s daughter, Channing, climbs on his back and takes him to the track.
When she signs up to race him, everyone thinks she’s lost her mind, but she knows Stripes is as fast as any horse. Spoiler alert: he is…
I was up for the role of Channing, and the audition was just about as strange as what I’d had to do for Panic Room.
Instead of falling on the floor and faking a seizure, though, the casting director told me to saddle up and ride a horse as best I could.
Heath Harris, the film’s Australian zebra trainer, planned to judge me against the other girls auditioning for the part of Channing.
Naturally, I assumed that the best rider would win the role.
I liked horses well enough and knew the basics of how to handle them, but I was a dreadful rider that day. In the middle of my audition, I fell off my horse right onto my butt. Determined not to quit, I dusted myself off and climbed back on.
Heath Harris decided to turn my lemons into his lemonade. “Now that’s a girl I can teach!” he said. He and the directors conferred with each other, and I got the part.
Racing Stripes was live action, but most of its actors planned to work from a sound studio, serving as the animals’ voices.
My castmate on Malcolm in the Middle, Frankie Muniz, was cast as Stripes, and Jansen got the part of Young Stripes.
Jansen had been building up his résumé as a voice actor after securing the role of Periwinkle, a tabby cat, on Blue’s Clues, and his scratchy, hugely animated voice was perfect as a sad little zebra who’s rescued in the pouring rain.
Jansen may have been driving me nuts at home—he’d just gotten a drum set, and he banged on those drums all day and all night—but his voice was heartbreakingly adorable.
Anyone would fall in love with him, even if they had to endure his bad drumming.
Filming was near a town called Nottingham Road in the KwaZulu-Natal province in eastern South Africa, and it was expected to last five months or more.
Because Jansen was in school in New York, Mom and Dad decided that they’d switch out shifts on set with me.
Mom would be there first, then Dad would fly in halfway through the film schedule while Mom flew out.
The issue, of course, was middle school.
This was years before the pandemic, when remote school became routine, so anytime I was filming I depended on on-set tutors and teachers who had to remember to email my assignments on time.
The tutors were fine, but the teachers often forgot.
I shouldn’t have been surprised; one of my middle school teachers, Mrs. Marino, had started referring to me as the “Big Cheese.” I wasn’t sure she liked me enough to get me my work on time.
Mom and Dad finally had enough, and before we left, they pulled me aside.
“Your dad and I have been talking, and we’ve decided that you’re going to be homeschooled. No more late assignments, no more missing school, and no more getting bullied.”
After the shock passed, I smiled. “Yes, Mom. Yes, that’s great. Thank you.”
My school days were done, and when I got to South Africa, I met the mandated requirement for homeschooling exclusively through a tutor. With middle school, lunchroom seats, and the Big Cheese in the back seat, I could focus on acting.
Racing Stripes was a dream come true for an animal lover like me.
With the help of Heath, I worked with four baby zebras and eight adults.
One zebra was named Daisy, and she was a maniac.
Then there was Sam, who’d appeared in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.
He was a friendly guy and always well-behaved.
Everyone assured me there was no way he’d give me any trouble.
Remember that: Sam was supposed to be no trouble at all.
For my first session with the zebras, I showed up in shorts and flip-flops, thinking I’d be getting a tutorial from Heath and not actually riding. Apparently, I had missed the memo.
“You are not getting on a zebra wearing flip-flops,” Heath said sternly.
I showed up the next day—on time and properly attired—ready to ride.
These zebras were not at all like domesticated horses.
They were wild animals who’d come from various corners of Southern Africa, including from the Kalahari Desert, and they bucked, reared up, and sometimes tried to bite me.
Zebras are also remarkably slow and don’t walk in a straight line, so when I rode them I had to force them back to the center.
Their mouths are also tough as nails, so they weren’t fazed when the reins pulled their bits.
I had to use all my strength and weight anytime I wanted them to move.
I loved the four babies, but the babies didn’t love me—at least at first. Two of them, Zoe and Columbia, were so obsessed with one of the trainers, Andrew, that they followed him everywhere.
Andrew advised me to stick with them because the point was to bond with me, but Zoe and Columbia had other ideas.
Every time I stood next to Andrew, Zoe ran between us, shifted her backside toward me, and kicked me hard.
Then she turned around with her head toward me, lowered it, and charged me.
I felt like I was back home, getting chased by Madison’s turkey—but a thousand times worse.
Also, did I mention that baby zebras love to bite?
I spent half the day wiping zebra spit off my arms.
I did most of my own stunts, and one day I had to film a scene riding Sam.
Sam was usually a sweetheart, but apparently, he’d sent two of my stunt doubles to the hospital the day before.
Go figure. Trusting that he’d always be the angel I knew him to be, I mounted him without a worry in the world.
At first, things went fine. But when I approached what we called the “mounting pads,” which were the elevated platforms that helped us mount and dismount, Sam bucked—at the exact moment I tried to hop off him.
My foot was caught in the stirrup, so my body swung up into the air, then came down hard on the ground.
I felt an excruciating pain shoot through my back.
“Are you okay?” Heath yelled, running toward me.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I stammered.
It was a total lie. I was injured, in pain, and screwed.
As my body twisted through the air above Sam’s back, I’d done some calculations in my head and realized I was in the middle of nowhere, far away from a hospital.
The closest thing to civilization I’d seen was a seedy restaurant called Porky’s Bar and Grill, and I can assure you there were no competent doctors eating there.
Going to the hospital would also take me away from filming for who knows how long, and the last thing I wanted to do was inconvenience anyone or slow down production.
So, I kept my mouth shut and endured the pain in my back and neck.
Over twenty years later, these injuries still bother me.
Even with my back injury, zebra bites, and more bumps and bruises than I could count, my six months in South Africa were glorious.
Nottingham Road was surrounded by green, rolling hills, cattle ranches, and sheep farms, and each day I’d walk outside grateful to be alive and have the opportunity to be in such a beautiful place.
When I wasn’t filming, I had the chance to travel to Cape Town and Johannesburg and even go on safari.
Seeing South Africa’s animals roaming free in their vast, natural habitat blew my mind.
These were creatures I’d only ever seen at the Bronx Zoo.
In a huge surprise, I was also invited to be an ambassador for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN)’s Red List of Threatened Species.
The ICUN is an international organization that promotes nature conservation, particularly the tens of thousands of animals that are close to extinction.
For the first time in my life, I realized that even a kid could help others.
Maybe my classmates didn’t want me around, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have value.
I could help others. It was a revelation, and I vowed then and there to do everything in my power to help animals in need—even the ones who kick, buck, and bite.
As my plane departed South Africa and rose into the sky, I looked down at the ground below, and my eyes filled with tears.
I thought of Zoe, Daisy, Columbia, and the biting baby zebras, as well as all the beautiful animals whose lives were threatened by mankind.
I thanked the people of South Africa for making me feel so at home, and I wondered if I’d ever get the chance to come back.
South Africa was half a world away from New York, so I knew it would be a long time, if ever.
Then I thought ahead to school, and I knew there was no building for me to return to anymore. As soon as I landed, I was officially a career girl whose school life would mold itself around acting.
Dad was sitting next to me, and he must have read my mind.
“You ready for this?” he asked. “Homeschooling and everything?”
“I am,” I answered, smiling and sitting back in my seat.
I’ve spent over half my life in LA, and that means I’ve lived through a lot of earthquakes.
At the end of an earthquake, the nausea-inducing shaking and unsteadiness dissipate, the strange rumblings quiet down, and your emotions feel suspended.
You don’t know whether to brace for an aftershock or be happy you’ve survived.
It’s an eerie sense of calm, the kind you may not be able to trust. After I felt my first LA earthquake, I learned to pause in that moment of calm and be aware.
I was still standing, still alive. I was prepared for whatever came next because I stood on a solid foundation.
I might have been afraid, but I was ready.
Deciding to leave school felt much the same.
I knew leaving school was going to push me out onto my own, where I’d have to forge my way and work within my personal expectations.
Something established and known was breaking, and it was up to me to prepare for whatever lay ahead.
On the long plane ride back to New York, I stopped and checked my feelings: I was still the same person with the same needs.
But Mom and Dad had my back, and I could do this.
Maybe there would be aftershocks, but I wouldn’t let fear stand in the way.
It was a new day built on new moments, and I sensed that my life would be better from there on out.