Chapter 17 Dead To Me
SEVENTEEN
DEAD TO ME
During postproduction, after the movie was filmed, I went into a studio to rerecord some lines.
I watched myself on the screen, matching my words to what was already taped.
At one point, they paused the film. You know that moment when you pause Love Island or Real Housewives on your Apple TV to go to the bathroom and the person’s face is contorted in such a way that makes them look absolutely awful?
Now imagine it’s your face. I look so old, I thought, trying not to freak out.
I made a comment about it, and to my horror, one of the directors admitted that the studio had already asked postproduction to fix my face.
“We had to spend thirty thousand dollars to make you look younger,” he said.
This business is brutal.
Until it’s magic.
My job as an actor opened so many wonderful doors for me.
I know how lucky I was, and I have so many incredible memories of the movies I made, the TV shows I starred in, and the ancillary work: the talk shows, the appearances on red carpets, hosting SNL—the list is long, and these days, sitting alone in my bedroom, I do my best not to turn these memories into statues of myself.
I got to host SNL twice. The first time, way back in 1993, at the height of Married…
with Children, I was lucky enough to be in a sketch during which the incredible Chris Farley debuted perhaps his most famous character, the motivational speaker Matt Foley, who lived in his van, “down by the river.” The character has long since passed into the folklore of the show, not to mention into American comedy history, and it was an extraordinary privilege to be brought so close to pure comic genius as Matt Foley debuted in the world.
The way Chris planted his legs wide, continually twisting his not inconsiderable weight from side to side and forward and backward; played with a belt he could barely find; and delivered his lines with an almost manic verbal energy—it was everything a very young David Spade and I could do to not completely lose it.
If you watch closely, Spade starts to crack almost immediately, and I try to hide my laughter behind my hair, which was conveniently falling across my face.
Even my hair couldn’t save me when “Matt Foley” says, “I am thirty-five years old, I am divorced, and I live… in a van, down by the river.” That was it—I brought my left hand up to my face in a vain attempt to stifle my giggles.
By the time Chris is telling Phil Hartman he wishes he could shut his “big yapper,” followed by further unsuccessful attempts to pull his pants up higher, David and I were done.
I think David had given up trying to not laugh out loud.
I was still playing with my hair and trying to hide my face, and though I was supposed to be scowling the way Kelly Bundy might, it was impossible.
Chris was now towering over me, and I was proud that I was able to tell him, without entirely breaking, that I too wanted to live in a van down by the river.
I thought I’d gotten away with it. But then Farley started to swing those big arms, and once again David and I were toast. It didn’t help that we hadn’t been told that Chris was about to dive full length into the coffee table, smashing it to pieces.
The sketch aired on May 8, 1993. My second time hosting was nearly a decade later, on October 13, 2012.
This time I was delighted to be part of “The Californians,” taking the role of Fred Armisen’s fiancée, Brie, after his first wife, Karina, played by Kristen Wiig, had “died.” (Kristen had left SNL the previous season.) Mastering that Californian accent wasn’t much of a stretch for a woman who’d grown up “east of the 405.”
I was also invited to create a sketch based on my former dance teacher, Madilyn Clark.
Madilyn, who sadly died in 2023, was very Fosse, and when she taught us—even when we were little kids just starting out—she would eschew using counts in favor of a kind of scat jazz.
We called the fake studio Jillian Chizz Dance Studio because “chizz” was the kind of thing Madilyn would say.
I got to both honor and parody Ms. Clark with my “kadonk”s, “kadunk”s, and “za-za”s—that is Fosse, as “Jillian Chizz” tells the bemused wannabe dancers.
At the start of the show, I’d sung my monologue, which was both nerve-racking and great fun, and the show ended with me shouting “Sadie Grace, you’re the light of my life!” during the good nights. She was approaching two years old then.
In between my SNL duties, I’d made two appearances a year apart on Friends: “The One with Rachel’s Other Sister,” which aired in 2002, during the show’s penultimate season, and “The One Where Rachel’s Sister Babysits,” which aired in October the following year.
I feel like a total schmuck saying this, but I’d never watched Friends before appearing on the show.
I really didn’t know much about it. I wasn’t trying to be cool by avoiding it.
Back then, before DVRs and TiVos, Friends was the ultimate in appointment TV, meaning if you were working in the evenings, as I often was, you missed it.
Now, in the age of streaming, I’ve watched every single episode.
I played the dreadful Amy Green, Rachel’s sister.
I already knew Jen Aniston and Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow a bit socially, as well as David Schwimmer, and Matt LeBlanc and I had worked together on Married…
with Children. He had played one of my boyfriends, from which he’d scored a brief spin-off, Top of the Heap, playing a very early version of Joey Tribbiani. And then there was Matty.
Matthew Perry always maintained that working on Friends was like being part of a lovely and loving family, and I saw firsthand how genuine that love was.
I felt safe on that set, and I think that showed in what I was able to bring to the ensemble.
I got Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series Emmy nominations for both appearances and won for “The One with Rachel’s Other Sister. ”
I’d known Matty the longest. In fact, we’d known each other since we were kids working on Charles in Charge two decades earlier. Much later, we also made a terrible TV movie together called Dance ’Til Dawn.
Later still, we performed together at a fundraiser, raising money to bring Shakespeare to children in Los Angeles.
Poor Matty was so freaked out beforehand—“I have to be good, I have to be good,” he kept saying.
I took him outside the theater for a pep talk, or as close to one as this snarky blonde gets.
“Matty,” I said, “Shakespeare rolls over in his grave every time we do this. So don’t stress.
Seriously. Sure, you’re doing Shakespeare with some of the most famous, lauded, award-winning superstars to ever live: Anthony Hopkins, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Robin Williams. Marty Short will probably improv his way through it as usual, and stars like Smokey Robinson and Bette Midler sometimes show up.
I realize it can be as intimidating as fuck to walk into that kind of crowd.
But everyone’s going to screw up. The audience loves it when we do. So don’t worry.”
I don’t think my little pep talk, filled as it was with bold-faced names, helped him all that much.
A bunch of us had been doing this fundraiser for years.
I was asked back every year, becoming part of what I suppose was kind of a little repertory group, comprising me, Marty, Tom and Rita, Jason Alexander, and William Shatner.
Ahead of time we would do table reads where we’d always have fun, no stress, and then we’d stage an entire play, usually a comedy, with scenery and costumes, all while carrying sides.
We were expected to know at least some of the lines, but it always went off the rails in the most delightful of ways.
At various breaks during the Shakespeare performances, we’d have a musician sing something, which was very true to the original staging of the plays, when troubadours would serenade theatergoers in England. We were lucky to have had Natalie Cole, Smokey Robinson, Faith Hill, and Tim McGraw.
Then one year Sir Paul McCartney showed up to provide the musical interludes.
During the rehearsal that week, when Sir Paul stepped forward to do his part, we all videotaped him—I still have video of all of us with our smartphones held up, filming each other, all of us just losing it.
He sang everything you would hope for: “Hey Jude,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”—you name it.
The director also gave him a couple of scenes to act in, one of which featured just me and him onstage. I can’t even remember what play we were doing—it might have been The Two Gentlemen of Verona—but beforehand, the director secretly took me to one side.
“I want you to do something,” he said, “and we’re not telling Paul. In fact, we’re not telling anyone. Got it?”
That’s how I came to randomly plant a massive smackeroo of a kiss on his famous-Beatle face. In the lead-up, in my head I’d been saying, Kiss the Beatle, kiss the Beatle.
The crowd went berserk.
Paul was shocked. He said “Christina, my wife is in the front row,” though I think he knew what a moment it was.
“I don’t care,” I said, and carried on with the scene.
Good things have happened to me, so, so many, including kissing one-quarter of John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
Then one year during the Shakespeare Festival I finally got to play a part I’d wanted since I was ten. I’d wanted to take the role of Maria in Twelfth Night because she’s dirty and naughty. It was one of my happiest moments onstage.
I had always wanted to be taken seriously, even in comedic roles—see my diary from January 1988:
I’ll show these fuckers that I ain’t no comedy bullshit actress.