Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [2]
This was a terrific job, and I was delighted to have it. Even though I couldn’t stand the regular cast member with whom Jilly had most of her scenes.
After five days on the same set with actor Michael Nolan, who played one of the dirtiest detectives in the Thirtieth Precinct, I’d already fantasized multiple times about stomping on his genitals with one of Jilly C-Note’s high-heeled boots.
Dating actors is an exercise in masochism, which is why I don’t do it. That’s a long-standing personal rule. But I normally like working with actors—indeed, I normally like it so much that it’s among the many reasons that I am one. Whatever their personal twitches and foibles, many actors, in the practice of their craft, are generous, engaging, and cooperative, and they care about doing what’s best for the overall production.
Michael Nolan, however, was the other kind of actor. He was temperamental, narcissistic, rude, and primarily concerned with doing what was best for himself, and the rest of the production be damned. On the other hand, though it galled me to admit it, he was also talented, and the same qualities that made him so difficult to work with actually translated well to his D30 role as Detective Jimmy Conway, an edgy, tightly wound, morally decayed cop struggling with alcoholism and (since getting shot in the first year’s season finale) post-traumatic stress disorder.
In this episode, Detective Conway was shaking down Jilly for sex and information in exchange for not arresting her on suspicion of murdering her pimp. The script didn’t reveal whether or not Jilly was actually the killer. Sticking with the dark tone that was typical of the show, the cops of the dirty Thirty didn’t care that a pimp had been murdered; they were just looking for ways to benefit from the killing—such as blackmailing the chief suspect, Jilly, for information about other criminals in the precinct. This might well get Jilly killed, and the cops didn’t particularly care about that, either.
Tonight was my final night of work on the episode, and despite how much I had enjoyed the script, the role, and the rest of the cast and crew, it was a relief to know I wouldn’t have to deal with Michael Nolan again after this.
We were preparing to shoot the most awkward scene in the script—for me, at least. I didn’t know if this scene’s shoot had been scheduled last as a courtesy to me or for other reasons entirely, but I was glad either way.
In this scene, Detective Conway was questioning Jilly about an illegal weapons deal while making her perform oral sex on him. The physical aspects of the scene would stay (just barely) within the boundaries of what could be shown on a commercial cable network, but it was the sort of scene that’s uncomfortable for two actors to perform the very first time they work together. By now, however, my fifth day of shooting, Nolan and I had already done a number of dialogue scenes together, as well as a grimly post-coital scene in a filthy outdoor stairwell. So, although I didn’t like him, I was accustomed to working with him and no longer anxious about kneeling before him with my face in his groin for a couple of hours.
Heigh-ho, the glamorous life of an actress.
To his credit, Nolan was very professional about this sort of thing—as I knew from the thirty minutes (on-and-off) that he’d spent pumping his hips against mine in a dank stairwell the night before. (Scenes that look embarrassingly intimate onscreen are usually technical and choreographed, and so it was in this case.) When the cameras were rolling, what