On Being in Greta Gerwig's Little Women (Part 1)

"I look up as someone walks beside me and, right there, is Timothée Chalamet."

Art: Austin Blake Mays

November 30, 2018

Waltham, Massachusetts

I was 25 years old

Expecting a 6 a.m. call or something, I was pleasantly surprised when I got the email last night saying background actors didn’t need to report to holding until 1:00 in the afternoon. Left this morning after filling out my application for that apartment on Covert Street, then scanning it at Gilford’s library, and emailing it off to the property manager. Got to Waltham around noon. Grateful, once again, to Greta Gerwig for exposing me to more of Massachusetts in the last six weeks than I saw in the six years I lived here.

Emma, the girl who always sent off all the emails from the casting agency, checked me in and greeted me by name before I even had to tell her who I was. The corners of my mustache just about curled up in glee. Almost immediately afterwards, I heard her greet another extra by name. But I’ll choose to forget that. Filled out my forms and went over to holding. Perhaps the smallest affair yet. Maybe comparable to my day of shooting the beer hall scenes. Took my seat beside a girl who, upon snooping her paperwork, was also coming all the way from New York. Her mailing address was in The Bronx. We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t talk at all. Was too busy chatting to the woman on my other side. She lives in Concord and met with the cinematographer and some of the crew back in August when they were first scouting locations. Or so she told me. She brought them big “New England-themed” welcome packages. She was beautiful and just palpably wealthy. Not in an obnoxious way, per se. Just like this general predestination for wealth.

I feel like the first round of background—myself included—were settled in holding for every bit of 45 minutes before getting pulled into wardrobe. My boy Brad was there, as always, the two of us on a first name basis at this point. But there was a new face for me, a really handsome, really tall guy who got me out of my clothes and into my costume. Mustached. He was on his hands and knees polishing my shoes at one point and I felt so powerful. Like a pop star.

The entire make-up crew today were women from Japan. Not sure why. The woman who took care of me was adorable. Heartbreakingly so. Whispering the whole time as she informed me of everything she was doing as she was doing it.

“Some moisturizer,” she ASMRed. “And a little bit more.”

She told me Little Women is very popular in Japan. I asked her what the title was in Japanese and how it translates. If I’m remembering correctly, it’s something along the lines of “Small girls who have blossomed like a flowering tree.” Filling in my eyebrows and mustache, she moved on to my soul patch and cooed, “These little hairs...they’re so light...they’re almost...pratinum brond...”

I almost hugged her. More curls in my hair than my past days on set, making for something even more “Christian Bale 1994” than usual. Off to the lobby for “last looks.” Another new face from wardrobe, a Michelle Williams-looking British girl with the poshest accent. Brad was there too, being cute, saying loudly to the British girl as she checked me out, “And him! Look! Just so smart looking. I wonder who dressed him…”

Rounded up into these little coach buses and off we went to set for the “Gardiner Ball.” Not far away at all. It was this really gorgeous, massive house tucked away in the woods. The railings and hedges out front were all dressed for Christmas and there was all this snow on the lawn. A massive light was rigged up in the backyard, suspended from a crane. Just amazing. I was in total awe of it all. But, again, we went to another “holding” inside this huge white tent before actually getting on set.

I connected the dots that this was the last night they could shoot at this house. Could tell that time was suddenly precious. Every minute a dollar figure. Made the decision to sit down as close to the lip of the tent as possible, making sure I was very visible to the PAs when they came in and picked out their extras for specific placements in specific scenes. Naturally, I found myself sitting at a table alongside some real feather fluffers. All psychopaths with, seemingly, the same exact idea I had. Was sitting beside this girl from Portland who was on a first name basis with every production member who even looked in her general direction. She was union. Acts and models professionally. Also at the table was this woman named Christine. Very much so a “career extra.” Also union. She told us she was allergic to peppermint and offered everyone at the table a mint from a SAG-AFTRA branded tin.

PAs came in and, just like that, I was one of the handful they picked out. Was placed on the lip of a dance circle with a camera placed directly opposite me, only to get moved elsewhere because I was too tall for the shot. Into the hallway I went. And I was there for a while. Holding champagne glasses, walking, faux talking. Etcetera. After a break back at the tent, my fellow “hallway people” and I were informed to come back to set, a truly lucky hand considering there were at least 75 other extras just twiddling their thumbs all this time.

In the next shot, we had to criss-cross in front of the camera as action was taking place behind us but, the way the camera was positioned, I’ll be lucky if my Adam’s apple makes it into the frame. It’s Not Easy Being Tall. A different shot sent me deeper into the hallway and, though the camera was further away than ever, I was still very specifically prompted by a PA to walk in a specific direction at a specific time. My starting point for that scene was in this little tucked away alcove. Which is to say: completely out of shot. So there were a lot of crew members all around me. And suddenly, from their walkie talkies, I started hearing, “Alright, let’s get Timmy to set...alright, Timmy’s traveling...yes, Timmy’s traveling…”

I look up as a presence walks beside me and, right there, is Timothée Chalamet. Right there. As in our faces were maybe 10 inches apart from each other for a half-second or so. He’d come through the front door of the house which was, miraculously, directly behind where I was stationed for this shot. Entering the house through a foyer that I, and I alone, occupied. But as he’s rounding the corner toward the ballroom, the AD yells from the ballroom, “Rolling!” and Timothée looks back in my general direction with a “HUH?” expression on his face, scooting back from whence he came. The whence I was!

He smells like that fragrance I’ve been smelling everywhere. Everywhere in New York, I should say. On, of course, the hippest and hottest people. It’s this piney, musky, super fresh scent. Men and women alike wear it. And every time I smell it, I just about slip a disc whirling my body toward its general direction. It’s that alluring. I’ve mentioned this phenomenon to Hunter who has some ideas of what it might be but, honestly, I don’t want to know! The appeal of the mystery so much more satisfying to me than knowing whatever it could be. And for Timothée Chalamet to round the corner smelling exactly like that fragrance, well, it just makes perfect sense. He’s all angles. But he doesn’t look freakish in person. At all. He’s tall. Every bit of 6’1”. But so so sooo skinny. He reminded me of the anchovies from Spongebob. Like, he’s so thin that his spine is convex and his hips concave. I wish.

We took yet another break, this time for a meal. PAs kept barking at us to completely fill a table before sitting down at an empty one because the crew would also be joining us in the tent. Crew and, as it turned out, talent. That was evident as soon a notable buzz took over the room the second actors came into the tent to get dinner. And, indeed, scooping their own food onto their own plates were Saiorse and Timmy. And then, would you believe it, as opposed to sitting on the half of the tent where all the crew were, Timothée comes walking down our aisle, plate in hand, right past all the tables where we lowly background “actors” were sitting. He then takes a seat, solo, at an otherwise empty table. Directly behind the table I was already sitting at.

He and I are sitting on the same side of our respective tables, so he’s facing me but my back is turned to him. But, by the grace of God, that Portland Try-Hard was sitting next to me and she and I immediately engaged in the most animated—read: psychotic—conversation of our lives, the both of us fully talking in perfect three-quarter profile, the tips of both our noses pointing due Chalamet.

Was of course texting my entire family about it this whole time. Mom INSISTED I sit down with him. As if production wouldn’t INSIST that my ass get kicked off set because of it. I really did love it though—the vision of this beautiful boy sitting all alone at a proverbial lunch table. And choosing that for himself! So endearing. So very Jordan Catalano.

February 24, 2021

Brooklyn, New York

I’m 27 years old

There’s hardly anything I love more than a chance to use the term “on one.” Holding so dear those moments spent around the kind of person doing the kind of things that can only possibly be met with a wide-eyed and out-of-breath, “She is on one.” And how very “on one” I was, on the set of Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. And, I’d say, for good reason.

This was a very eventful time for me. That whole year was, really. I’d moved away from Boston in the spring, spent a summer rent-free in Chicago, and was living in Brooklyn by fall. But it was in September, while living with my parents in New Hampshire just long enough to heal from a wisdom teeth extraction, that my friend Sarah Laird told me that her mom told her that Little Women was looking for extras. All I needed to do was email the casting agency my measurements and a headshot. And despite my imminent move to New York City with the express intention of “becoming an actor,” I did not, in fact, have a headshot. Instead opting to send the agency a selfie—shirtless, might I add—taken on the shores of Lake Michigan a couple weeks earlier. And, just like that, I got an email telling me to come to Billerica later that week for a costume fitting. This $40 million production’s ability to cast a wide net with extras? Entirely meaningless compared to the star-crossed fate of me deciding a year before all this to grow my hair out into a style that someone might describe, generously, as “nineteenth century.”

Because while I remained grounded in the reality that I’d be nothing more than an extra, barely even mentioning this to friends in fear of coming across delusional, there were still a million reasons why I could feel this was some heaven sent confirmation that all my dreams were about to come true. Me and my sisters were obsessed with the Winona version growing up, watching that tape I don’t know how many times. I’d felt singularly moved by Lady Bird when I saw it in theaters the year before. Again: I grew out my hair! And I tweeted, ad nauseum and only half jokingly, about landing a role in this exact film as soon as the first news came out about Greta choosing to shoot the film in Massachusetts. The state I’d called home for the last half-a-decade and, with a heavy heart, parted ways with that very same year. Hello! Check, check, check! This was meant to be! It had to be!

While my own naivety is ordinarily grounds for self-loathing, I’m so happy I let myself be so swept up by it all. So relieved I had the tact not to say anything to Timothée as he rounded that corner, yes, but all the happier I didn’t deny myself the glee of a somersaulting stomach on account of seeing such a star so near to me. I could crack up thinking about it. The tableau of me—this ex-dog walker with endlessly unemployed time on his hands to travel back and forth to Massachusetts to earn $10 an hour as an extra in a period movie—standing next to the premier heartthrob of modern cinema. It’s unbelievable to me. It’s magic. And if that sounds naive, I guess I have nothing more to lose in admitting that it would take me another year before I realized Timothée, and every other heart throb in New York City, was wearing Santal 33.