We're Going to Need More Wine - Gabrielle Union Page 0,46
room was huge, housing Ferengi ears and ridged Bajoran noses. My wig was standard Klingon, but fuller and somewhat braided, and for makeup I had just a hint of rose red on the lips. The look said warrior, but approachable. The irony of the situation was that the role was kind of high school: I was one of five new recruits, and Worf’s son totally got bullied in the cafeteria. I was the mean girl of the squad.
The direction I kept getting was “Klingons don’t smile.” All day long I would get caught on camera with a grin. “Gabrielle, Klingons don’t smile.”
At lunchtime, I would stay in my makeup and a bunch of us Klingon recruits would go to Lucy’s El Adobe Café on Melrose, across from Paramount Studios. The first time we went in, I expected some reaction.
“You must get a lot of Klingons, huh?” I asked.
“All kinds of people,” said the waitress.
I ordered the ground beef tacos. As we Klingon day players sat there looking at the wall of autographed celebrity photos, I ate as much of the salsa as I could. To this day, I love their salsa.
On the last day, after working nineteen hours and escorting a convoy of Klingon cargo vessels to Donatu V, I was beat. They said I had to wait until the makeup department was ready so I could take my Klingon face off. I had an hour and a half to kill before they’d get to me. So I went back to Lucy’s and sat alone in a booth with a book. Ricardo Montalbàn smiled down at me from an autographed picture. He was Khan on the original series and in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, so it seemed like a sign. When the waiter came over, I ordered a margarita.
“Can I see some ID?”
He held my California license up to my Klingon face and squinted. “I don’t know,” he said. “You look different.”
“It’s me,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “I’m just kidding.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Klingons don’t smile.”
PRETTY SOON AFTER MY DEEP SPACE NINE GIG, I LANDED MY FIRST FILM: 10 Things I Hate About You. Like a bunch of Klingon recruits, we all bonded that first night at the hotel in Tacoma, Washington. There wasn’t a mean girl or boy among us, and we made a pact that this was going to be the best summer ever. There was Julia Stiles, wise beyond her New York years, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who was recognized everywhere he went as a star of NBC’s Third Rock from the Sun. He and David Krumholtz—whom we affectionately called Krummy—bonded deep over their intellectual love of hip-hop. Larisa Oleynik was another child star, with her own show on Nickelodeon, and Andrew Keegan was the cast heartthrob. Susan May Pratt was a Michigan girl, and we clicked over our shared love of the Midwest and having a really, really good time. We were both the oldest. Playing a high schooler in your twenties isn’t exactly mutton dressed as lamb, but it still makes you feel like people’s big sister.
It was my first movie, this modern high school take on Taming of the Shrew, but we were all fish out of water. There was a “no favored nation” clause in all our contracts, which meant every cast member was treated equally. We all got the same type of hotel room, same rental car, and same type of trailer. That first week we had the run of Tacoma. It’s a really beautiful port city, so we would go waterskiing and take camping trips. I made it my mission to make everyone laugh through a trip to Mount St. Helens. We were tight.
The new guy, someone named Heath Ledger from Australia, was set to show up a week into shooting. We were so afraid he was going to be a drag. Would he fit in? Would he be a jerk? Would he light up?
The first night after he arrived, he met us in the bar at the top of the hotel. Only Susan and I were over twenty-one, so the cast sent us up as ambassadors to check him out.
We found him, all of nineteen years old, drinking a scotch on the rocks and holding hands with his girlfriend, who appeared to be at least thirty-seven. He was stunning, with long dark hair falling in curls. Then he opened his mouth and he was James Bond.