The F List - Alessandra Torre Page 0,49

back to Emma. Like leeches to blood, a handful of crew and assistants sucked in.

“I’ll do it on one condition. You get him and everyone else off set.” Emma pointed to me. “Just me, Layton and the milk people.”

What the…? We had just discussed this. I had given her strong advice, and probably the only she would receive that was untainted by personal agenda. She shouldn't pose naked. Was above it. And that was a difficult thing for me to say, given the opinion I've carried of her for a very, very long time. But I was starting to think, or had thought, that there was something more to her. Something more than just numbers and shock value. A person beneath all of the hype—the person that had blushed at me behind a set of crooked teeth five years ago.

I had been wrong. She—this was bullshit, and she had just absolutely toyed with me. That whole shy smile, you think that's what I should do act… it had been a game, and I had fallen for it.

“You heard the woman,” Dana chirped. “We need a closed set, NOW.”

Well, screw this and screw her. I turned and strode out of the backyard before I made a scene.

“God, the press loved the leak about that milk shoot argument. The next morning, every tabloid had an article about Emma’s initial refusal to do the nudity, and a did-she or didn’t-she guessing game with crew quotes and some covert behind-the-scenes shots. No one knew if she’d bared it all or not and a few of the magazines ran a timeline of every time she had shown any skin at all. All that, of course, was fed to them by her team. They had Twitter laying bets on whether she’d stripped down. By the time the print ad released—and there was an honest-to-god countdown to it—people were even asking if Layton was nude. Half of America was thinking they were mid-thrust with milk glasses in hand and the other half insisting that Emma was the Virgin Mary.

Milk ads are boring, right? But that was the genius of Emma. She made ordinary events newsworthy, and we filmed it all for the show."

Glorya Lane, Prod Assistant, House of Fame

"Emma said whatever she said in earshot of the crew—but there was a reason she wanted a closed set, and it wasn't to protect her nudity. It was the opposite. She didn't want anyone to know—not until the ad ran—that she was fully clothed in it. Flannel shirt, cut off shorts, and that milk mustache. I laughed when I flipped open USA Today and saw that shot because it was the perfect F you to everyone. And to this day, that is the most famous dairy ad on the planet. Probably the most famous ad that year.”

Paulette Reyes, Camera Operator, House of Fame

58

#thishouseisntbigenough

CASH

It felt like a war between us. When I stepped into the kitchen, she moved to the opposite side of the counter. When she stepped into the home gym, I took my water bottle and left.

I shouldn’t have cared, but I did. The more she avoided me, the more I wanted her to look at me. To respond to me. To see me as something other than an obstacle.

I wasn’t imagining it. The production team saw it too, and after a week of forcing us into shots together, Dana called us both into the biggest of the production trailers.

I took the seat in front of her desk while Emma leaned against the right wall, her arms folded over her chest.

“What’s the problem?” Dana said the minute my butt hit the chair. “Because viewers are going to be bored by both of you staring at walls.”

I said nothing and waited for Emma. After a moment, she cleared her throat. “There’s no problem.”

Dana studied her, then me. “Emma, sit down.”

A long, suffered sigh came from her, then she slunk into the chair next to me. Dana clicked a pen into action, then clicked it back into itself. "Emma, we need the relationship with you and Layton to progress."

I felt my muscles knot and bind in an agonizingly tight fashion.

Emma shrugged. “Okay. Like how?”

“They’ve already been naked together,” I bit out. “What more do you want?”

Dana held eye contact with Emma for a long moment, then continued. "We were thinking of a date night. Something casual, but with drinking and heavy petting near the end." Her attention pulled over to me. "And since everything is just hunky-dory between you two,