want to go back in the shadows?”
eleven
SEPTEMBER
Now
IT’S NOT UNTIL I’M facing the entrance to Twitter headquarters that I realize I’ve personally only tweeted from my account twice in ten years. Even so, I have over four million followers and I’m supposed to do a live chat in ten minutes. I can already see an enormous crowd of bodies just inside the doors and have no idea how I’m going to do this without screwing up.
“So, if I start the tweet with someone’s Twitter name,” I say, looking up from my phone, “everyone who follows me can see it?”
Marco is leaning back in through the passenger window, telling the driver where to meet us, and when. He straightens, glances at my phone, and waves me away. “Don’t worry about any of that. I have all the answers typed out for you. Just use the hashtag, and you’ll be fine.”
I take the folder he hands me, scan the questions and answers inside, and gaze up at him with melting gratitude. “How would I function without you?”
“You’d be curled in the corner of your messy house, eating Lucky Charms out of the box by the handful.” He checks the time. “Five questions, and then we’re out. Don’t get chatty. We need to get on the road by noon.”
I salute him obediently and follow him up the steps.
“Here we go,” he says under his breath. And then, he turns to me, asking more seriously: “Are you ready for this?”
He’s implied this question every time I’ve had to sign my name on a contract, every time a piece of this collaboration moves forward. But there’s a duality there now: He’s asking whether I’m really ready for what we’re about to dive into promoting headlong—my seventh feature film, but the first I’m making with my father—pulls me up short in a bright square of concrete.
“I hope I am.” I gape at him, heart pounding as if maybe I’ve made a huge mistake. It happens a little bit each time I start something new: the sense that I’m really a fraud, that I don’t actually know what I’m doing, that I somehow got into acting on a technicality and not because I earned it.
Usually the feeling evaporates pretty quickly. This time, though, it’s hung around since officially agreeing to take on the role of Ellen Meyer: farmer, local civil rights activist, and badass extraordinaire. Some of that has to be due to the pressure of leading a film with my extremely famous father in only a supporting role. And some of it has to come from knowing that we’ll be on a rural location together for a month and a half, and I have no idea whether it will bring us closer at all.
And on top of that—the pressure of acting with Dad aside—I’ve never done anything like this. Milkweed is a subtle script: the story about a tenacious woman who comes back from heartbreak to find the love of her life and help shape her small Iowa community, while going through the pain of losing a parent to dementia. It’s brilliant but entirely character driven, and will require acting chops I’m not even sure I have, under the guidance of one of the best directors in the world.
“What if I’m not ready?” I ask, chewing my lip.
“The correct answer was yes,” Marco says, tapping my chin so I’ll stop biting down on my abused bottom lip. “You are.”
His confidence in my ability has always been solid, but I know this right here is part bravado, too: the pressure for Dad and me to do a film together has been slowly building to a hysterical frenzy. It’s no longer a When Will They? headline, it’s become a Why Haven’t They? Admittedly, as Dad’s career has slowed down and mine has picked up, it feels like the perfect time for our Jane-and-Henry-Fonda moment. The script is incredible, the timing works, and I wouldn’t even be relying on Dad’s celebrity to get me in the door: if I back out now, it would be a PR nightmare for Marco.
“You are, Tater Tot.” A sweet smile and a wink takes the edge out of Marco’s next words: “Don’t make my life a living hell.”
He pulls open the glass door, gesturing me ahead of him. Cameras flash, applause rises in welcome, and although my brain is still stalled out, my body makes the subtle shift from Me to Tate Butler: My eyes widen, and an easy smile spreads across my