“Leave me alone, you nasty piece of a man,” she shouted and jumped away. “You disgust me. You’re absolutely revolting.”
Peter held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, but Pat didn’t seem to recognize the gesture for what it was and thought he was reaching for her — she slapped him.
“Get those dirty paws away from me!” She shouted.
Everyone around them was now staring and I stood up to break it up, but Pat, looking around, saw people staring at her, put her hands up to shield her eyes, started crying and ran off.
Quickly, I went after her as she ran for her room.
“Pat, Pat please stop running!” I called out to her, but she kept it up and ran into an elevator just as the doors were closing. Damn!
I had worked with a lot of moody and emotional actresses, including a few prima donnas, but Pat was normally a very grounded person. Bill must really have done a number on her brain if she treated a harmless guy like Peter that way! Peter might have been drunk and coming onto her, but the two had been working together for over a month and the man was sweet natured and timid and while he clearly couldn’t read signals from women better than a thirteen-year-old virgin, he’d asked her for a dance, not sex and certainly didn’t deserve to be slapped!
As I got to Pat’s room, I could hear her sobbing on the other side of the closed door.
“Pat, please open, it’s me.”
She kept sobbing but didn’t reply.
“Pat, please, you’re upset. You need to talk to someone.”
“I don’t want to talk, Jeff. Please just leave me alone. I can’t handle having men in my life.”
“Pat, we’re friends. At least do me the courtesy of opening the door and speaking to me face-to-face.”
“I don’t want to.”
She was starting to sound angry, which rattled me.
“You just slapped one of my crew, Pat. We need to talk.”
“He’s married. He deserved it.”
“No, he’s not married. Peter is single and like many men, wears rings on his right hand. If you had looked closer, you would have seen it wasn’t a wedding band.”
“Oh God,” I heard Pat whimper.
“Maybe you could come down with me and apologize?” I suggested. Slapping someone in the crew doesn’t make you popular and if all went well, we would spend months together filming in a near future.
“I can’t. I can’t face them. I can’t handle any of this right now. Just leave me be. And please don’t contact me in L.A. I’m not interested in having anyone around me right now.”
“You’re just going to give up then? You just filmed a show with a great bunch of people who adore you and you’re going to hide away like a coward? And we’ve been friends for over twenty years and you’ll dismiss me just like that?”
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t, Jeff.”
“You can’t act like this. I understand Bill hurt you, but right now you’re hurting everyone else. I can’t allow that on my set. If we get this gig, I can’t promise you the lead unless you sort yourself out and start taking responsibility for your actions.”
I meant what I said, but maybe it came out too harsh — she was emotionally frail and I was meant to be her support. It was just…I had worked with enough divas who thought they could do whatever they wanted on set to have a very short fuse where my crew was concerned. I NEVER allowed the cast and crew to get nasty. And these days when I called the shots, I didn’t hire the divas.
“Oh, just go away, Jeff, you don’t understand anything. Leave me alone. Respect my damn wishes, or are you just like Bill who doesn’t?”
“That’s unfair, Pat, and you know it. I have a crew to think of and a TV series to get made. These people’s livelihoods depend on me doing my job properly. And if you can’t do yours then I’ll fire you.”
“Fine, we probably don’t have a series to shoot anyway.”
“You’re being mean,” I said and then turned on my heel and walked away. I had a crew to see to. And my guess was that right now they were not too happy with Pat. Maybe they’d forgive her, but if she was going to be a liability who couldn’t put work above her own personal issues, she would be fired. I’d see to that personally.
