Sara, Here are ten things that happened during the past two weeks, on our press trip for High School and Crybaby. I thought this might be a fun way to recap what we’ve been up to, so maybe you can do a list too from your perspective?
1 – I got my haircut the day before we left for our trip. Sofia set it up for me with her stylist, Broc. He’s great. As soon as I walked in, I went from thinking I was going to get a bang trim to knowing I was going to get an actual haircut. I could just tell he was the right person to give me a much-needed cut. I’ve been growing my hair since January but it’s mostly growing out not down, so it needed some shaping. I showed Broc my driver's license, I said I wanted a haircut that would grow into the haircut in the photo. He seemed quite confident he could do that. I don’t want to see your scissors below my ears, I said laughing into the mirror. Don’t cut away the length. He said not to worry and got to work. My head, my ears, my neck, I said as he shaped my hair into a hairstyle before my eyes. 2 – I packed the night before we left for our ten-day trip. You told me you were carrying on and since all I’ve read about the last three months is how every airport is a nightmare, flights are canceled and delayed everywhere, and everyone is losing luggage, I attempted to also pack in a carry-on. It was hard. Impossible even. I felt overwhelmed. I called Sofia, who had Covid, and told her my predicament. She reminded me that it was my first press and promo trip in three years, and I should bring a regular-sized suitcase with what I needed so I had options for our press days, clean clothes to fly in (a must for me) and multiple pairs of pajamas. It’s going to be 115 degrees, I moaned as I carted my trusty Dakine suitcase up the stairs while still on the phone with Sofia. I’m going to sweat through everything. She told me to fill the suitcase with more than I needed. I felt relief wash over me as I added a dozen more tops and a jacket, a change of clothes just for the red eye we’d take a few nights later from LA to NYC, and two extra pairs of shoes to my suitcase. Who was I kidding? I’m not a carry-on person. 3 – As you know, Sofia got Covid five days before I left, I had to leave her at our house and go back to the city alone and quarantine. I got a PCR test the night before I flew to LA. It was negative. But I have to admit that a tiny part of me wanted to get a very mild case of Covid so we didn’t have to go. I was nervous about playing on TV, about the TV show premiering at TIFF in Toronto, and most of all about the cost of all this. I know you hate that I worry about money so much, but it is not cheap to rehearse and fly a band to play a TV show in New York City or to fly around the country doing interviews. People don’t realize how much of your own money you have to invest to promote things, even at this level. At any point in the 10 days we were gone, if we got sick, we’d just have to go home, and all that money and investment would be for nothing. I didn’t say this to you. I just stayed home and kept quiet. You checked in every day to see if I had symptoms. When I got my negative PCR, I texted you and our managers and you wrote back GREAT! You don’t seem as worried about how expensive everything is, how small the margins on that trip or our tour are, and how close to losing money we are if someone gets sick and we have to postpone or cancel things. I’ve wondered if I am worrying for the both of us and if so, what are you worried about?
5 – At Seth Meyers, they gifted us boxes of Levain cookies. You used to live across the street from one of their bakeries on the Upper West Side when you were still in New York. I remember having a cookie when I stayed with you. People used to line up for them, you told me. I was excited when I saw the package last Monday sitting on the coffee table backstage, but I was too nervous to have one before we performed. Then you had a bite right before we went on TV, so I had a bite of yours. I regifted the boxes of cookies after we played to the people who were there with us that day, but then one of them stored the box in my backpack and forgot to take it after dinner. So I found myself with a full box of Levain cookies later that night, back in my hotel room, alone. I ate a chocolate one and got pieces of chocolate inside the keyboard of my computer and on my pajamas. I felt really relieved to have an extra set of pajamas with me. Also, the cookie was fucking incredible.
6 – When we arrived in Toronto for TIFF where our show was premiering, it was late. I was so excited to get to bed, but when I got in the room it smelled like raw sewage. I sometimes have that issue in my apartment. Once when I was gone for a few months I came back, and the bathroom upstairs had the same smell. The trap in the sink or shower is probably empty, Bruce told me. Our stepdad comes in handy a lot with these kinds of issues. He explained that I had to run some water and the smell would go away and it did. As I brushed my teeth our first night in Toronto, I ran water in the shower and the sink, flushed the toilet twice, and went to bed with my fingers crossed. An hour later I woke up to the smell. I had already unpacked and steamed all my clothes; I couldn’t bear having to pack everything up and move rooms in the middle of the night. Plus, our hair and make-up team was coming at 7 am. I decided we’d just use your room to get ready. But when our stylist, and hair and make-up people arrived the next morning it turns out we had adjoining rooms; our shared door was propped open, and our two rooms became one. Thwarted! 7– After an eight-hour press day in Toronto, we came back to our rooms to do a fitting for the rest of the trip. We needed four outfits for the Toronto film festival and another for the film festival in Calgary. We returned to a sea of clothes on every surface in our hotel rooms, shoes lining every wall and corner. In the midst of them, our long-time stylist Toyo, slightly frazzled but in possession of a plan to get us enough outfits for all the press and appearances and premieres, was waiting. You ordered wine and charcuterie, an attempt at lifting the mood after an already long day. Three hours later we each had five outfits. I went for fries and a Manhattan downstairs after, you said you were just going to go to bed.
8 – I feel like most of our press days are typically packed and progressively run behind as we race from outlet to outlet and location to location. It’s rare there are refreshments; we’re often somewhere only a few minutes, pushed into a radio booth for a quick catch up, or sitting at a table of a restaurant we won’t ever get to actually eat food at. Instead, we’re plied with water and coffee, the sustenance that doesn’t ruin makeup or leave you with a full mouth when you’re supposed to be talking. You and I like to run on empty when we’re doing press, preferring to just get it over with as opposed to taking breaks and having long meals in the middle of a photo shoot. This is why it was such a shock to do TV press this past week. What a different world!? A “busy day” meant 3 photo shoots, none of which took longer than five minutes, after which we sat or stood in a room full of food and refreshments for a half hour or more! Then off to the next outlet, we’d ride in a fancy SUV with fresh water and mints, to another photoshoot almost identical to the first.
Interviews were five minutes and questions were shared amongst the cast and creators. In the time we usually did a dozen interviews for magazines or radio stations in the music world, we did two in the TV world. You and I couldn’t believe it! Everyone kept asking if we were tired. No, I said enthusiastically to our publicist, this feels like a fancy holiday! 9 – In the holding room before the premiere of High School at TIFF, you and Seazynn each had a nip of white wine. I would have loved wine but was already having pee anxiety since we were going to have to sit and watch the first three episodes of our show with an audience shortly.
When they took us to our seats, I saw people waving in the theater, so I waved back. I have no idea whom I had waved at since I can’t see faces in the distance so well anymore. I need to go get my eyes checked again. I think I need glasses; I’m waving at strangers a lot lately. The team at Amazon bought us popcorn with butter (an extra treat I never ask for) and I binged the entire bag watching episode one. I hope Toyo doesn’t read this, but I used my premiere outfit pants as a napkin for my butter fingers. Prior to the premiere I thought for sure I’d be nervous or awkward watching the show with an audience but I was neither. It was so big and so loud and felt so different that I forgot what we were watching or that the show is based on our lives for the majority of the time we were there. I loved hearing people gasp and laugh and sigh in unison. I know I’m overconfident, I always have been, but I think people will love the show.
10 – Sunday we had more press and then a small break before the High School dinner thrown by Amazon and their party for all their new shows they were premiering at TIFF. I was most nervous about the Amazon party. I think you were more nervous for dinner. Networking in the time of Covid wasn't my idea of a fun time or a good idea but we had to go. The dinner prior to the party was three hours! It was a bit long and very loud, but worth it just for the Tuna pizza. Good god, that fucking pizza was good. I prayed the Amazon party would be outside, but it wasn’t. It was in a tight narrow space with too many people, most of whom were unmasked, us included. Our joke all night was, we’re definitely going home with Covid. Having had Covid and having just seen Sofia go through a terrible case, I actually felt very nervous that I would get it, but also felt obliged to be there to support the launch of the show. You and I worked the room shyly and ran into Emily Hampshire of Schitt's Creek a few minutes after we arrived. Good god, she was nice.
Then while I talked to the head of Awards for Amazon - also a very nice human - you talked to Bella Ramsey who plays Ellie, the star of HBO’s The Last Of Us. When I finished my conversation, you introduced me to Bella and then I suggested we go find the cast and crew we’d come to the party with. After we walked away you told me who Bella was, I stopped us in our tracks and shouted, That’s who she was!? We have to go back! I want to tell her the Ikea story! THE IKEA STORY! A month ago, a teenager approached me at IKEA with his phone out. I was standing in an impossibly long line waiting to pay. Can’t even remember what I was buying. Excuse me, he said, tapping me on the shoulder. I turned around and thought maybe he worked there, that another line was opening up. You look just like Ellie from Last of Us, he said. Open on his phone screen was images from the video game of Ellie, the lead character of the game. You look just like her, he said again, panning between the phone in his outstretched hand and my face. I don’t know that I look like her, but I was pretty stoked to be compared to a teenager! Thank you, I gushed. I love that game! He walked away starstruck as if I was somehow Ellie from the game. I couldn’t believe that a month later I was at the Amazon party, just a few feet from the real actor hired to play Ellie. I grabbed your arm and turned us around to go back. No, you said, shaking your head, you missed your chance. Then you pushed me forward into the crowd. I was so disappointed, but we immediately bumped into Mae Martin. We gushed and raved about them and how much we love Feel Good, then we went home because we knew we’d peaked. Also, we had an early flight back to Vancouver the next morning. Worth it, I said to you as we made our way upstairs, you to your room to call Stacy, me to my sewer stink to pack my giant suitcase for the final leg of our journey. Tegan
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