Читать книгу Meghan Misunderstood - Sean Smith - Страница 15

Like many teenage girls, Meghan was finding life with dad a little constricting. He seemed to be always around – at home, obviously, but also at school, and not just for drama; he was the man called in to help with sound and lighting for important events. Having dad lurking in the background changing a light bulb was not the ideal scenario. He still doted on her but perhaps she needed a touch more freedom.

He was involved, naturally, in what would turn out to be her last show at Immaculate Heart. She had to dust off some of the tap-dancing steps she learned when younger for Stepping Out. Originally a London stage play, it was transformed into a star vehicle for Liza Minnelli in a 1991 movie in which she played a former dancer teaching a weekly tap class to a group of women. Meghan was the abrasive Vera, memorably portrayed in the film by Julie Walters.

Meghan wanted to stretch herself dramatically, so she decided to audition for a role in a play at St Francis High School. It would give her more independence. Luis had left school by this time and they had drifted apart. He would have a startlingly successful career as a realtor in and around Pasadena and has never talked about their teenage times together. Danny was still at the school, though, and they continued to be the best of friends.

The first production she went up for was also the first involving the new director of drama at St Francis, Manny Eulalia. He wanted to come in with a bang and stage something demanding so he chose Oedipus Rex, the Greek tragedy by Sophocles, which his English class were already studying. This was a million miles away from Annie and she was the only girl from her school auditioning, hoping to be cast among forty or so other budding actresses.

Meghan tried out for the leading female role of Jocasta, the Queen of Thebes, who marries her son Oedipus and subsequently hangs herself in the last act. Manny saw a lot of hopefuls but Meghan stood out: ‘There are people who just walk in and they have that presence.’ Manny was also impressed with the work ethic that Meghan brought with her from Immaculate Heart. As it was his first production, he wanted the process to be disciplined and she did not disappoint him.

Meghan encouraged Danny to audition as well and he was cast as Creon, Jocasta’s brother, another of the leading roles. In return, Danny nominated Meghan to be Homecoming Queen at St Francis, a big deal in US school culture. Usually, co-ed schools or all-boys schools hold Homecoming Dances on the same weekend as the Homecoming Football Game (American Football). Since all-girls high schools like Immaculate Heart don’t have football teams, they don’t hold the dances.

At seventeen, she had blossomed into a stunning young woman who cast a spell over the boys of St Francis. By now the gradual process of sorting out her teeth had paid off. Dental work was a rite of passage for American teenagers. Gone was her trademark gappy grin and in its place she had a million-dollar smile.

The competition to be Homecoming Queen was fierce. Such a contest did not sit easily with Meghan’s feminist views, but she was a teenager enjoying her social life and the attention of boys. The first stage was an essay listing her achievements and accomplishments to date. Meghan sailed through that, largely due to her impressive charity work on Skid Row. Next she was interviewed by four boys, the committee, who were members of the student body. They were impressed.

The winner was announced in November 1998 at a special red-carpet ceremony during the Homecoming game between St Francis and another school team called the Chaminade Eagles from neighbouring West Hills. A school football game is a raucous event so, at half time, the Homecoming court was greeted with much hollering and cheering as they made their way onto a makeshift stage in the middle of the field.

The girls were given a guard of honour onto the red carpet by boys brandishing swords. Each one was announced over the loudspeaker and then Meghan was declared the winner. After she had been crowned by last year’s Queen, Carla Suarez, the entire court was applauded as they were driven away in a fleet of classic convertibles.

Danny was Meghan’s escort for the big dance that night. Meghan loved dancing and wasn’t usually much bothered about posing for official pictures. This evening she was a little more careful because she was wearing her Queen tiara and didn’t want to send that flying across the dance floor.

Dressed in an elegant strapless ivory ballgown and carrying a bouquet, she already looked like a Hollywood star. Her broad smile was entirely natural, however, and not one of those weary ones celebrities manufacture for the cameras as they are snapped for the thousandth time that night in the name of publicity. Danny stood proudly at her side with his hand resting lightly on her shoulder. They never dated – she had, after all, been dating his elder brother.

Meghan’s popularity was boosted by becoming the Homecoming Queen of an all-boys school. They could all see how attractive she was. One of her admirers was Nema Vand, a year younger than her and very handsome. He admitted, ‘Meghan was amazing, a woman among girls. Everyone was in love with her. She was sweet and very kind.’

Nema, who would later become one of the stars of the reality show Shahs of Sunset, still enjoys telling the story of the time when he was at the same party as Meghan and she came over and sat on his lap. Then she spoke to him in the Persian language, Farsi: ‘You are so beautiful, she purred. Nema recalled, ‘I asked her, “How do you know Farsi?” She said, “I learned it for you.” Then she walked away. She played with our hearts masterfully,’ he sighed

When word got round that Meghan was in it, tickets for the three-night run of Oedipus Rex in early January 1999 sold out rapidly. Manny Eulalia remembered that Meghan’s first entrance on stage was greeted with a round of applause, which was not exactly in keeping with such a moving and powerful tragedy.

The play was held across the road from St Francis in Flintridge Preparatory School. Its theatre held 250 people so the standing ovation the cast received was quite something. Meghan was exceptional in the role of the despairing mother who eventually kills herself when she realises she has committed incest with her son.

She did not have Tom in her corner – or more precisely, in the wings – which was perhaps a blessing as she was now seventeen, but she thanked him in the programme notes, alongside ‘Mommy’, Danny Boy, the ‘beautiful, amazing sweeties of St Francis’ and one boy in particular called Gabriel Stewart, known to everyone as Gabe. He and Meghan dated a few times and kept in touch for a year or two until, as he put it, ‘her life took a different direction’.

Her school stage career was not over. The best was yet to come. She auditioned for the annual musical at the Loyola High School in downtown Los Angeles, another all-boys school with close ties to Immaculate Heart. She was cast as the devil’s sidekick Lola – Señorita Lolita Banana – in a production of Damn Yankees, a dream role for Meghan.

The Adler and Ross musical from 1955 had practically swept the board at the Tonys, winning seven awards including one for the legendary Broadway star Gwen Verdon as Lola.

The show, a rough reworking of the Faust legend in a baseball setting, ran for more than a thousand performances on Broadway. Gwen had the stand-out number ‘Whatever Lola Wants’, which she reprised in the Hollywood version of the film. She was a tough act for anyone to follow.

Meghan didn’t disappoint. Though experienced in school drama, it was still a big step to parading around the stage in a sequinned leotard, suggestively purring the lyric ‘I always get what I aim for’. She was still at high school, so it wasn’t exactly Pussycat Dolls but, as the idiom goes, Meghan brought the house down.

Gigi Perreau was in the audience, sitting beside Tom Markle. She was impressed, ‘I was so thrilled to see her because it seemed like everything she had worked for. It was very exciting, I must say.’

Meghan was now in her final year, twelfth grade, at Immaculate Heart. She had her first taste of modelling on a catwalk at the annual mothers and daughters fashion show in March 1999. Meghan showed off her legs in a short skirt and some very high heels that would become something of a trademark in her acting career.

As Gigi observed, ‘She was a cute little kid in eighth grade and then by the time she was Lola she was absolutely gorgeous.’ Understandably, she attracted a degree of envy from the other girls. Gigi noticed it, ‘There were some girls who were very jealous of her. It happens in a high school situation.’

That situation might have been even worse if Meghan had been crowned Prom Queen at Immaculate Heart in April 1999. She had to settle for being one of a very glamorous prom court, alongside friends including Niki Priddy and Susan Ardakani escorting the Queen, Camille Townsend. The event, called that year Midnight Masquerade, was held at the swish InterContinental Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

Her date this time around was a handsome young student at Loyola called Giancarlo Boccato. They looked like a Hollywood couple and dazzled on the dance floor. The pictures of the night showed just how much the camera loved Meghan. It always had. The hundreds of shots that her dad took of her growing up revealed that she lit up any photo and one’s eye was always drawn to her in a group picture.

The Immaculate Heart photographer John Dlugolecki wasn’t at all surprised, therefore, when Meghan turned up at his studio in Burbank for her official school senior portrait meaning business. Most of the girls would just have the required white cap and gown shot and then disappear, not Meghan. She drove out in her mum’s station wagon with the personalised number plate ‘MEGNMEE’ with a bag of clothes on the front seat.

Normally it would be just ten or fifteen minutes and a goodbye, but John allocated her an hour. She brought a black v-neck sweater and wanted to pose for an atmospheric shot against a black background. It was her first proper professional session. John was delighted to have a subject keen on trying something different. He decided to use rim lighting to highlight the edges around her hair.

While she posed, they chatted about her plans after leaving high school. John was an alumnus of Notre Dame, the prestigious university in Indiana. Meghan wanted to broaden her horizons away from Los Angeles and told him she was keen to go to college in the Midwest, so he encouraged her to try for his alma mater, although it had no special connection with Immaculate Heart.

Meghan had talked many times with John’s wife, Vicki Conrad, who usually accompanied him as co-photographer on important school nights to share the load. Meghan had one big concern that played on her mind: ‘What can you do with a degree in theatre?’

Vicki was herself a theatre major, so was speaking with authority. She told her, ‘You can do anything you want.’ Meghan was uncertain so Vicki added, ‘You learn how to act with people. You learn teamwork; being on a budget; being on time; meeting deadlines. That’s what jobs in the world involve.’

Vicki was an example of what she was explaining. Her ‘day job’ was as the manager of one of the largest shopping malls in southern California. She strongly encouraged Meghan to try the Chicago university Northwestern, whose drama department had a growing reputation in the late nineties. Vicki told her she would give anything to go to Northwestern right now.

Meghan still wasn’t sure. She won a place at Notre Dame, even earning a small scholarship. But in the end she chose Northwestern, which had been her preferred choice throughout her teens. Unexpectedly, her intention was to major in English and concentrate on developing her own writing skills. She was an avid reader and had been totally absorbed studying some of the great writers at school – it was one of the reasons why she had auditioned for Oedipus Rex.

She studied classic English literature including Shakespeare and the Brontë sisters, as well as some of the greats of twentieth-century American literature, such as Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Salinger. For the present at least, drama was on the back burner. She did not want to become that cliché – the Los Angeles teenager who dreamed of becoming a Hollywood star. Her earlier intention to tread a path to Broadway also seemed a distant dream.

She still had one pleasant task to undertake before closing the chapter on her school days – graduation at the Hollywood Bowl. Immaculate Heart was one of only two schools in the Los Angeles area allowed to hold their big day at the iconic venue that normally played host to some of the biggest stars in music. The only time the school’s graduation was ‘bumped’ in recent years was when they had to change their date because it clashed with a Paul Simon concert – although, inevitably, in 2020 it was cancelled owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

Traditionally, the girls wore white satin dresses that were rather plain and unflattering, so they would all frantically try to customise them into something a little more Givenchy. They stood in line, each carrying a bouquet of red roses, to have their name called to enthusiastic applause. Meghan collected many awards that afternoon in June 1999, testimony to Maria Pollia’s opinion that she was one of the top five students she had ever taught. They included one for drama, a service award for mentoring younger students, the Bank of America Fine Arts award, the Notre Dame Club of Los Angeles achievement and perhaps, most interestingly, she was commended in the National Achievement Scholarship Programme for outstanding black students – a recognition of her identity at last.

After the ceremonial duties were concluded, she joined the others to sing John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ and ‘I Will Remember You’, the timeless and poignant break-up song by Sarah McLachlan. It was a day never to forget.

Meghan’s graduation photograph hangs with all the others in one of the main corridors at Immaculate Heart. To accompany it, she chose an empowering quote usually attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, ‘Women are like teabags; they don’t realize how strong they are until they’re in hot water.’

Meghan intended to earn some money in the summer break before travelling to Northwestern, at least to make sure she had the right wardrobe – not just for looking good but also keeping warm during the bitterly cold Chicago winters. She sent off the best headshot from her session with John Dlugolecki to various casting agents in the hope of finding some work as an extra.

She soon struck lucky with a tiny part in a video for a new single by Tori Amos called ‘1000 Oceans’. The singer-songwriter is one of the most thoughtful of modern avant-garde artists: Meghan’s tastes were more traditional, preferring old-school performers such as Joni Mitchell, although she did have a soft spot for Mark McGrath, the lead singer with US rock band Sugar Ray, who she thought was ‘hot’.

‘1000 Oceans’ is a haunting ballad about love and loss, crying a thousand oceans to come to terms with grief. Blink and you miss Meghan. She is seen briefly at thirty-nine seconds and fifty-nine seconds, one of a crowd staring at Tori in a glass container that is reminiscent of an exhibit in a museum or a zoo. A day spent filming in a far-from-glamorous disused car park was worth it to be able to pop a couple of hundred dollars in cash in her purse at the end of it.

Another shoot, this time for a new Shakira single, promised to be even more lucrative: $600 for two days’ work. The Columbian singer was on her way to becoming one of the biggest-selling artists in the world. Meghan had to audition to be one of the crowd dancing wildly to the track, ‘Ojos Asi’.

The day of the audition was chronicled on film by her friend Niki Priddy as the young women drove around Beverly Hills shopping for outfits in a station wagon with the number plate signature ‘Classy Girl’. As they make their way to the famous shopping street, Melrose Avenue, they point out some of the stores they wouldn’t be visiting on Rodeo Drive – Chanel, Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Valentino and Tiffany.

The girls drive down Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood and point out that it is known in this neighbourhood as Boystown because of the local homosexual community. Meghan observes, ‘We could walk around naked here and they wouldn’t care.’ Before the audition, they stop off at Meghan’s house for chocolate croissants and iced milk and to cuddle her mother’s cats, Bella and Maria.

She had moved back in with Doria because she wasn’t getting along with her father. She had given up popping in to see him or even collecting her mail. She admitted, ‘My dad and I are not on the best of terms.’ She still had a picture of him on the fridge, though, taken during last October’s fathers and daughters picnic at Immaculate Heart, so perhaps it was a temporary falling out. The photograph was a lovely shot of Tom with his arm around his smiling daughter but, like a million and more young women, Meghan was no longer Daddy’s little girl.

The audition, which we don’t see, went ‘pretty well’, she thought. She had to dance crazily. Afterwards, driving over to Niki’s house, she admitted that her principal worry during the audition was that she was going to fall out of her top. She didn’t get called back for filming, which was disappointing, but it was something she would get used to in the future.

The day ended with her trying on some of the outfits she had bought during the day. The film was by no means a masterpiece and Meghan could never have imagined that Niki would store it away and make it public for the whole world to watch. That would be many years later. In the immediate future, Meghan was leaving her safe and secure world in Los Angeles and setting out on the next stage of her life.