Matilda is Franco-British actor. She studied at RADA in London, then spent years learning techniques with the aim of broadening her storytelling skills. At some point, she realised she might have missed a trick and started writing. On this MA, she’s embarked on a book project about her unconventional upbringing in Provence, as well as some short stories and life-writing essays.  The following piece is fictional memoir.  

Email: Matildajanekime@gmail.com

The Day Player.  

I earn a tidy living.  

What do you mean tidy?   

You know not a fortune, not a pittance said the affable driver Marc as we whooshed down the motorway. I archive the expression. We’re on the M40 on our way to an illustrious film studio in Buckinghamshire. I am sitting in the front, something I do often and regret only occasionally. The car is unusually long and deepest black on the tarmac. It already feels like space travel. Marc is the gravity, the first of many humans who will stop me from drifting off into the firmament.  

A day player is an actor that will have one day of filming, a few scenes. In the hierarchy of actor’s gentry, the day player crushes an extra, and is grateful to breathe the same air as a supporting character or lead. Your purpose is to help move the story along, allow the leads to bump up against you so that they can continue their respective journeys.   

I’ve signed innumerable Non-Disclosure Agreements, as well as a thick contract with the Mickey Mouse people – to play the part of secret directed by secret in a TV show with a fake name.  

I’d worked it out. I knew it was a second season, and there was a clue in the audition scene. I telephoned the males in my life. Robots? Possibly. Aliens? Think so. First, we thought it was another one, less good apparently; no, it’s this one, much better. Nonono, not Baby Yoda.  

The information is need to know; in time, I will be informed of the context of the scene so that I can play it. Marc the driver – who spends time in cars with actors – tells me a little something, almost nothing. Head of Hair and Make-Up Emma is generous and will tell me about my planet. I’ll repeat this to her assistant Issy by accident. Then, I’ll tell Jonathan from the costume department (deliberately) with relish.  

Now, I’m still in the car pretending this is ordinary. Marc is a Second World War nut. His father, a soldier, was pulled off a boat to Normandy at the last minute, because of how good his handwriting was. He flicks his wrist on the steering wheel as he says the words Beautiful Cursive. None of his father’s friends returned. His old man spent the rest of his days angry, unbelievably so, riddled with survivor’s guilt.  

 At the Studios, I’m escorted to my trailer. Inside, it’s hideous – like a pop-up dentist’s waiting room.  I’m still chuffed. There’s a sofa bed, a waxy apple, a dressing gown, some fur lined boots and huge puffer coat – too voluminous to steal. The hotel manager is written on the outside of the door. I realize this is the third member of staff I’ve played in a row. The other two were a camerawoman in a meta feature film, and Brigitte Bardot’s nanny in a biopic TV show. I deduce that it’s because I’m a bit funny, and that people allow for a member of staff to be a bit funny; it makes them feel better about the concept of staff in general.  

Issy, a gentle sloth from Norfolk, spends two hours exploring a hairstyle, in the Hair & Make Up truck, referred to as the HMU. A cryingly long time. During, one has to sit up straight and not look down. This eliminates phones or reading; there is only your face in the mirror and Issy above. I cannot see what she is concocting at the nape of my neck – just her redoing and undoing over and over and thinking Christ and feeling better about being paid for this prep day.  

I notice a prosthetic head turned on its side on the shelf. It is the head of a septuagenarian Swedish actor. The likeness is uncanny. I warm to this head. Either because it’s fatherly and European, or because it feels benevolent of him to leave his head on a shelf. My hair is finished. It’s a bun, swirly like a cinnamon roll.  

Marlon, third Assistant Director at Base, is shuffling me from department to department. We walk fast, leap almost, around shadowy warehouses. Marlon is from New Zealand and looks like he has so many logistical threads in his head his eyeballs might pop out. There’s a vibe of cocaine about him.   

I’m so sorry about Jacinda! I say.   

Oh, yea thanks. What an icon. We agree. He adds,  

When I talk to people back home… I’m surprised by how conservatively they feel about the whole thing… the older generation especially.  

Interesting… you think fundamentally she was pushed out by misogyny?   

Ok here you are. I’ll come back and get you.   

Byee thankyouuuuu. I yell into the late afternoon blackness.  

In the costume department, Jonathan is measuring the distance between my nipples. It’s called point to point… A small man on thick-soled boots, chains rattle on him and he sports the buzzcut. I wonder what will happen to the costume after? I’m 6ft 1, will anyone else ever wear it? I haven’t had many costumes hand-tailored. In the theatre, yes, where they get more wear. But this is one day – unless there’s a catastrophe like a sandstorm or a flood, or I screw it up so badly they have to call me back in, or, I deliver such a ground-breaking performance that they rewrite my part. Jonathan inches around me measuring like a wood-elf at the foot of a great oak. An armless mannequin stares at me from across the room.  

Eight hours of my character being sculpted by people’s vision. I’m told I’m returning next week for more. Marc is driving me home, we talk war. I mention my Polish grandmother.  

Do you know the Polish Battalion that flew for England during the Battle of Britain? They were the most successful squadron.   

I didn’t. I picture them mad, winged and unbearably handsome. They had briefly fought the Germans, before losing in 1939, and apparently knew how to take down a Messerschmitt.   

How do you take down a Messerschmitt?   

You flight straight at it.   

Oh. Right. I say, horrified.   

There’s a war Memorial to the Polish Airforce coming up.  

The click of the indicator.  

Just a small detour.    

My safety occurs to me. Has my friendliness finally done me in. Just in time, we cruise around a motorway and there behold is a war memorial. Phallic and shimmering in the moonlight.  

Home in bed I look it up. Across the rear of the monument there is an inscription from the New Testament:  

I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith.   

(II TIM. IV. 7)  

DAY 2 

Traffic’s absolutely diabolical, says today’s driver Cian. We’re on the North Circular, near Wembley. Benzene and nitrogen dioxide bushy in the air. The houses are stained like an old smoker’s mouth.    

It’s early, so I’m fragile and sitting in the back. Wondering if I’ll keep quiet. I’ve developed this mechanism over years: outward attention as a way to bat away feelings. It has the virtue of keeping people too distracted to notice I’m not wearing a shell. I’m also of that lucky but exhausted breed that finds almost everything interesting.   

Cian trained as a printer originally in Dublin. You mean on a press? Then started minicabbing in London. One day, an actor asked if he would like to drive him to work? This is how Cian became David Suchet’s driver, and was responsible for getting Poirot on and off set for twenty-five years.  

We’re headed to a different film studio in Surrey. This happens. The trailers are clamped to the backs of trucks and rolled to a different studio. I think of hundreds of make-up brushes jiggling in boxes on the motorway, panicking.  

Cian went back to Dublin in the eighties. You see an old friend of mine became Taoiseach.  

What?  

Prime-minister of Ireland I mean and… asked me to be his driver.   

My neck is reaching out towards the front of the car where I now regret not sitting. 

Really… Who? He tells me.  

I drove him around for a coupla years. Eventually he got done for smugglin’ arms to the IRA. See he never told me, but I knew. I’d be pickin’ him up in the middle of the night at the back of the house, that’s with the security unit sittin’ at the front of the house.  

A look in the rearview mirror.   

But you never saw anything?   

No…was terrible times.  

We’re in Virginia Water – somewhere I’ve heard of without knowing why. Faux Tudor houses peruse their lawns smugly. A light rain.   

There is a racing circuit on the same land as these film studios, used to film countless car chases and crashes. Driving through the woodland, I wonder about the local fauna. Badgers, moles, warblers, sand lizards, the water voles, hazel dormice. Are they bored of the spectacle? Have they packed-up and moved? Or do they line up in a row, and clap and cheer at the magic of movie-making?  

We’re here. I’m full of feeling for this man I may never see again. I don’t know that he’ll be driving me home.   

You know it means leek? Poirot… it’s spelt differently, but it’s a leek in French. The vegetable, from the onion family.  

Unsure there is such a thing as an onion family. He smiles.  

In the HMU truck, one of the leads is having his injuries prepped for a battle scene. There is debate on the topic of a flesh-wound across his cheek. He’s in a different section of the truck. I want to say hello, tell him the neurotic vulnerability he’s developed for the character is great.  

But I’m not sure if I’m meant to pretend I can’t see him; there are lots of unspoken rules I keep upsetting like a mess on the floor, so I say nothing.   

Holly is dying my hair. The same chestnut brown I had it dyed two weeks ago by a gregarious woman from Montpellier. I move my head around according to the strand that’s being coloured, a minimalist head dance. I think about drivers and wonder if the same skill set applies to Unit drivers as to spies: being exactly what someone needs at the right moment, the capacity to disappear, appease, entertain, have a warm sense of context and a spirited relationship to adventure.   

I sneak a look at the other actor. He’s covered in blood and is sneaking a look at me, whilst I have my hair washed in his part of the truck. Holly rubs my head, warm water trickles down my neck…  I  was actually at drama school with this guy, in a different year. I know from the internet, not because I remember.  Does he recognise me? He married that girl. The pocket-sized actress – able to play seventeen-year old Anya in the Cherry Orchard; the one who had multiple agent offers before she’d even graduated. Even at seventeen I couldn’t play seventeen. At thirty though, I played Dostoyevsky’s Prince Mychkin, The Idiot, which makes the great unread laugh, but I know that it was the part of a lifetime.  

I stand up (head majestically wrapped in a towel), and he eyeballs me. His gaze is another wash of warm water. I return to my chair out of sight. Holly and top HMU person Emma are whispering about the crown of my head. They decide to dye it brown again, the same brown as before and the same brown as two weeks ago.  

A hat-trick.  

My costume is a skirt suit in forest green in a thick tweed like material. If an air hostess was also a matron and also a leprechaun. There’s a  high collar that’s been an issue. I cannot wear anything around my neck – it makes me panic. Head Costume Designer Richard, is kindly loosening my collar at the back as we search for the threshhold where panic ends. There? Not yet. I’m a bit red, sweating. And there? Still not great, I’m afraid. I stress laugh. Jonathan suggests an alternative : opening the collar at the back. Good idea, let some air in.   

I’m driven home in a real taxi as all unit drivers are occupied. The driver is kind enough to let me eat the Cajun chicken and grilled tenderstem broccoli in a polystyrene box that I was handed on the way out. I suck on the bones.  

DAY 3  

A white plaza. Sort of thirties and fascist. Circular and airy, swan neck pillars swizzle up to hold the marble-like buildings. A large white staircase leads off the plaza and up into nowhere. A green screen wraps around the top of the entire monument like a fluorescent halo. Blue sky beams down on us. I realize they’re going to replace the sky with outer space. It’s easy to imagine as I look up at the blue I’ve always known, with its uninspired clouds. Easy to imagine that, beyond, is a darker shade of blue, expanding and pulsating with coloured planets and moving ships and burning stars. It’s right there. Just behind the vault. My loneliness goes quiet.   

The maverick Jewish philosopher Spinoza – frequently accused of wanton atheism – actually argued that God and Nature were one and the same. I imagine him sitting in a café in Amsterdam in 1651, chewing on a radish, as he begins to formulate the idea that humans are one whole, infinite, multiple sparkly knot of the entirety of everything that exists. We are flawless and determined only by the laws of nature. What string is to a knot we are to the universe.  

Down here, on planet secret, humans in costumes are lounging, the plaza is populated by its denizens. I wonder if I’ve misread the scene – they look like cadavers, but then understand that they’re lying in the sun with their lids closed. They’re recharging and twitching like amphibians on a rock. A gargantuan yellow crane towers over the whole edifice.  

I was escorted on set with another actor. We’ve worked together before, we both speak French, and as far as anyone knows he is not famous. We walked along a deserted life-size street – red clay square houses – think post-war council housing on Mars, and I said Are we meant to pretend we’re not impressed? A light-hearted, not entirely humourless attempt at bonding; to which the cunt responded Just be yourself. I think he’s masking shyness with arrogance, but I’ve given it fifteen goes and I give up. I venture off alone, not far, they never let you go far. You’re on an invisible leash. The hitherto undiscovered problem of actors getting lost, condemned to eternally wander the earth looking for their sets.  

A cacophony erupts as the film crew demands silence, a tsunami of noise rolls round the circular square as people yell shut up, silence, QUIET, hold… the…chat!!!!  

The HMU girls keep an eye on me – except it’s not really me they’re looking at – theirs is a war against stray hairs and creases. I sit at the terrasse of a fake art deco café. I’m looking for aliens – although they are referred to as creatures, for political correctness? I haven’t slept. I used to think this was a day player curse; then had seven days on a film and seven sleepless nights. My body is unable to quash the feelings of apprehension and terror that would permit sleep, so here I am in this heightened state.   

Luckily this morning’s driver was not too chatty. He was in his mid-thirties like me, timid, gorgeous, very tall and this is the one I decided to establish a boundary with. I, of course, made a brief peer into his soul, and once there, found that he was Ex-army and had never made it to Afghanistan.  

Sometimes I wish I’d gone he said with a faraway look.  

I think you might feel differently if you had, I softly countered. But mostly he gave me space to pretend I was shy and so I’m reasonably present to myself today.   

On my way across the plaza, I see a breath-taking alien creature. Her head is an oval egg, freckly and elongated. Indigo octopus tentacles are sleeked back from her forehead as if brushed.  

Her electric blue eyes match her robe. I lower my gaze as I walk past.   

Once in my hotel, a man called Bryan is talking to me and I notice a sticker on his nose. I don’t mention it in case he’s cut himself shaving or it’s a spot. Soon I’ll realise that the creature in my scene – the one with the Parrot head that breathes, the beak that moves, and the plumage shooting out of his scalp and three-fingered claws – is in fact Bryan. And that the sticker must be to hold the mask in place or to prevent it from chaffing. Parrot Face is adorable. I’m enchanted.  

A man bounds up:  

Hi Matilda, I’m Aaariel the director, it’s a pleasure to meet you.   

There is a dramatic warmth to his tone. His Australian accent immediately triggers my imitation and I respond in my broadest Melbourne.  

Oooh don’t start, I’ve got to plaay the damm scene in a french acceent, this is gunna bee impossible, you and Iiii need to stop talking. Noow.  

He’s laughing hard. His eyes gleam. Am I flirting? Someone interrupts us, thank God.  

They’re setting up the shot. A hundred people are looking at me, past me, around me, at the spaces between me. I’m moved away by my on-set costume lady, Tallulah, who is tugging repeatedly at my skirt. I feel the tug, pull, pull, pull. Then – with a revolver shaped object – she staples me together. Staple, staple, pull, tug. I forget she’s there. A woman is standing where I just stood… on a box… I realize she is my stand-in! Standing there whilst the technicians tweak the light so that I don’t have to. The stand-ins are excluded from the hierarchy entirely, they will never be in shot once the camera rolls.   

I’m back at the front desk of this grand establishment that I manage. I piece together that I’m to have an improvised interaction with Parrot Face, followed by an exchange with a shorter lilac blob head with a thick hide (Rob) before the scene that I’m familiar with in which the hero and namesake of the entire TV show walks in and checks into the hotel. The crew are wearing surgical masks. Smiling moving eyeballs. Tallulah flits around me, brushes my chest, brush, brush, brush. Sound is swallowed up in this space and I can’t tell who is talking to me and who is not. Prop people mumble instructions at me. They put objects in my hands, take a look, change their minds. Unfriendly French Face is lurking the back, no doubt feeling the acute pain of having forsaken my friendship. Focus Matilda. Tug, tug, brush, brush. Camera people emerge, speak, then retreat. I’m protected behind my desk and in my uber tailored costume. Pull, tug. Protected and growingly insane. Set ready for rehearsal! It comes out of nowhere every time, with emphasis on the hear and a high pitched sal. Set/prep/team ready for reHEARsal! I have to act not panicked every time. My brain is a throbbing computer on LSD, with bits of information in bright colours clanging into each other. Clang. I’m grasping Parrot Face’s claws. Clang. A robot waves at me. Do I know him? Clang. Tallulah attacks the skirt. Tug, tug, pull, pull. Clang. Matilda look at me says person…different person this is the key you’re using right? Huh. Which key. Staple, tug, pull. Clang. But, soft! What light through yonder — It is the movie star, in heeled leather boots and a velvet fashion space cloak. Ruggish, long-haired and lonely, crushed by his yoke of heroism. He’s looking at me. Clang softens. His black eyes hold mine, tell me I’ve got this, that we are tethered – one freak to another – two bits of string, whispers in the galaxy, a kiss in space, the birth of a rebellion, one small day player but one huge step for the oppressed peoples of the galactic empire…  

Prep ready to…voice booms… SHOOOOT.  

I won’t remember most of the drive back, an ellipsis. At the end of the day, I went into a box where five hundred cameras simultaneously took a photo of me in costume. This is so that they could make a 3D model of me, in the future, for a game. Video, or board, I presume. It’s too much for me to understand, I don’t try, only I’m already embarrassed by what I imagine to be an unflattering figurine. Proof in plastic of my imperfections. 

Somewhere near Muswell Hill, I’ll wake-up as we drive past a Greek Orthodox church in a whole Greek area of North London I had previously been unaware of. They tend to have beautiful singing; I must look into this. London is good at resuscitation; it is one beating ecosystem full of separate rhythms that put you in your place.  The driver tries to impress me with stories of a paranoid movie star convinced that there were snipers on Baker Street. I respond, am charming and curious and funny. I am pretending.  

I want to lie on my creaky wooden bed, in my bedroom above the kitchen.