her early twenties whom I recognized as the former second lead on a Disney Channel show I will call Dixie Peppard, Secret Singer-Songwriter and Witch . Greta was tagged and the caption was: “Doing booty ballet with my BFF. Can barely walk!” I clicked on this photo and saw even more photos of Greta and Second Lead. Greta and Second Lead in Malibu. Greta and Second Lead at a Dodgers game. Greta and Second Lead at a Beverly Hills hair salon getting “lobs” (long bobs) together.
I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching long bobs.
The sting of being replaced was very painful. Thank God this was pre-Twitter, because I know I would’ve tweeted a lot of angry quotes about betrayal and then later deleted them in a worried state. Greta’s phasing me out of her life hurt way more than Nate. Hell, it hurt way more than most breakups I’d had, and we were only friends for about four months. But as any woman reading this will attest to, there are not many relationships more powerful than that of two women who fall fast and deep into a friendship. It was heartbreaking to be loved and left.
Happily, though, a few months later, work had taken over my entire life, and my friend group was whittled down to the old reliable standbys: Mom, Jocelyn, Brenda, and B.J. None of them would love the term “old reliable standby,” so shhh, don’t tell them. The great thing about true best friends is that when you go MIA for a few months, they inquire but they don’t press. Best friends know the power of infatuation but also how quickly it dissipates. You just have to wait it out. And then afterward, tease them about it for decades.
In the past ten years, I have met a handful of chic and charismatic women in Los Angeles with whom I have had the telltale spark of being “best-friend material.” It’s exciting, like seeing a guy you are really attracted to from across the room at a party. None, however, has managed to infiltrate deep into my best-friend group, where they have seen me openly weep, heard me talk shit about my job, or checked my scalp for worrisome alopecia spots. But one magical summer, Greta was my best friend. And then, like the guy who spends the night and the next morning tells you, “I honestly feel like I’ve never met anyone like you before,” she was gone.
HOW TO GET YOUR OWN TV SHOW (AND NEARLY DIE OF ANXIETY)
T HOUGH I AM extremely young, I am old enough to remember Must-See TV. For the small handful of readers who are even younger than me and don’t know what I’m talking about, Must-See TV refers to the Thursday-night lineup on NBC in the ’80s and ’90s, when you could watch back-to-back, amazing, high-quality shows like Cheers , Seinfeld , and Friends . I had the unique experience of being hired to work at NBC in 2004, the year Friends ended, which marked the death of that dynasty. Over the next eight years, Must-See TV went from Must-See TV to Pretty Good TV to Not the Worst Thing on TV to Meh, Just Watch HBO TV.
I was lucky enough to be employed at one of the remaining great NBC shows of the mid-2000s, The Office . Greg Daniels, the creator of the American version of The Office , had plucked me from a strange little off-Broadway play, Matt and Ben , which I had cowritten and in which I played Ben Affleck, to write on his show. 1 In eight years The Office went from near-cancellation to the kind of mainstream and critical success where people come up to you and ask, “Is Dwight really like that in real life?” to which I respond: “Oh, no, Rainn isn’t like Dwight. Dwight is an angel next to Rainn. Rainn is a demon.”
In the fall of 2011, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I had been working on The Office for almost eight years. I was thirty-one years old and was one of the few people in TV who felt like I had job stability.
As the success of The Office grew, so did my role as a writer and producer, and by season 8 I had written twenty-four episodes. I was
I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching long bobs.
The sting of being replaced was very painful. Thank God this was pre-Twitter, because I know I would’ve tweeted a lot of angry quotes about betrayal and then later deleted them in a worried state. Greta’s phasing me out of her life hurt way more than Nate. Hell, it hurt way more than most breakups I’d had, and we were only friends for about four months. But as any woman reading this will attest to, there are not many relationships more powerful than that of two women who fall fast and deep into a friendship. It was heartbreaking to be loved and left.
Happily, though, a few months later, work had taken over my entire life, and my friend group was whittled down to the old reliable standbys: Mom, Jocelyn, Brenda, and B.J. None of them would love the term “old reliable standby,” so shhh, don’t tell them. The great thing about true best friends is that when you go MIA for a few months, they inquire but they don’t press. Best friends know the power of infatuation but also how quickly it dissipates. You just have to wait it out. And then afterward, tease them about it for decades.
In the past ten years, I have met a handful of chic and charismatic women in Los Angeles with whom I have had the telltale spark of being “best-friend material.” It’s exciting, like seeing a guy you are really attracted to from across the room at a party. None, however, has managed to infiltrate deep into my best-friend group, where they have seen me openly weep, heard me talk shit about my job, or checked my scalp for worrisome alopecia spots. But one magical summer, Greta was my best friend. And then, like the guy who spends the night and the next morning tells you, “I honestly feel like I’ve never met anyone like you before,” she was gone.
HOW TO GET YOUR OWN TV SHOW (AND NEARLY DIE OF ANXIETY)
T HOUGH I AM extremely young, I am old enough to remember Must-See TV. For the small handful of readers who are even younger than me and don’t know what I’m talking about, Must-See TV refers to the Thursday-night lineup on NBC in the ’80s and ’90s, when you could watch back-to-back, amazing, high-quality shows like Cheers , Seinfeld , and Friends . I had the unique experience of being hired to work at NBC in 2004, the year Friends ended, which marked the death of that dynasty. Over the next eight years, Must-See TV went from Must-See TV to Pretty Good TV to Not the Worst Thing on TV to Meh, Just Watch HBO TV.
I was lucky enough to be employed at one of the remaining great NBC shows of the mid-2000s, The Office . Greg Daniels, the creator of the American version of The Office , had plucked me from a strange little off-Broadway play, Matt and Ben , which I had cowritten and in which I played Ben Affleck, to write on his show. 1 In eight years The Office went from near-cancellation to the kind of mainstream and critical success where people come up to you and ask, “Is Dwight really like that in real life?” to which I respond: “Oh, no, Rainn isn’t like Dwight. Dwight is an angel next to Rainn. Rainn is a demon.”
In the fall of 2011, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I had been working on The Office for almost eight years. I was thirty-one years old and was one of the few people in TV who felt like I had job stability.
As the success of The Office grew, so did my role as a writer and producer, and by season 8 I had written twenty-four episodes. I was
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