Brutally Honest by Melanie Brown

Author:Melanie Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Quadrille Publishing Ltd
Published: 2018-10-04T16:00:00+00:00

But there were other issues between us. I didn’t always want to be in a house full of his friends. I’d ask him if we could have a few evenings on our own and he’d say, ‘Sure, go and tell Charisse.’ (Charisse Hewitt-Webster is Eddie’s assistant and producer, and he’s known her forever.) Or I’d call him from my house and say, ‘Eddie, are all your friends at your place?’

‘Just a few, honey.’

‘Well, I’m not coming over till it’s me, you and the kids.’ I know it didn’t make me popular with a lot of his friends who loved camping out at Eddie’s. But I didn’t like having a permanent crowd in the house. And there were people on my side. Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of DreamWorks, who had known Eddie for thirty years, took me and Eddie out for a steak dinner one night. When Eddie was in the bathroom, Jeffrey said to me, ‘Mel, don’t know what you’re doing to him. Eddie’s nice. He’s a bit of a funny geezer, but I’ve never seen him so happy. He is re-energized. He wants to work. He’s excited about work and I know that’s down to you.’ I was acutely aware that a lot of Eddie’s friends didn’t like me (I was too loud and – they thought – had too much influence over Eddie, especially over how often everyone piled over to his house). To have a well-respected man such as Jeffrey show kindness to me was very much appreciated.

Eddie was a funny geezer because he expected you to know the way he wanted things to work. It had been similar back in Leeds when Danielle and I would automatically know how many inches of water we could have in the bath … or what nights we could watch the TV shows we wanted to because Dad was on a late shift. You had to learn Eddie’s rules.

If I wanted to go to the outlet shops in Palm Springs to do a quick shop for the kids, I’d pre-warn his driver and have a conversation about taking my car, being driven or taking one of Eddie’s cars. If I went out on a rare night with friends or if I wanted to get away, it was Eddie’s people who sorted it out. It felt like nothing was really in my control. On Fridays he would do movie nights and decided that I had to pick the film we were all going to watch.

That was pressure. I felt it was a test. Eddie is very knowledgeable on black American culture; he was always telling me about various jazz musicians, actors, writers who had begun the difficult task of paving the way for others. ‘Eddie says I have to choose a film. What the hell shall I pick?’ I’d ask my girlfriends. ‘They need to be the right ones.’

‘Go for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Or anything with Sydney Poitier,’ advised one of my friends. Every week I’d go to her to brainstorm the next movie choice.

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