Clover Hendry's Day Off by Beth Morrey

Author:Beth Morrey [Morrey, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-four

That’s what TV producers do: We clear up the mess. Sometimes we make it too—omelets, eggs, and all that. But firefighting is a prerequisite of a good program-maker: fearlessness in the face of chaos. Sometimes things unravel quite spectacularly—presenters getting stroppy, contributors backing out, the production hemorrhaging money, showrunners shifting goalposts. The producer keeps a steady hand at the tiller, guiding everyone through. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

The problem is, normally I don’t do fearlessness. Tidying up is okay, stemming the frenzy, keeping things together, ticking over—that’s doable. But managing all that without shitting bricks is something I’ve never quite achieved. Pretty much every production I’ve ever worked on has added years to my life in terms of stress and anxiety, repeating Other Martha’s mantra, It’ll all come out in the edit, it’ll all come out in the edit…to calm myself down. In our catch-ups with Vince, I’d listen to my fellow executive producers Petroc and Oz casually mentioning the various production issues they were battling and find it hard not to grab a paper bag to hyperventilate into—how were they not made dizzy by the things they had to deal with? As execs, we were near the top of the tree production-wise, which meant that lightning struck us first. Of course, they were delegating the worry down to someone else, which is something I’ve never been able to do. Sometimes you clear up the mess by giving everyone a broom and telling them to get on with it.

After he helped me out with Vince and the head-of-development job, Petroc and I had become friends, regularly sneaking off to the pub round the corner to snark about colleagues, showrunners, and the industry generally. He’d been at Red Eye for longer than I had and although professionally we were equals, I’d come to rely on him as a sounding board—or at least someone I could let off steam with. He has a certain sagacity—laced with sarcasm of course—that I find reassuring. Most of the time, anyway. Sometimes he fucks up, just like everyone else.

One day, I was in my office watching casting tapes and eating honey-and-sesame-coated almonds that someone had brought back from Turkey. We have what Vince inappropriately calls the “Fat Shelf” in the communal kitchen, where people leave treats out—chocolates they’ve been given, leftover birthday cake, holiday harvests. It’s where I left my doughnuts, where I leave my bagels—ostentatiously, so everyone knows I’m being generous. Someone had left the almonds out that morning, and after telling myself I definitely wouldn’t have any, I took a handful and lined them up on my desk, resolving to only eat one when I came across a contributor I liked on the tape. I’d eaten three almonds when Petroc burst in, looking gray and unhinged.

“Kill me now.”

He threw himself into my armchair, which is a prop from a celebrity interview show we made. It’s orange, designed to pop on camera, which only served to heighten the zombie tones of Petroc’s face.

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