Cybill Disobedience (27 page)

After a long professional drought, I reveled in the reviews and ratings for
Moonlighting
, lapping up my new designation as “TV’s sexiest spitfire” in an “ouch-she’s-hot comeback.” (Perhaps most satisfying was Peter’s report of a call from Cary Grant saying, “You were right about her all along.”) But our first year on the air, the Emmy nominating committee lumped the show into the comedy category with sitcoms, which are, by definition, joke-driven. The competition was
Family Ties, Cheers, Kate & Allie, Night Court,
and
The Cosby Show
(which won). Moonlighting didn’t get any nominations until 1986, when we were reclassified as a drama, “leading the pack” with sixteen nominations. It was a huge disappointment that we only won one--for editing.

You can get pushed over the edge of exhaustion on a crappy job too, but when the material is good and the people are passionate about it, everyone tends to be in even more denial, making excuses for their bad behavior. You tell yourself: This is so clever, so classy, so valuable, that it’s worth the sacrifice, and meanwhile a little voice inside your head is screaming for sleep, sanity, salvation. In scientific studies, too many rats in a cage will attack and eat one another alive, even if they have enough food. It’s an apt metaphor for the
Moonlighting
set, and we were all under pressure. Bruce Willis had never experienced anything close to this kind of success, and his reaction to it exacerbated the situation. The man whose high school yearbook recorded that his ambition was “to become deliriously happy, or a professional harp player was suddenly rich beyond imagination. He bought a black Mercedes and a 1966 Corvette. I understood the heady mix of fame, money, groupies, and feel-good treats. I’d already been there and back, but Bruce was on his maiden voyage. The first time I experienced sudden success, I had my insufferable moments too.

There was a real cultural difference between a guy from “Joisey” and a girl from Memphis. In the South, what is considered acceptable behavior has at least a patina of courtesy and formality. That kind of ingrained etiquette has both positive and negative aspects: you may not know what someone really thinks of you and there’s a lot of “Honey child this” and “Darlin’ that” covering up savage feelings, but on the surface it’s Sunday school gracious. The roots of my steel-magnolia temperament run deep, and I always try to alleviate tension with humor. I had my fan photo made into a dartboard and sent one to Bruce and one to Glenn, complete with darts and a poem: “I’m giving you my picture, I hope you’ll treat it nice, you can hang it in the attic to scare away mice.”

I indulged in regular therapeutic massage to help cope with the stress of the shooting schedule, during which I could feel body and soul coming back together. One day my masseuse opened her big canvas bag and pulled out a tape called
Woman’s Spirit
, a guided meditation with one’s female ancestors. Lying on the backseat of my limousine on the way to the studio, I would listen to the tape and imagine myself in a field, holding my mother’s hand, who was holding her mother’s hand, who was holding her mother’s and going back to a time of safety and peace. I was searching for a spiritual anchor, I needed to make God a holy and forgiving mother.

Despite massage, I developed debilitating headaches and a back stiff enough to build condominiums. A friend recommended a chiropractor who was known to make house calls and “set calls” for actors. When Bruce Oppenheim came to treat me during a late shoot, it was close to midnight and there was hardly room for his table in my trailer. I’d never had chiropractic work, but he had such strong hands and worked so quickly that I didn’t have time to get nervous. The disappearance of my headaches made me an instant believer, and his twisted sense of humor made me laugh. I started having “adjustments” about once a month, and with my skewed sense of boundaries, it didn’t seem to matter if I was dating a health-care professional who was treating me. He didn’t seem to be troubled by it either.

With the first serious money of my life, I bought a house at the end of a cul-de-sac in the Encino hills, framed by two stone lions. I removed the previous owner’s expensive bad taste, and replaced it with my own expensive bad taste. Mother always said, “All your taste is in your mouth, girl.” Behind sliding glass doors was a pool lined with small gold tiles that made me feel like I was swimming in liquid gold. Bruce brought me tea and melon in bed at the crack of dawn, then biked with me a dozen miles to the studio. Right before we left, I’d have a can of Mountain Dew plus a cup of coffee, so I felt like I had been shot out of a cannon. A teamster would drive me and the bike back at the end of the day, and Bruce often cooked dinner while I spent a little time with my daughter. He let me know that he’d never really considered having children of his own, but his relationship with seven-year-old Clementine was warm and affectionate. We already felt like a family.

Even though I was bone weary, I well knew the lesson about striking while the iron was hot--and I had lived through some cool-iron times--so I spent a springtime hiatus from
Moonlighting
doing a television remake of
The Long Hot Summer
, based on a short story called “‘The Hamlet” by William Faulkner. I wanted to play the role originated by Joanne Woodward but was pronounced “too pretty” (although hardly prettier than Don Johnson, the hot star of Miami Vice, who was playing the Paul Newman role). Such distinctions seemed unfathomable anyway when they gave the part to Judith Ivey, a lovely-looking actress who was deemed more serious, after making her do four screen tests and telling her she wasn’t pretty enough. I was cast as the libidinous daughter-in-law originally played by Lee Remick.

The opulent homestead of the fictitious Varner family in “Frenchman’s Bend, Mississippi” was replicated by the Oak Alley Plantation in Thibodaux, Louisiana. It had an unpaved road lined by stately two-hundred-year-old live oaks draped with Spanish moss, leading up to the white-columned mansion. Its several caretaker cabins with screened porches had been converted to guest houses. A high levee with a gravel road on top separated the house and the river, and I walked there every chance I got.

On a job with such a large ensemble cast, there’s lots of time to sit around, which means more time to read. One afternoon while waiting on the screen porch of one of the converted caretakers’ cabins, the book I chose would have an enormous impact on the direction of my life. It was
Outrageous Acts & Everyday Rebellion
by Gloria Steinem. Although I had called myself a feminist for fifteen years, I realized I had not committed a single Outrageous Act in any public way to support women’s reproductive freedom or any other civil rights issue. It was also around this time I became aware that Congress had disallowed funding for abortions for poor women. Pregnancy as punishment because you’re poor? It was one of those big moments in life when you say, “Hold on a minute missy, that ain’t right!” Determined finally to become part of the solution, I called Ms. magazine and asked to speak to Gloria Steinem, the magazine’s founder, whom I had met briefly at a party in Manhattan a few years earlier. She took my call immediately and without wasting time. I asked what I could do to help the cause.

There’s a political action committee I’m involved with called Voters for Choice, she began. “They’re in need of a strong morally committed spokesperson. Would you consider that?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitation. I was finally on my way toward exorcising the demon of political inaction and apathy that had been brewing since my childhood when I had been surrounded by the racism of the segregated south. But once I started speaking out there was no stopping me. I marched on Washington for reproductive freedom and women’s equality, I spoke at fund-raisers for pro-choice candidates like Ann Richards (governor of Texas), Barbara Boxer (senator from California), and Bill Clinton (president of the United States of America). I marched again on Washington for gay and lesbian rights, I helped dedicate the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, and was called to testify before a House subcommittee on the U.S. approval for RU-486. To this day, I believe that any excuse to discriminate against any group of human beings violates their civil rights. Regardless of their skin color, religion, sex, or sexual preference, all people must be treated equally. To do otherwise is un-American. Because of my advocacy for these basic civil rights, Gloria Allred, my longtime friend and fighter for feminist issues, asked me to seriously consider running for president of the United States in the year 2000.

But let’s go back to the fun and games on the set of
The Long
Hot
Summer
. Don Johnson and I were aware of an intense attraction the minute we met. When ten journalists arrived for a press junket wanting to photograph the steamy scenes between us, they were astonished to hear that in the four-hour miniseries, there were none. I told the director and the producer, both separately and together, “You’re crazy if you don’t write at least one scene for Don and me.” Unfortunately, it was assumed that I was trying to pad my part. Just because we were forbidden to explore our flirtation on-screen didn’t mean we couldn’t follow up on it in private. One night, as I relaxed on the screen porch of my little cabin, I heard a man’s voice purr, “Ohhh, Miss Eula” (my character’s name).

I responded, “Why, Mr. Ben Quick” (Don’s character’s name). “What are you doing here?”

“I’d just like to pay my respects, ma’am.”

I opened the screen door a wedge. ‘’Why don’t you come on in and sit a spell.”

We lasted a nanosecond on the porch and then rapidly progressed to my bed. It was like wolfing down a candy bar when you’re starving--fast, furious, intense--and it was all over in five minutes. Somehow we never got around to another five minutes, since “Mr. Quick” moved on to one of the hairdressers, who thereafter acted as if I had bad breath.

The gracious and genial Jason Robards, who was playing the family patriarch, was well loved by the crew, but Don was not a favorite. He told too many of them too often how they could do their jobs better. A palpable tension seemed to arise when he walked on the set and disappeared when he left. Everyone was in awe of Ava Gardner, who was playing the mistress of the domineering Will Varner. We hadn’t done our one scene together yet and nobody, had bothered to introduce us. One night while we were shooting out in the middle of a swamp, the air-conditioning in my tiny trailer kept breaking down, and I decided to walk over to her trailer to say hi and introduce myself, I had just raised my hand to knock when the door flew open and slammed against the side of her trailer. Fortunately, I had leaped back into the darkness in the nick of time. I froze and watched, unseen in the shadows. Her hair was in rollers, and she was swaying, holding a bottle of white wine by the neck. Suddenly, she began screaming, “JASONNNNNNNNN!” I hightailed it out of there, but later that five mithe crew was setting up the dramatic fire finale and we were taking our places, I dared to approach her again.

“Ms. Gardner, I am thrilled to be working with you.” It took her a while to focus on me. Then she belched out a slurpy, “SHADDDUPP!”

The next day around the motel pool, she seemed alert and agreeable, throwing her glorious neck back with a rich and lustful laugh I. took one more risk. “Ms. Gardner,” I said, extending a tentative handshake, “I’m Cybill Shepherd.”

“Oh, hello!” She beamed, flashing that profoundly sexy Ava Gardner smile. “It’s so nice to meet you.” The previous night had never happened.

Almost immediately I could tell that
The Long Hot Summer
was going to be a stinker. In one scene I actually begged not to have a close-up, and they agreed. The miniseries was so bad it was appropriately dismissed as “irredeemable, paltry and barren” by the
Washington Post
TV critic Tom Shales, who noted of my performance, “She seems playfully aware that the movie is garbage.” It was shown on CBS opposite
Moonlighting
.
Moonlighting
won the time slot.

IN JANUARY 1987 I WAS GETTING DRESSED FOR THE
Golden Globe Awards, and my dress didn’t fit. There was no mistaking the reason. The stomach pooches out more quickly in a second pregnancy because the muscles have been pregnant before. By the time I scheduled a doctor’s appointment, a test was a formality--I was so violently nauseated I couldn’t eat.

When the obstetrician got the results back from the lab, she called me. “Either you’re further along in your pregnancy than you thought,” she said, “or you’re having twins.”

I dismissed this possibility, even though my grandmother’s sister and their grandmother had had twins.

It was recommended that I see a specialist for an early ultrasound. Two hours before the time of my appointment I was supposed to drink eight glasses of water (a full bladder lifts the uterus into a good position for a sonogram). I forgot and didn’t start chugging on a big bottle of water until I was in the car on the way to the appointment, so when the doctor moved the probe over my abdomen, his face registered concern: he saw two amniotic sacs but he could detect only one heartbeat. I tried not to panic as I lay on the table in an ungainly position, pushing images of dead babies out of my head, while we waited for the water to do its thing. When the doctor came back to make another pass, his face brightened. A second heart was beating in syncopated rhythm with its sibling.

When I called Bruce at his office, I started with, “Honey, I want you to sit down.”

“Why?” he said.

“Just do it,” I insisted. “We’re having twins.” There was no response at first, then a slow “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-”

“It could be worse,” I interrupted. “It could be triplets.”

A twin pregnancy is considered high risk for any woman, let alone one closing in on forty, and I had to see three different OB-GYNs before I found one who didn’t make me feel doomed, reading me a riot act list of all the horrible things that could happen. I called Peg Burke, one of the midwives who had attended Clementine’s birth eight years earlier.