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I looked at Bree and could see her shoulders shaking as I tried to come up with an answer.

“I would love to work with Mark Ruffalo. He’s a very believable Hulk,” I said.

“He plays Bruce Banner, not the big green guy,” Bree helped.

“Oh, well, I liked him too. How they would interact with each other, uh, I would guess that would be up to the writers. If I were to guess, Stryker would kick his butt, or maybe I could teach the Hulk how to dance.”

“I can see it now. In the future, you win battles with dance-offs,” Bree shared.

In another interview, I felt like I was in the twilight zone. The guy was weird with a capital ‘W.’

“Hey, how you doing, I’m Bert Carlson?” he asked and held out his hand to shake.

He hung onto my hand and continued to shake it.

“I’m so excited to meet you, David,” he said.

“Uh, me too.”

Bree had an amused expression when he completely ignored her. I ended up having to jerk my hand out of his.

“Can you do me a really personal favor?” he asked.

“Uh, I’m not sure if I should.”

He pulled his phone out and started to dial.

“Can you talk to my mom and tell her I just came out of the closet?” he asked.

Was this guy serious? I looked at Bree, and she snorted, covered her face, and wouldn’t look at me. That was when I figured out he was pranking me.

“I would love to,” I said.

He handed me the phone, and it really said ‘Mom,’ so I was no longer sure. We got her voicemail.

“Hey, Bert’s mom, this is David. He wanted me to call you and let you know that he’s gay. When you get a chance, give him a call so you two can talk about it,” I said.

“I feel like a great burden has been lifted,” he said.

“That was fun,” I said.

Bree must not have believed my sincerity. We called this one quits after that.

Later, we had this British girl interview us. She was busy asking Bree questions.

“You must get asked to read a lot of scripts. What made you decide on this one?”

Bree’s phone chirped, and she took her time and pulled it out of her bag by her chair, then looked at the text.

“Hey, look, the guy from last night,” she said as she handed me the phone to read it.

She continued the conversation with the interviewer. I texted her date back.

‘Had a great time’

‘You free tonight?’

‘Depends …’

‘On what?’ he asked.

‘R U into anal?’

That was when the interviewer asked me a question, so I put Bree’s phone down and forgot about it.

◊◊◊

After the marathon session of interviews, Frank and Caryn wanted to talk to me and decompress. Caryn had taken my suite at the hotel. The studio was being generous, and I would have to thank them when I saw them at the premiere.

“Towards the end, you got sloppy,” Frank started.

I took a deep breath and let it out.

“Did I do anything I wasn’t supposed to?” I asked.

“David, that’s not the point, and you know it,” Frank chastised.

He was right. I was doing this for a purpose, and I had gotten sloppy. Suddenly I remembered I’d forgotten to warn Bree about the text messages. I wondered if what I’d done had crossed some line. Surely not. It then struck me that I’d forgotten to tell Frank about the 69 Naturals photo op. I thought that might distract him from dissecting my every little comment from the day’s interviews.

“Do you know what 69 Naturals is?” I asked.

Caryn looked at me curiously, while Frank looked confused.

“Google is your friend,” I said as I looked at Caryn.

She pulled her phone out and sucked in her breath.

“I will kill him,” Caryn fumed.

“Care to clue me in?” Frank asked.

I came clean about going to the party and letting them take pictures of me.

“Did you sign a release?” he asked.

“No, but what’s to keep them from saying they were candid shots? I bet they could make them look like they came from a cell phone,” I said, reminding him that he had done that when he released pictures to Hollywood Central.

“And you’re just telling me about this now?” Frank asked.

“You do know when they’ll release those pictures, don’t you? They’ll get splashed all over the net during the premiere,” Caryn said.

“Star Academy is supposed to be a family-oriented movie, even with the PG-13 rating,” I admitted.

They’d had me do a voice-over for my language in one scene in particular. With that, we’d gotten the film rated down from an R to appeal to a broader audience. Frank got a faraway look on his face.

“Let me cogitate on this,” he said and then left.

I then told Caryn what I’d done to Bree. She just laughed.

“Do you remember how they hazed you as the new guy?” she asked.

As part of her education process, Caryn had sat me down and wanted to know all about what I’d done on the set of Star Academy. I told her the stories of the lip-sync contest and the dance video. While Craig was the ringleader, the rest of the cast had their hands in it.

“So you don’t think she’ll be mad?” I asked.

“Oh, she’ll be furious, but you can remind her payback is a bitch.”

I liked Caryn more and more as time went on.

◊◊◊