“I can’t find my scissors so we’re gonna have to use a straight razor.”
It’s six in the morning. I’m sitting in a makeup trailer in downtown LA in a parking lot next to the river. I’ve landed a recurring role on one of the biggest shows currently on television. The kind of show that’s a phenomenon, that makes people fall in love with TV as a medium all over again. I never thought I’d get this job. When I went to the audition I honestly thought I was just there for fill. So the fact that I’m here already feels like a mistake.
I’d woken up at 3:00 a.m. because I was so terrified of sleeping through the alarm I’d set for 4:00 a.m. because my call time was 6:00 a.m. but I wanted to get there at 5:30 just to be safe. They sat me in the hair chair at 5:55, and just as I sat down, the showrunner’s assistant came in and began talking to the head of the hair department like I wasn’t there. They both looked at my reflection in the mirror as if it were a photograph.
“I didn’t know her hair was that long?” the assistant said. “Me either,” the head hairdresser said.
My hair had always been this long. My hair had never not been this long. In my audition, which the showrunner had attended, in all my fitting photos, in my entire nineteen years of life that I had lived up until now, my hair had always been this long. But they seemed to be upset with me inadvertently for not telling them that my hair was this long. It was below my boobs at this point and, as previously men‑ tioned, had been ever since they met me.
They continued to stare at me in the mirror as the assistant took a photo, texted it to someone, waited for a reply, and then turned to the head hairdresser and said, “He doesn’t like it. You need to cut a bob and we need her on set in five for a blocking rehearsal, with short hair.”
The blood drained entirely from the body of the hairdresser as if a vampire had tapped her like a keg. And then she snapped to and began to tear the hair and makeup trailer apart searching for her cutting scissors. Three minutes into our five minutes, she gave up her search and held up a straight razor. That’s when she told me she couldn’t find her scissors and this would have to do. And then, without so much as asking me, she went to work. She grabbed a fistful of my long, thick horse mane of hair and began slicing it Sweeney Todd–style. As it fell around me I just kept thinking, Maybe this is a dream, maybe this is a prank, maybe I never got this part at all and this entire thing has been a hallucination.
Two minutes later I was staring at myself in the mirror with chin‑length hair. The rest of it sprawled on the ground around me, missing its host. I could still feel it, almost like a phantom limb. A production assistant came in and whisked me off to set for a blocking rehearsal that I floated through. Nobody mentioned my hair again. Nobody mentioned the length or the fact that it looked like somebody had frantically cut it with a straight razor, which they had.
The first day of shooting was a success, and minus my impromptu haircut, I had a blast. One of the actors on the show was directing for the first time, and he was absolutely incredible at it. And something about the energy of it being his first day at something new put me slightly at ease about waltzing into this overwhelming, successful, and established show as a newbie who had just had a traumatizing 6:00 a.m. haircut with a utensil not meant to cut hair.
I went home at the end of that day having forgotten entirely about how my morning had started until I washed my hair and realized how truly uneven the cut actually was. But it didn’t matter, nothing a trim in an actual salon with actual scissors couldn’t fix.
I did a couple more episodes of the show that season. And while the nerves didn’t entirely wear off and there were still bumps along the road and the other actors definitely kept to themselves quite a bit, it was still a thrill and I loved every second of it.
And I always got along with the crew so well. It turned out the on‑set props guy lived a couple blocks from me in Venice, and we became friends and he taught me how to play the ukulele. The costume designer was an absolute tornado of a woman who I came to adore. Her sincerity in her ridiculousness was something I wished I could emulate. When she’d try to put me in a pair of pants I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to breathe in and I’d say, “These aren’t going to fit,” she’d always respond with, “If you can zip ’em, they fit.”
And then a glorious thing happened. They asked me to come back and do more episodes for the following season. I was over the moon — how could I be so lucky? I showed up on set for the first episode of the new season ready for anything. If they had asked me to buzz my head I would have been cool with it. If they had asked me to get naked, I probably would have done it. I was ready to roll with whatever they threw at me. Or so I thought.
The show’s creator and showrunner was an intense human. He directed some episodes every season but not all of them. This one was being directed by someone else. The showrunner wasn’t always around, but when he was, the entire vibe of the set would change, as if a cold front had swept the soundstage. I never entirely understood why. He was definitely spirited and opinionated, but there’s way worse than that in Hollywood. I had always thought there was maybe something I was missing.
I was correct.
We were doing a blocking rehearsal when he showed up on set. The scene was short and easy. I was meant to come into the office, tell everyone I had photos of something important, remove them from the manila envelope I was carrying, and place them on the table. Then everyone had a few more lines and that was it. So we’re rehearsing, I walk in, I go to take the photos out of the envelope, and the showrunner calls “Cut.” Not the director of the episode, the showrunner. And we all look at each other like, Did somebody do something wrong? We all thought the scene was going fine.
He gets up out of his chair at the monitors and walks toward me slowly, looking at the ground the entire time like he’s trying to figure out how to word what he’s about to say. And when he finally stops right in front of me, he takes a few more beats before he lifts his head, looks at me, and says, “What the fuck are you doing?” To which I say, “Um…rehearsing?”
And then he grabs my hand that’s holding the manila envelope and he says, “No! What the fuck are you doing with this! That’s not how you take something out of an envelope! Do it again!”
So we do it again, and again, and again. And every time we get to the part of the scene where I’m meant to take the photos out of the envelope, he calls “Cut” and he gets up and he yells. Well, first, he starts off just raising his voice, which escalates to yelling, which eventually mutates into full‑out screaming.
He spews the kitchen sink at me: “You’re doing it wrong!”
“How the fuck can you think that looks right at all?”
“That’s not how anyone would remove anything from an envelope ever!”
“I don’t understand — when I cast you, you knew how to act.” “I’m honestly confused at how you can be so bad at this.” “Did you forget how to act, Mamet?”
“What’s wrong with you?” “Do it again.”
“Do it again.” “DO IT AGAIN.”
Eventually he gave up or got bored. But this lasted for about a half hour. And nobody stopped it. Everyone just stared at their shoes while he screamed at me. Eventually we finished the blocking rehearsal and shot the scene. I finished my day. I walked to my car and called my agents and told them I quit. I was supposed to do four more episodes that season, not including the one I was on, but I told them I didn’t care what they had to do, I didn’t care if the network sued me, I refused to go back on that set for one more day than I actually had to. I don’t remember anything else about the rest of that shoot. I think I’ve blocked it out.
The show went on to break records for awards and ratings. And it deserved it. It’s an incredible piece of television, and I feel insanely honored to have been a part of it. I feel proud of the work I did on that show and I wouldn’t take back any of it for a second. It’s all a learning experience, right?
I ran into that showrunner at the Emmys a few years later. Both of our shows were nominated. He pretended not to know who I was. They swept the awards that night and part of me resented him for that. But you know, he hasn’t really made anything since. And sometimes I think about him sitting in his office alone feeling sad and angry and anxious and wondering if everyone’s forgotten him, and for a moment it makes me feel sorry for him, feel compassion for him, hope that his life isn’t too bad…
But let’s be real, only for a moment.
From DOES THIS MAKE ME FUNNY?, by Zosia Mamet, published by Viking Books, an imprint of the Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Zosia Mamet.
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