Hey everyone!
My name is Annie, and I’m one of Jesse’s fellow interns this
summer. Hope you’ve all been enjoying
the tales of our many adventures working with Liz. We’ve all learned so much and have gotten to
meet some really interesting, creative people, and it’s only week two.
I’m going to backtrack a bit to write about a little field
trip we took on Monday. One of Liz’s
good friends is the actress Shiri Appleby, whose impressive resume includes Roswell, ER, Life Unexpected, I’m Reed Fish, Swimfan, and
Charlie Wilson’s War, among (many)
others. She recently starred in and
directed the online series Dating Rules
From My Future Self, which Liz directed.
For those who haven’t seen the first season (you should), it’s centered
around a woman who, while trying to navigate her difficult love life, receives
advice via text message from herself ten years
in the future. Shiri only has a cameo in
the second season (in which a new main character chats with her future self via Facetime), but she’s directing an episode for the first time and was generous
enough to let us come to the set to cheer her on and learn how things are run.
Let me be honest: being part of Liz’s entourage is nothing
short of awesome. It became clear pretty
quickly that she was a VIP; she was bombarded with hugs and hellos when we
walked in, and a few of the producers gave up their seats so that we (yep, even
the lowly interns) could have front row seats behind the monitors. Oh, and we got headsets to listen to the
audio being recorded. I should mention
that one of those producers, Tripp Reed, was actually Liz’s first intern back
in the day. Between Gregg Hurwitz and Mr. Reed, we’re beginning to notice a
trend…looks like we have big footsteps to fill.
Seeing Shiri in action was a lot of fun. I have met very few people with as much
enthusiasm and energy as she has, and I think Elizabeth and Jesse would
agree. She was commendably organized and
confident, and I certainly don’t think I would have suspected she was new to
directing if I had just wandered on set.
It was great seeing her various strategies with the actors to get different
reactions out of them, which sometimes included yelling (slightly) outrageous
things from off-camera. By the way,
Shiri now refers to us as her interns
as well, which is more than okay by us!
Actress Lindsey Kraft, who stars in this season
Because everything else just wasn’t enough, we got to have
“lunch” (at 7:30 pm, because of the weird call-time schedule) with Shiri, Liz, and
the rest of the cast and crew. And the
food was really good. Seriously. After helping myself to seconds and a half, I
considered grabbing a to-go box but decided that was a little out of line for
someone who had contributed nothing to the show. Although, come to think of it, Shiri did ask
us our opinion on a shot set-up…so I guess I could have taken some asparagus
after all. Special thanks to Toby Meuli,
one of the stars this season, who was kind enough to sit with us, answer all
our questions and tell us about all the interesting work he’s done.
All in all, we had a fantastic time. We owe a lot to Shiri and the cast and crew,
all of whom were very gracious and welcoming even after Liz left and we hung
around for a while longer. And make sure to
check out Dating Rules when it’s out!
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