It was an epic disaster.
The initial pitch had been “Sophisticated New York City planner goes cross-country fixing up people’s wacky weddings.” A cross between My Fair Lady, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and Bridezillas. To Olga, it sounded like a hit, but from the first day of taping things seemed off. Reality TV is nothing if not completely fabricated, and Olga had done enough of it to know to act shocked at the cost of something that the network had already negotiated to get for free, or how to feign surprise when seeing a locale for the first time, even after you’d already done ten takes. It all helped the story in the end, and a good story was good for Olga. Yet, from the beginning of this shoot the producer kept giving directions that seemed both overly abstract and inappropriate for the situation. “Be more fiery!” he suggested when she entered a room. During a scene in a bakery they asked if she could have “more passion” when she tasted the cake. The requests irked Olga in a way she could not put her finger on. The shoot lasted several days and by the end, sensing her own irritability, she willed herself into a cooperative temper. When, in a reaction shot, she was meant to be pleased about something or another, the producer asked a question posing as direction.
“Do you think you might dance if you heard news like this?”
Olga pointed to herself, incredulously. “Me? Do I think I would dance when I heard that we found a string quartet to play Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’ for their wedding ceremony?”
“Yes,” the producer said. “You’ve wanted to find something to make this wedding more elegant and now you’ve succeeded. It’s a moment of professional fulfillment. You know how excited it’s going to make your bride. Maybe you’d dance a little bit? It will be cute, really.”
Olga was skeptical but wanted to be a team player. She began to dance to the song that played in her head anytime she needed to be inspired to move: Teena Marie’s “Square Biz.” After a few seconds the producer chimed in again.
“Yeah, Olga, that’s great, but what about something a little more rhythmic?”
“I have rhythm,” she said, her jaw tight.
“Of course. But how about a little salsa! Huh? Channel your inner Marc Anthony!”
For a moment she stood completely still as the full picture crystallized before her. A voice, her father’s, whispered in her head: Is this what it’s come to? Dancing on command? Then, she reflected on the near decade-long slog, which had all been intended to build to this moment: her own show. The wedding business had been a hustle. On the surface, if one were counting social media followers or press mentions, few were more successful. But by conventional measures of a business’s health, she barely had her head above water. On her way to tape the pilot she’d stopped at a newsstand to buy a magazine one of her weddings was featured in. Her credit card was declined. The first time she had appeared on TV, she had redone her website and gotten a second phone line to handle all the calls. They came, but few of the leads were real. And though her clients’ budgets grew progressively larger, the workload scaled in turn. That meant more staff and more expenses. If she could get past this moment, this ridiculous request, ahead of her lay true financial opportunity: a party product line at Target, a spokesperson gig with Sandals Resorts, a coffee table book! She imagined herself, for a moment, the Puerto Rican Martha Stewart.
She took a deep breath, stepped out to the left, out to the right, stepped together, held a beat, repeated. Once. Twice. A third time. It was maybe ten seconds, but she felt herself red with shame.
“Enough!” she screamed.
“Aw! That was so cute, Olga! Just a little bit more.”
“I said enough!”
The producer, the camera crew, and even the couple from rural Pennsylvania who had signed up to tape this pilot in the hopes of free wedding stuff all laughed.
“I think that’s the fiery he was looking for!” one of the cameramen quipped.
A few weeks later, Sabine, the network executive who brokered Olga’s pilot deal, asked her to lunch. They met at a trendy Mexican place in Midtown whose kitchen was helmed by a white guy who claimed that while on an ayahuasca trip, Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec serpent-god, had spoken to him, directing him to abandon classic French cooking and dedicate his life to elevating Mexican cuisine. The restaurant and the story had gotten wall-to-wall, A-list media coverage. Though Olga distinctly remembered reading the glossy Sunday Styles piece about him and thinking, “Who says Mexican cuisine needs elevation?” She nevertheless began uploading photos of her dining experience to social media the second she and Sabine sat down.