New Amsterdam
Now this was a fun day. New Amsterdam is a new show on Fox that was supposed to be out in the fall but looks like it is going to be a mid-season replacement now. The premise of the show is that John Amsterdam lives forever. Which is ripped right out of the novel Forever by Pete Hamill, so go read this and you’ll understand more. It also happens to be one of my favorite novels, so just read it anyway. The day I shot is a flashback scene of John’s life in 1812. Which means fun period piece! Wigs and fancy dresses and pure aristocratic shenanigans because I am playing “Lady Friend of Aristocrat” at a dinner where John Amsterdam challenges an evil dude to a duel. We’re all gathered around a table, enjoying a succulent meal of pig and spinach and other delicacies, with the evil rich dude, and Amsterdam waltzes in and challenges our evil rich friend. Shocking! I've posted a picture of the whole gang (from left to right): Breeda Wool, Chris Santangelo, Stephen Graham and Michael Jay Kaplan - who were all wonderful and we had a great time together. We were shooting at the Bartow Pell Mansion in the Bronx, which was lovely, and we had a call time of 10:00 am. A van was provided for us and when we arrived we found that there was a huge parking lot filled with all the trailers and large tents for us to wait it out in. They were pumping cold air into the tents, so we all sat outside while we waited. I got a little sunburned. They put us into our skull caps to prepare us for our wigs around 10:30 am and we thought we were going to be on set soon. Eight hours later we were finally on set. No kidding – eight hours!! – of just sitting around in our skull caps, which are secured by a million bobby pins on our head and then when we did get our wigs on, they were heavy, so I had a bit of a headache at the end of the day. But it was really fun to get all “done up” like that. And unless my career takes on a Kiera Knightly track, I don’t know when I’ll get the opportunity to be “done up” like that again. The five of us were a motley crew – taking a million pictures and goofing off. I am extremely gifted at not being cool, which you’ll see in the small sampling of pictures I have posted here:
http://s83.photobucket.com/albums/j301/428pics/?action=view¤t=09b1dd11.pbw
(I tried to get the slideshow to post on this blog but after a few hours trying, I've given up. You'll just have to click on the link if your curiousity is piqued)
The episode probably won’t air until February and the rumor on the street is that they were getting a lot of good establishing shots of the table and reaction shots from us as the hunky Amsterdam strolled in and shook our fancy dinner up.
