Every Day I'm Hustling Read online

  There was a moment where I had to do what I call “flipping the channel.” I was out late one night at another club in L.A., and I kind of looked around at who I was hanging with. These weren’t my homegirls or Gigi. They were people who liked to drink and be seen. And this one guy was eyeing me for a while. Then he got real close.

  “You look like a model,” he said. He was cute but, ooh, that gin-and-tonic breath.

  It was the aha moment. Like a model. I wasn’t one. I was thinking it was cute to have guys buy me drinks, thinking it mattered whether or not I was the prettiest girl in the place. That was acting like a model, not being one.

  I gave the guy a polite smile and looked at all the people around me. These people weren’t hustlers. They were not focused on anything other than getting a waitress’s attention. I am around people who are going nowhere and I am better than this, I thought. All this clubbing ain’t equaling no paychecks! I need to switch things up here. I had to buckle down and get it together.

  I entered a few modeling competitions. One was called Face Finders, and I got to go to Arizona and was a finalist. All the girls were talking about wanting to go to New York. “That’s where the best models go,” one said.

  A girlfriend of mine, Barb, wanted to get into the music business, and she kept bringing up New York, too. One day I turned to her. “Let’s try it out,” I said. “Let’s move to New York.”

  Cut to us living in Hell’s Kitchen. Our apartment was a dingy little hole near Times Square, back when Times Square was rough and dirty. Barb and I slept on two air mattresses on the floor. No matter how I scrubbed the place, it never felt like home. It was a romantic starving-artist scene, only there was nothing romantic or in the least bit nice about it. I called my mom as soon as I got a phone.

  “I moved to hell, Mom.”

  “Well,” she said, “you wanted to go there.”

  A friend from L.A. by the name of Jill Jones was also living in New York. She was the blonde in Prince’s “1999” video, working the keyboard and grinding with Lisa from Wendy & Lisa. Prince loved her voice and they had a thing going. I thought it would be good for Barb to meet her, so I invited Jill over to our place.

  “What the hell are you doing over here?” she said, standing in the doorway. “Vivica, I’m rescuing you.”

  She did. Prince had her put up in a penthouse across town by Grand Central. Since she was always traveling with Prince, she said I could live with her there for free. “Just take care of my dogs,” she said. “I’ve got you.”

  Me and them two dogs were some pampered bitches. She had these two little Malteses, and we had a fine time acting like that penthouse was our place. It was like I’d moved from the projects to Beverly Hills. The place had white carpets and white walls, and I would take the most luxurious bubble baths in this huge tub. Even the water felt rich! I would come home from modeling look-sees and look out over the beautiful lights of the city. If I kidded myself enough, I could feel like I’d made it. But none of this was really mine. I was playing pretend, no different from Barbie in a dream house. I wasn’t jealous, though. I felt, One day I will earn this and have this, too.

  I lived like a princess for nearly a year, not paying rent, my career treading water in that pretty bathtub. Then one day Jill gave me a call.

  “Hey, girl, me and him aren’t going through good things right now,” she said. With Prince, it was always “him.” She didn’t need to clarify.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, baby,” I said.

  “I’m going to have to move, Vivica.”

  It was like the record scratched. If Jill moved, I moved. Prince was paying for my little fantasy and I’d never even met him. And when the relationship was over, it was like someone called the repo man on Jill. Girl, bye!

  I made the mistake of becoming comfortable in someone else’s success. I had to pull up stakes, but I was not going to Indianapolis, that’s for sure. I decided to go back to Huntington Beach and Gigi’s family so I could finish up school. (Which I did, thank you very much, Mom. I got my associate’s degree in social and behavioral sciences.)

  I took a cab to the airport, and my whole life could be crammed into two bags. I looked back at the skyline of Manhattan and I thought, When I come back, I’m gonna be famous. And I was. The next time I came to New York I was a bona fide soap opera star.

  And yes, I finally met Prince in 2011. He invited me onstage to dance for him at his show at the Forum. He was a little bitty thing, but he had some moves! I was too busy dancing to thank him for all those bubble baths. His passing was a terrible shock, and I will always be indebted to him for giving me that first taste of real luxury.

  *   *   *

  Once I was back in California, there was no more time to mess around. I needed to be ready, to stay attentive for opportunity and ready to act immediately. No warm-up, no “let me think about it.” I carried my modeling portfolio with me everywhere, expecting to be discovered and visualizing how I would react so I’d be able to take my moment and make it count. And I truly believe that because I put my intention out there, fate responded with an “I see you, girl.”

  It happened when I was having lunch with a girlfriend outside at Cravings, an Italian restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. I was wearing this leopard-print miniskirt with cowboy boots and a black shirt, and I had my hair up. This man came walking along the street and then stopped at our table to look right at me.

  “Excuse me, are you an actress?” he asked, with a British accent.

  “Noooo,” I said, “but I’m a model.” I went digging into my bag. “Would you like to see my portfolio?”

  “No, but here’s my number,” he said. “My name is Trevor Walton. Please call me. I think you would be great for a television show I’m doing.”

  His card said he was a producer at Paramount. But the second he was gone, my friend, who was not in the entertainment business, was all like, “Okay, these guys out here are devils trying to get girls and turn them into prostitutes.” If I called this Trevor, she said, I was basically signing my life away to the Hillside Strangler.

  I listened to my instincts instead. This was the moment I had stayed ready for. And I later came to find out Trevor didn’t want nothing from me but my talent. There was something in me that he saw. And he became my guardian angel. He got me an agent and an audition for a pilot at Paramount. When I went in, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. But I smiled, pushed aside my fear, and did it anyway. There is nothing as inspiring to an artist or entrepreneur as having nothing to lose.

  Trevor called after the audition. “They said you were green,” he told me. “Green as hell. But they all knew this was your first time and they liked you.” I didn’t get the job, but Trevor guaranteed me I’d be working.

  I landed a Clearasil commercial where I had to run around on Melrose pretending I was getting chased by pimples. I didn’t even have lines. There was someone yelling, “Don’t let the zits get you!” But it was $400, scale, and you have to start somewhere.

  Let me tell you how auditions go. It’s rare that they ask you to sit down and talk about yourself. You might get that little tiny bit of sugar when you come in. Like, “Hello, what’s your name?” Usually, it’s “You got any questions? Okay, let’s go.” Sometimes you can feel the room, and you think, Ooooh yeah. You know they’re with you.

  Then they may give you some notes and ask you to try it a different way. That’s to see if you’re coachable. Just to see if you can give them a little something else. But most of the time it’s “Thank you.” You see yourself out and you wait by the phone.

  You have to be sympathetic to the casting agent, who is kind of like a hiring manager or someone you see in HR. Maybe you think you’re perfect for the job, but they have the whole film—or company—in mind. You have to be the right fit, so if you’re hungry, your best bet is to go into your audition or interview and be flexible so they know you’re coachable.

  I kept working my day jobs while I audition
ed, but I started working smarter, thanks to my “host sister,” Gigi.

  “Girl, you need to stop working these little jobs.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I liked the bookstore, and you know I loved the Potato Palace.

  “You need to come work with me at Bob’s Big Boy and be a real waitress.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “You’d go home every day with money,” she said.

  “Whaaat?”

  “Oh, yes, sweetie,” she said with a laugh. “These tips flow in over there.”

  And so that’s what got me from behind the counter and introduced me to the world of waitressing. I loved it. I felt like I was getting a grade at the end of the meal. That cash in hand was good, thank you, Gigi. But I kept at my auditions, until I saw a notice that Days of Our Lives was casting. I went in with all those auditions under my belt, and I wasn’t so green anymore. I’m no Michael Jordan, but he once said of a Nike commercial: “Why don’t they show all the times I failed to get to success?” (Did you know he was cut from his high school basketball team? Stick that on your inspiration board!)

  I’d had plenty of failures, so I was definitely ready for success. Days would be my first speaking role, and I wasn’t going to have to pretend pimples were out to get me.

  *   *   *

  I was a nervous wreck the night before my first day on Days of Our Lives. I had my lines down cold, make no mistake, but I was worried about the five A.M. call time. I was still living in Huntington Beach, and I had to get to the NBC studio in Burbank. You can never guess how L.A. traffic will be. My friend Lisa Mapps had a place in L.A., and she was like, “Vivica, just sleep on my couch.” So my major TV debut followed a night of couch surfing.

  Everybody on set was really sweet, and I admit I was a little starstruck. These were people I’d seen on TV for years, and there they were, speed-reading scripts and checking their makeup. I have, to this day, the utmost respect for soap actors. Working on one is like acting boot camp since the schedule is so grueling. If your character has a story going, you do five shows a week, and then go home to memorize pages and pages of dialogue. And you have to make the most outlandish story lines real, all while hitting your mark and crying on cue.

  One of the first things I learned was that nobody had time to wait for you to get teary for a crying scene. When I first had trouble, the crew was like, “Oh, baby, we’ve got a little trick for you.” They blew menthol mist into my eyes, and that would make you tear up. That is why I said, “I gotta learn to cry on cue ’cause this shit stings like a mother.”

  I also learned about craft services. That’s one thing about show business: You will get fed. ’Cause they got food everywhere. That’s why you see actors and actresses get a little chubby when they finally get a job. You can’t blame a once-starving actor for not being able to push away from the table, you know? Sometimes it’s steak and lobster; other times—and this is a pet peeve of mine—wraps or some garbage. It all depends on how big the production is and how much the people in charge like to eat, too. At the soaps, there was always breakfast, because it was a twelve-hour day. On Days, you could go to the NBC commissary for lunch, and that was always fun. You would see stars from other shows, and it added to the community feel. We were all working actors, living our dreams.

  I’d been in audition mode so long that I stayed that way. Every day I tried to earn my part on that show. I knew my lines; I knew my scene partners’ lines. I showed up early; I stayed late. I wanted to be there even more, but the writers just weren’t building up my story. China Beach called, and I’d landed a little arc on there as part of a makeshift girl group in Vietnam, the Candettes. But the thing that seemed like it could be the start of something even bigger was a small—and I mean small—role in Oliver Stone’s docudrama Born on the Fourth of July. My character’s name was “Hooker, VA Hospital,” so that gives you a sense of my scene with Tom Cruise. As you know, Tom plays Ron Kovic, a paralyzed Vietnam War veteran, and I straddle another war vet in the hospital bed next to him. My lines were “Why, sure, sugar.” “Like this?” “Anything you want, baby.” I was a nice prostitute, thank you.

  I was on set just one day, and it was overwhelming. I just wanted to not get fired, so I was just standing there and trying to not get in the way. I admit I was looking to see Tom Cruise. You know, that sexy Tom I knew from Top Gun and Cocktail. As I’m looking, this crew guy walked by me looking like a rough biker who needed a shave and a shower. He stopped right in front of me.

  “Hi there,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Hi,” I said, shaking it kind of warily but so nervous about being on a film set that I would take anyone as a friend. I found myself looking into the most intense and most beautiful green eyes I had ever seen in my life.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  I paused, drawn into those eyes. “My name is Vivica,” I said. Did we have a fixer-upper on our hands here? I thought, I can get him a razor …

  “Tom,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

  As he was walking away, I realized that was Tom Cruise.

  “Oh my God,” I said aloud. “Was that Tom Cruise?”

  He heard me and turned back with that smile. “Yeah,” he said, “I look kinda jacked up, huh?”

  “Oh man!” So that was my first meeting with Tom Cruise. He was the most polite guy, and he was committed to work. He knew everyone’s name on that crew, and I thought, That’s how a star acts. You can be humble and still be confident. The biggest star in the world came right up to me and introduced himself to someone with three half-lines and a half day’s work. To this day, I do that on every single set I’m on.

  Meanwhile, Days still wasn’t really putting much into my character. I was holding down my waitressing gigs, too. I didn’t want to turn down good work like China Beach or opportunities to do small film roles if Days was going to cut me at any moment, so I asked for a contract.

  They said they couldn’t at the time, and I made a decision. “Oh well, gotta go, then.”

  If you feel you are not valued at work or not selling like you think you should, get real and think about why. Is it because you’re not applying yourself? For me, working hard means going above and beyond, not simply doing what’s in the job description. If you’re in an office or company, you’ve got to be a team player. That means coming in early, doing something extra, doing those little bitty things. When you go out to get coffee, bring something for the boss. I’m not saying be a kiss-ass or brownnoser, just prove you’re a team player.

  Make it so that no one can say, “Well, are you qualified? You weren’t here, you haven’t applied yourself, and you haven’t done the extra thing…”

  If you’ve done all those things and you’re still not moving up, then you can walk away knowing your worth. If you’re not valued, move on. That’s what I did with Days. I heard about an opportunity to join Generations, the first soap opera centering on an African American family, with the promise of a much bigger role than I had on Days. I went for it and got the gig.

  My Generations character, Maya Reubens, was a dance girl, and it was fun to play her. The best day was when I found out Richard Roundtree was playing my dad. Shaft is my dad? Lord, what? Richard Roundtree starred as a detective in the Shaft series, a collection of films that has defined representations of black male power in movies for years. He’s a bad motha— Shut your mouth! The story was that Maya has been helping her father stay on the run for fifteen years after a mysterious lab explosion. I brought layers to the work. I was the costar that people would be like, “Shit, you don’t want to do nothing with Vivica because she will come in and steal that damn scene.”

  Still, I was new as an actress. I had my first love scene ever on Generations. It was with Kristoff St. John, who was the male lead of the show. And I damn near ran out of the bed. I was like, Oh, Lord Jesus, what the hell is this? I said, “We are not making out.”

  He was such a pro, but I
was still a little bit Angie from Indy. Everlyena’s gonna kill me behind this one, I thought. But I got through it. When I first started acting, my impulse was always: Oh my God, what’s my mother going to say?

  But again, you have to be ready to face your fears and do it anyway. Having courage doesn’t mean you don’t still get anxious. To this day, I get butterflies walking on a new set or stepping onto a stage. Not every now and again. I am talking every single time. Maybe you get anxious when you’re giving a presentation, or meeting a new boss or client. Butterflies just mean the work is still important to you. And that’s good.

  Here’s a tip for taming those nerves: When I get too in my head before a performance, I’ve learned to ask God for help. I say, Give me grace, Lord, so that I can perform to the best of my God-given abilities. You have brought me to this point and I am grateful.

  And it works. Your whole life has brought you to that moment. Everything you’ve learned, all the hours you’ve put in, all that was training for the now. Remember that and you’ve got this.

  Day to day on Generations, my on-screen dad, Richard, gave me such a sense of protection. One day we were working with a certain director. I won’t bother you with his name because he wasn’t a nice man and he’s beneath your notice. At the time, I didn’t know how little he thought of actors.

  One day I asked the director a question. It wasn’t a clichéd “What’s my motivation?” question—I think it was about blocking or what beat I should enter the room on.

  “Your job is to shut up and do what I told you to do,” he spat.

  I blinked. My instinct was to fight, but my other instinct was to keep my damn job. Like John Shaft incarnate, Mr. Richard Roundtree came to my rescue.

  “Your fucking job is to direct her,” he yelled. “You don’t just tell her to shut up. She asked you a question. Answer her.”