Free Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick Page A

early so that I could move to Manhattan and do A Little Night Music at New York City Opera, which is the braggiest sentence I will ever get to say. During this time, puberty finally hit me full force, which led to a number of horrifying incidents, including nearly passing out onstage because of the chest binder I had to wear to hide my new boobs.
    Renting an apartment on my own and going to work at Lincoln Center made me feel very grown-up. I was constantly congratulating myself for the smallest things. Yeah, I’m just riding the subway to work in New York City like it’s no big deal . Which of course meant that to me, at every moment, it was a HUGE deal. I wish I could say this masquerading-as-an-adult-and-getting-away-with-it feeling was exclusive to being seventeen, but so many things in my life are still like that. Yeah, I’m checking my email on a laptop I own like it’s no big deal.
    Night Music was the first real job I’d had since I was a kid, and I was desperate to do well. Also, Paul Gemignani, the musical director on High Society (who used to speed up that indulgent actress’s songs), had recommended me for the role, and I didn’t want to let him down. The cast was packed with impressive talents.My onstage grandmother and most frequent scene partner was played by none other than Claire Bloom, arguably the greatest living theater actress. Before I did the show, my dad found a VHS called Shakespeare’s Women & Claire Bloom , which was half documentary, half master class. Watching it raised her to a godlike level in my eyes.
    Working with someone with that kind of technique was beyond intimidating. I wish I could say that I shouldn’t have been nervous, but the woman did not mince words. During our first attempt to rehearse our most intimate scene in the show, Claire stopped me mid-sentence and said, “You’re not going to do it like that, are you?”
    Well, Claire, I thought , this was my audition scene, and that was how I did it in the audition . . . which got me this job. . . . So yeah, I thought I might . I never forgave the director for not defending me. Together they decided what changes I should make. The net result was that I had to do almost the entire scene in profile, facing her.
    If she saw me outside the rehearsal room, she would ask to run our scenes over and over. She once snapped her fingers while I was mid-line and said, “No, really do it; let’s start again.”
    As we got closer to the performance date, we started watching full run-throughs so we could see the pieces of the show come together. After watching me do a scene with another actor, Claire approached me and took hold of my arm.
    “That was really lovely work today, Anna,” she said. Her eyes were sparkling. “No, I mean really wonderful.”
    I was thrilled, but something about the surprise in her voicemade me feel like a monkey who had composed a sonata. Still, it was enough to make me reframe her in my mind as a strict but fair mentor of sorts.
    We became almost friendly. We once walked to a Starbucks near Lincoln Center in the drizzling rain and didn’t talk about work at all. I told her about my friends, who were all still in high school back home, and how I missed them but never knew what to say when we talked. She talked a little bit about her ex-husband (who was Philip fucking Roth, by the way) and her daughter, and like a typical seventeen-year-old I retained none of it. We were getting along well in spite of my fear and she seemed to have a growing respect for my slightly superior musicianship. I could read music and follow the time signature changes, which was especially important now that we were expected to listen for our cues instead of watching the conductor. The irony was that we were in the company of five full-time members of the New York City Opera, but their skill level so exceeded ours that we could almost no longer understand it to be impressive. It was like being the smartest janitor at