There are some actors who, whenever they show up on screen, you think: OK, now we’re cooking. That would apply to Michaela Watkins, who has been a reliable comedic presence on everything from “Saturday Night Live” to her roles in “Enlightened,” “Trophy Wife,” “New Girl,” “Casual,” “Search Party,” “The Unicorn” and more.
She currently co-stars in the Hulu series “Tiny Beautiful Things” with Kathryn Hahn and the film “Paint” with Owen Wilson. After that, it’s director Nicole Holofcener’s “You Hurt My Feelings,” which comes out next month. “It’s funny,” said Watkins, “it’s like everything I did over the last few years is coming out of the gate at the same time. But that’s pretty much acting; when it rains, it pours.”
When it comes to a worst career moment, Watkins has a doozy.
“I have so many stories and some of them I really just don’t want to tell because they are two-whiskeys-in-at-a-dinner-party kinds of stories where I know 78% of the people very well. So this story has to be for public consumption, but I think I’ve chosen wisely.”
My worst moment …
“This goes back to the first TV job that I ever had, and that was on a show called ‘Charmed.’ This was in 2001 and I was very excited about it because I had been doing commercials and now I was finally going to be on a scripted TV show — and a bit of a popular one at that.
“So two days before I’m meant to shoot, my friend comes over and she says, ‘Oh, did you know that you have a little mustache?’ And I said, ‘No, nobody’s ever said that to me.’ And she’s like, ‘It’s Hollywood and you have a TV job — you should do something about it.’
“OK, I guess I’ll do something about it because now I’m a TV actress and I’ve got to do something about a little peach fuzz on my face.
“I had neither money, nor common sense, nor knowledge of the ins and outs of where the beautiful people go to have their lip waxed. So I went to one of these places in Hollywood where they board dogs and they sell candles and they also do waxing (laughs). It’s one of those ‘Hey, we do it all — sure, we’ll make you a burrito’ kinds of places.
“Because it was my first time, I didn’t know that things were going terribly, terribly wrong, which was that I was getting a thousand degree burn on my face. It was like, oh, wow, this really hurts. The wax was clearly too hot and it burned my lip, especially where this one gob was. But we’re such people pleasers when we start our careers and this was before I found my voice to stop things and say ‘Hey, this doesn’t feel right.’
“So she rips off the strip and the look on her face was so very, very scared. It felt like she ripped off 17 layers of skin. Like you could almost see the inside of my mouth. It was such a deep ripping of flesh that happened. I mean, it really hurt. It was like I had a seeping wound.
“They kept apologizing and the woman who did it was practically crying and the man said, ‘We’ll give you back your money.’ And I said, ‘No, no, no — I’m sure it’s fine. I’ll pay.’ (Laughs)
“And I paid! And they said, ‘Are you sure?’ I just felt like we had to make good on this transaction. She was going to wax my lip and I was going to pay for it and nothing could really move me off of that, not even probably needing to go to a hospital.
“Anyway, now I’m working the next day on my first TV job with a huge burn on my face. I didn’t know what to do. It was sort of circular and it was above my lip and probably looked like a cold sore. I’m telling the makeup woman what happened and I don’t think I could ever duplicate her disdain of having to work on my face that day. She was disgusted. If she quit the biz that day, I wouldn’t be surprised.
“It looked like an undiagnosed venereal disease on my face, it looked so profoundly ghastly. And it’s my first TV job ever! In my mind, the producers and director were all huddled in a room together like, ‘I don’t know, do we recast?’ But nobody said anything to me about it. I guess the concealer covered it up enough — I had a new lip spackled onto my lip.
“But I still have a scar. It’s 22 years later and I still have a scar.”
Was Watkins able to give a performance she felt good about that day?
“No. I was sweating because I felt like everybody was staring at this gaping, seeping wound (laughs). You have to understand, every single part of it was new to me. I had done a lot of commercials by that point and a lot of theater, but I had never done television. So I just wanted to be perfect and do a good job, even though they killed me in the episode and I knew I’d never come back (laughs).
“But I wanted that job to beget the next job. The stakes felt so high. And I was meeting Shannen Doherty for the first time and Alyssa Milano and Holly Marie Combs. And we’re all in this shuttle van together and the whole time I’m making a joke about it. Knowing me, I couldn’t stop talking about it.
“By the way, that’s the reason I can’t do drugs, because every time I’ve ever done drugs I’ve told everybody: ‘I smoked pot, just so you know! I’m high right now.’ And my husband will be like, ‘You don’t have to tell every single person.’ But I feel like I do (laughs)!
“But with my lip, it felt like I had to acknowledge the elephant in the room.
“I went home afterward and I think the spackling didn’t help. When you have a burn, putting tons of makeup on it is probably not the best thing for it, so it was quite irritated.
“So I just kept it clean and put aloe on it and it scabbed over eventually. And I thought, unless it gets worse, there’s nothing to be done.
“When I see it now in the mirror I think, ‘You dummy. When you felt it burn, why did you sit there and take it?’ Women are conditioned to be nice and not be difficult and second-guess what is happening.
“So it is a constant reminder that, no, you’re not supposed to feel pain. That’s not normal.
“And now I do nothing to my lip. But I think I’m less hairy than I was 22 years ago.”
The takeaway …
“You get what you pay for.
“And I literally paid for it! I insisted!”
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