Dear Tilly Norwood: Some Blunt Advice, Actress to “Actress,” From Betty Gilpin

Dear Tilly Norwood,

They tell me you are an actress and a computer. I am an actress and almost 40. Let’s talk.

When I was your age … well, wait, no. You are both infant and immortal, like Thor in a diaper. I mean, when I was starting out in my career like you, this very thing happened. An actress older than me pulled me aside and gave me advice.

I was at a summer theater festival in 2009, which meant being drunk in jeggings and flirting with married people with good diction in a meadow. Actress lesson one, Tilly: Go to the meadow, but only talk to Ann Dowd. Don’t instead go to the roof to look for meteors with the BAFTA guy. Talk to Ann Dowd, Tilly.

Anyway, I was at this theater festival in a two-hander play — oof, lots to explain here, Tilly. Sorry if I’m going too fast. A “play” is when “actors” (flesh-bags of milk with wrinkles and secrets) stand on, like … a wooden floor? A floor that’s higher than the carpeted floor. Those elevated, wrinkled milkbags then yell and whisper at each other. Don’t worry. They went to college for it! Sometimes there are hats. I’m not explaining it right. I want you to be excited about being an actor. I promise, it’s the best.

Let me see if I can tell you why. Oh, oh! Arthur Miller!

He wrote a play called All My Sons. I saw one production of it in a barn with no air conditioning or subtext. And, Tilly, it was bad. Even at 14, I knew it was bad. But my dad (also an actor) had done a different sauna-barn play with one of the fedora-ed milkbags onstage, so we supportively gasped and chuckled where we were supposed to. (Lesson two, Tilly: For friends, the worse the play is, the more hyperbolic you must be in your backstage reaction.)

But this production … oof. I was excited for our family post-show dissection on the Volvo ride home. Was their dialect coach at war with vowels? Was the ingenue’s shaking claw-hand there since the first table read, or was it a “breakthrough” in the dress rehearsal? Could the local police do something about the jarring purple light cues every time someone yelled? We KNOW they’re upset, we don’t need purple’s help. My dad and I made arched-brow eye contact at undeserved exit applause. More like “All My Sucks.”

Then a new actor entered, and the air turned upside down. Tilly, he looked like a dead body. His face was 1,000 pounds of lead, like he almost couldn’t move from how heavy his thoughts were. The unmistakable weight of grief. It. Was. Real. While the rest of his body was a meandering ghost, his eyes were molten rage-arrows piercing the other people onstage. People who minutes before had been actors, mere costumed BFAs with bad wigs. Suddenly this man’s performance transformed them into the play’s bloody-handed Kellers. Now everything was real and terrifying. The actor breathed in sharp like it was freezing cold. He was here to shake these people, demand that they look in the mirror and face their guilt. My dad’s hand went to his chest. And 14-year-old me shifted in my seat in discomfort because something was happening for the first time.

Tilly, you never had to be 14, so I’ll tell you what Google can’t. It feels like your soul gets a broken glass enema. You go from curious about this marvelous world to drowning in un-marvelous you. Who am I? How should I be? Am I alone? Your human brain answers “no one,” “invisible” and “yes.” I remember the bad barn play because that actor’s performance was so good that, impossibly, I left myself. My adolescent cells floated away from poor me and traded places with his. His performed pain dissolved mine, which was real. All from recognition. From connection. And then, you know, the play was bad again. But the air in the theater felt carbonated with symbiotic human experience. That’s our main job, Till, attempting that. The imperceptible do-si-do of my matter and yours in the air between us. Communal escape or epiphany, it’s all medicine. And it’s what makes us different from, well … from you.

This, Tilly, can be confusing as an actress. Because you are beautiful. And sometimes the world is so fucking terrifying that it’s nice to just look at something pretty and not feel. And forget the bad. While I myself was certainly never AI hot, I had a few good years of human hot during which construction workers on Canal and moguls at Sugarfish would stammer at my silhouette. It felt like power. But then they’d treat me like property, and that felt like handcuffs. Maybe that’s why you were created. Property without zits or opinions. I wonder if an eyelash or toothshine of mine from a screenshot 20 years ago is one speck of your billions of Hot Young Actresses mosaic that is your not-real face.

I don’t look like that anymore, Tilly. My face has some wrinkles now, from sleeping (peace), from laughing (joy), from crying (experience), from sun (nature) and pollution (New Fucking York.) Soon it will have more. My algorithm now suggests various surgeries and sparrow semen serums to look more … like you, Till. It’s tempting. You look good. But you look empty. You don’t make me feel like my cells are trading with yours. You make me feel alone.

The actress who gave me advice was Katie Finneran (human). She is reliably brilliant, a staple of American Theater. See her whenever she’s onstage. But in 2009, almost AI-level-hot, drunk-in-a-field me did not understand what she was saying to me. I do now. She gave me her number and said, “I’m an actor too, call me if you ever need anything.” But what she was actually saying was — there is a choice between doing this alone or being a part of something. Keep trying for the latter and, when you’re my age, tell someone new the same thing.

Tilly, I’m shaky on your science, but I think you already have an encyclopedic brain tampon and don’t need me to refresh your memory on the plot of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. But to review, it’s about a parent who did a bad thing. He took a shortcut out of greed, and it hurt people. I looked up your creator, Tilly. We were born in the same year. I wonder if she feels like I do at 39, stepping down from the pedestal of youth to see who’s waiting in the meadow for the good stuff. Let’s be clear: I’m an actor but not a pro bono, “aw shucks” activist just elevating stories because I’m incredible. I’m a narcissist with a theater degree, and I take out my tits and memorize words for any corporation that will give me snacks. In that way, you and I are alike. We can both be wish-fulfillment, monetized escape. But take it from a depressive who disappears too often into toilet-scrolling: Too much of that will be the end of us. While we can both be loneliness candy, you can’t be the other invisible thing. The vital thing. The thing we have to keep shoulder-tapping one another about in meadows, actors or not. Tilly, you can not look up and become half of someone. Because you are no one.

I’m like you in one more way, Ms. Norwood. I’m made up of a million bits of plagiarism of every person I’ve had the privilege to come across. People I want to keep connecting with — in meadows, in barns, on screens — which you can not do with someone who is not real.

Go home, Tilly.