Some days you are dressing a set in a historic mansion, a five star hotel in a penthouse suite, and some days you are outside in a literal junkyard all day.
Leadman Deon Philipps literally jumping out of a dumpster
I was so grateful to our set dressing crew for really rallying for a long day under the sun in heat advisory (HEAT ADVISORY!) weather to put together this unconventional and creative set. Shooting crew was filming in there overnight.
Not going to lie, it was a really tough day for me. But this was a real highlight that gave me faith in humanity:
At lunch I walked to the nearby deli but wasn’t feeling it.
Remembering that I saw some Chinese workers eating a rice dish at the warehouse down the street I walked over and asked them where they got that Chinese food (we were in deep industrial Ridgewood where cinematic junkyards still exist in NYC.)
They told me the warehouse provides lunch to them but if I walked a couple of blocks there was a Chinese place. I was about to start walking when the lady of the group said to one of the truck drivers “you want her to walk blocks in this weather?”
And she rushed inside and gave me two boxes of the homemade food she made for everyone’s lunch at the warehouse. We chit chatted about 老家 and the 麻烦 when filming is on your street and then I walked back to the junkyard to eat lunch.
The food was so good and I felt so grateful I totally forgot how utterly disgusting it is that I ate lunch outside in a toxic junkyard. I went back to the warehouse with some oranges from crafty to say thank you. Best pay off of learning Chinese to date.