Teaming With the Shrew
Copyright© 2025 by Argon
Chapter 4: Stud Muffin
I was back in the middle of shooting the second season of Utilities Included. Brenda came down to LA twice a month to perform her magic on the scripts. She had a standing offer to join the writing staff once she graduated next summer, and she was of a mind to accept.
Jennifer and I developed quite a good chemistry with each other, and the viewers loved the show. I actually had to hire a part time publicist to handle my fan mail and interview requests. Hilarious! I received about 200-300 emails per week from faithful viewers of the show and even from personal fans. Quite a few of the latter were gay folks; not exactly my personal target group, but true admirers. We developed about twenty standard reply texts to cover the various types of fan mail, and my publicist, Toby, spent two hours every day telling the fans how much I appreciated them.
Now in its second year, the show was shown by a few other cable networks all over the country, creating a growing, nationwide fanbase for us. Of course, Jennifer was the leading lady, and she made talk show appearances wherever the show was being offered. Still, some talk show hosts actually wanted to have me on their shows, mostly in the big urban markets on the East Coast. Mind you, these were not network late night shows but rather cable talk shows, but we were getting a bit of a name.
Shooting the episodes was a hoot most of the time. I was playing an exaggerated version of my adult performer persona, and it came easy enough to me. We shot four days every week, enough to be ahead of the broadcasting by three weeks. I was in a supporting role, meaning that only thirty percent of the scenes were with me in them. That gave me lots of opportunities to watch the proceedings from the sidelines, and it was educating. I could see myself doing mainstream acting for a few years, or for as long as I had fun, when my past caught up with me, sort of.
It was early December and we had just wrapped up the Christmas episode. I was sitting in my tiny dressing room wiping off the make up and generally getting ready for leaving, when Sharon stuck her head in.
“Umh, Ricky, can you come to the office? We have an issue that needs discussing.”
I looked at her curiously. “Sure. What’s up?”
She shook her head, obviously distressed. “Let’s go over. This concerns us all.”
Fred Myerson was the head of production. He had treated me okay so far, but just so. Jennifer was also there. I looked at her and she shrugged.
Myerson cleared his throat. “Guys, this is good news and bad news. Good news first. We have an offer for the show from a network, a national network.”
“NBS?” I asked, knowing that their lineup was haemorrhaging viewers.
Fred nodded. “Yeah. We can get the ten pm slot on Mondays.”
“That’s sweet, isn’t it?” I asked innocently.
Jennifer had better instincts. “Don’t tell me they have problems with Ricky!” she challenged. “This was a third-rate show before he joined. He’s getting almost as much fan mail as me. Without him, NBS wouldn’t even have us on their radar.”
Fred winced. “I know. I told them. You see, they’re owned by Brett Monahan. He’s a family values guy. He wants the show, but we need to tone down the racy stuff. And...” he swallowed, “he doesn’t want Ricky on the show.”
“Well, then, maybe he doesn’t want me on the show either,” Jennifer snapped. “I have veto rights for the supporting cast by the way. Remember?”
I did not know that and I realized that Jennifer must have backed me all the time. This would be her break, though. Before my brain could interfere, my mouth opened and the words came out.
“Jenn, don’t! You want that break and you deserve it. I’m not that important. You’re the star. They will probably replace me with somebody established, right, Fred?”
Fred looked unhappy. “You won’t like it. It’s Monahan’s stepson, Hugh Dumont.”
“Is he out again?” Sharon asked. “Last time I heard he was doing time for DUI.”
Fred shrugged. “He’s out again. One condition was regular employment. I guess that’s why Monahan wants our show.”
“I can veto him,” Jennifer maintained.
Fred sighed. “No, you can’t. You have veto rights for supporting cast members, but not for co-stars.”
I was afraid Jennifer would have an aneurism. Her eyes bugged out and an unhealthy red complexion spread from her face down to her neckline.
“Co-star?” she managed to say.
“Part of the deal to get him out of stir, Jennifer,” Fred explained. “Oh, and Ricky, I’ve been authorized to buy out the remainder of your contract. You’ll make out like a robber.”
I calculated quickly. There were 12 more episodes to shoot, $114,000 according to my contract.
“So I get the rest of my pay, 114 k?”
Fred turned red. “Of course not! Monahan offered 50 grand to buy you out.”
I had to laugh. “Fred, I have a contract that says $9,500 per episode, whether I’m in it or not. I don’t need a buy-out. I’ll show up once a week and ask for my lines. If you don’t have any, I’ll leave with a check. Very simple.”
“He ... he won’t pay more than that,” Fred said.
“Well, he better buy me out completely, or we’ll meet in court. I’ll let Floyd handle that. Of course, the whole shenanigans with Dumont will become public. How he has to buy a show with shareholder money to bail out his stepson. The SEC will love that, won’t they?”
“He owns NBS,” Fred interjected.
“Controlling minority share,” I shot back. “Still, a publicly traded stock. Hell, I’ll buy a hundred shares and show up at the shareholder meeting telling them how he wastes their money to bail out a druggy.”
“Jesus! What is it with you?” Fred asked in an exasperated whine.
“For real?” Jennifer joined my side. “You not only dump him, but you want to screw him out of what’s his, and you’re surprised he’s fighting back? Are you out of your gourd? Well, tell Mister Monahan that unless Ricky gets full compensation plus fifty percent punitive damages for breach of contract, I will make his precious stepson look like a complete git in each and every scene we’ll have together. I’m a theatre actress, Fred. I learned and honed my craft on the stage. Dumont is nothing but a C-level talent with delusions of grandeur, and I can tear him apart like a wet tissue. You tell that blowhard I want compensation, too, for working with a twit and a felon. I’m also sure my agent will have something to say about your creative interpretation of my veto rights.”
“Shit, I don’t need this,” Fred sighed. “Okay, I’ll call him. What if he doesn’t cave? What if he cancels the deal?”
“Then we’ll keep having the great show we’ve had until today,” Jennifer snapped back.
Sharon had another worry. “Fred, I’ve come to rely on Rick for the creative work. Can I at least keep him as my co-producer?”
Fred thought briefly. I couldn’t help. I had to needle him.
“As much as you’ll pay me, you’ll get at least some work out of me.”
He cast me a vitriolic glance. “Fine. Just don’t credit him as Ricky Ryder, willya!”
Thusly ended my acting career. To nobody’s surprise except Fred’s, Monahan accepted Jennifer’s and my conditions without even raising a fuss. Fred had been too awed by the offer from a nation-wide network to realize that they needed the show, not vice versa. Over Christmas, Sharon and I carved out my niche of responsibility. I would be credited as co-producer, but as Richard Borgward. We moved into NBS-owned studios in Burbank for the production and I even got a small office on the lot with my name on the door and reserved parking in my name.
Hugh Dumont showed up there after Christmas, full of piss and vinegar, throwing his weight around, annoying the writers and pissing off Jennifer right from the start. He might have survived Jennifer’s antagonism, but if you make the writers unhappy, they can make you look real bad, real fast. In his case, it was even easier. He demanded stupid changes to his dialogue, and the writers simply complied. Hell, nobody could blame them if they accommodated the male co-star. Except, Dumont did.
We were watching the dailies after the second day of shooting, and it was nothing but awkward. In the scenes with Jennifer, Dumont looked like a mouse confronted by a malevolent cat. Her role called for some stuck-up bitchiness, and being a very good actress, she’d always pulled it off convincingly. Paired off against Dumont, who’d made the mistake of calling her “girlie” one time too often — i.e. once — that bitchiness was up to 12 on the open Richter Scale, and it came completely naturally. Every sentence, delivered with breathtaking speed and perfect diction, was laced with scorn. Dumont was no newbie, but his timing was off from a year spent in stir, plus too much drugs and booze before that. He tried to hold his own, but Jennifer had this neat trick to not let him finish his sentences completely. His last words were always drowned out by her next lines, delivered in her rapid fire public school English. She had studied Drama in Oxford, and she’d honed her acting in Stratford upon Avon, presumably setting new standards as The Shrew. She owned Dumont, and he didn’t like it one bit.
“This is Jennifer’s fault. Her timing is off,” he complained.
“My timing is perfect,” she returned icily. “It would seem that you have problems delivering a dialogue. Perhaps we can arrange for some acting classes to bring you up to scratch?”
“You stuck-up bitch! You’re nothing but a snotty newbie. You have one and a half seasons in a cable sitcom, and now you...”
“Well, that’s one more year than you ever lasted in any role, isn’t it?”
“Can’t you ever let anybody finish what they’re saying?”
“Oh! You ... need ... more ... time?”
“Bitch! Sharon, can’t you curb her?”
Sharon shook her head. “Look, Hugh. This is a sitcom. Pris’s bitchiness is one of the main comedic elements. You’ll be fine once you learn how to deal with it.”
“It’s not only her, it’s the role. I’m playing a two-bit wannabe actor, and...”
“Then you really shouldn’t have any problems, should you?” Jennifer cut him off.
It was a sore point for Dumont. We had to retire the Ricky Ryder character. The network did not want a porn performer among the characters. We thought it would be neat to replace a real-life porn performer playing a porn performer with a real-life struggling actor playing a wannabe actor. Dumont did not see the humor.
“The Ricky Ryder role was juicy. Why couldn’t I continue that?”
In this moment I realized that I have real acting talent: I did not roll on the floor laughing my ass off. Instead I tried to reason with him, keeping my face in check.
“The bosses wanted to retire that character as being not family-friendly. Plus, you have no adult movie background. Your background is TV actor. The struggling actor as a roomy worked great in other productions, didn’t it? There are so many things we can do. You just have to parody yourself and your colleagues.”
“Yeah, yeah! A lame-ass copy of that Tony Treviani character.”
“That show ran for ten years and each cast member made a million bucks per episode,” Sharon reminded him.
“Yeah, yeah. Not going to happen here with the ice princess messing up the dialogues.”
Jennifer tilted her head a little. “Are you a natural or did you graduate from idiot school? You are the problem. You haven’t worked in over two years. You’re rusty. You don’t know the first thing about this show and the cast. Yet you waltz in on us and demand special treatment. You insist on out-of-character lines. The writers came up with a tailor-made character for you, an appealing one too, yet you want to be a lame macho stereotype.”
“Ricky Ryder is macho!” he protested.
Sharon shook her head. “Never! He was the stud muffin, and he could pull it off ‘coz the evidence is out there for everybody to see. Everyone over 18 that is.” She giggled.
“That’s beside the point, guys,” I interjected. “Monahan’s people want the Ricky character out. Besides, I own that name, and no matter how much your step daddy pays me, I will not allow you its use.”
“You? Why would you...”
“He is Ricky Ryder, you imbecile!” Jennifer sighed. “It’s his bleeding stage name. He started out in a cameo appearance, just for giggles and to annoy Pris, and he stayed in as himself because he was so damn funny. Funny, not ridiculous.”
“You mean that Ricky Ryder character is real?”
Five pairs of eyes rolled up synchronously, including his own agent, a doll-faced redhead named Elise Jordan.
“Of course he’s real, Hugh. That’s why Mister Monahan insists on retiring the character. Right now, you need to fit in. I’ve seen the screenplay. It’s really not bad. Why don’t we try it first and see how it works?”
“Hey, you’re supposed to be on my side, Girlie!”
“Well, Mister Dumont, that’s where you’re dead wrong. Mister Monahan pays me to keep you on the straight and narrow. So pull up those pants and make like an actor, will you? This production lost two days already because of your prima donna act. That means overtime and additional costs, which in turn will make it harder to market you. Producers like on-time performances.”
Wow! Elise was a tough cookie. Dumont swallowed.
“Jeez! What’s it with you all? Don’t I get any say in this?”
“Right now, no,” Sharon stated. “Let’s focus on playing the role as outlined. Just deliver your dialogue. Once you pick up a following, we can work on a character development. Right now, as Elise stated, we need to shoot an episode.”
“Jeez!”
“And tomorrow, I want you ready and in character by 9 a.m., meaning on the set at 7:30 a.m. You are getting paid, Mister Dumont, and we demand a performance.”
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