Fringe “What Lies Below”

4x18 - The Consultant

We regularly had directors on our show who had lots of trouble with my name (pronounced juh-SEE-kuh). Even with the aid of cast and crew members trying to help him with pronunciation , one director refused to learn how to say it correctly and instead referred to me as “Jessica” so much that josh found a “ my name is” sticker in the production office and wore it with the phonetic spelling of my name written on the front. The director appeared to resent this and continued to mispronounce my name for the rest of the episode. Another director didn’t even try to pronounce my name after getting it wrong (he was Swedish), and started either pointing to me til we made eye contact and I walked over to him, or referring to me as “you” or “that one” . As in “Anna, josh, John and THAT ONE, let me have y’all enter from here”. Another director who was with us in the first season spent 10 minutes talking out the blocking of our scene for a rehearsal, but never mentioned me, my character, or told me what he wanted me to do in the scene. So when he was done I said “hey, where would you like me to be in the scene?”, and in front of our cast and crew, he asked me “what number are you on the call sheet?”

I looked down, embarrassed. Cast members in a production are given numbers to make certain parts of the production more efficient, so like, instead of having the full name of an actor listed in the limited space of a call sheet under the scenes they are in, it will just have a list of numbers that represent all the actors who are in that scene. The number an actor is given generally adheres to the hierarchy of that person’s character in the show; out of seven series regulars, Anna was number 1 and my number was 7.

I quietly said to the director “I’m number 7”, because I knew where he was going with this but I didn’t know how to stop it. He said “number 7, last. so it really doesn’t matter does it?” And he walked away. Everyone in that room saw this happen. No one said anything about it. Josh is the only one who came over to me and gave me a hug. I think he told me “I’m sorry”, as I tried, unsuccessfully, not to cry in his arms.

These are but a fraction of the microaggressions I experienced working on this show. Individually they don’t seem like much. But at the end of five seasons, they feel like they have sliced through all your vulnerable parts. I am not sharing these stories to get people to stop liking the show or to deny the show’s impact. I am sharing because my personal story is as much a part of the legacy of the show as astrid’s was. And because I’m sick of carrying other people’s shame as if it were my own.

astrid farnsworth in every episode- 1.04, the arrival

astrid farnsworth in every episode - 1.03, the ghost network

I am not brushing a cow’s teeth, Walter. You know I have real work to do, right?

Astrid Farnsworth II Alternate Universe

Actress, Jasika Nicole (aka @sugarbooty) 
Photography by Robin Roemer