Cordelia (wearing pink) has thicker dark brown hair, darker complexion, brown eyes, a round face, and a larger mouth. Estella (wearing purple) has thinner blond hair, a lighter complexion, bright blue eyes, a longer face, and a small mouth. In a room full of a dozen babies, it would be hard to identify them as sisters, let alone twins.
But, I went anyway. The director spent twenty seconds looking at them, declared them adorable, and moved on. We left, and I thought that was the end of it.
Two months later, someone from the In Plain Sight casting group called me and asked if Estella was available to play a character in the show. It would be a one-episode commitment, two half-days of filming, and she would be paid for the job. I had just defended my PhD the day before, so had a little more free time, so I said yes.
The first half-day of filming was a mess. We arrived at the studio, waited around for a while, filled out some paperwork, then went to "wardrobe" where Estella tried on two outfits and had three more held up to her before the wardrobe person decided on what she should wear. We were then sent to the "nursery." There, we sat around and talked with the mother and grandmother of the twins who play the regular baby on the show, a six-year-old who was going to be in the same scene as Estella, the six-year-old's mother, and two tutors for the kids. Yes, a six-year-old and three five-month-old babies required two tutors while on set. The worst part of that is that we were there only for the afternoon (1:00 to 5:00) and the six-year-old had already had a full day of school that day so didn't have to do any lessons. I thought it would be pretty nice to be a tutor for a TV series!Because Estella was five months old, she was allowed (by New Mexico law) to be at the studio for up to four hours a day, and on set only two hours. The paperwork and wardrobe took an hour, and we spent the next two hours in the nursery waiting. I was beginning to think that they were just going to send us home, but eventually we were called together and told that we were going to go to a house in Albuquerque to take a single still photo. They started loading us up in the van, and I suggested that I would follow the van since it would be easier to take Estella in my own car. Fifteen minutes and two calls to legal later, they decided that it would be a liability issue to have Estella ride in my car -- she needed to be transported to the set in a company vehicle. Her car seat wouldn't fit in the fifteen-passenger van they had (the car seat was too long), so they decided that Estella and I could ride in a company SUV that would follow the van. I installed her car seat in the SUV, then waited another ten minutes while they looked for a union driver, only to discover that there were no union drivers available. So we were stuck, until someone came out with an old infant car seat. It was a car seat used on the set and they wouldn't be needing it that afternoon, and it fit in the van (barely). Unfortunately, it was set up for a baby who was much larger than Estella, but we got it adjusted, installed it in the van, and we drove away.
The house we went to was an older home in Albuquerque. Estella, the six-year-old girl, and two young adults were going to be in the photo -- it was supposed to be a family photo from thirty years ago. They got everyone set up and took the picture outside the house -- on a very cold, very windy afternoon in Albuquerque. The mother in the photo held Estella, and she screamed the entire time the photo was being taken. Fortunately, we were only at the house for about fifteen minutes, then back to the studio and we were able to go home.
The second day of filming was rescheduled twice, and always at the last minute. I'd get a call around 6:00 the evening before we were scheduled to film, delaying until a future date. Eventually the filming day came (and didn't get canceled) and we drove directly to an off-studio location. Trailers were set up all over the place, and we had a nice little trailer room to ourselves. Estella played, I read a book, and soon we were called to go to the same house we had taken the picture at earlier. A van was available to take crew to the house, but of course there was no car seat. This time, they didn't even try to put Estella's car seat in the van, or to find another car seat; they just asked me to follow the van to the house.It was much warmer this day, and Estella filmed two scenes: one outside and one inside. In the outside scene, Estella is in a pack-n-play in the front yard and her older sister is dangling some keys in front of her. The dad comes out of the house and has a conversation with the older sister while Estella just rolls around in the pack-n-play. It took about an hour to film that scene, for what ended up to be about thirty seconds on the screen (and a five-second shot of Estella). At one point, the older sister and dad were doing the scene with close-ups, and I was holding Estella out in the street. She was standing up holding on to my hands, let go, and fell face-first into the street. She started crying, I picked her up and ran her back to my car, and I heard the director yelling "cut! cut! that was perfect, but we have to do it again!" I felt awful, and within two minutes someone came up to me and asked me to take Estella back to the trailers to wait.
So we waited in the trailers for a while, then returned to the set to film the inside scene. Estella was in a cradle in the living room, with her older sister leaning over the cradle and talking to her. Her parents were fighting in the background. This scene was only filmed a few times, for about twenty minutes. Finally, they retook the picture they had taken the previous day (with Estella smiling this time), and we were done.
Two months later, Estella's episode was on the air and we watched the show for the first time, marveling at the eight hours we spent on the set (and two hours spent filming) for two scenes: one was about five seconds long, and the other was so brief that we couldn't even tell it was Estella!
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