It feels wrong to leave London behind without saying goodbye, though I don’t have any other production notes for you.
I tend to take my last look at places through airplane windows with eyes so blurred by tears that the world is a soft smear of gray, green, and blue. This time was no exception.
As a city, London is the queen of my heart. I’ve seen her in every season, been there for the sake of tourism, for shows, for simple living, and just passing through. This is the first time I worked in London, and I worked hard. A city has a different face when you’re there for work, deeper and far less forgiving. It becomes part of the scaffolding of your life, if temporarily, both nurturer and antagonist.
This London, I loved best of all.
And it’s the same with people. When you live and work with others, there’s a sudden, unavoidable intimacy you gain. You have to do the “whose turn is it to use the bathroom” dance and become deeply concerned by the state of their blisters and stomachs, hour by hour. However temporarily, you become both less and more than a family, washing each other’s dishes and working toward a common goal.
It was a pleasure and a profound honor to share my life with Seraphina, Sherie, and Carrie for nearly two weeks. It says amazing things about their creativity, resourcefulness, and open heartedness that I wish it had lasted longer and I was still in that little London flat with them even now.
I dearly hope that this isn’t the last time we get to work together. We were fabulous, my darlings, utterly fabulous. I wouldn’t place money on any obstacle in our way. And our project isn’t done yet, not by a long shot. We did an impressive amount of filming in London, but there are still a few stragglers to collect, and a bit of filming to do in LA as well. And then of course, there’s a film to be cut from the whole cloth of hour upon hour of interviews.
I look forward to telling you more about those adventures as they happen.
But for now it’s goodbye, however temporarily. My last look at London was the same watery blur as always, but I wasn’t searching for the city through my tears this time. I was trying to see through the roof of Heathrow, to a table in one of the horribly overpriced restaurants where my friends had hunkered down to wait for their flight. Even now, as I settle back into the routine of work and writing, fighting my way through Houston’s crowded humidity, I feel like I’m still looking. I hope I’ll catch sight of them soon.
Rachael Acks
Executive Producer
@katsudonburi