Searching for Lynn Redgrave
That time we forgot to pick up an acting legend...
It was early in the morning on a very warm September day when I arrived The Sheraton Centre, our home base for the duration of the 1996 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). This day was all about SHINE – a remarkable Australian film that would go on to win the coveted TIFF People’s Choice Award that year and also be nominated for several Academy Awards.
Directed by Scott Hicks and starring Geoffrey Rush (who went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for this role), Lynn Redgrave, John Guilgud, Noah Taylor and Armin Meuller Stahl - on this day, visiting talent were scheduled to do interviews with the Canadian press. Unfortunately, the day didn’t start off as smoothly as we had planned.
Getting to our working suite in the hotel was a bit of an ordeal that year. The hotel was SO huge, that we actually had to take two separate elevators to get to our floor - the first one took you up to the 12th floor, and then you had to catch the “connecting” ride up to our floor through another bank of elevators. I cursed the stupidity of this “journey” every day.
“We lost Lynn Redgrave! We have to find her – she is somewhere in the hotel! Please go find her!”
I finally reached our suite to find the door slightly ajar. As I pushed it open, I could almost feel tension spilling out into the hallway, and before I could even utter “good morning!” - my boss, Anna Maria Muccilli, with a grim look on her face shouted, “We lost Lynn Redgrave. We have to find her – she is somewhere in the hotel, please go find her!”
“What? We LOST Lynn Redgrave? How did we lose Lynn?!? What do you mean?!? I replied in a confused state.
“Just GOOOOO!” she insisted, so in a complete state of panic, that’s what I did. I abruptly put down my coffee, dumped my backpack, spun around and took off in a mad dash down the hallway back towards the elevator in search of her.
The hotel complex, which still stands today, consists of three connecting buildings, one that is 43 floors high - which was our tower. The lobby itself is three stories high and it also serves as one of the entrances to the “PATH” network of underground pedestrian tunnels that stretches for miles under the city, and the complex has over 170,000 square feet of event space. It is a ridiculously HUGE conference centre, and Lynn was somewhere in it – finding her was like finding a needle in a haystack.
My mind raced as I jumped back onto the same elevator that I had just stepped off of a few minutes earlier. I decided that I would start the hunt by heading down to the lobby - that’s where she had to have entered the complex to begin with, so it seemed to make the most sense in a situation that still made no sense to me.
I rode back down to the 12th floor, stepped off of that elevator and waited impatiently by the second bank of elevators that would take me down to the lobby, and after a painfully long wait, I finally I heard the “ding” and readied myself.
The doors slowly opened, and to my immediate relief and delight (for a brief moment), there she was! I found her! Lynn Redgrave was standing dead centre in that elevator - and she looked PISSED.
I exclaimed, “Lynn! There you are! I’m Susan - I’m with Alliance and …” and before I could say another word, I was cut off as she projected her rage-fuelled stage voice at me while frantically waiving a piece of paper, “Who the #$%! is Joel Green?!? Do you have ANY idea how #$%^&*! furious I am?!!!!”
She continued projecting with, “I rushed to the airport late last night after finishing on Broadway so I could be here for YOU this morning. I have ONE #$%^&*! day off a week, and THIS - THIS is what I get - how dare you…”
It was futile for me to try to say anything at this point, not that I could even find words because I was pretty much in shock and she was clearly very angry and needed to vent.
As she continued on, I instinctively resorted to mime-like body language to direct her out of that elevator, and onto the next, which thankfully was still sitting there with the doors wide open - almost as though the universe had sheepishly thrown me a bone.
The yelling continued, and as the doors trapped us in that tiny acoustic chamber from Hell – she projected so loudly that I could practically feel my ribcage vibrating. At that point, with legs shaking and in a deep state of panic - I just nodded in agreement with her, throwing in the occasional “you’re right, you’re right” - which, in fact, she was.
It was now abundantly clear what had happened and why she was livid. And she had every right to be.
12 hours before this moment, she was onstage performing in Moon Over Buffalo on Broadway in New York. As soon as she stepped off of that stage, she raced to the airport to catch the last flight out so she could be in Toronto on this day, her one day off, to do a full day of press interviews which were mostly Canadian.
It is standard practice for publicists to pick talent up at their hotels, yet, there clearly was a miscommunication on that day - none of us had been assigned that responsibility 🙄. Not that it’s an excuse, but we all had SO many balls in the air with over 20 films in the festival, and it was a very major detail that was missed.
A copy of her itinerary and interview schedule had been sent to her in New York - that was the paper she was waving in the air. It had the name and address of our hotel on it, the film publicist’s name (Joel Green) and she had to grab a cab and then navigate through this monolith of a hotel on her own. She was exhausted, justifiably frustrated and angry. And being the respectful professional that she was - she was extremely concerned about being late for her interviews.
As we arrived to our suite - I pushed the door open for the second time that day, cleared my wavering voice as best as I could and announced, “look who I found!” and stepped aside as she bellowed, “Who the #$%&! is Joel Green” all over again and went on.
What I experienced leading up to this moment was clearly the dress rehearsal, as she started to repeat a portion of what I had just witnessed to this bigger audience.
Feeling somewhat relieved that her ire was no longer directed at me, I glanced around the room and saw one of our favourite journalists - Jay Stone from The Ottawa Citizen (her first interview for that morning) sitting on the sofa staring in awe. He had a glimmer in his eye and a slight smirk on his face knowing that he was experiencing an intimate once-in-a-lifetime performance from acting royalty - one of Broadway’s most respected artists.
When she finally was through venting and was able to compose herself, our team apologized profusely, and she managed to complete all of her interviews that day with professionalism and grace. She was absolutely delightful.
After her last interview, she thanked everyone and apologized to all who had witnessed her earlier behaviour. She was deeply embarrassed, though she had nothing to be embarrassed about.
Then – she came up to me, put her hands on my shoulders and said, “I am so very sorry, you didn’t deserve what I unleashed on you earlier today. I was just so tired and frustrated and I took it out on you, the first person I saw, and that wasn’t fair” and then she gave me a big hug.
Throughout my career in this business where fear-based management runs rampant, I’ve been yelled at by some pretty crazy ego maniacs, and I’ll always maintain that it is inexcusable behaviour.
But on this day in particular, Lynn’s anger wasn’t coming from a place of inflated ego – she was an extremely dedicated professional who was here to work hard for us and for her film and we really let her down. I didn’t need nor did I expect an apology because we as a team were 100% in the wrong, but she was such a class act and you could tell she genuinely was sorry and needed to say it.
I had the honour of working with her again two years later when she returned to promote another film we were working on called STRIKE. I was seated next to her at a dinner that followed the premiere screening, and she clearly remembered that morning at TIFF - we had a pretty good laugh over it.
In 2010, I was completely heartbroken to learn that Lynn tragically succumbed to breast cancer. I remember finding it impossible to comprehend that such a powerful force could be taken down by this horrid disease.
That year, the world lost a wonderfully passionate, talented and hard-working woman - she was a class act. I will always remember her for her professionalism, her kindness and warmth and how that bizarro morning back in 1996 turned into one of my fondest memories of working in this crazy business.
