Story #2: Star Fuckers
A story about Hollywood's unscripted roles
You can always spot a Star Fucker by the way they listen, or rather, don’t. They nod along, murmuring the occasional ‘uh-huh,’ but their eyes dart past you like they’re scanning for an exit during a bad date.
The moment someone famous enters the room, their entire body shifts, like a sunflower desperate for light. That’s when you know: you were never part of the conversation. You were a placeholder, something to fill time until something better walked in.
They don’t even try to be subtle about it. One minute, you’re telling them about your dog getting gang-banged at the dog park; the next, they’re halfway across the room, draping themselves over an aging actor like a weighted blanket. You could set yourself on fire, and they’d only pause long enough to check if you were someone worth knowing. And even then, they’d just take a selfie and leave you there to burn.
Los Angeles is built for people like them—people who thrive on proximity and power. I never set out to be anywhere near their orbit. Moving to LA wasn’t about the industry or fame or making it. It was always about the sun, the abundance of produce, and the freedom to be myself.
And yet, there I was. Standing in my first Hollywood home, beneath a five-foot, gold-framed poster of an iconic movie—proof that I somehow slipped past the iron gate.
If you want to see how power really works, don’t look at the people who own the houses. Look at the ones who move through them unnoticed. You learn quickly that privacy in a wealthy home is an illusion. You see everything—the fights, the dysfunction, the very human cracks in the marble. And yet, none of it is your business.
The job might seem extraordinary on the outside, but at its core, it’s like any other job. You exchange your time for money. The only difference is, the closer you are to power, the more invisible you’re expected to be.
Back before Craigslist was a raunchy marketplace for sex-addicted perverts and scammers, you could actually find jobs.
That’s how I stumbled upon a listing for a “mother’s assistant;” a job that paid $15 an hour for what, where I came from, was just existing. Cooking, laundry, sewing, watering plants, and taking care of the dog weren’t skillsets; they were the cost of living indoors. The idea that someone would actually pay me for this felt like a scam, but a scam in my favor.
Of course, she wasn’t just hiring for a job. She was hiring a type. Tired of, “all of these entitled girls from LA,” she wanted someone down-to-earth. Which, in Hollywood, meant someone who could be told what to do without the hassle of managing their feelings. Luckily for her, I’d stuffed mine so far down I was practically a blank slate.
Fresh from the Midwest, holding no secret agenda, she sensed I would work without pushback. It wasn’t that I was a pushover, but my blue-collar upbringing taught me the value of hard work. I found satisfaction, and even comfort, in being useful. The thought of angling my position for an introduction or waiting for the right moment to slide into something better never crossed my mind. Back where I was from, everybody was a nobody. The only status symbols were guns and huntin’ stories.
Back then, I thought running an errand was as simple as getting in the car and following directions. That belief shattered somewhere between my third U-turn on Sunset Blvd and my rising blood pressure.
A twenty-minute task had become a ninety-minute panic attack, increasing my existing anxiety to new levels.
By the time I made it to the house I was sweaty, panicked and convinced I was getting fired. The Producer was waiting. Her eyes said she was concerned. The rest of her body screamed frustration. She greeted me with a sharp, “Where have you been?!”—as if I’d been down the street, enjoying a fucking latte instead of sweating my way through West LA traffic. And what was I supposed to say? “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing!” or “Why are there so many goddamn cars in this city? It’s not normal to live like this.”
By the time I was ready to respond, she was already launching into the system I was to adopt. Errands were to be routed in advance: start with the furthest stop, work back toward the house. No detours, no wasted time.
It was up to me to figure out that working in LA meant choosing between dehydration and kidney failure. Eventually, I learned how to maintain proper kidney function by keeping a pee bucket in the back seat. If the woman wanted efficiency, come hell or high water, she was gonna to get it!
The real skill set in Hollywood is having the right attitude. People will give you the chance to fix your mistakes—and at the very least, they’ll tolerate a little incompetence if they think you’re worth the effort.
When it came to cooking, I wasn’t a chef. I hadn’t attended culinary school or worked in a restaurant—but that didn’t matter. I was going to cook her way. Everything had a place, a sequence, a logic.
She showed me how to gather the necessary pots, prep them in advance, and time each dish so everything finished together. The rice always started first because it took the longest. The water in the steam basket went last.
The first time I steamed broccoli for her, I cranked the heat too high and left it in too long, turning what should have been a colorful display of health into a flimsy pile of greenish-gray garbage. It was pitiful, but I appreciated her patience as she walked me through the steps and ate her way through my mistakes.
The second time, I watched it like a hawk, adjusting the temperature to ensure a bright green stalk with a pale green inner core and a subtle sheen across the surface.
When I got something right, I never deviated. I absorbed the method, adopted the ritual, and learned to cook thoughtfully and seamlessly without hesitation or worry.
Wealth and status were never distractions. Not because I had some grand sense of integrity, but those things never hijacked my brain.
I never thought about where I was or who she was or what the status symbols meant. I think she tested me sometimes by dropping the names of her celebrity neighbors just to see if I’d bite. But every time she mentioned one, I’d be in my own world, mentally responding to her like one of the roles they played, “Tell your gardener to park up the streeeet, Clarice.” By the time she finished her sentence and saw no reaction from me, she’d move on. It wasn’t that I wasn’t paying attention, I was just focused on the job.
What fascinated me most about these types of people is they spent most of their time fighting for the spotlight yet their homes were designed to keep the world out.
Her house was perched atop one of the Hollywood Hills. It was inconspicuous, hidden among tall foliage and nestled near winding, blind-turn roads. Through the Moroccan French doors, I stepped into a foyer filled with trees, which I would water with a “slow trickle” every Wednesday. Inside, a curved staircase of marble and iron led to the second floor, while an ornate wooden bench stretched along the entrance, baskets for shoes tucked neatly beneath. The hallway was lined with books from floor to ceiling with vintage rugs softening the cold, marble floors. Much like Hollywood, the grandeur was hidden. The magic was revealed in the back of the house, where a sweeping view glistened all the way to the ocean.
This was not a home of the latest and greatest but of generational care. I’d bet the sheets were as old as I was, living a lifetime of being neatly pressed and stored by size in the linen closet. It reflected her perfectly – down-to-earth, uninterested in proving her wealth through labels or perfection, but exuding practical affluence.
The problem with working in someone’s home is that it’s their home. Which means there are no rules. There was the time she called me on the weekend because she needed to yell at someone. The time she trailed me around the house while I did her laundry, complaining about her other assistant. But the reality check came when my dad died.
I flew across the country on a Wednesday to help my mom prepare for the memorial service, planning to stay as long as she needed me. By Sunday, The Producer called. She sent her condolences—then asked when I’d be back in LA because they were out of Bolognese and had no food in the freezer. As if I should have anticipated my dad’s death and stocked them up before leaving town.
In Hollywood, time off wasn’t about need. It was about how long you could be gone before someone decided you weren’t worth the inconvenience.
She expected a lot, sometimes more than reasonable. Squeezing grapes to see if they were hard before purchasing them felt insane. But was it? Her way might have seemed obsessive, but if it worked, was she micro-managing or just hyper-specific?
She was driven, had high expectations and liked things done a certain way – though she often left the ‘how’ up to my best guess. Her assistants, frazzled and stressed, would sneak into the kitchen, asking how I got along with her so well. I had no secret. I listened to her, guessed wanted, and if I got it wrong, she’d correct me and I’d fix it.
I liked to think I didn’t take her frustration personally, but sometimes I did. Sometimes, her disappointment sank into me. Not as guilt, but as regret for falling short. The woman hated green bell peppers. I burned that into my brain. When she called to tell me she wanted chili one night and listed bell peppers as an ingredient, I hesitated.
“What was that?” I asked, making sure I heard her right.
She repeated, “You’ll need onions, bell peppers, ground beef.”
I didn’t question her. I just did what she said. The bell peppers went in, brunoise cut and all. When she came in to taste it, her eyes were raging and her mouth was disappointed, but I couldn’t tell how much I fucked up until she said, “I said NO bell peppers.” She said it in the same tone she used with her husband right before he slunk out the side door.
I didn’t dare recall the conversation to her. My balls hadn’t dropped yet. Instead, I painstakingly fished out each 3mm piece of pepper from the ten-quart pot. With each dip of the ladle, I hoped for the absence of green, but the slightest fleck would test my patience.
As I focused on cleaning up my mistakes, an overwhelming sense of failure found its way out of me and tears began to well.
I had disappointed her. I was honestly trying so hard to please her all of the time. I tried to do what she wanted even if I didn’t know how to accomplish it. I ran her errands despite having terrible anxiety about driving to unfamiliar places. Her disappointment broke my heart, and all of the feelings I stuffed down to keep the job competed with the task at hand. Why do you take on things you don’t know how to do? You knew she didn’t like bell peppers. Why didn’t you say something? Why don’t you ever say anything? You gotta be more organized. Pay attention! What would Dad say?
When she came barreling through the door one last time and saw how ashamed I was, she softly said, “It’s ok, you can go home.” Out of her sight, I wiped my tears, gathered my belongings and left. She called later to impart a lesson about clear communication; repeat lists back to her to ensure clarity.
Parroting is one hell of a useful tool I relied on for the next fifteen years to dodge any more bell pepper moments, but it wasn’t just a cooking mistake. It was a microcosm of the new environment I was in.
I was no longer in a blue-collar community where someone might shrug off an oversight. I was in the trenches in one of the most competitive cities where even small mistakes could cost you your job, your reputation, or your livelihood.
This wasn’t about her need for control. It was her way of preparing me for the demands of Hollywood and the expectation that everything should always run smoothly, effortlessly, and without a single misstep.
And yet, this same woman refused to throw out a single pair of socks.
Real wealth isn’t about what you flaunt, but what you keep.
The Producer had a reputation in the industry for being cheap, which tracked. Afterall, I spent a shocking amount of time darning holes in socks and cheap t-shirts. But nothing topped the grocery store returns.
After every kid’s party, half-eaten chips and salsa went straight back to Ralph’s. I considered paying for them myself just to avoid the humiliation, but honestly, I didn’t have much use for Tostitos and Pace salsa, either. I’d slink up to the customer service desk, attempting to mask my mortification with apologetic eyes and a smile that wavered between tears and fear. Rolling my eyes, I’d beg, “My boss is crazy. I’m so sorry to do this. I know it’s gross.” The reaction was always the same. Disgusted disbelief. After, I built a mental map of every Ralph’s between WeHo and Venice just so I wouldn’t have to return to the same store twice.
The key, apparently, to maintaining wealth, wasn’t to show others that you were cheap, but to hire someone to be cheap for you.
But I came to appreciate her lack of fanfare when it came to food. Nothing was done to impress, even when it came to feeding her celebrity friends.
When celebrities graced the Hollywood or Malibu homes, food options didn’t deviate from the norm. Pesto penne pasta, salad with tomatoes, cucumber, hearts of palm, avocado, Newman’s Own Italian dressing with a splash of balsamic, and broccoli that was steamed for exactly four minutes then lightly salted. The routine and predictability were reassuring, especially when I’d be thrown a guest curveball.
The first time a celebrity walked into the kitchen, I did what I was supposed to do—said hello and kept working. But when she struck up a conversation as if we were old friends, I was expected to respond. Small talk felt like cutting with my left hand, but I tried, cautious so I wouldn’t injure either of us with awkward words. I only had a slight frame of reference for her significance. I had never seen her movies and wasn’t born when she graced magazine covers, so her fame went over my head. But still, there was something about her. She wasn’t vying for attention, but her presence made my body rattle with nerves. While some people take up space, others shift the air when they enter a room. And whether you care about status or not, you feel it.
What Star Fuckers get wrong is thinking fame buys distance from the things that break ordinary people—grief, failure, sickness, and loss. They think money softens the blow, that status turns obstacles into minor inconveniences.
But the human experience isn’t something any of us can opt out of.
A name on a chair doesn’t stop relationships from unraveling, bodies from aging, or the weight of the world from flattening you. The only difference? Your worst moments aren’t private. They’re headlines. Your struggles become entertainment for strangers eager to weigh in. It’s no wonder the wealthy live behind gates and hedges. If people constantly asked you for something because you did your job well, you’d disappear too.
And Star Fuckers orbit these people, not because they know them on a deep and personal level, but because they see them as access points. Their conversations are calculated. Their loyalty is conditional. Their attention is transactional.
No matter how much time passes or how far you climb, Star Fuckers stay the same. Years later, long after I left The Producer’s house behind, they were still hovering, only now they were calling me to cater.
Producers for celebrity editorial shoots were some of the worst types of Star Fuckers. Their desperate fawning, eye bulging urgency for everything, the $1,200 loafers worn as credentials was nauseating.
When they called to check my availability, they’d name-drop, dangling celebrities like a carrot, using them to pressure me into taking the job at a discount, as if the opportunity was enough payment.
I hated the way they tried to manipulate me.
Somewhere between the name-drop and their realization that my silence wasn’t a yes, I’d be doing the marginal costs in my head. Did I have the emotional capacity for this? Where is the location? How many days do I have off after so I can recover from this bullshit?
The answer never really mattered. The only thing that made it bearable was a competent producer. And competent producers never took these jobs.
The headcount was always be wrong. They’d tell me it would be forty-five people but I’d be prepared for sixty or seventy-five people. We’d be expected to keep breakfast going for two hours past the scheduled time, then have lunch ready forty-five minutes later, only to find out — without being told — that lunch had been pushed another two hours. By the time everyone strolled in, tempers already short, they’d complain the food wasn’t fresh.
Make-up and wardrobe assistants would ask “What do you have that’s vegan?” when a sign with all of the vegan options would be right in front of them. I’d say, “Here’s what we have that’s vegan, on the sign.” They didn’t care. They wanted us to read it to them. They’d order their food, wait thirty seconds, claim it had been ten minutes and roll their eyes. “These people take forever.”
The ask beyond the ask never stopped. I would take it with a smile, shoving down my frustration, my disbelief that people could be so animalistic, so far up their own asses. But the truth of it all, I was actually enabling the problem.
By the end of it, we’d kill it. We always did. We’d feed the extra people, work past the exhaustion — hungry, dehydrated and without a break, solve every problem before they even knew it was a problem.
And the Star Fucker producer? Not one thank-you. Not one acknowledgement for fucking us with the headcount. Not one acknowledgment for bending reality to make it all work. To them, we just did our job and we were lucky to be a part of it.
They’d buddy up to us at the end, their faces relieved with smiles. They’d start talking shit about the talent — too demanding, too difficult, a bitch. I’d nod with an attempted smile and “uh-huh.” After their therapy session was over, I’d throw in a “Hm. That sucks. They were super nice to us.”
And then I’d ask for my overtime.
And that’s the real isolation of fame—it’s not just about getting mobbed in public or losing the ability to live a normal life. It’s about never knowing if the person sitting across from you sees you or only sees a way up. Wealth and fame might set you apart, but it’s the people clawing at you to get in who make sure you never belong anywhere again.
Star Fuckers think proximity is enough. That if they linger close enough to power, some of it will rub off on them and they can by-pass the work. But power isn’t absorbed. It’s earned.
Working for The Producer was where I cut my teeth and where I was introduced to the unrelenting demands of Hollywood. Fame may have its gravitational pull, but orbiting around stars doesn’t mean shit if you’re not bringing something to the table. And what I brought was the ability to keep going.
I didn’t have connections. I didn’t have formal training, polished skills, or a “refined” look. What I had was unwavering ambition to be better, the ability to adapt, and to move forward with labia of steel no matter how many times I stumbled. In a city where many cling to nepotism or ass kissing, I learned to rely on the one thing that would never let me down—myself. It wasn’t about being perfect or even being the best. It was about showing up, following through, taking the hits and staying in the game. And in Hollywood, sometimes that’s all you need not just to survive, but to carve out a space for yourself.
Credits:
Narrated by: Elaine T.
Sound Engineer: Max Lee
Written by: Anonymous Fork
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"Do you think nepotism blocks people without connections from entering a field or is that just an excuse?"
A very insightful and enjoyable read, even though I listen to it. The narrator's voice is very nice to listen to as well.