#to some extent shit like rupert's ending and the general who was where in the bbq/beard's wedding and ...

[trentcrimminallybeautiful]

i think my main problem (aka why i am so insanely anxious) is that. after the finale i... kind of lost faith in the writing entirely? and now i'm afraid of What They Will Do With A Whole New Season. if this retroactively ruins a show i find flawed but still otherwise love i will be very upset. and i know that would be somewhat my own fault but like. gnaws

[sleemo]

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do

What is cooler than one multibillion-dollar box-office hit? Two multibillion-dollar box-office hits. 

British actor Daisy Ridley is about to have both to her name as she returns as Rey in the next instalment of Star Wars. Emma Brockes meets her as she prepares for superstardom. — ELLE UK, December 2017

A few weeks after the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey – Jakku scavenger, desert-planet survivor and feminist hero – went on holiday to an island off Croatia with friends from the crew. The actor, who was 23 at the time, had been warned that after the release of the movie – number seven in a franchise that has made more than $42bn (£33bn) – her life would dramatically change, and she was terrified. This was, after all, her first big-screen role. 

In restaurants, she scrutinised waiters to see if they were being too nice to her; she wondered if she’d ever be able to use the tube again. On holiday, her friends started calling her Linda, ‘as a jokey alias’, she says, ‘and then they started calling me Paranoid Linda’ when she became convinced a man was following them around and wondered if he was a private detective employed by the studio.

Two years later, 25-year-old Daisy is sitting opposite me at a restaurant in downtown Manhattan, dressed in a shirt and capri pants in clashing blue-and-white prints, her hair still wet from the shower. She’s brimming with the kind of enthusiasm that reads on screen as charisma, and that helps to explain her meteoric rise from stage-school graduate with a few TV credits to her name to one of the most recognisable young stars on the planet. Paranoid Linda still makes an occasional appearance, she says, but mostly she has managed to adjust to life after two Star Wars movies.

Daisy clings to the fact that fame doesn’t need to have a warping effect. It also fits in with her belief that the best way to survive the pressures of high-voltage exposure is to try enjoying it. Everything is ‘amazing’ in her world and everyone is ‘remarkable’, ranging from her mum (‘a great person’) to Barbra Streisand, with whom she recorded a song in 2016 (‘a fantastic woman’), Harrison Ford (‘awesome’) and ‘Colly’ – Olivia Colman to you and me – who she starred with in Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express and who she found ‘incredible’, naturally. There is no hint of sycophancy here; it appears that Daisy is simply joyfully happy.

This cheerfulness has acted as a useful screen to hide behind during the years since she made Star Wars. Now her character, Rey, is back for The Last Jedi, the new Star Wars movie, directed by Rian Johnson. But Daisy found this one to be much more pressure than the first movie. ‘I suddenly felt a much bigger sense of re- sponsibility,’ she says. ‘I didn’t think I was good in the first film, and I was struggling with that.’

This is no humble brag. Daisy’s candour when it comes to her own performance is kind of startling. As a child, her general inability to disguise her feelings occasionally sent her into scatter-brained overdrive, an impulse that her loving London-based family: Mum, who works in internal communications; Dad, who’s a retired photographer; and two sisters – a model and a musician.

Daisy sometimes reads as posh – there is a certain ringing tone to her accent. In fact, she says, her family is more bohemian than posh. The accent, meanwhile, probably comes from boarding school. Aged eight, Daisy went to board at Tring Park School for the Performing Arts in Hertfordshire – not, she says, from any desire to be an actor, but because a friend of hers had gone to boarding school and it sounded like fun. ‘I was such a grumpy child,’ says Daisy, smiling at the implication that she can still, now and then, throw a big wobbler. ‘I used to get super-distracted – once I’d done my work, I would be annoying to everyone else – and my mum thought if I was busy, I’d be less distracting. I always sort of felt like I didn’t fit in.’ This anxiety wasn’t just a result of being a bookish teenager, but a feeling of unreadiness to go out and meet the world as an adult. ‘At 12 or 13, I didn’t know how to do make-up,’ she says, ‘and I still don’t know how to do my hair. And people wore high heels at that age!’

Even now, Daisy retains some small sense of herself as an outsider looking in. How could she not? Her CV at this point is extraordinary: as well as Star Wars, the actress has starred in Ophelia opposite Naomi Watts, and shot Murder on the Orient Express alongside Judi Dench, Penélope Cruz, Sir Derek Jacobi and Olivia Colman. It was on that last set that Daisy finally cracked. ‘I turned to Ken, wiped away a tear, and said, “I can’t believe I’m here, thank you so much.”’ Daisy adds, only half-jokingly: ‘“Did someone make you cast me?”’ (No, he said.) The self-deprecation is real. It’s not just the burden of fame or lame faux humility. There have been times in Daisy’s life, most notably after the first Star Wars movie was released, when she was literally uncomfortable in her skin.

At 15, she was diagnosed with endometriosis, a painful condition of the uterus lining that, along with other symptoms, can result in severe acne that is exacerbated by stress. You know, the kind of stress that comes when you find yourself the star of the biggest-grossing film of all time. ‘I was in my flat going nuts, and then my skin got really bad with the stress of it all, and I hadn’t been well – I had holes in my gut wall and stuff – and we were trying to figure out what to do with that because I’d felt poorly.’ She did what she always does in times of stress and turned to her family, moving first to her sister’s house, a few streets from their parents, then to a flat she rented on her own in the same west London neighbourhood.

Still, says Daisy, it was scary. It is difficult to think of a more in- tense introduction to Hollywood than winning a big role in a new Star Wars movie, nor a bigger professional leap than Daisy’s jump from small parts in the usual roster of UK dramas and long-running soaps – Casualty, Silent Witness, Mr Selfridge – to the first day of filming The Force Awakens in Abu Dhabi. She had only turned up to the audition when a friend mentioned she was going, too, and now here she was, on day one of the shoot, with a production assistant holding an umbrella over her to keep the sun off while she looked around and ‘freaked out’. And then JJ Abrams, the director, yelled ‘action’.

Daisy will never forget that first scene, in which she had to dismount from her Speeder bike and walk a short distance with BB-8 while saying something like, ‘We’re going to get you home.’ Is it true that, after delivering her line, JJ called her acting ‘wooden’? Daisy laughs. ‘It is true! After the first take, he goes, “Just a bit... wooden”, and then we carried on. But JJ is the kind of person who before a scene says, “Don’t fuck it up.” So he said, “Just a bit wooden”, and I was like, “Oh my God.” But it got better.’ She is still laughing at the discrepancy between how bad it sounds (quite bad), and how bad it was. ‘It’s only because that word “wooden” is so loaded. But it was just tense. And I thought, “OK, loosen that shit right up and it’ll get better.”’

In fact, Daisy found JJ Abrams and the rest of the production crew to be incredibly nurturing, to the extent that she was rarely aware of the Star Wars ‘ma- chine’. It was a friendly set, she says, where she mostly hung out with John Boyega, the 23-year-old Brit who plays Finn, and with whom she had the greatest number of scenes, although her best friends were among the crew. JJ Abrams had deliberately hired hair and make-up for Daisy from the team who had worked on the Harry Potter franchise because, she says, ‘aside from the fact that they’re amazing, he knew that they had looked after Emma [Watson], Daniel [Radcliffe] and Rupert [Grint] for however many years. I felt very well taken care of.’

Harrison Ford, meanwhile, reminds her of her dad – ‘They both have an earring and are fucking awesome,’ – and the first time she shot a scene with him, he gave her a hug and said, ‘She’s so adorable’, and she felt right at home after that. (Mean- while, when her real dad visited the set, he went up to Mark Hamill and, in classic dad fashion asked, ‘So, who do you play, then?’) 

In fact, the most difficult thing about the whole Star Wars experience has been reconciling the terrible warnings she received about how life would change with the reality of what actually happened – that, and the anxiety of shooting the second film. In the first instance, ‘Everyone asked me, “Are you ready for your life to change?” And that gets into your mind.’ Throughout this period, she tried to hang on to a piece of advice given to her by the late Carrie Fisher – not to shrink away from the success, but to enjoy it – ‘And that was wonderful.’ Beyond that, she threw herself back into work. ‘At work, you’re normal, you’re not the anomaly, unlike in other situations.’ 

Surely she has occasionally been starstruck herself? ‘Absolutely not,’ she says. ‘I’ve never idolised anyone, really. I never had a crush thing. So when I met Barbra Streisand, for example, I was blown away, not because of her work, but because she’s a fantastic woman.’ It was JJ Abrams who recommended Daisy to Barbra, who was looking for a young star with a good voice to feature in Encore, her album of 2016. Daisy ended up singing with her on the song At The Ballet from A Chorus Line, and finding a new role model for herself. ‘I went to her house and we talked about [psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl] Jung because my dad loves Jung, and we were talking about dreams, and I left and got super emotional, not because she’s famous, but because she’s amazing. Part of her reputation comes from being a woman. If it was a man being “controlling” about his career, people would just say he knows what he wants.’

One of the things Daisy has struggled with in the wake of grow- ing fame is the responsibility of being told Rey is a role model for young girls. She has been asked about feminism and has had to scramble, on occasion, to form an opinion, not because she is bland or apolitical, but because everything she now says has the potential to come back and haunt her. For someone struggling with self-doubt, this can have a paralysing effect, and it is testament to Daisy’s seriousness that she has the sense to acknowledge it.

Of course, whatever kind of attitude you have, being a beautiful young woman in Hollywood means you are exposed to constant scrutiny. Daisy, like Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Lawrence before her, will have to weather the salacious interest that undercuts anything she has to say and, if she seems less confident than her peers, it’s not only part of her charm but also, paradoxically, speaks to some deep-seated security that one assumes comes from Daisy’s family; it can take greater courage to admit to one’s weaknesses than to cover them up with bravado or a fake kind of self-confidence.

She has also learned to sit back and relax a little, although shooting the second Star Wars movie, in which she had fewer scenes with her pal, John Boyega, made her briefly very stressed. ‘It’s not this big adventure that I’m on with John [unlike in the first movie]. I was thinking I did the first one because I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into and I was having loads of fun, and suddenly I’m realising what this actually is, and I can’t fucking do this.’

She says all this with a smile to acknowledge how neurotic this was. ‘I’m highly dramatic – so it’s all “oh my God”. And [director] Rian [Johnson] just said, “We’re going to do this, and these are the scenes, and this is how it’s going to work,” and finally I was like, “Oh yeah, this is working.” The fact is sometimes you’re not good at your job, and sometimes you’re better at your job.’

Having that kind of experience helps, but Daisy still has moments when she has to check herself to make sure it’s all real. There was one night on the set of Murder on the Orient Express when she found herself sitting around playing cards alongside Sir Derek Jacobi, Olivia Colman, Penélope Cruz and her husband Javier Bardem, who had come to support his wife. (Judi Dench had retired early to bed.) The next day, she and Sir Derek sat around doing the crossword. Even Paranoid Linda couldn’t worry the fun out of that one.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is out on 14 December.

— ELLE UK, December 2017

[jennycalendar]

Bravery (24/27)

tbh that’s just a rough guesstimate but i’m getting so pumped about the fact that i’m closing in on the end of bravery that i wanted to put something in that wasn’t a question mark. gives it finality, y’know?? jfc i’m so happy

anyway!! it’s also on ao3

Rupert, bless him, categorized his books quite thoroughly, and it was easy for Jenny to find the library section on magic and the occult. Most of the books were just general magic theory and explanations of the kinds of spells that could be cast, but Jenny did find a few instructional books that might be of some use.

“Any luck?” Xander called, looking away from Willow, who was throwing punches. “Ow! Jeez, Will, I wasn’t looking.”

“Did it hurt?” Willow sounded excited. “I mean, sorry, but also that means I’m improving!”

“Yeah, my cheek’s really glad your fist is getting better at punching it,” Xander said dryly.

“Play nice,” Jenny reprimanded them with amusement. “I think we’re going to move on to stakes in a few days. You two seem to be getting the hang of the whole punching thing, as far as I can tell.”

“I can vouch for that,” Xander agreed, rubbing his cheek. “What’d you find?”

“Books,” Jenny quipped, and handed Willow one of the heavier volumes. “This one looks promising. We can check it out after we do the, uh, magical litmus test.”

“Isn’t that chemistry?” said Xander bemusedly. Willow giggled. “Am I missing something?” he asked her.

“She’s testing whether or not I’m basic!” said Willow, and giggled again. “Checking out if magic and I have chemistry!”

“You are enjoying this way too much for it to be a lesson,” Jenny informed Willow with an easy smile.

“You started it,” Willow volleyed back.

Jenny rolled her eyes. “Hop up on the table,” she said. “Xander, can you wait in the office?”

“Am I not allowed to be here?” Xander inquired, sounding like he was trying his best to sound joking.

“I just want to make sure Willow has a clear headspace for this,” Jenny explained. “That means as few people in here as possible. It’s not a lot, but—it could help if you’re outside. I’d go too if I didn’t have to orchestrate the—”

“Magical litmus test,” said Willow, and went into a giggle fit in the middle of clambering onto the table.

“Hey, magic’s a serious business,” Jenny informed her, but she felt the corners of her mouth twitch and knew Willow saw it. “Have you ever heard of a giggly witch?” This sobered Willow up, which made Jenny smile encouragingly. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “Just stay focused.”

“Focused,” Willow agreed nervously.

Xander very carefully exited the library. Jenny made a mental note to thank him later. “Magic is all about control and tranquility,” she said. “It’s another reason why I’m not that good at it. I tend to focus too much on my motivations and not enough on the present action of doing the spell.”

“But isn’t magic about doing spells?” Willow asked with a frown.

Jenny shook her head. “That’s one of the most common and dangerous misconceptions about magic,” she replied, sitting down next to Willow on the library table. “It isn’t a means to an end—it’s about being present and focusing in on the energy around you. You can’t use it like a tool, or you’ll start thinking of it as a skill, and then you start thinking that your goal is to master it.”

Willow was still frowning. “I thought it was something that could help us,” she said slowly.

“It is, if you learn how to control it,” Jenny replied, “and I have complete faith in your ability to do that.” She smiled encouragingly, and felt gratified when Willow returned it. “If it’s not a skill, though, Willow, are you still interested in it?”

Willow nodded, eyes bright. “Teach me,” she said.

Jenny held out her hands. Willow took them. “Think about something good,” she instructed. “Something that makes you happy.” She waited, and watched as Willow’s face relaxed slightly. “Now try and give that thought to me.”

“Is that—a thing I can do?” Willow asked hesitantly. “That seems pretty advanced.”

“Doubt won’t serve you well if you’re trying to control the energy around you,” Jenny replied. The truth of the matter was that Willow most likely couldn’t transfer thoughts to Jenny, but if she was centered enough, Jenny might get some kind of read on the level of power that Willow had. Magic was a lot like meditation, if you did it right; treating it like a weapon was a road Jenny didn’t want Willow to go down.

“But—”

“Trust me.” Jenny squeezed Willow’s hands reassuringly.

A small, sweet smile drifted over Willow’s face, and she didn’t object any further. Jenny closed her own eyes, focusing. Waiting.

Then, unexpectedly, she felt a soft warmth that began at her fingertips and traveled through her arms, directly to her chest. She tasted something sugary in her mouth, and thought she could feel the faintest hint of rain, even though it was warm in the library. Jenny was comforted, and almost forgot where she was, but then it clicked and she opened her eyes, jerking her hands away from Willow’s more out of surprise than anything.

“Did I do it wrong?” Willow asked anxiously, smile fading.

“No, um,” Jenny laughed nervously, “not, not exactly. Willow, what were you trying to send me?”

Willow turned pink. “Well—last September, Buffy and I went on a rain walk that day it got all drizzly but it was still sunny, you know? It was a sun shower. And Buffy got us strawberry milk, which she thought was a little weird, but I thought it was nice. We got all giggly over this cute boy in her gym class and it was—fun. Normal. No vampire talk, no tense Buffy, just us.”

Jenny remembered that particular day. She’d forgotten her umbrella, and she’d avoided leaving school until she’d had to, only to find Rupert waiting on the front steps with a shy smile and an umbrella big enough for two. They’d held hands all the way down the stairs, and she’d kissed him on the cheek before getting into her car.

But that wasn’t the point. She drew in a breath and tried not to think about the way Rupert had blushed as she’d straightened his scarf. “You might have more potential than I was expecting,” she said. “You shouldn’t have been able to transfer anything to me, but—”

“Did you get it?” Willow’s eyes were wide and awed.

“Yes and no.” Jenny smiled ruefully. She suddenly missed that tranquil warmth, and wished she’d appreciated it more while she’d had it. “I got the way you felt that day.”

“And that’s—”

“Pretty unusual for a novice. You should be proud.” Jenny straightened up, running a hand through her hair. Rupert’s fingers always caught in the tangles, and he’d tease her about not combing, and shit this was not the time for her to get weird and nostalgic. She drew in a breath. “I think I’m going to have to re-evaluate my lesson plan.”

“Really?” Willow sounded delighted. “Am I good?”

“I really don’t want you to focus on how good you are at this,” Jenny said carefully. “Magic can be hugely corrupting, especially if you’re exposed to it too young.” At Willow’s slightly crestfallen expression, she amended, “But yes. You are good.”

Willow beamed. Then, carefully schooling her face into a neutral expression, “Of course, that’s not the point, though.”

“You got it.” Jenny smiled at her. “Look, do you mind if I take a minute? I think I left some things in my classroom. Just—stay here with the candles and try and think happy thoughts. Practice sending them places. You can infuse a whole room with good feelings if you do it right.”

Willow closed her eyes obligingly, still smiling softly as Jenny left the room.

Jenny headed into her classroom, unlocked her desk drawer, and took out the photo strip from the monster truck rally. Rupert in his blue suit, supremely uncomfortable in the first photo, smiling softly at her in the second as she made funny faces at the camera. She’d had to catch her breath when she saw the pictures for the first time, because she’d never had anyone look at her like that.

It was intoxicating to be beloved, to the extent that maybe she’d overlooked some problems with Rupert’s overly simplistic view of her. But that didn’t change the fact that she missed him—not just as a lover, but as a friend. He’d made her smile so easily, and that wasn’t something that had happened before she’d known him. Jenny let her thumb trace Rupert in the last picture—his bright, genuine smile as she playfully pressed her lips to his cheek—and then she let the picture fall back into the drawer. This was the last time she’d let herself miss him.

Giles picked up the rose quartz necklace, let the light catch it. It didn’t feel like anything, for all the dramatic gestures it had been involved in. It couldn’t mean anything to him, even knowing that Jenny had wanted him to have it.

Healing powers, she’d said, as though that would fix all the things left broken by Angelus. For all his idealization, it always felt like Jenny was the optimist. He put the necklace back in his pocket; he still couldn’t wear it close to his chest. It felt strange and clingy enough to carry around a piece of jewelry technically given by an ex as a goodbye gift.

He was still in Los Angeles. He wasn’t sure where else to go. He was searching for Buffy, still, but only halfheartedly; Jenny’s words had stuck with him. He hadn’t considered what would happen when he found her, only that he wanted to find her, and now that he knew she was alive, the search seemed to have lost its urgency. Out of obstinacy, he’d stuck by the idea to bring Buffy home by any means necessary for a day or two, but the desire to prove Jenny wrong had faded with his resentment and anger.

She was right. Buffy had been through so much, and really did need some time to process it in any way that she could. Giles bringing her back would do nothing for anyone—the Council would be stuck with an indifferent, rebellious Slayer, and he would be stuck with a girl who no longer trusted him. He couldn’t think too much about the fact that he no longer thought of Buffy as a Slayer. There were too many other things he had to work on before addressing that.

Giles looked around the small, sparsely furnished hotel room. He wondered if, given the chance, he’d change the way this summer went, and wished he could say with certainty that he could. Some resentful, childish part of him still desperately wanted to be right about all this.

Is it better to be right, he thought, or to feel a part of a family? He’d seen Jenny on the beach, long before she’d noticed him. He’d had to stop walking and stare for a moment at the wind blowing her hair, the unrestrained joy on her face as she laughed with Willow. Whether or not she was right about his idealization of her, she had stayed with the children, and she was clearly happier for it—as were they.

Jenny was brave in a way he couldn’t possibly imagine. Perhaps it was time to deviate from the rules and take a leaf out of her book, because his own didn’t seem to be doing all that well for him.

Giles hesitated, and headed over to the bureau. If he did pack, now, and go home—to Sunnydale, he corrected himself, because it still wasn’t clear whether he had a home to go back to anymore—he of course wouldn’t expect some sort of magical, beautiful reconciliation with Jenny. It would be messy, and he’d have to face a lot of justified anger. He’d have to prove to Willow and Xander that he cared about them, and prove to Jenny that he believed in her.

And if he could do that—

Giles thought of Jenny and drew in a sharp, shaking breath. He wondered how on earth she’d managed to restore Angelus’s soul when she’d been just as isolated and lonely as he was right now. He missed her, and being a part of her life in any capacity would be enough for him.