The pain and sadness this left me with gradually twisted itself into anger. I started to see injustice everywhere. The technical crew, who generally showed me more compassion and kindness than anyone else on set, and who clearly had far more experience and expertise than the people they worked under, had no meaningful say in the show’s creation and were treated with noticeable disrespect by producers and some of the show’s directors. Many of the crew worked such long hours that they would talk about falling asleep and swerving off the road, or not seeing their children at all during the week because they left for work so early their kids were still sleeping and returned home long after they had gone to bed. I saw elderly background performers moved unceremoniously out of lunch lineups to make way for the show’s “stars,” including myself, after they had spent twice the time outside as everyone else, in thin period costumes, in sub-zero temperatures. Sometimes even the food they ate was different from ours, cheaper and less healthy. I became aware of a pecking order, one that I was near the top of, at least superficially. When I behaved in a bratty manner, no one held me accountable. But no one in charge seemed to care if I became so exhausted from work that I spiked a fever, or that I didn’t get time off after my mother’s death, either. Daily, I was fed a toxic concoction of coddling and neglect, which, unsurprisingly, did not bring out the best in me.