On what should’ve been just another Monday in March at TCN Studios in Willoughby—the making of television in all its gore and glory, something entirely unexpected happened.
Rita Wilson was in the building. Soon, we would be the Breaking News.
Here is my account of that very day: March 9th 2020.
The thing with being a makeup artist is people. People who at times like to cough, sneeze, yawn, chew food or gum (the WORSE), slurp on a drink, warm up their vocal cords or talk incessantly. All this while your face is inches from theirs. And while all of these activities are HIGHLY annoying on their own, they are now a perilous health hazard.
You can only imagine the frisson in the air on Monday when we learned that Rita Wilson, TOM HANKS’ wife, was coming to our humble Channel Nine studios SANS makeup artist. This was unheard of. Every celebrity who graced our fine premises brought their own team. This could be Instagram GOLD for the lucky makeup artist working on Today Extra that morning. (Would she perhaps agree to a little Tik Tok dance?)
That type of gear could go VIRAL!
But what Elle, the makeup artist who did score the prized gig, didn’t entertain was the fact that Rita Wilson was already viral. Viral with COVID-19. And while two weeks off work with full pay sounds like a dream come true for any makeup artist who gets up at 3:30am, this would be an unmitigated DISASTER. In just over two weeks, Elle was to be a bride.
This dream, my friends, had turned into a NIGHTMARE.
“I was meeting my sister and her baby for lunch at the café in my building, and I got a call from Kylie (our boss),” Elle told me during a phone interview from self-isolation. “She said, ‘Darling, I have some news, are you sitting down?’ I started to freak out. It sounded like someone had died.
“Then she told me as my sister was walking towards me with the baby. I could barely speak. I just told my sister to go…and they got back in the car and drove away. All I could think of was the wedding.”
Elle rang her mum (a nurse), and along with her fiancè Bobby, they went to RPA to be tested.
“It was so weird – everyone was in Hazmat suits, and there were about 30 people also waiting to be tested who seemed visibly sick.”
She says the process took around three hours, and even though the test came back as negative, she “knew this was only the beginning.”
“I just had this gut feeling that this was going to get bigger, and sure enough, a day before we decided to pull the pin on our wedding, the government made further restrictions on gatherings of more than 100 people,” she says.
“We had put so much effort and planning into our wedding,” she says. “I didn’t want to have it and not be able to even hug people or have guests who were nervous about coming near me. Even some of our family are still wary of coming in contact with us. I couldn’t have that for our wedding.”
Like many makeup and hair staff at Channel Nine, Elle has had her own wedding makeup business. She had been making up brides since she was 19, and now at 32, she was looking forward to her own wedding. Suffice to say, there were a lot of tears.
“I didn’t want it to be like this,” she says.
Like thousands of other couples, Elle and Bobby postponed their wedding.
“It was a nightmare,” she says. “While we had to liaise with the venue, photographer, DJ and all our suppliers to lock in a new date, I had brides also on the verge of a breakdown, ringing me all day trying to do exactly the same thing with their weddings. It was hectic.
“And then we had a meltdown about the new date. Had we chosen the right date? Imagine cancelling again! But we feel relieved now that it’s done. The date is set.”
The icing on the cake? Their meticulously planned honeymoon was in…(drum-roll) ITALY! Even if their honeymoon wasn’t in one of the most Coronavirus-concentrated countries in the whole world, all travel is now restricted.
You just can’t make this stuff up
Rita certainly left a path of destruction at Nine, with the network going into complete contagion prevention. The dressing room she used, shared by Tracey Grimshaw and Brooke Boney, had to be disinfected within an inch of its life with even the removal of The Couch (if only that couch could utter one sentence. Just ONE).
However, it wasn’t just the couch that had to go—everyone who had contact with Rita had to be in a 14-day quarantine. This included the hosts of Today Extra, producers, meet-and-greet people, those who used/entered/glanced at the dressing room in question (crime scene) were also out of commish.
And then to push us to the tipping edge of hysteria, the news of a confirmed casualty—our very own Richard Wilkins. The most treasured veteran of Australian entertainment testing positive after meeting Rita on two occasions during her tour. Mon Dieu!
With that positive reading, two more makeup artists and another hairdresser have also been tested and were in quarantine.
Who will be left standing at the end?
What has possibly been more laborious for my long-suffering boss? It was not the constant re-structuring of a seven-day week roster, or the buying of truck-loads of rubber gloves, masks, eucalyptus spray, extra utensils for each makeup station, sending near hourly email updates on the forever changing landscape of Coronavirus and company policy on said pandemic, but the fielding of questions from hyper-paranoid employees.
“What has been your most stupid question to date?” I asked her today as she stood by her computer, punching keys and muttering under her breath.
“Don’t,” she said, giving me her best I’m-dead-inside look.
“Has it been…Um, Rita looked at me from across the studio, and now I have a sore throat. Should I get tested?”
Again, the look, yet with the addition of steely eyes-narrowed, it had evolved into the don’t-start-something-you-can’t-finish look.
After a long pause, she replied, “I know now who I want to be in the trenches with and who would climb over my half-dead body to get to safety.”
And still, the aftermath of Rita Wilson continues.
Elle and Bobby had the (smaller) wedding of their dreams on
November 28th 2020.
The love was palpable.
