Nightwing: Heartache

Part 3: The Road to Hollywood

Willa had transferred to Boston College to finish her degree but even in a new city she couldn't escape her past trauma. She couldn't focus in class; the things that once made her happy, excited, now just seemed dull. Politics, clubs, sports games, parties, none of it seemed to register.

When she first got to BC, she tried to go back to her old self. She joined clubs and tried to make friends, but it was so hard to pretend to be fine, like she was normal. Nothing was normal any more. The worst part was the boredom. She just didn't care about all the things that used to interest her. So her grades started to slip, she gave up trying to make friends, gave up looking for a job. And she couldn't bring herself to care. It took everything she had not to buckle and call him.

So she watched a movie in bed instead of going to class. And another. And another. Then she started watching bootleg Broadway performances, TV series, short films, anything she could get her hands on or pirate. Then she found out Boston College was putting on Almost Maine. She auditioned, bombed the audition, got one line in a scene, but she went to every rehearsal. She started going to enough classes so she could be in the play. She didn't need to be a big part, she just loved watching the theater majors, the actors on stage. She loved watching a new world come to life.

One of the girls in the play, Brandi, was nice enough to be nice to Willa, and she didn't hate her, so when Brandi asked to run lines, Willa obliged. Apparently Willa impressed her because when a girl got sick two days before opening night, Brandi vouched for Willa to go on. So she did.

And the strangest thing happened: when she was onstage, pretending to be someone else, she didn't think about Dick Grayson, or superheroes, or supervillains.  It was a high unlike any of the drugs she had tried.

So when Brandi told her she was auditioning for a community theater production of Rent, Willa tagged along, secretly crossing her fingers and toes she got a part. And when she got Mimi, she poured her whole heart into the part of a drug addict of the 1990s. Her grades started slipping again, but not because Willa didn't feel alive, they slipped because she felt so alive. When Rent closed Willa hunted every Instagram page, Facebook page, ad in the paper for something to audition for. She played Harper Pitt in Angels in America at the same time as shooting a short film for free with a film major. She ran herself ragged taking only acting classes, acting in two shows at a time, not caring she didn't have enough credits to major in anything. She didn't even care if she didn't graduate, because she had found her dream. Her escape. Her refuge. The thing that made her abandon her usual cautious inhibitions and move to New York City instead of finishing college.

She nannied and scrounged for any acting gig she could get for six months before landing a regional commercial for toothpaste. Then she did an ad for a local discount shop selling Christmas sweaters. She barely made enough to live but she had a Wayne Foundation grant. She finally got back on stage with a production of Sense and Sensibility. That got her a gig as a swing in the off Broadway revival of The Importance of Being Earnest. But the real game changer was in a tiny blackbox theater that barely held fifty people, nowhere near Broadway. It was a crowdfund project put on by an NYU grad student trying to make a name as a director with a production of Hadestown.

It just so happened Willa was Eurydice. And it just so happened one of fifty people in the room had been Sam Lark, a big shot Hollywood talent manager on vacation with her niece who loved Hadestown but missed the Broadway run. So Sam found this little production.

After the show, Sam made a beeline for Willa. She handed Willa a card and offered to buy her a cup of coffee.

"Who's your agent?" Sam asked as soon as they sat down in a booth in a rundown little diner.

Willa just furrowed her eyebrows, "do you know how hard it is to get an agent in this city?"

"Consider me your agent."

Willa studied the card in her hand, "this says manager."

"Technically I'm a manager now, but I spent the first thirty years of my career as a talent agent. And when you make enough to need a team, I'll be your manager."

"You seem awfully confident."

"Honey, you don't make it as far or as long in this business as a woman without being confident."

Willa liked her immediately. "Do you believe in me?" She asked the forty something woman across from her.

Sam met her gaze evenly. "I do."

That was all Willa needed to know. To be honest, she didn't really expect things to change with an agent, especially not with some woman Willa just met, but Sam kept her word and worked her ass off for Willa, diluting herself back into an agent for her.

She had six auditions the next week. She booked a commercial for Target a month later. She did a Tampax commercial and worked as an extra in four movies the next week. She sent in over four dozen self tapes for actual parts the next week, booked a one liner, flew out to LA, and never came back. Thank you Wayne Foundation Trust.

To this day, Sam says she just got Willa in the room, but it was Willa that booked the jobs. One night over a bottle of champagne, Sam told Willa it was the fearlessness and vulnerability Willa could harness. "I've never seen so much pain yet so much love in one performance," Sam said of Willa's Eurydice. "You're magnetic, how you become a character."

Willa's big break was a year later, when she booked the life changing role of June Iparis in the big screen adaptation of the YA dystopian Legend. The studio was looking to make names, so it cast Willa and another unknown actor to spear it, counting on the fan base and Academy Award winners as the adults to bring in the ticket sales.

Now, Willa sat in a black Mercedes SUV in a Saint Laurent black dress with people fussing with her hair and makeup for last minute touch ups. Three years ago she could barely bring herself to smile. Tonight, she was about to smile for tens of photographers before attending the Saint Laurent Spring Collection Runway show with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Funny how life works.