Morgan "Marsha" Mellow {District 11 Stylist} [finished]

[The following premiered on 'Capitol Insider' in the days after the 77th games, when Morgan "Marsha" Mellow declared she would be retiring her syndicated show, Marsha!]

{A camera focuses on Morgan “Marsha” Mellow, lips painted, brows done, face blended and highlighted, hair coiffed and dress stitched within an inch of its life. She smiles.}

(Tonight, on Capitol Insider, I interview Morgan “Marsha” Mellow: Entertainer, Fashion Icon, and the newest addition to the Hunger Games Team)

{A clip rolls by, Marsha fading in and explaining}

By the time I learned the truth about the world, I had one of those—come to ripred—type moments where there I was, trying to hot glue earrings onto my ear lobes with a hair teased wig, thinking well fuck this. You know, the anger that comes from a young person that all of a sudden figured life out? I got this real, visceral anger deep inside my stomach, like the world had been the one to put me here to tease me and abuse me, and leave me looking like a drowned rat by the side of the road. Ha. You can always see that anger in the kids, because they think the world’s the one done something to them. 

(Morgan Mellow was not born into aristocracy; only child of Cesar and Desiree Mellow, his climb was from the bottom to the top)

I grew up the son of an elevator operator and seamstress. The only child, it’s probably the reason why I’ve always been hungry for attention. Walking around the house in my mom’s high heels and one of her chiffon dresses like I was on capitolite teevee, I’d sashay and shimmy and have her laughing. She’s the one that taught me how to sew. I wouldn’t be half the person I am today if she didn’t take the time away from her own work to show me how to use those machines. Of course nowadays it might be considered child labor, all those dresses that I finished. But she would sit me down and say Morgan, learning a trade doesn’t make you less than the folks out there with money. You’ll have something you can keep that they can’t take away. And you’ll have it for life.

My father didn’t so much admire me dancing around the house in pumps or dabbling with rouge. He was a dyed in the wool man’s man, a working class capitolite, which is a minority all on it’s own, honey. Do you ever take the time to ask how the man running your lift is doing? How about the lady that goes and cleans your house ’cause I know you don’t clean if yourself? He was a shadow in someone else’s eye his whole life, and he liked it that way. I think that’s why we could never understand each other, him always finding peace out on the periphery. Of course he had seven brothers and sisters, so I could understand him appreciating silence. 

{Marsha takes out and lights a cigarette, before slowly exhaling}

Do you smoke? (No.) Okay, I’m just going to—(You really shouldn’t). {Marsha keeps smoking, and blows a smoke ring as the camera pans in. She raises an eyebrow and gives a laugh before squelching it out onto the floor.}

I lived my life under their terms. They were good parents, I can’t really complain about the little struggles they had with me or understanding who I was. That man worked night and day to keep a roof over our heads and when he saw me walking around in high heels, the only thing he said to me was I hope you can do a twelve hour shift in them. So I told him I could do it backwards and forwards, whatever I was going to do. 

(Do you miss him?)

Yeah, I miss him. He died when I was about—eighteen? God, I don’t think I was much more than a baby, then. He never ate well, never slept much. His heart went bad and it wasn’t more than three months from when he started going downhill before he fell apart. My mother just sort of—well, she had her sister, that was her comfort. She didn’t want to stay in that apartment because it reminded her too much of him. She told me that if I could afford it, I could keep it. Little two bedroom, nothing special, in a not-good-but-not-bad part of town. Except I was working with the communications company, Tel-Bel, you know, with the jingle? (Tel-Bel, give a yell, sound is swell, Tel-Bel) I’d got the job from my mother’s aunt’s cousin, one that said they didn’t care what I dressed like or how I was just as long as I could work out how to fix things that broke. 

I wore a lot of old dresses back then. The style at the time was a throwback to before the dark days, with these long, thin dresses and white gloves. Now—I’m six foot two, and one seventy so, putting on one of those things just made me feel like I wasn’t me. That’s the thing with—well, some of the dressmakers just don’t play with illusion, they want to standardize it for what they’re used to. So I took what my momma had taught me and put it toward creating shapes, illusions that made me look how I wanted to look, and how I wanted to feel. Oh—they were pretty terrible at first. I was a little boy making a dress for the woman I wanted to be. So of course it was going to be awful. But that’s how you learn, you start off with this notion of what things should look like, sound like, act like. It’s naïve, you know. No life experience and here I am thinking how I wanted to be. I’m surprised anyone paid attention to me at all.

(But you got better).

I wanted more money. And I wanted more than just the looks I got when I walked out on the street, because that wasn’t real. Not that a lot of things here are real. No—I went down to the clubs on Essex and I watched the shows, the illusions, all that. I tried to walk my walk and they laughed at me. Yes ma’am, they laughed. Oh lord—they told me my face and asked who I was hiding from. They were artists, kids like me. They swore up and down they were going to be on television, they’d have sponsorships and sing, they’d be moving up in this world. 

I miss them—I miss their dreams. 

(Why is that?)

I surround myself with that sort of energy now; it’s that striving, when you haven’t had it, you’re willing to live with every ounce you have. I don’t knock anyone that started from somewhere, but you learn how to value it all when you don’t have it to begin with. We all were struggling and striving; we wanted to see what people would like, what people would laugh at. We wanted to be taken seriously and not seriously at all. So we played with illusion, with light and dark. 

(When did you feel like that changed?)

I started hosting a morning show (This Morning Today), a little nothing show at an ungodly hour but—that was everything. It was a moment when I could put on my paint and the world saw me the way I wanted to be seen. Thousands of eyes seeing Marsha and not just Morgan; and all at once you’re so happy and fulfilled but then you’re scared. Because the second you’ve made yourself, you start to wonder about if this is it, am I authentic, what’s going to happen to the ones that didn’t…

(Right. You felt like you were in between.)

Honey it took a long time for me to figure me out. People liked Marsha and I told myself I’d been cutesy becoming Marsha Mellow, but who was she, really? And I wondered about if I was just like her name: a bit of fluff that people would like and want more of… but then I wondered if I wasn’t really anything at all, other than a punch line or something to look at. And that’s fine for some people, but that’s not who I wanted to be. 

(Can you tell us about when your mother died?)

I—I call my parents my wake up calls, because each one of them went off like an alarm in my head when they died. Here I was on television and getting invited to parties and showing up in a long line of dignitaries at the same party as President Snow, but it was work. It was work and not fun, fun like we all talked about it being when I was a kid. Wasn’t I supposed to just love being with them, and that I was important? I wasn’t just some elevator operator’s child, I was Marsha Mellow, I could dole out the sweet and the sass and people knew who I was. But even when I was at the end of a table from the president, and it was a long table so don’t think I was that special, when I got the call from her sister that she’d passed, I broke down. 

I thought about giving it all up, going into hiding in a little apartment with my wigs and a couple of little dogs until the end of my days. I just felt—I don’t know, it hit me so damn hard. She used to call me every other day to talk about how I was feeling, what I was doing, where I was going. She liked to hear about the dresses people wore, she would tell me when she saw me on television. She was just about the only one I had left that would do that sort of thing. And then all of a sudden she was gone. I was just sort of floating there, in this space. I’d created for myself, but without the sort of purpose that had gotten me started. 

Now listen—that sort of rudderless passion is good in youth. I don’t want any young person to think that you should know from the get-go where you want to go and who you want to be. You have to take time to find yourself. But god damn it I was forty years old and feeling like I didn’t know who I was or where I was going. That’s not cute. That’s not drop dead gorgeous by a long-shot. So I meditated, I took some time, and I decided I wanted to rebuild.

(That’s how we came to Marsha! The longest running advice program to date on capitol television.)

Yes, honey. That’s how we came to me. I started pulling apart the little things and it all came back to not having people in my life to confide in, to help, to keep me grounded. I didn’t know who I was and I was just playing a part—and it wasn’t working. So I started an inner circle, a little salon for me and my best girls, that we could talk about the damn weather without having to put on an act. That we could cry or scream or just do each other’s nails (except for Denise, because she just did hair). It’s how I got to Marsha, from talking to these girls, to giving advice and taking it, to answering real questions. And my friend 

Tyree told me that he could listen to me all day answering questions, and I called him stupid—but then I started to see if there was an avenue for that. 

We brought in men and women from around the capitol and let them talk about how they felt, what they wanted and who they were. We were shocking, and different. Imagine, people talking about how they felt toward one another. One season led to two, to four, to twelve. It was nuts.

(That brings us to today. You announced last week you were stepping down to take on a new challenge—stylist for District Eleven for the Hunger Games.)

They approached me for years telling me that they wanted me to help and—and I just said I didn’t think that I wanted to give up what I had. But I wanted a challenge, something different. I know that Zell has had her hands full with all the winning they’ve been doing in those lower districts and she looked like she could use some help. Something where I might be able to create some art that could live on beyond what I’ve done. And who knows? If I’m bad, I could always go back to that little apartment with my wigs and my dogs. 

(Thank you, Marsha. The world will miss your show, but we look forward to what you bring in the games. This has been Capitol Insider.)

{Note: Using my MVP for the stylist of District 11}