Page 46 of Business or Pleasure

My fingers fly across the keyboard as we talk more about his transition from Reno to LA, and he tells me about the first time he got recognized in public.

“I was at a Ralphs in the Valley, waiting in line to buy an absolutely horrific array of groceries,” he says. “Pop-Tarts, frozen Red Robin onion rings, a whole tray of fancy cheeses I was going to eat by myself—that’s what happens when you’re twenty and living alone for the first time. These two girls who couldn’t have been more than a few years younger than I was couldn’t stop staring, and I was convinced they were judging me for what I was buying, so I kept trying to shield my basket from them. It wasn’t until we were out in the parking lot that they asked if I was Finn Walsh, and I was so shocked that I forgot where I’d parked my car. Walked around in a daze for fifteen minutes, just trying to find it.”

“What was that like?” I ask, grinning at the mental image. “The getting recognized, and the living alone for the first time.”

“Surreal. To be honest, I’m still not used to it. And not just because it’s less frequent these days. When the show was on, I had to go incognito just about everywhere—sunglasses, a hat, the works. Now I don’t bother with any of it. The rare times it happens, I’m always convinced, like, one of the Stranger Things kids is behind me and that’s who they’re really staring at.” That seems accurate, based on what I’ve observed so far. No one seems to know him unless they know him, unless they’re in that world. “And I guess I should clarify—I had a couple roommates at first, but they worked restaurants in the evenings and auditioned during the day, so I almost never saw them. At the end of season one, I moved into my own apartment. And I loved it. I’d already been fairly self-sufficient for a while, so once I got all the Pop-Tarts out of my system, I was cooking pretty regularly. And I went back to Reno to see my mom whenever I could.”

The sound of my keyboard continues to fill the space between us. “I’d love to hear more about your family,” I say tentatively, because I haven’t forgotten what he said about his dad, and the fact that he doesn’t mention going back to see him.

Another few taps of his pen along the table. “Let’s see... you already know they got divorced when I was in high school. My mom used to do hospital billing, but now she’s a rabbi.”

I gasp. “Are you serious? That’s amazing. We can put that in the book, right? Please don’t tell her I eat pork.”

“She wouldn’t judge,” he says. “And you’ll actually meet her in a few weeks. We’ll spend some time at my old house in Reno when we’re there for Biggest Little Comic Con.”

“Sounds like a gold mine.”

“I’m extremely proud of her. It was a massive career change and she had to go back to school for it, but she’d always wanted to do it, and she made it happen.”

“And how does she feel about Ms. Mistletoe?”

He laughs, pretends to chuck the pen at me. “It was good money! And if you look closely in the Christmas Eve scene, there’s actually a menorah in the background.”

“Wow, the representation.”

This makes him laugh harder, eyes crinkling at the edges. “I want that in the book. Not just the sad menorah, although that’s a great image to open a chapter with, but my religion in general.”

I nod, making a note of it. “And your dad?”

His mouth forms a grim line. “Not sure where he is these days. He tends to only pop up when he wants something from me.”

“Oh—I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he says, waving this off, and I get the feeling there’s much more to the story. “It’s a relief, actually, not to need to worry about whether he’s happy with what I’m doing or if he thinks it’s a childish waste of time, which is what he said when I started auditioning.” He presses his lips together. “We didn’t agree on anything, really. Politics, money, what I wanted to spend my life doing. He was a bitter, unhappy person, and he seemed to make it his mission to ensure everyone around him felt the same way.”

He talks more about his mom, telling me a story about how she convinced her synagogue’s sisterhood to dress up as characters from The Nocturnals during one Purim. Naturally, I require photographic evidence.

“Somehow I get the feeling this isn’t the reason you wanted to write this book,” I say, passing his phone back to him. He is so close to telling me, I can sense it—I just need to give him the tiniest push.

He takes a few moments to consider what he wants to say, the way I’m realizing he tends to do before revealing something deeper. And I like that—that he needs time to collect the right words. Too many of us are too quick to fire off the first thing that comes to mind.

“The whole time I was on The Nocturnals,” he finally says, “the media speculated on who I was dating. Who I wasn’t dating. Whether I’d be as sweet and generous in bed as my character. They wanted to talk about what a dork I was in real life, too, and wasn’t it hilarious, how much I knew about Tolkien? I was the ultimate nice guy, wasn’t I? Wouldn’t I make the best boyfriend, for all these readers who knew absolutely nothing about who I really was? The women on the show, it was even worse for them, being under that microscope. And it was fucking relentless.”

“I—I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I admit. It doesn’t feel right to stare at my laptop screen while he’s speaking so candidly, so I push it to the side, letting my voice recorder take the reins.

Finn’s breaths come faster as he gains steam, forearms on the table, leaning in to make sure the recorder is getting every word. “And then they loved to shit on the show itself. That’s what Hollywood does, right? Anything meant for teens, even though none of us were teens, that was our primary demo. Any time I said something publicly, I had to think about all the ways it might be misinterpreted. The sound bites that would distill something I spent ages coming up with the right words for into a five-second clip. I couldn’t speak my mind. I couldn’t act out of character, even in my regular life, because no one wanted to see that. They wanted Hux, not me. This book is my chance to show them who I really am. Isn’t that what we all want—to be able to talk, or create, and have other people listen?”

Oh. Wow. He might have me pegged.

“And then it was all just... gone. I love the show. I love the fans,” he says. “But some of the actors were almost thirty and playing eighteen-year-olds. It’s like we’re trapped in this bizarre kind of extended adolescence, and the reunion...” He trails off, weighing his words again. “I don’t want to be a household name, I really don’t. I’ve seen what that level of fame does to people. Juliana—well, you probably read the stories.”

I did. Paparazzi documenting her addictions and her time in rehab, photo galleries questioning whether she’s too skinny or not skinny enough, and how long she’ll be sober this time before another relapse. All of it horrifying.

“And that’s just what makes it to the gossip sites,” he says. “It can be fucking brutal.”

“But it’s worth it?” I ask. “It’s worth all the bullshit?”

He considers this for a moment. “I don’t know if it’s that it’s worth all the bullshit or that I don’t have any other marketable skills. Well—maybe I don’t. But there’s truly nothing else like it. You get to create art that matters to other people, something that brings them joy or inspires them or helps them process, or something that just allows them to escape the real world for a while. Maybe they’ll find some connection with it that you never intended—that’s part of the magic. When I’m in front of a camera, I don’t have to worry about anything except making that performance as believable as possible, and it’s an incredible release. And I hope to keep doing it as long as I can, even if I’m not getting huge roles. Even if those roles aren’t ‘prestige.’ Maybe I’d like to produce or direct someday, but for now, I like my privacy. What I’m most passionate about, actually, is mental health.”

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