The Tony Award that got away from this promiscuous “Virgin’s” Monologues.
The review was malicious and scathing about her lead role in the play, Virgin Monologues. Cheryl thought it was a bad idea. But she hadn’t worked in over a year. Her agent urged her to say yes to something soon before the fans “replaced her”. But the screenplays he was sending her lately were dull and underdeveloped. And she was not ready to accept a smaller role. “I am the star of everything I do” she famously said in an interview. But when her team had to finally tell her the good scripts were going to younger actresses, she was devasted. Until now she, in a delusion, convinced herself that it was the screenwriters who were getting bad. All hundreds of them.
She phoned her agent. His voice came on as she was hanging up. She waited for him to call her. “Hey sweetie” he greeted her. “Hi, John” she said annoyed. “Am I disturbing you?” she asked. “No. Why do you ask?” “When you let the phone ring several times before answering, the inclination is that you’re busy or disinterested. So, which one is it?” she scolded him. Not wanting to let her upset him, he began to chuckle. “I’m not disinterested, Cheryl” he tried to comfort her. Made you wonder who was the actor here? Still annoyed she quipped, “did you see the New York Times? I’m headlining, for a bad cause”. “I did hear something about that, but”, she interrupted, “You heard? You’re not even paying attention to what’s being said about me in the press?” “I am paying attention, and I’m on top of it” he assured her. She paused. “I’ll bet. Call me with a solution. No later than tomorrow” she ended the call while he was in the middle of responding.
Then she called all of her connections at the New York Times. To no avail. They hadn’t yet forgiven her for her last outburst to a profile story they ran three years ago. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Her career came to a violent halt. Hollywood was exhausted by her. They seized the opportunity to ghost her. She had no choice but to return to the stage but even Broadway had no place for her. The gig was so far off of Broadway, you would have thought she was an understudy for what they paid her. Until you looked at her face covered with heavy make-up.
Honestly, this is John’s fault, she thought to herself. He’s the one who encouraged me to do this play. Virgin Monologues my ass! I’m forty- two years old. Not even my pets are virgins. Right when she started to put her phone down, a notification from UnHollywood.com came up. It read, “Cheryl Woodlyn- the virgin- pops her cherry then gets it sewn up with cheap threads”. She had enough. She hit the power button on the phone. For the rest of the evening, that phone would not taunt her.
Tameka Fleming 