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Three nearly naked men drenched in oil gyrated around me, their things barely covered in short tan-hide loincloths that dangled between their thighs. When I was a little girl dreaming of being a singer like Norah Jones, this was not what I had pictured.
I pictured myself onstage wearing a flowing gown draped over the bench of a gorgeous grand piano as I slammed the keys and crooned into the microphone. I could hear the crowd in my mind singing along to the songs I poured my soul into, cheering as I hit the bridge and shook my hair all over the place.
Instead of all that, I was filming my first solo music video off my debut album, dressed in next to nothing, stumbling through choreography with male dancers wearing even less, lip-synching the words to a song where I have zero writing credit. Not that I really wanted credit for the majority of the chorus being just "oh oh oh" approximately three billion times, but writing was what I thought I did best. When I was finally given this record deal, I had thought some of the songs I wrote and demoed for my label would make it onto my album. None of them did. With autotune, anyone could be a pop singer, but I was a songwriter first. Sadly, that was not what the executives who controlled my career believed.
The only reason the powers that be were investing so heavily in this music video now was because of the success of my leading single, "I Need a Warrior Tonight." They weren't sure a Native American pop star could enter the charts. I not only debuted my single in the Billboard Hot 100, but the song has stayed there for nine weeks. Now we were all scrambling to get this music video shot and released to capitalize on the success. Afraid the market attention would turn, and this would all be a waste. It couldn't be. I wouldn't let it.
There was one thing I never called myself-a dancer. Yet here I was trying to remember the intricate choreography while wearing five-inch stilettos to get one flawless take. My concentrated face looked too "angry," and we had been filming this sequence for what felt like hours. A slippery, toned butt cheek of one of the dancers whacked my hand, causing hysterical laughter to bubble out of me. I missed my cue mouthing the words to the next line of this absurd song and I knew I was about to get in trouble.
"Cut!" Fabian, the most coveted music video director in the world, threw his headset as he stormed over to me. My song cut off and was replaced with silence.
I tried to stop laughing, I really did. But then one of the dancers, I think he said his name was Justin in rehearsal, wiggled his eyebrows at me from under his bad wig and headband. It was so ridiculous, that-paired with his super white teeth contrasted with the orangey-bronze spray tan-it was too much. I hadn't come across a whole lot of Native Americans in Hollywood, but I knew this was too over the top to be thought of as authentic.
This was bad. Fabian's forehead vein was throbbing under his flowing locks with bleach-blond highlights.
I snorted, which sent me into another fit of giggles and then I started hiccupping.
"Avery! This shoot is already three days over budget, and you laugh and refuse to take me and my vision seriously," he whined with his French accent.
"I'm . . . I . . ." My laughter was so unhinged I couldn't even form an apology.
"You mock me!" He threw his clipboard onto the floor and charged out of the studio warehouse where we built the forest set for my music video.
I should've run after him and apologized to smooth things over. My label pulled many strings to get him to direct this video last minute for me-a "gamble." Everything needed to be perfect. But I couldn't catch my breath and my eyes started to water. When was the last time I laughed so hard? That deep-belly, feel-it-in-your-toes laughter? I needed it. It had been guest performances on late-night talk shows, meet and greets with radio stations across the nation, and grinding in the studio to make sure each track hit like this single, for the past month.
It was all hard work and no sleep-many creative differences and debates on my sound and look-and it all culminated in this music video. And I looked like I belonged in a western created by Adam Sandler. My skimpy tan-hide two-piece bikini had feathers and beads hanging down like a flapper's fringe. This shit was funny, and it wasn't supposed to be. In my delirious, lack-of-sleep state, it all seemed to be in bad taste. But everyone who held the purse strings loved it. I just wanted my own music video, and this was how I could get it. This was the launchpad for my solo career; I needed to pay my dues before I could take more creative control with my music.
Before I could extract myself from the group of barely covered male dancers, I heard a noise that could raise the dead.
My mother.
"Avery!" The shrill was accented with the echoing clicks of her Jimmy Choo stilettos on the concrete floor of the downtown Los Angeles warehouse where we were filming. My mom was a yard away from me and on reflex, my shoulders hunched over in anticipation of the earful my momager was going to unleash on me.
"Why did I just see Fabian run out of here yelling that he quit?" she asked me.
"Because I'm so tired-" Hiccup. I took a deep breath to try to banish the hiccups away, holding it in trying to get to ten.
"Entirely unprofessional," she hissed under her breath, and turned her cold eyes to the dancers. They dispersed faster than I could blink.
Hiccup. I giggled. Mistake. I gulped down air again.
"All my sacrifice to get you here, near the pinnacle of success, and you would throw it away because you are tired? With your Rolling Stone cover dropping so soon, one would think you'd be working extra hard to get this music video perfect. Laugh on your own time, but not on production's."
I expelled my breath. The mention of my magazine cover ruffled my feathers a little bit. She dropped it as if I didn't do all the hard work to even get that opportunity, that I haven't been working around the clock for years. "Mom, lighten up. We've been filming all week and have to have all the shots by now. Fabian even said we're over budget."
"Do you want this music video to flop?" She crossed her arms and her face looked unamused, but still perfect from her spa treatments and Botox.
I hated when she asked me rhetorical questions. Obviously, I did not want my song or accompanying music video to flop. But I also did not want to create a reputation for being expensive this early in my career.
"No, Mom."
"Right. So, why don't you let everyone do their jobs and make the best damn music video this genre has ever seen."
"That's stretching it," I mumbled. She caught it and did not think it was funny. She attempted to glare, but with all the Botox in her forehead and around her eyes, the effect was less than intimidating since her eyelids were the only things that could move. Still, I could interpret the subtle sign of her displeasure. A common occurrence for me, but I really did try to make her proud. She sacrificed so much for me over the years, what was a few more hours dancing?
"Sorry," I squeaked as I looked down and got back into place.
"Places!" she yelled. "Run through rehearsal, I'll bring the director back. Let's wrap this shoot strong!"
Hiccup. "Let's take it from the top one more time." I clapped to my dancers. I cocked my hip in my starting pose and counted in. "Five! Six! Seven! Eight!" We got back to work.
When filming finally wrapped, it was at 11:02 p.m. and Fabian and I were back on good terms. I mean, I wasn't thrilled the last shot filmed was of me crawling on the fake forest floor toward the camera looking as sexually suggestive as possible, but as everyone liked to tell me-sex sells.
The only crawling I wanted to do was into bed, which I couldn't do because I had to catch a flight to Dallas for rehearsal for a show in a few nights. A sold-out show opening for the hottest rapper on the planet-My$teriou$ Money. Another incredible opportunity I had earned from my time being featured (creditless) on tracks since I was nineteen.
A legendary and award-winning director for my music video and a sold-out show opening for one of the most popular artists of the century was great and all for exposure, but Rolling Stone was career-making and they had chosen me to be on the cover-alone.
My idols have appeared on the cover and some multiple times, like our lord and savior, Britney freaking Spears. If I had a quarter of the success with even one song to define a generation like she had, then I could die thinking that I really "made it." Even if I wasn't quite the dancer Britney is, she is the Queen of Pop.
I smiled to myself and ripped the stilettos off my feet and waddled to my robe that was waiting in my chair. Los Angeles as a city was really cool; however, filming in Los Angeles was not. The warehouse wasn't exactly a private place. It was right in the middle of downtown near the garment district and someone leaked that I was here. There was a group of fans clutching headshots of me waiting outside the warehouse with a few paps, most likely hoping to get my signature so they could turn around and sell them online.
This wasn't the worst part about my job or public status, but it wasn't the best either. Not after a grueling shooting schedule, no sleep, and a charley horse cramp in my right arch, but most of those people had been waiting out there since early this morning and the least I could do was say hi to them. I always tried my best to treat my fans right.
My trailer was located in the parking lot adjacent to the warehouse, so encountering the crowd was inevitable. I stepped into the cool night air to cheers and yelling.
"Is that Avery Fox?" a young girl asked her dad.
"Oh my gosh, it is Avery Fox! Deuxmoi was right! She's here filming!" a man in basketball shorts and Beats headphones wrapped around his neck said to his much shorter companion who was rocking an oversized flannel buttoned up to his neck.
"Avery! Avery!" Two teenage girls rushed toward me.
I spread my arms out to give them each a hug. My mom, who was power walking behind me, glued to her phone and oblivious to her surroundings, crashed into my back.
"Watch it!" Her voice was stern, but once she noticed the small group of people with their phones out, she plastered her phony smile on. "Well, hello!" she cooed.
"Hey, everyone!" I waved.
"Can we get a photo with you?" the teen girls asked so fast the words bled together. Their excitement was contagious.
"Of course!" I bent my knees a little, so my head was closer to theirs, and smiled for the million selfies they took in succession.
"I think you got a good one in there," I said as I straightened.
"We loved you in the Disney Channel's A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Musical! Your song as Helena, 'Blind Cupid,' is our favorite! It's like our 'Hopelessly Devoted to You' but for young people."
Ouch. Kids say the darndest things.
"You girls are so sweet, but nothing comes close to beating Grease!" I laughed. Out of all the shows and films I did as a kid, that last made-for-TV musical movie from seven years ago was my calling card. I didn't even want to do that project back then. I wanted to give up acting and focus on my music. Now my mom was going to gloat and rub it in again that she "told me so" and that her career strategy for me was all "falling into place." When, really, the actress they had originally cast had gotten arrested for a DUI and Disney dumped her faster than these girls asked me for a photograph.
They needed an actress with a spotless reputation, and as a dorky sixteen-year-old whose mother never let her out of her sight, I fit the bill.
It also helped that as a descendant of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, I was a great "diversity" hire for the shareholders, as my agent liked to phrase it. My mother preferred to say that Hollywood "owed" us.
"Is it true you are going to be in Rolling Stone tomorrow?" the preteen girl with glasses and braces asked. They had to have been pushing thirteen with their awkward, gangly limbs.
"How could you have heard about that?" I put my hands on my hips in mock outrage. It was my mother who sent a tip to Deuxmoi after the photo shoot six weeks ago, trying to make sure there was public discourse about it in case Rolling Stone found a better option for the cover and tried to bump me.
"We can never be too careful," she had said.
No one likes to think their mother capable of extortion or blackmail, but not everyone had a mother like Harriett Fox. I'd once watched her rip a disposable camera out of an old lady's hands when I was sixteen, because she thought there might have been a photo of me on it. My mother was a control freak and my public image had to be curated and spotless. When my mother got the film developed, we discovered the poor woman had taken a photo of some sign over my head. I wasn't in any shot.
"Can I get a photo with you? You were my high school celebrity crush," the basketball shorts-wearing man mentioned unnecessarily.
"Of course!" I smiled and pretended that hearing about being crushes or "fantasies" of young men didn't gross me out. He didn't look much older than me. Less creepy than the old men who said they were introduced to my work through their daughters. He at least kept it very vague with "crush" and I appreciated it. Until he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pretended to lick my cheek.
Copyright © 2025 by Danica Nava. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
