What a horrible end to the weekend this has been.

I'll get right to it: Shobhit was let go from The Foreigner. This is probably the worst thing to ever happen to him in his acting career. This was the first lead part he had ever been cast in. I asked him multiple times how rehearsals were going, and he always said they were going well. He even felt like today's rehearsal, which was scheduled at the TPS space at Seattle Center as all Sunday rehearsals until this weekend have been, was going well—until they had the conversation about an hour in that they were "going in a different direction."

I had scheduled a double feature in the Braeburn Condos theater today with Laney, and we only made it through one of the movies. During one of the bathroom breaks Laney needed, thankfully while the movie was paused, I got the text from Shobhit: I just got fired

I texted back: What?? But then, of course, the very same minute I texted that, I called him. He was still at Seattle Center, "processing," as he put it. It's probably safe to say he was reeling. He was clearly deeply upset, as anyone in his position would be. "I'm so, so sorry," I said. I truly meant it.

I had gone out into the Community Kitchen to make the call. Laney walked in as she returned from the bathroom, chipper as usual, but she realized instantly something was wrong when I said, "Are you doing okay?" He clearly wasn't. God knows when he will be again. I don't think anything has ever happened to Shobhit, outside the deaths of our cats, that has had my heart break for him to this degree. I feel so bad for him.

Shobhit said on the phone that he was essentially told he wasn't "pulling his weight," but I learned later that was not actually said. The director did tell him something to the effect of that they were "going in a different direction." Typical weasel-speak for "we're letting you go."

Laney was the one who asked if he had ever been at least given a warning, and I noted that Shobhit never mentioned such a thing—and that, indeed, he had consistently said rehearsals were going well. I'm pretty stunned by this. Could they not at least give him a chance to correct whatever they felt was going wrong? I asked him later, after he got home, if he's ever even been fired from a regular job. "I came very close to it once," he said, "at my first job in India." But in the end, he wasn't. He was given the chance to turn it around. Because that is how this is supposed to fucking work.

I don't know, maybe they made the decision with the production company as early as last night. That's what Shobhit seems to suspect. If that happened, why wait until now to make the decision clear? Why blindside him with it? Why run rehearsal for an hour today before having the conversation? What the fuck? I suppose I should be fair and note that I was not there; I have not been witness to any of the rehearsals; I can't possibly be objective about any of this. I can't let that stop me from being livid about it all. I think Shobhit is mosty crushed by it; this is why my heart breaks for him—but the whole thing sounds weirdly shady to me, how they went about it, and so I can't help but be furious on his behalf. Getting fired from a regular job is one thing, and in terms of his professional life would actually be worse. But this was going to be something truly special, something he, and I, and many others, were incredibly excited about. That adds a whole different, very specific layer to the disappointment.

I checked the play's web page before I even went back upstairs after Laney and I finished the first movie. At that time, it was still showing photos from the photo shoot that had been the first pre-production event with the entire cast, Shobhit featured front and center. Within two hours, I checked it again, and all the photo shoot shots were gone. Shobhit told me there were no understudies cast for any of the parts, which stunned me; he thought maybe the director himself was planning to step in and do the part. Instead, though, there is already another actor listed as playing the part of Charlie Baker. This guy even has a profile page on the TPS website, noting previous Pacific Northwest regional parts he's been in, one of which was as both in the ensemble and as understudy for the Frederic character in the 2022 Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society production of The Pirates of Penzance (my favorite Gilbert & Sullivan play, incidentally). I found his Facebook page, and just like Shobhit would have been, it looks like he'll be commuting from Seattle.

There are so many layers to how devastating and frustrating this is. The impact on Shobhit surpasses that of all other considerations combined, of course. But there is also this: I have at minimum seven family members and at least three friends (including my boss) who have confirmed they already bought tickets, and I'm going to have to follow up with all of them that Shobhit will not be in the play after all. I'll need to post a general notice that Shobhit will no longer be in the play, in case anyone else I don't know has bought tickets. The production company website says "all ticket sales are final" and that they can offer exchanges for other productions, but I sure as shit hope they will regard this as a special circumstance and refund these tickets—the play is no longer actually what these tickets were bought for. I'm going to wait to follow up with people until I call or email the box office myself, as I need a refund myself for the ticket I bought for Alexia on March 22 and which she Venmoed me for, and for which I will need to Venmo her back.

Laney is the only other person as of yet who even knows about this, because she was with me when I got the news. She sat down on a seat near me when she gathered from my phone call that something bad had happened. Shobhit told me he was going to stay there at Seattle Center and process for a few minutes; he told me later that he left to walk home almost immediately after we got off the phone. Anyway, Shobhit and I hung up, and I told Laney, "Shobhit got fired from his play." He said, "Oh, no!" and covered her face with her hand—she knew as well as I did that this was going to be a devastating blow to his morale. She told me to tell him how sorry she was to hear this.

Laney and I were doing the next of our Alexander Payne series of double features; this one was going to be The Descendants (2011) and Nebraska (2013). We'll have to reschedule seeing the latter. I texted Shobhit to let me know when he got home and I would come upstairs, Laney and I could finish our movies later. I knew Shobhit was walking home from Seattle Center, though, and that's a couple of miles away, so Laney and I went back to finish The Descendants, which was about halfway over at this point.

The Descendants might be Alexander Payne's saddest movie, although I still love it; it's also one of my favorites. And even though the sadness in it had to do with family drama and had no connection to what just happened to Shobhit, the sadness in it still hit harder now, as my heart was breaking for Shobhit and what had just happened to him.

Shobhit texted me he was home maybe half an hour before the movie ended. I didn't notice the text until 15 minutes after he sent it, as I had made the mistake of setting my phone on the seat next to me. I texted him that the movie was almost over and then I would come up. I don't think I could have fully enjoyed watching the next movie today anyway; I'd have been spending the whole time thinking about Shobhit.

This changes so much about how we expected the next month and a half to go. Shobhit had even coordinated with Gina and Beth's friend Sam to go stay at his house for a couple hundred dollars a week the next couple of weeks: he was going to head down on Tuesday morning (when the next rehearsal is scheduled, at the theatre in the state capital from then on) [EDIT: I replaced the city name with "state capital" to lessen the risk of anyone googling the play + the city winding up finding this post], and stay down there until Sunday, March 8, which is opening weekend. I was going to take the bus down on the 6th to be there Opening Night (which Jennifer's entire family, and I believe Gina and Beth, all already have tickets for), stay the night with Shobhit that night, and then bus back home the next day. None of this is happening now. Shobhit and I will be able to spend more time together than we thought we would now, but that is small consolation under the circumstances.

Laney gave me a hug when we said goodbye, and wisely said she didn't want to come upstairs and intrude on whatever Shobhit might be going through. She said to give him a hug for her, though. My trip up the elevator and down the hall to our condo door was an unusually vivid experience, the anticipation being so heightened. I opened the door, and Shobhit was on the couch, scrolling on his phone. Anyone with no knowledge of what had just happened would think it was a perfectly normal day in our home.

But, I walked up to him, and took his hand, and said, "Stand up." He stood up, and I hugged him, and we stayed that way for a long, long time. He clearly needed that hug. I even cried a little. I don't know if maybe I should have tried to fight that back, as this is not about me? My heart just breaks for him so much. I don't want this to break his spirit, or any of his ambition to keep auditioning for things. Shobhit also sniffled a little. It was nothing like the sobs he heaved when we put Peng down in 2008, but it's still the only time I've seen him cry from any kind of sadness since then. Usually he bottles it in, which was curiously what he did when both Shanti and Guru died, I think I was so beside myself when those deaths happened, and so Shobhit took on the role of consoling me—the inverse of what had happened with Peng. Shobhit has harbored his sorrow for the loss of Shanti and Guru far longer than he ever did Peng, but I am convinced that's simply because I insisted on getting Shanti and Guru only a couple of months later, which quickly took his mind off of Peng. But, Shobhit knew Peng for four years, and he knew Shanti and Guru for sixteen, since we brought them home as kittens, and it's now going on two years since their passing and we still don't have another cat. I plan to have one by late summer, though.

I'm digressing a little here—the point, I guess, is that grief can vary not only depending on the person, but even from a single person depending on the circumstance. It's going to take some time for Shobhit to get over this, and this just happened today.

I haven't even mentioned the play Shobhit and I went to last night, which is actually relevant to all of this: we saw a play version of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, co-starring a woman named Juliette, who is also in The Foreigner. Shobhit decided to go see this play to support another person in the cast he was in, until today anyway. I had plans to take myself to a movie at the AMC Alderwood Mall late yesterday afternoon, but changed the plans when Shobhit proposed this new plan when he texted me about it on Friday night. We were unsure whether we were going to have to spend $80 on two tickets to the show, and literally as we were walking from the car to the theater, Juliette texted Shobhit with two of the comp tickets she could share for friends and family as a cast member.

I actually took Light Rail down to Federal Way to meet them—Shobhit gave Juliette a ride from the rehearsal they had just had in Tacoma yesterday. Presumably Juliette had no idea Shobhit was about to be let go from The Foreigner the very next afternoon. When they met met at the Light Rail station (actually meeting in the McDonald's parking lot across the street; Maps still doesn't know where to direct people to pick up people at the station's own parking lot), Juliette immediately got out of the front seat for me, which was totally unnecessary but I get it. She was very nice and of course I thought I was meeting a member of the cast I would be seeing in [the state capital]. Not anymore.

I keep wondering how the rest of the cast of The Foreigner will react to this change. Shock? Mixed reactions? How did the rest of them feel about Shobhit, I wonder? Presumably Shobhit would have picked up on it if any of them had any lack of patience with him? As I said, so far as Shobhit could tell, rehearsals were actually going well. That adds a whole other layer to the shock and frustration of all this.

I still feel compelled to say that And Then There Were None was super fun. I'm glad we went to see it, and Juliette was fantastic in it. Most of the rest of the cast was too. I'd love to go to more live theater, but for how expensive it is and the fact that I prioritize so much of my time for going to the movies. Juliette asked me if I was also in theater when we were all in the car, and I said no and that I was really into movies and had a movie reviews blog for over twenty years. She asked me what my favorite movies were. I rather got the sense that she's a lot younger than I am.

Ugh. Age, another relevant factor to Shobhit's situation. He's 52, and he had been cast in his first-ever lead role. This was a big, big deal. And now it's been pulled out from under him. He's said more than once that "It's going to take some time for me to process." I'm sure it will.

I find myself kind of weirdly holding on to the ignorant bliss we were in last night. We dropped off Juliette at the theater, then went to buy a quick dinner at Chipotle. We drove straight back to the theater, and Shobhit got the comp tickets over text when we were just feet away from the door—theater people supporting other theater people. Shobhit has to be feeling particularly unsupported right now. All I can do is be there for him and support him myself, in whatever way I can.

Shobhit asked me to make chai, and while I did that, I discovered the updated web page. I noted it to Shobhit, who looked at it with mild interest. A few minutes later, seeing me still on my computer, I think he got slightly worried: "Don't do anything crazy," he said. "I'm not,," O replied. Maybe he thought I would post to socials talking shit about the production company or the director or something—no, nothing like that. I'll tell some people directly that Shobhit was let go, but when I post about this later in my social feeds I'll be more diplomatic about it, and just say that Shobhit will unfortunately be unable to perform in this production after all, and hopefully be able to offer instructions on how to get refunds.

I'm sure glad I took this screenshot, from a version of the play's web page that no longer exists and never will again. I even had a photo album already going, figuring I would get other shots over the course of the production. It had this screen shot, and three of the head shot photos I took for use in the program and on the website; the third shot had already been on it. Until this afternoon. Now it's replaced by the new guy.

[posted 5:57pm]