Coke Zero, Ella’s Doughnuts, and Barbara from Nova Scotia
Nappoholics Anonymous is a weekly column featuring twelve random thoughts by actor Tony Nappo. Some are funny, some are poignant, some bother him, and some make him weep from sadness while others make him weep for joy. Here are his thoughts: unfiltered, uncensored, and only occasionally unsafe for work.
1. It recently occurred to me that when I was younger, we were intermittent fasting all the time. We just called it doing cocaine.
2. In honour of legalization
3. On the plane trip home from Italy, I sat next to a very sweet woman named Barbara from Nova Scotia who I shared my licorice with. Barbara kept asking to get the map on her tv screen so she could follow along with where we were at and announce it to her husband every fifteen minutes or so for the entirety of the ten hour flight. It literally took forty-five minutes and several different people to get the map on her screen. She seemed quite annoyed by this and kept repeating to me and her husband that she needed this map in front of her and she didn’t know why it was taking so long. It was as if her entire existence depended on this map. For a moment I suspected terrorism, but then thought they probably bring their own maps. I went to the bathroom, stretched my legs, and when I returned to my seat I saw that, at long last, she finally had the map in front of her. I said, “Hey! You finally got your map, eh?” She seemed super pleased with that until I said, “I was pretty sure we were gonna end up in Toronto whether you got it or not.” At which point she rolled her eyes and pointed the remote at me and made a clicking gesture to shut me off.
Fuckin’ Haligonians.
4. How confident in aerospace technology do you have to be to order a Coke Zero on a ten hour transcontinental flight? This could be your last drink ever, motherfucker! Take the calories!!!
5. My daughter really doesn’t fuck around when it comes to doughnuts.
6. A few months ago, I turned down a voice audition for Dracula in Hotel Transylvania 4. I did so because I really suck at doing a Dracula accent but, hard as I tried, I couldn’t suck as badly at it as Adam Sandler does.
7. Classic Me
8. Whenever someone points out that the fly on my pants is down, my favourite response is to pretend to get all embarrassed and apologetic, as if my dog kept getting into their yard, and as I am doing it up, I say, “I’m so sorry, it’s like keeping an elephant in a birdcage.”
9. It’s amazing to me how these fuckheads are constantly promoting a mass hatred of Muslims—based on the actions of a very small number of radical extremists—while simultaneously promoting a “healthy” society based on those radical extremists’ same core values.
10. Two years later and this is more relevant than when I first posted it. If you haven’t seen the 13th, see it. Especially if you support the Republican or Conservative agenda. I mean, if you are going to be a racist asshole, at least be an informed racist asshole.
11. The perfect Christmas stocking stuffer. But it would make so much more sense if it was a puppet instead of a calendar.
12. A year has come and gone since the #MeToo movement went viral. It has changed everything and nothing. Everything in terms of the behaviour I observe firsthand on film sets. Nothing in terms of Kavanaugh’s appointment to the US Supreme Court. So I decided to rerun what I wrote a year ago as a reminder to all men that if WE don’t change, the issue won’t ever go away. Because, after all, we ARE the issue.
Reading all the #metoo posts broke my fucking heart, but that’s just too fucking bad for my heart, isn’t it? I didn’t have to personally live through any of it. I didn’t have to continue to live with it or feel any shame or self-blame connected to it. And I didn’t have to live with being ignored or dismissed when I had the courage to expose it. Caring about those who did have to go through any of these experiences is the very least my fucking heart can and should do.
As a younger actor, I constantly flirted with and hit on women. Constantly. There was some hole deep inside of me that needed to be filled with their attention and needed to be wanted by them. It was never about power. It was never about control. It was about need. I never felt attractive enough or cool enough or anything enough growing up and, as I aged, I found my self-worth, to a large degree, in how many women I could sleep with. There was some belief instilled in me early on that the more women I could sleep with, the more of a man I would be. I wasn’t always honest. I wasn’t always faithful. I know that I hurt people.
Eventually, I was the guy who women warned each other about. To be clear, I never assaulted anyone. I never wanted anyone who didn’t want me, but still. I was not a good guy to women. As I grew older, I began to see how pathetic men like I were. How incomplete we were. How little we really had to offer anyone or the world. And I started to try to be better because I didn’t feel good about who I was or how I was viewed or who I was clearly going to end up being in the end. It was a very long road and involved many, many slips and mistakes, some I will regret for the rest of my life.
It’s really obvious that harassment and assault and rape are wrong. I’m not talking about that here, really. I’m talking about a way of viewing and using women for one’s emotional and psychological needs that is not respectful and not right. It is shameful. I’m talking about objectifying women. Plain and simply. I’m talking about being a willing participant in the accepted sexism that goes on around us daily because it benefits us to do so. I’m trying to talk, ultimately, about the possibility of undoing the idea (in the heads of most but not all men) that women are there to be conquered or collected to feed the desperately weak egos of empty men. And I know that it is possible because I have done it. The final straw came when I hurt someone that I had loved more than anyone I had ever known.
I’ll be fifty years old in February and I am happy with who I am now. I don’t even flirt anymore at all—either at work or in life. I am a father now. I am a veteran actor with this column as a platform, someone who can be an example in an industry where women are mistreated and used and abused regularly. I am sincerely sorry to those people that I have misled and hurt and disappointed. You didn’t deserve that. This wasn’t an easy thing to write. But I felt like I owed it to the women I hurt who may be viewing my support as insincere or hypocritical or self-serving. And also to those of you who follow this column and support it. I’m pretty aware of how “liked” I am, in general, and how I’m thought of as a no-bullshit guy or a fun guy or whatever the fuck it is I am thought of, but I’d rather those thoughts be based on my entire truth than just the selected highlights.
Thanks for hearing me out.
Tony Nappo
Tony is Italian, he’s from Scarborough, he’s an actor, he’s a father, he’s a really good house painter, and he doesn’t believe that most things matter, ultimately, at all.
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