Fantastical Portia Doubleday did a lot of glue for After the Ball

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      “I had so much glue inside my nostrils. The boogers were endless!” Ladies and gentlemen, please meet Portia Doubleday.

      You are perhaps already acquainted with the 26-year-old actor from her costarring role in 2009’s Youth in Revolt or notable parts in Her and 2013’s Carrie remake (as bad girl Chris Hargensen). But the Canadian film After the Ball, opening Friday (February 27), is all hers—boogers, glue, and unkempt sideburns included.

      “I’ve never been so defeminized and ugly during the duration of a shoot,” she says, calling the Straight from a hotel room in Montreal. “And the facial hair? Ugh. I don’t know where that hair came from or whose it was, but it was all over my face and then it would get in my mouth. I’m so glad I’m not a man. I’ll never be able to date a guy with that little thing, that little patch on the chin.”

      According to my records, that little patch on the chin was pioneered by Quebec’s male population back in the early ’90s. Ironic, really, as After the Ball is set in a faintly fantastical looking Montreal, although it’s not nearly as fantastical looking as Doubleday herself, who goes drag in the film to play an imperious fashion designer named Nate Ganymede.

      “I wanted Nate to be this weird creature. Like, ‘What is that?’ But I had no idea so much glue would be involved,” she says.

      Rest assured that Doubleday also gets to play a woman in After the Ball, which brings a post-feminist spin to the Cinderella story, if reconfigured for the rag trade and then sprinkled with daddy issues.

      As Doubleday points out, the film also places a crucial emphasis on self-actualization over the hunt for Prince Charming. Because After the Ball was made in cooperation with Le Château, hanging for a day with the retail-garment giant’s CEO, Jane Silverstone Segal, gave the “Bette Davis–obsessed” actor the kind of inspiration she was looking for.

      “Being surrounded by professional, corporate women who have maintained their integrity, their soul, their sweetness, and yet are insanely successful?” she says. “That was so empowering for me to be around.”

      Still, it sounds as if Doubleday’s own success was predetermined in some ways. Although she says they discouraged her from entering the business, the LA-native was raised by actor parents. Her dad, Frank, was the ghoulishly iconic Romero in Escape From New York, while Doubleday says she “grew up, literally, in the theatre.”

      “Probably four days a week for my entire childhood, that’s the life I led,” she recalls. “I’d climb up into the attic and watch the shows, but it was very discomfiting for me to watch my mom do personalizations and get all wound up and become this character, this weird person that I didn’t know. It was so strange. But, of course, I was like, ‘I have to do this.’ ”

      It sounds like Doubleday got the best primer a kid could ever have. Too bad nobody mentioned the boogers. 

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