A Day In The Life
Four stars kept a diary of their day on the job for Digest.
Katrina Bowden (Flo)
6:30 a.m.: I usually wake up at sunrise. It depends on what my call time is, obviously, but I usually get up about 6:30-6:45. From there I make my coffee.
7:00 a.m.: I meditate for 20 minutes when I can fit it in, then I try to get in a workout before I head off to the set. That would be about 30-45 minutes. I’ll do that in my bedroom. Pilates is pretty easy as that goes. 7:45 a.m.: I will walk the dogs and feed them before I leave for work, and then take a quick shower. I usually leave about 8:15. 8:15 a.m.: I head to the studio and usually get there by 9, depending on traffic. 9:00 a.m.: Once I get to the studio,
I’ll get my hair done and usually I’ll do my own makeup. That takes about 20 minutes, and I will run lines, usually while I’m getting my hair done, and then wait until it’s my turn to be called to set. We start shooting at 9 and we do a quick blocking/rehearsal and get our notes from the director when we are there, and
then start shooting. With Covid, now there are different things we do. We go to set with masks on and then we’ll take them off to do our scenes. In the beginning, it was a little tricky with all the new Covid rules, but we really made it work and it’s really easy now. 11:00 a.m.:
Depending on the day, I tend to start shooting around 11 and I’m there for a few hours. It depends on the schedule, of course, but if I arrive at 9, I’m usually there until about 3 or 4 in the afternoon.
12:00 p.m.: We have a lunch break from 12 to 1, so if I don’t have time to pack a lunch or I just didn’t bother doing it, I’ll go run and grab something. But I will usually pack a lunch.
3:00-4:00 p.m.: That’s when I usually get out of work. After work, I’ll usually head home and walk the dogs since it has been a while since they’ve been out. We will take a nice, long walk. Then, maybe I’ll meet a friend for a hike or go out for a drink before dinner, and now that The
Grove is opening up again, and sometimes if we wrap a little bit later, I’ll go over there to have a drink with some of the ladies after work, and that’s been really fun. 7:00 p.m.: I like to cook maybe four-tofive times a week. I’ll usually start dinner around 7 so we can eat about 7:30-7:45, depending on the day, of course. I make a lot of salmon. That’s one of my favorite things to cook. It’s good and it’s good for you.
8:00 p.m.: After dinner and clean-up, I like to watch a little
TV, but I haven’t really been watching much of it lately. But if
I’m really into a show, forget it.
I’ll be watching.
9:00 p.m.: I will usually go over my lines for the next day.
I’ll spend about an hour doing that. I’ll go over it once and then go over it again, but I don’t like to go over it too much because I don’t want to overload my brain before bed. It’s usually about
45 minutes to an hour, depending on how much stuff I have for the next day. For me, I memorize well and then I sleep on it and it seems to stick in my brain a little bit better than if I study a lot. Then, read a little bit of a book in bed. Lately, I’ve been reading a lot. I find that when I read
10:00-10:30 p.m.: I like to be in bed by 10 to 10:30 and asleep by 11. I like to be a bit of an early bird, so bedtime usually depends on what time I eat dinner but if I eat by 7:30, I’ll be in bed by 10:30.
11:00 p.m. Lights out.
Lindsay Arnold (Allie)
4:45 a.m: Today was a very early day. I woke up before the sun even did and made a cup of coffee while getting ready for work. 5:25 a.m: Arrived at work and went in to get Covid tested, which involves a swab going up my nose for a few seconds.
5:30 a.m.: As soon as testing is done, I go right to my dressing room to wait until I’m cleared as Covid-negative.
5:45 a.m: I usually do a yoga flow to stretch out my body and sometimes take a short nap if my call time is this early.
7:25 a.m.: Got my negative test result and went to my wardrobe fitting, where I spend about 10 minutes helping choose Allie’s outfit for the day.
7:45 a.m.: After an outfit is picked out, I head to hair and makeup to hang out with my faves, Natalie (my makeup artist) and Dani (who does my hair), while they make me look camera-ready.
8:30 a.m.: After I finish up hair and makeup, I usually run lines with my scene partner. Due to Covid precautions, we can’t leave our dressing rooms, so we usually Facetime to run scenes or just virtually hang out.
8:45 a.m.: Time to head up to set! Today I worked with one of my closest friends, Victoria Konefal [Ciara], which was so fun because me and V haven’t had scenes with each other in almost a year.
9:30 a.m.: We were in the first set of scenes, which took about a half hour or so. We finished pretty early, changed back into our comfy clothes and headed out. 10:00 a.m.: So, if I’m not at work, you can probably find me hanging out with Victoria. After our scenes together that morning, we went out to breakfast. Early call times mean lots of coffee for the rest of the day.
11:30 a.m.: After breakfast, we decided to hit some vintage shops and search for some furniture for my new place. I recently moved, and a lot of my days since have been spent looking for new decor items.
3:30 p.m: After a long day of hanging out outside and going into different stores, we went to our favorite spot in
L.A., which is called Yoga-urt. It’s vegan fro-yo and if you live in L.A., it is a must.
4:30 p.m.: Got home from hanging out with Victoria and decided to go to the gym for a little. I did some cardio and abs and called it a day.
6:00 p.m.: Self-care is very important to me, especially after an early call time, followed by a day of being out and about. After the gym, I took a long shower, did my skin care and put on some sweats.
6:30 p.m.: I try to read at least one book a month, so I usually set aside time every day to read for a little, which is another way I practice selfcare. Right now, I’m reading The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller and 10/10 recommend. I can’t put it down! 7:45 p.m.: Made dinner for myself! I had some brown rice pasta with spinach and tomatoes, which is one of my go-to easy, quick meals. I usually make it once a week. 8:30 p.m.: I cleaned up from dinner and did any extra dishes I had in my sink. 9:00 p.m.: After dinner, I’m usually exhausted from my day and just want to lay on my couch for the rest of the night. So, I put on whatever show I’m currently bingeing (right now it’s DYNASTY) and relax. 11:00 p.m.: After a few hours of chilling, I go brush my teeth, throw on pajamas and head to bed. I usually scroll on my phone for a bit before I fall asleep
Haley Pullos (Molly)
4:30 a.m.: For a 6:45 call time, I set my alarm for 4:30. It’s terrible! I live pretty far from the studio, about 30 minutes without traffic — but in L.A., that doesn’t exist. I usually don’t eat breakfast, I’ll just bring a snack or a protein bar with me and have it on the way. Before work, I do have tea; I switched from coffee because coffee makes me way too jittery!
6:30 a.m.: It takes me an hour to get to work. I chill in my dressing room and kind of get settled for the day and then wait for them to call me into hair and makeup. 7:00 a.m.: We start with hair; they throw rollers on the top because I have famously flat hair. It loves to just stick right to my head! Then I go over to makeup and get my makeup done and go back to hair and we take the rollers out and curl it. At around 7:30, I get called upstairs for blocking. I almost always go up to set with the rollers in my hair and everyone has to comment on it, of course, because I look so ridiculous! Depending on how many scenes you have, blocking usually takes like 20 minutes, then I go back downstairs and finish hair and makeup and get dressed.
8:00 a.m.: I have scenes with Tajh [Bellow, TJ] and I always go into his room to hang out and run lines a bunch of times. Tajh really likes to get familiar with the blocking, so I sit on the couch and say my lines while he blocks out the entire scene. 8:30 a.m.:
Now we wait to be called up for our scenes and when it’s our turn, we start filming. It usually doesn’t take very long because we’ve gotten it down downstairs, so we do one or maybe two takes of each scene and it takes an hour or two hours total. 12:45 p.m.:
GH has lunch at 12:45, so I get whatever the vegetarian option is, and Tajh and I have lunch together. If we still have scenes to do, we’ll go over them while we eat and then we go back up and finish. The commissary isn’t open anymore, so since Covid happened, GH provides boxed lunches on stage and we grab them from a table.
There are usually two meat options and a vegetarian option, or a meat option, a pescatarian option and a vegetarian option. If there’s a pescatarian option, I will almost always grab that, but today, it was vegetarian. Usually, it’s a sandwich or a rice/ salad type of bowl.
They taste a lot better than they look most of the time! I always sneak up early because the vegetarian option is the first one snapped up, and if I’m still on set taping and won’t be able to get to thefoodontime,iasksomebodytograba vegetarian box for me and put it to the side.
2:00 p.m.: I’m done for the day! I don’t think I’ve ever left without my full glam on. I feel so pretty after I get made up that I don’t want to touch it; I just want to leave it for the rest of the day! Even if I’m not doing anything, I’ll just sit at home and feel pretty. Before I leave, I hang up everything I was wearing and put them in plastic bags, which we use for sanitary reasons, and I walk it over to the rack outside of the wardrobe room.
It’s called the “wrapped rack” and you put your stuff there when you’re done wearing it. I always get all my stuff together and get changed and get my wardrobe put away so much faster than Tajh, but we like to walk out together, so I sit and wait for him. He’s always like, “Oh, my God, you beat me again! I was going my fastest!” He’s amazed, like, “I just put on jeans and a T-shirt. You have jewelry and heels — how do you do it?” So, we walk out to our cars together and sometimes we hang out in each other’s cars and listen to music for a few minutes before we go our separate ways, just because Tajh and I love each other and have so much fun together. 3:00 p.m.: On the way home, I listen to music or my favorite true crime podcast, Morbid, and think about what I’m going to have for dinner.
4:00 p.m.: I get home and before I even put my stuff down, my little kit-cat [Chloe] comes downstairs to greet me so I stand in the entry holding all my stuff and cuddle her. It’s almost Chloe’s dinner time, and she lets me know by yelling at me incessantly. I feed her, watch some TV. I’m currently obsessed with HELL’S KITCHEN.
6:00 p.m.: Dinner time! I’m really great at making myself dinner because I am a fantastic chef and my sous chef is Joe — Trader Joe [laughs]. He makes things very easy for me; I just throw something into the microwave.
6:45 p.m.: I finally take off my full glam makeup and I do my whole skin care routine, drowning myself in different oils and creams. To chill and wind down, I’ll do some evening yoga by following along to a Youtube video. Chloe does stretches with me. It’s so cute!
9:00 p.m.: I am an old lady, so I am in bed, falling asleep to a podcast.
Bryton James (Devon)
6:45 a.m.: I wake up to my alarm because I have an early morning call time and have to be on the set for blocking at 7:30. I only live a few minutes from work. I don’t hit the snooze alarm and get right out of bed. I don’t drink coffee and I’m not hungry in the morning, so no breakfast.
6:50 a.m.: My showers are short. I’m in and out, brush my teeth and get dressed. I don’t spend too much time on what I’m going to wear, I just put on something comfortable when it’s this early, and I wear one particular jacket as my work jacket because it’s always freezing cold on the sets in the morning.
I always keep everything
I need in my backpack that’s ready to go.
7:15 a.m.: I’m out of the house and it’s only a short drive to work. 7:20 a.m.: I’m already parking. Luckily, we now have our own assigned spots, which makes it really easy. 7:25 a.m.: Since no one else, even wardrobe, is allowed inside your dressing room because of
Covid, I find what I’m wearing for today hanging in a plastic bag on the outside of
my door. My dressing room is 41E, which is Kristoff’s [St. John, ex-neil] old room and it’s right on the morning stage.
7:30 a.m.: Today, I’m on the Society set with Christel [Khalil, Lily], which usually means we’re sitting down for our scene, so it’s pretty simple blocking. 7:50 a.m.: We’re done with blocking, so Christel heads to hair and makeup while I wait in my dressing room, looking over my scenes. A while ago, I stopped going to hair and makeup and no one seemed to notice, so when I get to set, I’m given these blot pads to use if my face is shiny or oily. 8:15 a.m.:
Christel texts me that she’s done and since we can’t hang out in dressing rooms anymore, we meet on the balcony that overlooks the front parking lot.
8:20 a.m.: When I’m working with Christel, we don’t need to spend much time on running lines because she’s already prepared and has a grasp on what to do in the scenes. She knows that about me, too, so it’s pretty effortless when we get together to run stuff. 8:40 a.m.: We’ve finished going over our lines but half the time we spent catching up and just talking.
8:45 a.m.: I’m back in my dressing room and change into my wardrobe. I don’t need to be on the set for another 45 minutes, so I play some old video games. I also have workout equipment here, so if I’m in a scene where my shirt comes off, I’ll put in a little workout, but today isn’t a shirtless day. 9:30 a.m.: I report to the Society set and this should go quickly.
11:30 a.m.: We’re done, so I change back into my street clothes. I have scenes coming up later in the week with Mishael [Morgan, Amanda] and Sean [Dominic, Nate], and since they’re here, we all work on our lines on the balcony.
12:30 p.m.: I head out and I need to pick
with Daniel, so it’s time to work out. I found some inexpensive workout equipment that’s been incredible to use at home. 4:00 p.m.:
Finished my workout and catch up on some of my sports shows.
5:45 p.m.: Bryt comes home and we walk [our dog] Charli. We discuss what to make for dinner and run lines.
6:30 p.m.: We have decided on tacos for dinner. I’m the sous chef and Bryt puts together this awesome mix of lettuce, tomato, vegan mayonnaise, cheese, avocado and vegan meat.
7:00 p.m.: We sit down to eat in front of the TV because there’s always some shows that we’re behind on and this is when we catch up.
10:30 p.m.: I love staying up late, like until 1:30 or 2 in the morning, but I have an early call time again tomorrow, so we head to bed. I’m usually asleep by 11:00.