I tried to stay focused to please Mama and the director, but the boredom wore on me and, combined with my exhaustion, made me less and less enthusiastic about working on the show, which led to more takes and our tapings getting longer.

One night, as I tried to wrap up a scene with Redford at one in the morning, I couldn’t get my blocking right and kept running into the living room too soon.

“Marc, you’re not concentrating,” Steve said over the studio speakers.

“I’m tired. I want to go home,” I replied.

“You can’t go home until this scene is done.”

I rubbed my eyes and tried not to cry. “Let him take a nap,” Redford said as he hugged me from the back and patted my head. “We can wait.”

Steve nodded and let me lie down on a couch while the cast and crew waited. I somehow willed myself to finish the scene after I woke up and was ready to sleep in the cab on our way back home. But I knew by the way Mama pulled my arm when the car arrived that she wouldn’t leave me alone when we got in.

“I can’t believe you embarrassed me like that!” she yelled. Mama spent the next few minutes enumerating my faults, how I’d been unfocused and unenthusiastic, how I was an ungrateful child. “You’re so lucky to be on TV, and you’re throwing the chance away.”

“I don’t even know where my money goes,” I replied. “You’re just spending it when you go out.”