When I went in the following Monday to do our last taping, Steve and other crew members reassured me I wouldn’t have trouble finding work. Because the cancellation was so sudden, the scriptwriters didn’t have time to write a proper ending, so the last episode gave no indication that there wasn’t going to be another one, as I pretended to run away even though I was just hiding in the bushes of our backyard and Redford couldn’t find me. When Isabel finally looked around and noticed where I was hiding, she started talking about how it was too bad she didn’t know where I was because she brought me cake, and I sprang out of the bushes to hug my TV mom for the last time, the kind and beautiful mother I didn’t have in real life.

I wasn’t done with show business though; I was actually booked on a talk show called Seeing Stars with Joe Quirino, so I returned to Broadcast City the following Friday. Another guest that night was Lea Salonga, the singer I’d admired for so long but had never actually met in person.

I went on first, and the cancellation hadn’t been announced yet, so I had to pretend there was nothing wrong as the host asked me mundane questions about being a sitcom kid. When I got off the soundstage, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, I spied a figure in a baby doll dress and pigtails with ribbons standing at a distance from me. It was Lea Salonga. A crew member was leading me toward the exit to the dressing rooms, and I would pass her on my way there. I prepared to pause and say hello.

But as I got closer, I noticed that Lea’s gaze was pitched upward and her eyes were glassy. She was focused on her performance, maybe going through her song in her head. I didn’t want to affect her concentration, so I only gazed at her in wonder as I passed. Instead of returning to my dressing room, I stood in the back of the studio as she sang “Top of the World” by the Carpenters.

“I’m on top of the world, looking down on creation,” she sang during the chorus, and how could she not be? She looked too big for her dress, on the cusp of puberty at twelve years old, with that voice and that beauty. I couldn’t help but compare us to each other, how I had no real talent besides looking cute and memorizing lines like a trained monkey. In her presence, I understood what real, transcendent talent was like, and how it didn’t just come naturally but must have been nurtured over many years. This was what I sought rather than fame, something I was both good at and passionate about, instead of a job I didn’t like even though it brought me attention.

—