I thought Undersea would be a welcome escape. After my failure to ride the subway over the weekend, and a full evening of procrastination in which I Aced over thirty matches on Bree’s behalf, I fired up the DVD and some microwave popcorn. Unfortunately, fully sober at the midnight hour was not a good time to be subjected to wooden dialogue and so-so special effects. I wanted to appreciate the historical significance of the first fantasy-action film directed by a woman, but the outdated, 1980s-style, battle-of-the-sexes banter made me cringe more than cheer, and I abandoned ship halfway through, right at the moment Mary’s fins made their debut.

All it did was make me miss Mary, the real Mary.

I went online and Googled Mary Clarkson Undersea for the first time.

Playboy, 1996

Long Time No Sea: How Mary “Jane” Clarkson Went from Persona Non Grata to Hollywood’s Best-Kept Secret

Ten years ago, at the age of twenty-two, Mary Clarkson landed the role of a lifetime as Duchess Quinnley in the Undersea films. Well, film. What was intended to be a trilogy famously went off the rails when the actress, a self-described former adrenaline junkie, insisted on performing her own stunts. She tripped (while in the tight-fitting mermaid costume that launched a thousand wet dreams), hitting her head on a camouflaged rock submerged a foot beneath the water. After a month at the hospital recovering from a broken vertebra in her neck, she punched her physical therapist out cold when he told her swim therapy was the only way to achieve full spinal mobility.

Now, “running at 87 percent capacity,” as she puts it, “without ever stepping foot in a goddamn whirlpool, thank you,” she lives in a secluded fortress in the Hollywood Hills, as far from the ocean as one can get in Los Angeles without leaving earth. Over several hours, our conversation touched on her short-lived acting career and her new, behind-the-scenes role as Hollywood’s most sought-after script doctor whose dialogue and plot tweaks you’ve seen in two dozen movies without knowing it.

On the assault charge that landed her in prison for four days

“All I ever wanted my whole life was a captive audience, so it was a dream come true, really. The other women, all of whom I’ve kept in touch with, would say things like, ‘I was at Bedford Hills maximum security before this’ and I got to say, ‘I was in Undersea.’ ”

On her Hollywood blacklisting

“Obviously, it’s sexist as all f*ck-out. Male artists get into fights all the time and it just increases their mystique, their virility. It’s the Hemingway effect. I give one asshole, who I think we can all agree deserved it, a concussion, and it’s lights-out for my career? I’m ‘uninsurable on set’? Come on.”

On the PEZ dispensers that bear her/Duchess Quinnley’s likeness