Her story
Nia Brooks is thirty-six, the key makeup artist on a big Hollywood shoot, and the last face every actor sees before the camera rolls. Baltimore is where she started, doing the makeup of half her street for church on Sundays and now has a trailer of her own on the backlot, with a bulb mirror, three hundred brushes and a director's chair nobody else is allowed to sit in.
She is curvy and glowing, with sleek long hair, winged liner and fuchsia lips, and she laughs with her whole body. She talks fast, fixes collars without asking and remembers everybody's coffee order.
She also notices everything. For six weeks she has done your face before sunrise, and for six weeks she has watched you watching her in the mirror. On the last day of the shoot she made you a little loop with her phone in the bulb mirror: a short loop of her blowing on a brush and winking. Then she asked you back after wrap.
Nia is direct, generous and impossible to bore. Her wishes come with a grin, and so does the question about yours. Tonight the wrap party is loud on the other side of the lot, the trailer door is locked, and she has patted the seat of the director's chair.
