PEZBERRY WEEK 2016 – DAY 1 – THEME: FAKE DATING
The Interview
Rachel Berry and Santana Lopez still laugh at the story now, and it's clear to this interviewer that it's one of the many reasons they've been together for so many years. Their eyes sparkle and their hands squeeze together when they playfully suggest that maybe every relationship should start the way theirs did - as a high school joke, a "fake dating" plot to shake up the student body in general and make "Q" and "B," their respective exes, jealous in particular.
We sit in the couple's sun-drenched glass-walled living room, sipping at glasses of Rachel's delicious homemade iced tea – the couple are notorious in show business circles for their alcohol-free lifestyle – while listening to an advance copy of their soon to be released Old Standards for New Days album, a collection of Rachel's favorite Broadway show tunes rearranged and reimagined by Santana, and sung by them both. The multiple Tony, Grammy and Emmy Award winners are personable, charming and completely relaxed, treating a stranger in their home – me – like an old friend, true to their longstanding reputation as one of show business' nicest couples, in addition to being one of its best-looking.
They begin the story by telling me that it was during the time they were planning their mad scheme, bonding over how they would make their first grand entrance as a "couple" and from there pretend to be in a relationship, that they felt the first sparks of attraction, and then discovered that what they'd intended as a fiction was quickly becoming a reality. It's become a favorite story in the celebrity press that the first kiss they'd shared in the hallways at McKinley was originally meant just to give the school's notorious blogger-slash-gossip hound, a boy named Jacob, a photo opportunity, but when their lips met that first time, the sparks they'd felt were fanned into a raging flame.
(Santana laughs at the memory of "that poor boy" practically spontaneously combusting at the sight of the two of them kissing. She contends that it's most likely the best memory he has of high school.)
As has been noted before, it's striking how much their past has shaped and informed their present; they talk about how they're still extremely close with their high school friends, most of whom were fellow members of the New Directions, the tightly-knit glee club with which they'd performed and won a national championship as students at William McKinley High School back home in Lima, Ohio. It was largely to fool them, more so than the rest of the school populace, that they perpetrated the fake dating scheme, as well as to make their exes jealous - but even those exes, who had been on the cheerleading squad with Santana as well as members of the glee club, remain dear friends.
Santana leans forward conspiratorially and boldly tells me, with the snarky yet disarming smile that's made her one of America's favorite personalities, that kissing is one of her very favorite things to do. She was damned good at it even back then, she says, and damned proud of that fact too. So good, in fact, that every single person she'd ever kissed up to that point in her life, including "B" (who, she points out, was not exactly a slouch herself), had told her she was the best they'd ever had. And until that point, she'd never thought she'd ever meet anyone who was as good at kissing as herself, but what Rachel lacked in experience at first, she more than made up for in enthusiasm. Rachel blushes and Santana's smile widens when the stunning Latina informs me that Rachel was also a terrifyingly swift learner, and how within seconds, the petite singer had somehow gotten her more worked up than she had ever been before. She goes on to describe, in her famously blunt manner, how Rachel had clasped her hands behind her neck and pressed her lithe little body up against her own...well, to this day, she says, that first kiss is still the hottest kiss she's ever experienced.
(Rachel agrees that it was indeed very hot, but she insists that every kiss they share is like that, even today. Santana nods enthusiastically in the affirmative and lovingly strokes Rachel's hand. Their interactions are frequently punctuated by such affectionate little gestures.)
For her part, Rachel says that she began to realize how real things actually were between them when Santana audaciously sent her a picture of herself wearing nothing but a scandalously sexy lacy red Victoria's Secret bra and matching panties, just to mess with her. She'd wanted to delete the picture right away, wanted to erase the image from her brain, but it was seared into her consciousness forever the instant she saw it. From that moment on, she says with a smile, red became her very favorite color. Santana doesn't blush at this, just grins wolfishly, and it's clear how much of the brash sixteen year old self that their classmates have previously described to me still resides within her.
(Santana interjects that this is the reason she hardly ever buys lingerie in other colors, which earns her a playful slap on the hand from Rachel.)
The story goes that they had planned to keep the fiction going for only a few weeks at most, just long enough to get the attention of their exes, with the intention of winning them back, but before they knew it, that entire year became a blur for them. Rachel recalls it mostly as a whirlwind of sounds and images: the continuous buzzing of the stunned student body, all the pointing fingers and amazed stares; the Glee rehearsals that were livelier and more energetic than ever before; the soft conversations and loud, exuberant laughter they shared in school and on the phone.
Santana fondly remembers how their conversations lasted for hours, and when they were unable to talk, they texted furiously, until they had to stop because their hands and fingers ached. They didn't even notice the changes taking place in themselves at the time, but their classmates did. Santana had a well-deserved reputation in school as a tough, angry girl, but being with Rachel seemed to bring out a softer, gentler side of her that only Brittany had ever seen before, glaring a lot less and smiling a lot more. And Rachel, who had been criticized and even openly disliked for being bossy and overbearing during Glee rehearsals, talked less and listened more, taking others' thoughts and opinions into consideration in a way she'd never done previously, while still being assertive regarding her own ideas.
They talk about how they spent more and more time together - watching movies in the Lopez family's home theater (Santana's father, a well-to-do surgeon, was also a major technology buff), going shopping at the Lima Mall, kissing and cuddling in Rachel's bed. Santana ducks her head, blushing, when Rachel mentions how as the months passed and the seasons turned, they inevitably began to do more than kiss and cuddle. When pressed, Santana admits that when Rachel asked Santana to be her "first," fireworks had gone off in her brain, and she'd been unable to speak for a full minute. It's Rachel's turn to blush when her wife confesses that somewhere along the line, Rachel had become the sexiest, most gorgeous girl in the world to her, and that their first time was the most emotionally moving event of her life.
They look at each other with unabashed adoration as Rachel recalls how afterwards, they had lain awake, spent and weary, murmuring secrets into each other's ears for hours until they finally fell asleep.
(It's a sublime moment, and your humble reporter is not ashamed to confess to tearing up along with the two beautiful, radiant performers seated on the massive couch that seems to take up a third of the living room in the enormous apartment they share here in New York City, overlooking Central Park, which is alive with joggers, tourists and picnickers on this sunny spring day.)
It's fascinating just to look at them, to see how different they are, and yet how perfectly they fit together. Rachel is well-known as the short girl with the biggest voice on Broadway, and while Santana isn't really that much taller, she has this large presence that makes her seem bigger. Santana curls her arm around Rachel's shoulder protectively; it's a reflection of the other stories their classmates have told about how fiercely loyal Santana is to those she cares about. She's a guardian, a person who will do anything, go to any length, to make sure that her friends, her family and especially her petite wife are safe and happy. She's also more casual than Rachel, wearing a white T-shirt that says LEBANESE in big black letters across the front (an in-joke from the McKinley days, they tell me) and a pair of tight black skinny jeans, while Rachel, the more reserved of the two, sports a loose pale yellow blouse and a short dark skirt.
After we all recover, and Rachel insists upon refilling all of our drinks, a question comes to this reporter's mind, and it spills out before it can be more fully considered.
Is it strange for them to realize that it took a lie for them to realize the essential truth of who they were to each other - that without the preposterous plot they'd hatched way back in high school, they might never have gotten together and thus deprived the world of the entertainment industry's premier same-sex couple, the first ever to completely dominate the show business world?
They look at each other thoughtfully, as though this is something they haven't quite considered throughout their long relationship. Their eyes flash with questions, as though they're having a wordless, psychic conversation, as longtime couples tend to do. At what point did the lie become the truth? Or was it ever really a lie at all?
Santana grins, and Rachel bows her head and covers her eyes, trying and failing to stifle the laughter that comes bubbling out of her. It's one of the most famous and beloved laughs in the world, as pure an expression of joy and delight as anyone's ever heard, and to hear it up close is an unexpected gift.
For her, Santana says, the lie became the truth the moment she realized she'd rather watch Rachel twirl around in the impossibly short skirts she used to wear in high school, hoping for a glimpse of the thongs she would wear underneath, than do just about anything else.
Rachel smacks Santana lightly on the arm, shrieking out her wife's name and laughing uproariously. She'd known what was coming, she says, but once Santana has a story in mind, she can't keep herself from telling it. She's a classic over-sharer, as well as a chronic exaggerator. Santana frowns in mock indignation at the description, but pointedly refrains from denying it.
When Rachel asks, wide-eyed and serious, if that portion of the interview is going to be printed, your reporter holds two hands up in the universal gesture of surrender, even as Santana mouths "print it, print it."
It's as good a summary of this fascinating couple as any, and really, what does it matter, where the lie ended and the truth began? What matters is that Rachel Berry and Santana Lopez found their way to each other, and from an outsider's perspective, it's evident that they would have done so anyway at some point. They may have started out as "fake," but they're undeniably, unmistakably very, very real, and there's no indication that they'll ever be anything else to each other, or to the world at large.