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Area graduate is a 'success in the city'

July 11, 2008 12:16 am

For the first time in months, Tiffany Hayzlett Parker's BlackBerry is quiet.

It chirped day and night, through fall, winter and spring, demanding attention from technical support, scheduling, the production team, wardrobe and a host of personal assistants associated with filming "Sex and the City."

But now, several weeks after the film's U.S. premiere, not a peep.

"Now I'm like, is it on? Is it working? Nobody's calling my phone. I don't know what to do with myself," says Parker, a workaholic and Fredericksburg native who was one of the film's associate producers.

Parker, 31, was unaccustomed to taking it easy long before she moved to the Big Apple and joined the "Sex in the City" team, which includes her sister-in-law Sarah Jessica Parker.

Before that, she earned straight A's as a theater major at Mary Washington College, balancing her coursework with independent research projects, jobs in the school's box office and theater department, and two prestigious summer internships in New York.

Before that, she embraced drama at Chancellor High School under the late Jerry Pritchett, who as technical director and set designer for the Fredericksburg Theater Co. instilled in her a love of community theater.

"She was a person who really took advantage of every opportunity," says UMW Professor Gregg Stull, chairman of the school's Theater and Dance Department. "You want students to have their eyes open to a world they didn't know, to really seize that world and become a part of it. When I look at Tiffany's journey, that's what I see."

IN LOVE WITH NY

The funny thing is, Parker hadn't intended to journey that far.

When she visited Mary Washington as a high school senior, she told Stull she'd pursue community stage work in her hometown.

"She loved the town she grew up in and felt like that was the place she wanted to spend her life," he recalled.

"But she was ambitious and her potential couldn't be realized by staying in Fredericksburg," said Stull, who encouraged her to pursue an internship in New York.

At the nonprofit New York Theatre Workshop, Parker earned just enough for subway fare and the occasional meal of brown rice.

She scraped together change and slept on 41st Street to score last-minute, discounted tickets to "Rent," that year's Tony winner.

Years later, she'd meet and marry original cast member Toby Parker, a stage and film actor and older brother to Sarah Jessica Parker.

"I just fell in love with it that first summer," said Parker, who moved back to New York after graduation and ultimately became the workshop's associate director of marketing. "Everything you studied and learned about is happening right there."

Mom Susan Hayzlett admits to being "a little freaked out" by her daughter's early big-city adventures. And she and husband, Ron, worried their oldest might become a starving artist.

"Here's a kid who got A's in calculus going into theater, where she's not going to make any money," Mrs. Hayzlett recalled thinking. "But we wanted her to be happy."

A THEATER NATURAL

No one else in the family harbored theatrical inclinations, but Parker was single-minded from the start, her parents say.

"She always wanted to put on a little skit and do that kind of stuff," said her father. "She's always been extroverted and mature beyond her years."

Mrs. Hayzlett, a nurse, recalls getting a phone call from her daughter years ago while working in Mary Washington Hospital's ICU.

The emergency? The fourth-grader, a huge fan of "The Sound of Music," wanted her mother to help her contact Julie Andrews.

"Basically, I told her, 'This does not involve CPR so you're going to have to hang up,'" Mrs. Hayzlett said.

Not to be deterred, Parker consulted the postman, who told her to call the library, which gave her an address.

She sent off a fan letter and even got a response.

In New York, Parker soaked up the "worker bee" mentality of the New York Theatre Workshop, an off-Broadway theater that supports both up-and-comers and established artists.

She never gave movie-making any thought.

"I looked down on film because film was not 'theater,'" said Parker, rolling her eyes and affecting a high-brow accent. "And we all know thea-tuh is the high art and it's what everybody should be doing."

But after six years at the workshop, she wanted to try something new--though she wasn't sure what.

Her husband, who by now was touring with "Wicked," was longtime friends with Kenneth Lonergan, a playwright, screenwriter and director whose work includes "Analyze This" and "Gangs of New York."

And Lonergan, who was beginning work on a new movie, needed an assistant.

'INSANE WORK'

Whatever disdain Parker had for filmmaking evaporated the first morning she stumbled out of bed at 4 a.m., to be on the set of Lonergan's film "Margaret" by dawn.

She found the same breathless pace on the set of "Sex and the City."

"It's not glamorous," she said. "It's insane work. You work a 12-, 16-, 18-hour day. There aren't any short days ."

As the director's assistant, Parker coordinated rehearsals and script readings and kept Lonergan on schedule--and caffeinated.

If he had a brainstorm during filming, she wrote it down and reminded him of it later. If he needed a videotape, she hunted it down. If he needed space, she made sure he got it.

"It's just like daily problem-solving," she said.

She enjoyed it, but when "Sex and the City" producer John Melfi came looking for an assistant, she wasn't sure she wanted the job.

She had just moved to L.A. to be closer to husband Toby, who was starring in "Wicked."

But Melfi said he needed a problem-solver--and Parker thought it sounded like fun.

"It was all the things I really loved doing," she said. "It was all the best parts."

'FUN AND CHALLENGING'

That's not to say it was easy. Unlike many others on the set, Parker had never been part of the HBO series. The entire project was new to her.

"After about three weeks, I really started to get it," she said. "It became really fun and challenging. No day is ever the same."

The movie's insane schedule--from filming to premiere in 10 months--meant Parker and her BlackBerry never slept.

"It's hard to describe what you do," she said. "You do everything, everything that needs to be done. Answer every question. Solve every problem. Make everybody happy. And the goal is for this finished product to be the best it can be."

Some of the most painstaking work takes place not "on location," but behind the scenes, Parker said. During post-production, she joined a handful of people who inspected the film frame-by-frame, dissecting every shadow, every sound: Is that car horn too shrill? Are those birds too loud?

In the end, Melfi, director Michael Patrick King and other studio officials decided Parker had been more than an assistant on the film and they awarded her an associate producer title.

"Sarah wrote me afterwards and said, 'I hope you know they don't just give these out,'" said Parker. "It was a grind every day, but I was lucky to work with such a great group of people."

Seeing the film at its Radio City Music Hall premiere was thrilling, but also a little bit sad, Parker said.

"I was like, 'Oh my God, it's over,' because that's what it meant. It's an event now. I'm so proud of the movie, but it exists now in a totally different way than it did before," she said.

Parker isn't sure what her next project will be, but she doesn't rule out returning to theater.

She and her husband have moved back to New York City, and she plans to start meeting again with Mary Washington theater students who travel there for classes and internships.

"That's the best part about it," she said, "being able to share the experience with other people."

Edie Gross: 540/374-5428
Email: egross@freelancestar.com