[A hallway behind the set. Fluorescent lighting. A folding table with a coffee urn that has been there since the first season and has not been cleaned since the first season. The kind of backstage space that exists in every production — functional, forgotten, fluorescent.]
[Cohen enters from the stage door. He's loosened his tie. He's carrying the folder. He looks like a man who has just finished something and knows he has to start something else and is taking thirty seconds in between to be a human being.]
[There is already someone in the hallway.]
[Of course there is.]
[Anthony Scaramucci is leaning against the wall with a coffee cup, looking like a man who has been waiting for exactly this conversation for approximately seven years and has strong opinions ready.]
Former
ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI
White House Communications Director
Days on set: 11
Never officially sworn in.
Still has opinions.
Many of them unprintable.
Anthony Scaramucci
SCARAMUCCI:
Eleven days.
COHEN:
I know.
SCARAMUCCI:
They didn't give me a section.
COHEN:
You got a mention.
SCARAMUCCI:
A mention. I was White House Communications Director of the United States of America.
COHEN:
For eleven days.
SCARAMUCCI:
Eleven very eventful days.
[Cohen pours himself a coffee. Looks at the urn. Decides against it. Sets the cup down.]
COHEN:
You called Reince Priebus a paranoid schizophrenic.
SCARAMUCCI:
He was acting like one.
COHEN:
On the record.
SCARAMUCCI:
I thought it was off the record.
COHEN:
It wasn't off the record.
SCARAMUCCI:
I'm aware of that now.
[Beat.]
SCARAMUCCI:
You know what the worst part is?
COHEN:
The New Yorker.
SCARAMUCCI:
The New Yorker. Of all the outlets. Ryan Lizza. I gave the interview of a f***ing lifetime to Ryan Lizza at The New Yorker — the New Yorker — a magazine whose readers have at least three tote bags and opinions about sourdough — and I didn't even get to finish the job.
COHEN:
What was the job?
[He thinks about this for a moment.]
SCARAMUCCI:
I genuinely have no idea anymore.
[Cohen almost smiles.]
COHEN:
How long were you actually there? Officially?
SCARAMUCCI:
That's the thing. Technically? Never. The paperwork wasn't done. I was fired before I was sworn in. I was the Communications Director who never officially communicated anything. In eleven days I managed to become the most famous person in a building full of famous people and then get fired from a job I never technically started.
COHEN:
That's actually impressive.
SCARAMUCCI:
It's a gift. What can I say.
[Beat.]
SCARAMUCCI:
How's Season Two?
[He looks at the stage door.]
COHEN:
Different.
SCARAMUCCI:
Better or worse?
COHEN:
The original cast at least believed in something. Even when the something was wrong. Season Two is more —
[He searches for the word.]
COHEN:
— transactional.
SCARAMUCCI:
They're all transactional.
COHEN:
Season One had true believers. People who thought the movement meant something. Season Two is people who know exactly what it is and signed up anyway.
[Scaramucci considers this.]
SCARAMUCCI:
That's scarier.
COHEN:
Yes.
[Long beat.]
SCARAMUCCI:
You know what I think about? My wife had the baby while I was in there. I missed it. Eleven days and I missed the birth of my kid for a job I never officially started.
[Silence.]
COHEN:
I did 13 1/2 months in Otisville.
SCARAMUCCI:
Yeah – and then what? Home confinement during COVID – what a twist.
COHEN:
We all paid something.
SCARAMUCCI:
Some of us more than others.
COHEN:
Some of us more than others.
[Beat.]
The Season Break
SCARAMUCCI:
You know Kelly fired me. First thing he did. Day one.
COHEN:
I know.
SCARAMUCCI:
The f***ing guy hadn't even unpacked. Walked in, looked around, fired me. You know what? I actually respect that. That's efficiency. That's a man who knows what he's doing. Walk in the door, identify the loudest problem, eliminate it. Boom. I respect it. I hate it. But I respect it.
COHEN:
He tried to bring order to the whole operation.
SCARAMUCCI:
How'd that work out?
COHEN:
December 2018. Gone.
[Nodding slowly.]
SCARAMUCCI:
See, that's the thing about that place. Kelly comes in thinking he's going to run a tight ship. Military man. Chain of command. Nobody tweets without authorization. Nobody tells him what to tweet. The whole thing is completely un-run-able and Kelly — God bless him — spent a year and a half learning that the hard way while I learned it in eleven days for free.
COHEN:
To be fair, you contributed to the un-run-able-ness.
SCARAMUCCI:
I accelerated it. There's a difference. I'm like — you know when you add Mentos to a Diet Coke? The explosion was already going to happen. I just —
COHEN:
You were the Mentos.
SCARAMUCCI:
I was very enthusiastic, yes.
[Beat.]
SCARAMUCCI:
I watched the rest of it from television. Bannon. Tillerson. Sessions. Mattis. All of it. From my couch. It might as well have been a reality show.
[Pause.]
SCARAMUCCI:
You want to know the real thing? The thing that actually gets me?
COHEN:
[Carefully.] Do I?
SCARAMUCCI:
Bannon lasted longer than me. Steve Bannon. The guy looked like he was cosplaying as a man who'd been living in a haunted lighthouse – and well – you know.... He lasted longer than me. Tillerson — Rex I-Was-Running-ExxonMobil Tillerson, who had negotiated with actual foreign governments and actual foreign dictators — couldn't handle it. Gone in fourteen months. Meanwhile I'm out in eleven days and everyone's acting like I'm the problem —
COHEN:
You did call Reince Priebus a paranoid schiz—
SCARAMUCCI:
I KNOW WHAT I CALLED HIM, MICHAEL.
[Pause. He collects himself.]
SCARAMUCCI:
Look. You want the real version? You want what I would have said if Ryan Lizza had been off the record?
COHEN:
[Long pause. Against his better judgment.] …Sure.
SCARAMUCCI:
These motherf***ers — and I use that word with the full technical precision it deserves — these absolute weapons-grade a**holes had the greatest opportunity in the history of American politics, okay? You've got the keys. You've got the house. You've got both chambers. And what do these c***s******s do? They spend the first six months leaking on each other like a bunch of broken fire hydrants! Priebus is leaking, Bannon is leaking, everybody's on background with every reporter in Washington telling them what a disaster everyone else is while the whole ship is taking on water and I — I — come in to fix the s**t, and Kelly — who I genuinely respect, let me be clear — walks in on day one and fires me like I'm the problem when the problem is that this whole f***ing operation was built on a foundation of pure, weaponized chaos and nobody — nobody — had the balls to say that out loud except me, and I said it to Ryan Lizza, who it turns out was very much on the record, and now here I am in a hallway next to a coffee urn that smells like 2017 talking to a man who went to prison for who knows what and somehow we're both the sane ones.
[A long silence.]
[Cohen stares at him.]
COHEN:
[Quietly.] You've been waiting seven years to say that.
SCARAMUCCI:
[Straightening up. Smoothing his jacket.] Yeah, and I still restrained myself…believe me.
[Cohen almost — almost — laughs.]
COHEN:
For what it's worth? You're not wrong.
SCARAMUCCI:
I know I'm not wrong. I was never wrong. I was just early.
[The stage door opens slightly. A production assistant leans in.]
PA:
Mr. Cohen? They're ready for Season Two.
[Cohen picks up the folder.]
[He looks at Scaramucci.]
COHEN:
You gonna keep watching?
[Without hesitation.]
SCARAMUCCI:
How can you not…it's all they let you see.
[Cohen nods. That's the right answer.]
COHEN:
[Quietly, almost to himself.] It certainly is a show.
[He straightens his tie.]
[He walks back through the stage door.]
[Scaramucci finishes his coffee.]
[He looks at the door.]
[He looks at the coffee urn.]
[He pours another cup.]
[He looks at it.]
SCARAMUCCI:
[To no one.] Eleven days.
[He shakes his head. Not sad. Almost proud.]
[The fluorescent light hums.]
[Somewhere on the other side of that door, Season Two is about to begin.]
[It's TV and it's History – and the ratings are incredible]
End of Section Eight