I Sat on Johnny Depp’s Lap and He Fed Me Cake when I Was 6

Yep, you read that title correctly.

Harmony S
6 min readMay 24, 2022

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Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Johnny_Depp_Deauville_2019.jpg

I guess you have some questions.

Well where to begin?

I grew up in Southern California. Burbank, to be precise. You know, the place where Nickelodeon, NBC, and Disney are. And that’s not exactly an exhaustive list of all the production companies and conglomerates there.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Burbank_media_district_from_Griffith_Park_2015-11-07.jpg

Burbank is like fifteen minutes from Universal Studios and the theme park, which was super fun to visit growing up. I still hate that Jurassic Park ride, but I still rode it each time I visited.

Hollywood is about forty minutes to an hour (in LA traffic) from Burbank. What goes on in Hollywood? Tons of acting, for the uninitiated.

I guess in order to pass the time and make some fun memories, mommy took me to acting classes, starting when I was five. I still vaguely remember her asking me about whether that was something I wanted to do. I guess realistically, it’s something she wanted to do when she was a kid but didn’t get the opportunity to fulfill. I don’t blame her for being a little bitter and hoping another chance rolled around through me.

I have flashes of memories of my mother sometimes getting paged at odd hours from my agent. This was back during the mid to late 1990s. Pre cell phone time. Occasionally, I had to get a slip for my teachers at school to excuse me from classes.

I think I was seven when I got the call to be an extra on Murder, She Wrote. To this day, I’m completely unfamiliar with the series. All I remember is having to dress up in some 1800s looking dress while it was a zillion degrees outside. It had coincided with my birthday and so my mom surprised me with a bunch of Pokémon cards that I got to open in front of the other kid actors.

The scene I was in? A bunch of kids darting in front of a horse drawn carriage. Yeah. That’s it. Had to wait around all day just to do that.

The first film I did was some Christmas film. I think a straight to TV kind (ie the kind no one takes the least…

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Harmony S

H A P P Y and you should be TOO!!! LIFE IS AMAZING 👏🦝🦄🌺🍭I write for ILLUMINATION, The Memoirist, Fuck Niches, and The Orange Journal.