“Paparazzi,” she says, getting back to the car and motioning for me to do the same. When she sees the photographer slink into a silver SUV across the street, Diaz considers making a getaway but then decides she’s in the mood to face the enemy. What follows is a chilling lesson in the realities of celebrityhood, circa 2006.
Diaz pulls up next to the SUV, in which the paparazzo, a young woman in a white T-shirt, is crouching in the driver’s seat. The woman tries to stay hidden, so Diaz toots her horn and rolls down the window.
“Hi!” Diaz says. “How’s it goin’? Did you get a good shot?”
The paparazzo grudgingly sits up and offers a sycophantic smile. “I’m sorry,” she says. “If I can get one shot of you, I’ll leave you alone for the rest of the day. Otherwise there are going to be like 10 people coming.”
“Why?” Diaz asks.
“Because...that’s just the way the industry works. But if I just get one shot, I swear on my life that I’ll leave you alone.”
“So you’re saying that if you don’t get what you want, you’re going to just sic 10 other people on me?”
The photographer, who introduces herself as Danielle, tries to strike a sympathetic tone. “Honestly, I usually get sent on news stories,” Danielle says, adding that she’s here reluctantly, under pressure from her agency. Some tipster apparently spotted Diaz with me—a guy who’s not Diaz’s boyfriend of three and a half years, Justin Timberlake—and called it in. “Can we work out just a little deal?” Danielle pleads. “I mean, I’m just doing this to get ahead in my career.”
Diaz, who has stayed coolly polite thus far, can’t help but burst out laughing. “This is no way to get ahead!” she says. “This is, like, the bottom!”
