Dave Bautista: The Eddie To Pamela Anderson’s Shelley In ‘The Last Showgirl’ And What His Character Means To All Women Around The World

I’m not much of a movie-goer anymore. I used to be, but not anymore. Firstly, there’s streaming, which had the theatre industry die down, especially following the 2020 pandemic. And secondly, there aren’t any good movies anymore; good enough for me to say I’d be willing to dress up and go out of my way to see a movie, as well as pay $13 + popcorn fees and spend two hours of my life to see the movie. I think the last time I went out of my way to see a movie was 3 years ago.

That was until my experience at TIFF. I was willing to pay a whole almost $100, not $13 to see a movie in theatres. But it would’ve been worth it. Not only did I get to see a great movie, I got to see its stars and filmmakers up close and personal. Because of minor inconveniences, I ended up experiencing TIFF for free. It was an experience I sure won’t ever forget. Even if I did end up paying almost $100, it would’ve been worth it. I would’ve never gone to see a movie such as ‘Anyone But You’ which starred Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney. I wouldn’t even go on the half-priced Tuesday showing. It was overhyped and not even good. But to have the experience that I did at TIFF…. YES, a million times YES! The fact that this is the third blog post you’re seeing from me about this on this blog should really tell you that.

In most movies, women are seen as secondary characters; ones that aren’t ’as important’ to the storyline. And then there are movies where there’s an ensemble cast, such as Marvel’s ‘Avengers’, where the franchise concentrates on mostly male characters with one female lead. You could tell the differences in treatment between all the male cast, which included Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Hemsworth as Iron Man and Thor respectively, and the female lead, Scarlett Johansson, who played Black Widow.

‘The Last Showgirl’ also has an ensemble cast, but nothing like the Marvel movie. In this instance, the ensemble cast consists of mostly women and one man. During the Q&A portion of the movie’s premiere on September 6, there was only one man standing, and that was Dave Bautista, who played Eddie in the film. At first, Eddie seems to be like the most useless, random character in the movie. He just continued showing up, and I, as a viewer, constantly asked myself why. As the movie progressed, I got my answer almost at the very end of the movie. It was when Eddie and Shelley go to dinner together after a show that we learn that Eddie is actually Hannah’s biological father. Hannah is Shelley’s estranged 22 year old daughter. Eddie abandoned Shelley and Hannah. He wasn’t in Hanna’s life as her father, but watched her grow up from a distance.

Bautista, a former WWE wrestler, starred in movies such as ‘My Spy’, Guardians Of The Galaxy’, and ‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’. During the Q&A following the showing of the film, he was asked why he accepted the role of Eddie. He said that he was becoming unhappy with the roles he was getting and talked to his agent about it. He asked for more meaningful roles rather than just your typical body-built heavy weight characters that we’ve seen him portray in the past. This new career move certainly worked.

And I loved that for him. Bautista is this strong, masculine man who can literally beat the sh*t out of anyone who comes in his way in a negative light. He’s played these types of characters his entire acting career since retiring from WWE. Seeing him on the screen while sitting in the theatre was like a ‘Oh, Wow!’ moment for me. It was surprising to see him in such a role and in such a movie, but that’s what makes the movie so great as well. Eddie is a big guy, just like Bautista. But unlike Bautista, Eddie seems to be broken. He’s very lost in his life and abandons those he cares about at the first sign of trouble in paradise. It’s evident when it’s revealed that he abandoned Shelley when she got pregnant with Hannah.

Eddie is a character that seems to intimated by women, specifically strong women who show leadership qualities. This immediately reminded me of ‘Emily In Paris’. I wrote about the show in my previous post. But in it, I described Emily and her very complicated love life. This time, I want to discuss her friend, Mindy, played by Ashley Park, and her love life. More specifically, I want to discuss Mindy’s relationship with Nicolas, played by Paul Forman. Just as a fun fact, Park and Forman are a couple in real-life.

Emily first meets Mindy in Paris. She’s the first person to ever befriend Emily and take her under her wing in Paris. If it wasn’t for her, Emily would’ve been a lost puppy. She becomes Emily’s sidekick throughout the series. But make no mistake, Mindy is her own person. She’s a strong, independent woman. She lives in Paris on her own. She’s an aspiring singer, and went against her family’s wishes, specifically her father, to get to where she wants to go. She makes it very clear that nothing and no one will ever stop her from making her dreams come true.

In season 3, Mindy meets Nicolas. He’s handsome and dreamy, but comes with his own set of flaws. The duo initially knew each other from their younger days as they attended the same boarding school. Just any youngsters would, they lose touch, but reconnect when they bump into each other at an event they both individually attend. Mindy tries to tell herself that she didn’t have feelings for Nicolas, especially because she was in a relationship with her bandmate, Benoît, but she eventually caved, and she and Nicolas got together.

Nicolas’ toxicity was evident right from the beginning. He’s the type of man that’s intimidated by, and I’d say is almost fearful of, Mindy’s strength and independence. No matter how much he tries to control her life to his advantage, Mindy won’t allow it. In season 3, Nicolas doesn’t have a liking to Emily, so he creates conflict between her and Mindy when he forces Emily to leave the party that was in Mindy’s honour. When Mindy finds out about this through Alfie, who was dating Emily at the time, she apologizes to Emily and makes it clear to Nicolas that she won’t be treated that way; that if he wants to be with her, he has to try to get along with her friends, or at least pretend her; that he can’t ever make her believe that her friends are mistreating her when they’re not.

That wasn’t even the worst part, however. The worst part of it all was when Nicolas aimed to push Mindy’s dream of becoming a professional, famous singer aside and called it silly. He told her he wanted her to take herself out of Eurovision because it could hold him back of becoming CEO in his family company. Mindy was shocked that he’d tell her to do such a thing, but she didn’t allow him to win. As soon as he calls her dream silly, she walks away and breaks up with him. Nicolas realizes he said something utterly stupid as soon as Mindy walks away, and he tries to apologize and redeem himself. Mindy doesn’t care to listen and leaves the restaurant without looking back. And I hope it stays that way when we see ‘Emily In Paris’ come back for season 5.

And yet, that’s not to say that Mindy and Nicolas weren’t good for each other. They were, for a time being, and they needed each other in order to grow as individuals. The biggest issue in their relationship is that Nicolas will always see Mindy as his ‘prize’, and he will always try to change her in order to make himself look good in public so that she doesn’t embarrass him. That just won’t do with Mindy as she always tried to step aside from the life she grew up in.

Her relationship with Nicolas was completely different than her relationship with Benoit. That’s because Nicolas and Benoit were polar opposites, both in who they are as people and in how they treat Mindy. Unlike Nicolas, Benoit is kind-hearted, understanding and supportive towards Mindy. He pushes Mindy to follow her dreams, even if it’s at the expense of his. It was very evident when Mindy turned down an opportunity meant for her because she didn’t want to break her hand up, but Benoit still made it happen for her when he found out about what she did. And let’s not forget the differences in their reactions to seeing Mindy perform a gig in order to pay for Eurovision. The performance had Mindy show her boobs. Benoit looked like he couldn’t be prouder of her, whereas Nicolas looked embarrassed AF.

It’s safe to say that I hope that we’ll be seeing more of Mindy and Benoit in season 5 of ‘Emily In Paris’, and I hope that the two will be endgame. But the main reason why I emphasized so much on the secondary love triangle in the Netflix show that everyone absolutely loves to hate is for you to really understand who Eddie from ‘The Last Showgirl’ really is. The circumstances of Mindy and Nicolas and Shelley and Eddie aren’t as different as you think. In fact, Shelley and Mindy’s lives could’ve intertwined. The one difference between the two is that Mindy walked away from her relationship with Nicolas just at the right time, unlike Shelley with Eddie.

This goes back to my previous post. In it, I mentioned the recent remarks Jamie Lee Curtis made on Kevin Hart’s podcast. It’s where she said, ‘If you’re a creative person, the tragedy is the creativity that dies with you if you don’t let it out, and so for me, I wake up turned on by creativity every day. I wake up like this every day. There’s not a day in my life where I wake up going, like, ‘Ugh.’ And now, all of a sudden, I’m owning it. And now, all of a sudden, I’m a boss. All of a sudden, I’m a bitch boss, and I like it. And I’m now taking all of this great opportunity that has come my way … And from that, I am now getting to produce things, and then one of these things will end up on a screen, and you will get to see my name and it will say, ‘Jamie Lee Curtis. Produced by Jamie Lee Curtis,’’

Again….

Life is a series of choices; and women, these choices are made FOR them, not BY them. I guess I could describe a woman’s life as a sacrifice. One way or another, women have to sacrifice something in their life. Sometimes, though, that sacrifice is the best thing that a woman can make for herself. Shelley sacrificed her relationship with her daughter for her work. But she worked because she had to provide for her daughter. It wasn’t that she worked because she craved that success. She worked because she had no other choice. No one was there to help her take care of her child. Mindy, on the other hand, sacrificed her relationship to not be held back by anyone, and that’s the positive sacrifice. In hindsight, Mindy’s life could’ve mirrored Shelley’s had she stayed with Nicolas.

Nicolas and Eddie are practically the same person. The only major difference between the two is that Nicolas comes from money, and he uses that as a power technique to control, or at least try to control, Mindy and everything about her life. They’re both afraid; afraid of not being in control; afraid they’ll lose control. That’s why we see both men take matters into their own hands. Eddie changes his circumstances and takes himself out of the equation of taking responsibility for his child and the mother of his child, regardless of whether they’re together romantically or not. Nicolas does everything he can to get his way with Mindy, even going as far as telling her that whatever she’s doing to follow her dreams is practically stupid. He wants her to be his trophy wife and follow him around like a mullet for his benefit, and his benefit only.

I can’t say that all men are the same. Not all men that are lost in their lives have bad intentions. Not all men who are lost in their lives try to bring those they claim to love down with them. ‘Glee’ is the perfect example of that. Particularly in showcasing the relationship between Rachel Berry, played by Lea Michele, and Finn Hudson, played by the late Cory Monteith. Rachel was an ambitious character. She always knew she wanted to do big things in her life. She was a Barbara Streisand fanatic. Broadway was her ticket out of Ohio. But she’s also in love with Finn Hudson throughout the show’s entire run.

Finn is a good guy, and he has the best intentions. He’s obviously made his share of mistakes, but doesn’t everyone make mistakes throughout their life, especially at such a young age? Unlike Rachel, he hasn’t got a clue about what he wants to do with his life. He only knows he’s in love with Rachel. When they’re in Grade 12, they get engaged. Due to unforeseen circumstances, they cancel their nuptials on the day they were supposed to get married. They don’t cancel it, but rather postpone it. They decide to get married after they graduate high school.

Graduation comes around. Rachel and Finn clash on where they see themselves going after their graduation. They don’t see the same future for themselves as husband and wife. Rachel is still adamant on leaving for New York and going to school, with the intention of being a Broadway star. Finn, on the other hand, is a lost soul. He doesn’t know what to do with his life and with his future. He feels like a failure. When his mother tells him the truth about his father’s history in the marines, he decides to join the marines to finish what his father never got to.

With that being said, Rachel was willing to sacrifice it all and give up on her dream of moving to New York and building a life there to be with Finn. But Finn isn’t willing for her to give up her entire life for him. So he arranges for her to leave on a train to New York and her dad’s to meet her there without her knowing. She tries to plead with him and tells him, ‘I’ll go wherever it is you want to go.’ No matter how much she pleaded, and no matter how much it hurt him to let her go, he knew it was the right thing to do. He broke up with her because he didn’t want her to make the sacrifice for him to give up on her dream.

The end of ‘Glee’ saw Rachel end up with Jesse, her high school boyfriend who unwillingly ended up betraying her at the hands of Rachel’s birth mother, who was Jesse’s teacher. Nevertheless, Jesse ends up developing real, genuine feelings for Rachel, and is heartbroken when Rachel ends up choosing Finn over him. After years of being apart, Rachel and Jesse reconnect when they’re finally at the same place at the same time. In the end, they get married. They live together in New York, and each have their own independence and the careers they both aspired to have in high school.

Rachel ended up being exactly where she was always supposed to be; with the career she was supposed to have and with the man she was always meant to be with to go along with the career. If Cory Monteith hadn’t passed away, the ending would’ve looked much different. Rachel would’ve sacrificed her career in New York and moved back to Ohio to be with Finn. Her ending up with Jesse was Plan B for the show. But as a viewer, I realize that Plan B was always the better option for Rachel; that she was always meant to be with Jesse. Even if Cory Monteith hadn’t passed away during production, Rachel and Jesse would’ve been a much better pairing than Rachel and Finn. And it’s not that Finn was a bad person. But rather, it’s that as a woman, Rachel deserved a life where she didn’t have to give one thing over another to be happy. Had she ended up with Finn, she would’ve had to give up her life as a Broadway star. It would’ve been her choice to give it up, but it would’ve been a sacrifice nonetheless. And just as a fun fact, Lea Michele predicted that Rachel and Jesse, played by her real-life best friend Jonathan Geoff would be endgame at the Season 2 premiere of the show.

Personally speaking…

Eddie and Nicolas are the type of men I always strived to avoid. Choosing a life-partner is the toughest thing a woman can for herself in her life. I pride myself in the fact that I chose the right partner for me. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t make any sacrifices for the relationship. I did. But my life-partner did too. In fact, my life-partner made more of a sacrifice for our relationship than I ever did. Men make sacrifices too, and that’s okay. It was my husband’s choice to make the sacrifices that he did over the years for me and our relationship. It’s not to say that our relationship isn’t good, because it is. We have our flaws and our marital problems, but who doesn’t? Our relationship continues to grow because we continue to grow and learn from each other. We listen to each other and our needs.

Just recently, I met a fellow mom while picking up my son from daycare. She has two kids, one of which goes to daycare with my son. we’ve gotten to know each other a little bit during the daily pick ups from daycare when we get to see each other. She’s a business owner. Her husband works two jobs. They have no help provided them with the kids. His parents passed away. Her father passed away too. Her mother is alive, but she’s not in the best of health, and she can’t be left alone with the kids to babysit.

This brand new information got me thinking a heck of a lot. Sacrifice could be a lot of things. It’s not just about sacrificing a career for love or vice versa. The woman I recently didn’t sacrifice either one. She has both love and career in her life. She’s a wife, a mother, and a businesswoman. She’s what society would consider as a woman who has it all. But does, she really? By her having it all, she’s sacrificing a work-life balance. She’s sacrificing her time spending with her husband and kids. She’s sacrificing her ability to release stress. And much more. It’s a lot. It’s certainly not impossible. But it’s a lot, and this type of lifestyle isn’t for everyone. It takes a certain type of person to be able to do all that, practically alone, and do it all successfully without going insane.

It takes a certain type of strength and resilience to overcome what Shelley had to overcome at the hands of Eddie. That’s what ‘The Last Showgirl’ made me understand about men like Eddie. Even though they might have a small presence in our lives physically, they’re somehow always in our lives. They’re somehow still present in our lives, whether we like it or not, and they still affect the course of our life. They have definitive roles in our lives, even in their absence. They define us. They forget about us, but we don’t forget about them, and that’s the toughest part of it all. I know because I’ve had my share of Eddies in my life. That’s why I feel so fortunate to have found my success in my personal life.