Rachel Bloom is the co-creator and star of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” a standout television show on the CW network that combines elaborate song-and-dance numbers with comedy and drama. It has scooped up a number of awards, including a Best Actress Golden Globe for Ms. Bloom, and is currently in its third season.
Based in Los Angeles, Ms. Bloom travels frequently, but still struggles to (politely) avoid conversations with strangers on the plane. “I like to be solitary and kind of left alone when I travel and so something that I’m still learning is, how do I remain solo and be in my quiet space without feeling guilty — like I have to talk to someone just because they talk to me?” She’s developed a technique to deal with chatty seatmates. “I meditate now, and when you say to someone, ‘Hi, you know, I’m just gonna meditate,’ they don’t know what to say. They go, ‘Oh, oh, O.K.!’ It’s either that they really respect it, or they think you’re a weirdo, and either way they leave you alone.”
Her favorite travel accessory? Her dog, Wiley. “Because my husband was in New York for so long, I got my dog certified as an emotional support animal. And you can always tell when you’re on a flight coming in from L.A., with the amount of emotional support dogs on it.” Wiley’s first cross-country flight was a success. “She understood that it was quiet time. She’s in her middle years — my dog’s around eight — so she’s a woman in her comfortable middle age, who kind of knows how to chill out.”
Here’s what she takes on every trip.
Humidifier
“My throat gets really dry on plane rides, so I have a little portable humidifier that I bring. It actually just plugs into a phone charger, it’s a USB-powered humidifier. What you do is you get a water bottle, and you screw it in, and the water bottle creates the moisture for the humidifier. So that’s always exciting.”
Loungewear
“I wear basically pajamas on the plane. I wear the softest pants that I can find, the softest shirt that I can find. I mean sometimes I won’t wear a bra. I am just basically preparing to pretend that I’m in a bed for six, seven hours.”
Magazines
“I did this thing a couple years ago where I subscribed to one magazine and somehow got like seven magazine subscriptions that I’ve been meaning to cancel, so my house is filled with magazines. I mean every single bathroom in my house is filled with all these magazines. So usually in my carry-on I will have some combination of magazines and then nine times out of ten I end up falling asleep or watching a movie and I don’t finish the magazine, so I’m walking around with the same copy of The Atlantic for the whole vacation, and then I bring it back home.”
Laptop
“I usually am trying to get work done on the plane. Usually it’s writing a song, writing a script. I always had this thing even before I was working on the show: I didn’t want people to see I was working on a script because when people see you’re working on a script it becomes the inevitable question, ‘Oh, are you a writer?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘What do you do?’ and then suddenly you have to go over your whole career with a stranger. And then you have to get into the nitty-gritty of what you’re working on, or people are looking to network, and I just want to be basically left alone. So, I try to hide what I’m working on. I just want to work on my lonesome, and I don’t want to go into the history of how I found my passion with the person that happens to be sitting next to me.”
Dog supplies
“Obviously when I bring the dog, I bring dog treats. It’s her food, it’s her treats, that’s half of what I’m carrying. When I went to New York last time, I fooled myself into thinking I would take her on the subway by carrying her around in a dog backpack. They make these bags that you just kind of strap your dog into like you’re climbing a mountain, and so on this latest trip, I brought this dog backpack. I didn’t end up using it because she’s a dog and she wants to walk.”
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