Bad Reputation

Chapter 5 INT. REHEARSAL ROOM

Chapter 5

INT. REHEARSAL ROOM

“Wait, we can shoot it without showing my boobs?” Rhiannon Simmons looked at Cole as if she wanted him to confirm that Maggie wasn’t talking nonsense when she said the actress didn’t have to display her nipples to everyone with a Videon subscription.

Cole’s costar was almost impossibly young—the kind of young he could barely remember being. But Rhiannon was about a zillion times more together than Cole had been in his early twenties, and someone was taking time and care with her that they never had with him.

He was so, so glad the industry had changed ... and maybe also the tiniest bit jealous.

“I mean, I’m not saying I don’t want to,” Rhiannon added quickly. “But I didn’t know that was an option.”

Across the table, Maggie was watching Rhiannon with a mixture of warmth and motherly concern. Cole understood, since Rhiannon made him feel like the Cryptkeeper. It was one thing to know your coworkers had been in kindergarten when you’d gotten your start. But then they introduced themselves and said your early work was “classic,” and your heart shriveled up to a raisin in your chest.

Cole didn’t want to be classic. Classics joined the AARP and had opinions about the best brands of over-the-counter meds for aches and pains—which was ridiculous, because it was clearly Bayer Back & Body.

“Of course,” Maggie told her. “Zoya has a vision for the scene, for what it shows us about your characters, but this is collaborative. If there are elements you don’t want to do for whatever reason, it’s my job to help you negotiate those and to find a way to film this that’s comfortable for you.”

Rhiannon again turned to Cole. Are you hearing this? her expression screamed. “I’m feeling a little green.”

“I can’t tell,” he said.

Maggie snorted. “Look, if anyone’s the newbie here, it’s me. As written, you’d be nude from the waist up, and the blocking—it would be pretty intense. Zoya sees Madge as being debased by her relationship with Geordie. She’s exposed, literally and emotionally, and we can tell he already has one foot out the door. When Geordie leaves Madge for Effie, that’s going to destroy her.”

“Not very heroic of me,” Cole said, trying to make a joke.

“No.” Maggie gave him a courtesy smile, but Cole knew they were both focused on Rhiannon.

His costar considered the script under Maggie’s hand. Cole knew this was Rhiannon’s first big film or television role. During their chemistry read, she’d been amazing, but she was also walking into a world she didn’t know at all.

For a second, Cole thought about what Tasha had said last night about Cosa Nostra . Tasha was so fierce—and she’d grown up in Hollywood—so it was hard to see her and Rhiannon as having much in common. But suddenly, those distinctions hardly seemed to matter. They had both been young women in an industry of vampires.

“I’ve done nudity on stage,” Rhiannon said, “in The Bald Soprano when I was at uni. My gran came one night, and that was ... awkward. But this feels different.”

“Because the play didn’t have an international audience?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah.”

Maggie nodded. “Again, the goal is to show something with the intimacy that we can’t reveal another way. But your nipples aren’t necessary to achieve Zoya’s vision, and I’ll be discussing what we decide during a production meeting tonight.”

Rhiannon processed this. Nodded. “And Zoya won’t be mad? I signed the nudity waiver already. My agent ... I mean, we didn’t even have a discussion about it. Waverley is big for me, and this is just what you do.”

Drew had certainly never told Cole that he could decline a scene or negotiate nudity. Cole’s abs were practically a résumé item for him. The idea that he might not smack them up on screen was almost comic.

Almost.

But there was a gap between the cartoon version of Cole, all muscles and good vibes, and the real person, who might feel embarrassed or self-conscious about it. And given how much of his life Cole spent caught in between them, he didn’t find it that funny.

“No,” Maggie said. “Zoya won’t be mad.”

“And who cares if she is? If it isn’t something you want to do, you shouldn’t do it.” Oops, Cole shouldn’t have said that.

One of Drew’s key rules was Be easy to work with . This wasn’t because Drew believed kindness to be inherently important or anything so slushy, but because in a world without many backup options, you didn’t want to give them a single reason to axe you.

If he were here, he would lose his mind that Cole had suggested Rhiannon put her own wants ahead of the showrunner’s.

But . . . she should.

“Sorry,” Cole said, trying to decide how much of that to walk back. “I don’t mean to give you bad advice. Of course you want Zoya to be happy. But your feelings are important too.” Cole sounded like a goddamn after-school special. If this went on any longer, he was going to tell Rhiannon to stay away from drugs and not to text and drive.

But when he glanced across the table, Maggie was watching him with a slightly dazed smile on her face, as if he were a butterfly she’d seen in October after she’d assumed they’d all flown south for the winter.

Well, he couldn’t have messed up too badly, not if his words had Maggie looking like that.

“Cole’s right,” Maggie said.

It was all he could do not to puff his chest out.

Maggie turned her attention back to Rhiannon, and for a second, he was almost tempted to say something else reckless to get it back. But he’d done enough. He had to go back to following the rules.

“We can always modify the waiver. It’s my job to have those conversations for you and to get everyone on the same page.”

Next to Cole, Rhiannon considered this, twisting a lock of her red hair between her fingers. “I need to think about it.”

“That’s totally fine. That’s why we’re starting this now, before we even get into the full rehearsals. Whatever you decide, I want you to feel good about it. Is there anything else you want to discuss?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, then.” Maggie turned to Cole. “On to Geordie.”

Her tone was more removed than last night, and Cole wanted to press Maggie until she went soft, like she had been when they’d walked back to the hotel, under the twinkle lights with the romantic trumpet serenade and all the wine going to his head. Before he’d made an ass of himself, of course.

He was making up for it now and proving that he wasn’t a total fool. To keep doing that, he had to focus. And in, like, twenty seconds, he was going to do exactly that and stop indulging in the schmaltzy crap that had gotten him into trouble in the first place.

“We’re going to be good friends by the end of this shoot, Cole. You have a lot of nudity and intimacy on the books. But let’s start with this scene with Madge from episode two. Just top line, how do you feel about the costuming?”

The script said he’d bare his ass, but that ship had sailed. Cole had shown his ass to anyone who’d wanted to see it from Central Square on. And it didn’t bother him ... though it did seem odd that no one had ever asked how he felt about it before.

“I’m comfortable with it,” he said. “I’ve signed the waiver. I don’t need a body double.”

“Okay. But it’s the same thing I just talked about with Rhiannon: you aren’t locked in.”

“I appreciate that.” And he did. “But I’m not worried about the nudity on my end.” At least the script didn’t call for full frontal—because that he’d need to think about.

“You’ll keep your pants on for this scene with Madge, but with Effie, you’ll be more exposed. What’s most comfortable for you in terms of coverage when we’re filming?”

“The genital barrier is fine. Can we get Penelope Bullock for that? We’ve worked together before.” Having a strapless thong pasted over your junk was the kind of job where trust was important.

Maggie made a note. “I need to check, but I’ll put in that request.”

“Thanks.”

She riffled through the script. “So we just have a rough description of the choreography. We’ll get into the details in the next few weeks. I know that Zoya is going to direct episodes one and four herself. Kevin Combs will handle episodes two and three. Access to the set will be quite limited on the days with intimacy, but do either of you have any hard limits?”

Rhiannon lowered her eyes, and Cole got the sense that she was deferring to him, waiting to see what he would say. Cole was a senior talent here, and if he showed a willingness to negotiate, to think about how stuff was written, that could help Rhiannon.

“I don’t ... I don’t love the moment when Madge is performing oral sex on Geordie and he’s basically ignoring her. This isn’t a hard limit. I know how we’ll film it, and I know why we need it.”

Cole had prepared for this role for months, and part of what he loved about it was how much Geordie was going to grow. But the way this scene was meant to draw a clear line between the sex that Geordie had with Madge and the kind he had with Effie, it struck him as kind of gross.

“What don’t you love about it?” Maggie wasn’t disagreeing with him. Her question was open and curious.

“I’m playing an asshole,” he said flatly.

She tipped her head to the side. “Are you worried about how people will respond?”

Strangely, he wasn’t. Cody Rhodes had frequently been an asshole, and that hadn’t put people off the character. Far from it.

But you still had to identify with a character to play them. Cole didn’t want to rattle around inside himself to find the bits of selfishness that matched Geordie’s. He knew they were there, but he’d rather not rip them out and hold them up to the light.

He probably should’ve decided that before he’d taken this part.

“No, but I guess I worry about finding too much of Geordie in me. Like, I read the script, and part of me goes, ‘Why did I want to play this jerk?’”

A beat, then Rhiannon burst into laughter. “I have to tell you, I reread episode two on the way here, and he’s such an asshole! I’m like, ‘Girl, run.’”

Cole covered his face with his hands and groaned. “He’s Mister Red Flag.”

“But oh so sexy,” she teased.

That didn’t seem like much of a trade-off.

“Why is that?” Cole asked, looking over his fingers from Rhiannon to Maggie. “Why are we okay with his behavior if he’s sexy?”

“I don’t think we are,” Rhiannon said. “It’s entertainment. Just because you enjoy watching it on Videon with a glass of wine to unwind doesn’t mean you want it in real life.”

Cole caught Maggie’s eye. This probably wasn’t what she wanted them doing in this rehearsal. “I’m sorry. I’m slowing us down, asking these questions that aren’t really about anything, and I—”

“They’re very much about something.” There was steel under Maggie’s words. “This is exactly what we wrestle with in acting.”

“Absolutely,” Rhiannon agreed. “I mean, Madge isn’t exactly a saint. She’s going to steal your baby and frame your lover for murder. That’s some pretty dark shite.”

Rhiannon wasn’t wrong. The Heart of Midlothian was a weird swirl of darkness and cotton candy. The book’s main character was Jeanie, who walked barefoot to England to beg the queen for a pardon for her sister. But Zoya had pushed Jeanie and her bland love interest, Rueben, to the edge of the series because, well, they weren’t very interesting. They were, however, much nicer people than Geordie, Effie, and Madge.

“So why did you want to play Madge?” he asked Rhiannon.

“Setting aside the, you know, evilness of some of her choices, I identify with her. I mean, haven’t we all had a relationship that wasn’t emotionally equal? Haven’t we all thought ‘I’m going to do everything they want, and then they’ll love me’? I mean, I have. I want to find a way to give her dignity, even if Geordie isn’t giving her that.”

Cole was pretty sure he’d been both people in that scenario, the one having fun and the one in over their head, but love had stopped being fun for him a long time ago. He could understand that Rhiannon, who hadn’t blown out twenty-three birthday candles, probably wasn’t there yet.

Geordie was certainly someone who still enjoyed the thrill of the chase, and Cole was going to get to play him while he grew the fuck up.

There was that.

“When he apologizes to Madge,” Cole asked, “do you think it’s sincere?”

Cole was still trying to decide how to play that moment. He’d talked to Zoya about it, and she wanted him to try it where it was absolutely sincere. She thought it would show he’d learned a lot.

Some tiny piece of Cole—the piece that probably identified the most with his character—was less sure Geordie had. He’d probably ask for some takes that were more skeptical, where Geordie was saying the right words but maybe didn’t fully understand them yet.

“I want to believe he is,” Rhiannon said, which was generous.

“It doesn’t help that by that point, she’s basically ...” Cole tried to decide what was the polite way to describe Madge’s mental state in the back half of the season.

“Having a mental health crisis?” Rhiannon supplied.

“Yup. I mean, it sort of undermines his apology if he’s broken her.” Cole reached for his script so he’d have something to do with his hands. He was feeling suddenly self-conscious. “Sorry. I know you’re all pros, and you know I’m not him. But we’re talking about this, breaking down all the beats, and it’s hitting me how awful he’s going to come across.”

“More even than the moment when he watches Andrew, his partner in smuggling, hang?” Maggie asked.

“Maybe. Yes. I mean, sex ... it isn’t always making love, I get that. But you should have respect for the people you take to bed. That’s like the floor of good-personing, and Geordie can’t do it. At least Andrew is an adult, and he chose to be a smuggler. Madge didn’t sign up to get crushed. So yeah, Geordie was way worse to Madge and Effie than to Andrew. No question.”

Maggie set one of her hands over her mouth, and he knew she was doing it to buffer her emotions from him. He didn’t know her, not really, but he was certain of it.

Did she think he was being silly? Unprofessional? Unserious? He wanted to ask.

He shouldn’t.

“What are you thinking?” Well, that had just popped out. It was too personal a question, but he wanted to know.

After a beat, Maggie dropped her fingers to her neck and looked at the ceiling, considering how to answer.

He tried not to think about how soft the skin under her neck looked.

“Actors are empathetic,” she said. “You absorb emotions. That’s what makes you good at your jobs. But sometimes, I think performance is about shedding civilization—dropping the rules, the stuff that in most cases we might say makes us good people. We have to turn the volume down on that when we’re performing and try to reveal the truth instead, the messy shit underneath. So it’s good to ask these questions, Cole. It speaks highly of you as a person. But at some point, you have to let those worries go, because they’ll get in the way of your performance.”

Cole had next to no formal training in acting, which hadn’t mattered when he’d been playing a guy who looks good in a tight polo. He’d tried to think about “technique” sometimes, but this conversation was on another level.

He might not be a novice, but Cole hadn’t walked through every beat of this before. He hadn’t had someone to help him communicate with the director or someone whose job it was to balance his feelings with what was good for the production. Maggie was taking him seriously, as a person and as an artist, and it made him feel hot and cold at once.

He desperately wanted to be worthy of this conversation, and he worried that he wasn’t.

“I’ll try.” His voice was a bit gruff. He cleared it, taking a sip from his water bottle, while Maggie shuffled through the pile of scripts in front of her.

“Let’s jump for a minute to the scene from episode six—though we’ll come back to episode two. There’s no nudity in this one, but there’s some kissing and more of that humiliation dynamic you don’t dig.”

She gave him a sympathetic smile, and Cole’s heart crinkled.

Gosh, but Maggie was thoughtful. Last night, he’d watched her watching him, watching Tasha. Not even really enjoying her dinner but trying instead to figure them out.

Cole was so familiar with how people watched him—full of expectations they were confident he’d meet—that he’d forgotten what it felt like for someone to be unsure with him, to check if they were getting the right answers, and to gauge his feelings and wants.

He was used to how the world watched him, but he preferred how Maggie did it.

“Let’s do it. More of The ‘Geordie Robertson Is the Worst’ Hour .”

“Yay,” Rhiannon cheered.

When they’d finished with the scripts, Maggie pulled out another notebook, which she flopped open in front of them. “I’ve been working with this mentor to learn how to, you know, do this job, and he suggested I try these.”

She’d broken the page into panels, as if it were an erotic cartoon strip peopled by stick figures. At least Cole suspected they were supposed to be stick figures.

And supposed to be erotic.

Rhiannon leaned over the table to inspect them more closely. “Is that an arm, or does he have three legs?”

Maggie squinted. “It’s an arm.”

“And is that a shirt, or is it one of those puffy coats? Wait, did they have puffy coats in 1700s Scotland?”

“Arg.” Maggie tried to close the notebook, but Rhiannon had slapped her hands on the pages and was holding it open.

She was cackling now. “Maggie, I’m sorry, but these are the worst drawings I have ever seen, and I have a three-year-old nephew.”

“I don’t think they’re that bad,” Cole put in. They were, actually, but he was trying to be nice. “Is that a bush behind us?”

“It’s a campfire. I was thinking about the light.” Maggie sounded so glum as she sagged in her chair and began tapping around on the floor for something. “No, you’re right, they’re hideous. Bernard uses pictures as a way to agree on rough blocking before you do it for real, but we’re going to have to try something else.”

Maggie straightened and, without warning, heaved an exercise ball at Cole. He snagged it out of the air, and Maggie managed a crooked smile, one that he felt in his gut.

Having her here helped so much, but that smile was pure trouble.

Maggie rifled through the box of props and costumes she’d brought with her. “I have a period-appropriate shirt if you want it, Cole.” The linen scratched her palm. Hopefully the real one would be softer than the mock-up.

“Sure.” He stood and began to take off his sweater, doing that thing where he stretched his hands over his back and pulled it off over his head. And what that did to his abs—it was indescribable. Just a ripple of muscles and golden skin.

Maggie made herself look away, but they were in a dance studio. There were mirrors everywhere . The art of Cole’s torso was inescapable.

Don’t lust after the actors. But she wasn’t having trouble not lusting over the actors generally, just Cole specifically.

She was starstruck. That was it. She couldn’t believe that she was here. She couldn’t believe she was doing this . She’d had a terrible year, and somehow, this magic dream had become real. No wonder she was dizzy.

The previous night, Maggie had almost let herself get carried away. It had been the fault of that once-in-a-lifetime meal and all the booze, but when Cole had made a chivalrous joke about how they should dance, Maggie had almost said yes.

Which would’ve been embarrassing because he hadn’t meant it. Thank God she’d figured that out at the last second.

No, she had to concentrate on her job. No more emotionally revealing conversations. No more entirely-too-romantic late-night walks. Work, work, work: that was the ticket. Once Maggie got her sea legs, this silly crush would go away, as surely as the nausea faded the second day of a cruise. It had to.

Luckily, Rhiannon had hopped up onto the exercise mats and was still teasing Maggie for her bad drawings. The words unintentionally Cubist were getting thrown around a lot, and that was a blast of cold water over Maggie’s libido.

Bernard had been adamant that storyboarding was a necessary prerehearsal step, but Maggie knew when something was a lost cause. At least she felt confident about handling the blocking.

For the next bit, they walked through the dialogue and the kissing that preceded the love scene. It was like choreographing a dance, which Maggie had done for her productions because her high school didn’t have a dedicated dance teacher, but it was more complicated than on stage because of the different kinds of shots and camera positions. Are you comfortable with this movement? and How does it look from this angle? Maggie was taking notes madly.

The truth was that sex scenes on TV and in the movies were broken down into so many tiny bits, rehearsing them didn’t feel sexy. The rough blocking had an establishing shot with kissing, a tracking shot of Cole’s hand tugging up Rhiannon’s skirt, a close-up of Rhiannon’s face in ecstasy, a medium over-the-shoulder shot from one point of view and then the other, a series of close-ups of various body parts touching and thrusting, and then a close-up of Cole gasping, before a high-angle shot looking down on the postcoital couple.

And each one would be scarcely longer than a GIF.

But when they were stitched together and processed and scored, they would be swoony. Or at least Maggie had to believe that this was going to, somehow, turn out swoony. Because right now, she couldn’t see it.

Cole and Rhiannon ran through the blocking again.

“I don’t think you can kiss her like that, Cole.” Maggie tapped her pen against her cheek, considering. “It’s too ... tender.”

Maggie couldn’t think about whether this was how Cole James would kiss a woman in real life. What she had to think about was this shot, and Geordie wouldn’t kiss Madge like that, as if she were precious. With that much sweetness and intensity. Even if Maggie was certain that every woman in the audience—herself included—would vaporize if he did, the feel of it wasn’t right, not for these characters.

Cole raised his brows in amusement at Maggie’s comment. “How should I do it, then?”

“Well, don’t cradle her neck. Maybe if you put one hand on the back of her head? You have to be more controlling.”

Cole rearranged, his fingers splayed across Rhiannon’s hair—and whoa, those were some thick, sculpted fingers.

Not the point.

“Like this?” he asked.

She cleared her throat. “Yup, that’s better. Rhiannon, you good?”

The actress gave a thumbs-up, and they ran through the sequence again. This time, Cole was more distanced, less affectionate. His movements were rougher, more demanding.

“That was good. Much more Geordie. I think we can call it a day.”

“Hold on.” Cole rolled back on his heels, and with the V of his old-fashioned shirt hanging open and his hair mussed and his lips flushed, he looked like a romance cover model come to life.

Maggie whimpered in her mind.

“Toss me a pen,” he deadpanned. “I gotta write When in doubt, be a selfish ass in my script.”

Which she could tell that he loathed because it was contrary to every reflex she’d seen him act on. Even when he was being a little too direct and told Rhiannon to put her own feelings ahead of the director’s, his impulse had had good intentions.

“That’s why they call it acting,” she reminded him as she began packing up.

He looked as if he wanted to disagree, but then he swallowed whatever self-deprecating response he’d wanted to make. Cole wasn’t as obviously or deeply wounded as Tasha, but somewhere along the way, someone had done a number on him too.

As long as Maggie managed to keep things aboveboard, she needed to try to help him as well. So when Cole returned the prop shirt, she told him, “I really appreciate everything you brought into the room today. I don’t think most people would be as willing to share those worries as you were, but it helped with—” She covertly pointed to Rhiannon. The actress was quite possibly the most Scottish-looking person ever, with pale-white skin, long red hair, and bright-green eyes. This rehearsal had driven home for Maggie how young she was, how vulnerable. “So thank you.”

Cole shrugged, as humble as ever. “It was no big deal. I honestly wasn’t even trying to break the ice or whatever. Those are real things I’m stressed about.”

“That’s what made it work. It wasn’t a put-on. You’re sincerely a nice guy.”

That much she felt comfortable saying, even though it was exactly why this crush was going to linger. She liked him, in addition to being attracted to him. It would’ve been easier if he’d been simply the hot, vacuous guy she’d assumed he was, but the real Cole James wasn’t the Cole James brand. Not at all.

“Now we just have to get Tasha to do the same,” he said.

When Maggie hadn’t been able to fall asleep last night, she’d spent the wee hours contemplating the Rubik’s Cube that was Tasha Russell.

This first episode of the season included a Geordie-Effie love scene in her jail cell. The audience needed to see the history between them but also their desperation, which was no small order. Since the table read for episode one was just a few days away, Maggie and the actors needed to start work on the blocking immediately.

“I’m going to take another swing at her, one on one.”

“You sure?” Cole was impressed, and it took a lot of self-control for Maggie not to preen.

“Yup. I have some theories about what’s going on, and I need to test them without witnesses.”

“Okay, but maybe you should get that gear baseball catchers use. The pads and the mask.”

“Do you have fencing gear to practice the sword fighting? Maybe I could borrow some from Ryan Baris.” Maggie hadn’t met the stunt coordinator yet, but from the way Cole talked about him, it was clear he and Tasha liked and trusted him. She was kind of jealous about that.

“Actually, no. We’re not using sharp swords, but they have me training with the stuff that we’ll use for filming. No masks or eye protection or anything. The gear for the sex is more hardcore.”

“Whoa.”

Cole shot another look at Rhiannon, but she wasn’t paying attention to them at all. She was smiling at her phone, probably texting someone.

He set a hand on the table and leaned closer to Maggie. Close enough that she could smell his deodorant. “I’m really glad you’re here, Maggie Niven. I don’t think I’ve talked about the hows of acting or creating characters more than I have today.”

Maggie’s voice came out soft. Intimate. “That, Cole James, is a crime.”

For a long moment, they stood there, watching each other. The sun had shifted during the morning, and the room was now all soft grays and blues. Cole’s hair looked less blond and more brown and gold than this morning. Maggie wanted to push back the lock that had fallen over his forehead.

But Maggie needed this job. She needed to be good at this job.

So she just waved her hand awkwardly. “Have a good day.”

She made that big, including both actors. And then she left before she accidentally said something else too revealing.