An actor
‘I wanted to see my brother,’ says the older sibling. ‘My real brother. The boy I grew up with.’
‘Your brother died years ago,’ the younger sibling spits back. ‘You’re arguing with his ghost.’
Dead silence in the room. No one dares cough, or shift in their seat.
The table read is always a giddy affair, like the first day of school.
Adèle remembers this same feeling on Clara Cowan’s last film, for which she was plucked from relative obscurity to play one of the leads.
Fast-forward to that shuddering auditorium at Tribeca, where Adèle had gripped her chair through the applause that rolled like a thunderhead through the end credits of An Enormous Mind.
Clara had spun on her heels during the standing ovation, like she was reinvented by it.
Then she’d gone and written something even better.
Adèle only has a minor role in this one, because all the roles beyond the main two are minor.
There’s the dead dad, who pops up in flashbacks and visions.
There’s a smattering of villagers, the military men who show up in the final act, and her, the housemaid still hanging around at the chateau after her employer’s death.
They were supposed to shoot in Italy, until tantalising tax breaks moved production to France.
Adèle wonders if this is the more likely reason for her Cowan project return, and for the many French faces in this London studio, alongside the British producers and the American execs and the department heads of varied origin, all radiating the same excitement.
They are sharing a table with Jacob Steele, after all.
Steele’s involvement in the film had been kept secret until the last possible moment, probably because they knew that no one would keep their cool once the news was out.
Even sitting here in a hoodie and a baseball cap, it’s hard to pretend he’s mortal.
Everyone in the room knows him, as would most of the people on the street outside.
Perhaps from the BBC series in which he played a scrawny addict from a broken home, leaving women across the country united in their belief that they could fix him.
Or from the gay indie drama that got him the BAFTA up-and-comer nod, or the other gay indie drama that had him dispelling queerbaiting allegations with a disarming smile in a front-page feature with Esquire.
Most likely, though, they know him from the big-budget American series that has him beamed into their living rooms every Sunday night, pouting out from a heavy fur cloak with a broadsword strapped to his back.
Head a few streets over to the Pinter Theatre right now and he’s there, too, looking pensive on a giant billboard, the lead in the latest of a string of smart decisions on the West End.
‘He’s so humble,’ one of the villagers had said, before they began.
‘Did you see how he introduced himself to everyone?’ another had added. ‘They don’t all do that.’
Steele is playing the younger brother. The older brother is being played by Seb Bonami, who some people in the room have seen in some stuff.
Everyone agrees that he is handsome, and that he only got the role because he’s the director’s boyfriend.
Adèle wonders why he looks so angry, and if it might be her fault.
She’d only wanted an excuse to talk to Steele before they started this morning.
But when she’d stood between the two of them and asked them if they knew each other, she could tell straight away that she’d committed a faux pas.
‘No,’ Bonami had said, quickly.
‘Tangentially,’ Steele had said, at the same time.
It soon became clear that this tangent is the director herself.
Whenever Steele stands over Clara’s shoulder and suggests adding a feed line here, a plant and pay-off there, Bonami glowers from the other side of the table.
He hasn’t introduced himself to anyone else in the cast, really, a solitary attitude that lends itself to his solid, serious role in the film.
Adèle feels a little sorry for Bonami. All day, Clara has made herself available to everyone else but him.
Steele has chosen a chair that puts him right between the two of them.
Clara must know that she’s setting her boyfriend up for failure.
He’s bound to be outshone by such a star, which might be why he looks so glum about the whole affair.
No one really knows what Clara is thinking.
This morning, she’d talked them through her vision.
And it’s in her vision that they trust, with the reception to An Enormous Mind still lingering, and with the strength of the locked script now sitting in front of each of them.
Well, semi-locked. Every single page of Clara’s version is covered in handwritten notes, and Steele has been doing his best to make his mark upon them.
‘She never could stop changing things,’ Steele said earlier, with an almost-proud smile.
‘I just think when something’s done, it’s done,’ Bonami had interjected, his own voice steely.
There’s tension here. Two territorial actors who don’t see eye to eye.
When sparks fly, fires start. Everyone has heard stories of how electric their first screen test was.
They don’t look remotely related, but Adèle supposes that’s the wonder of good acting.
Now, at this table, she sees it for herself.
Organising a film is a puzzle within a puzzle, the jigsaw of interlocking schedules and locations dictating when the film itself will shoot, and then within that the smaller order of the scenes themselves, the thirty-first shot three weeks before the first, and so on.
The housekeeper’s scenes will mostly be wrapped in the first two weeks of shooting.
The scene that Steele and Bonami are acting out now, one of the film’s most climactic, will be the last. They just have to get there.
Because it isn’t Bonami and Steele that Adèle is worried about. It’s Bonami and Clara.
‘It’s different,’ Adèle overhears Clara saying, once they’ve broken for lunch. ‘We were kids back then.’
Adèle is out in the cold, smoking a cigarette. Clara and her boyfriend are tucked into a doorway around the corner, out of sight, presuming they’re out of earshot, too.
‘You hated him,’ Bonami says. He lowers his voice. ‘You said he was abusive.’
Clara’s response is curt. ‘I never said that.’
‘You implied it.’
‘Don’t tell me what I—’ She abandons the thought. ‘Yes, he’s a dick,’ she says. ‘But he’s still a good actor.’
‘Fuck me,’ Seb says. ‘Is this all because he’s famous now?’ His voice takes on a new, desperate timbre. ‘He’s your ex-boyfriend.’
‘It’s ancient history.’
‘Are you going to tell me he’s changed?’
‘Some people have the capacity.’
Whatever she means by this, it seems bruising. Bonami sounds like he’s biting his tongue.
‘How would you know?’ he says. ‘He only waltzed back into your life a couple of months ago.’
‘Is this going to be a problem?’ Clara says.
There’s an undertone here. It seems to imply that it wouldn’t be too hard for her to recast one of the leads. That if she were to do so, it wouldn’t necessarily be Steele.
Bonami gets the message. ‘It’s your film.’
‘It is,’ Clara says. ‘And I don’t need to ask your permission about casting. That’s not in your contract.’
A frosty silence. Each waits for the other to speak. It’s Clara who relents, eventually. She seems to know it’s her job to keep things running smoothly.
‘Look,’ she says, with a sigh. ‘I’m not asking you to be his best friend. I’m just asking you to trust me.’ A silence. ‘That wouldn’t have been so outlandish, once.’
Adèle can’t help but wonder at the meaning of this. What’s happened between them. What’s still happening.
‘You’re good together, the two of you,’ Clara adds, testing the water.
‘So people keep saying,’ Bonami replies. ‘It’s intensely annoying.’
Another silence, less cold, but not exactly warm. Over the soundtrack of the west London traffic, Adèle hears a progression of sighs, of clicked teeth, of two people shifting on their feet.
‘OK,’ Seb says finally. ‘I trust you. I believe in you.’
‘Thank you,’ Clara says, her voice rigid and professional.
‘I want this film to be good,’ Seb says. ‘You deserve it. If anyone knows how hard you work, it’s me.’
A pause. ‘Thank you,’ she says again. Softer. More sincere.
Another silence. Another topic neither of them wants to broach.
‘When is it happening?’ Clara asks, after a while. She isn’t speaking as a director any more. Her tone commands nothing, does not demand an easy answer. ‘Did Nimesh say when?’
‘He said it’ll be obvious,’ Bonami says. ‘It’s about quality of life.’
‘Obvious,’ Clara repeats, sounding almost angry. ‘That’s easy for him to say.’
‘It’s not easy for him. And it’s not his fault.’
The sharp response doesn’t seem to surprise Clara. She’s touching a nerve.
‘Of course,’ she says. ‘It’s an impossible decision.’
‘I know,’ says Bonami. His own voice is distant, like he’s lost in his own head. ‘I don’t want to make it.’
Another pause, and Adèle imagines Clara reaching for his hand. Does he take hers? Does he hold on to it for long? Perhaps she doesn’t reach out after all. Perhaps the distance between them has grown too wide.
‘I don’t know how to fix this,’ Clara says. It’s clear she isn’t talking about the film, because there’s something new in her voice. Something fearful. Something desperately sad.
Bonami says nothing at all.