Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
Katie
Edgar Pinsent didn’t meet me in an office or a studio. He met me in a house overlooking Hampstead Heath, the kind of place that belonged on Bridgerton and had probably housed a duke sometime in the last four hundred years. The duke would have been handsome, of course. And single. Dark and tortured, yet secretly yearning for love. I needed to read fewer romance novels.
Though Edgar was American—he was born in Chicago, according to my googling—he didn’t look out of place here. He sat behind a desk in a beautiful office with deep wood floors and an honest-to-god tapestry on the wall. I remembered what year it was when I saw that he was wearing a hip T-shirt under a blazer along with cowboy boots and jeans. He was forty-three—again, according to my googling—and the only thing that made him look English was his pasty complexion that hadn’t seen much sunlight.
One of his assistants, Rita, had shown me into the office, and she stood next to his chair, a little like a servant would. It was weird, but I tried to ignore it as I shook Edgar’s hand and sat down across from him.
“So you want to work on the film,” Edgar said, crossing one ankle over his other knee and regarding me with seriousness.
This was it. My big chance. I had done my research, so I knew that Edgar Pinsent didn’t like too much flattery because he didn’t like fakes. So I said, “I’d be really excited to do it, if that’s what’s in the cards.”
“Maybe,” Edgar said. “I have something in mind. Do you want something to drink? Tea? The English love their tea. I think we have some.”
“I’m fine.” I looked around. “Is this your house?”
Edgar gave a tight shrug. “When I’m in London. I haven’t been here much, because I’ve been working on the script.”
I nodded. “Sure. The script. As my agent likely told you, I’d love to read?—”
“No.” He cut me off firmly. “You won’t be reading the script. Not until we begin final prep.”
I stared at him. “I can’t…read the script?”
“It’s how I work,” Edgar said, as Rita stood there unmoving. What was she doing here? “I don’t like everyone reading the script and imprinting their voices over mine. I need the actor’s raw reactions to what I’ve written, not rehearsed moves. I need it to be real.”
It made no sense. Who made a movie without reading the script? An actor needed to rehearse lines, to work scenes with their scene partners. We needed to learn blocking. And what about prep for action scenes, fight scenes, or—god forbid—sex scenes? How was I supposed to do everything blind? “Is this how you’ve always worked?” I asked him. “I haven’t heard?—”
“I use the method that works best for the project, whatever that may be,” Edgar said. “This is how this project cries out to be created.”
I forced myself to keep still and not glance around the room to check if I was being pranked. “Mr. Pinsent, I need some kind of details. I have to be able to prepare.”
“I’ll explain what your role is,” he replied. “As for preparation, I’ll let you know what you need to do. It will be a three-month shoot, and the cast and crew will be secluded for that time. That means no visits home, and no one visiting you. The isolation will feed your creativity.”
I nodded, but for the first time I thought that this setup was too close to a murder mystery setup for comfort. Maybe ten actors would go to the shoot, but only nine would come back. Or we’d get picked off one by one. Or this was all an elaborate psychological experiment, and we were?—
“You’ll also need to lose twenty-five pounds,” Edgar said.
I blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Twenty-five should do it.” His gaze flicked down, over my jeans and blameless cardigan. I thought I looked nice. “I’d prefer thirty, if you can manage it, but I realize that the timeline is tight.”
“Twenty-five pounds? Is my character stranded on an island? Starving?”
Edgar ignored the question, though Rita gave me a sour look. “No cosmetic procedures are allowed before the shoot. Whatever Botox you’re getting, it stops now. No lifts or tucks. I need your face to look real.”
I scowled at him. “Hey.” You do not discuss a lady’s Botox unless you’re her doctor or her husband. “That’s presumptuous.”
“It’s necessary,” Edgar countered. “I’d like you to work with a trainer so that your body is toned. Also, I’m not on social media myself, but Rita tells me that you’ve been in the tabloids lately with a famous boyfriend. That has to stop.”
I did look around then, wondering if someone was joking. All of that careful planning for the past few months, my elaborate scheme, the script. All of it to get Edgar Pinsent’s attention and make him think I was more than just a romcom girl, that I was a woman with depth. All to give him a glimpse of a personality that I had thought he would like.
The weeks with Travis, our planning of Instagram posts, the way we’d both walked a line we didn’t understand. We had played pretend instead of actually dating, instead of letting ourselves fall in love, and we had done all of it for this man in this moment.
He had just dismissed all of it by basically saying he thought it was stupid. All of it.
“Why on earth,” I said slowly, “would you need me to break up with my boyfriend in order to shoot a movie?”
“I don’t want bad publicity around my project,” Edgar said with a shrug, casually suggesting I end the best relationship in my life and break Travis’s heart. “Tabloid publicity is bad publicity.”
“It isn’t a tabloid.” What year was he living in? “It’s the internet. And I haven’t done anything that has bad publicity. Travis and I are both single, and we’re dating. What’s wrong with two people dating?”
“He’s some kind of famous musician,” Edgar said. I had so carefully cast Travis as my boyfriend, and Edgar had never heard of him. “Bad publicity always follows musicians around, and you’re too exposed while you’re with him.” He shrugged again, as if he wasn’t sure why we were spending so much time discussing this. “Get rid of him. It’s a hard condition. I make art, not media circuses. He should be gone by the time we start final prep in a few weeks.”
“No,” I said.
There was a moment of stunned silence in the room. “Pardon?” Edgar said.
“No.” I was sweating and rigid with nerves, but I was also starting to get angry. “I’m not breaking up with my boyfriend for this role. The star of your last movie got divorced because he slept with the nanny. Why didn’t you care about his bad publicity?”
“Are you saying you don’t want the part?” Edgar’s eyebrows rose. “You’re replaceable.”
“Who are you going to replace me with who meets your morality standards? A nun?”
Rita let out a whispered gasp that told me that no one talked to Edgar Pinsent like this. Maybe I was torching my career, but I noticed that Edgar had avoided answering my question. I had the feeling that the morality rules only applied to actresses, not actors.
“My films are art,” Edgar said, his face going red. “I’m offering you the chance of a lifetime. By the way, it will be the easiest money you’ve ever made. All you need to do is lie still on a mortuary slab, and your career will never be the same.”
I gasped at that, louder than Rita had. “The role is a dead body? Are you serious? You want me to give up thirty pounds, three months of my life, and my boyfriend to play a dead body ?”
“It’s central to the plot,” he argued. “The hero has to avenge your murder.”
“My murder is naked? Is that necessary?”
“It’s central to the plot,” he argued again.
I pushed my chair back and stood. I was angry now. Who did he think he was? “You have no idea,” I said, “ no idea what I’ve done to get this meeting. How I’ve upended not only my life, but other people’s lives. I’ve said no to other projects—ones that paid. I made a thriller. Did you even see it?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
So he hadn’t seen Honor Student , which I’d made to impress him. I’d picked it so carefully.
“You’re missing out,” I snapped. “It’s a good movie. I’ve shown my talent and my range. I’ve auditioned over and over. I traveled all the way here. And all you want is someone who is skinny, naked, and dead.”
“In a great film,” Edgar spat. “It’s either that or more romcoms.”
“I like romcoms. That’s why I make them. And you aren’t my only option to do other things. I’m already expanding without your help. I don’t need to play dead to have a career.”
He was flushed, though he kept his voice calm. “So you’re saying no.”
“I won’t be going to your weird serial-killer shoot, no. I’ll be busy doing other projects. Ones in which I’m alive.”
They both stared at me, and the moment felt over. Like the end of a good scene. So I turned and walked out of the room.
No one stopped me.
That was a great exit, I thought as I walked onto the street and called an Uber. I’ll have to write that one down.