Chapter 4
Chapter Four
ROMAN
Vivian Treadway and I do not have chemistry together. It’s the day of our reads, and I have more chemistry with a damp towel than with her.
I look to my left, desperate to see our director Arnold’s reaction to what’s happening right now.
His face is a mask of complete and utter professionalism, he should really be the actor here.
I’m having to work overtime to keep the scowl off my face.
If I weren’t so frustrated with how this was going, maybe I’d laugh.
The light in the room beams down on Vivian and me, and despite it being warm, there’s absolutely no heat between us.
We’re doing two scenes from the movie today to test out our chemistry, or apparent lack thereof.
The first, we have a heated exchange and her character slaps mine.
It’s not a love scene, but it requires chemistry nonetheless.
The tension and hate between our characters needs to be palpable; it needs to feel real.
The next scene we’re doing is one right before our characters kiss for the first time. It’s a 180 from the first, so between doing these two it’ll give us a good indicator of who sparks fly with most.
Arnold will be calling “cut” before we kiss, and I’m really fucking grateful for that right about now.
“Great, Vivian. Thanks!” Arnold calls out, and God bless him for giving any compliment to what he just witnessed.
“I think we’ve got everything we need for that scene.
Let’s reset and try the next one.” Translation – we got absolutely nothing, and I don’t want to waste time anymore, so let’s move on.
Vivian flashes a bright smile around her deep red lipstick and blinks rapidly.
Her fake eyelashes nearly brush against her eyebrows with each movement.
Clearly, she and I have different understandings of what her character would dress like.
While there’s no official dress code for a chemistry test, it’s widely understood that you should wear something your character would.
Something that helps the casting team envision you as the character. This isn’t cutting it.
I shrug my shoulders and roll up the long sleeves of my black shirt, exposing some tattoos that wind around my right forearm. Part of an intricate sleeve that goes all the way up onto my shoulder and pec.
Gripping the script in my hand with slightly more force than necessary, I will the paper to transfer some sense of calm into me. This has been an absolute waste of everyone else’s time so far.
While Vivian’s doing a great job of delivering the lines, she’s working completely on her own and not with me in the scene.
She barely makes eye contact, and she refuses to scan my face or read any of my body’s cues as I perform my lines.
Part of being a talented actor is working with your scene partner, reading their body language and interpreting that into your own performance.
It’s a give and take. And right now Vivian is giving and refusing to take anything from me.
“Alright, Roman, when you’re ready, start us off with the second scene,” Arnold instructs.
The others at the casting table are taking notes, and the camera that’s honed in on us continues to capture the shit-show that is this read.
Thank God it’s digital. This would be a pure and utter waste of camera film.
Flipping a few pages in the script to get to our next scene today, I take a deep centering breath. I try to make eye contact with Vivian to see if she’s ready to go. I should be able to read her body language and know exactly when to start, but she looks like a complete and utter blank slate.
“Vivian, are you good?” I ask, annoyed that she isn’t giving me any nonverbal cues to begin.
“Yes,” she replies quickly, giving her body a big dramatic shake as if to shed the persona of Vivian and step into the character of Moonbeam. I give a quick nod and decide to rip the rest of this thing like a Band-Aid.
“I thought I told you not to come after me,” I deliver in character, scanning her face and reading her performance to help shape my own. My words are laced with longing, and although I’m saying one thing, my eyes show that I’m both relieved and terrified that her character is with mine.
“And I thought you’d know that I don’t take orders from you,” she replies angrily, as though she hasn’t seen any of the vulnerability shining in my face.
Her face is twisted up in a haughty expression, and there’s zero acknowledgement of what I’m offering performance-wise.
I give and I give and this is going nowhere in a hurry.
“And you should know by now that it’s not about taking orders. It’s about keeping you safe,” I say.
“What if that’s not what I want?” she says, almost like a petulant child.
“What do you want?” I ask as I step in closer, trying to build the physical momentum for the kiss. It’s like trying to start a fire using wet spaghetti noodles as tinder.
“I think…” she starts, and this is where we’re supposed to lean in toward one another.
Vivian has taken absolutely zero steps toward me this whole time, and now with the distance between us, it’s so awkward and inauthentic for me to close the distance and almost kiss her.
But I’m nothing if not the consummate professional, so I do my best to get there, and Vivian just stands there like she’s frozen in place, waiting for chemistry to fall out of the sky like a comet and make this audition work.
After a few steps that feel like an eternity, and a few seconds too long, I bring my mouth down slowly toward hers, praying Arnold puts us out of our misery before I actually have to kiss her.
“Okay,” he shouts from the casting table behind the camera. “Thank you so much, you two.”
“Do you want us to run it again?” Vivian asks with a beaming smile on her face, and clearly no clue how poorly that went.
“No, I think we’ve got everything we need actually,” Arnold smiles as he rounds across the table and comes over to our space. He puts a friendly hand on Vivian’s upper arm and ushers her toward the door. “Thank you so much for your time today, Vivian. Our people will be in touch.”
“Sounds great, thank you so much!” She chirps as she exits the room before giving me a friendly wave. I muster a slight hand raise back in her direction, before whirling on Arnold as soon as the door shuts.
“What in the fresh fuck was that?” I hiss.
Arnold blows a quick breath through pursed lips and rubs his forehead. “Unfortunate.”
“No shit, did she even know she had a scene partner up there today?” I toss my script down on the ground and head over to where my water bottle is on the floor nearby.
“Not that I saw. I swear she was great in her solo audition.”
“Great, so cast her in a one-woman movie,” I mutter before chugging.
“We’ve still got Clover coming in a few minutes,” Arnold says, trying to appease me.
“And don’t even get me fucking started on this next chick,” I growl before launching into a tirade, because I’m in a mood, and he’s going to hear my thoughts before I have to go through another painful chemistry read in a few minutes.