Chapter Twenty-Four
My timing couldn’t have been better: I might have left Wonderwick with just a hint of a crush on Josh Sacco, but being thrown straight into shooting Orientations meant zero opportunity to nurse it.
This film was a completely different world.
Written by the director himself, it was a story of a reclusive mother and daughter living in a sprawling house whose lives are disrupted by the arrival of a handsome stranger.
Realities were questioned, perspectives shifted, nothing was quite as it seemed.
It was all shot on location at an abbey outside Galway, and the crew kept commenting on how we shouldn’t take the surprisingly good summer weather for granted.
Although it had a much lower budget than what I was used to, it was still a proper, full-scale production.
I didn’t have an assistant, my trailer was smaller, but I didn’t care because I was so excited to be trying something new.
Ben Sage-Whittle was finishing up on a Beach Boys biopic in LA that had overrun, so the first few days of the Orientations shoot could be all business.
Edgar was a much more hands-on director than Martin, keen on naturalism and getting to the emotional truth of the scene rather than pure storytelling.
He would talk about Laban and Meisner and Actioning and I would dutifully read and research about acting techniques that I suppose I would have studied properly if I’d gone to drama school, rather than growing up on Wonderwick.
It was challen-ging, but I looked at the whole experience as an exam I wanted to pass.
Unlike a lot of sets, Edgar enforced that the cast and crew ate meals together rather than the cast being sequestered in their trailers.
That didn’t stop all the departments from naturally congregating, and I found myself sitting next to Lucy Lennon, the actress playing my mother.
We’d shot a scene together that morning and I’d been excited by how rigorous she was, the questions she’d ask of Edgar, everything she would put into the scene.
‘I was glad to see you signed on to this.’ She was eating crisps out of a yellow bag, delicately picking them out with her elegant oval nails. ‘I’ve always liked you in those films, it made me want to see more from you.’
‘Oh, that’s really nice of you.’ I flushed with pride. ‘I’ve loved watching you ever since Take Me Home.’
‘Well, aren’t we a pair of luvvies?’ She laughed and offered me one of the crisps. I shook my head. ‘How are you finding it? Edgar’s an interesting one, isn’t he?’
‘It’s early days yet but I’m really enjoying it. It’s certainly different from what I am used to. I feel like I’m really challenging myself in lots of ways, like I have to do a lot more with a lot less. I don’t have the books to draw on to know who my character is and what she wants.’
‘It’s a big change. A lot of actors your age wouldn’t have been up for it, I can tell you that for nothing.’
I thought of my dad. I could be filming with a green screen in a studio right now if I’d taken his advice and followed the money. Instead, I was being showered with praise by an Oscar-nominated actress. I was glad I’d stuck to my guns.
‘Have you worked with Ben Sage-Whittle before?’ I asked, trying to sound very nonchalant.
‘I have, and I like him well enough.’ She flicked her eyes to my face as if she was trying to figure out what I wanted her to say. I didn’t give her anything, just waited for her to continue. ‘I mean, he’s very good at what he does . . . you know, that British public schoolboy thing? Why?’
‘Oh, no reason.’
‘He’s handsome, I’ll give him that,’ she said, raising her eyebrows at me as if it was extremely obvious why I was asking.
The day Ben Sage-Whittle arrived on set I found myself at the station next to his in hair and makeup.
I would glance over at his reflection, watching him sleepily come to life over his morning coffee, his fair hair clipped back from his handsome face.
He’d look up, catch me checking him out, smirk to himself while I pretended I hadn’t been looking at all, just taking in the ambiance of an early-morning makeup trailer.
Then it was his turn to be caught looking at me in the mirror, and back and forth we went until we were both finished.
‘Nice to see you again,’ Ben said, holding the door open for me as we stepped out of the trailer.
‘Yes, I’d been looking forward to it since our coffee,’ I said, looking up at him.
‘You always seem like such a good girl, but something tells me that even without an introductory meeting you’d have been making eyes at me in hair and makeup.
’ He was so confident, zero need to play games.
I hadn’t encountered anyone quite like him before.
Maybe he wasn’t as awkward as his public persona would suggest.
‘I’ve never made eyes at anyone in my life,’ I said, coyly.
‘I don’t believe it for a second.’
‘Are you usually this forward with your co-stars?’
‘Oh no, only the pretty ones.’
Before I could reply, he had turned off to head for his trailer. He looked back over his shoulder and gave me a wry smile. I suppose we had to at least pretend we were hard to get.
The next day, I was reading between takes, shielded from the sun in an E-Z Up. Enter Ben. He swaggered over to the chair facing me, glanced at my book. ‘My mate’s just bought that.’
‘Nice.’ I smiled. ‘I hope they enjoy it.’ It was a coming-of-age story with a murder at its heart, quite literary but it was really popular with the kind of girls who followed @WhatsEmilyReading.
‘No, not like that,’ he laughed. ‘I mean, he’s a producer and he’s just bought the rights.’
‘Oh!’ I touched my hand to my forehead. ‘Of course, wow. Have you read it?’
Ben nodded. ‘I thought it was quite brilliant, the writing was almost . . .’ he thought for a moment ‘. . . luminous. And anyway, it certainly made teenage girls sound utterly frightening, which in my experience they very much are.’ Josh had never talked to me about what I was reading, only stolen my books from me and hidden them around the set, so Ben certainly had that going for him.
‘I can’t imagine you having any trouble with girls,’ I said, which came out a little more primly than I had intended. I was not a natural born flirter – maybe I needed to take lessons from Chloe.
‘Oh, no, I was a late bloomer.’ He crossed one leg over the other, a perfect right angle. ‘I was a skinny, awkward thing until I was about eighteen, then I started working out. Fancy a turn about the grounds?’ Ben asked me, like we were in a Regency novel. ‘I’ll hold your parasol.’
‘That sounds delightful,’ I said, snapping my book shut a little bit too enthusiastically.
Even if I was only thinking about Josh in terms of how he didn’t match up to Ben, I was still thinking about Josh and that needed to stop.
Ben was gorgeous and I genuinely wanted to throw myself into something with him, whatever that may be.
We walked together around the grounds of the abbey.
He carried himself elegantly, and I never saw him slouch or lean against anything.
Every time we turned a corner out of view of the crew I couldn’t help wondering if we were maybe about to kiss, and when we didn’t, I was half relieved (we were at work!
You didn’t kiss your colleagues at work!) and half disappointed.