Hollywood: Lights, Ink, Entertainment!-Chapter 353: First Read

....

(Few Hour before)

....

[LIE Studios | Conference Room B | 10:14 AM]

The room had been set up the night before.

Samantha had arranged it herself, which was unusual - she typically delegated that kind of thing - but there was something about this particular project that made her want to oversee the details personally.

The long oval table had been cleared of its usual corporate clutter and replaced with printed scripts at every seat, water pitchers at both ends, and a small bowl of mixed nuts.

She had also, after some deliberation, moved the chairs so the two lead seats were across from each other rather than side by side.

Chemistry needed eye contact. Regal had said that once, years ago, about something else entirely, but it had stuck with her.

The room filled gradually.

Regal arrived first, which he always did, coffee in hand and a different copy of the script already marked up in three different colors of pen.

He set his things down at the head of the table, glanced around the room, and then pulled out his chair and sat without comment.

Tom Holland arrived six minutes early and then visibly didn’t know what to do with himself.

He stood near the door for a moment, then he spotted Regal, and said.

"Morning! Hi, hello–

"Should I just—" and gestured vaguely at the nearest empty seat.

"Anywhere’s fine." Regal said, not looking up from his notes.

Tom sat. Then second-guessed the seat, looked at the other chairs, and stayed where he was.

He set his script on the table very precisely, lining it up with the edge, then immediately knocked his water glass with his elbow and had to catch it before it tipped.

It didn’t spill. He looked around to see if anyone had seen.

Samantha, standing near the door, had seen. She said nothing.

Zendaya arrived exactly on time - which was to say, at ten-thirty sharp - with her own copy of the script.

She acknowledged everyone with a brief nod, found the seat across from Tom without needing to be directed, and sat down.

Tom said. "Hey."

She said. "Hey."

Then they both looked at their scripts.

The other chairs filled in over the next few minutes.

Noah Rick, who Regal had cast as Kyle - Elliot’s closest friend, the one character who witnessed the entire arc from the outside - arrived carrying a bagel in one hand and apologizing preemptively for being the last one in, even though he wasn’t.

And Priya Kiss, cast as Jun, Sakura’s best friend who would carry part of the film’s grief in its final act, settled in quietly with green tea and the expression of someone who had read the script at least twice and was still processing it.

Regal waited until everyone had water and scripts and whatever degree of composure they were going to manage.

Then he said. "Let’s start from the beginning. We are not performing today...

"So read it like you are reading it for the first time, even if you have already read it three times at home."

He looked directly at Tom when he said that last part.

Tom sat up slightly. "I only read it twice."

"Good. Read it like once."

Samantha quietly closed the door.

....

The first ten pages moved smoothly.

Around page thirty-five, there was a scene that Regal had been quietly curious about.

It was the first real conversation between Elliot and Sakura after she discovers he knows. She corners him outside the school library - she’s cheerful about it in a way that should be alarming and somehow isn’t - and offers him the deal.

Keep my secret. In exchange, I will show you how to be alive.

The scene was written as quick, staccato.

Sakura advancing, Elliot retreating, the dialogue overlapping in a way that required both actors to actually listen to each other rather than wait for their cue.

They read through it the first time flat.

That was fine... it was the first pass.

"Again." Regal said. "Tom–

"–stop anticipating her lines. You are already forming the response before she has finished."

Tom blinked. "Was I?" 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

"You were. The character doesn’t know what she is going to say next. You do. Separate those things."

Tom nodded, mouth pressed thin, clearly filing that away.

They read it again.

This time, there was a moment - not written into the script, staged or planned, where Sakura’s line was–

You don’t want to know me

–and Zendaya said it with something that landed differently than the words suggested.

Not sad exactly but something more complicated.

Like the line was also a question.

And Tom, instead of moving to the next scripted beat, paused for just a half-second too long.

Then Elliot’s response: I didn’t say that.

It was four words. But in that small gap, something had shifted in the room, the way pressure shifts before weather changes, subtle but undeniable.

Regal put his pen down.

Samantha, from her chair near the wall, looked at him. He didn’t look back at her. He was looking at the space between the two actors across the table, at the invisible thing that had just briefly existed there.

He picked his pen back up. Made a mark in the margin.

There it is.

....

They took a break at noon.

The kind of break that happens organically when everyone collectively decides they need air - someone reaches for the water pitcher, someone else stretches.

Noah announces he is getting coffee and asks if anyone wants anything with the cheerful domesticity of someone who’s been in enough read-throughs to know the rhythms.

Tom stood, rolled his neck, and then drifted toward the window with his script.

Zendaya stayed at the table for a moment, re-reading something on page forty-two. Then she looked up and across at him.

"Can I ask you something?" she said.

He turned. "Yeah, absolutely."

"Elliot. At this point in the story." She tapped the page. "Do you think he knows what’s happening to him yet? Emotionally, I mean. Does he understand that he’s starting to care about her?"

Tom thought about it as his eyes went slightly unfocused and he turned back toward the window for a second.

"No." he said finally. "I think he thinks it’s still... manageable. Like he has categorized it. She is a situation he is dealing with, not a person he is attached to."

Zendaya considered that. "Does Sakura know?

She continued. "...that she is becoming a situation to him? ...that he is wrong about that."

Tom smiled a little despite himself. "Yeah. I think Sakura knows exactly what’s happening to him. Way before he does."

"That’s what I thought." She looked back down at the page, wrote something in the margin. "Okay. That helps."

He looked at her for a moment - she had turned back to the script with that focused quiet that he was already starting to recognize as her particular way of working, the place she went when something had clicked into alignment for her.

"Can I ask you something?" It was Tom’s turn now.

She looked up.

"When you were reading that line earlier, ’you don’t want to know me’."

He paused, and there was something slightly careful about the pause. "Was that planned? That way you said it?"

Zendaya held his gaze for a second. Then she looked back down at the page.

"No." she said simply.

Tom nodded. Turned back toward the window.

"Yeah." he said, mostly to the glass. "That’s what I thought."

....

The session was about to resume in about seven minutes when Samantha walked in.

Noah Rick, who played Kyle, and Priya Kiss, cast as Jun, had already wrapped for the day.

For the moment, only Zendaya, Tom, Regal, and now Samantha remained in the room.

Regal had been going over a scene with Zendaya when Samantha approached.

"Regal, it’s Elara. She wants to speak on the behalf of the Script Evaluation Team."

He didn’t look up immediately. "Is it urgent?"

Normally, any promising material would be left with Samantha, who would pass it along when Regal had time.

"You know I wouldn’t interrupt you if it wasn’t." Samantha replied. "Elara believes it’s important."

Regal paused for a moment.

Elara’s judgment can be reliable since it was him that appointed her.

"What’s the title?"

"It’s called Mr. White."

"Mr. White?" the name stirred something faint in his memory.

"It’s from a new writer." Samantha added. "Rowan Atkinson."

"Rowan Atkinson..." that felt even more familiar.

Samantha handed him the script. "Here."

Regal took it and began reading immediately.

Page after page turned in quick succession. His focus sharpened, eyes moving rapidly across the lines.

Within minutes, he was halfway through.

When he finally looked up, his expression had changed - the kind of look someone wears when they stumble onto something unexpectedly valuable.

"Call them in." he said. "And tell Priya and Noah that they are done for today."

Tom glanced over. "What about us?"

"You are staying." Regal replied.

Tom dragged out his response. "Okaaaay."

Zendaya simply nodded.

Samantha stepped out to relay the message. Zendaya moved closer to Regal, a hint of uncertainty on her face, but before she could speak, he turned back to the script in her hands.

"The emotional arc of the scene has to match where Sakura is in that moment." Regal explained. "She is sad. Yes. But also accepting. The difference is that sadness is passive. Acceptance is active - it’s a choice she’s making."

Zendaya considered that. "So it should feel lighter? Even though the content is heavy?"

"Right on the mark. Light but not trivial. Does that make sense?"

"I think so." She nodded slowly. "Can we try it once more?"

"In a minute."

The door opened.

Elara stepped in, composed as always, with Rowan just behind her.

....

.

[To be continued...]

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