“High-maintenance?” Kira fills in, adding more gel to his hair.
“She means well…”
The PA I just saw in Holden’s trailer bursts into the makeup trailer with a set of sides in hand.
“Last minute rewrites, sorry, man,” he says, tossing the pages onto his lap before bolting back out the door. Holden barely looks at them.
He only needs about twenty minutes total before all the new rewrites are perfectly memorized in his head. Holden is reciting the words out loud with ease.
And seeing it up close? I’m in awe.
An hour later, his assistant is escorting him to set and the day has officially begun for him.
Holden shapeshifts into a smart-aleck jock who never took anything seriously. They are in the middle of the episode, rehearsing a fight between Graham and him. A pivot point in the series where the two brothers duke it out over Graham not taking the sport seriously.
Fifteen takes of the same fight—Graham and Holden collapse to the ground from being shoved apart by their coach, both characters seething at the sight of each other as the camera rolls.
“I think we got it!” The director yells and they lift each other up from the ground, ending the moment between them with a smile.
A familiar woman I’ve seen in photos with him on red carpets frantically runs to him, throwing a jacket over him.
“You look cold,” she says.
“I know my own body temperature, Theresa.”
“We have been over this. We can’t afford for you to be sick.”
Staring at her side profile, she has his cheeks and nose. The freckles across their faces are identical. Even their facial expressions, side by side, look uncanny. It clicks that she is the woman in the photo I saw.
Theresa picks up the black wind breaker from the floor and lifts it back over his shoulders. This time he doesn’t move it. He wistfully accepts her gesture and marches for his chair behind the monitors.
Sitting in the chair, he watches his castmate, Graham Walker, perform the next scene. This time, the scene is between their father and Graham.
“I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t hold you to the same standard as everyone else.”
“What standard? Me, playing in the conference finals?”
“No, you peeing in this damn cup and proving to our team that you can show up.”
“I don’t have a problem.”
“Then explain this!”
The actor playing their father puts a white baggy in front of their faces. A small, pained expression surfaces on Graham’s face. The back and forth arguing spirals off script, becoming so heated that I can’t even look at them acting anymore.
“He’s amazing,” an intern says to Holden, passing him an apple to snack on.
“Yeah, he’s got it down.”
The words are flat and lifeless as he responds to her. When the intern walks away, I can see the switch.
He now looks worried.
“Do you have a pen?” he yells after her.
She nods, walking back to him, wielding one out her pocket before walking away again. He brings the pen to his script, etching notes near a few lines on the page—
Look more remorseful here.
