‘Today went fine,’ Heather said, ‘but it would have gone so much faster if Naya didn’t make so much trouble.’
Bingo. ‘Why don’t you get along with Naya?’
‘Naya’s an uppity bitch. It’s disgusting that someone like her talks the way she does to someone like me.’
Heather tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder. ‘She’s always trying to bully me.’
The pieces clicked into place. My stomach lurched, like the ground had just suddenly fallen away beneath me.
‘It’s like she thinks she’s on my level,’ she said, ‘but she’s not.’
‘All right, thanks, Heather,’ I said swiftly. ‘That’s all for today.’
None of that would be going in the episode.
‘Damn it, Lily,’ I murmured to myself, as Heather tossed her hair over her shoulder again and walked away.
When Romeo-Dylan had signed the contract for this season, there were a few conditions he’d made crystal clear. One was that he didn’t want to do any kind of Very Special Episode about racism. ‘I’m not interested in putting myself or any of the women of colour in the Villa in harm’s way,’ he’d told me. ‘Or putting the POC audience in harm’s way, for that matter. We all experience enough racist bullshit as it is. So if you’re deliberately planning to cast some All Lives Matter types to create drama: I’m out.’
‘No problem, mate,’ I’d said. ‘We’re completely on the same page.’
I’d meant it. I wanted to make a feel-good season, and there would be nothing feel-good about that. I’d taken care when we were casting. I’d dotted the I’s. I’d crossed the T’s. I’d double-checked all the research on the potential Juliets that my team had done. We’d delved deep into their social media profiles, the ones they’d told us about and the ones they hadn’t, combing through all the things they’d posted and reposted and liked for the last five years.
We must have missed something. I’d fucked up.
There was no way I could put a white woman like Heather on television, talking like that about a Black woman, and not have it turn into an entire episode about racism. The shithead unmasked/shithead humiliated one-two narrative punch was a Lily Ong special – but I couldn’t use it.
What must Heather have said to Lily for her to set her up like this?
I set that question aside. That was one for later, repercussions to dole out when I had brain space to come up with something really vicious.
I had a more immediate problem. If Romeo-Dylan found out one of the Juliets was making overtly racist comments, he’d immediately assume I’d cast her to kick off the very conflict he’d told me he didn’t want to engage in.
I’d lose his trust.
I couldn’t make this show – couldn’t do my job – if that happened.
So I needed to figure out a different way to convince him to cut Heather. That way, I could bury this so completely thatneither he nor anyone in the audience would have any idea it had ever happened.
Thankfully, Romeo-Dylan had never seemed particularly attached to Heather. When he sat down with me for his ITM, I started nudging him where I wanted him to go, asking pointed questions about which women he was feeling a connection with—
Then Cece came down the stairs.
In a few quick sentences, she told him what she’d seen on the monitors.
Romeo-Dylan’s jaw tightened. ‘Show me.’
My brain started whirring as I followed them up to the monitor room. Fuck. How the fuck was I going to fix this? Fuck.Fuck.
His jaw tightened even further as he watched the footage from Heather’s ITM. He crossed his arms over his chest, the muscles in his shoulders turning to stone.
‘I’m really sorry, Dylan,’ Cece said.
He didn’t move, but his body language softened as he looked at her. ‘You don’t need to apologise. You did the right thing, telling me. It’s not your fault.’
I tried to take advantage of the softening. ‘I’m so sorry about this, mate. That interview I did with her today was the first time I’ve heard this kind of language from her. I genuinely had no idea—’
‘Save it.’
