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“You did not deserve that,” Maggie went on. “Even if you read that script and wanted to play that character, you did not deserve to be treated like shit on the set. Vincent Minna should not have harassed and pressured you in any way. He had absolutely no business touching you. None. Your mother, your agent, and every professional on that set failed you. I’m joking to defuse the situation, but if you want to put together a team of mercenaries to exact justice ... I mean, I don’t think I’m very scrappy, but I’m aces at travel research. I can probably get us a group rate.”
Tasha covered her face. After several deep breaths, she put her hands on her hips. She’d composed herself again into ruthless beauty. “I have never talked about this with anyone. Not my old agent, not my new agent, not Merrit, not Cole, not anyone. It’s been the cone of fucking silence.”
“Again, I am so sorry that this happened to you. And I will never repeat any part of this conversation.” Maggie wasn’t able to project emotions into a space the way Tasha could, but she meant it. Tasha had shown tremendous trust in telling Maggie all this. The least Maggie could do in return was to keep her mouth shut.
“Thank you.”
That felt like the end of one chapter in their relationship and the beginning of another one. As a director, Maggie knew that necessitated a scene change.
She crossed to one of the chairs and dragged it toward another one. She sat down and pulled a notebook out of her purse. “With that context, if you’re ready to talk about it, I’d really like to think about what you need forWaverley—what the production can do to support you and protect you while you’re acting.”
Tasha sat down across from Maggie. The morning sunlight streaked over her cheekbones and down the column of her throat lovingly, as if she were in a Dutch master’s painting. “Well, I don’t want Vincent Minna to be on set.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem. But he is ... I mean, he owns Silverlight, and they’re producingWaverley.”
“I know.” Tasha muttered a string of curses under her breath. “But he’s mostly retired.”
“Feel free not to answer this, but why did you take this part? With them as the production company and all the sex and nudity in the script, those both seem like they’d be dealbreakers.”
“I took it for Cole,” she said simply. “But also, Effie Deans is a badass—and not in the way ‘strong’ female characters usually are. She doesn’t set off explosives or roundhouse kick anyone. But she knows what’s true, and she says it, even when it costs her. She refuses to escape from prison because that would admit guilt, and she knows she’s not guilty. She’s selfish and immature, like Geordie, at the start, but she becomes a better person. I know Zoya reworked the book, made Effie the focus rather than Jeanie and gave Effie a happy ending, and I just felt as if she deserved that. I realized I’d be pissed if anyone else got to play her.”
“That makes sense.”
Tasha probably identified with her character in much the same way Cole did with his.
Tasha smiled a deadly sort of smile. “For a long time, I did action movies because, while I had to wear tight clothes, I didn’t have to get naked. They’re all PG-13, so there’d be some kissing, maybe, but nothing else. And they let me be ... powerful, albeit in a pretty limited way. But I’ve killed, like, hundreds of shitty men on screen.”
“Did you picture them all as Vincent Minna?”
“Half. The rest are Supreme Court justices—you can guess which ones.”
“Super fair.”
Now that Tasha had let her guard down, it was easy for Maggie to see why Tasha and Cole were such close friends. The real Tasha was charmingly profane.
“I don’t want to be afraid anymore. Effie Deans,Waverley: they’re going to be the way I finally get past this. And again, I really do trust Cole. And Zoya. And I think you too. I needed some time to warm up to the idea of an intimacy coordinator. And maybe to figure out that strength isn’t just holding things in.”
“Noted. And I want to earn that trust. So no Vincent. What else do you need?”
“Rhiannon said you wrote out all the blocking, touch by touch.”
“Yup. I know it’ll be tricky, but if you and Cole and I could find some time in the next few days, we could choreograph your stuff. There are, um, several scenes.” Zoya had literally described episode four as including a bonk-fest montage.
“Effie and Geordie are really hot for each other.”
“They are,” Maggie said diplomatically.
Tasha nodded. “It would help me to have predictability, a closed set, and veto power over the wardrobe. I guess what I’m saying is I need to know if I speak up, someone will hear me.”
That was all anyone needed, and it was amazing how rare it was to get.
Maggie leaned back in her chair. “I wouldn’t have taken this job if Zoya hadn’t convinced me that the people at the top of the productioncare. I was worried they were bringing me on to paper over something messy or unsalvageable. I haven’t been here very long, but I don’t think that’s the case.”
It hadn’t been during the preproduction or rehearsal, at any rate.
“And look, I should also say, while I will do everything in my power to make filming go well for you, I can’t ... I’m not a therapist.”
Tasha snorted. “I can barely talk about my piece-of-shit mother and her psychopath ex with you—I’m definitely not going to do it with a total stranger.”
