Daddy's Girls (61)

Jerry introduced her to Rufus Blake-Harte, who had been studying her so intensely. He smiled at her as they shook hands. “I apologize for staring. You’re even more beautiful than I expected, even more than you are on screen. Thank you for coming in on such short notice. We’re only here for two days.” They all sat down again, and he looked to be about fifty. He had a well-trimmed beard and was very tall and lean with dark hair like hers, and intense blue eyes. He had a pronounced British accent, and what she’d read on Google said he had gone to Oxford and had been a Shakespearean actor himself at the beginning of his career, but became a film director very quickly, and had worked in TV series for the past fifteen years.

    He admired her tan and casually asked where she’d spent the summer. She could sense that he was trying to get her measure and who she was in real life. She explained that her family had a ranch in the Santa Ynez Valley, and he looked pleased.

“You ride?”

“I do. I grew up on horses.”

“Wonderful. It’s so much easier than needing a stunt double for every shot, with actresses who are terrified of horses.” They talked about the show she’d been on and how much she’d loved it, the writing, and her fellow actors, and how sad she was that it had ended. It had been like home to her for ten years.

“Well, we’d like to find you a new home for the next ten,” he said warmly, and everyone in the room laughed. He seemed like a very intelligent, sensible, easygoing person, with none of the posturing of Hollywood, and he asked her how she felt about being based in England while they’d be shooting.

“That’s fine with me,” she said simply. “I’m not married, I don’t have kids, no boyfriend, no dog. I’m unencumbered.” He looked ecstatic. Another actress they were considering had four young children and wanted it in her contract that she’d be flown home every weekend, or her children, husband, and nanny would be flown to England. It was a nightmare of logistics they knew would never work. And she wanted special accommodations if she got pregnant again. They’d been asking around about Gemma and liked what they’d heard. Good actress, reliable, shows up and does her job, a consummate professional in every way, easy to get along with, well liked by director, crew, and cast. That was worth its weight in gold to them, not to have to deal with histrionics on the set, or actresses who didn’t know their lines, and there were plenty of them, male and female in the business, who required twenty or thirty takes before they got it right. Time was money, and although the director said he was a perfectionist and people hated that, no one wanted to retake a scene ad nauseam because the actor hadn’t learned his or her lines. Everything he had heard about Gemma so far had convinced him she was right for the part.

    “We’d like to give you a script, and see how you feel about it. We’ll be shooting in Africa for the first two months. Christmas, I’m afraid. You’d get to spend it with me and the cast, although we’ll have a break in there somewhere.” She looked unfazed by any of it. She hadn’t gone home for Christmas in years, and usually tried to go away with friends. And Africa would be interesting. She’d never been there.

“I’ll admit I’m not crazy about snakes, but I don’t mind being on location over Christmas.”

“I will personally protect you from them. We’ll be in a very civilized, sophisticated, high-end safari camp. Most of it is for several episodes later in the season, and some for the first show, but we thought we’d get it out of the way right off the bat, and stay in England after that, with a few scenes in Paris during the war. Your character has an affair with a French army officer in the First World War, and she goes to meet his family at their chateau. He gets killed shortly after so that takes care of that.” He smiled at her, and Gemma liked him. He seemed warm, personable, unpretentious, and human, and she liked the idea of working with him, and loved the concept of the show. “Your part is the second lead role. Your co-star is a very hot young British actress right now. She’s twenty-eight, brand new, and a joy to work with. And from everything I understand, so are you. We need a British actress in the lead role to keep the folks at home happy on British TV, but as it will be seen worldwide, we want an American, a real one, in the second lead. You’d be the only American in the cast. The rest are all British. And we intend to do a maximum of publicity for the show. We want it to be the number one show in England a year from now. And with you on board, I feel sure we can do it.” He smiled at her, and one of the other men handed her a script. “If you have time to take a look at it tonight, I’m sorry to press you, but I’d love to hear from you by tomorrow. There’s no point chasing a flock of others if we can have you. You really are our top choice,” he said, and Gemma glowed.

    The meeting lasted for two hours and she was floating on air when she left. She went straight home, took off her shoes and jacket, and sat down to read the script. She called Jerry at nine o’clock that night. He was on the freeway on the way to a party and put her on speaker.

“Sign me up. I want it. I don’t care if I have to sleep with the snakes in Africa, it’s the best show I’ve ever read and the part is perfect for me.”

“They think so too. The director is obsessed with you.” He was smiling. “I’ll give them a call right now. They’ll be thrilled. You’re okay about being stuck in England?”