Jo threw herself into studying the script as soon as she got it and had been reading through it over and over for weeks by the time the script read-through rolled around. And she still hadn't fully memorized it. Well, it was rather different from scenes from TV shows, or even musicals she'd been in during high school. In musicals, half of it was songs, and songs were easier to memorize than dialogue. Her other roles had been very minor. Now she was in nearly every scene of what would be an extraordinarily long movie unless Eve decided to cut bits and pieces.
She mentioned it in passing to Friedrich and he told her they were hardly ever expected to have the whole thing memorized. They would probably read through the scene before shooting it, and go until it was perfect, in character, and natural. "You don't need to be able to recite it from cover to cover," he assured her.
That was a huge relief. But it still didn't keep away the first-day-on-set jitters. The night beforehand, Jo caught herself chewing her nails, a habit she thought she was over with. The last of the fittings and costume altering and makeup and hair plans had at last been completed that day, and tomorrow they were officially filming.
"Jo!" she was pulled from her thoughts by Theo, "Hey, I'm trying to get everyone to my hotel room for some promotional content." He held up his phone, which displayed his YouTube channel.
"What kind of promotional content?" Jo asked.
"Y'know, some fluffy stuff, Stars of This Year's 'Four Sisters' Play Uno or something like that. Oh, or sing karaoke! Can you sing?"
"Not really," Jo laughed, but she fell into step with him anyway on their way out.
"It doesn't really matter either way. This stuff just gets the fans interested."
"It's not going to take much for your fans. You pretty much have a cult following."
"They aren't a cult," Theo protested, holding open the door. He paused to think for a moment. "Okay, maybe they're a little cultish."
"Who's a little cultish?" Meghan finished putting out her cigarette and fell into step with the other two.
"Hey, are you coming to karaoke?" Theo changed the subject before Jo could tease him anymore.
"Yeah, of course, sounds like a lot of fun," Meghan said. "Who else is going?"
"I don't know, anyone who wants to. May, definitely. We'll ask the rest after the read-through."
Late that night, Jo found that her nerves hadn't been settled by that little get-together at all. If anything, they had come back worse.
Theo had ended up live-streaming their karaoke-and-Chinese-food get-together, most of the main cast being there, including the actor for John who Jo hadn't gotten a chance to meet yet.
"Hi, I'm John Brooke."
"Really?" Jo hadn't been able to hold back her laughter. "And you're playing..."
"John Pratt, yes."
He was a pretty good singer. The comments in the live stream had requested Livin' on a Prayer, and he had delivered.
The livestream comments... that had ended up being the problem.
It was fun at first. There were thousands of people on the livestream, and Theo and May seemed very at ease with that. So did everyone else who was now accustomed to being in the public eye. Jo, however, was skittish. She had never been so aware of being watched. The number kept creeping higher. She saw all sorts of excitement and positivity, people who were ecstatic about this movie. They had all sorts of questions that Theo scrolled through between songs.
"No spoilers!" Jenny yelled from off-screen, earning a laugh. She had settled in a beanbag chair with a bowl of lo mein and looked perfectly content there.
"There will be spoilers," Theo said. "And don't anybody cry about it, you've had over a hundred years to read the book!"
"And watch one of the other- what, three movies?" Meghan popped open another container of rice and scooped some onto her plate. "Four? And that one anime?"
"Sure has gone through a lot more iterations than that," a middle-aged man in the seat next to John's said. "Including a silent movie, all of which is lost except for two frames."
"That's Mr. Westerson," Friedrich explained softly, when Jo glanced at him, puzzled. "He is playing a younger Mr. Laurence in a few flashbacks, he just got here."
"Oh," Jo nodded. Mr. Bhaer seemed to catch on quickly to confused expressions and filled her in quietly on any people she wasn't familiar with. It was a relief that he didn't make her moments of cluelessness known to the others.
"He knows a lot of trivia about the book and its author. He was actually talking to me just earlier about the amount of concealed pregnancies on the sets of a few adaptations."
"Really? There were?"
Mr. Bhaer shrugged. "Apparently."
Questions and comments continued to pour in. Meghan had recently acted in another period piece and compared the eras and their costumes for a while. May and Theo hadn't worked in a film together in a few years, and fans were ecstatic to see them back together. Then others started asking about Jo and Theo. Or Louisa and Laddie.
Will they get together in this version?
Louisa and Laddie shippers rise up
do tehy kiss i havent read the book
"So, basically, for anyone who hasn't read the book-"
"Which I totally recommend, one of my childhood favorites," May added.
"Yeah, great book," Theo continued, agreeing, "And in it, Laddie and Louisa are childhood friends. They are described as brothers in the book. Laddie catches feelings, but Louisa doesn't reciprocate. It's very... one-sided and sort of tragic?"
"The movie- it does not stray far from the source material," Freidrich said. "This is not a reimagining or any alternate ending."
"The director is a huge fan of the book. Wouldn't change it."
Then the weird comments started to show up about Jo and Theo. At some point, he had gotten up, went to brace himself on the back of the couch, and touched her shoulder. That was enough to spark theories about their dating. Jo tried to ignore it until the livestream ended.
"Don't worry about it. Happens a lot," Theo shrugged it off. "A lot of celebrities are shipped, don't take it too seriously."
"Yeah, it'll pass soon enough. Well, unless you do another project together, there's always that," Jenny said.
"Don't even get me started on the fanfiction sites," John sighed. Jo laughed, believing he was trying to add some levity to the situation. He adjusted his glasses, looking grim. She awkwardly stopped. "In all seriousness, be prepared for anything. This movie could seriously propel you into the spotlight."
"Don't scare her too badly," Meghan wrapped an arm around Jo's shoulders. "It's really no big deal, the weirdos are few and far between."
May scoffed but didn't say anything, opting instead to take another egg roll.
At twenty-two, Jo still had somewhat of a baby face. She stood in front of the motel bathroom mirror, ignoring the web of cracks in the corner, and tried to focus on the YouTube video playing on her phone. The woman in the video transformed her face shape with contour like magic. Jo tried to follow along as best she could.
Thirty minutes later she was scrubbing it off, the laughter of the female lead making her face burn in embarrassment.
They put padding in her bra instead. That would make her look older. It was a much better plan than the makeup, she was assured.
