“I won’t get any parts if I don’t go to auditions!” Chuck snapped.
“Well, you’re not getting them even when you do go, so what’s the difference?” Olivia snapped back. “It wasone night, Chuck!”
“One night that could have changed everything!”
“Okay!” TJ interjected. “I see the fuse here is short. No wonder that scene in the street was so explosive.”
“You should have seen what you missed upstairs…” Chuck muttered.
“What’s that?” TJ asked.
Olivia shot Chuck a death glare, daring him to elaborate.
“Nothing,” he said, backing off.
TJ looked back and forth between them like he was watching a tennis match. “I sense there’s more to the story here, but I also sense we aren’t going to get very far in this interview with the two of you together.”
“Can’t say we didn’t warn you,” Olivia said with an annoyed arch of her brow. She leaned her elbow on the chair’s arm and sighed.
TJ looked back at her like it was a challenge. “How about this?” he said after a beat. He looked over his shoulder at the camera crew and Parker and waved his hand to cut. “Why don’t we start with some one-on-one footage for this segment?”
“Sounds great,” Chuck said, and stood up. “I volunteer to go second.” He stepped away and left Olivia sitting there in the spotlight.
“I—” she started to say, and stopped when she felt all eyes on her.
“Olivia? Is this okay with you?” Dan the director asked.
She felt trapped, but storming off set might ruin her chances of getting paid, and that was, after all, the whole point.
“Sure,” she said, defeated.
“Excellent,” Dan said. “TJ?” He gestured at him to carry on, and Olivia didn’t like the sly grin on TJ’s mouth.
“Let’s do it,” TJ said.
Dan called action again, and Olivia felt the camera boring into her like a drill. She’d lost sight of Chuck behind all the equipment.
“So, Olivia,” TJ resumed. “You’re a writer forMix. What draws you to that line of work?”
She felt herself settle into a much easier interview. “I like learning about people. I like telling their stories.”
“That makes two of us,” he said with a grin. “You have an interesting story, don’t you?”
An uncomfortable feeling separate from the one due to the lights and camera took root at the base of her spine and began to climb. “What do you mean?”
TJ settled back in his chair. “Well, you’re the daughter of a rather famous—or should I say,infamous—couple, aren’t you? Rebecca Martin and Bradley Harris?”
Olivia startled at the abrupt shift in direction. “Um, yes. They were my parents.”
“Your mother was a brilliant actress. Such a tragedy. How well do you remember them?” He gazed at her with an expectation that said this had been part of his plan all along, to get her to talk about everyone’s favorite secret scandal, and she was not equipped.
Her mouth went dry. She had to unstick her tongue from her teeth. “I don’t remember them at all. They died when I was a baby.”
“And your grandmother raised you, is that right?”
Olivia expected someone to yell cut. This had nothing to do with her and Chuck, and frankly, she was uncomfortable talking about it.
But the camera was still pointed at her, and the lights were bright. She didn’t know the rules of interrupting filming.