A/N: Thank you, thank you, thank you, all you precious wallabies, for your incredible patience over the past million months as I sloooowly got this story planned and started in my head. Let's do this.
P.S. Let's just pretend all my mistakes related to TV production are reality rather than lack of research and go with it.
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There are apparently a lot of things they don't tell you when you somehow magically* convince Hollywood to let you write your own TV show, Ellie Barnes was learning, except one unhelpfully vague but imperative rule: don't fuck it up. (*Magic, in this case, felt suspiciously like a whole lot of hard work and a healthy splash of luck.)
This led to a lot of surprises. Take, for example, surprise #1: Living out your dream was both exhilarating and insane, but it didn't come with the automatic boost of confidence Ellie had always assumed it would. It reminded her, weirdly, of losing her virginity—none of the so-called big moments really made her feel any different once she'd reached them. She hadn't woken up a totally new, confident person then, either. She was writing her own TV show! She should be walking on clouds and kicking down doors and flipping off assholes in the street, shouldn't she? And yet, fake it til you make it was suddenly even more of a thing than she had ever imagined it could be.
"Okay, but is this really what we're looking for for Miles?" Ellie asked, examining a headshot and frowning right back at the actor brooding out of the photo at her in black and white. Netflix had greenlit the pilot of her show twentysomethings to be filmed, and casting was underway.
"Don't say 'we'. Why do girls always say 'we'?" Ellie's showrunner and mentor, Caroline Roux, didn't even glance up from the stack of headshots in front of her. "I want to know who you're looking for for that role. Say 'I'."
"Right." Ellie said. "This isn't what I'm looking for for Miles." Ellie dropped the photo onto the no pile in what she hoped was a decisive way.
"Great. Why not?" Caroline tucked her pen behind her ear, rested her chin on her hand, and looked over at Ellie. Caroline had "intimidating stare" down pat.
"He's too....beefy cover model for a Harlequin novel. Miles is good looking, but he's more pretentious-guy-in-your-MFA-program than rugged-quarterback-turned-lonesome-cowboy."
Caroline snorted. "All right, I'll move the Chris Hemsworth types to the bottom of the pile."
Ellie continued to carefully sort through the headshots in front of her, placing them into yes, maybe and no piles. The yes pile was a disappointingly small stack; the no pile was positively mountainous. The on-screen version of Ellie's on-again off-again university ex-boyfriend was proving difficult to find, even if his particular species of jerk seemed to be despairingly ubiquitous in real life.
She stopped on a headshot featuring a vaguely familiar face. She'd seen that smirk before. Ellie tilted her head, like the change of angle would somehow help place him. "Where do I know you from?" she asked.
"Hmmm?" Caroline glanced over. "Oh my god," she laughed. "Oh come on, you know who that is! No cheating," Caroline said, pressing the photo down onto the tabletop so that Ellie couldn't turn it over to read the bio.
Ellie frowned. "I mean, I definitely know that smirk..."
"Subtract at least 8 years, add some downright awful early oughties fashion choices..."
Ellie frowned down at the face partially hidden under Caroline's perfectly manicured nails. The guy's hazel eyes looked very familiar, too... "Ugh, it's on the tip of my tongue. Give me a clue. Should I be thinking of like a Cole and Dylan Sprouse, annoying kid on a sitcom?"
"Maybe this will give you a hint... As if being a teen isn't scary enough, try going to school on Ghost Ship High!" Caroline recited the idiotic slogan that had once been plastered on posters and ads across North America in a ridiculous voice.
"Wait, is that Arlo Fletcher-Pine?" Ellie leaned closer to the photo again as Caroline moved her hand away.
"Sure is." Caroline cackled. "The teen heartthrob's all grown up, it would seem. I'd heard he was attempting some sort of comeback, I just had no idea he was trying for an acting gig. I would've thought he'd be done with TV."
"Huh." Ellie stared at Arlo's face, able to see the resemblance now that she was looking for it. His face has lost its baby fat, but had kept the rest of its appeal. "What do you think? Should we bring him in?"
"Ellie, darling, beautiful innocent soul. It's fucking Arlo Fletcher-Pine. Do you know what this could do for the show? I think we have to."
Ellie scrunched her nose in disgust. "I'm not hiring him because he's famous, Caro."
"Don't look so offended. I'm not suggesting you throw aside your artistic integrity or anything. Jesus. But at least bring him in. See what he's got."
Ellie made a face at the photo in front of her.
"You never know, El," Caroline wheedled. "He does have a bit of a...what did you call it? Poncy guy in your MFA look?"
"Pretentious. Pretentious guy in your MFA." She sighed. "And alright, we'll bring him in."
Surprise #2: The reality of Arlo Fletcher-Pine in the flesh was a very different, very distressing story than what Ellie had imagined from his headshot. He was, embarrassingly (if Ellie was being honest, and she always at least tried to be), her seventh grade dream boyfriend personified. The perfectly styled hair from his headshot had clearly been smoothed into submission for the photo, because in real life it stuck up stubbornly in all directions. The smirk had been replaced with a warm smile, and his eyes were kind in a way she had rarely encountered in Hollywood. He could charm the pants off the whole entire world without even trying, Ellie thought. He was the type of guy who showed up early for your house-warming party with your favourite bottle of wine, she mused, and insisted on helping unpack the last few boxes.
"Oh my god," Ellie groaned, collapsing onto the table in front of her the second the door had slipped shut behind Arlo after his audition. (He would make sure it didn't slam, the complete jerk.) "I cannot believe every single piece of journalism ever written about Arlo Fletcher-Pine mislead me so thoroughly." She had done a lot of research in the days between discovering his headshot and his audition. "Untalented, they said. Former child actor grasping at straws to make a comeback, they said. Boyish charm, they said." She rolled her head to the side to look despairingly at Caroline, who was sitting next to her and clearly fighting a losing battle to hide her amusement. "Did you see that smoulder? There was nothing boyish about that smoulder."
Caroline gave up and laughed. "Are you swooning? I would never have guessed a former teen heartthrob would be your achilles heel. Should I fetch the smelling salts?"
Ellie groaned into her folded arms and pushed herself up to sit normally. "No, it's fine, I'm fine. I can handle this. I can— He's just good looking. And stupidly charismatic. Nothing I haven't dealt with before." She took a deep breath and let it out. "I'm a professional. He's a professional. We can be...professional about this."
"Right. Easy peasy," Caroline said, with a consoling and probably more-than-mildly sarcastic pat on her arm. "And good thing too, because he was also very good."
"Okay, thank you, I was really hoping I hadn't imagined that in some kind of lust-fuelled haze."
"Nope. Surprising though it may be, that was real, actual acting talent we just saw." Caroline shuffled through the notes and headshots on the table in front of her, considering. "He might actually be in my top five for Miles."
"Really?" Ellie leaned in to examine Caroline's messy scrawl. "Fuck. I'm doomed."
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A few weeks into casting, they had seen a few promising actors for the role of Miles, but casting for the lead role had been less encouraging. It was making Ellie particularly queasy. She had shared her life on YouTube for years, spinning her teen angst and the ups and downs of her university experience into dubious life advice for her subscribers. In her videos Ellie was friendly and honest and real, and that was (somehow, bafflingly) enough to make her views skyrocket.
But internet fame was a weird thing: the second she closed her laptop or thumbed her phone onto silent, she was just Ellie Barnes, totally normal twenty-something with the same unpaid internship and bad dates and teensie-weensie-but-outrageously-expensive apartment to prove it. Sitting on her bed talking into a camera to record a message she could re-do countless times and edit to perfection was easy. That little red recording light was comforting, and her subscribers were supportive to a fault. Sharing her experiences with the entire nation (and possibly even beyond?!?) was a whole other theme park of nerves. And finding an actress she could trust with that was especially difficult.
Everyone at the network and on her writing staff had been super supportive so far, and that helped. Netflix was putting a lot of weight behind her ideas and her vision for the show, and they'd even gone with her top pick of a young, female director to helm the pilot. (And fingers and toes crossed that the show got picked up, more episodes beyond.) Ruby Winslow had tightly wound curls, dark skin, and the best laugh Ellie had ever heard. It was this big, warm cackle that had made Ellie jump in (delighted) surprise the first time she heard it. That such a small person could make such a great, comforting sound shouldn't have been any kind of surprise, Ellie had thought later, once she'd known Ruby for even a few hours. Ruby's laugh was the first of many notable things Ellie would quickly come to appreciate about her.
They sat in Ellie's tiny yellow bug in the parking lot of In and Out with burgers balanced on their laps. Troye Sivan played quietly from the speakers as Ellie walked through the actresses on her short list so far. Ruby scribbled notes and made suggestions.
"What was it about this girl again?" Ruby held up a photo of one of the many actresses with long auburn hair and freckles dusted across her cheeks who had auditioned that week. It had been, for Ellie, like looking into a weird, slightly distorted mirror all week. "Bryn Botaglia," Ruby read off the back. She scanned the notebook she had propped up on the dashboard. "God, I can't even read my own hand writing today." She laughed at herself, turning her notes this way and that.
"Mmm, she's good, and I liked her," Ellie said. Her mouth twisted as she considered how to voice her next thought.
"But?" Ruby asked, glancing over.
"Okay, you know when you look back at you from a few years ago and you wonder how you were that person?" Ellie traced the lines of stitching in the steering wheel with her thumbnail so she wouldn't have to look at Ruby's face. "Like, I was this shy, careful person who never did anything wrong. And who— I had all these big dreams stuck inside me. But I was set on this other path, this path to become a doctor, because that's what my family wanted. And expected, really. And I was— I didn't want to break out of that."
"And Bryn Botaglia was that girl?"
"No. Bryn was too confident to be that girl. God, that feels weird to say about me. How awful is that to say about myself?" Ellie laughed in a sort of hysterical way and took a big gulp of her Coke.
Ruby nudged Ellie in the arm. As far as shoves go, it was surprisingly comforting. "That's the kind of stuff I need to hear though, to make this show real. And hey, Miss Careful, look who made the crazy impulsive decision to up and move to Hollywood."
Ellie laughed weakly. "True," she said, "I did do that."
"That doesn't look like a careful move from over here."
"Yeah, let's hope the show doesn't totally flop and I regret it."
"We've just got to work extra hard to make sure that doesn't happen," Ruby said. She had the kind of authority and decisiveness when she spoke that made it difficult not to believe her.
"Yeah," Ellie said. She sighed and then smiled over at Ruby. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to throw my pessimism all over the place like this, really. I'm super excited to be doing this. Like dreams-coming-true excited. I just— I talked to my mum last night and she was all 'it's not too late to come home and apply to med school, you know.'" Ellie imitated her mum's voice and Ruby laughed. "As usual."
"God, I can't wait to meet her and see if that's what she really sounds like."
"Well, if things go according to plan and twentysomethings is the next binge-watch sensation, or whatever, you are welcome to come with me to the middle of nowhere in Canada to meet her."
"Aw, I always forget you're a little country mouse," Ruby grinned.
Ellie laughed. "I know, you cultured city mouse, you. I don't know why you're so surprised—this place is full of us small town escapees."
"Okay, here's the plan," Ruby said, clapping her hands together. "Once the pilot gets picked up—"
"Don't jinx it!"
"I'm not going to jinx it, you superstitious freak. Confidence, Barnes." Ruby gave Ellie a mock-stern look. "Once the pilot gets picked up," she started again, raising her voice when she saw Ellie open her mouth to object, "and we're waiting for filming to start, I'll come visit and you can show me all the milestones of your pristine youth. For like, research."
"Because the show is going to be a stupendous success," Ellie said, trying out this decisive thing.
"Exactly," Ruby agreed, and they collapsed into laughter.
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A/N: I promise it won't be another 7 months before the next chapter is up! /o\