Page 2 of The Austen Affair

I stand at the craft-services table, wearing a delicate blue traveling coat and matching bonnet. One of my cream-colored gloves is clenched between my front teeth to facilitate the process of scrolling anxiously through Twitter.

I knew the news would break sooner or later, but I still wasn’t prepared for this level of public humiliation.

I’m on the verge of vomiting all down the front of my beautiful, period-appropriate costume. Panicking, I continue scrolling down the feed, before smashing headlong into the digital brick wall that is the public announcement from my former showrunner.

@ChuckBrownOfficial: Statement on Loosie recasting from showrunner, Donna Cox, in photo attached.

“We categorically deny the rumors swirling that Tess Bright has been recast due to unreliability and unprofessionalism. We refer you to the statement from Tess’ team, which states that she is departing the series due to scheduling conflicts with the shoot for her upcoming film, Northanger Abbey .

Cast and crew here at Chuck Brown send Tess all our love and support! xoxo, Donna”

My breathing starts to even out. Donna did me a solid here, which she really didn’t owe me.

But the public denial hasn’t impressed everyone, and loads of fans are speculating that it’s just a professional courtesy—which it sorta is.

All around me, I can hear the bustling of the production crew as they prep the next scene.

I face the corner of the craft-services tent so nobody passing by can read the humiliating news from my expression.

@RosingsParkour: Statement from CB showrunner only supports the rumor IMHO. why bother denying unless it’s close to the truth? SMH. Tess is just gonna drag this Northanger adaptation down

@makeatomelette: Tess Bright has a face that has seen an iPhone. Sorry not sorry.

@Half_Agony: I’m so torn. Obviously I want to see Northanger Abbey for the gorgeousness that is Hugh Balfour, but I think Tess will ruin it for me.

It’s been almost nine months since major casting for Northanger Abbey was announced and I had really hoped the outrage would die down.

No chance of that now. This recasting news has only fanned the flames.

Listen: even when I went in for the auditions, I knew I was a long shot.

Nobody casts the girl best known for her work on an increasingly bizarre teen drama based on a long-running cartoon strip for the lead in a major-motion-picture adaptation of a classic work of literature.

Still, I’d hoped audiences would be open to seeing my performance before passing judgment. I need people to like me in this role. Badly. It’s all I have left of my career.

And look, I’m not going to lie. I completely understand why I’d been unemployed until I got Northanger Abbey.

It had been a long time since I’d given Chuck Brown my best work.

I am not proud of that, at all. But I’d been catatonic in the months following my mom’s funeral.

Not lying motionless in bed, necessarily.

I was still walking and talking and showing up to set, albeit frequently late.

But the light in my eyes wasn’t there anymore.

I knew that because I’d seen the reels of my recent work.

The disgruntled fans of Chuck Brown were right—I was phoning it in for Season Four.

I’d also been half-assing it for much of Seasons Two and Three, ever since we’d learned that Mom was sick.

My agent told me they were casting for an adaptation of Northanger Abbey about nine months after I lost her.

It was the first time I felt a flicker of real emotion in what felt like an eternity, instead of just…

numbness. I’ve never been a coma patient—I’ve just played one on TV—but emotionally, it felt like waking up in a hospital bed after years asleep.

The news forced me to get a grip. Northanger Abbey is an underrated, underadapted Austen.

And it was my mom’s second-favorite one.

And I guess along the way I convinced the director and the casting department to forget about Chuck Brown —I mean, I kind of already had.

But when it came to Northanger Abbey, I had to show up for this.

I had to risk it all and prove my talent to not only everyone in that casting room but also myself.

I had to get that role or die trying. Because if I could pay tribute to my mom with an Austen movie, I was going to nail it.

I was going to be a revelation. I’d be a prayer and a eulogy and a heartfelt epitaph.

I’d be my mother’s daughter.

“Tess!” Katie from the wardrobe department rushes over, swatting me away from the food station. “Do not tell me you were eating in that costume!”

I fumble my phone in my haste to pull the glove out of my mouth. “Only carrot sticks and celery!”

Katie gives a wry laugh. “Because you don’t have the ability to eat anything even halfway liquid without getting it all over yourself!” She points a stubby finger at my loose glove. “And don’t think I didn’t see you with that in your mouth. It’s hand-embroidered, Tess.”

I give Katie my most sheepish expression. “Sorry, K.” My stomach churns as I wonder if Katie has seen the news about me. Maybe she’s judging me now, privately thinking that I’m a huge mess, and my costume carelessness is just a symptom of my larger character flaws.

Katie returns a grudging smile, and my muscles unclench. “Please try to remember our commitment to costume continuity.”

“For you, my dear,” I tell her, pocketing my gloves and putting them out of harm’s way, “ anything. ”

Just then, I see a towering blur of charcoal gray speed past me.

I shoot my hand into the air, peeling after my costar.

“Oh, Hugh! Would you be free to run lines for this next scene with me? I really want to get this right.” Hugh is famously dedicated to his craft.

Maybe, if I can just convince him that I’m also taking this überseriously, I can break through to him.

And hopefully make this massive career risk I took for Northanger Abbey worth it.

Hugh Balfour—the authentically British actor who was cast opposite me as the movie’s romantic lead, Henry Tilney—comes to an abrupt, though reluctant, stop.

Heat is rising in my cheeks from the exertion of catching up with him.

Hugh has incredibly long legs, and I am in period-accurate Regency stays, which may have been perfectly comfortable for those who were used to wearing them day in and day out but to which I have not yet become accustomed.

Honestly, I’m the kind of person who comes home and immediately unhooks her modern bra, so learning to like stays was probably always a reach for me.

“Miss Bright,” Hugh tells me, his thunderous voice dour, “how many times do I have to inform you that I do not run lines?”

“At least once more,” I tease him. I hit Hugh with a cheeky grin, praying that banter will make the ice between me and my costar finally thaw.

Hugh considers himself a strict Method actor, but so far, he’s coming off more as a big snob.

Really, what else can you call someone who refuses to socialize on set, who sticks to Regency-era manners and address, and won’t rehearse with his scene partner?

To top it all off, Hugh won’t sit in the makeup trailer if an actress is present, because according to him, Henry Tilney wouldn’t be alone with an unmarried woman without risking the ire of polite society.

I don’t care that he was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art—as far as I can tell, he is out of his goddamn mind.

But I will not not be liked, even by some stuffy, blue-blood lunatic.

Certainly not when so much is riding on our chemistry in this movie.

People already hate me and love him. Fans will be going into this movie expecting me to suck, which, I am happy to inform you, I do not.

But if we can’t sell the romance between our characters, the whole film will land like a lead balloon, and people will blame it on me.

I cannot be like Dakota Johnson in the Netflix Persuasion.

I cannot. I don’t have the career she has—this is my big break and my last shot.

If I blow this, I don’t bounce back. I’m twenty-six, and God knows Hollywood loves to call relatively young women old news the moment they disappoint.

Twenty-seven is creeping up on me with Charlotte Lucas’s voice, telling me, I’m frightened!

And I don’t even have any parents left to be a burden on.

Without Chuck Brown as my fallback option, I’ll be lucky if I’m funneled off into the Hallmark-holiday-movie-industrial complex before fading into utter irrelevance.

Not that Hugh Balfour, hotshot nepo-baby up-and-comer, would care about any of that.

He’s two years older than me at twenty-eight, but as a man, he’s got a lot more years in the tank to establish himself.

Not that he really needs to: his filmography is already much more impressive than mine.

He’s had a prominent secondary role in a Christopher Nolan biopic and a two-episode arc on the latest season of The Crown, and the rest of his IMDb page is nicely rounded out with dark, Scorsese-esque dramas that really make the audience think about themes and directorial intent.

Chuck Brown usually just makes people wonder what cocktail of recreational drugs our writers are on.

“Fraternization is not a part of my process,” Hugh tells me. His expression is so pinched it looks like he’s been sucking on sour candy. As if Hugh Balfour, scion of centuries of English stiff-upper-lippishness, would ever do something so undignified.

It’s kind of a shame that Hugh spends every second of the day scowling.

He really is extraordinarily handsome whenever he doesn’t look so irritated—as you might expect from a movie star.

But he isn’t the typical Hollywood-megablockbuster kind of good-looking.

You wouldn’t see him in your Christmas-release action flick, walking away from an explosion with a toothpick in his mouth.

No fake veneers, artfully sprayed-on tan, or dehydrated muscles.

He’s got an almost Byronic look to him, like he should be standing on a cliff somewhere, the wind blowing his dark curls back from his noble brow as he thinks deep and troubled thoughts about the fate of his lost love.

He is cursedly afflicted with high, aristocratic cheekbones and flashing dark eyes, which mesmerize as much as they terrify.

But you can’t focus on any of that when you’re too busy being sick to death of his shitty personality.

Having firmly denied my request for a cordial relationship, Hugh starts walking again.

I follow him. I’m nothing if not dogged.

“I will not be put off forever,” I say, hearing my voice hitch up a shrill half octave and not doing anything to stop it.

“No, not forever,” Hugh mutters. “Just until we wrap.”

“Come on,” I whine. “I know you’ve got your fancy little process, but I have to get to know my scene partner. Can’t we meet in the middle on this one?”

Hugh arches a dark, sardonic brow. “If you don’t mind, it looks like it’s about to rain, and we’ll be set back hours.

I would prefer to spend those hours dry in my trailer.

” We have just reached said trailer. He takes the handle of his door—which often sticks, I have noticed—and jerks it open, hard. Like he’s angry at it.

“Or you could spend them in my trailer,” I suggest, truly hoping that where all else fails I can annoy him into liking me. “It’s just as big!”

“No thank you,” Hugh snorts. “I’ve heard about the state of your trailer.”

He steps inside and snaps the door shut in my face.

He is really such a dick.