Divas (63 page)

It had been their dream at RADA to play Romeo and Juliet together, while they were still young enough to be convincing as teenage lovers. After James was cast as Dr Who, and Melody as Cathy in a
film adaptation of
Wuthering Heights
, they were both well-known enough for producers to be eager to cast them in a stage production, and the idea of real-life boyfriend and girlfriend
playing the star-crossed lovers had been irresistible. Sir Trevor Nunn was lined up to direct them at the Theatre Royal. They had talked of nothing else for months.

‘Oh, of course this won’t interfere with the play!’ Melody had assured him, taking his hands. ‘I’d
never
mess with that, I promise! I’ll tell them that
I’m committed to the play and that I couldn’t possibly start shooting on this till the run’s over – that’s if I even
get
the part, which is very unlikely . .
.’

But she
had
got it. Almost immediately. Millennial, the production company, had sent her a first-class ticket to LA as soon as they’d heard she was interested; the day after she
arrived, she’d read for the executive producers, who had loved her reading as much as her looks – which, as her agent had already pointed out, were a huge point in her favour. Of
course, you could take a blonde, brown-eyed actress, dye her hair black, give her blue contact lenses; but it was always preferable to cast a girl as Wonder Woman who naturally had her specific
colouring, and Melody’s Irish blood had also given her Wonder Woman’s smooth white skin.

Melody was Millennial’s top pick. She had everything: youth, beauty, classical training, and the freshness that came from being a new face. And thanks to a good ear, as well as her RADA
training, she could do a pitch-perfect generic American accent. Delighted, they sent her to meet Brad Baker, who was already contracted to direct the film.

And that was where everything went so wrong.

Brad Baker was the most successful director of action films Hollywood had ever had. Stocky, aggressive, with the Napoleon complex of a very short man, there was nothing Brad liked more than to
orchestrate vastly expensive movie shoots, full of explosions, special effects and CGI wizardry. He was a perfect fit for the breathtakingly original action scenes that the
Wonder Woman
scriptwriters had imagined. Unfortunately, Brad was a much worse fit for a film with a strong female lead.

Because Brad, famously, was a very unpleasant misogynist.

Melody had heard some of the stories about Brad: the most notorious one was how he had made a roster of Victoria’s Secret models audition for the part of the female love interest in his
most recent movie by coming to his house and washing his car, clad only in skimpy bikinis and a bucketful of soapy suds. The producers, however, very keen to cast a classically trained English
actress, were now absolutely set on Melody playing Wonder Woman, and had instructed Brad in the strongest terms not to fuck this up by pulling any car-washing nonsense.

Brad had duly behaved himself. The drawer full of bikinis had remained closed, the Aston Martin in the driveway of his Malibu beach house had been buffed by the Mexican gardener rather than
Melody. He had given her iced acai berry tea on the glass terrace with its commanding view of Carbon Beach, a wide golden crescent-shaped stretch of sand that led to some of the most expensive real
estate in the world. It was popularly known as Billionaire Beach: Brad had taken great pleasure in pointing out the houses of David Geffen, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Jeffrey Katzenberg of
DreamWorks.

‘Jen’s farther down,’ he’d said nonchalantly, and Melody had realised he meant Jennifer Aniston. ‘Nice girl. But she’s kinda the exception. Actors just
don’t make enough money to live here, honey. They’re in Malibu Colony, or on Broad Beach. It’s the guys behind the scenes that make the real money. You know what this house cost
me, five years ago? Thirty-three mill. And I paid
cash
. You tell me an actor who could come up with that kind of green!’

Brad had gone on to list the salaries he’d paid actors in his recent films. A dizzying array of famous names and eight-figure sums danced before Melody’s eyes, dazzling her even more
than the California sun. It was her first visit to LA, but she was quickly learning that this was how people in LA made conversation: they dropped more names than a kid did their toys, scattering
them all over the place, not letting you get a word in edgeways as they streamed out Leos and Brads and Angelinas and Gerards with compulsive abandon.

Her LA agent had done exactly the same thing, told her a story about Roger Federer – a ‘close personal friend’ – and an umpire at Wimbledon, assuming that because she
lived in London she’d be interested in a story that was set there. At first, Melody had panicked, thinking that she was supposed to have met all the people who were being named, contribute
something to the conversation, but soon she’d realised that this was simply how they operated, their currency being proximity to the stars, and they were laying out their riches in front of
her to impress her before they got down to business.

And Brad had certainly impressed her. The extraordinary, architect-designed house, nestling on the pristine coastline, the films he had directed, the people he knew – and the attention he
was paying her – were all designed to sweep a twenty-four-year-old actress off her feet. He told her she was extraordinarily beautiful, perfect to play the twin parts of Diana Prince and
Wonder Woman. He’d claimed the entire credit for bringing her over to LA, saying that as soon as he had seen photos of her he’d screened
Wuthering Heights
in his private cinema,
known that she was the one, and had pushed the producers to view it too. Melody had asked, feeling idiotic, if he actually wanted her to read for him; she’d stuffed the script, now battered
and crumpled from being thumbed over so much, into her bag, and brought it to the meeting.

Brad had burst out laughing and waved it away.

‘Oh, baby, no,’ he’d said airily. ‘Script, schmipt. I love you Brits! Always thinking about the words! I guess it’s all that Shakespeare – you read that,
like, from birth, right? Well, you’re in LA now, baby. Movie Town. And guess what’s
way
more important over here?’ He raised his hands in front of his face, framing a shot.
‘
Images
. I could give a shit about the words, to be honest with you.’

‘But—’ Melody had started nervously. The script was what had seduced her into doing this project, leaving a furious and resentful James behind in London; without its wonderful,
sparkling wit, she’d never even have agreed to meet the producers and Brad . . .

Brad leant forward intently, staring at her with utter concentration.

‘Right now,’ he said, ‘you know what’s the most important thing in the world for me? The
only
thing I’m focusing on right now? You gotta know,
right?’

Melody had shaken her head, baffled.

‘
You
, baby.
You
. My leading lady. Because, you know why I wanna do this project? You know my work, right? Cars, bombs, explosions, guys driving trucks off cliffs to hit
helicopters?
Bow! Biff! Bang!
’

Brad jumped up, pacing the flagstones of the terrace. Melody was sitting under the bronzed-steel pergola, protecting her white skin from the sun; she raised a hand to shade her eyes as she
turned to watch Brad, who had reached the far side of the patio, where a floating flight of steps led down to the saltwater pool. He strode back, his short legs stumping to a strategic point where
the terrace had been built out over the beach to accommodate a teak-and-steel lava-rock fire pit. Pausing dramatically, the sun directly at his back, he pointed at Melody, who was squinting now at
his silhouette.

‘
You!
’ he repeated. ‘
You’re
why I wanna do this movie! Here’s how it went down: Millennial came to me and said, Brad, we wanna do a Wonder Woman movie
and we want you to helm it, and I said, “Shit, guys, that’s a chick flick!” You know? For girls! I could give a shit about what girls wanna watch!’ He fixed her with a
basilisk gaze. ‘I’m being totally frank with you – I hope you get it, that I’m being totally honest about this, because I want you to know
exactly
how passionate I
feel about this,
exactly
the journey I went on to realise why Wonder Woman was such a passion project for me.’

Both his fists pounded his chest, like a gorilla demonstrating his strength. And that was exactly what Brad was doing, Melody realised. A film director, especially one who worked on Hollywood
blockbusters, had to have a core of arrogance, of certainty that their vision was the best, and the ability to impose that on cast and crew. Sammy Cox, the director of
Wuthering Heights
, had
been as gentle as Brad was aggressive; she worked by coaxing, convincing, moving you along a path of her choosing, so that you thought you were making your own decisions about the character you
were playing, but in the end, watching the finished cut, you realised that Sammy had been pulling your puppet strings, getting you to give the performance that she wanted from you all along.

Brad was a loud, boastful silverback to Sammy’s clever, persuasive fox, but that didn’t make him any less convincing. As he kept speaking, Melody felt herself being swept away on his
sea of words, further and further away from land, and no matter how much she tried to put down an anchor, to withstand the waves of rhetoric, she couldn’t hold out.

‘Who
is
Wonder Woman?’ Brad was demanding. ‘That’s the question I asked myself! And you know what I answered?’

He was approaching the table now, and he grabbed the back of the chair he’d been sitting in, rattling it on the flagstones with considerable force: Melody shrank back a little as she said,
nervously:

‘Diana Prince? I mean, that’s her alias . . .’

‘
No!
’ Brad bellowed. ‘Wonder Woman is an
Amazon
! She’s a
goddess
! A
goddess
come to Earth! And you know what I thought of as soon as I
realised that?’

Melody shook her head as Brad rolled on:

‘
One Touch of Venus!
Fuck, I
love
that film! Have you seen it? Ava Gardner as Venus, the goddess of beauty! Most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life – shit,
I’m obsessed with her! And I thought: Hey, this is my chance to make an homage to one of my favourite movies of all time! With
you
!’

He pointed a stubby finger at Melody again.

‘You’re going to be a
goddess
,’ he said, his voice throbbing with conviction. ‘A modern
goddess
, a new Ava. Everyone is going to fucking
worship
you.
I wanna put in way more Amazons – warrior princesses – a whole
tribe
of goddesses, and you’ll be, like, the
queen
. The
empress
.’

Melody’s lips were parted now: she was gazing at Brad with awe and wonder.

Ava Gardner?
He’s comparing me to
her
? Ava Gardner was one of the greatest Hollywood beauties of all time: screen legend, the great love of Frank Sinatra’s life. She
had been a star, rather than an actress, but it was a comparison that would have utterly dazzled any ingénue who had just been offered a huge breakout role.

‘I played Venus in a school play,’ she heard herself say. ‘I had to give a big speech coming down a flight of stairs wrapped in a sheet – we couldn’t afford proper
costumes, it was supposed to be a toga. I was terrified it’d catch on something.’

‘You see!’ Brad narrowed in triumphantly on the only part of this that was relevant to him. ‘You already
played
Venus! You’re a goddess already!’ He pulled
away the chair whose back he had been holding, sending it flying away across the terrace, reached across the table and grabbed Melody’s hands. ‘You’re a
goddess
! My Ava!
I’m going to make you what she was – the Ava of your generation – the most beautiful woman in the world!’

Only Ava Gardner was famous in the 1940s and ’50s
, Melody thought now.

Before plastic surgery became so common that people in LA are surprised when you
haven’t
had it.

It had started very gradually. Brad had known exactly what he was doing, how to manipulate her. Melody had been put up in a suite in the Hotel Bel-Air, with her own private infinity pool with
views over the Hollywood canyons. Every night, Brad had taken her out to one exclusive party after another, dazzling her with his access to the most A-list celebrities, actors, directors,
producers, all of whom were flatteringly keen to meet her. Since the runaway success of
Downton Abbey
in the States, the interest in British actors had intensified even more than usual, and
Melody had found herself the toast of Los Angeles, invited everywhere, feted and garlanded as the new British breakout star, the new Wonder Woman.

Because, by that point, she had signed the contracts. It was official. Her UK agent had baulked initially, concerned that the filming schedule might clash with the
Romeo and Juliet
dates,
and about Brad Baker’s reputation as a sexist vulgarian; her US agent had naturally been over the moon. However, the sheer amount of money they had managed to extract from Millennial had
swept away even the objections of the British agency. It was only James, in the end, who held firm, pleaded with Melody not to do the film, told her that they didn’t need the money, that
their pact to stay in London and concentrate on theatre work should be the deciding factor.

But Melody couldn’t resist the lure that Brad was dangling before her eyes. She was going to be a goddess, the new Ava Gardner. She was going to incarnate an Amazon warrior, a feminist
icon. And she was still committed to playing Juliet . . . she might have to skip a couple of weeks of the scheduled rehearsal period, but she’d work like a dog as soon as she got back to
London, be word-perfect on her lines the moment she stepped off the plane . . .

Only Melody never went back to London. She was plunged straight into the deep end in LA, utterly immersed in preparing for her role. Millennial sent her to boot camp to work on her muscle tone,
and to a professional cowboy to learn how to spin a rope and throw a lariat, so that she could convincingly use Wonder Woman’s magic golden lasso. She wanted to do as many of her own stunts
as possible, and they flew in Randy Nebel, a gymnastics coach who had trained many Hollywood stars, from New York, where he was based, to teach her back flips and somersaults. Brad called her in
for test shots and expressed some concern; her nose had a slight flaw, was fractionally imperfect from the left profile, did she know that? No, she didn’t. He showed her the evidence,
frowning: goddesses didn’t have slightly imperfect left profiles.