The smaller room smelled like fresh paint, the kind of detail nobody but Franz ever bothered to register in these spaces. Three chairs faced a half-circle of reporters, close enough that he could see which ones had already decided what they were going to write before he opened his mouth.
Noah Hart existed for rooms like this one. Franz had built him carefully, over years, a version of himself with the rough edges sanded down to something that photographed well and answered questions without handing over anything for free. The two of them weren’t strangers. They just weren’t the same person, and Franz had learned exactly how much of himself he could hand over to the version that did press before something in him started to cost too much.
Marisol Vance sat to his left, dark hair pulled back the same way it had been on stage, a plain blazer that looked chosen for not drawing questions of its own. Her hands were folded so tightly in her lap that her knuckles had gone pale. She’d said maybe ten words since they walked in, most of them to Daryll, checking the run order twice before she trusted it. Callum Reyes took the third chair like it belonged to him, silver hair combed back, the lines in his face doing more work than any makeup artist would have let show a decade ago. Franz supposed that ease was the kind that came from finally being asked back into a room he’d been told for years he no longer belonged in.
Franz had watched them both in the greenroom beforehand. Marisol had rehearsed her opening line under her breath three times before giving up and deciding to wing it. Callum had spent the ten minutes making small talk with the catering staff, unhurried, like a man who’d learned the hard way not to waste a single conversation that came his way anymore.
"Let’s start with the obvious," the first reporter said. "Meridian Artists. Why now?"
"Because now is when it was ready." Franz kept his hands flat in his lap, mirroring nothing, performing nothing. "We could have rushed it a year ago. It would have been worse."
"Where does Miss Summers fit into all this? We know she’s not just cheering from the sidelines."
"She’s an investor. That’s public record if anyone wants to check it." Franz let a beat pass before he went on. "Her opinion of the agency is hers to share, not mine. She asked harder questions during the planning than anyone else in the room, including me."
That got a small laugh from the back row. Franz didn’t add anything else to it. Arianne’s name could do real work for a headline, and he’d hand over exactly that much and nothing past it.
"Marisol, Callum — what made you say yes to an agency with no track record yet?"
Callum answered first, leaning forward like he’d been waiting for the question. "Every other agency in this city had a version of my file that said I was done. Fifty-eight, character roles only, don’t bother pitching him for anything with his name above the title. Meridian read the same file and asked me what I wanted to play next." He spread his hands. "Nobody’s asked me that in six years."
The room liked that answer. Franz watched three reporters write it down word for word.
"Any regrets about signing with a first-year agency instead of waiting for something established?" a reporter asked Callum directly.
"I waited six years for established to call. It didn’t." Callum said it without bitterness, just fact, the same register Franz had heard him use in the greenroom over coffee. "I’m not interested in waiting for a seventh."
Marisol took longer. "I said things publicly that cost me work for two years." Her voice had a thin edge to it, controlled but not fully steady. "Most people who called after that wanted to use what happened to me as a headline. Meridian called and asked about my range instead." She stopped, recalibrated. "That’s — I’m not used to that being the whole conversation yet."
"No follow-up questions?" someone asked, half a laugh in it.
"They had follow-up questions about my technique," Marisol said. "Not about the producer. I wasn’t ready for how much that would matter to me."
Franz watched her fingers loosen a fraction once the sentence was out, like saying it out loud had cost her something and paid her back at the same time. He didn’t jump in to smooth it over. She hadn’t asked him to, and covering for her would have undercut the only thing she’d actually wanted from this — to say it herself, in her own words, without anyone standing between her and the room.
Franz let the room sit with that a second before the next question came, aimed back at him now, the way these things always eventually returned to whoever’s name sold the most tickets.
"There’s a global skincare campaign, a new agency, and word going around about a film with Anton Kessler. That’s a big year. How does it feel?"
"Good," Franz said, and didn’t elaborate on purpose. When nobody filled the gap he’d left, he added, "Busy. Good busy."
"Can you confirm the Kessler project?"
"I can confirm I’m working with him. That’s as far as I’ll go today." He’d been warned twice already that Kessler’s team would rather he say nothing at all than say too much, and Franz had agreed without needing convincing. Some directors wanted noise around their films before release. Kessler wanted the opposite, and Franz respected the logic of it enough to hold the line himself.
"Is it true it’s a drama? No romantic lead this time?"
"It’s a drama." A small, real smile. "Kessler doesn’t do romance. He does people falling apart on the inside while everything on the outside holds, and then putting themselves back together wrong. It’s the kind of part that scared me when I first read it."
"Scared you how?"
"There’s nowhere to hide in it. No charm to lean on. Just a man and what he did and what it cost him." Franz paused, aware he’d said more than he’d planned to. "That’s the appeal, if I’m being direct about it. I haven’t done anything that required that much of me before."
"Is this the Laurel Awards play everyone’s already calling it?"
"I don’t make films to win things." He said it evenly, without heat. "I make them because the part is worth doing. What happens after is other people’s business."
The reporter who’d been waiting for an opening finally took it. "Speaking of other people’s business — marriage life. How’s it treating you?"
"Good. We’re happy." Franz let exactly that much sit in the room and didn’t move to fill the space after it.
"And the new addition to the family?"
Something in Franz’s face gave way before he could catch it, an actual smile instead of the practiced one. "He’s healthy. Loud, most mornings, usually before I’ve had coffee. There’s a laugh he does now that I’d walk through a wall for." He caught himself there, aware he’d handed over more than he’d planned. "That’s more than I meant to give you. I’m not asking for it back, though."
"Any chance of a photo? Fans have been asking for months."
"Not today." Not unkind, just final, the door he’d learned to close without slamming it. "Some things are for us."
The moderator called time before the next question could fully form, and Franz stood, shook two hands he didn’t remember belonging to reporters until after they’d already left the room, and let Daryll steer him toward the hallway. Behind him, Callum kept fielding a question, gesturing with the loose confidence of a man enjoying every second of being asked things again. Marisol had stopped talking altogether, but her shoulders had dropped half an inch since the first question, some of the fight in her hands finally letting go.
Franz checked his phone once they cleared the door. One message from Arianne. Here, no rush. He read it twice before he put the phone away, and for the first time all evening, the version of himself that had walked into that room let go of whoever Noah Hart needed to be tonight.