The interview setup was smaller than the ballroom, three chairs and a low table with water glasses nobody would touch, a single camera on a tripod instead of the press pen’s forest of them. Sam had done enough of these now to know the small setups were the ones that actually mattered. Big rooms wanted a soundbite. Small rooms wanted you to stop moving long enough that the mask slipped.
Daryll walked her through the door with a hand at her elbow, the same steadying gesture he’d used every time since he’d taken her on as a client, a little over a year ago now, back when she’d been trying to convince herself modeling and acting could share the same calendar.
"Ten minutes," he said. "Maybe twelve if she likes you."
"She’ll like me. Everyone likes me on camera. It’s off camera where I have problems."
Daryll didn’t dignify that with an answer, which was its own kind of answer.
The reporter introduced herself as Priya Okafor, mid-thirties, a notepad she didn’t seem to need, and a handshake that skipped the performance most people gave Sam’s last name. She sat across from her without ceremony and started before the camera had fully settled.
"You’re the first artist signed to Meridian. How does that sit with you?"
"Heavier than I expected." Sam let herself actually think about it instead of reaching for the practiced line. "I’ve been ’the model’ and ’Gilbert Pemberton’s sister’ for most of my adult life. Being the first name on a roster means whatever happens to this agency, people will trace some of it back to whether I was any good. That’s a different kind of pressure than modeling ever gave me."
"Good pressure or bad?"
"Ask me in a year." Sam smiled, and meant it. "Today it feels like the first real thing I’ve been asked to carry."
"Let’s talk about the work. The new series is performing well. What’s next?"
"Two more episodes of the current season, then a hiatus while I shoot a film in the spring. Small cast, character piece, nothing flashy. I picked it because it scared me a little, and I’ve started trusting that feeling more than I used to." She caught herself starting to ramble and reined it in. "After that, there’s a project with Meridian I can’t talk about yet. Monica would have my head."
"Your family’s reaction to all this? The Pembertons have a long history in finance, not entertainment."
"My brother cried at my first premiere and then denied it for a week." Sam laughed, easy and real. "My parents took longer to come around. They wanted stability for me, and modeling already read like a risk to them. Acting read like doubling down on the risk. But they came to the last set visit, and my mother cried too, so I think we’ve landed somewhere good."
"Did your brother ever apologize for the denial?"
"My brother doesn’t apologize for crying. He apologizes for getting caught." Sam shook her head, fond despite herself. "He sent flowers to the set the next week with a card that just said ’proud of you’ and no signature, as if I wouldn’t know his handwriting anywhere. That’s very on brand for him. My sister-in-law ratted him out within the hour."
"One more, and I promise it’s the one everyone’s actually waiting for." Priya’s mouth curved, already anticipating the answer. "Is there a relationship in your life right now? The tabloids have theories."
"The tabloids always have theories. Most of them are wrong, and the couple that aren’t are none of anyone’s business." Sam took a beat, and this time the beat wasn’t for the camera. "But no. There’s no one right now, and it’s not high on my list of priorities."
"No interest in changing that?"
"Interest, sure. Priority, no." She turned the water glass a quarter turn on the table without drinking from it, buying herself half a second. "I spent a long time chasing something before I was ready to hold it. I’d rather spend the next while getting steady. Building something that’s actually mine, work I’m proud of, a version of myself I’d want to hand someone if the day ever comes." She looked back up at Priya, unhurried now. "When it happens — if it happens — I want to be the best version of myself for that person. Not the version already figuring out who she is underneath everyone else’s opinion of her. I owe them that much, whoever they turn out to be."
"You make it sound like a project with a deadline."
"Maybe it is one." Sam let herself smile at that, unbothered by how it sounded out loud. "I’ve never been afraid of deadlines. I just used to spend mine on other people’s timelines. This one’s mine."
"That’s a patient answer for a woman who just told me acting scares her."
"Some things are worth being patient for." Sam said it lightly, but something in her chest didn’t match the lightness, and she moved past it before Priya could catch the seam. "Ask me about the film again. I have better answers for that one."
Priya let her have the redirect, folding into a question about the shooting schedule, and Sam answered it on autopilot while her eyes drifted, just once, past the camera to the edge of the room.
Arianne stood near the wall with Franz’s hand resting at the small of her back, close enough that they’d drifted there together and stayed. Franz said something low, and Arianne’s mouth curved in response, the two of them sharing a look that had nothing to do with the interview and everything to do with each other, the kind of look built from years of not needing to explain themselves to one another. Sam had watched them do this in a hundred different rooms by now, always from the outside.
She answered Priya’s next question without missing a beat, because that was the job, and she was good at the job, and turned her water glass another quarter turn before she let her eyes come back to Priya fully.
"That’s time," Daryll said from the doorway, tapping his watch with more relief than urgency.
Priya thanked her, shook her hand again, and gathered her things without lingering, already composing the piece in her head if the pace of her exit was any indication. Sam sat a second longer after the room emptied around her, water glass untouched, camera light dark, the last question lodged somewhere behind her ribs, before she finally stood to find Daryll.
Daryll waited by the door with her phone already in his hand, screen bright with three missed calls she’d been too focused to notice. "Monica wants you back at the ballroom in fifteen. Something about a photo op with the other two."
"Tell her I’m coming." Sam took the phone, scrolled past the calls without answering any of them, and pocketed it instead of dealing with whatever they were about. "And Daryll — that interview. Did I do all right?"
"You did more than all right." He held the door for her, glancing back once at the empty chairs, the dead camera light, the water glass she hadn’t touched. "You told the truth. That’s rarer than people think, in rooms like that one."
Sam didn’t answer that, mostly because she wasn’t sure which part of the truth he meant, and she wasn’t ready yet to find out whether he’d caught the part she’d left out.