Versatile Superstar: Rise In Hollywood
chapter-198

After Rachel tried to believe in herself more, slowly, the mental block stopping her from progressing diminished. Because of that, she was able to do much better in the recording.

Though, the recording was hard not just for her.

It was very hard for Aiden too as he was also just in Intermediate Grade 3. There were parts which he had trouble with.

Especially the ones with high notes.

The only reason he was able to keep up with it was because the song proficiency was increasing pretty fast because he was the composer of the song. He knew the song way better than anyone.

Despite the troubles both Rachel and Aiden were able to eventually complete the song and with that, the first song of his album was finally done.

It was a great start for Aiden as he had recorded the most difficult song of the album already.

Due to working together, Aiden and Rachel also got a bit closer. Being in an environment where they weren't enemies certainly helped and it seemed like Rachel herself wanted to mend their relations.

"I didn't get the chance to say it before but I'm extremely sorry as to how I behaved when our songs clashed. I got arrogant after getting a bit of fame."

Rachel said, lowering her head a little and sighing. This was something she was hoping to say for a long time but she had only gotten a chance now when she was about to leave for LA.

A little distance away, Linda was already standing by their car. Their flight was in an hour.

"When did you become so soft?"

To her apology, Aiden was only able to reply with a bewildered expression on her face.

This was a very changed Rachel from the one he knew.

"What do you mean?"

"You used to be someone who didn't think twice before insulting anyone. Now, you are apologising for something you did a year back. Are you sure you are Rachel?"

Aiden joked and in his mind, he thought of a certain movie in which clones were taking the place of a real person. Rachel's current behaviour was akin to a clone.

"Shut up!" She frowned. "You are joking when I'm apologising."

"It's just a bit unlike you and it's okay, I accept your apology. I understand what fame could do to a person. It's good that you experienced it early on."

"Uh, yeah."

The only reason Rachel had changed or in Aiden's words 'gone soft' was because she had experienced the cold reality of the showbiz world. Surviving in it, she had slowly realised that being cold and distant to everyone won't work out even if that was her personality.

She needed to learn how to maintain relationships and not just say anything because she felt like it.

Though, she was still the same to people she didn't know. She had come to warm up to a few people.

"Anyway, it seems like we are only going to meet after two months."

Rachel muttered, trying to change the topic before it became too awkward.

"Yeah, I would finish up other songs of my album by then and we could start practicing together for 'Firefly'. I want it to be the first song to be released on the album."

"Sounds good to me."

For a song like 'Firefly', live singing was going to be extremely hard and she needed to practice for over a month to master it. She wasn't going to be free after returning to LA.

"By the way, I watched [30 days of Happiness] coming here. I never knew you were such a nice actor." Rachel suddenly said.

"Thanks." Aiden smiled. It was always nice to hear praises about his acting.

"Are you going to do more movies? I feel like it suits you a lot."

Rachel said casually but Aiden's answer shocked her.

"I actually have a meeting with my agent in an hour for a movie I auditioned for. I would be back to the film sets in late January if it all went fine."

"What? When would you prepare your album then?"

"I'm going to do both the things at the same time."

Rachel didn't mutter anything to that and just muttered 'Monster'. She had heard of celebrities who have great acting and movie careers but she had never heard of anything doing both the things at the same time.

She didn't know that it wasn't too difficult for Aiden as he was already composing 'Lost in the Sky' during the filming of [30 days of Happiness].

The scale was just much more than one song this time.

***

"I'm sorry I'm a little late. The traffic was pretty bad."

Wade said entering the lounge area of the office. Aiden was already sitting there with Jody and Sasha next to him who were drinking coffee.

"How did the recording go? I'm sorry I wasn't able to focus on it. I was dealing a lot in the context of [Disconnected]."

Wade said, sitting down.

"The recording went well. I would send you the audio version of it. There still needs to be a bit of work I need to do on it but it looks good." Aiden said and asked the question that was roaming his mind. "What happened with [Disconnected]? I didn't get the role?"

"No, it's more complicated than that."

He muttered, getting the attention from Sasha and Jody. Wondering how to talk about it, he hesitated before replying.

"I managed to have a talk with Jesse Ross, the director and he liked you as the main character. Apparently, he even mentioned his intentions to the producers straightforwardly."

"So, Aiden got the role?" Sasha asked.

"No, I got to know that SGA has invested heavily in the project. They pretty much green lit the project and a lot of actors are there in the movie but they have a condition and that is—"

"Seth Douglas needs to be the main character."

Aiden completed his sentence, realising what was going on. He thought of Tyler Reed who had tried to take the role of Kai away from him just due to connections.

But the situation was much more complicated in this scenario.

"So, what happened next?"

Jody asked, frowning. He had seen a lot of things like these in Hollywood. This was a simple case of a packaged deal when an agency would invest in a project and want all their actors to be in it.

Like this, they have a lot of control over it.

"Jesse argued with the executive producer but nothing really came out of it. SGA straight up acted like a bully and told him that if don't get Seth on it, then he would be out of the project. Anyway, they have the script rights alongside Black Line Cinema."

Wade took a deep breath and continued.

"So, Jesse was very angry about it. He even talked about going to court and stuff but in the end, an agreement came up as he himself knows he's not really the person in power here, at least in the matters of casting."

In a movie, powers are mostly never with one person and it's very divided unless it's an indie movie. For example, in [30 days of Happiness], most of the power was with Leo and Omar as the director and producer.

Aiden also had power as the main lead and film composer. He even had a share in the box office.

The good thing was that they were able to cooperate with each other pretty well. That's the thing that was the mission for a movie like [Disconnected].

Black Line Cinema wanted to please SGA due to the investment and to be in their good books and SGA wanted to promote Seth Douglas as a lead to set him up to be an A lister.

They were not thinking of making a good movie.

"So I lost the role of Mark?"

Aiden muttered and sighed, his shoulders sinking. Wade nodded in confirmation and even Sasha and Jody had disappointed expressions.

He had liked the role a lot but in this case, Aiden knew he can't do anything.

It was not as simple as the case with Tyler Reed.

But suddenly, Wade opened his mouth.

"Yeah but there's something good that came out of it. As Jesse liked you a lot, Black Line is offering you the role of Andrew Kingston. It's basically the second lead and has a pretty meaty role. You just need to say yes as they are confident about your acting and need to do a basic audition."

Hearing that, Aiden was a bit surprised.

Andrew Kingston was a pretty great character but had a different character development than Mark. He was the person who actually believed in Mark when no one did and was an old friend of his from high school.

He was even the sole investor at first but as the story went, Mark would throw him out of the company and it would complete his arc of turning into a very scummy character due to the ambitions of attaining more money and fame.

'Andrew is a very sweet and timid character.'

From what he remembered, the character of Andrew was very soft spoken and even when he realised that Mark had backstabbed him, there would only be tears in his eyes as he would leave.

There won't be any anger or frustration.

It was designed in a way that at the end of the movie, the audience would start to sympathise with Andrew but the problem was that the character didn't have a lot of shades and was just too simple.

There was not a lot of challenge with this kind of a character.

...