Scene 24

Mark walks into the office. Anni is waiting for him.

Anni:
Morning.

Mark stops and stares at her.

Mark:
Morning. Were you waiting here for me?

Anni smiles.

Anni:
I was.

Mark:
Why?

Anni:
I was worried about you.

Mark:
Strange woman.

Mark carries on walking and Anni follows him as they walk through the building.

Anni:
You look terrible, have you slept?

Mark:
Not a wink.

Anni:
You really should sleep its.

Mark:
Anni.

Anni:
yeah?

Mark:
What do you have for me?

Anni hands over the documents that have been resting in her hands.

Anni:
All the major papers are running the story about the kid. A lot of online stuff is falling directly onto you.

Mark:
Any mention of us in the papers?

Anni:
I’ve highlighted a few areas but I wanted you to look for yourself.

Mark:
And it’s all in here?

Anni:
Yeah and I’ve sent some over to Beth, Daniel and Hugo to look at.

Mark and Anni both stop at the bottom of the stairs.

Mark:
Are they all up there?

Anni:
I think they are waiting for you.

Mark:
Okay. Anni thank you for this.

Anni smiles.

Anni:
Anything else you need?

Mark:
Yeah can you get hold of Andrew and see if he knows anything else.

Anni:
With pleasure.

Mark looks disgruntled.

Mark:
Anni now’s not the time for jokes.

Anni:
I know, I will be good.

Mark:
I will see you in a minute.

Anni leaves shot into Mark’s office. Mark turns around but stops as Daniel calls.

Daniel:
Mark.

Mark:
yeah?

Mark and Daniel begin walking up the stairs together.
Daniel:
Have a good night?

Mark:
It was brilliant watching myself get slated on the news again and again until dawn. Yours?

Daniel shrugs

Daniel:
I’ve been ignoring phone calls most of the day. Chloe wants me to resign.

Mark:
Maybe you should. I’m sure you can earn a good wage commenting on how terrible I am.

Daniel:
Come on Mark.

Mark:
No I’m serious. They pay good wages for that.

Daniel:
I’m not going anywhere and I’m actually a little bit annoyed that you thought I would.

Mark:
Sorry I’m tired. Have you got some comments?

Daniel:
Yeah and Louise is finishing off the confrontation now.

Mark:
I will come and sit in with you after this. Can’t bear to be around Anni she is in mothering mode today.

They stop outside David’s office where Sophie is busy working.

Daniel:
Hi Sophie.

Sophie:
Hi guys.

Mark shrugs.

Daniel:
Is he ready?

Sophie nods.

Sophie:
Hugo and Beth are already in there.

Mark and Daniel enter the room. Camera follows them. David, Hugo and Beth are sitting at the desk they stop their conversation as Mark and Daniel enter. Mark and Daniel take their seats. Mark immediately starts going over the papers.

David:
Lets begin. Beth?

Beth:
From my point of view we are quite good. A few people have pulled out of casting but we’ve actually had more applications.

Daniel:
Why is that?

Beth:
They think we are going to admonish Incels and some people want to be a part of that.

Hugo:
Well we aren’t going to admonish them.

Mark looks up.

Mark:
After the trouble they’ve caused me, I think I will.

David:
So we can go ahead with casting. See if we can ride the train of negative press on that front.

Hugo:
But our lead might not be so lucky.


David:
What do you mean?

Hugo passes a sheet of paper to David.

Hugo:
Andrew isn’t the most popular actor as it is. Seems a few papers have it in for him.

David passes the sheet over to Mark who scans it before handing it to Daniel.

Daniel:
Ex-gambling addict bets on wrong show to boost career.

Beth:
Catchy headline.

Hugo:
On our front there is only one line about the show, the rest just goes into his past.

Mark:
It’s going to kill him.

David:
Do you think he might pull out?

Mark:
I doubt it. He’s a good guy. He knows that not many people would give him a chance to get his career back on the up. Andrew’s grateful.

David:
Good. Daniel. What do you have for me? It better be good news.

Daniel:
Well Mark set me to doing comments for the press, which is great but I don’t know where we stand.

David:
We stand to protect the show.

Daniel:
I get that but do we support the line and therefore support the notion that all incels and this kid are evil or do we deny the scene is there.

David looks at Mark.

David:
Can we deny it?

Mark shakes his head.

Beth:
How did they even get the line?

Mark:
 They got it from us.

Hugo:
Sorry?

David:
Back when we first started we sent out scenes from the pilot to friends, ex staff people like that. We wanted to get feedback on how the scenes were reading.

Mark:
One of them would have given it to the press.

Beth:
Fantastic.

David:
Our position?

Mark:
I don’t think we can take a side.

Hugo:
Why?

Mark:
Because the show doesn’t take a side. This scene does but the show on the whole is a lot more sympathetic towards Incels than my book was. Its right in the middle and we could get that across if we had some of the pilot filmed but still we would need a media manager to get it out there.

David:
Daniel. Work versions of this to your questions. It is alarming to us that this line is causing harm to some people. It is taken out of context and does not state the position of the show or its creators, on the people known as Incels. We will look into this matter and consider whether the line should be in the show.

Daniel:
Great.

Mark:
It’s good.

David:
What about you?

Mark:
Well we aren’t front page news.

Beth:
That’s a start.

Mark:
The kid is though, in fact he’s page two and three as well. The issue is we get a nice column on page three of most newspapers. Mark stops as he reads one of the papers.  In fact in some I get a whole page.

David:
What’s your play?

Mark:
I’m going to hang low. Make it seem like its business as usual. I will help Daniel with the comments and oversee Louise with her work but I won’t make any statement myself. Anni is looking into who published it first. If I find that out, I might find who gave them the script. See if they hate us and how many more things I’ve written, that they might be hiding in the closet.

David:
Good work. People I want this day to run smoothly and will someone please get us closer to filming this pilot. I don’t want us getting bogged down by this. Get to work.

Everyone stands up and leaves. End scene.