Chapter 219: The Road to Berlin is Paved with Angels

"I was standing in the kitchen, carving up a chicken for dinner."

The exceptionally tall Black woman stepped out from behind the iron gate. Moving flawlessly to the beat of the music, she approached the camera, dancing her way around the lens as it rotated in a smooth 360-degree circle. "I was minding my own business, and in storms my husband, Weber..."

Mia Valentine had average looks, but her performance was incredibly infectious, showcasing the deep stage fundamentals of a Broadway actress. She stepped skillfully to the rhythm, slowly turning to face Duke.

"Cut!"

From this angle, Duke had immediately spotted a problem. Valentine froze for a second and asked, "Did... did I make a mistake?"

"Your performance is great, Mia."

If judging solely by acting, singing, and dancing, this Black woman absolutely crushed both female leads, Naomi Watts and Catherine Zeta-Jones. But movies were about more than just performance. Even though she was Broadway's choice for Velma in the upcoming season of Chicago, her completely average appearance guaranteed she could never be the leading lady of a film.

Duke walked up to Valentine and pointed at her corset. "Who did this? Don't let it happen again."

There was nothing wrong with Valentine's costume itself, but the tiny microphone meant to be tucked away inside her corset for audio recording had popped out.

As the sound team handled the minor issue, Duke called Lily Fred over to discuss Valentine's performance. Mia only had this single song and dance sequence, and she was executing it brilliantly. Under normal circumstances, that would be a good thing. But she wasn't the lead. One of the actual female leads, Velma, would be taking the stage right after her. If a supporting actress completely overshadowed the star, it would inevitably hurt the film.

With filming temporarily paused, Catherine Zeta-Jones waited off to the side in full makeup, absentmindedly playing with her specially cropped hair as she lost herself in thought. Another actress appearing in the scene walked over to her.

"Kate, you should do something," she whispered.

"Hmm?" Zeta-Jones looked at her, feigning confusion. "Laura?"

"Don't pretend you don't know."

The blonde woman named Laura continued, "She was already trying to steal your spotlight during rehearsals, and she's visibly fired up today. She clearly wants to show you up. Don't forget, you're the leading lady!"

"Thank you, I know what to do."

Even though the look in Zeta-Jones's eyes as she watched the Black woman was ice-cold, she didn't actually intend to do anything. After working together for a while, she knew exactly where the director's bottom line lay. Anything else might slide, but if it disrupted the shoot...

True, she had engaged in plenty of scheming throughout the rehearsal period, but she knew perfectly well what the most appropriate course of action was right now.

Watching Zeta-Jones head toward the director's chair, the smile at the corner of Laura's mouth vanished in a flash. She was also from Broadway, and her first audition for this film had been for the role of Velma.

"Tina, can I have a quick word with Duke?"

Zeta-Jones was extremely smart. She didn't foolishly approach Duke directly; instead, she walked over to Tina Fey. "It's about the character."

Tina Fey nodded. Waiting until Duke had finished his discussion with Lily Fred, she stepped up to him, murmured a few words, and waved to the back. Zeta-Jones immediately hurried over.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

Sitting behind the monitors, Duke looked at Zeta-Jones in her costume. This woman truly was clever. Right before the crew started filming, she had sought him out on her own initiative and asked to cut her long hair short just so the audience wouldn't lose sight of her face during the dance sequences.

In this era, long hair was practically a second life for an actress. Very few had the ruthless resolve to chop it off.

Zeta-Jones had figured out some of Duke's temperament and didn't beat around the bush, saying directly, "I feel like Mia is pushing too hard today. It might affect me."

"I know."

Duke had already noticed the issue. Mia Valentine's performance was indeed phenomenal, but a supporting character was still a supporting character.

He pointed to the side. Zeta-Jones walked over and sat down next to Tina Fey, not saying another word, though her eyes remained firmly fixed on the monitors.

"Anna," Duke called out to the assistant director. "Get ready to shoot."

'He didn't make any changes?' Zeta-Jones couldn't help but furrow her brow, though she forced herself to sit quietly. Every successful director had a stubborn side to them...

However, once filming resumed, she quickly realized she was wrong. Duke had clearly made an adjustment, and it was one he had already settled on before she even came over.

It wasn't a massive change, but looking from her angle, Zeta-Jones could see a stark difference between the effect captured on the monitor and Mia Valentine's infectious live performance.

The camera was no longer facing Mia Valentine head-on. Instead, it was shooting from a forty-five-degree diagonal angle, focusing primarily on her profile. No matter how brilliantly she performed, her presence on camera would only come across as average at best.

It was simple, wasn't it?

Zeta-Jones couldn't help but smile. A director only needed to slightly tweak the shooting angle to effortlessly destroy an actor's painstakingly prepared performance. Mia Valentine probably wouldn't realize it until the movie premiered and she saw her song and dance sequence relegated to profile shots.

As for the rest of the shots, Zeta-Jones was confident she could crush Mia with nothing more than her own beautiful face.

The song and dance segment featuring the two Black actors came to an end, and Duke called cut. After a ten-minute break, they ran through it again. He adjusted the camera positions one more time, and in this take, Mia Valentine's performance looked slightly better on screen than the previous one.

After reviewing the two completed takes, Duke turned his head. "Kate, go get ready. We're shooting your part first."

Then, he turned back and called out to several of his assistants, "John, bring the main camera back to its original position. Zack, watch the red lighting you're controlling."

"Anna, notify the rest of the cast to prepare for the group dance."

Anna Printz nodded and turned away. Duke waved at the sidelines, waiting for Lily Fred to walk over before saying, "You're controlling the dance scenes. My requirements are the same as always. It needs to have explosive power."

"I understand."

The crew operated at full throttle. Twenty minutes later, Catherine Zeta-Jones stood behind the iron prison bars while the other actors took their marks one by one under Lily Fred's direction.

Anna Printz held the clapperboard in front of the lens. "Scene forty-five, take eleven! Action!"

The male and female dancers shifted to the sides, framing Catherine Zeta-Jones to highlight her leading role. Playing Velma, she swayed her hips and stepped out from the crowd.

"My sister, Veronica, and I did a double act, and my husband, Charlie, traveled around with us..."

This was an incredibly simple monologue shot, and Duke approved it on the first take. But the subsequent filming ran into some trouble.

The group dance, with Velma as the focal point, went off without a hitch in terms of coordination thanks to months of prior rehearsal. Zeta-Jones's performance was also decent. However, perhaps because Mia Valentine's spectacular showing was still fresh in his mind, Duke couldn't shake the feeling that this Velma was missing something.

Calling a temporary halt to the shoot, Duke reviewed the footage they had just captured on the monitor. "John... and Kate, come here."

John Schwartzman and Catherine Zeta-Jones walked over together. Duke queued up the group dance shot of the six murderesses, paused the video, and pointed at Laura Young and Mia Valentine on either side of Zeta-Jones. "John, adjust the aperture and blur those two out."

Duke then looked at Zeta-Jones. "You can do better than this!"

"I..." Zeta-Jones opened her mouth but ultimately said nothing. She knew that in a director's eyes, an actor could always do better; there was no such thing as "best."

"You're being too restrained." Duke frowned in thought for a moment before staring intensely at Zeta-Jones. "I need your vocals to have more explosive power. Your dancing needs to be looser, wilder. I want you to sing and dance out all the anger and resentment in this character's heart!"

"Mia Valentine is outperforming you," Duke warned her coldly. "That is not a quality a leading lady should have."

Catherine Zeta-Jones took a few deep breaths, well aware that clashing with the director wouldn't help her in the slightest. The only things that could persuade him were her singing, dancing, and acting.

"Can you give me ten minutes?" she asked.

Hearing this, Duke nodded and sat back down in his chair. "Don't disappoint me, Kate."

Catherine Zeta-Jones worked incredibly hard—Duke could certainly attest to that. After months of rehearsal, her singing and dancing were quite polished. However, even with her formal training, no amount of effort could make up for the gap in natural talent. The sheer explosive power of her voice and movements would always be slightly inferior to the innate advantages of the Black actresses.

There was a very good reason Mia Valentine had secured the role of Velma in the Broadway musical.

Ten minutes later, the crew resumed filming. Zeta-Jones's performance still failed to satisfy Duke. If John Schwartzman hadn't used camera tricks to soften the focus on Mia Valentine beside her, the leading lady truly would have had her thunder stolen by a supporting actress once the film hit theaters.

Duke called cut five times in a row without uttering a single word. Everyone on set knew the problem lay entirely with the actress.

"You have a massive amount of dancing to do as well."

In the studio's makeshift rest area, Naomi Watts watched the set in her casual clothes. The voice belonged to her agent, Nancy. "Are you mentally prepared for this, Nami? You should know Duke's personality by now. He'll treat you the exact same way. If you can't satisfy him, he'll keep rolling the camera and make you keep dancing until you do."

Naomi Watts looked at the director—a man who had once been so familiar to her, yet now seemed so foreign. "If we're counting from the very beginning, I've been preparing for this role for two years," she said. "Everyone else thinks Duke is going to fail, but I believe he will succeed, and I will succeed too!"

"As long as Chicago meets expectations," Nancy said, sounding half-encouraging, half-instigating. "As the female lead, you'll be able to break into the borderline A-list, maybe even the true A-list."

"I'll give it everything I have!"

Casting a cold glance at Catherine Zeta-Jones, who was still being tortured by the director, Naomi Watts turned and headed toward the dance studio to prepare for the duet they would be shooting in two days.