Page 2 of The Unknown

Who, as of three days ago, was still working as a waitress. A professionI’ll likely have to return to six weeks from now, once filming wraps. How this all came to pass remains a blur in my anxiety-riddled, sleep-deprived memory. It happened so fast that it still feels like a fever dream.

Exactly one week ago, my agent, Veronica, sent me a casting notice for a movie that called for a woman in her late twenties with a “period look.” Director-speak for a specific type: not ugly, but not conventionally beautiful, either.

Someone plain is what they were looking for. Lucky for me, I fit the bill.

Still, I couldn’t help but think it was all some kind of mistake.

“You want me to audition for amovie?” I said when I called Veronica on my break.

“It’ll be good experience for you,” she said, indicating that even she had no illusions I could actually book the part.

“This is, like, some indie thing, right? No budget. Shot on an iPhone.”

“It’s a studio picture, actually. The budgetison the low side, but then again, what isn’t these days? But a theatrical release is planned. None of this straight-to-streaming bullshit.”

“What kind of movie is it?”

“Horror,” Veronica said, quickly adding, “Elevatedhorror. Whatever that means. I assume it’s respectable since Ronan Peters is directing and Violet Wright has agreed to star.”

I gulped down my shock.TheRonan Peters directingtheViolet Wright? In a horror movie, no less? An unexpected pairing like that would definitely get people talking. This was indeed a real movie. A potentially huge one.

“Why do they want to see me?” I asked, knowing that there were literally a million actresses who would sell their souls to work with Ronan Peters and Violet Wright. And ninety-nine percent of them had more experience than I did.

“They’re willing to see anyone,” Veronica said.

Ouch.

“I was told it’s a casting emergency. The original actress just dropped out, leaving them in the lurch two weeks before production starts.”

My heart did a backflip in my chest. “Two weeks?”

“Yes,” Veronica said. “They’re desperate.”

Again, ouch.

“Because of the…situation, they’ve decided to go with an unknown.”

That definitely describes me. No one knows who I am unless we went to high school together or they were unlucky enough to catch the three plays I’ve done off-off-Broadway. If I look familiar to anyone, it’s because I appeared in a commercial for an eczema drug in which I played a bridesmaid shoved to the back of the wedding photos because of the severe rash on my arm.

With those illustrious credits, it’s no surprise that I have never been in a movie. I’ve never even read for one. And although, like Veronica, I was certain I wouldn’t book the role, the prospect of auditioning for a film had me spinning like a Disney princess around the restaurant’s break room.

Because the role’s description wasn’t exactly a boost to an actress’s ego, I opted to lean into it. Minimal makeup. My brown hair plain and straight. Shapeless tan dress that made me look like an extra fromLittle House on the Prairieor someone in a Netflix cult documentary. That was apparently a good thing. When I entered the audition room, the casting director perked up in her folding chair and all but purred, “Who do we have here?”

“Marin Keane,” I said, peeling my headshot from my sweaty palm. I handed it to the casting director, who gestured for me to stand in front of a camcorder mounted on a tripod.

“I don’t know what role I’m reading for,” I said. “I wasn’t given any sides, so…”

I let the sentence trail off into silence, making it abundantly clear I had no business being there.

“Is this your first audition for a film?”

The question came from a man quietly seated behind the camcorder. I’d been so laser focused on the casting director that I hadn’t noticed him. But now that he had my attention, I realized the man wasn’t just some random assistant.

It was Ronan Peters.

TheRonan Peters.

His first film, a low-budget thriller calledMercy, was an indie success that got raves at Sundance and earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Director. His second movie, an adaptation of the Broadway playShred of Doubt, was a slicker affair that evoked the mid-century work of Alfred Hitchcock. An apt comparison, because, like Hitchcock, Ronan had become a celebrity in his own right, recognizable to anyone who paid even the slightest attention to movies. He appeared on talk shows, graced the covers of magazines, even cameoed in a Super Bowl commercial for Uber Eats.