Kiera was out of breath when she got to the Talent Management Department's offices, she was glad someone waved her over when they saw her; she honestly had no idea where she was supposed to go. After she rushed to her class, her instructor informed her that she was asked to go upstairs; there was no time to ask for further information.
"Sorry to pull you out last minute from your class. We haven't been able to reach you this morning." The woman led her into another office, and knocked twice before she opened the door. "Eduard, I have Kiera with me."
She gently pushed Kiera into the office. It had floor to ceiling windows and several sofas before the office table, where Eduard was currently working. He looked up from his laptop as she came in and motioned for her to take a seat. "Sophia should be here soon."
As if in cue, there was a brisk knock on the door before a frazzled looking Sophia walked in. "I'm running late, I know. My schedule is all messed up today." She flopped into a sofa and gave Kiera a little wave.
Eduard joined them on the sofas and his secretary came in with cups of coffee and a plate of small sandwiches. Eduard and Sophia busied themselves with their coffee for a moment.
"I just got the confirmed timeline of the series." He looked at Kiera, "You'll be starting the first shooting within 5 weeks' time. But you have a scheduled table read 17 days from now."
At those words Sophia seemed to slump further into her chair, "You're saying we're on a time crunch. We haven't even finalized her image!"
Kiera also wanted to slump into her own chair. The dates were making her anxious.
"We knew the timeline for this project would be tighter than what we would like. But we will work around it. We will need to cover as much as we can of the basics, as soon as we can. I'm planning to have her work with you full time until then."
Sophia looked at Kiera, "You will need to go through the script on your own and if you want, we can work on some of the things you need help with but we will continue with our fundamental villainess training. Two weeks should be enough to let you go on a table read and meet people. We would need to give you etiquette and interview training as well. You never know which paparazzi would be there."
She let out a big sigh, "I'm tempted to hit Emmanuel over the head for wrecking my training timeline. She wasn't even supposed to be on a project until a few more months!"
"You agreed to this and her getting a second female lead role in this big project is already a great chance we wouldn't get otherwise. It might have sped up our timeline tremendously but we will recalibrate."
Sophia waved her hand to dismiss more of Eduard's words, "I know, I know. I just hate you people messing up my learning schedule. I'll pencil her in on the crucial work we need to do before then. But you need to finalize what image we'll have for her."
Eduard nodded and handed Sophia his tablet, "I actually called you because of that. We have a few choices in mind but we're unsure which one would fit."
Sophia went through the information, "Seriously? You're first option was, an upbeat and optimistic woman out when not in front of the camera? Do you want her to be bashed on her very first interview? Nope, this and the pure woman trope is out."
Eduard shrugged, "We wanted to present everything to you first. We're planning to get yours and Kiera's opinion before we send this to the higher ups for final approval. Maybe together with a tape. We can have the people in PR look through it too."
Sophia narrowed her eyes at Eduard, "She can't be an evil bitch 24/7 either. We will be closing so many doors with that one. None of these extremes would work with how sharp-eyed netizens are now. Get PR to veto all of these first before sending it to me. We're on delicate waters as it is. Kiera will be acting as hated characters already, there's no need to make her a bad person off screen."
Eduard sighed in relief, "Thank you for saying that. PR wanted you to sign off on it before sending it to them, said it was how it used to work. They won't listen."
"Pull rank! You're never scared to argue with us but when it comes to that man you cower like some kid."
"You're scared of him too!"
Kiera absentmindedly listened to her bosses bicker with each other, as the weight of the next few weeks started to sink into her. The next few weeks would be hectic and there was a script she need to familiarize.
She snapped out of her thoughts when Eduard called her name, "We should be able to finalize with the higher ups regarding your public persona, so no need to worry about that for now. But once we finalize that we need to consider your clothes, shoes and accessories. Our stylist would work with you to select them but we would need to consider if you would be willing to pay the cost of those up front, or would you want it to be an advance from the company? There is another option of going to designers and companies and loaning the clothes and shoes from them.
"The problem with the last option is that you're an unknown right now. We might get some smaller designers who might want to collaborate but the third option would be the least feasible at this point."
Kiera considered the credit stone at her wrist and wanted to grin at everyone in the room but fought to maintain her calm facade. "How much do you think it would cost me?"
"It would depend on how we want to portray you as. Would you be a rich young lady? Or from a middle-class family? If we go with the first option the expense would be extremely higher than the latter."
Kiera nodded, "I should be able to afford them unless we spend more than a million credits." Hopefully her newest investment would give her some revenue soon.
Sophia let out a tinkling laugh, "If only all of us had genius investors as sisters."
Eduard chuckled, "It is a relief when I heard of your family background, it actually opened a lot of avenues for us to work around. Though we will need to get PR iron out how we will present your time away from home."
Kiera sighed; she knew that idiotic decision would bite her in the future.