eyebrows, I remembered what I had forgotten the first time. That this was my chance, my one chance to get it right and to at least do the best I could do, so that this afternoon and tomorrow and next week I wouldn’t be kicking myself, wishing again and again that I’d done things differently. This was my moment. I had to give it everything I could.
“I’ll give it my best shot, Mr Dubrovnik,” I said, my voice sounding clear and even again. Mr Dubrovnik looked pleased.
“I look forward to it,” he said.
When he had left the room Jeremy Fort looked at me and said, “Now then, Ruby, shall we begin?”
THE LOST TREASURE OF
KING ARTHUR©
A WIDE OPEN UNIVERSE
PRODUCTION
DIRECTED BY ART DUBROVNIK WRITTEN BY ART DUBROVNIK AND ADRIENNE SCOTT
STARRING: IMOGENE GRANT, HARRYMCLEAN AND SEAN RIVERS
INT. DAYTIME—PROFESSOR DARKLY’SOFFICE AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM
The office is lined with shelves of very old-looking books. There is a huge ancient-looking round table covered in scrolls and manuscripts. There is a mummified head on the table. It looks like it died in terrible agony. PROFESSOR DARKLY HARRIS stands with his back to camera, looking out of the window. POLLY HARRIS runs into the room to tell him what CATCHER SMITH has just told her. She is anxious and out of breath.
POLLY
Daddy! Daddy! Oh, thank goodness, there you are. You have to come quickly. There’s this American boy downstairs saying terrible things about you, Daddy! Terrible lies. He must be quite mad!
Professor Darkly turns around slowly and smiles at his “daughter”. It’s the dark, deadly smile of a monster who is preparing to finish off his prey.
PROFESSOR DARKLY
Now, now, Polly dear. Do calm down. I’m sure it’s just another tourist playing some kind of joke. You know what these Americans are like. They have no appreciation of any real history. Just sit down and tell me calmly what he said to you.
POLLY sits reluctantly at the table on the only free chair. She looks unhappily at the mummified head. It seems to be staring right at her.
POLLY
Well, this one knew a lot about Arthurian legend, Daddy. He said…he said that—that you weren’t my father at all! That you had kidnapped me because I was a child born on the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month, which made me perfect for your evil purposes. He said that you were an evil scientist and worse still the direct descendant of the evil sorcerer Mordred. And that you were planning to resurrect the sleeping body of King Arthur and enslave him with a powerful spell, so that he would show you where the sword Excalibur was hidden, thus giving you the power to conquer the world and bring about an apocalypse!
PROFESSOR DARKLY laughs. It is a dark and menacing laugh, one that POLLY has never heard before from her beloved and kindly father. She starts to feel afraid of him but is still disbelieving. Professor Darkly leans menacingly over the table.
PROFESSOR DARKLY
And was there anybody else with this boy, my dear?
POLLY leans back in her chair.
POLLY
He said…he said he had come with my sister. My real sister who had been looking for me since the day you took me. He said her name was Flame Buchanen.
PROFESSOR DARKLY howls in rage and sweeps the papers off the round table. The mummified head falls into POLLY’S lap. She jumps up and screams.
PROFESSOR DARKLY
That cursed woman will ruin everything!
Polly creeps gradually further away from her father back towards the open door. She is very afraid and confused.
POLLY
Daddy? What do you mean it will ruin everything? What do you mean?
PROFESSOR DARKLY narrows his eyes and looks at his retreating daughter. Slowly, slowly he begins to stalk towards her, a terrible smile on his face.
PROFESSOR DARKLY
My dear, I had hoped to keep all this from you until the last moment. But I suppose it is almost the last moment. Everything that boy told you is true. I have raised you and pretended to love you. But our entire life has been a lie—a lie waiting for this day, this very night! For tonight is the night when the ancient prophecy shall come true at last and King Arthur will walk this earth again, but not as a hero to save the world from destruction. Oh, no, he will be my slave. And to make him my slave I need to make a sacrifice to my forefather Mordred. A human sacrifice, my dear. A child born on the seventh hour of the seventh day of the seventh month. A girl descended from Guinevere herself. I think you’ll find that’s you!
In tears of disbelief and fear POLLY runs towards the open door, but PROFESSOR DARKLY gets there first and slams it shut in her face.
As we waited for Anne-Marie to come back from the audition suite, I went over and over the last half an hour again and again, just like I had with the first audition.
After about five minutes I had forgotten that Jeremy Fort was Jeremy Fort, and started to think of him as my fellow actor, just in the same way I would have thought of Nydia in the school play or Brett on the show. As we looked at the short but emotional scene, I started to feel just as I used to at work: I felt like I knew what I was doing.
I was wrong though—at least partly.
Jeremy told me that the first read-through of a scene should be to get the rhythm of the words, so as we read our lines to each other I tried my best to do what he said. But he stopped me and reminded me.
“Listen for the rhythm, Ruby; don’t turn it into a musical!” I looked at him. I had no time to bluff my way through.
“I don’t think I understand you,” I said, intently wanting to be able to. Jeremy thought for a moment.
“Ruby,” he said eventually. “If you want a career as an actor, you have to be the best of the best. You have to remember that whatever job you are doing, from a toothpaste commercial to a blockbuster movie, you have to treat it as if it were the role of a lifetime—a work of genius that the bard could have written himself. Remember that without your script you are literally nothing. Pay it respect and don’t just read it—listen to it. Listening to the rhythm of the lines and—even more crucially—to your fellow actors is the single most important skill you will ever learn as an actor. Because whether you and I have read this scene once or a thousand times, when our audience sees it, it must be absolutely fresh and spontaneous. Every single time you hear me say my lines to you, you have to listen to them as if it’s for the very first time.” Jeremy gave me a small tight smile. “If you can do that—you can do anything.”
And when he said that, it was as if I suddenly understood a really long and really difficult maths equation that I had been staring and staring at for hours and hours and was unable to make sense of. It was as if at last I understood this great big secret that everyone else had been in on except for me. In the space of five minutes, Jeremy Fort had given me knowledge that would make me a better actor no matter how