After the incident with Lilly, the atmosphere around Alex began to shift.
The people who had believed she'd taken someone else's role, or entered the production through a side door, could no longer maintain the story. She was there every morning, prepared. She improved every week. She took Owen's corrections without argument and repeated the same fight sequence eleven times without complaining once. Even the crew members who had arrived expecting a spoiled model found her easy to work with.
The attacks online had also thinned. Ethan's fans were still waiting to see the film before they praised her — this was supposed to be his last work as Ethan, and none of them wanted a weak co-star to be the thing that flop the film — but the crude posts had slowed. The absence of new material was doing its own work.
