Isolde carefully took a step back. "I didn't mean it that way. We're still students, we haven't studied acting, so we don't really know how to do this. We thought we'd just be standing in the background..."
Lara looked down at her manicured nails. "If you can't play the bully, you can at least play the victim, right?"
Isolde tried desperately to stay calm. "I'm sorry, Lara, but we don't want to act."
"Fine." Lara shrugged indifferently and turned to glance at the assistant director.
Taking the hint, the assistant director immediately put on a strictly business expression. "In that case, you'll have to pay the penalty. This is a massive production, and the daily costs for the set and crew are huge. You girls will split the bill."
The girls froze, panic setting in.
"That's completely unreasonable! Why should we?"
The assistant director sneered. "Why? Because of the contract you signed this morning."
This wasn't Lara's first time using a shoot to humiliate her co-stars. Everyone in the industry who knew her personality tried to avoid her. Whenever she was on set, the second female lead either got her scenes cut to nothing or ended up dressed like an extra.
But as her fame grew and her public image became cleaner, her family and agency banned her from bullying her actual co-stars, afraid of a PR disaster. Bored on set, Lara had slowly developed a nasty habit of tormenting the extras.
Extras had no connections and no visibility. Even if she crushed them, there wouldn't be a ripple in the press. With no consequences, Lara grew increasingly reckless.
She had money and influence, so people just tolerated it. Some production teams even pre-selected vulnerable extras specifically for Lara to toy with.
Poor students like Isolde were the perfect prey, and the contract was a trap laid out from the start.


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