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For a long, agonizing moment, none of the cast members wanted to speak.
Henry looked at the ground.
Zain stared at the sky.
Asha and Carla suddenly found their shoes very interesting.
But Emma couldn't lie. She took a shaky breath, steeled herself, and stepped forward.
"We... we saw him," Emma stammered, her hands trembling as she looked at the director and Andrew. "I mean, we didn't know it was him. H-he was smoking near the trailers. And..." She swallowed hard. "And I yelled at him."
The color instantly drained from the director's face. "You... you yelled at him?"
"I b-berated him," Emma corrected miserably, her voice squeaking. "I told him he was being incredibly rude. And then... oh God. Then I screamed at him to put the cigar out because... because Michael Owen was coming to visit today."
Andrew stopped breathing.
The director looked like he had just been struck by lightning.
As Emma recounted the entire, horrific five-minute confrontation, the two industry veterans grew paler and paler.
Andrew suddenly clutched his hair and began to aggressively pace in a tight circle.
"Greg is going to murder me," Andrew hyperventilated, launching into a frantic, high-pitched monologue. "Greg actually did it! He got the boy genius to agree to a video interview! The kid hates cameras, he hates the press, and we had him! I was already drafting the press release in my head! I was going to pay off my mortgage! I was going to buy a boat! But no! He comes to set and gets chased off by his own cast! He is sitting in a car right now, writing my name in a burn book! He's going to call Netflix! He's going to buy my house just to evict me!"
The director's face shifted from pale to a terrifying, dark shade of red.
He whipped his head toward the cast, a vein visibly pulsing in his forehead. He opened his mouth to scream, but when he saw the four young actors standing there, looking like terrified, shaking puppies, he forced himself to stop.
He closed his eyes, inhaled a sharp breath through his nose, and let out a long, defeated sigh.
The cast was already punishing themselves enough. They were completely spiraling.
Henry covered his face with his hands. "Why did I open my mouth?" he asked himself on a loop. "I'm the oldest! I should have just let him smoke! I should have offered him a light!"
Beside him, Zain looked like his soul had left his body. "I'm done," Zain thought wildly. "Do you know how hard it is to get a lead role with my skin color in Hollywood? I finally get a break, and now I'm going to spend the rest of my life auditioning to play 'Tech Support Guy #3' on CW shows."
Asha had actually crouched down into a ball on the asphalt. "Why did I have to be so righteous?" she whimpered into her knees. "Why did I point at the sign?!"
"It's okay, Asha, we didn't know," Carla sobbed softly, patting Asha's back even though tears were currently streaming down her own face.
But Emma was in the deepest pit of despair.
She wrapped her arms around her stomach, feeling physically sick. Michael Owen had personally recommended her for this role. It was a known fact in the industry. He handed her the biggest break of her life on a silver platter, and she had repaid him by screaming in his face.
"Erica Spector is going to kill me," Emma panicked, thinking of her fierce manager. "Erica is going to fly to England, drag me into the woods, and leave me there."
"Okay. Okay, we fix this," Andrew gasped desperately.
He pulled out his phone with shaking hands and hit the speaker button. He dialed Evans.
The phone rang twice.
"Hello?" Evans's crisp voice echoed from the phone.
"E-Evans! Hi, Andrew here!" Andrew fumbled, his words running together in a panicked blur. "Listen, disaster, huge misunderstanding, the smoking, the cast, the yelling, we didn't mean to—"
The director snatched the phone right out of Andrew's hand.
"Evans, please, this is the director," he said, his voice entirely devoid of pride. "I am begging you. Could I please speak to Mr. Owen? It is incredibly urgent."
There was a pause on the other end.
"Hold on," Evans said.
For fifteen agonizing seconds, nobody moved. The phone sat in the director's trembling hand. The cast stared at the device as if it were a live grenade.
Emma held her breath.
Andrew squeezed his eyes shut, praying to a god he hadn't spoken to in years.
The silence was deafening, filled only with the collective, frantic thoughts of seven people terrified for their careers.
Then, the speaker crackled.
"Sup?" Michael's voice echoed from the phone.