Chapter 368 - 366: I’ll Help You, Okay?

The teacher turned a deaf ear to the male students’ complaints, walking directly to the front of the stage to start displaying the character information.

In reality, the gender ratio of audition roles was entirely dependent on the genre. Female-oriented projects naturally had more female roles, and male-oriented ones had the opposite. It was just that recently, there were more new female-oriented projects in the industry, so it was understandable that the male students would complain about it being unfair.

But this was all determined by the market; there was nothing to be done about it.

Hannah Warner focused intently, taking a picture of each character’s information with her phone. Then, she moved her phone to the space between them so Lily Sterling could look with her.

The roles were all suitable for their age. A few of them had significant screen time and were considered fairly important supporting characters, but the rest were minor roles. They had lines but no individual storylines, serving only as background filler in group scenes.

For example, Female Student A, B, C, and so on in the class.

At first, Lily Sterling just looked along with Hannah Warner, not saying anything or offering an opinion. This was Hannah’s audition, and it should primarily be based on her own preferences.

But she still intentionally observed Hannah’s reactions.

A character named "Mona Underwood." Roles like this with actual names were considered important minor supporting characters. The character was described as reckless, careless, and prickly, with a rather fiery temper.

The set scenario for the audition was: "The class monitor (the female lead) is checking homework in the morning at school, but she hasn’t done it, which leads to a series of conflicts"!

Hannah clearly lingered on this character’s page the longest. The character description was brief, but she seemed to read it over and over again.

In the end, she swiped to the next page!

"Lily, I’ll audition for this one!"

She ended up pointing to "Female Student C," a nameless background character.

Lily frowned slightly. The set scenario for this character’s audition was "buying a grilled sausage from a stall at the school gate on the way home from school"!

Even the audition scene was just being a background character.

Of course, as an inexperienced newcomer, you shouldn’t be picky if you get a role at all, because not everyone gets an opportunity.

But the problem was, they *did* have a choice!

There were seven roles, so why pick the simplest and most invisible one?

Because Hannah had completely lost her confidence.

Lily hesitated for a moment but couldn’t help speaking up. "This role doesn’t have any room for acting."

Hannah was speechless.

Lily swiped directly through the photos on her phone, flipping back to the profile for the character "Mona Underwood." "I think this one is good. The audition scene has conflict, which means there’s room to perform."

"Besides, I noticed you were looking at this character’s profile for a while. You want to pick this one, don’t you?"

Hannah bit her lip and looked up, troubled. "I’m not confident enough. And everyone will definitely want a role like this. With so many people competing for it, I don’t stand a chance."

"How do you know you don’t stand a chance if you don’t even try?" Lily disagreed with her line of thinking. "You think no one will compete with you for that background role? For such a boring character, the director will probably think anyone could play it. So why would they pick you? Can you make a background character shine?"

"No." Hannah shook her head honestly, but she was still full of doubt. "But I haven’t been chosen for any of the roles I’ve auditioned for before. I feel like I just can’t act."

"You can’t think like that!" Lily was alarmed and quickly tried to stop her from spiraling into self-doubt. "You can’t think you don’t know how to act. On the contrary, you need to constantly hypnotize yourself into believing you’re a great actor, that you become whatever you play. You have to give yourself a little bit of blind confidence."

"Huh?"

"Yuna taught me that! I think it works really well!"

"Yuna? Yuna Sutton!"

Lily nodded. "Yeah. She said actors need to have a kind of unfounded confidence in themselves. You have to open yourself up to accept the character, and if you’re not confident, you can’t truly open yourself up. Instead, you’ll just keep doubting yourself during the acting process, and you’ll never be able to play any role well."

Hannah dazedly processed Lily’s words, feeling like there was some truth to them.

’But that’s so hard to do!’

"Maybe next time. I’m not ready yet!"

"There won’t always be a ’next time’! Do you think these opportunities come around every day?" Lily grabbed Hannah’s hand. "We’re already here. Every audition is a challenge. You can’t just shrink back every time. Think about what I just said. You can do this. You know how to act. If other people can do it, so can you. You can do it even better than them!"

Like a master hypnotist, Lily continuously fed Hannah’s mind with messages of "you’re the best, you’re amazing."

Finally, Hannah looked at Lily and murmured, "Lily, I feel like you’ve changed so much. You’re a completely different person from when you first came to school!"

Lily: "..."

Lily remembered when she first arrived at school. Because of her low self-esteem, she had isolated herself. It was her roommates who had constantly tried to be kind to her and proactively befriended her.

She had always been grateful for that.

"Yeah, I was the one with the lowest self-esteem at the beginning, but now I think I’m amazing. You have to think that way too!" Lily seized the opportunity, using herself as an example to encourage Hannah.

"Will it really work?" Hannah bit her lower lip, her expression conflicted.

"You’ll only know if it works by trying. If you don’t try, then it definitely won’t work!" Lily squeezed her hand, looking into her eyes encouragingly. "Hannah, don’t be afraid. I’ll help you. Let’s give it a try, okay?"

"You’ll help me?"

Lily nodded. "I’ll help you, okay?"

At that moment, Lily’s determination and encouragement were like a shot in the arm for Hannah. She looked into Lily’s eyes, finally mustering a shred of courage, and nodded lightly. "Okay. Okay!"

Time was running short. Lily immediately pulled Hannah out of her seat. They found a relatively quiet corner in the hallway outside the small theater, intending to first help her analyze the character.

The area was filled with other students, each focused on their own world. To Hannah, the tense and oppressive atmosphere was no different from the college entrance exams, making her heart THUMP THUMP THUMP relentlessly.

"Hannah, in the set scenario, the one collecting homework is the class monitor, who is also the female lead. That means this character has scenes opposite the female lead. It’s a very important role."

Lily got into the zone first, forcefully pulling Hannah into character with her. "Now, you need to flesh out the character profile of ’Mona Underwood’ within the set scenario."

"Me?" Hannah pointed at herself. "I just make it up myself?"

"Of course. You have to imagine what kind of person this character is. She gets into a conflict with the class monitor over homework, so you can establish that she already had a bad relationship with the female lead. Once you have that established in your mind, you’ll know what kind of attitude to show when you face her. Only then will your performance become natural and believable!"