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Read the First Chapter of Chief Correspondent Daniel D’Addario’s Awards-Season Novel ‘The Talent’
Actresses and egos collide in the new novel by Variety's Chief Correspondent
Booklist has called the novel “a sharp-eyed examination of the toll pursuing a career in the arts can take, even and especially when one is at the top of her game.” In this excerpt, Adria Benedict — the much-decorated grande dame of the entertainment industry — is on her way to the Colorado film festival that kicks off the awards-season sprint. The girl was very “on,” shimmeringly “on,” so “on” that Adria suspected Bitty didn’t notice her retreating within her own mind to contemplate, first, whether this movie was worth meeting the young go-getters of American acting, and then, for a while, whether Lindy would really be coming with her and Bill to the Montecito place in a few weeks or whether she’d cancel again. Within seconds, she knew that it was a performance that would retain a kind of infamy in the minds of all who saw it; it was one that she’d replay for far longer than she even recalled the specifics of shooting days with Delle, of trying to find a rhythm opposite a young woman who wanted to define herself against Adria.
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