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Exclusive details from soap star Jasmine Lin’s humiliating breakup with rock star playboy McIntyre.
If you’re not wearing lipstick and earrings, you might as well be naked, Esperanza used to say. It wasn’t until Jasmine was older that
the true meaning sank in. Those things were armor against a world that had wanted to treat her grandmother as someone smaller and duller than the brilliant and beautiful woman she was. Looking after her appearance forced people to take her seriously.
For Jasmine, who’d made a name for herself on English soap operas and received a Daytime Emmy nom, headlining a show on ScreenFlix had the potential to be her big break. If it did well, it could lead to more ScreenFlix projects, or maybe even a big-budget cable show or primetime network program.
Leading Ladies are badass queens making jefa moves.
“Um . . . yes.” Holy shit. Of course she had. Ashton Suarez was her grandmother’s favorite telenovela star. Esperanza had watched every show he’d been on for almost a decade. She was going to flip when she found out.
While Spanish had been Jasmine’s father’s first language, her mother, who was Puerto Rican and Filipina, knew very little Spanish or Tagalog, so English had been the main language in their home.
They’d felt his character’s death was the best story arc, and anyway, he was only missing out on a few episodes before the show ended. What was the big deal?
He was waiting for the chance to prove himself and instead, he’d been removed from the show early.
“Um, hola.” Trying for a joke, he gestured at the half-empty cup in her hand. “Supongo que no te ibas a beber eso.”
On-screen, Ignacio backed away to make room for Yadiel, Ashton’s eight-year-old son.
After Hurricane Maria wreaked havoc on the island, the federal government’s absolute failure to provide resources and aid and unwillingness to treat the people of Puerto Rico as the American citizens they were by right of birth had prompted Ashton to move his family to Miami for a time.
If you’re not wearing lipstick and earrings, you might as well be naked.
Carmen in Charge had a bilingual script, cast, and crew. It was a big part of the promo for the show. How was this going to work if the lead actress wasn’t fluent?
Was there still room in that lexicon for Ashton Suarez? The sudden silence made him blink. Jasmine stared at him expectantly. No, not just Jasmine. Everyone was staring at him. Puñeta. It was his line.
Jasmine tried not to take it personally, but taking things personally was one of her greatest skills.
Her father didn’t give up. “Like you said, you’re the best in the business at rehabbing celebrity images. If you can turn Victor’s career around, we’ll have clients knocking down our door. Come on, mija. Do it for the family.”
“You know exactly what I mean,” Carmen said, getting to her feet. “Just because I’ll be working with him does not mean that Victor and I will be getting back together. So get that out of your head. Same goes for Mom.”
No pictures of Yadiel, of course, which weighed on him, but his phone camera roll was filled with photos of the two of them with silly animal filters over their faces. He missed being able to see Yadiel more easily.
And if he were being honest with himself, he missed being a big fish in a small pond. He’d built up his career over fifteen years in the telenovela scene and achieved a modicum of fame. Yet it hadn’t felt like enough. Despite his intense need for privacy, he wanted more.
his heart had broken and reformed into something stronger than he’d ever imagined, forged in the purest love someone could feel.
Everything changed after the night an overzealous fan-turned-stalker, angry that Ashton hadn’t been replying to his letters, tried to break into Yadiel’s nursery.
Well enough, he’d told his father. Deep down, he knew he could be doing better as Victor. Ashton was too much of a perfectionist to ever feel like he’d done a great job, but he knew when he was holding back. If this show was going to catapult his career, he needed to give it his all. It was
“By that I mean, why is this scene here? Does it make sense for the story and characters?”
Leading Ladies do not rebound with their costars.
Jasmine agreed. “It’s a release of tension too. They’ve been snapping at each other since he returned, but the anger and teasing mask the real feelings underneath—both the hurt and the lingering love.”
Kissing a stranger while another person hovered around them, adjusting their body parts and giving direction, was also weird. But Vera was so quirky and genuine, Jasmine couldn’t help but love her a little. She also truly seemed to understand the characters, which was more than Jasmine could say for many directors she’d worked with.
The silence surrounding them was deafening, the only sounds their soft moans and breaths, picked up by the boom mic above them. Their attention was 100 percent focused on each other, except . . . Except for a nagging feeling that something was missing. And then: “Cut! Going again!”
She and Ashton were missing the communication piece. True enough, they barely spoke to each other. She’d started to feel like he was warming up to her—she didn’t think she’d imagined his reaction to her over the mofongo broth—but after that, he’d only looked at her when the script called for it.
“What, sleep together?” she said, at the same time he said, “Practice kissing.” Jasmine shot to her feet, then froze. “Wait, what?”
He gave a rueful smile. “Seventeen takes.” “Exactly. I mean, that’s just embarrassing.” “I was thinking the same thing before you got here,” he admitted. “It’s totally embarrassing. I keep waiting for someone to bust in and revoke my Romantic Hero Card.”
there. “They cast you for a reason. Carmen is fierce. She commands the space around her. I’ve seen clips of your other shows. You have that power.”
Ashton shot Jasmine a thumbs-up, and she grinned back, but deep down, she knew she was a liar, liar, pants on fire. In Ashton’s dressing room, she’d acted all shocked and offended at the thought of them sleeping together. She deserved a damn Oscar for that performance, because there was nothing objectionable about the idea at all. Even now, her traitorous mind couldn’t stop replaying the sensation of his hands gripping her thighs.
Ava: Because a Leading Lady is whole and happy on her own.
Michelle: And Leading Ladies don’t piss where they eat.
She’d sprawled on her bedroom floor listening to her sister’s Alanis Morissette CD for a week after that, because that’s what she’d seen girls in movies do after a breakup.
“It’s gotten better now, but when I started acting, it was really bad. If I tanned even a little bit, they’d get all bent out of shape.”
But even if there were a lot of people being hired, there was this whole Highlander ‘there can be only one’ mentality. They’d use me to check off the ‘brown girl’ box on their list and fill the rest of the commercial with white people.”
This was before I signed with Riley, my current agent. She’s biracial Chinese, so she understands me, but my first one would send me to casting calls for all kinds of ethnicities.
She swallowed hard and hunched her shoulders. “I don’t even think I liked him that much. I just . . . wanted to be liked. And I thought he did.”
“It’s where the soaps film, but I dread going back.” She gave a sad little shrug. “The traffic, the stress, the fake friends . . . I don’t even know which of my so-called friends took money in exchange for giving anonymous statements to the tabloids—multiple people, I suspect, probably even some of my castmates on The Glamour Squad. How do you know who to trust after something like that?”
“Do I want to work in Hollywood? Absolutely. But I don’t think I could ever live there full time.”
I think this is what most and older celebrities feel after years of Hollywood career. It is why they decide to move somewhere else for nice peace and quiet for their sanity.
She wanted to keep dancing. Or undress him with her teeth. Either one would be fine.
“You have the diaspora experience on both sides.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed? Our roles are reversed. I’ve got paparazzi hounding me, like Victor does. And you—” “I avoid the media, which is more like Carmen.” He nodded slowly. “I see what you’re saying.”
“Everyone thinks they’re low budget and ridiculous, but it’s a huge industry. So much of the culture comes out through the stories and characters. There’s romance and angst, imagination and emotion. They’ve come a long way, but when people think of telenovelas, they only think of the wild storylines of María la del barrio and Marimar, even though those shows achieved global popularity and Thalía’s now a Latin Pop icon.”
“I am, but I’m not doing it for the accolades; I just want to be a working actor with consistent gigs. I don’t want to struggle. And both of my grandmothers are over the moon about it, even if the rest of my family acts like I don’t have a quote-unquote real job.”
“I don’t have my return flight booked yet, and it will depend on the needs of my own grandparents, but if I’m in New York, I’ll attend.”
The Leading Lady Plan was in action, and this opportunity was too big to screw up.
He looked over at the animals penned in their play areas. “Sí, Carmencita. I wanted children with you. Eventually. But we didn’t get there.”
