Su Zhi had no idea what was happening at Morningstar. Even if she had, she’d have been delighted.
Not because her former company had finally been forced by circumstances to offer her an A+ contract. Just the thought of her old company getting into trouble made her feel so good she could eat two extra bowls of rice.
And right now, Su Zhi was in an excellent mood.
“You don’t have a king crab that weighs sixteen and a half pounds? All right, then. You do have snow crab, though, don’t you? I haven’t had that in ages. Uncle You, you won’t mind if I order one to satisfy my craving, will you~”
At an upscale restaurant in downtown Magic City, Su Zhi gave You Xin a harmless, pitiful look from across the table.
“I don’t mind…”
When You Xin heard that a snow crab cost several thousand yuan, his back teeth nearly ground themselves to dust.
It had been three years, but Su Zhi was still just as exasperating as ever—maybe even more so. He regretted choosing a restaurant where the average customer spent more than two thousand yuan.
That was the average, too. Judging from Su Zhi’s order, the bill was already headed toward five thousand yuan per person.
He didn’t really care about the money. He’d spent tens of thousands on meals plenty of times while shooting dramas or soliciting investment.
It was just that Su Zhi asked after every dish whether he minded, as if she were doing him a favor by raising his low blood pressure.
And the worst part was that he couldn’t even complain.
Why couldn’t he complain?
Because after Su Zhi became famous, she’d made guest appearances in two of his movies. His excuse had been, “Just come by and show your face. It’s only two shots and one line.”
And, “Relax, it definitely won’t take a whole week this time. Would I lie to you? It’s really just one shot, right next door. It’ll only take a few steps. I’ve even ordered a fifteen-pound king crab for you. You know, fifteen pounds! It was just flown in from Europe. I’ll treat you after we finish filming.”
The first cameo had lasted seven days. The king crab had taken nine days to arrive, and Su Zhi had spent all nine days filming.
Oh, and in the end, she had to rush off to a variety show and never even saw the crab.
After that, aside from one time when his daughter was there, Su Zhi never let him off easy whenever they met.
Once she’d finished ordering, she stopped tormenting him and brought up the show instead.
“The Chunmeng in Loophole was written especially for me, wasn’t she? It’s a pretty good role.”
On the drive over, Su Zhi had taken a quick look at the script for Loophole.
Unlike Battle of Ningcheng, which took place in a fictional world and even had a touch of cyberpunk, Loophole was firmly grounded in reality. It cut out all the empty posturing and focused on real social conflicts. The show adapted a large number of real cases to teach people about the law.
The character Su Zhi was meant to play was named Chunmeng. The story had her at twenty-four, with doctorates in law, mathematics, sociology, and finance.
Four doctorates in four different fields by the age of twenty-four. A genuine super-genius.
But this genius had been twisted by certain childhood experiences into something extremely dangerous.
At least half of the cases in Loophole wouldn’t have happened without her.
An uncontrolled genius could do enormous damage to the social order.
Most importantly, despite her involvement in so many cases, she was always officially the victim.
Not because she was unlucky. She made sure of it.
The law couldn’t touch her. Worse, she used the law to protect herself.
A lot of what she did would be difficult to pull off in real life. Only a supposed genius could make it look easy.
But the character would leave a strong impression. The audience would remember how she used the law to protect herself—and start asking whether the law itself was fair.
If the show could do that, then it would have achieved its main purpose: educating the public about the law.
“If you accept the role, it’s yours. I trust your acting. At first, I wrote the story from Chunmeng’s perspective. But that version was too dark and too far-fetched. In the end, I decided to tell it from the police’s point of view. It avoids a lot of logical problems and makes the whole show more convincing.”
You Xin admitted what he regretted most.
Chunmeng was still the female lead in terms of screen time. But because the story wasn’t told from her perspective, it would be much harder for Su Zhi to compete for Best TV Actress. It would be easy for someone to interfere behind the scenes.
“There’s nothing to regret. I’m not going to win an award for this show anyway. I’ve completely fallen out with Morningstar. If I won Best TV Actress or Best Actress in the next year or two, that would be an awfully loud slap in their face. They wouldn’t let that happen. Not yet.”
Su Zhi replied.
Morningstar Entertainment’s main business was film, but the company had a hand in the selection process for several major domestic awards. It didn’t have absolute control, but if it wanted to interfere, there was no way she’d win Best TV Actress.
Fortunately, Su Zhi didn’t care. What she needed now was to get back on screen.
“Then what happened? Morningstar really had the nerve to shelve a money-maker like you for three years.”
You Xin was baffled. The whole thing made no sense to him.
In the past decade, he hadn’t seen a newcomer in the entertainment industry as capable as Su Zhi.
After Battle of Ningcheng made her famous, Morningstar had tried to capitalize on the momentum by immediately putting her in a detective movie. Su Zhi played a female detective.
Before it was released, people called it a cookie-cutter production and said there was no point watching it. Plenty of people predicted it would flop.
Morningstar’s rivals piled on, hoping to build Su Zhi up just to tear her down.
But Su Zhi and one of Morningstar’s own star directors had shown everyone what a textbook detective movie could be. The film made nine hundred million yuan in its opening week.
The following year, Su Zhi scored another hit with a movie that brought in 2.1 billion yuan, proving beyond doubt what she could do.
Her third movie had been a flop, earning less than six hundred million yuan. But that was only by comparison with her first two films. The movie’s total budget had been around ninety million yuan, and it had been made to win awards, not as a commercial blockbuster.
Across three movies, she’d brought in more than four billion yuan at the box office. Her drawing power was stronger than that of many established Best Actors and Best Actresses.
And yet, just as she reached the height of her career, Morningstar abruptly shelved her. No one could understand why. It made the company’s executives seem as if their heads were full of water.
“That? They wanted me to sign an S+ contract. I refused.”
Su Zhi answered calmly.
An A-Tier contract was usually for a first-tier artist, and A+ was the highest tier. S contracts involved company shares.
On the surface, it looked as if Su Zhi had been the unreasonable one. They’d made her such a generous offer, and she’d turned them down.
But that was only on the surface.
