Quick Transmigration: Underdog Turns out to be Untouchable

Chapter 443: Chapter 440: Movie Queen 7

However, this was just an illusion because as soon as Zheng Mingjing called over, all the emotions on Ning Shuangshuang’s face quickly faded away, leaving no trace of the previous fervor or the calmness she had forced herself to exhibit.

The part this time was very short, plus Ning Shuangshuang’s unexpectedly good acting skills, which made Zheng Mingjing believe it would take at least half a day of shooting. However, it was done in just one take, taking only about ten minutes!

Because Ning Shuangshuang’s performance was so good in this scene, Zheng Mingjing was delighted and, apart from the previously agreed fee, gave her a big red envelope, rounding it up to ten thousand yuan! This amount of money startled Ning Shuangshuang.

Ning Shuangshuang remembered that in her past life, Zheng Mingjing was also very satisfied with her in this scene, and after the shooting, he gave her a red envelope too, but it was only five thousand yuan. Who would have thought it was ten thousand this time? It seemed that Zheng Mingjing was more satisfied with her performance now than in her previous life.

This was also evident when Ning Shuangshuang was about to leave, as Zheng Mingjing directly handed her a note with an address, telling her to audition for his director friend’s crew!

This was an internal casting audition, and those who received the audition notice were veteran actors with guaranteed skills. Even if they were new actors, they were recommendations of actors with talent for acting amongst friends. For instance, Ning Shuangshuang, who was introduced by Zheng Mingjing at the moment.

This was something that had never happened in her previous life. In Ning Shuangshuang’s previous life, it was only after she had acted in two more of Zheng Mingjing’s plays that he started to take notice of her acting skills and introduced her to roles, slowly becoming friends with her.

In this life, Zheng Mingjing had already started introducing roles to Ning Shuangshuang this early, which showed how much he appreciated her acting skills.

Filled with excitement, Ning Shuangshuang thanked Zheng Mingjing profusely and then hurried back to her rented small apartment to pack her luggage and book a flight online! Why was she booking a flight? Because the director of this play was holding auditions in H City, which had the largest film city in the country!

The director Zheng Mingjing introduced to Ning Shuangshuang was someone she knew as well and was very good friends with Zheng Mingjing, and also a friend of Ning Shuangshuang’s previous life. He was known as the eccentric director Fang Jian.

One was a genius and the other an eccentric, these two could be said to be the youngest and most renowned directors in the directing world, and the two were also friends with similar temperaments, most valuing the acting skills of the actors when casting roles.

It’s said that this eccentric director Fang Jian once turned down a female star that an investor specified for him to arrange for a role in his crew just because the actress’s acting wasn’t good enough.

And that wasn’t all, before rejecting that female star, Fang Jian even criticized her acting from head to toe, and before the investor got angry, he kicked that yet-to-sign-contract and negotiate investment investor out and found another investor.

Fang Jian had this kind of confidence because he never lacked investors waving money to seek investment from him, as they all knew investing in his films would definitely be profitable.

After arriving in H City, Ning Shuangshuang found a hotel close to the film city to stay in and rushed to Fang Jian’s crew to participate in the audition.

Since Zheng Mingjing had already given Fang Jian a heads-up, as soon as Ning Shuangshuang got to the place, she was quickly taken by the staff into the audition venue.

Because it was an internal audition, those who came were all already famous stars, and there were quite a few current A-list stars. If it were a pure newcomer, they would definitely feel extremely stressed.

However, this newcomer, Ning Shuangshuang, was not in such a category. After receiving the script, she sat on the side to start flipping through the script, which was more like an outline here, roughly letting those coming for auditions know what roles were in this play.

Faced with the opportunity to compete with so many famous stars, if it were the Ning Shuangshuang of her previous life, she would surely be nervous and uneasy, but the Ning Shuangshuang of this life was not like that. She silently sat on the side, flipping through the script while contemplating in her mind which role she should play.

This is a historical drama, telling the legendary life of the legendary General Qi Weibin of the Da Ran Dynasty in history!

Qi Weibin was born a commoner and repeatedly achieved military exploits on the battlefield due to his natural strength, being promoted to general and earning the Emperor’s deep trust!

There aren’t many female roles in this play, and even fewer are outstanding. First is the role of Qi Weibin’s wife, who was in love with him throughout his life, prompting him to resist countless beauties and insist on being faithful to her alone.

And there is also the only female general under Qi Weibin’s command when he was defending the frontier, a female legend of her era, Qin Shuangshuang!

The special nature of historical dramas doesn’t allow the plot to focus solely on the male and female leads. In historical dramas, it’s common for supporting characters to become more popular than the leads, and this situation is quite common.

If there’s a beloved historical figure appearing in this play, it’s even more common due to this historical figure’s intrinsic charisma.

And without a doubt, Qin Shuangshuang is such a character, as the first legendary female general in thousands of years of history, who has been mythologized by later generations.

This historical figure, deeply adored by women, attracts a large audience to any drama in which the character Qin Shuangshuang appears.

But conversely, all actresses who dare to challenge the role of Qin Shuangshuang are without exception criticized heavily by viewers.

The reason is simple: Qin Shuangshuang’s life was too legendary, and her achievements on the battlefield were too astonishing. Especially now, with the pursuit of countless feminist women, this character has been enshrined.

Her iron-blooded ruthlessness toward the barbarians, her deep feelings for her compatriots, and her remarkable wisdom in advising Qi Weibin to establish a Mutual Market that destroyed the grassland tribes’ threats against Da Ran, uniting grassland tribes to expel the barbarians, building meritorious deeds not inferior to famous generals of various dynasties in history!

Such a legendary woman is hard for any actress to be accepted by audiences who deeply admire this historical figure.

This has created a strange cycle: all historical dramas of that period must include the character of Qin Shuangshuang, yet anyone performing this role will be criticized by viewers from beginning to end.

The role of Qin Shuangshuang is something all female stars avoid at all costs. There was once a director who believed that women could not portray the legendary female general Qin Shuangshuang and hence cast a man to play her, resulting in the male star nearly being unable to stay in the entertainment industry due to the backlash!

Holding the script and faced with this role that everyone feared, Ning Shuangshuang felt an inexplicable urge—she wanted to play this role!

Ning Shuangshuang didn’t know why she had this impulse, in her past life, she had played many roles, but never had the chance to play the legendary female General Qin Shuangshuang. This was her first opportunity to play Qin Shuangshuang.