Tycoon Actor C541 (Patreon)

László treated architecture like it was the only thing worth believing in — and that came through immediately. The eyes, complicated and weighted, the posture of a man carrying decades of something unspoken. Brady, Mona, and Andrew found themselves wondering if the person sitting across from them was still Lucas at all.

That question only deepened when he spoke.

"Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction?"

The accent was there — genuinely there, not performed. If they had walked into this room not knowing who Lucas Knight was, they would have believed without question that this man was not American.

'This is the László I've been searching for,' Brady thought, something tightening in his chest. 'The one I could never quite picture no matter how many times I wrote the script...'

He'd carried this project for years without ever letting himself fully picture who could actually hold the role together. Now he didn't have to wonder anymore.

Andrew watched with a different expression. He hadn't said it to anyone, but he'd come into today with a quiet reservation about Lucas — a man who had spent the last few years doing a world tour, committing to music, blockbusters, becoming the most famous person on earth.

That read to Andrew as someone who had drifted away from the craft, trading acting for something bigger and more commercial. He hadn't disliked Lucas for it. He'd just quietly put him in a certain category.

He was revising that now.

Mona felt it differently. As an actress herself, she understood exactly what the work looked like — the preparation, the incremental failure, the slow building of a character from the ground up.

What Lucas was doing didn't look like any of that. It looked like he had simply always been László, which made no logical sense whatsoever. Great actors could do this, yes. But not like this.

Ten minutes. Then Lucas exhaled, shoulders dropping, and came back to himself.

"So," he said, with a small smile. "What do you think?"

Brady and the others exchanged glances, then looked back at Lucas.

Andrew went first. "Do you even need to ask? I'm floored." He laughed. "Seriously though — what's the secret?"

Lucas chuckled. "A lot of hard work. Standing in front of a mirror looking completely foolish." He kept his tone light. The real answer wasn't something he could explain to anyone in this room.

"Hard work and talent," Mona said, more seriously. "I've been in this industry a long time and I put in the hours — I still couldn't do what you just did."

Brady nodded, then added with a slight smile, "Well. If someone loves their craft like it's their whole life, maybe they get there eventually. Right, Lucas?"

Lucas just smiled.

Mona turned to him. "What does that mean? You saying I don't love my craft?"

"I never said that."

"Ha." Mona paused. "You know what — you might be right actually."

Andrew shook his head, smiling.

Lucas watched the two of them quietly. Former partners — it came through in how they spoke to each other, the ease and the edges both. And all three of them had loosened up considerably from when he'd first walked in.

"There's actually something I should mention," Brady said, looking a little embarrassed. "Going into this, we had a plan — if the accent wasn't convincing enough, we were going to use some technology to clean it up in post. Make it more Hungarian." He paused. "After what you just did, I don't think we need it. Your accent is already better than what we had in mind."

Lucas looked at him. "Technology to fix the accent?"

Brady exchanged a glance with Andrew and Mona.

"There is this technology called AI," Andrew said, a little uncertain with the terminology himself. "From what we understood, it can go into recorded dialogue and modify the voice — adjust it to sound more convincing. We had been looking into using it if it came down to it."

Lucas thought about it. He had investments in AI companies himself. He knew exactly where the technology stood right now — and it wasn't where people assumed it was.

"Hold on — won't that backfire?" he said. "These things always come out eventually. And when it does, it won't just be the technology people criticize. They'll go back and question everything — the performances, whether any of it was real. That's not a small thing for a film like this."

"I raised the same concern with Brady when he first brought it up," Mona said. "We talked about it at length and I told him I wasn't comfortable with it. But the reality is — Hungarian is genuinely difficult. Even with proper coaching, it takes a long time to get anywhere convincing with it. The phonetics are completely different from anything English speakers are used to. With our budget and our timeline, we simply couldn't guarantee the cast gets there in time."

"We were thinking about Felicity too," Andrew added. "Same situation — if her accent isn't where it needs to be by the time we shoot, we'd use it on her as well."

Lucas looked between the three of them. "You're still planning to go ahead with it?"

"It would only be minor adjustments," Brady said. "Specific sounds that a native speaker would catch but a general audience wouldn't notice. And we can't keep pushing the schedule back waiting for perfect accents."

Lucas was quiet for a moment. "I'd still advise against it. The technology isn't reliable enough yet — the results are inconsistent and the seams show more than people expect. And authenticity is supposed to be the whole point of this film." He paused. "But it's your call. I'm not here to override your creative decisions."

Brady sat with it.

"My concern is exactly what Mona said," he replied. "Hungarian is hard. Even with serious coaching, you're asking actors to master something that genuinely takes years. We can't push the schedule indefinitely."

"If the schedule needs to move, move it," Lucas said. "Give them the proper time to get it right — that's a better solution than patching it after the fact." He paused. "And if budget is what's holding it back, I can bring my contribution up to twenty million."

The room went still.

Andrew looked at Brady. Not subtly at all.

Brady exhaled slowly. "I want this film moving. You know that." He shook his head. "But if you're putting that in so we can do it properly — I'm not going to argue against it."

Lucas smiled. Then, lighter: "Good thing you told me about that plan today, by the way. If I'd found out halfway through production that you'd been quietly editing my accent without telling me —" he let the look finish the sentence.

Brady laughed and raised both hands. "Never would have happened. On record."

Mona smiled quietly to herself. She hadn't been able to stop Brady from pursuing the option when he'd first brought it up — the practical arguments were real and she understood them even while disagreeing. But she hadn't liked it. Having it resolved cleanly, before a single frame was shot, felt like the right way to start.

After two hours of discussion — the expanded budget, the revised schedule, the production plan — the meeting wrapped well and Lucas headed out.

...

Each of them sat with their own thoughts for a moment.

"I built up a certain idea of him in my head before today," Andrew said. "He walked right past all of it. I'll be straight — I figured he'd be full of himself. Guy becomes the most famous person on the planet, does a world tour, headlines everything — I thought that comes with an attitude. It didn't."

"I was a little nervous meeting him," Mona admitted. "I don't even know why now. Completely unnecessary as it turns out."

"Those articles we read on him," Brady said, smiling. "There's more truth in them than I gave them credit for."

The other two agreed.

Before today they'd all gone through the same research — interviews with people who'd worked with him. Seth Rogen, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro. All of them talking about Lucas the same way, with the same unreserved praise, none of them with anything to qualify it. At some point it started to feel like everyone had agreed on a story beforehand.

The skepticism had been reasonable.

Most of what they'd read had proven itself today. But one specific claim was still sitting uneasily.

J.K. Simmons — in a recorded, sit-down interview — had said that Lucas didn't simply embody his character. He came away from the role with its actual skills. His proof was *Whiplash*. Lucas had played that drum kit himself. Not for camera, between takes. Real technique, built from nothing, that Simmons had watched up close and couldn't explain.

None of the three had fully accepted that part.

"Do you think he'll actually come out of this with László's architecture skills?" Mona said suddenly.

Brady and Andrew both paused.

Both Brady and Andrew felt the claim was a stretch too far.

"I have my doubts," Andrew said honestly. "But after seeing him today, I want to at least wait and see. My guess is Lucas studied drumming for Whiplash, got genuinely good at it, and that's what impressed Simmons. But architecture is a different animal entirely. Even if Lucas studies it seriously to get into the character, he might get to a beginner's understanding of it. Reaching László's level though — that's something else."

And it was. Architecture wasn't a skill you picked up through dedication alone — it was years of formal study, the kind that put you in a lecture hall and a design studio for the better part of a decade before you could call yourself qualified. Getting a feel for it was one thing. Actually having it was another.

"It's a big ask," Brady said. "But if Simmons wasn't exaggerating — if Lucas genuinely gets there — then we're in for something special."

All three of them felt the same way about it.

"By the way," Mona said, "now that we're dropping the technology plan — how long do you realistically think it'll take the rest of the cast to get the accent down properly?"

It was a genuine question. With the AI option off the table — and Lucas willing to bump his investment from five million to twenty to make that possible — she found herself wondering if it was truly achievable. Not everyone could do what Lucas had just done in that room.

Brady thought about it. "With a good dialect coach working consistently with them? Three to four months minimum. Hungarian is not something you rush. It's one of the hardest accents for English speakers to get anywhere near convincing."

"Fair estimate," Andrew said honestly. "And not every cast is Lucas. They'll have a hard time with it, no question."

"True," Mona nodded.

It wasn't that any of them looked down on their actors. It was simply the reality of what they'd witnessed today. Lucas's ability sat so far outside the normal range that using him as any kind of benchmark was almost unfair.

He couldn't be judged by the same common sense you applied to everyone else in the industry.

---

Lucas made his way back to Knight Residences — the apartment complex he'd purchased about a year ago, the penthouse floor kept exclusively for his family whenever they were in the city. Jennifer had already wrapped up at the LK Foundation and was back with Seraphina, Martha, Jack, and Simon by the time he got there.

Over dinner, Jennifer listened as Lucas walked her through the meeting — how it went, what was discussed, and that he'd decided to increase his investment to twenty million so the film could be done properly.

She had no issue with any of it. If anything she agreed immediately. The idea of actors not knowing their voices had been touched — even slightly, even one vowel — sat wrong with her. It was their performance. You didn't do that without telling them. The extra money was worth doing it properly.

The days fell into a rhythm after that. Lucas met with Brady and the others periodically to work through the remaining details.

In between, he and Jennifer took Daciana out around the city — private shopping, quiet indoor spots, the whole family in tow with Martha looking after Seraphina and the security team keeping things manageable.

It didn't take long for word to spread. Articles started appearing within days — sightings, long-lens photographs, speculation about what Lucas was doing in New York and who the small girl beside him and Jennifer was.

By the end of the first week, most of the city seemed to know he was there. Every outing carried that particular tension of being recognized at any moment, and more than once it nearly tipped into something unmanageable.

Without Jack, Simon, and the rest of the team forming a buffer around them at all times, they would have been mobbed the moment anyone got close enough to confirm it was actually him.