Someday, Someday, Maybe

Set in New York City in 1995, the story follows Franny Banks, an aspiring actress approaching twenty-seven who lives in a Brooklyn brownstone with two roommates: Jane, her stylish best friend and aspiring producer, and Dan, a quiet aspiring screenwriter engaged to his college girlfriend, Everett. One January morning, Franny realizes that exactly six months remain on the three-year deadline she set to establish a real acting career. If she fails, she plans to become a teacher like her father, an English teacher in Connecticut who gave her a brown leather Filofax, a personal planner, to track her auditions. She also counts on reuniting with Clark, her college boyfriend now studying law in Chicago, with whom she agreed to take a break and reconvene after three years.

Franny's accomplishments so far are slim: a waitressing job at a comedy club, a commercial agent who sends her out sporadically, and acceptance into the prestigious acting class of John Stavros. She lost her mother at eleven when her mother was hit by a car after accidentally turning the wrong way down a one-way street. Pretending the tragedy was happening to someone else became a formative experience that drew Franny toward acting.

At a commercial audition for Niagara dishwashing detergent, Franny meets Penelope Schlotzsky, a glamorous new student in Stavros's class who already has an agent at Absolute Artists, the top agency in town. During the audition, Franny fails to read the stage directions and plays the comedic material straight. The casting directors laugh and praise her, leaving her unsure whether being accidentally funny counts as real skill. She soon runs into James Franklin, the most successful actor in her class, who asks for her phone number, but her excitement fades when she learns he is dating Penelope.

The Showcase, an annual class performance for industry professionals, proves both disastrous and transformative. During her monologue, Franny misses a chair while wearing only a borrowed silk bathrobe with nothing underneath, causing the robe to fly open. She ad-libs and the audience laughs, but she also drops a section of her monologue. Afterward, Stavros delivers unexpected news: Two respected agencies have requested callbacks, and he calls her a gifted comedienne.

Two meetings follow. Barney Sparks, a warm, elderly agent whose father was the Broadway director Irving Sparks, immediately offers to represent her. At Absolute Artists, the polished senior agent Joe Melville, impressed by her humor, sends her to audition for the sitcom Kevin and Kathy. The role requires only a funny laugh. Franny improvises one that builds from a nervous giggle to a breathless gasp, and the casting team offers her the part. She signs with Absolute Artists, choosing prestige over Barney's warmth.

On the Kevin and Kathy shoot, Franny earns strong audience laughs and receives an extra line. After this burst of activity, her career stalls. Weeks pass with no auditions from the agency. A last-minute audition for the soap opera Pinetree Lodge goes well, but the part goes to Penelope, who has changed her name to Penny De Palma. Franny also loses her waitressing job.

Stavros assigns Franny and James to perform a scene from a two-character play called The Blue Cabin. They rehearse at James's apartment, where he pushes her to abandon her planned staging and follow impulse. Frustrated, she tears apart his perfectly made bed and delivers her lines with raw defiance. James tells her she is amazing and kisses her. They begin an intense but private relationship, spending evenings at his apartment but rarely going out. Walking home, Franny realizes his line is actually from a scene in the play where it is spoken mockingly, but she pushes the thought aside.

Meanwhile, Franny's backup plan collapses. While working a humiliating catering shift in a polyester uniform, she learns from a college friend that Clark has gotten engaged. That evening, she finds Dan on the sofa: Everett has broken off their engagement, and his screenplay has been rejected from a festival. They impulsively see The Phantom of the Opera and go to Sardi's, where Dan kisses her beneath a portrait of the actress Stockard Channing. The next morning, Jane advises them they were simply confused friends, and Franny and Dan agree to keep their distance.

Franny receives an offer for her first feature film, a horror movie called Zombie Pond, but the role requires nudity. Deena, an older classmate, passionately advises her to refuse, arguing that saying no is the only real power an actress has at the start of her career. James suggests he could pay for breast augmentation so Franny would feel more confident, shocking and wounding her. He tells her he loves her for the first time. When Jane cannot attend Franny's cousin's wedding, Dan steps in. They dance all night. On the beach afterward, she stops him from kissing her by saying "Don't," and they stand motionless, his heart beating against her hand.

Franny decides to turn down Zombie Pond and calls the agency, only to learn that Joe Melville has left Absolute Artists, taking his top clients. She has been dropped. At James's premiere, she arrives alone after accidentally grabbing her Filofax instead of her evening bag. Penny De Palma rescues her at the entrance. Inside, James ignores Franny in front of reporters. In the bathroom, Penny reveals that James made the same breast augmentation offer to her, confirming a pattern that destroys Franny's remaining illusions. She leaves without telling James.

Franny returns home to find Dan writing again, something inspired by her, with human characters instead of his usual science-fiction creatures. Dan connects Franny to J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, the book her mother named her after. The fictional Franny is also an aspiring actress who carries a book about how repetitive practice can bring enlightenment. Dan compares Franny's Filofax to that book: She has kept filling up its pages, and persistence itself is meaningful regardless of measurable success. He shows her the window into their neighbor Frank's apartment, where for the first time in three years, a woman sits beside Frank on the couch.

Franny's deadline passes, but she contacts Barney Sparks and signs with him, setting a six-month extension. He shares his father's advice for actors: "Faster, funnier, louder," which he unpacks as a philosophy about generosity and respect for the audience. Her Kevin and Kathy episode airs, generating enthusiastic responses. Barney calls with news: A Los Angeles producer wants to screen-test her for a cable pilot called Mr. Montague. She is the only New York auditioner flown to Los Angeles.

Before leaving, she meets her father at The Plaza Hotel, where he tells her that her mother would have been proud. Looking up, Franny recognizes the Abundance statue on the fountain, which Dan once mentioned to her. In the Los Angeles makeup trailer, a nervous artist admits it is her first day. Franny realizes she is no longer the least experienced person in the room. When the artist offers her an eyelash curler, Franny takes it and says with confidence that she can do it herself. That night, she calls Dan from her hotel room and begins to tell him she was thinking of him, but the line cuts off just as he picks up the phone.