Jo Ellen Pellman & Ariana DeBose on Finding Love & Acceptance in Ryan Murphy’s “The Prom”
Helmed by Ryan Murphy, the ebullient musical dramedy The Prom is bringing some much-needed holiday cheer to our December. Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, and Andrew Rannells play four fading Broadway performers who reach for relevance again by championing a newsworthy cause in small-town Indiana. Queer teen Emma (newcomer Jo Ellen Pellman) wants to take ...
Moses Ingram on her Debut role as Jolene in “The Queen’s Gambit”
Moses Ingram stepped off the stage at Yale and immediately onto the set of The Queen’s Gambit. The acting newcomer had only two weeks between graduating from the Yale School of Drama in May of last year and flying to Toronto to begin filming. “The first scene I filmed was a little snippet of the ...
Meet the Background Actors Who Populate HBO’s “Perry Mason” – Part IV
Here are Parts I, II, and III of our deep-dive into the casting, costuming and prepping of Perry Mason’s background actor cast. A large collection of background actors voicing their objections to a case on the City Hall steps or finding themselves under the spell of Sister Alice at the Radiant Assembly in HBO’s Perry Mason ...
Meet the Background Actors Who Populate HBO’s “Perry Mason” – Part III
Here are parts I, II, and IV of our deep-dive into how HBO’s Perry Mason finds, outfits, and directs its many background actors. Even with all of the fitting and other work they’ve done prior to the shoot, before showing up to the set to film, background actors must prep the night before. Women are ...
Meet the Background Actors Who Populate HBO’s “Perry Mason” – Part II
In Part I of our deep dive on the extras—properly known as background actors—in HBO’s Perry Mason, costume designer Emma Potter’s revealed just how much work goes into the wardrobes of folks we often only see on screen for only a matter of seconds. Potter’s approach to the design of the costumes for Perry Mason’s ...
Meet the Background Actors Who Populate HBO’s “Perry Mason” – Part I
On the west façade of Los Angeles City Hall, Perry Mason (Matthew Rhys) and Della Street (Juliet Rylance) step out of a car and begin to push their way up the long staircase, through a crowd of 200 protestors, angry about the child murder case Mason is working. But while the crowd appears to be ...
KiKi Layne on Her Lethal Left Hook (And More) in “The Old Guard”
With her star turn in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, KiKi Layne left a lasting impression on critics and producers alike. In director Gina Prince-Bythewood‘s The Old Guard, now streaming on Netflix, Layne shows herself to be a performer capable of handling wildly divergent roles. Her character, Nile Freeman, the youngest and newest ...
A Conversation With Laverne Cox
Laverne Cox serves as the guide of director Sam Feder’s crucial new documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen. The film offers a vivid, frankly startling history of the portrayal of transgender lives on screen, and Cox (also an executive producer) captains a compelling cast of influential trans creators, cultural critics, and thinkers. They include The Matrix ...
Dashaun Wesley Takes MC Duties to a New Level on HBO Max’s “Legendary”
It’s a party that’s been years in the making. Legendary, the original HBO Max series that debuted on May 27, celebrates the “legendary” underground world of Voguing and Ball culture with a reality competition unlike any other on television. Eight houses (aka teams), mostly comprised of Black and Latino LGBTQ members, pour it all out ...
Josh Gad & Kristen Bell on Their New Animated Musical Series Central Park
Before he was an adorable singing snowman named Olaf, Josh Gad was a Tony-nominated Broadway star (“The Book of Mormon”) and before that, he was a devoted fan of old-fashioned Broadway musicals, you know, the kind that begin with a big “I wish” song and use the music to reveal character and move the story ...
With Her Amazon Directing Gig on Hold, Indian Filmmaker Tannishtha Chatterjee Embraces Other Creative Pursuits
It’s often two-thirty in the afternoon before actor, writer, and director Tannishtha Chatterjee finds time to turn her attention to creative pursuits. “Till lunchtime…I’m cooking, cutting vegetables, cleaning, dusting and bathing Radhika.” Radhika is Chatterjee’s four-and-a-half-year-old daughter. For the last six weeks, it’s been just the two of them tucked away in her Mumbai apartment. ...
Erica Mūnoz on Producing & Starring in HBO’s Undocumented Immigrant Story Long Gone By
Just premiered on HBO, Long Gone By is the story of the hardworking single mother and undocumented immigrant Ana, played by Erica Mūnoz, who is trying to create the best life for her brainy teen daughter Izzy (Izzy Hau’ula) in their adoptive small town of Warsaw, Indiana. When a deportation order demands Ana return to Nicaragua, ...
Actress Tamlyn Tomita on Star Trek: Picard, Celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and More
Actress Tamlyn Tomita was one of the four panelists in our first-ever virtual Film School Friday event this past April. Tomita appeared alongside (remotely, of course) Fear the Walking Dead and 9-1-1: Lone Star cinematographer Andrew Strahorn, Watchmen scribe Stacy Osei-Kuffour, and Game of Thrones and Westworld composer Brandon Campbell. The panel discussed, among many topics, the collaborative ...
Selah and the Spades Star Celeste O’Connor on the Power of Tayarisha Poe’s Film
Amazon Studios has premiered writer/director Tayarisha Poe’s new indie Selah and the Spades to near-universal acclaim. It’s the story that takes place in an elite boarding school, where seventeen-year-old senior, Selah Summers (Lovie Simone), runs the Spades, a powerful clique that supplies illegal drugs to the student body. That’s just one of the vices these cliques, ...
The Cast of Gentefied on Netflix’s Glorious New Series
Season 1 of Gentefied is now streaming on Netflix, which is cause for all fans of great content to celebrate. The show, which has been in the new “top ten in the US today” category on the site since its launch date on February 21st, focuses on an extended Latinx family in LA’s Boyle Heights. It follows ...
Writer/Director/Star Numa Perrier on Her Autobiographical Sex Work Film Jezebel
Though filmmaker Numa Perrier only spent four years of her life in Las Vegas, those formative years being surrounded by adult vocations served as the backbone for her autobiographical ’90s-set film, Jezebel (now available on Netflix). Not only did Perrier write, direct, and produce, but she also stars as her older sister (executive producer Livia ...
Freya Allan & Anya Chalotra on Playing The Witcher’s Powerful Women
For millions of excited fans around the world, the first season of Netflix’s long-anticipated fantasy series The Witcher has not disappointed. The show is based on the best-selling novels and short stories by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, and the subsequent video games based on the stories, which have sold over 40 million copies worldwide. The ...
Best of 2019: Carmen Ejogo on her Pivotal Role in True Detective’s Season Three
*We’re reposting some of our favorite interviews of 2019. Happy Holidays! In season three of True Detective, creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto returns to the series’ Southern Gothic roots, with two detectives, Vietnam vet Wayne “Purple” Hays (Mahershala Ali) and Roland West (Stephen Dorff) trying to solve the murder of one child and the disappearance ...
Actor, Writer, and Producer Reggie Lochard on his Passion Project
Actor, screenwriter, and producer Reggie Lochard has a lot going on. He’s currently filming his passion project, “A” for Alpha., which he wrote, produced, and stars in. Last week, Lochard sat down with the Motion Picture Association’s Vice President for Multicultural and External Affairs, John Gibson, at the third annual New York State Multicultural Creativity ...
Waves Writer/Director Trey Edward Shults & Stars Kelvin Harrison & Taylor Russell on Their Powerful Drama
From the moment the new film Waves had its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in August, it started getting awards mentions. Touted were the emotional intensity and authenticity of the script by writer/director Trey Edward Shults, and the powerhouse performances served up by an ensemble cast that included stars Kelvin Harrison, Taylor Russell, Lucas ...
