Annette Bening, Adam Driver, & Writer/Director Scott Z. Burns on Digging Into The Report
For Annette Bening, playing California Senator Dianne Feinstein in The Report is personal. “I had moved to San Francisco [to attend San Francisco State University] in 1978, the year that Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated and she [as head of the board of supervisors] then became mayor automatically,” says Annette Bening. ...
Ed Skrein & Luke Kleintank on Playing Legendary Fighter Pilots in Midway
Midway is a stirring tribute to the immeasurable courage of the men we now call part of the Greatest Generation. Premiering on November 8, Veteran’s Day weekend, it is the story of the early days of WWII, from Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor to America’s first major battle victory in the Pacific, the battle ...
Edward Norton on Redefining Heroism in Motherless Brooklyn
Edward Norton brought Motherless Brooklyn, his long-gestating passion project, to the Motion Picture Association’s brand new theater last night for a special screening and Q&A moderated by professor Yanick Lamb, Director of Media Studies at Howard University. Norton’s film, which explores institutional racism built into the very foundations of New York City, was inspired as ...
Renée Zellweger on Becoming Judy
Despite numerous screen classics over decades, Judy Garland famously never won an Oscar. She was favored to win for her major career comeback in 1954 for A Star is Born but lost to fresh-faced Grace Kelly. So it would be a fitting, full-circle tribute if Renée Zellweger, in her own major comeback role as Judy ...
TIFF 2019: Getting Weird With Synchronic‘s Director Aaron Moorhead and Star Ally Ioannides
Anthony Mackie (Avengers: Endgame) and Jamie Dornan (Fifty Shades of Gray) are well known for playing superheroes and super seducers, respectively. For Aaron Moorhead and Justin Aaron Moorehead’s trippy, gripping new drama Synchronic, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, the two stars went a decidedly different direction. Mackie and Dornan play a ...
Best of Summer 2019: Jared Harris on Creating Valery Legasov, Chernobyl’s Reluctant Hero
*As summer draws to a close, we’re looking back at some of our favorite interviews and stories. It’s the lies told throughout Craig Mazin’s five-episode series Chernobyl that get you. After all, most anybody watching the HBO program set in today’s northern Ukraine will already know that the Soviet nuclear plant exploded in 1986, the ...
Emma Nelson on Nabbing her First Film Role Opposite Cate Blanchett in Where’d You Go, Bernadette?
It takes a special kind of confidence and poise to star opposite Cate Blanchett in your very first film. But that’s what teenager Emma Nelson does in the comedy Where’d You Go, Bernadette? Nelson goes toe to toe with the two- time Oscar winner in the plum role of Bernadette’s feisty 15-year-old daughter, Bee. “It ...
Casey Affleck & Anna Pniowsky on Finding Truth in Light of My Life
Set amid the natural splendor of British Columbia, Light of My Life (opening August 9 in theaters, digital and On Demand) follows writer-director-star Casey Affleck as a father shepherding his daughter through the wilderness. Shot by cinematographer Adam Arkapaw (True Detective), the gorgeous backdrop belies an ugly collective psychosis that has taken hold of a ...
Shahadi Wright Joseph on Becoming the Young Nala in The Lion King
Young Nala in Disney’s new remake of The Lion King (which opens today) might be a lioness cub, but she’s nothing less than a princess. After all, Nala grows up to be Queen, at which she’s played by none other than Beyoncé. But the young Nala, voiced by 14-year-old Shahadi Wright Joseph, is very much ...
Marwan Kenzari on Becoming Jafar in Aladdin
There’s a lot more to Dutch actor Marwan Kenzari’s than even his highest profile role to date, the villain Jafar in Disney’s live-action musical Aladdin, might indicate. A classically trained stage actor in his native the Netherlands, Kenzari auditioned for the role of sinister Jafar by singing; the character’s song never made it into the movie. ...
Los Espookys Co-Creator & Breakout Star Ana Fabrega on her new HBO Series
On June 30, New York City will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which catalyzed the contemporary gay rights movement as we know it. As a gay filmmaker and comedic performer who was born the year Stonewall took place, I’m thrilled that, especially in the last few years, mainstream entertainment has embraced a ...
Laura Dern on Finding Renata in Big Little Lies
When Laura Dern took on the character of Renata Klein for HBO’s mammoth hit Big Little Lies three years ago, she knew exploring the emotional life of this alpha female wasn’t going to be her focal point. The character is tough, all business, and doesn’t have a lot of friends – not the least of ...
Carmen Ejogo on her Pivotal Role in True Detective’s Season Three
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 of another in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Hays takes the lead on the ...
Jared Harris on Creating Valery Legasov, Chernobyl’s Reluctant Hero
It’s the lies told throughout Craig Mazin’s five-episode series Chernobyl that get you. After all, most anybody watching the HBO program set in today’s northern Ukraine will already know that the Soviet nuclear plant exploded in 1986, the area was eventually evacuated, and the adjacent newly-built town of Pripyat transformed into a ghost city, as ...
Mindy Kaling & Nancy Meyers on Writing, Producing & More
With a history just over a decade old, the “Produced By” conference in L.A. is a gathering that promises, if not exactly unfettered access, at least a chance to be in the same room with many accomplished producers, and hyphenates: producer-actors, producer-directors, etcetera. Run by the Producers Guild, and currently hosted on the Warner Brothers ...
Here’s How Younger Star Miriam Shor Became a Director
It was during season three of Younger when Miriam Shor, a scene-stealer in the role of Empirical marketing executive Diana Trout, started thinking about directing. “I’d never been on a show that went more than half a season, so to be a regular on a show that goes and goes and goes was a new ...
Finding the Funny With Long Shot Director Jonathan Levine & Actress June Diane Raphael
Long Shot stars Charlize Theron as Charlotte, an elegant, poised, hyper-competent Secretary of State who wants to run for President and Seth Rogen as Fred, an awkward, shlumpy, but principled journalist. Charlotte hires Fred to help write speeches that will reveal her warmer, more accessible side. It is romantic, it is funny, and it is ...
Star Michael Ealy on Household Horror in his new Thriller The Intruder
New thriller The Intruder stars Michael Ealy and Meagan Good as Scott and Annie Russell, a newly married couple who have bought what they hope is their dream home from longtime owner Charlie Peck (Dennis Quaid). They slowly discover Charlie is not only having a hard time letting go, but he’s also getting obsessive. Michael Ealy talked ...
Dr. Ruth Westheimer Talks Life, Sex, & Ask Dr. Ruth
As a follow-up to The Keepers, documentary director Ryan White found a very different, very inspiring story in Ask Dr. Ruth, which is releasing in theaters on May 3rd. The film examines the fascinating life of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, a Holocaust survivor who became the country’s most widely known and celebrated sex therapist. In following this famously ...
Julianne Moore on Craft, Coming of Age, & Women in Hollywood
Julianne Moore’s fearless approach to her craft has forged a career that seamlessly mixes commercial blockbusters such as The Hunger Games with independent films. Her signature roles range from a cocaine-fueled porn star and maternal figure in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights to a 1950s housewife suffocated by social convention in Todd Haynes’s Far From Heaven. ...
