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.
“I was talking to Alan Menken, the amazing writer of [the film’s] songs, and he mentioned that [he] really wanted to get a song for Jafar in there,” but the pace and the film’s length necessitated cutting the tune,...
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 new unashamed and unfiltered breed of LGBTQ comedian. Case in point: The superb new HBO comedy Los Espookys...
How Mood & Lighting Established Tone in The Last Black Man in San Francisco
The Last Black Man in San Francisco marks the feature debut for director Joe Talbot, an allegory that puts a spotlight on the childhood dream and the effects of gentrification.
Inspired by the real-life story of Jimmie Fails, who plays a fictionalized version of himself, Fails, with the help of his best friend Mont (Jonathan Majors), go on a journey to take back the family home his grandfather built but lost ownership of when he was a young child...
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 which her co-stars’ characters, played by Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley and Zoe Kravitz (and, this year, Meryl Streep). “It was really knowing Renata was the…B-word,” she laughs...
Spencer Averick on Finding Truth & Humanity in the Edit of When They See Us
Netflix rarely releases viewer numbers, but on June 12th, the streaming service tweeted that Ava DuVernay’s miniseries When They See Us has been its most-watched content in the US since the show’s premiere on May 31st. In the UK, When They See Us has been running second only to Black Mirror. But audiences hardly need to turn to Black Mirror’s fictional, dystopian worlds to watch the miscarriage of justice play out on the small screen...
How Russian Doll’s Cinematographer Owned the Night in Netflix’s hit Series
“Joel was amazing for coming up with solutions for turning New York into a Russian Doll city.” The Big Apple already boasts its share of Russian dolls, mobsters, peroshkis, and more, of course, but cinematographer Chris Teague is instead referring his gaffer, Joel Minnich, and the recent hit Netflix series of the same title, which he shot.
Starring co-creator, co-producer (and for one episode, director) Natasha Lyonne, Russian Doll follows the various embedded and unraveling realities of Nadia,...
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 case in 1980 and is doing desk work and starting to lose his memory by the time we reach 1990 (West,...
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 did 1,000 square miles of other towns and villages in what’s now known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone...
Godzilla: King of the Monsters’ VFX Supervisor on Giving Mythic Dimension to the Titans
Godzilla first came to life in 1954 when actor Haruo Nakajima put on a sweltering 220-pound suit and tromped around a Tokyo soundstage smashing miniature buildings. Orchestrated by special effects genius Eiji Tsuburaya, the black and white Godzilla, King of the Monsters terrified movie audiences and effectively birthed the Kaiju cinematic universe of radiation-mutated ogres. This summer, Godzilla: King of the Monsters version 2 relied on five visual effects shops to digitally resuscitate the gargantuan title reptile and fellow titans Rodan,...
How Rent: Live‘s Production Designer Created a 360-Degree World on Live TV
One of the most ambitious TV projects of this year that didn’t include CGI dragons and battles with ice zombies happened on Sunday night, January 27. This was the moment when Fox aired a live version of the iconic musical Rent. To call staging a live version of Rent on TV ambitious is probably underselling it. The musical, which focuses on seven artists living in New York City’s East Village in 1996, dealing with immense social and political turmoil,...
Leaving Neverland‘s Composer on Scoring a Legacy Shattered
It’s sometimes hard to fathom the kind of pinnacle Michael Jackson reached. The King of Pop was a singular phenomenon without equal. His dominion was the entire planet. His star power was so colossal, his status as the greatest living entertainer so secure, it is not unreasonable to say no one will ever enjoy (if you can call it enjoyment) that level of fame again. His influence on artists far and wide is still being felt today. This was a different time and a different industry,...
Meet The Other Two‘s Secret Weapon—Songwriter Brett McLaughlin
If you haven’t watched Comedy Central’s The Other Two, I’m jealous of you. It is one of this year’s most consistently funny shows, with a joke-per-minute ratio that rivals some of our recent standard bearers, like HBO’s Veep. Go watch it and see for yourself. Created by SNL alums Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, The Other Two centers on a young musician named Chase Dreams (Case Walker),...
Sharp Objects & Big Little Lies Production Designer on Creating Signature Worlds
If you had not one but two critically acclaimed HBO series under your belt, you’d be permitted to gloat. If those series were wildly different yet deliciously unforgettable, you might even be expected to brag a little. But that’s not production designer John Paino‘s way. The laidback pro was happy to discuss his work on Sharp Objects and Big Little Lies without any unnecessary braggadocio. With Big Little Lies back for season two,...
How Dark Phoenix‘s Key Costumer Handled a Mutant Wardrobe
Co-writer and director Simon Kinberg’s Dark Phoenix was a very different kind of X-Men film for a variety of reasons. One is the fact that he removed X-Men from the title altogether. This was done to put the focus squarely on the troubled shoulders of Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), whose evolution, so to speak, into the titular Dark Phoenix is the film’s central storyline. Yet despite removing the name of the mutant super-group from the title,...
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 backlot (an “above the line” analog to the Cine Gear show held at Paramount, the week before), admission ain’t exactly cheap...
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 experience for me. As it was happening, I thought, well, this is a pretty unique opportunity,” Shor tells The Credits...
Production Designer Akin McKenzie on Recreating Reality in When They See Us
When They See Us, Ava DuVernay’s four-part series on the 25-year aftermath of a 1989 rape and assault that took place in Central Park, was originally going to be titled Central Park Five. That moniker quickly became the shorthand for the five boys from Harlem — four African-American, one Latino — who were wrongly accused and convicted of the attack. Instead of a name reflecting only how these teenagers were viewed by the media and public,...
Meet the Man Who Provided the Vintage Props for The Sopranos Prequel
When a movie takes place in the past the filmmakers have to recreate a whole bygone world. We might not notice if a telephone, neon sign, or cash register is right for the period, but if it’s wrong it can be a distraction. Prop Specialties provides all kinds of items to film and television productions set any time in the 20th century and even in the present, as most settings today include older or vintage items. Their specialty is providing props that really work so that when a character puts a coin in a vending machine,...
Longtime X-Men Scribe Simon Kinberg on Directing Dark Phoenix
He wrote Sherlock Holmes, produced The Martian and guided six X-Men movies to fruition from his vantage point as a writer and producer. But Simon Kinberg never actually directed anything until he took the reins of Dark Phoenix. Opening Friday, June 7, the movie reunites X-Men fixtures Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, and Michael Fassbender along Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones), playing Jean Grey,...
Getting a Mutant Makeover With Dark Phoenix‘s Makeup Department Head
Dark Phoenix is the last film in the nearly two-decade-old X-Men franchise. Yet by dropping X-Men from the title, co-writer/director Simon Kinberg, one of the franchise’s most tenured creatives, put the focus squarely on Jean Grey (Sophie Turner). The film is centered on a space rescue mission gone horribly awry, and the resultant transformation of Jean Grey from an already potent member of the X-men into the titular cosmic force with nearly unimaginable powers...
