Atlanta‘s Brian Tyree Henry has Arrived

As Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles on FX’s critically acclaimed Atlanta which ended its second season in May (and was just picked up for a third season), Brian Tyree Henry can do more with one grimace than many can do with their whole body. He’s instilled Paper Boi with heart, humor and a lovability that makes him one of the best characters on television right now.

But he hasn’t stopped there, after a Tony nominated run in the Kenneth Lonergan scribed Lobby Hero—Henry’s now setting his sights on the big screen...

Westworld’s Production Designer Breaks Down Season 2

Production designer Howard Cummings’s thirty year career has encompassed an incredible range of varied and stylized work: from the fantastical designs showcased in Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightening Thief, to the grounded realism seen in such films as Francis Coppola’s The Rainmaker, to the expressive realism seen in his 20 year stint working with director Steven Soderbergh on movies like The Underneath, Contagion, Haywire,...

Hereditary‘s Production Designer on Building the Scariest Movie of the Year

This is no exaggeration: Hereditary is the scariest movie in years and sure to become a horror classic. Writer/director Ari Aster brings a horrific tale of how we might just be unable to escape our familial bonds. He tells this through the Graham family—when Ellen, the mother of Annie Graham (an Oscar worthy Toni Collette) dies her private presence begins to haunt the whole family through her things, her secrets and perhaps even her spirit. It’s a film that’ll constantly throw you through for a loop until you are a quivering,...

Andrea Riseborough on Bringing the Complex, Searching Nancy to Life

English Actress/Producer Andrea Riseborough might be the most successful performer you won’t recognize, and that’s exactly as she likes it. Highly in demand by both the UK and the US film industry, she is known for disappearing into her characters, and creating indelible performances that enhance every one of her projects. To see her in the terrifying Black Mirror episode “Crocodile” is to witness an actress at the very top of her game. She has now expanded her work as producer,...

Writer/Director Ari Aster on his Terrifying Debut Hereditary

When critics bend over backwards to keep a movie’s secrets under wraps, presume that the title in question is a step beyond the norm and well worth seeing. That is the case with Hereditary. Writer-director Ari Aster’s feature debut caused festival goers at Sundance and South by Southwest to squirm, shudder and gasp out loud at what transpires onscreen. Starting on June 8, the public will get to witness this grandly operatic yet exceedingly unsettling horror thriller about a grieving family seemingly beset by sinister forces – if they dare...

Actress-Turned-Composer Amelia Warner Helps Re-Imagine Frankenstein Origin Story in Mary Shelley

It was a dark and stormy night two centuries ago when 18-year old Mary Shelley, staying at Lord Byron’s estate in Geneva, Switzerland, responded to her host’s scary story contest by writing “Frankenstein.” Then came the hard part: persuading someone in London’s male-dominated book industry to publish the story under her own name. Starring Elle Fanning, Mary Shelley, which recently opened wide, tracks the heroine’s love affair with poet Percy Shelley and the crushing disappointments leading up to her creation of the now-classic horror tale...

How the VFX Team of The Looming Tower Recreated Pre-9/11 New York

Nearly every American over the age of 25 remembers the horrific day of the September 11 attacks. Images of that day are tragically familiar. The events were so meaningful and are so well known that VFX artists on Hulu’s The Looming Tower took deliberate care to vigilantly recreate pre-9/11 New York. The series, starring Peter Sarsgaard, Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, and Wrenn Schmidt, explores the tense relationship between the FBI and CIA that obstructed vital intelligence about the impending attacks...

BBC America’s President Sarah Barnett On How Killing Eve Slayed In Its Debut Season

After viewing the pilot of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s bleakly comedic series Fleabag a few years ago, both Sarah Barnett, president and general manager of BBC America, and Nena Rodrigue, the network’s executive vice president of original programming, acquisitions and production, were “fan-girling over Phoebe,” as Barnett puts it, drawn to her distinct point of view and wit. “We totally fell in love with Phoebe’s voice.”

They wanted to work with her, and soon enough, BBC America was in business with the British writer and actress—who can currently be seen as the droid L3-37 in Solo: A Star Wars Story—and London-based Sid Gentle Films,...

Brian Tyree Henry on Hotel Artemis & Working With his Best Friend (Sterling K. Brown)

If you’ve been sleeping on Brian Tyree Henry, you better wake up immediately. The triple threat is ready to dominate the TV, film and stage this year and he’s only just getting started. First up on his plate is the delightful summer action flick, Hotel Artemis, from writer/director Drew Pearce. Henry plays Honolulu, one of a pair of bank robbing brothers (alongside IRL bestie Sterling K. Brown) who after a botched robbery end up at the Hotel Artemis—an underground hospital in Los Angeles for criminals ran by The Nurse (Jodie Foster)...

13 Reasons Why‘s Music Supervisor on Selecting Music for the Mayhem of High School

Netflix’s hit show 13 Reasons Why has had its share of controversy from the beginning. The show centers around teen character Hannah Baker’s suicide, how various traumatic experiences led to her deciding to end her life, and how friends and classmates deal with the knowledge that they potentially had a hand in her decision. Though mental health professionals and other groups have had concerns around the depiction of rape, bullying, suicide, and gun violence, the series has been lauded by critics and fans alike for its unflinching portrayal of the challenges for teens living every day with school shootings,...

First-Time Showrunner Breaks Down his Dark hit Series The Sinner

Derek Simonds had been toiling on the periphery of show business since 2001, when his indie film Seven and a Match toured the festival circuit, but progress proved fitful. He developed Call Me By Your Name, penned some TV pilots and worked as a story editor on ABC drama The Astronaut Wives Club, but, Simonds says, “I was still banging on doors to be heard.” Everything changed when Universal Cable Productions asked him to adapt German crime novelist Petra Hammesfahr’s dark thriller “The Sinner”...

Writer/Director Veena Sud on her Timely Netflix Drama Seven Seconds

A young detective, frantic because he cannot reach his pregnant wife, is driving through the snow, trying to reach her on his cell. He hears a sickening thud, but does not realize what he has hit – who he has hit – until he gets out of the car and sees the mangled bike under his wheel. A black teenage boy named Brent Butler was riding that bik,e and the cop is white.

When his colleagues arrive, they tell him to leave. ...

Joy Nash on her Breakout Role as Plum Kettle in Dietland

At one point in the two hour premiere of AMC’s latest drama, Dietland, Margaret Atwood’s most famous quote is uttered by main character Plum Kettle: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” Other than being a perfect encapsulation of our current times, it’s also a sentiment that can anchor the stickily interesting Dietland, based on the novel by Sarai Walker and brought to AMC by TV veteran Marti Noxon...

Ibiza Director Alex Richanbach on Mixing the Perfect Comedic Cocktail

For his sophomore directing gig, Alex Richanbach (We Are Young) opted for a little quirkiness, a lot of romance and a whole load of laughs. The film is Ibiza, streaming now on Netflix and starring Gillian Jacobs, Vanessa Bayer, Phoebe Robinson and Richard Madden. Jacobs plays Harper, a thirty-something New Yorker who jumps at the opportunity to travel to Barcelona for an important business meeting. When her pals, portrayed by Bayer and Robinson,...

Writer/Director Bart Layton on his True Life Crime Caper American Animals

Writer/director Bart Layton has a long history of bringing true stories to the small screen. He created and produced the documentary series Locked Up Abroad and directed the television documentaries 16 for a Day and Becoming Alexander.

In 2012, he brought his unique skills to the big screen with the documentary The Imposter. The film earned critical acclaim and Layton won the BAFTA Film Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer,...

Black Mirror’s VFX Supervisor on the Haunting Episode “USS Callister”

Each episode of Black Mirror is designed to be memorable in its own way, but none so far have spun what appears at first to be a mere goofy period romp into an emotionally complex depiction of covert malevolence quite like the feature-length opener of the show’s fourth season, USS Callister. Brilliant but overlooked Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons, once the beloved Landry of Friday Night Lights) is the creator behind an online gaming world for which his savvier,...

An Underwater Cinematographer’s Fish Eye View of Deadpool 2

Below the tide is another world, dangerous and unknown. As people tend to spend the majority of their life on dry land, some of the most memorable scenes in movies are underwater. Jack Sparrow diving into the ocean to save Elizabeth Swan in Pirates of the Caribbean. Adaline’s car plunging into icy waters rendering her ageless in The Age of Adaline. Judy Robinson swimming below the surface of an alien planet to save her family in Lost in Space...

Queen Sugar Showrunner Kat Candler Leads the Charge for Ava DuVernay’s Game Changing Show

It’s no exaggeration to say that Queen Sugar, the popular OWN series, is changing television. From the beginning, creator Ava DuVernay committed to hiring only female directors, which has led to a number of other shows seeking women for their roster of directors and other below-the-line roles. This season, writer/director/producer Kat Candler has been given the challenge of maintaining this great forward momentum for women working behind the camera, as well as building on the expanding story central to Queen Sugar...

The Gospel According to Andre Director Kate Novack on the Man Behind the Fashion Icon

As a fan of fashion documentaries, director Kate Novack knew Andre Leon Talley as the larger-than-life, high priest of haute couture. As a journalist- turned-filmmaker, she knew there was more to him than that.

“I’ve been watching Andre in many fashion docs since Unzipped in 1996, which is around when I was getting out of college,” Novack says. “It was always always this over-the-top [depiction] where he’d steal the scene but he was always an enigma...

Costume Designer Ann Foley on Creating the Cyberpunk Aesthetic of Altered Carbon

Netflix’s original cyberpunk drama, Altered Carbon, has become as known for the multifarious aesthetics it draws on — from Blade Runner to the works of Edgar Allan Poe — as it has for its philosophical leanings. Based on the novel of the same name by Richard K. Morgan, the show’s premise is that 300 years from now, the body is a mere “sleeve.” The mind, one’s true self, is stored in a “stack,” a disc that lives in the back of one’s neck...