Best of 2022: “House of the Dragon” Co-Creator & Co-Showrunner Ryan Condal on Season One & Beyond

It’s that time of year—we look back on a few of our favorite interviews from 2022 in our annual year-end list.

The first season of House of the Dragon has come to a close as an unqualified success. The premiere saw the largest single-day viewership for a series debut in HBO’s history and continued to land consistently in the top five titles streamed across all platforms through its last episode.

“George & Tammy” Creator Abe Sylvia on Crafting a Complicated Love Story

It’s a story that’s been on Abe Sylvia’s mind for a while. The screenwriter of The Eyes of Tammy Faye and writer/producer of such television series as Dead to Me and Nurse Jackie has always had a soft spot for country music. Blame it on his Oklahoma upbringing. And that’s why Sylvia found the story of George Jones and Tammy Wynette too good to resist.

“Bones And All” Writer/Producer David Kajganich on Creating a Consuming Cannibal Love Story

When screenwriter David Kajganich decided to adapt the YA novel Bones And All by Camille DeAngelis, he approached his friend and longtime collaborator, director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name), about taking on the project — the two had worked together on Suspiria and A Bigger Splash. Though professional commitments initially prevented Guadagnino from doing so, eventually,

Filmmaker & TV Creator Mann Robinson on Getting it Done in Georgia

Mann Robinson gets it done. The former rapped-turned-filmmaker and television creator can do it all—write, direct, produce, edit—with a tirelessness that would seem inhuman if he wasn’t so even-keeled about how he approaches his work.

“What’s allowing me to have so many things coming up?” he says when we spoke toward the end of summer, as he took a rare break to chat about his career. “First thing I do in the morning is write whatever project I may be on at the time,

“House of the Dragon” Co-Creator & Co-Showrunner Ryan Condal on Season One & Beyond

The first season of House of the Dragon has come to a close as an unqualified success. The premiere saw the largest single-day viewership for a series debut in HBO’s history and continued to land consistently in the top five titles streamed across all platforms through its last episode. The show was renewed before the second episode of the series even aired. 

House of the Dragon is a prequel to Game of Thrones—created by George R.R.

“Super/Natural” Producer Tom Hugh-Jones on How His New Nature Doc Will Blow Your Mind

They call him Sarcastic Fringehead, and the gargoyle-like fish with its glow-in-the-dark inflatable mouth must be seen to be believed. A resident of the Pacific Ocean, Sarcastic Fringehead is just one of 40 or so naturally gifted characters filmed in their native habitats for National Geographic’s Super/Natural show. Executive produced by James Cameron with voice-over narration from Benedict Cumberbatch, the eight-episode series (which debuted on Wednesday, Sept. 21) features creatures great (elephants) and small (Mexican fireflies) as they engage in stranger-than-fiction survival skills.

How the Ebo Sisters Find Comedy in Megachurch Scandal Feature “Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul.”

Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul. came seemingly out of nowhere in January to become a breakout hit at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, where Jordan Peele‘s Monkeypaw production company, Focus Features, and Peacock picked up the dark comedy. But in fact, the movie was a long time coming. Writer/director Adamma Ebo and her twin sister, producer Adanne, spent six years developing their 2015 short film of the same name.

“The Sea Beast” Writer/Director/Producer Chris Williams on His High Seas Animated Adventure

Chris Williams began working on The Sea Beast around four years ago, but telling an action-adventure story in animation is something he has wanted to do for a very long time. “It’s almost no exaggeration to say most of my life,” says the Academy Award-winning filmmaker (Moana, Big Hero 6, Bolt) about his latest movie, now streaming on Netflix.

Directed, co-produced, and co-written by Williams — he collaborated on the screenplay with Nell Benjamin,

Breaking Down the Astonishing Technology Behind Ava DuVernay’s “One Perfect Shot”

The cathedral wedding in John M. Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians. Diana Prince boldly crossing a World War I battlefield in Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman. Lisa stuck on a zip-line suspended above a raucous crowd in downtown New Orleans, in Malcolm D. Lee’s Girls’ Trip. Cathartic, lovely, or almost distressingly hilarious, these scenes are indelible. What did their directors do to make them tick?

In One Perfect Shot,

Producer Autumn Bailey-Ford on Making Movies & Shows She Loves in Georgia

Autumn Bailey-Ford has been an independent film and TV producer working out of Georgia for the past 13 years. Originally from York, Pennsylvania, Bailey-Ford has worked her way up from production assistant—that invaluable, multifaceted job that has been the starting point to many successful film careers—to running her own studio…and co-running a second.

“I love film and TV,” Bailey-Ford says, reflecting on a career that began with her daydreaming as a little girl watching Bob Hope and Bing Cosby movies on Turner Movie Classics.

Nicole Kassell on Producing & Directing HBO’s Devilish New Comedy/Horror “The Baby”

Shooting a television series under any circumstance is arduous at best. But when your title character is too young to even walk, it certainly increases the degree of difficulty. Producer/director Nicole Kassell discovered this fact quickly on her latest project, The Baby, a sly horror/comedy created by Siân Robins-Grace and Lucy Gaymer. 

“Even with everything I’ve already done before, I think this might have been the hardest shoot I’ve ever done,” says Kassell during a recent Zoom interview.

“Winning Time” Co-Creator Jim Hecht on His Love Letter to the Lakers

Jim Hecht‘s road to co-creating Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers began in 2014. Hecht was, by his own admission, at a low point, and he was looking for a project that really spoke to him. During his daily meditation, which he admitted with the qualifier “this sounds very LA,” he had a thought: “You gotta stop writing sh*t that you think other people would want to see and start writing the show that you would want to watch.”

Behind-the-Scenes With Five Female Singaporean Creators

“The last three years were an eye-opener because of the pandemic,” said Michelle Chang, managing partner at Singapore-based Mochai Chai Laboratories. “We are the post-production house at the tail end. If the producers stop producing, we are dead. The good thing was my business partner Chai Yee Wei has the foresight of not putting all our eggs in one basket. He has built a digital restoration lab. As luck would have it, a lot of distributors came to us because streaming platforms were buying catalog content and they need to up-convert into a compatible format for the streamers.

“NITRAM” Director/Producer Justin Kurzel Casts a Lens on a Shocking Tragedy

In 1996, Australia was rocked by a mass shooting in the small, peaceful community of Port Arthur, Tasmania. The horrific incident took the lives of 35 innocent people and injured 23, and remains among the country’s greatest national tragedies. 

Director-producer Justin Kurzel (True History of the Kelly Gang, The Snowtown Murders) reunites with screenwriter Shaun Grant to explore the events that led to the mass shooting in the IFC Films release,

Getting Intentional With Jeanne Mau, SVP of TV Programming Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at NBCUniversal

Jeanne Mau joined NBCUniversal only seven months ago, in a new position that was tailor-made for her skill set and experience. The former Senior Vice President of Global Inclusion at ViacomCBS is now NBCUniversal’s Senior Vice President of TV Programming Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Mau’s position has her overseeing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across NBCU’s vast television and streaming brands. It’s a thrilling opportunity for someone who has been doing the work for 20-years. 

Chatting With WarnerMedia’s Senior Vice President of Equity & Inclusion Karen Horne

Karen Horne has been working to amplify the voices of underrepresented communities for more or less her entire career. WarnerMedia’s Senior Vice President of Equity and Inclusion Programs has been creating results-oriented programs across a wide swath of the entertainment, sports, and news divisions for more than two decades. “I’ve always wanted to work in this field,” Horne says of her work. “Also, I’ve never had a plan B.”

The pipeline programs Horne has implemented at WarnerMedia since 2020 alone have been crucial,

Telling Stories With Singapore-Based Producer Si En Tan

Singapore-based producer Si En Tan already has an impressive resume in a relatively short career. After working as an assistant producer on Kirsten Tan’s Thai-Singapore co-production Pop Aye (2017), she went on to produce Anthony Chen’s Wet Season (2019), which won a string of awards at film festivals and the Golden Horse Awards held annually in Taiwan. Her producing credits also include Chen’s segment of the seven-part anthology film The Year Of The Everlasting Storm,

Smiely Khurana is Leading the Sustainability Charge in Canada With Reel Green

Smiely Khurana is the face of the sustainability movement in Hollywood North. As Creative BC’s in-house Sustainability Lead with Reel Green™, she’s cutting a singular path for the industry in Canada; one that is quickly being modeled in production hubs across the country. Through Reel Green™, Khurana is accelerating knowledge sharing and working to deepen local industry expertise. She’s leading the charge on training and developing new tools to help Canada’s film community green its story and transition to a circular economy. 

“Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America” Directors & Writer/Producer on Relearning American History

The documentary Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America has won numerous awards at fests across the country, including the Audience Award at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival, and boasts a 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The film is based on criminal defense and civil rights lawyer Jeffery Robinson’s work relearning American history and sharing knowledge that includes events and episodes either erased from in history books or never included in the first place.

How the “Scream” Team Created The Best Film in the Franchise Since The Original

How do you create the fifth film in a beloved slasher franchise that’s both a nod to everything that’s come before, a clever meta-commentary on horror films and toxic fandom, and something that’s entirely your own? This was one of the questions we put to Scream directors Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and their producing partner and the third member of their Radio Silence triumvirate, Chad Villella. The trio has once again brought the same passion that imbued their last outing,