Lilo & Stitch is charming audiences across the globe. Disney’s latest live-action remake, directed by Dean Fleischer Camp, is not only a box-office smash but also a heartfelt reimagining that has tapped into the power of Zillennial nostalgia in a big way. Based on the 2002 animated film, the new live-action Hawaii-set buddy comedy between young Lilo (Maia Kealoha) and her new alien pal, Stitch (voiced by Chris Sanders), is full of energy and light, thanks in no small part to cinematographer Nigel Bluck.
The shenanigans begin when, similar to the original, the alien experiment 626 – Stitch – escapes the grips of his planet and crash-lands on Kauaʻi, Hawaii. The alien meets Lilo, a fellow outcast. As alien and government officials close in on the rambunctious duo, Lilo & Stitch fight for each other and their home.
Prior to Lilo & Stitch, Bluck shot The Peanut Butter Falcon, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, and 10 episodes of True Detective. Recently, Bluck spoke with The Credits about reimagining Lilo & Stitch and his varied career.
When you make a film like Lilo & Stitch, do you think along the lines of, “What appeals to the eye of a kid?”
I’ve got a son, who was nine or ten when we were making it, and I thought about him a lot. How he sees the world and what they need out of the film, which is often different from what we think we need out of the film. You have to be more succinct with your storytelling. You can’t be flowery at all with your visualization of anything. It’s got to be direct and to the point. They’re not there to reference the films that have been and come before. I think for kids, it’s very much in the now, what they want. That being said, they’re also astute in terms of realities, visual effects, and details of motion, so it works both ways with them. They’re less sophisticated and more sophisticated at the same time.
In remaking an animated film, how did you and Dean want to pay respect to the original while also bringing it into live-action?
Dean and I were after, above all, a sense of naturalism and grounding the story in a reality that pays homage to the animation, which was very much grounded in reality and very much the story of this local family and this island. I think that’s what we were trying to protect and create – something that wasn’t trying to light that up or beat that up or make that into a universe that was more “Disney-fied.” There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it was an advantage, in a way, to have the animation as a precursor that was so successful and had such a brand on its own. That opened the door for us to continue in that direction rather than trying to transform it into something that was more cosmetically sealed, perhaps. That was the aim: to capture reality in the environments and in the performances.
One location that accomplishes this is Lilo and her sister Nani’s (Sydney Agudong) home. It has a feeling of history and warmth. How’d you want that location to ground the film?
The key thing about that location is that we built the house twice. We built the house on location for the exteriors, and we built the house in a studio for interior reasons. Primarily, we were working with a 9-year-old girl who has specific windows of time during which she can and cannot work. When you are working with that governor, as it were, that’s why the decision was made to go into a studio. So we were never at the mercy of the weather, which is robust and unpredictable sometimes, being on an island.
You’re a cinematographer who prefers being on location, right?
I really like shooting on locations and seeing the reality of the environment outside. There’s a lot of me that wanted to shoot everything – just build the house once and just run inside when the weather gets bad. It became a challenge of how to then light this house on stage, keep the reality that we’re trying to imbue through all the rest of the film, and create a sense that the real world is outside those windows.
On the island, what did you appreciate about the light?
We’re always trying to keep everything even in cinematography and consistent for the sake of the scene and the edit, and not pointing to ourselves. The work is usually about keeping the reality of the wavering weather to something that looks either sunny or not. Whereas on the island, it has that, and to a certain point, I just embraced that. The reality is, it changes every five minutes. As long as it’s not jarring, I tried not to be too afraid of that and allow things to change a little more, perhaps, than I was used to curating on set.
Is shooting on the ocean still as challenging as the days of Jaws?
You’re on this merciless, changing platform that changes all the time. It’s very difficult, even on the most placid days. You have to be very careful about what you bite off and try to be as organized as possible. We had an incredible water team on the film, who were largely made up of veteran watermen and women who live and breathe that ocean and are at home there. It was a real privilege and a massive contribution from the Hawaiian people, the team, and the culture that has made this movie what it is today. Those surfing scenes and underwater scenes – I don’t think we could have manufactured them anywhere else without that expertise and that incredible dedication from those people.
What were your lighting references for Stitch? What did you use in the CG character’s place on set?
We had a beautiful mock-up of Stitch in correct proportions, correct fur, just very real-looking. Amazing puppeteers basically brought it to life. We always shot references of everything. The rule was that whatever potential reality pertains to the character, he’s just living it in that environment. We weren’t going to light him out at all or try to put any kind of special treatment on him. Grounding him was the aim, which was just trying to light the scene, let him be in the scene, not lighting that character out of the scene.
Your body of work – this film, True Detective, and The Peanut Butter Falcon – is a wide variety. When your career started, what was your ambition for the stories you wanted to tell? Is the cinematographer you are today the cinematographer you hoped to be?
I’m working towards it. As a very serious film student, I was a little more high-minded about it all, perhaps. I still am, in terms of what I watch and what I love. It’s very easy to make the stories that come naturally to me, but working outside of your comfort zone and examining from a different angle always comes up with something interesting. It’s good for my process. I just want to continue changing all the time and working in different genres. It’s a reinvention every time. For me, it is one of the greatest privileges I have as an artist: to walk into these worlds, which are new every time, and explore ways of creating them.
Jesse Armstrong takes his exploration of the rich and powerful to new heights—both literally and figuratively—in Mountainhead. In his feature directing debut, the writer/producer who created HBO’s Emmy-winning, zeitgeist-capturing Successionabout the family turmoil of the media mogul Roy family, turns his satirical eye on the titans of tech. And it all takes place at the top of a snow-covered Utah summit in a breathtaking, multimillion-dollar estate that gives the movie its name.
Debuting on HBO MAX on May 31, Mountainhead opens with a mighty tech quartetmeeting for a weekend of bro bonding and boasting about their triumphs. Randall (Steve Carell), the patriarch, often referred to as Papa Bear by his younger acolytes, made his fortune in defense and weaponry. Venis (Cory Michael Smith), the foursome’s rising star and richest member, has recently launched a generative AI social media platform that is taking the world by storm. Jeff (Ramy Youssef),a tech wizard, developed a program that can mitigate the potential risks of AI, a “filter for nightmares.” Despite hosting the event in his new digs that make Zeus blush, Hugh Van Yalk (Jason Schwartzman) goes by “Souper,” as in somebody who works at a soup kitchen, because his wealth is measured in millions, not billions. He is hoping to convince his colleagues to fund a wellness app that will elevate him to their level of success.
Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef. Photograph by Macall Polay/HBO
As the weekend unfolds, the men discover that Venis’ recently launched AI tool is being co-opted to wreak havoc around the world. Racial animosity is escalating, causing violence, rioting, and looting. Governments are teetering towards collapse. The mayor of Paris is assassinated. Instead of being horrified, the foursee an opportunity. How wonderful a world it could be if they controlled everything themselves. The question is — will divisions among them squelch these plans before they can be put in motion?
After four seasons of Succession, the last thing Armstrong intended to do was another tale of influence and arrogance. But as fate would have it, he accepted an assignment to review a book about cryptocurrency king Sam Bankman-Fried. Armstrong’s curiositypiqued.
“That professional bell started ringing in my head,” says Armstrong during a Zoom conversation. “I was consciously keen not to do another rich people thing, but sometimes you find that the subject picks you. I began reading biographies and histories of Silicon Valley. On podcasts, you can listen to their tone of voice…the level of confidence, consequentialism, and power in the world. I couldn’t get their voices out of my head.”
Before committing to a script, Armstrong wanted to pitch the idea to gauge interest. With the basics in his head—four guys in a snowy getaway as global upheaval ensues—he showed it to Succession colleagues Lucy Prebble, Jon Brown, Tony Roche, and Will Tracy. With their input, Armstrong fashioned a story. In January, Armstrong took it to HBO. CEO Casey Bloys quickly said yes.
Cory Michael Smith, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Ramy Youssef. Photograph by Macall Polay/HBO
Before you could say “greenlight,” Armstrong found himself in the mountains of Utah and Vancouver, Canada, looking for a house that could serve as Mountainhead. But with everything happening so fast, one thing was falling to the wayside.
“I was trying desperately to start writing, but we’d fired the gun on production. I was location scouting and writing in the back of vans,” Armstrong remembers. “Eventually, when we still hadn’t found the house, I said to Marcel Zyskind, the cinematographer, production designer Stephen Carter, and producer Jill Footlick, ‘Can you carry on looking? I just need to write this because otherwise we’re going to find a house and there’s not going to be a script.”
Photograph by Courtesy of HBO
Ultimately, a location was found — a private homein the gated Deer Crest neighborhood of Deer Valley, Utah. Concurrently, the veteran writer, who in addition to winning five Emmy Awards for his work on Succession, scored an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay forIn the Loop, drafted a script.
The production schedule for a May premiere was tight. Preproduction started in February. Filming took place in March. For Armstrong, it presented an opportunity.
“Normally, I love collaborating. But I knew the tone of this and to cut out some personnel and communication loops, I’d direct it myself,” says Armstrong. “It was rather a different tone to Succession, but I knew shooting it in a similar way would be amenable. So I felt safe. I’d learned how the two-camera situation works, and we were going to do it largely in one location. ‘Oh yeah, this is conceivable.’”
Jason Schwartzman, Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith. Photograph by Macall Polay/HBO
“It’d be impossible for me to imagine doing such an endeavor without it,” says Armstrong. “I grew so much from being a British sitcom writer into being comfortable around a large crew. I knew the individuals in the sound department, the script supervisor. These were all people from Succession. It gave that feeling of familiarity.”
Armstrong invited Mark Mylod, who has two Emmys for directing Succession episodes, to be an executive producer. Mylod lent advice and helped put together the crew. Even so, making the leap to director did present a whole new challenge.
“A showrunner has an advantage. You’re around sets a lot,” Armstrong continues. “But I was surprised at how that director’s title takes it to another level. The crew is looking to you. The actors place a lot of trust in you. The writer offers the raw materials. But the director is the one there saying, ‘It’s going to be okay. I know what we want.’ So I felt that responsibility, especially because I didn’t necessarily have the experience. I had to subtly convince them with my demeanor. I never like bullshitting people, but for that moment, it’s a little bit fake it till you make it. You have to sort of pretend to be a director until you are one.”
The location was a plus. From its sweeping snowcap Utah vistas to such amenities as an indoor bowling alley, basketball court, and a towering staircase that soared several stories, Armstrong couldn’t have imagined a better playground for Mountainhead.
Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman. Photograph by Macall Polay/HBO
“For some reason, I always wanted this snowy, slightly icy, sequestrated away environment. It offered us that at a rich people’s scale,” says Armstrong. “I adapted the script once I saw the stuff there. It was fun to write to a massive house burrowed out of the rock.”
Randall, doing his morning yoga in the middle of the cavernous basketball court, and Venis bowling melons down the bowling alley were both inspired by the estate. Armstrong set a pivotal moment in the drama at the top of the dizzying staircase. A sitcom veteran of such series asPeep Showand Fresh Meat, he couldn’t resist adding a bowling ball joke.
“There’s a bit where Steve gives a mock heroic speech that references stuff like being at the doorway of Octavian,” Armstrong remembers. “And at the last minute, Jon Brown, my writing and producing colleague, and I were laughing, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny to undercut it by saying, ‘Have you got the bowling ball?’ And the way that Jason and Steve did that joke…with no time to consider it…seeing them hitting a perfect comic tone on the fly was just a very pleasing experience to watch.”
Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Cory Michael Smith, Jason Schwartzman. Photograph by Macall Polay/HBO
Armstrong adds that the leads gave a novice director more than he could have expected from the characters he created.
“I cast them because they’re the best in the world. This was a long script. It’s almost like a play. There are a huge amount of words which, if they hadn’t nailed on a basic technical level early, we would have been in big trouble,” explains Armstrong. “Without being too reductive about it, there’s a little bit of Frankensteining in the writing. They have those archetypes, but there are also these Frankensteined business stories and emotional relationships. What a great actor does is take those things—maybe you’ve sewn together a leg of this and an arm of that—and make it into this real person. Suddenly, you’re watching four real people interact on a set. There’s no other way to describe it other than just a delightful play happening before your eyes.”
Mountainhead is streaming on HBO Max.
Featured image: Cory Michael Smith, Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef, Jason Schwartzman. Photograph by Fred Hayes/HBO
The trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein has electrified viewers. The first glimpse of the visionary director’s remake of the iconic monster movie has garnered millions of views since its release on Sunday. There are few directors alive who are more perfectly suited to enliven a fresh adaptation of Mary Shelley’s deathless novel, one of the most adapted stories ever told; and after thinking and dreaming about tackling his own version for decades, Del Toro’s vision has breathed new life into the tale.
His Frankenstein stars Oscar Isaac as delusional, brilliant Dr. Victor Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi as The Monster, Mia Goth as Victor’s financé, Elisabeth, Christoph Waltz as Harlander (a new character not in Shelley’s book), and Ralph Ineson as Professor Krempe. The teaser returned Frankenstein to the arctic climes that Shelley included in her story (it was filmed mainly throughout Scotland), and it’s such a richly cinematic look that viewers are now clamoring for Netflix to release the movie on the biggest screens possible.
Frankenstein is the movie that Del Toro has been longing to make for years. The Oscar-winner has gone on record in the past to say that adapting Shelley’s work was a dream project for him (along with adapting H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness), but one he shied away from making. Speaking with Den of Geekin 2016, Del Toro explained that despite the fact that Shelley’s masterpiece has been adapted many times, no filmmaker has captured the crucial North Pole sequence, for example, and that, to him, was where he wanted to come in:
“To this day, nobody has made the book, but the book became my bible, because what Mary Shelley wrote was the quintessential sense of isolation you have as a kid,” he told Den of Geek. “So, Frankenstein to me is the pinnacle of everything, and part of me wants to do a version of it, part of me has for more than 25 years chickened out of making it. I dream I can make the greatest Frankenstein ever, but then if you make it, you’ve made it. Whether it’s great or not, it’s done. You cannot dream about it anymore. That’s the tragedy of a filmmaker. You can dream of something, but once you’ve made it, you’ve made it.”
Guillermo del Toro’s dreaming about Frankenstein has come to an end—he’s made it. And now that he has, millions of people have seen only a peek at his work and want more.
Check out the trailer here. Frankenstein comes to life on Netflix in November.
Let’s get this out of the way. History For Hire, the iconic prop house that’s been a staple in the Hollywood community since 1985, is open for business. People started to question its future, flooding owners Pam and Jim Elyea with inquiries after The New York Times published an article dramatizing a potential closure. “It was a beautiful article, but I just wish it didn’t say ‘Waiting for the Axe to Fall’ on the front page because that’s really not where we are at,” Pam tells The Credits over a video call.
History For Hire has made North Hollywood home for years, with its massive warehouse serving as a museum of historically accurate props for the film, television, theater, and music industries. Inside, it’s like an antique store on a forty-year bender with no intention of getting sober. Their inventory spans from ancient times to the modern era, featuring old camera gear, military equipment, communication devices, medical supplies, and numerous everyday items from decades past. Their work is praised for its visual accuracy, having contributed to the visual stylings of Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, and Titanic, among other productions, as well as more recent films such asOppenheimerand A Complete Unknown. Pam, 71, and her husband Jim, 74, have built a business rooted in meticulous research and a deep respect for history that, by all counts, isn’t slowing down. The company has signed a new lease with its current building owner. “We’re excited to be in California and we are based here, but we are truly an international company in that we are currently doing movies in Europe, Canada, and Australia,” says Pam.
Jim & Pam Elyea. Courtesy History for Hire.
History For Hire considers itself a purveyor of Americana, European history, and other cultures. “One of the things that I think really sets us apart is our passion for being culturally sensitive to the items that appear on screen. When we’re doing the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, which was filmed in Thousand Oaks, we had a Japanese consultant on that project with us to make sure the props were appropriate at all times. If we do films about Native Americans, we make sure we are working with Native American technical advisors so that the items are going to be appropriate,” explains Pam.
Courtesy History for Hire.
Their staff comprises experts in various fields. “We have military and police experts. We have a watch expert, a music expert, and Pam and Jim are motion picture experts. And I’m an expert in handcrafts and have a degree in criminal justice,” says Christine Bullard, History For Hire’s operations manager. “We even have a staff member who’s a blacksmith if a project needs something custom-made.” In 2011, their expansive inventory migrated to a digital platform. “We went from handwriting and taking pictures of every order to a barcode system,” notes Bullard. “And for the most part, it’s all done by barcode now, so when we scan an item, it tells us every production it has been used on and the history of that prop.” While you can find most of their inventory online, it’s not everything. “The pandemic pushed us to get more of our props online because the shutdown forced a change overall in our industry. We were able to put our inventory online and really streamline it,” says Bullard.
HFH Founder Jim Elyea (hawaiian shirt) with film Historian Kevin Brownlow – 2019
When asked when productions should start considering props, Pam suggests early. “You can feel comfortable reaching out when your film’s in development, or if it’s a time period you haven’t worked in. Maybe you never worked on a Civil War film before. We have done hundreds of those films, and we can help you get a budget estimate. We can tell you what you may need, plus we can tell you how other people solved a problem. So it’s never too soon to reach out.”
Photo by Tommy Estridge
History For Hire is keen on details, no matter how large or small the project, the staff treats each request with the same enthusiastic examination. “We try to give them accurate information but also give them options for the look of their film,” notes Pam. “So the list of items and pictures we send them not only work with their list but also accentuates what that list is. So if you’re doing a Western, and all you’re asking is about lighting and general store stuff, we will also ask about horses because we have horse tack.” And if the company doesn’t have something available, they’re happy to recommend another prop house. “We work really well with other companies because we want to make sure that the prop, no matter if we have it or somebody else has it, is the best prop that can be out there,” says Bullard. Pam added, “Other prop houses are not our competitors. We look at them as our collaborators because if we work together and give our clients the best look possible on the screen, more people are going to want to go to the movies and see more movies.”
Courtesy History for Hire.
History For Hire not only supplies props, but it also becomes an integral part of the entertainment community, offering tours for schools and educational programs. They’re also members of the California Production Coalition, a group of like-minded businesses that want to see production stay in California. Extending that outreach is a June 7 program where the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival will bring forty filmmakers to History For Hire for a master class in set decoration and property. The discussions will be mentored by set decorator Jan Pascale, who won an Oscar for David Fincher’s Mank. “We’re very invested in people learning more about our industry, learning more about our business,” notes Pam.
Photo by Tommy Estridge.
Being part of the community is what makes it special for them, allowing them to create their own history. “We do a lot of student productions and kids will come in and pick out something, and it’s great to say, ‘oh, you know, Timothy Chalamet used this A Complete Unknown or this was used by Russell Crowe on Master and Commander, and you get to use it on your student project. It’s exciting for them because they feel that connection with Hollywood.”
This article is part of an ongoing series that raises awareness among businesses and individuals in the film and television community. History For Hire is a member of the California Production Coalition. You can find more about the company here.
You can find more stories on how the film and television industry impacts local economies here:
Charlie Brooker is known for many things, and depending on whom you ask, you might get a different answer. In England, where Brooker was born, you may hear about cult comedies The 11 O’Clock Show, Brass Eye, or Nathan Barley, which he wrote, or maybeNewswipe, where he satirizes current events, or the fictionalized reality show Dead Set about zombies attacking the Big Brother house. His masterpiece is Black Mirror, an anthology series that combines futuristic technology with the worst aspects of humanity. It started over 14 years ago on Channel 4 in the U.K., before migrating to Netflix in 2016. Now, in Season 7, the buzzy series has an episode for any mood you’re in. To my lights, “The National Anthem” (S1E1), “Nosedive” (S3E1), and “Common People” (S7E1) are personal favorites.
This latest season has more of Hollywood’s familiar faces with Chris O’Dowd, Rashida Jones, Akwagine, Issa Rae, and Paul Giamatti, the latter of which sees Giamatti’s character revisiting a past relationship by stepping inside old photos – a story unfolding like an ode to Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” Its finale gives fans a long-awaited sequel to the USS Callister (the first of which aired in S4, E1) with Cristin Milioti, Jimmi Simpson, and Jesse Plemmons returning – which Brooker tells The Credits he hoped would have become a limited series but the pandemic and following union strikes set it on a standalone course.
During a video call, we caught up with the multi-hyphenate talent and decided to do what any morallygood person should do if they had 15 minutes with someone known for absolute genius satire: we messed with him. And of course, he took it in stride.
Charlie Brooker attends Black Mirror x TCKR Systems Event at TCKR Systems HQ, The Brunswick Centre, London, UK — on April 8th, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by StillMoving.Net for Netflix)
I was just assigned this interview, so I had to look up who you were on IMDB. It says you worked for the famous comedian Jimmy Carr on television show 8 out of 10 Cats as a program associate. Can you tell me exactly what is a program associate?
Oh my God. That was 2,000 years ago.
So you don’t remember what the job title entailed?
My background is in TV comedy in the UK, and I was part of a production company that was making all sorts of things. I’m not part of that company anymore, but they still make 8 out of 10 Cats, which is the huge panel show in the UK. I went on to do other things like presenting shows, and sort of ended up on air. Then I did other things like Newswipe and Weekly Wipe, where we had this character, Philomena Cunk, who interviewed experts and asked them stupid questions.
Similar to what I am doing now?
(Laughs) Yeah, with my comedy hat on, I had to do things like that [being a program associate] too.
We all start somewhere. Speaking of, as a journalist, I’m not supposed to make myself part of the story, but I do want to point out I paid The New York Times .25 cents to read a 2020 profile of you for research. Is that something you can reimburse?
Yeah, sure. Why? Because the article was so uninteresting?
No, it was good. It was aboutwriting Black Mirror during COVID. I am asking so I don’t have to worry about claiming it later on my taxes.
Oh, I see. Yeah. Okay.
This next question is from a friend of mine, and he asks, Charlie, if you had to live in one Black Mirror episode for a year, which one would you pick?
That’s a no-brainer. If it’s for one year, it would be “San Junipero” [S3E4]. But maybe “Eulogy” [S7E5], where you can walk into old photographs. But I mean, “San Junipero” would be the obvious answer in a way because it’s a nostalgic playground. It’s basically Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, San Junipero.
L-r: Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Mackenzije Davis in “Black Mirror” episode “San Junipero.” Courtesy Netflix.Declan Mason, Paul Giamatti. Credit: Nick Wall/Netflix
Netflix told me this is Season 7 of Black Mirror. I watched all the episodes at 1.5x speed, of course, and I have a few questions. What should be the minimum amount of throw-up a man should experience after helping to end his wife’s life?
Oh, well, I’m in the metaphor, which is I’ve got a phobia about vomit and vomiting, genuinely. So I would say none. There should be no throw-up whatsoever. You should just get on with it, finish the job. And stop being such a wuss. (laughs) No, I don’t actually know [how much]. That episode started out very much as a comedy. That’s a classic Black Mirror sort of thing, is that you start to do something that’s an absurd premise, and then we see it through to the bitter end.
Now this, too, is a serious question. If you were only able to eat one dessert, would you choose a miso jam flavored chocolate bar or a chocolate mallow crème pie?
You know what, we made those miso jam chocolate bars for that episode [S7, E2, “Bête Noire”]. They had to be vegan, because I think Siena Kelly, who’s playing Maria, is vegan. And they were really f**king tasty. They made me one for my birthday. A giant one, like a cake size…it was like a chocolate cake to me.
Charlie Brooker on the set of “Black Mirror,” season 7, “Bête Noire.” Courtesy Netflix.
Curious, what current reality would you want to change, and what would you want to change it to?
Oh, I mean, all of it. It would be great to just have any consensus on reality. It would be useful because it feels like the problem at the moment is that you can kind of choose your reality depending on your affiliations. But some people don’t seem to be actually that concerned about whether their reality is real. So, the flood of disinformation that we are being subjected to is only going to multiply. How can we hope to tackle climate change if people can’t agree on what reality is and what’s happening? I find that terrifying. So I would make it so that there was one reality for everyone. I think that’s what I would try to do.
During the credits of episode 4 of this season, “Plaything,” a QR code appears, which I scanned. Now, every day, a copy of the book “A Clockwork Orange” arrives at my door with tiny pieces of paper in it. What do I need to be doing here?
(Laughs) So that’s supposed to take you to a game that you can download for free. We made the game from the episode, and it’s a game called Thronglets. And you can create, nurture, and care for a community, a colony of Thronglets. So I would recommend you do that. It won’t bite. And you can mistreat them at your leisure.
Lewis Gribben in “Plaything.” Courtesy Netflix.
Which sci-fi author would you prefer to eulogize? Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, or Isaac Asimov?
You know, I’m so badly, shockingly poorly read. I’ve read very little sci-fi. I have read an Isaac Asimov collection. I’ve read [H.M.] Hoover. I’ve read “The Stainless Steel Rat” by Harry Harrison and “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Most of my references come from the world of movies and television. So, I’d say I’d eulogize Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone. He’s clearly one, or the British author Nigel Kneale, who was a huge influence on Black Mirror. So lump them together and I’d eulogize the pair of them.
Here’s an easy one. Would you suggest that someone read Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol?”
That’s why the character is called Carol. When we were talking about it originally, it was going to be that he [Paul Giamatti, as Phillip in “Eulogy”] was being led through like it was “A Christmas Carol.” And he was walking through moments in his life and seeing scenes play out. That was the original jumping off point, but then it became this thing, which is a lot more high tech, but also simpler and eerier in many ways, that everyone’s standing around, sort of frozen. But yeah, “A Christmas Carol” was a reference we were using when we were talking about it. That’s why the name Carol then just stuck.
Paul Giamatti. Credit: Nick Wall/Netflix
“USS Callister: Into Infinity” is a terrific sequel written by you, Bisha Ali, William Bridges, and Bekka Bowling. My favorite scene is the floppy disc sequence between the characters played by Cristin Milioti and Jesse Plemons. It’s The Matrix meets Einstein-Rosen’s wormhole theory.
Oh, thank you. The reason we made the sequel is that we genuinely love the characters. And it was something we were working on for a long time because it was originally going to be a limited series. Then the pandemic, the writer’s strike, and the actor’s strike got in the way, so we made it a one-off.
Jesse Plemons in “Black Mirror.” Courtesy Netflix.
But I think Jesse and Cristin in that scene are just fantastic. It’s tricky because it’s them talking in a garage, and they’re holding their own against it, intercutting with this giant space battle going on. They have to hold your attention alongside that, and they absolutely do. That’s one of my favorite moments.
This question is equally important. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest. How much did you enjoy the movie Being John Malkovich?
Oh, God, you know what? I haven’t seen it since it first came out in the cinema. But yeah, I must say 10 because it’s one of those things I should include. I quite often reference Robocop and The Truman Show when I’m talking to people about films that have influenced Black Mirror. And that should definitely be up there as well because there’s a lot obviously there with the Herman’s Head or Inside Out ending we have with Callister. Being John Malkovich is a great example of the logical absurdity, the logical ramifications of an absurd situation. I’m a fan of those sort of head f**king things.
Before we let you go, is The Real Housewives your reality show guilty pleasure?
I can’t quite remember why that was chosen. I think at one point we were going to just make up our own parody version of something, and we were discussing what they would be watching on TV. And I think it turned out that both Bisha [Ali] and Bekka [Bowling] are unironic fans of Real Housewives. So it’s an absurd premise that we played straight.
You can stream all the episodes of Black Mirror on Netflix
Featured image: Charlie Brooker on the set of “Black Mirror.” Courtesy Netflix.
“This was dressed as a miracle…it’s just a murder. And I solve murders.”
So says Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) in the middle of a minute-long teaser for his return as the southern detective in Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the third film in Johnson’s whodunit franchise. The teaser is a much darker affair than the previous two Knives Out installments, the last of which was a sun-baked mystery set on a Greek Island, while the first was a cozier affair situated at a grand, Gothic revival mansion. Johnson’s going for something keenly different in Wake Up Dead Man, which Johnson has billed as Benoit Blanc’s most dangerous mission ever. The vibe of the teaser is closer to horror than anything we’ve seen in the previous two films, with a church serving as a key location.
You’ll be hard pressed to glean too much plot from the teaser, and Johnson, Craig, and the rest of the ensemble cast are keeping mum. Johnson has once again assembled a crack cast to surround Craig, including Kerry Washington, Josh Brolin, Cailee Spaeny, Josh O’Connor, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, Thomas Haden Church, Daryl McCormack, Kerry Frances, Annie Hamilton, and Marcus Edward Bond.
Check out the teaser below. Wake Up Dead Man arrives on Netflix on December 12.
Created by Ben Watkins for Amazon Prime, the crime thriller Cross feels more like top-tier cinema than a police procedural. Based on James Patterson’s “Alex Cross” novels, the series’ first season (it’s already been picked up for a second) is taut and moody, following D.C. homicide detective Alex Cross (Aldis Hodge) as he pursues a serial killer on the job while struggling in his personal life with the murder of his wife, Maria (Chauntée Schuler Irving).
The villain Alex is after is wealthy and well-connected, reflected in his several torture chambers, including a large basement dark room and then a modern wine cellar, where his trapped victim is surrounded by neat shelves of hundreds of gently backlit bottles. Cross and his partner, John Sampson (Isaiah Mustafa), trek between the police station, Cross’s house, and D.C.’s bars and clubs as they close in on this serial killer-obsessed serial killer. At home, Cross’s children, Damon (Caleb Elijah) and Jannie (Melody Hurd), are looked after by their grandmother, Regina (Juanita Jennings), who does her best to keep everyone safe, despite the looming danger of Maria’s murderer, who seems to be out for further revenge. While navigating difficulties across his personal and professional relationships, Cross finds himself at the center of both unsolved cases.
For cinematographer Brendan Steacy, it was crucial to visually distinguish the detective’s home from the rest of the show’s locations, while ensuring the aesthetic conveyed a Washington, D.C. feel throughout.
We had the opportunity to speak with Steacy about his visual references, the strategic application of light and color, and utilizing cinematography to heighten the on-screen sense of danger.
How did you start off coming up with the show’s cool, moody aesthetic?
When I first met with Nzingha [Stewart, one of the show’s directors] on the pilot, I’d brought a lookbook and references, and as I started showing them to her, she was laughing. We had actually pulled a number of the exact same images. There was a lot of [David] Fincher in both our books. We were on the same page regarding the look and feel, but also wanted to create a version that worked for the story of Cross. It had to be something that could be sustained through the arc of the show. You’re in more spaces, there are more people.
Aldis Hodge as Alex Cross, Isaiah Mustafa as John Sampson. Photo Credit: Keri Anderson/Prime Video.
Cross really throws off all the tropes of a typical police procedural.
That was part of what we wanted to do. When Nzingha did her presentation, the first slide she had, she kept saying, it’s not a television show, it’s a movie — we’re going to make it look like a movie. We want it to feel like a movie. It has procedural elements and is a police show, but she drew on references with similar subject matter, albeit with a cinematic direction. That was the starting point.
How do you use cinematography to up the fear factor? For example, a scene that really stood out right away was the silhouette of a knife against the slats of a child’s closet door.
That was a reshoot after the episode had finished. There was initially some concern that it was too difficult to understand what happened to that character. So that was intentionally shot to try and up the stakes, the jeopardy of that child. There was a lot of conversation about how much we should see.
How did you approach the lighting for the basement at 41 Price Street? Was the lighting all practical?
We were really careful with color. It had been decided early on that Ramsey [Ryan Eggold] would have a red light associated with him. Not just red light, but the color red was going to be his thing. The fact that he had a dark room in the basement made it an obvious opportunity to put red in there. So, it was reverse-engineered to determine the practicality of the space, how it would have looked, and then to imagine the utility of that kind of lighting setup, what it would actually look like on camera. I did do a little messing around in there. Elise [Sauve, production designer] built a lot into the set because we wanted to be able to see the whole space and not have too much lighting on the floor. We talked a lot about the design of that overhead lighting. We tried a few different looks. I really wanted to keep it lit by just the stuff that was there, as much as possible. We wound up cheating a little bit — there was some stuff on the floor, and we also taped little valences around the lights so they’re not actually spilling everywhere, playing with the levels so it feels like they’re all on, but one is doing the work and the others are just kind of filling in.
How did you make Alex Cross’s home feel like its own distinct oasis?
It was very important to everyone that his home felt like a warmer, safer environment than all the other places he inhabits. But there were terrifying moments that take place there as well. There are also moments where he’s having domestic problems, so we could adjust levels and play with the overall feeling of the house in those moments. We played with color a little bit. But generally, the house was intended to be a warmer, more inviting, comfortable place for him. It’s where he can be himself, with his family, and then he goes out into this horrible world he has to deal with.
Aldis Hodge as Alex Cross, Caleb Elijah as Damon Hodge
Were there other colors specifically assigned to certain characters or places?
We had palettes that we associated with different environments. The house stayed warm, the police station was cool. When we were supposed to feel the threat of Ramsey, we brought in red light. When they go into the motel, for example, we wanted to signal that they’re in the right place with red light. They don’t know where he is, but his influence is there. We used red light a number of times. The gallery, the first time Shannon [Eloise Mumford] goes on a date with him, has a bunch of red. The red in his dark room. We were saving red carefully for Ramsey moments.
Ryan Eggold as Ed Ramsey, Aldis Hodge as Alex Cross, and Samantha Walkes as Elle Monteiro. Photo Credit: Keri Anderson/Prime Video.
Shooting in Canada, how did you make this look like Washington, DC?
While we were still in prep, we went to DC and shot some exteriors there. It was great, not just because you get some of the expansive shots of DC that give you a clue as to where you are before you go inside smaller spaces, but it was also great for all of us to get a feel for what it was like there, so you have things to reference while looking for spaces.
How was shooting in Canada? Do you work with local crew?
I live here, so I have a lot of people I love to work with and I’ve been working with for a long time. I try to work here as much as I can. It has a pretty strong production community. I do still wind up traveling, and I have a sense of how things stack up. I would say this is a pretty great place to work.
Cross is streaming on Amazon Prime.
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Seven seasons in, Charlie Brooker’s anthology series Black Mirror still gets under your skin. Usually, the load is heavy and dark, with characters’ lives driven to unambiguously worse places by technology we don’t yet have, but it feels like it may come frighteningly soon. But there’s one episode in this most recent season, Eulogy, starring Paul Giamatti, that stays in your mind for its emotional rewiring of one lonely man’s core memories. The technology leads to something different—tenderness, a shot at discovery, and at least an ambiguous sense of redemption.
Phillip is a prickly older guy leading a solitary existence until he’s contacted by a company called Eulogy, which sends him a kit to plumb the depths of his memories of a former girlfriend, Carol (Hazel Monaghan). Phillip is closed off, at first, insistent that he can barely remember Carol, yet still willing to follow the Guide’s (Patsy Ferran) prompts. Eulogy’s technology rests on transporting users into old still photos of themselves and the deceased, but for Phillip, there’s a hitch. He unearths a box of images of himself with Carol, and his ex-girlfriend’s face is scratched out or scribbled over in every one. Guided by Eulogy’s representative, Phillip emerges from his emotional lockbox to reveal why their relationship failed. It’s a pitiable moment, but also liberating—his honesty leads to an unexpected discovery that’s both devastating and allows Phillip to finally understand a pivotal moment in his former life with Carol. In this case, the truth really does set Phillip free.
“Black Mirror” still image of the photo from “Eulogy.” Credit: Nick Wall/Netflix.
The terrific range of the character’s experience over the course of his session with the Guide is made possible by Giamatti, who has received glowing reviews for the nuanced, sympathetic way he portrays Phillip’s peevish skepticism that transforms into a radical epiphany. We had the chance to speak with the actor about his reaction to being offered a Black Mirror script, his experience spending so much time alone on screen, and his own interpretation of Phillip’s unusual, technology-driven journey.
When you got the script for Eulogy, what were your initial thoughts?
I was very excited to get a Black Mirror script, and I didn’t know what it was going to be like. I kept waiting for it to turn really menacing and terrifying, and it didn’t. It was very moving, and I thought the stuff about the technology was interesting, whether it was a good thing or not. It was like a play. It was really written. I could see everything, I felt everything just on one read of it. The emotions are weird and messy and complicated and irrational. I just thought it was really great.
When you have to chart such a complex emotional journey for a character, how do you start?
If the script is that good, if I feel it as quickly as I did with this thing, which is generally when I know I want to do something, it will tell me where to go and what to do. I try to follow it and not push it or undersell it. It’s like a temperature chart. I follow where it’s going to take me and not get in the way of it.
Paul Giamatti. Credit: Nick Wall/Netflix
How was your experience spending so much time alone on camera?
When I read it, I didn’t quite take in how much of it was me alone, actually. When we started filming it, I realized, at a certain point, that this is going to be only me. And a lot of it is only me, which then proved not to be as daunting. He’s talking to himself, but he’s not. It was a cool challenge. But I wasn’t alone because Patsy Ferran was in the room with me, and she’s so great. I never felt alone. It was like I was in a two-person play, and then it was just fun.
Patsy Ferran & Paul Giamatti. Credit: Nick Wall/Netflix
What did you want the audience to feel, watching Philip have an epiphany at the end of the episode?
It’s devastating to him, it’s terrible, but it’s also what allows him to clear out all the messiness and see things as they actually were, to re-find the woman as she truly was and have that memory now to keep of her, while also knowing that it’s all gone. It’s a tough thing. I don’t know what the audience is going to feel about that. I just know what the guy is feeling—that he’s overjoyed to see her again. It’s all he wanted to do. To really see her, what she really was like. Maybe it’s a romanticized thing he sees at the end, but that’s a good thing, too. He finds something positive, he re-finds the good thing about it. Maybe that’s what you want people to [take away]—find the silver lining!
Black Mirror – Production Still Image. Credit: Nick Wall/Netflix
What did you think of the technology, in that case?
When I first read it, I thought it was coercive, creepy, seductive, and weird. I still kind of felt a little bit of that. When we were shooting, I felt a little more ambivalent. Then, when I saw the finished product, I thought, Oh, it’s much more positive. It’s so interesting to see it all play out and think, no, it seems like a good thing, now. Everybody else had a thing on their head at the end, except for him. He doesn’t need that, he’s got ownership of everything he remembers about her.
Patsy Ferran & Paul Giamatti. Credit: Nick Wall/Netflix
He’s one character who breaks free, not just in this episode, but across Black Mirror in general.
That’s true, most people are trapped, doomed, and destroyed. But he’s actually liberated by the technology.
Black Mirror episodes, in a non-preachy way, usually offer some kind of lesson on how to be human. If there’s one thing you want viewers to take away from what Phillip learns, what would it be?
That’s a good point, it’s much more about the humanity than it is about the technology, because all this stuff is as bad as the people who are in control of it. It’s what we were talking about—I suppose it’s finding some way to accept things and move on from things, and try to really see people for who they are. I don’t know, oftentimes, what people should take away from a thing, as long as they take something away.
Paul Giamatti. Credit: Nick Wall/Netflix
What’s it like going into a project that’s an anthology rather than a scripted series? Does that change your process?
I have huge respect for people who do anthology series. I think it’s really cool, great storytelling. I love it and wish there was more of it, but it’s hard to do. This was just like a little film. In some ways, it’s good that you don’t have to worry about it being a continuous series. It’s like you get this really neatly packaged, individual script. You feel really special. It’s like, ooh, I got my special Black Mirror episode, this is really cool. This is all ours. We didn’t have a whole lot of time. But I approach everything differently. Everything makes different demands.
The moment Phillip stops hiding seems to be when he reveals what happened to the photos of him and Carol. Was that also the moment of truth for you?
If I’m remembering it correctly, yes, it is. Some part of him realizes this is meaningful, so he needs to actually acknowledge what he did. In the moment when he says, I can’t do this anymore, and she asks, Do you want to stop, and he says no, in that area, things are starting to fill in. He sees some reason to do this. And he’s more honest with himself.
Paul Giamatti. Credit: Nick Wall/Netflix
Did you like Phillip as a character?
I did, totally. I didn’t find him unlikable. I found him messy and weird. One of the things I thought was great, when I first read [the script], was he gets pissed off a bunch of times and then all of sudden he says, I’m sorry. There’s something human in that. They thought about cutting those early on. I said no, don’t cut those, that’s so great, that guilt and that person who’s like, I’m an asshole but I’m not an asshole. I thought that was really human, in a way, and I liked that detail about him. I don’t think he’s a bad guy. He’s just human.
Black Mirror season 7 is streaming on Netflix.
Featured image: Paul Giamatti. Credit: Nick Wall/Netflix
After racking up 14 Emmy nominations for its first season in 2022, Severance returned this spring with a much-ballyhooed set of episodes that fortifies the show’s stature as a dread-saturated mind game drama on par with Twin Peaks and Lost. In the Apple TV+ + series, creepy experiments conducted by cult-like Lumon Industries center on split personalities (Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, and Dichen Lachmann) wrestling with their “innie/outie” dual identities even as their corporate overlords (Tramell Tillman and Patricia Arquette) try to stay in control.
Filmed almost entirely in New York and New Jersey, the show boasts a strikingly spare aesthetic, shaped by creator-writer Dan Erickson, producer-director Ben Stiller, and producer-DP Jessica Lee Gagné, who makes her directorial debut this year. A native of Quebec City, Gagné first teamed with Stiller on Escape at Dannemora in 2018 on the strength of her indie drama Sweet Virginia. “Quebec has very strong public funding for filmmaking,” she says. “I was able to be a cinematographer right out of college because one of my friends got her movie funded by the government, and that launched us. In Canada, you have access to financing for short films, they get into some festivals, and then you can get a feature made. It’s harder now, but the world I grew up in allowed me to be catapulted as a cinematographer.”
During a visit to Los Angeles, Gagné talks to The Credits about directing, picking the right camera, and curating movie references, including Jane Fonda’s 1971 thriller Klute, that helped inspire the Severance vibe.
Jessice Lee Gagné and Dichen Lachman on set of “Severance” episode 7. Courtesy Apple TV+.
Severance looks like no other show on TV with its restrained color palette and spare compositions. How did you arrive at the visual language for this show?
Through very intense collaboration, and bringing all the creative departments together. Ben does that really well. He made sure all the department heads were present in meetings where we decided what this thing’s going to look like, so everybody knew, for example, where the blue is going to land and how the greens are going to be. There was also a lengthy process of finding references for what our visual language would be be.
Robby Benson and Dichen Lachman in “Severance,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
What were some of those key influences?
Three movies that, overall, were big references were The Ipcress File, for its interesting use of foreground and set elements to create unique frames, Playtime, and Klute, for the vibe.
So everybody’s speaking the same visual language?
Not that we all need to like exactly the same things, but when somebody would reference a photographer or another movie or something, there’d be a nod of “Oh yes, we get it.” That creates the language.
Adam Scott in “Severance,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
Could you elaborate a bit on the pre-production process?
We conducted a series of tests, and as the DP, I led that process. For the first tests, it was the Sony Venice digital camera versus 35mm film. We watched them with our colorist, Tom Poole, who is an important collaborator because the final coloring stamp has a significant impact on how the show is rendered. Then we tested lenses. Ben is a big fan of the 2.35:1 [wide-screen] format, so we leaned into this kind of halfway world where we used the Sony Venice, which can definitely be contrasty. Mixing that with anamorphic gives you a beautiful texture, which is clinical but still lush.
You worked as DP on six episodes this season and also made your directorial debut in episode 7, “Chikhai Brado.” How did this directing opportunity come about?
It came to me because I wasn’t necessarily wanting to do season 2 as a DP. My favorite part of filmmaking is creating a language and a look, so I was like, “Oh, we’re going to do Severance again?” We’d shot through Covid, I had some PTSD from that [laughing]. And yes, I was thinking of doing something new. But then they offered me [the chance] to direct.
Were you nervous?
It took a minute to wrap my head around that, but when I read the synopsis for Episode 7, I felt a real connection with the themes. I also realized I’d never have an opportunity to work with a crew and cast and producers who knew me so well, so I decided, “This is the moment and it’s not going to happen again.”
In “Chikhai Bardo,” you transmit so much story through imagery – lighting, the characters’ faces, their eyes, their body language – rather than dialogue. For example, not a word is spoken in the flashback when Mark (Adam Scott) finds out his wife Gemma (Dichen Lachmann) is gone.
The moment Mark stands in front of the door and we see the policeman take off their hats — that’s all we needed. It wasn’t necessarily scripted like that, but you think, “How do we make this scene elegant and moving without going over the top?” Because it could have been so heavy. I feel like that’s the beauty of filmmaking: When you really strip things down to the essential, it can become poetic and so moving.
Meanwhile, Gemma is being subjected to painful experiences on Lumon Industries’ “testing floor.” How did you approach those scenes?
It was interesting to show different kinds of torture in each room. I don’t want to use the word “traumatizing,” but they were eerie and off-putting. We’re also dealing with contradictions, like in the Christmas room. It’s cheery, the doctor’s smiling at Gemma, but the fakeness of him playing a game brings this whole thing [of distress] out of her. And then in the dentist’s room, you’re in this sterile place where he has these weapons, and that evokes a different feeling. Everything had a weight, everything had a feeling.
Dichen Lachman and director Jessice Lee Gagné on set of “Severance” episode 7. Courtesy Apple TV+.
This episode puts Dichen Lachmann front and center for the first time. What was she like to work with?
It was fun to create a complex character who is basically a captive prisoner, with these rooms representing different parts of her. Dichen was creating a new character, so she was very open to exploration.
Did you rehearse?
We rehearsed at the house I’d rented for the whole of season 2. We’d sit in the living room and have casual conversations about what was really happening within each scene, what things were not being said. Adam has been with Mark for so long that he was really prepared. There wasn’t complicated blocking until the end, when I knew exactly how I wanted them to move. “I need you to walk from here to there.” But the rest was very casual.
You worked as director of photography on the provocative season 2 finale. How did you put together that last sequence where Mark abandons Gemma and runs with Helly down this seemingly endless hallway flickering with red and blue lights?
In terms of preparing for that sequence, the most complicated thing was the lighting, so I worked closely with the gaffer and the dimmer board operator.
Britt Lower and Adam Scott in “Severance,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
But what about the camera movement behind that tracking shot of Mark and Helly, running, and running, and running?
The sequences on the testing floor were handheld running shots. When we got to the regular MDR [Macrodata Refinement] floor, we were in rickshaw mode for most of that.
What’s “Rickshaw mode?”
The rickshaw is a lightweight dolly that the grips put together with pipes. Nothing fancy, just a contraption basically. Then we attached a remote head to the camera to stabilize it. It allows the grips to run really fast so they can spring down the hallway.
Severance has been filmed almost entirely in New York and New Jersey. Do you appreciate the production’s economic impact on the local filmmaking communities?
It’s really rare to do a show the way we get to do it on Severance. I know people say it’s a big budget, but we were given time and space to create at the highest level we could, and people were getting paid during times like Covid and the strike. The production’s intention has always been to get people to work.
You went straight from still photographer to full-fledged cinematographer. Did that transition come naturally to you?
I gravitated to cameras at a young age, started reading photography books, and quickly went technical with it. Films were also a big part of my life. My dad owned video rental stores, and we went to movies all the time, so there was this strong connection with the medium. In high school, I started shooting little movies with friends, and in film school, I went straight to cinematography.
Now that you’ve had the opportunity to direct, would you like to continue working with actors?
I do! They make me look at parts of myself that I hadn’t really looked at before. Now I feel like I’m more open to that in my life, so I definitely want to go there. And as a director, being able to build a world, step in, and have the final say – that’s really interesting.
Severance seasons 1 and 2 are streaming in their entirety on Apple TV+.
Featured image: Dichen Lachman in “Severance,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
In a world decimated by zombies, human survivors don’t have much time to worry about fashion, which explains why form follows function in The Last of Us. In the HBO Max drama, which concluded its shocking second season with a May 25 finale, characters primarily focus on staying warm and as dry as possible. Most of our major players in season two had two goals: revenge and killing any of the infected who got in their way. But even a no-frills wardrobe aesthetic requires world-building expertise, so showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann enlisted costume designer Ann Foley to call the post-apocalyptic sartorial shots.
A Georgia native with formidable credits, including the 2021 blockbuster Godzilla vs. Kong, Foley only decided to become a costume designer after she visited the set of 1969 as a college student when the Robert Downey Jr. movie was being filmed in Savannah. “I was blown away,” she tells The Credits. “Until then, I didn’t even know costume designer was a thing. Much to my mother’s dismay, I told her, ‘I’m moving to L.A. ‘ I arrived in Los Angeles with one phone number and $500.”
Since then, she’s designed wardrobes for TheSpiderwick Chronicles, She-Hulk, and Dwayne Johnson’s Skyscraper. For The Last of Us Season 2, she immersed herself in the eponymous video game to develop outfits for characters Ellie (Bella Ramsey), her girlfriend Dina (Isabela Merced), father figure Joel (Pedro Pascal), archenemy Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), steadfast Jesse (Young Mazino), militant Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) and their companions.
Speaking from Australia, where she’s working on Dever’s next movie, Godzilla x Kong: Skull Island, Foley discusses beanies, sneakers, color-coded character development, and the homemade ponchos worn by the kooky Seraphites religious cult.
Young Mazino, Isabela Merced, Bella Ramsey. Photo May 0Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
The penultimate episode this season flashes back to Ellie as she grows up, birthday by birthday. Somehow, Bella Ramsey actually looks younger!
Bella’s amazing. One of the things I loved about Episode 6 was getting to see Ellie’s progression through costumes, from a 14-year-old turning 15 to a 19-year-old young woman battling internal demons.
Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
How did you change Ellie’s clothes to indicate the changes she goes through?
When Ellie wakes up the morning of her fifteenth birthday, you see her in a yellow T-shirt with stripes. Then as Ellie progresses, the palette gets a little bit darker, and we start moving into this blue palette that you see in most of Season 2. That has echoes in Joel’s palette, which gets more blue as he gets a little darker and a little sadder. These two people are on a very similar journey emotionally and I wanted their clothing to reflect that.
Bella Ramsey. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
Along the way Ellie switches from Converse sneakers to hiking boots.
Ellie has to give up the Converse because they would not be practical for her to wear on the journey to Seattle. What I loved about the Converse — it’s probably one of my favorite costume moments of the season — were the doodles. Having watched the video game, I became slightly obsessed with Ellie doodling in the journal, so I came up with this idea I pitched to Craig: “What if Ellie were doodling on her shoes the way teenagers do?” So early on during pre-production, I gave a pair to Bella and said, “I want you to doodle on these like Ellie would.” I didn’t give her any direction, just “Here they are.” A month later, I got them back, and they were so cool. I didn’t even ask what the doodles meant because that was between Bella and Ellie.
Courtesy Ann Foley.
It’s cold most of the time in this show, so it only makes sense that there would be a ton of stocking caps.
Beanies.
Beanies, yeah. Nearly everybody wears muted colors except for Dina. Her beanie is bright and striped like a rainbow!
Dina will always have a brighter color palette due to who she is as a person and as a character. You can even see it in the game – Dina’s always going to be more colorful. When I found that beanie in a sale bin at some random store in Vancouver, it just felt right for her, and the same for her Aviator Nation jacket that I had on my mood board, to evoke that late 90s vibe. It doesn’t fit our timeline, where all clothes stopped in 2003, and Aviator Nation started in 2006. But when Neil Druckmann saw the jacket, he immediately thought it could be an iconic piece for Dina.
Danny Ramirez, Isabela Merced. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBOIsabela Merced. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
Joel’s likeable younger brother Tommy, played by Gabriel Luna, stands out from the crowd because he’s wearing bright plaid when the Infected hordes attack. What inspired that look?
When I was doing my research for Tommy, I came across this image of the Marlboro man on horseback riding through deep snow, and I went, “Yep, that’s Tommy.” Also, I felt it was important for the audience and [wife] Maria [Rutina Wesley] to spot Tommy in all of that chaos, which is why I kept red off of everyone else and dressed only Tommy in red.
Gabriel Luna. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
Kaitlyn Dever’s character, Abby, arguably the Season 2 villain, dresses in a fairly subdued fashion. What were you going for with her costumes?
It’s funny, I don’t see Abby as the villain. I see Abby and Ellie as being on a very similar journey of vengeance over their fathers, so their color palettes are going to be very similar. You see Ellie in a lot of blues and greens. With Abby, it’s blue with greys and tans, staying true to the WLF color palette. I wanted there to be a similar color story, with blue, to show that Ellie and Abby are sort of mirrors of each other.
Kaitlyn Dever. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
Jeffrey Wright plays Isaac, leader of the Washington Liberation Front. What informed his “Wolf” uniform?
I pulled that straight from the game. My feeling about a character piece like that is, if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Jeffrey played [the voice of] Isaac in the game; there wasn’t anything I could do to improve upon it.
Jeffrey Wright. Photograph by Liane Hentscher/HBO
The Seraphites barely speak a word of dialogue, but they play a pretty big role in Season 2 as violent enemies of Isaac and his Wolves. How did you arrive at their primitive look?
My concept costume illustrator, Imogene Chayes, and I worked closely with Ashley Swidowski, one of the game designers at Naughty Dog. We had multiple conversations with her, then went a step further to come up with the next evolution. In the game, they’re wearing black raincoats, but because the Seraphites are Luddites who make all their own tools and their own clothes, it didn’t feel realistic for them to have built raincoats. The Seraphites lived by the water near the abandoned Marina, so I thought, “What if they sourced canvas from old boats?” If you look at the Seraphites’ ponchos, you’ll see different colors of canvas because every single poncho is hand-painted by my breakdown team. Each poncho is unique to that actor.
Seraphite Priest Illustration. Courtesy Ann Foley.
Early in the season, hundreds of zombies attack Ellie and Joel’s community in Jackson, Wyoming. Logistically, costuming so many Infected creatures must have been a massive undertaking.
We did close to 600 fittings for Episode 2, and most of it was for the Infected. We fit every single actor into their own unique look to give each their own personality. Because of the snow in that episode, we also wanted to infuse as much color as we could so the Infected don’t completely disappear in the blizzard. That was really fun, and we also had multiple stages, from “just been bit” on up to the [final] Clicker stage. It took ten days to integrate all the Cordyceps [prosthetics] we got from Barry Gower and his brilliant team because one of our conversations with Craig and Neil had to do with taking it to the next level, where we see the fibers falling away and the ooze from the Cordyceps coming through. It was a wonderful process.
You spent about a year in Vancouver working on The Last of Us. Looking back on the experience, how do you feel about your contributions to the season?
I just hope the fans love the show as much as we loved making it. This season, it’s larger in scale, and aesthetically, it’s darker, but the show also has moments of light, which I hope the audience picks up on.
The Last of Us season 2 is playing in its entirety on HBO Max.
Featured image: Bella Ramsey, Isabela Merced. Photo Courtesy HBO.
A trio of young wizards has just earned admission to Hogwarts.
HBO’s Harry Potter series has found its Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley in Dominic McLaughlin, Arabella Stanton, and Alastair Scout, respectively. These three newcomers will take the roles made famous by Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, Emma Watson as Hermione, and Rupert Grint as Ron across eight feature films.
“After an extraordinary search led by casting directors Lucy Bevan and Emily Brockmann, we are delighted to announce we have found our Harry, Hermione, and Ron,” said showrunner and executive producer Francesca Gardiner and executive producer and director (of multiple episodes) Mark Mylod in a joint statement. “The talent of these three unique actors is wonderful to behold, and we cannot wait for the world to witness their magic together onscreen. We would like to thank all the tens of thousands of children who auditioned. It’s been a real pleasure to discover the plethora of young talent out there.”
The series will be a “faithful adaptation of the beloved Harry Potter books by author and executive producer J.K. Rowling,” HBO wrote in a statement.
McLaughlin, Stanton, and Scout joined a cast that already includes John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore; Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall; Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape; and Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid. All will serve as series regulars.
“We are happy to announce the casting of John Lithgow, Janet McTeer, Paapa Essiedu, Nick Frost, Luke Thallon, and Paul Whitehouse to play Dumbledore, McGonagall, Snape, Hagrid, Quirrell, and Filch,” said Gardiner and Mylod in an earlier statement. “We’re delighted to have such extraordinary talent onboard, and we can’t wait to see them bring these beloved characters to new life.”
The series is set to begin filming this summer and is expected to premiere on HBO in 2026.
For more on Warner Bros., DC Studios, Max, and more, check out these stories:
The sixth and final season of The Handmaid’s Tale picks up where it left off: on a train driving away from Gilead. June (Elisabeth Moss) is aboard, headed for Alaska, and so is her former tormentor, Serena (Yvonne Strahovski), the latter woman’s fortunes in Gilead having tumbled after the death of her husband, Fred (Joseph Fiennes). Each with a child in tow, June and Serena are seeking safety, but neither will keep it once they find it.
Knowing that Season 6 would pick up a few hours after the last season left off, cinematographer Nicola Daley’s (Gangs of London, Halo) first focus was how best to spend 45 minutes of the season opener on a train. She and the crew started talking about the episode six months before even starting prep, and at Moss’s suggestion, used an LED wall outside the carriage to allow the day to fade over the course of the episode and to help the actors experience the wobbles of a train carriage in motion.
On the set of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Courtesy Hulu.
“For me, it looks so much better, because you get all that beautiful reflection off the LED wall. The nice shiny surfaces that are in the train reflected all the beautiful light coming off the wall as if it were real,” said Daley, who also added interactive lighting between the set and the LED wall in order to marry the two planes of depth together.
THE HANDMAID’S TALE – “Train” – June and Serena’s journey takes an unexpected turn. Moira makes a bold decision. Nick deals with a powerful visitor. (Disney/Steve Wilkie) YVONNE STRAHOVSKI, ELISABETH MOSS
The journey to Alaska is long, and outside the train, an idyllic daylight transforms to dusk. Inside, other passengers realize who Serena is, and a mob forms. “We used Train to Busan as a reference. Obviously, we don’t have zombies, but Lizzie always described the mob as zombie-like,” Daley explained. The mob attacks, June pulls the emergency brake, and at that moment, “I wanted it to go even more chaotic,” the cinematographer said. The actors in the mob pushed on the camera operator, and Daley put in flickering lights and a red emergency brake light, sending the lighting from one extreme to another. “It’s 45 minutes all set in one carriage, so you need that visual interest and that ramping up of tension through the camera work and the lighting,” she said. “I love that episode, because you think it’s going to go one way with Serena and June talking, and then it takes a left turn and gets violent and ends up with her shoving her off the train.”
THE HANDMAID’S TALE – “Train” – June and Serena’s journey takes an unexpected turn. Moira makes a bold decision. Nick deals with a powerful visitor. (Disney/Steve Wilkie) ELISABETH MOSS, NICOLA DALEY (DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY)
Serena and her baby land in Canaan, and June makes it to her mother in Alaska. Their stories could have ended there, but both end up drawn back to Gilead—Serena to rule, and June to fight. June’s journey back takes her to the rebellion’s Mayday headquarters, shot in an abandoned ski lodge. “It was just perfect, because it’s got that big room with that massive triangular window. When Lizzie and I talked about episode two, when June comes to Mayday for the first time, Lizzie described it as kind of like a fairytale, like June goes down the rabbit hole,” Daley said. She mixed tungsten and daylight, and when June comes out to the waiting crowd, it almost feels like entering a church.
THE HANDMAID’S TALE – “Exodus” – (Disney/Steve Wilkie) ELISABETH MOSS
Meanwhile, in New Bethlehem, Serena is also holding court, with Daley shooting her from below as she reigns over—and is uncharacteristically questioned by—the Gilead wives attending her bridal shower. The symmetry in the women’s journeys is intentional. Back in season five, “Lizzie always described it as ‘Serena and June as Juliet and Juliet,’” said Daley. Even with June in rebellion for the greater good and Serena in it, as always, only for herself, the women are always connected. New Bethlehem, the Gilead-lite where Serena begins to find her way back to the top, is a picture-perfect region on the water where Daley embraced sunsets and aqua colors. With The Truman Show as a reference, New Bethlehem “looks like the real world, but everything’s a little bit too similar and a bit too neat,” Daley said. (In reality, it’s Canada—the exteriors were shot in Crystal Beach, two hours from Toronto.)
THE HANDMAID’S TALE – “Shattered” – After a shocking revelation, June spirals. Serena plans for a prestigious future. (Disney/Steve Wilkie) YVONNE STRAHOVSKI
Stylistically and sociologically opposite New Bethlehem is Jezebel’s, the house of ill repute where Janine (Madeline Brewer) and other cast-off handmaids are banished. Daley made Jezebel’s shower room, soon to become a site of horror, a cool blue that contrasted with a warmly lit dressing area infused with a sense of decaying beauty. Janine and a shocked Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd) first recognize each other in Janine’s hand mirror, a planned moment that sets in motion Lydia’s internal journey toward finally realizing what she has done. Outside Jezebel’s, Daley put Lydia under flickering lights, opening and closing doors, trying to get in, a visual metaphor for the truth starting to flare up in front of her.
Serena agrees to marry Commander Wharton (Josh Charles), then moves to cement her status in Gilead through a massive formal wedding in Boston. The cathedral where the nuptials take place required an enormous amount of lighting, and for Daley, who also shot Fred’s funeral back in season five, the scene felt like coming full circle. An overhead shot reveals a legion of handmaids, bonneted and clustered at the back of the church. “Everybody’s bonnet is facing one way, and then you just see June’s bonnet. Someone said to me, ‘I’ve never seen that shot in Handmaid’s before,’” Daley said. “After six seasons, it’s hard to come up with something that hasn’t been shot before.”
THE HANDMAID’S TALE – “Devotion.” (Disney/Steve Wilkie) YVONNE STRAHOVSKI, JOSH CHARLESNICOLA DALEY (DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY). Courtesy of Disney/Hulu
The Handmaid’s Tale is full of unique camera work. With only ten days to shoot each episode, “when I first came on board in season five, they told me, ‘don’t shoot all the coverage. Shoot the story, shoot June’s point of view, and shoot June’s experience of the scene,” Daley said. Eschewing traditional coverage, alongside Moss, Daley continually thought about how to tell the story with the camera. “I think that’s always been a beautiful thing about Handmaid’s,and it carries on through all six seasons.”
The Handmaid’s Tale is streaming on Hulu.
Featured image: THE HANDMAID’S TALE – “Train” – June and Serena’s journey takes an unexpected turn. Moira makes a bold decision. Nick deals with a powerful visitor. (Disney/Steve Wilkie) ELISABETH MOSS, NICOLA DALEY (DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY)
In this most impossible mission to date, McQuarrie ties the series together in a near-three-hour finale that functions as a proper send-off for the world’s most indefatigable super spy (all respect to James Bond and Jason Bourne) that ties together all of Hunt’s previous missions. It’s a towering, globetrotting experience, but at its core, a simple story: following the events of Dead Reckoning, Hunt and his team must stop a rogue AI, known as The Entity, from unleashing nuclear destruction. In order to save the world one last time, terrible sacrifices will have to be made, and every skeleton in Ethan’s closet will be brought marching out.
As Ethan, Benji (Simon Pegg), Grace (Hayley Atwell), and Paris (Pom Klementieff) journey from one far-off location to the next, the mission becomes as much about saving the world as it is about protecting the people Hunt holds dear. Final Reckoning entertains with character as much as it does with a bravura submarine set piece and dueling airplanes.
McQuarrie spoke with The Credits about honoring the big-screen experience, the evolution of the franchise, and two of the film’s most breathtaking sequences.
You’ve said that if only a hundred people are going to hear your message, it’s not quite worth sharing. What message really drove you on Final Reckoning?
What Tom and I are focused on doing, first and foremost, is getting people to come back to the theater and enjoy that experience and reconnect emotionally with it. Why you and I go to see movies in a movie theater, more than anything, why we keep doing it, and why we look at it as something that deserves to be preserved, is that we have an emotional connection to the act of going to the movies. When I was growing up, that was the only way you saw movies. They didn’t come out on home video for much, much longer. In fact, when I was much younger, there wasn’t even a home video. Sometimes you’d have to wait years before you would see a movie on television again. Now the release window is so small, and a younger generation doesn’t care where they get the movie from.
Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
And it’s certainly not because people no longer enjoy going to the movies…
It’s not that they don’t like movies – they just don’t need to go to the theater to see them. They don’t feel that same emotional connection to it. It’s very understandable given the fact that theaters are maintained the way that they are, and people behave the way that they do in movie theaters. You have to overcome all of that. You have to make a movie that’s so much bigger than that, that people are willing to brave it to come. That’s what Tom and I are reaching for and looking to preserve, and you have to make it an emotional experience, and you have to make it an experience that is specific to the big screen.
It’s hard not to look at almost 30 years of this franchise and think, what does Final Reckoning say? What does this entry, which is about defeating AI and protecting your crew, say about Tom Cruise?
That’s an inevitable part of making a Mission: Impossible. I recently came across a quote that suggests every movie is a documentary about itself. The making of Mission: Impossible is not too dissimilar to watching a Mission: Impossible. The story in the movie becomes the story on set, and vice versa. It’s not like I’m making an overt statement about those things. It just becomes self-evident in the making of it. I mean, look, Tom Cruise as an actor is somebody that people have been looking at for 40 years, and people have been making a great deal of assumptions about. And in just the same way I’m using what I sense to be an emotional moment in the zeitgeist, I’m also using people’s suppositions about Tom and playing against them.
How so?
I knew that when people came to Top Gun: Maverick, they would naturally assume that the story we were telling about this character would have similarities to Tom. People would draw those parallels and think that that’s what we were saying the movie was about. No one’s ever guessed what I was really after. Nobody’s ever put their finger on it, and it doesn’t matter to me that they do. It matters that everybody came to the movie.
Tom Cruise plays Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick from Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films.
Can I ask, what were you after?
You can certainly ask.
And would you answer?
That would take away the movie’s mystique. If anybody should ever guess it, I would tell them. However, right after Maverick, and before the film was released, I knew we had a successful movie, as it had been on the shelf for quite a long time during the pandemic. Tom and I always talk about how one of the hardest things to do in this business is to repeat a successful action. People tend to attribute success to luck and take those successes for granted, rather than analyzing why they work. Everything you’re looking at in these movies is what we have learned from the previous movie, and applying it.
Director Christopher McQuarrie, Ving Rhames and Tom Cruise on the set of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
For example?
There were things we tried in Dead Reckoning that worked, things we tried in Dead Reckoning that didn’t. We applied those lessons to Final Reckoning, but we also didn’t play it safe. We continued to push. I know there are decisions in this movie that not everybody necessarily agrees with, and I just urge anybody who didn’t fully take it in the first time to go and see it again. Everybody I’ve talked to who has seen it a second time has a completely different reaction to it.
Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
It’s a lot of movie.
It’s a lot of movie, and it’s a lot of setup, which, for a lot of people, they’re looking to get to what they come to believe Mission is about. Tom and I have very different impressions about what Mission is about. The things that you come to expect are what you come to expect, but to Tom and me, that’s not what Mission is about. And so, for me, I find the setup, the character drama, and all that interaction to be quite compelling. Not everybody does.
Greg Tarzan Davis, Christopher McQuarrie, Lucy Tulugarjuk, Simon Pegg, Rolf Saxon, Pom Klementieff and Hayley Atwell on the set of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
Each Mission has its own flavor, which is why the franchise is so entertaining. How’d you want your installments to continue to evolve stylistically?
And it has to. I appreciate the love that fans of the franchise have for all the other movies. Sometimes you feel people who have their favorite Mission and they want that Mission again, but that’s entirely not the point of Mission. As someone who’s directed four of these movies, there are three rules of Mission: Rule number one is you’ve got to have the theme. Rule number two is you have to have a mask gag. And rule number three is he’s got to get a mission: “Good evening, Mr…” Those are the only things Tom Cruise really poses in the movie. That’s the formula of Mission: Impossible.
The other thing that I took to heart: I listened very intently to people’s dialogue about the movie. They want a different director every time. And so, I endeavor to do that with each one, even these last two, which were presented as two parts of the same story. I’m a very different director on Final Reckoning than I was on Dead Reckoning, and a very different director on Fallout, and on Rogue Nation. That was to keep that feeling alive, that feeling of evolution and variety in all of these movies. And you look no further than the example of Simon Pegg.
Simon Pegg plays Benji Dunn in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
How does Benji represent the franchise’s evolution?
On Ghost Protocol, when I came in and kind of blew up the script, Simon felt a lot of the stuff he had signed on for was disappearing. They were things that would never have made it to the final film, and I understood what would and what could. And so, when Simon was upset because he was losing a mask gag, I asked, “Why do you like the Mask gag?” He said, “Because I don’t want to just be the guy behind the computer. I want to get my hands dirty and do some spy stuff.” And I said, “If I can give you something other than the mask gag, as good or better, as long as it’s team-oriented, would you be fine with that?” Simon said, “Yeah, I don’t really care what it is, just something not by the computer.”
I ultimately engineered the story so that Simon was the guy who saves Brandt’s (Jeremy Renner) life and kills the second villain in the movie, all of which are things that would never have happened in the movie they were engineering. It was just not Benji’s destiny. It took some doing, some salesmanship on my part, to get it there.
And that began an agreement between Simon Pegg and me that Benji would always evolve. He had to stay Benji. He is the beating heart of the team, and he’s a fun character, but we wanted Benji to grow and to evolve. In each installment, we push it further. And in the editorial, we pull back a bit, exploring and giving ourselves those options. You feel Benji evolve chapter over chapter, until this one, where he’s ascended to a completely different level. And I see the franchise in much the same way. For me, it had to evolve. If I were going to continue to be the director of these movies, it had to evolve.
Two of this chapter’s defining traits – fear and silence – may be best exemplified by the submarine sequence. How did you and your crew nail the pace of that exciting dread?
The pace is dictated by the gimbal. To understand what the gimbal was – imagine a cylinder, a 60-foot-diameter steel latticework cylinder that weighed a thousand tons. Into that, you could load the set – the submarine set. They were interchangeable, so every room that you see Tom move through is a room that had to be loaded and unloaded from this gimbal, which rotates 360 degrees, tilts 45 degrees in both directions, and is fully submersible in an 8.5-million-liter tank – all of which was scratch-built.
Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie on the set of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
How much experimentation was involved in operating the gimbal?
We didn’t really know what this thing was going to do until we turned it on. We knew how fast it could turn. And so, we did a bunch of animatics with the submarine rotating and did a great deal of experimentation in terms of putting in the hypothetical camera placements and seeing what happened if it was half-filled with water, all full of water, only 20% full of water – to see what those cameras could see. And it became pretty clear, even before the gimbal was finished, that the gimbal’s slow rotation was not a bug – it was a feature. The scene just has a certain torturous, unrelenting, inevitable sense that he’s trapped in a giant gear.
How did the mobility and weight of the dive suit, as well, influence the pace of that stunt?
A Mark VII dive suit, when it’s wet and he’s not submerged, weighs close to 125 pounds. He’s carrying close to his full body weight while he’s climbing around inside that submarine, which we knew would be slow and agonizing. Well, let’s just lean into that. Let’s not fight it. Let’s make this environment just glue, and it just won’t let him go. And that’s what I think you’re feeling when you’re watching that scene.
Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
As Anthony Hopkins says in Mission: Impossible II, “This is not mission difficult, it’s mission impossible.” How do you approach escalation and write the impossible within an action sequence?
The essence of action is suspense, and the essence of suspense is not creating a scenario that can’t possibly end well. That’s not the challenge. The audience knows how a scene is going to turn out. They know how a movie is going to turn out from the first 10 minutes of the movie. The first 10 minutes are a contract between the filmmaker and the audience that says, “This is the kind of movie you’re getting.”
So I don’t try to create a scenario where the audience can’t imagine the outcome, because I know they’re always imagining the outcome, whether they’re right or not. What I’m trying to do is create a situation where the audience believes it will end well. They need it to end well for the movie to continue, but what they can’t see is how it possibly could end well. You’re just constantly creating scenarios where you’re saying, “There’s no believable way out of this,” and then finding your way out.
Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
Erik [Jendresen, screenwriter] and I started with the ending. We knew how it was going to end. We just had to engineer our way backward from that. And we also knew you, having seen the sequence, know how it ultimately ends. We’re telling you the whole time, “This is what’s going to happen,” and the audience is thinking, “No, that won’t happen.” And, well, it does.
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in theaters now.
Featured image: Tom Cruise and Director Christopher McQuarrie on the set of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
If there’s a performer well-suited for the world of Mission: Impossible, it’s Katy O’Brian. The films are wildly ambitious technical endeavors – hugely physical and highly creative. Those are just a few of the characteristics that define O’Brian’s work, both on and off screen. On screen, she’s appeared in a galaxy far, far away in the world of Star Wars (The Mandalorian), mixed it up with superheroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania), and chased tornadoes in the most recent Twisters. Imbuing her performances is a work ethic honed in bodybuilding and martial arts.
Last year, she gave a powerhouse performance in Love Lies Bleeding – both richly cinematic and personal. Now, in Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning, she plays Kodiak, one of the colorful supporting characters helping Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, of course) save the world from nuclear destruction. It’s a role O’Brian couldn’t disclose much about during our interview, but one she worked closely with Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie in shaping.
Recently, O’Brian spoke with The Credits about earning a role in what is possibly the final installment (for now, at least) in the Mission: Impossible franchise and making the stories she wants to tell.
When you’re reading a Mission: Impossible script, what are you looking for?
[Laughs] Script? That’s funny. By the time I was about to fly out, I asked, “Hey, can I know anything about my character?” And McQ [writer/director Christopher McQuarrie] is like, “We’ll work on it when you get here.” They’re focused on making the words that come out of your mouth authentic to you as a person and authentic to you as a character. They want to hear how you’re saying things, and how you move, act, and work before they even mold the words for you. What I loved about that was that Tom and McQ were there. It was intimate. Tom doesn’t have someone reading lines other than himself, and for the biggest movie star in the world, that’s incredible. He was so passionate, not just for his performance, but with every single person’s performance.
Katy O’Brian plays Kodiak in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
Being on a Mission: Impossible set, how deep do you dive into the technical side of making one of these movies?
They want you to understand the lens they’re using. They want you to understand why they’re doing a scene a certain way and having you be more static than you’re used to. This is going to be an acting style based on the lens. They encouraged us to ask the crew questions if we weren’t working. Like, “Hey, can you explain the lighting setup?” They want you to understand how the entire team works, how the entire set works. They break it down: “This is this set, this is how we built it this way, this is why we built it this way. This is the effort that it took and the reason it’s unique.”
What did you appreciate most about the practical sets and stunts?
They’re trying to do as much as they can practically. Also, as an artist, appreciating the creativity and effort that goes into finding out how to do something on a grand scale practically is incredible. It shows a great appreciation for human beings and artists.
How does your life as a martial artist inspire you when you’re working on a Mission: Impossible or other projects?
It’s such a stress reliever. It’s also a way to keep the brain going outside of memorizing lines and everything like that. Jiu-jitsu, for instance – it’s such a fun game of chess. Muay Thai is physically exhausting, but also, there’s strategy and constantly remembering techniques. It’s mostly a way to relax, because I don’t often get to use it on screen, which has been such a bummer. I’m actively looking to do that now while I still have a functioning body. My shoulder’s already giving out, so I’m trying to take these 31 years of martial arts and put them on the screen. But there are so few action movies centered around fighting that allow for a woman lead that aren’t sci-fi, horror, or fantasy. I’m trying to find a grounded action or action-comedy that’s not all guns and explosions. It’s something I’ve discussed on sets with Tom and Glenn [Powell], just brainstorming, “What is a world where you see this being possible?”
(L-R) Katy O’Brian, Kristen Stewart. Credit: Anna Kooris
You’re writing more these days. Are you looking to create those roles and projects for yourself?
I’m in this weird, slow time in the business, where everyone’s almost afraid to pull the trigger with productions. I’m taking this as a time to pretend that I’m back in school. I’ve got my Japanese book to try to learn a little Japanese, and then I’ve got a book on fitness that I’m downloading because I’m working on a little project. I’m doing all that on the side, trying my own stuff. Once I finally put social media down for a while and stopped constantly doom-scrolling, I became so much more productive. My brain is functioning normally again, and the creative flow is coming. It’s been great because I overcame the hurdle of perfecting the first draft. Now I’m just doing this complete vomit draft of the story I want to tell.
Arnold [Schwarzenegger] has great acting advice about treating lines and projects like bodybuilding and reps. In terms of discipline, do you feel similarly about your approach to acting?
If you don’t train, then you don’t get better. An athlete can definitely understand that. One of my first big gigs was a series regular on this silly zombie show. The auditions were 14 pages long. They kept making me do it over and over again. I finally asked the showrunner, “Why did you book me for the job?” He’s like, “I saw in your résumé: black belt, and that says discipline. I saw bodybuilding competitor, and that says significant discipline. Those are necessary for someone who’s going to have to come in every day, know their lines, know their role, and be able to handle the stress. That gives, even on the production end, people more confidence that someone will be able to handle it.”
(L-R) Katy O’Brian. Credit: Anna Kooris
In addition to the work ethic, understanding the countless nuances of an art form is also important, right?
Bodybuilding is an art – you’re sculpting your body, seeing what you need to improve, and fine-tuning sometimes really small things. The same with martial arts – it’s very technical. It’s called martial arts. There’s beauty and craft to it. You’re constantly redefining and understanding the technique. A lot of that is introspection and seeing, “What am I failing at? What do I need to improve?” and having the self-awareness to focus on that improvement. It’s crazy how many actors are like, “I’m not booking anymore, I’ve hit a plateau,” and don’t change anything. They don’t say, “Maybe I need to go back to class and learn how to breathe,” or “I need to learn how to move and take a movement technique, like an Alexander Technique,” or “I need to work on breaking down a scene better.”
(L-R) Katy O’Brian. Credit: Anna Kooris
Even when you’re not working, you are working.
[Acting coach] Larry Moss says in his book and chats with him too: you have to treat it as a full-time job. You should read multiple plays a month and memorize a monologue here and there. Then, when you get one in real life for a scene, you should pick it up quickly and know what memorization techniques work for you.
You worked with Larry Moss on Love Lies Bleeding. The emotions in that movie are so visceral and, as you’ve stated, provided you with new opportunities as a performer. What about that script or part of your life helped you perform at that level?
I was frustrated because for the longest time, I didn’t think anybody was willing to give me those challenges. It’s easy to get pigeonholed into a genre as an actor – especially as a queer actor. Or women in general. Even when I read the script breakdown, I was like, “That’s me – queer woman, bodybuilder from the Midwest. I don’t know any other actors matching the description.” I’ve often been overlooked for roles because of my body, so I thought, “This is a great opportunity to put it on screen in the way I want to show it.” There’s nothing embarrassing or weird to me about having a muscular physique on a woman.
It’s such an intense film.
When I read the script and saw how deep and complicated the relationships were – they weren’t just cookie-cutter, perfect, or morally superior – it was exactly what I’d been craving and hungering Knowing that it would be with Rose [Glass], something intimate with a female lens, I was like, “This is going to be such an amazing project. It’s going to challenge me. It’s the role that I need to take in order to take that next step and have people be able to trust me in bigger projects.”
Back in Season 4 of Black Mirror, an enthusiastic programmer, Nanette (Cristin Milioti), gets trapped in a virtual-reality game by its creator and her boss, Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons). Shy and self-minimizing in real life, Nanette’s in-game clone is creative and confident enough to lead the rest of her colleagues, also trapped as crew by Daly on the starship USS Callister, out through a wormhole. Black Mirror picks up the thread with a sequel in Season 7, “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” with Daly dead and the starship’s crew fighting to survive against the multiplayer game’s millions of other players.
For production designer Miranda Jones (Trigger Point, Breeders), the sequel brought the chance to upgrade and further explore Daly’s starship, the in-game world, and Infinity’s offices, now taken over by Daly’s megalomaniac co-founder, Walton (Jimmi Simpson). Some of the show’s visual elements were inherited, like the characters’ improbably slim cell phones and the prevalence of clear Perspex details throughout the office’s hardware. But while the original episode’s design was rooted in loving Star Trek references (co-creator William Bridges is a fan), the sequel sees Nanette and her crew make it off the starship and onto the Infinity game’s multifarious planets. For Jones, that meant considering what Daly’s creations would look like, as well as imagining the garage locale where he first made it all happen.
Jones spoke with us about mirroring Nanette’s two worlds, incorporating practical elements into the props and builds, and using retro technology to make the future believable.
The ship and the office seemed to mirror each other. Was that intentional?
We directly connected things like the lifts and the movement around them. Charlie [Brooker] had inspired us in the script, and Toby [Haynes], the director, also loved those connections. But we did that deliberate echoing with all sorts of things, particularly when we saw Nanette in both places. And we’d done quite a lot with the upgrade of both spaces. The ship had been upgraded through Infinity, and the office had been upgraded through Walton’s ego.
Cristin Milioti is Nanette Cole in “Black Mirror.” Production Still Image. Courtesy Netflix.Cristin Milioti is Nanette Cole in “Black Mirror.” Production Still Image. Courtesy Netflix.
How did you want to change or update the locations from the Season 4 episode?
There’s a sort of homage to Star Trek in that first one, but we were very much into a game aesthetic in this one. But it was a game that had been created by someone working for years. You can look at some of the games out there, and they’re not as, perhaps, detailed as ours. We wanted to believe Infinity could really go for it. We wanted to add a lot more detail and finesse. We also had some extra things, like a weapons drawer, that didn’t exist before. The consoles had working parts to them this time. We spent quite a lot of time, partly to make the actors really enjoy it. I was standing on the shoulders of what had been done before, so great credit to Joel [Collins] and Phil [Sims, previous production designers], who had done the first one. But we had a lot of freedom to really, really upgrade it.
Milanka Brook in “Black Mirror.” Courtesy Netflix.
And how did you upgrade the office?
The first time round, it still felt like a startup, and I thought Infinity was making money, and Walton had a massive ego. My idea was to make it familiar to the audience so you knew we were still in Infinity’s offices, but Walton had knocked through to Daly’s office. We upgraded the lighting, and we just really went for it.
Jimmi Simpson in “Black Mirror.” Courtesy Netflix.Jimmi Simpson in “Black Mirror.” Courtesy Netflix.
What was the approach to incorporating practical elements that function?
The ship took three months to build, so we had quite a lot of time to think about things. We had the consoles laid out in our offices in Ealing, and we kept bringing different things in to play with, and everybody had a go. The more we did, the more ideas popped out. It was very intentional, but as the ship was built, we all walked round it and more got added. Sometimes on the day, Toby would have an idea, and there’d be this mad scramble around trying to fulfill that great idea. It was a real mix. The guns this time really lit up. As you upgraded through the weapons, they were full of LEDs, and the triggers worked. Instead of adding them in post, the actors could see that happen. We definitely wanted to improve the functionality of everything.
Cristin Milioti, Jimmi Simpson. Courtesy Netflix.
How did you approach the in-game locations?
Charlie would describe them, but then there was the matter of what’s available. We went down all sorts of different routes in how gamey to make them feel, how super real to make them feel. We went somewhere between the boundary of sci-fi and games. There was always an ice planet at the beginning of the script. At one point, we were going to go to Iceland, and then we looked at a slate mine in Wales that was possibly quite dangerous to film in at night. In the end, we built it. Itchanged so many times before we got to where we were. Then we always knew we wanted to do something green, and again, we thought about going abroad, but what we ended up doing was we went to Black Park and filled it with exotics and smoke. Then we needed a contrast, so we went to a copper mine in Wales. You didn’t need to punch the colors much to make it just look otherworldly, because it really is orange. We wanted to introduce a really contrasting color, so we made the creature’s blood blue. The aim was to make three very different planets for each character.
Cristin Milioti, Jimmi Simpson. Courtesy Netflix.
How did you approach Daly’s garage?
We obviously needed an exterior. We knew we then needed to match it to an interior that was very slightly bigger, and walls had to be removed for the stunts and things like that. So we spent quite a lot of time looking for something that could be California, and we ended up outside London in an estate with that style of house. We particularly liked the one on the sweep of the curve, but of course, that did not have the garage doors that we wanted. We had to put them in because we wanted the particular movement of that garage door, like a spaceship. And it needed to be that way, so that when Daly clicked his fingers, it ominously started to come down again.
Jesse Plemons. Courtesy Netflix.
There are so many subtle signals that show that it takes place just into the future, but there are also retro elements. What was the approach there?
This comes from Charlie’s brain, the way we look at five minutes into the future. We can be quite linear with our decisions on things, and Charlie always brings in these different ways of looking at it. By introducing some of the more period items, it was a way not to explain exactly how Daly’s doing this, because that’s bonkers. It’s a floppy disk. Therefore, you accept it because if we had tried to invent the technology that can do that, we would have asked too many questions. When he was working in the real world, it was a bit like Warhammer, we had all sorts of little paints. And then he just expanded that to how he’d make planets. But it would still be very physical, even if he’s just doing it.
Black Mirror season 7 is streaming now on Netflix.
Featured image: Cristin Milioti is Nanette Cole in “Black Mirror.” Production Still Image. Courtesy Netflix.
A quarter of a century after the first Final Destination movie landed in theaters, the beloved franchise is back with a vengeance. Final Destination: Bloodlines leans into two things: using practical effects wherever possible and paying homage to the franchise’s core concept—Death can’t be cheated.
Final Destination: Bloodlines, now in theaters, follows college student Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) as she is plagued by a recurring nightmare that leads her to discover her family on Death’s list. Her only way to try to save them is to find the one person who can break the cycle.
Cinematographer Christian Sebaldt, ASC, whose work includes Resident Evil: Apocalypse, and visual effects supervisor Nordin Rahhali, known for San Andreas and the Fantastic Beasts films, collaborate to breathe new life into the franchise’s trademark iconic set pieces. Here, they break down how they made the best of Vancouver’s creative talent pool, how they constructed the film’s creatively brutal sequences, and what they think needs to be done to bring more films like this back to Los Angeles, where they both live.
What can you tell me about your creative partnership?
Rahhali: The restaurant set piece at the beginning of the movie is a great example. That came from the script, it went to storyboards, then a very heavily prevised sequence so we could work out all the major shots ahead of time. That was important for Christian and me, because we could figure out which ones would be challenging even before the set was built. I was also able to do some techvis so we could figure out how to film it. We had limitations on the stage space and how the build was going to be. We also gave some leeway for the art department to put flyways in the ceiling so we could get cranes in, and all of that had to be planned way ahead.
Caption: New Line Cinema’s “Final Destination Bloodlines,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Eric Milner
How much prep time did you have?
Rahhali: We prepped twice for this film because we were a week away from filming, and SAG-AFTRA members went on strike, which shut the production down. When they came to an agreement, we went back to film, but not everyone was available, so we had a partially different team. We managed to keep the core intact, but had to do prep again. We benefited from it because our script had evolved and improved. The writers were on strike, too, but we had a locked script, so when they agreed, they could work on it, and lo and behold, it was better. The whole film benefited from that.
Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
When setting pieces and effects, what was the one you knew you needed to get right first to set the bar?
Rahhali: We wanted to have the first scene in the film at the end of the schedule because it was the most complicated. However, due to money, scheduling, and other things, it ended up fitting at the head of the schedule. I think that also benefited the film because sometimes you need to be thrown into the fire and get the hard thing out of the way.
Sebaldt: One thing that has always been important to me, no matter what type of project it is, is to deliver first dailies that are really good, because the first few days, maybe even the first week or so, the studio or the network, wherever the money is coming from, are watching them closely. It was the right way to start because the moment the dailies came in, everybody said, ‘Oh, my God. Incredible.’
Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
What are your favorite effects from the film?
Sebaldt: My favorite scene is when our lovely couple gets in the elevator in the first scene as the premonitions start. The audience sees them arrive at the restaurant, but the elevator doesn’t actually arrive because it was built into the set and didn’t move at all. It’s just a gag, but everybody wiggles in sync, and now it’s my favorite effect in the movie.
Rahhali: There’s a really great shot right after the explosion in the restaurant. It’s a tracking shot. Iris enters the frame, the restaurant is on fire, people are in the background, and there is all this smoke. It’s the first shot where you see the mayhem and feel it on her face as she runs towards us. It’s not the most extravagant shot, but it looks beautiful and merges all the disciplines. It’s the type of shot that, if done wrong, you don’t buy anything after it.
Final Destination: Bloodlines leans into practical effects. What were the creative benefits of that?
Rahhali: I’m a big advocate for building off a good base. The visuals look the best when they’re built off of something real, or if there’s a great reference, so I worked with our SFX head, who was game for putting as much fire everywhere as possible, which is why we fireproof the set. We had the fire department there every day. It was a very safe and controlled environment, but they could put fire everywhere. With that base, even though we added a lot more fire, that fire was a lighting reference and a physical reference for the actors to act against. Practical effects like the degloving of the hand and the lawnmower to the face are incredible. That was a beautiful maquette, and we took a lawn mower, went for the face, added blood, and enhanced it, but it was a base to work off.
Caption: Brec Bassinger as “Iris” in New Line Cinema’s “Final Destination Bloodlines,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. PicturesCourtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
You are both based here in California. Final Destination: Bloodlines was shot in Vancouver, Canada. Did you use a lot of local craft talent?
Sebaldt: I rely on the camera, lighting, and grip departments to save my butt, and fortunately, when we started both preps, the talent pool was unbelievably strong. There was a hole in the schedule where the big movies and TV shows were not shooting, so we had the best crew available in Western Canada at that time.
Rahhali: Vancouver has a world-class crew and a great talent base, both for production and post. Years and years of rebates will do that for you. Everyone migrates up there.
Sebaldt: I worked there on the show Lucifer for Jerry Bruckheimer for a few months. I was replacing another DP, and I met a gaffer with whom I worked well, called Sean Rooney. When this project came along, Sean was available. He’s extremely experienced, can handle the most complex settings, and he’s unbelievably prepared. He brings the right rigging gaffers and so on, so we never have issues or delays. If I have an inexperienced crew, I deliver a mediocre product. There’s no question about it.
There is a huge move to improve incentives and bring more filming back to California, especially Los Angeles. What do you think needs to be done to help with that?
Rahhali: It’s dollars. That’s all it is. If a market offers a studio a rebatable percentage of 30 percent or more on their dollar, that’s where they will want to film, especially if that market is strong and has a great team. Vancouver, Toronto, London, and the Gold Coast in Australia have built up. This is just my opinion, but until all those rebates go away, the studios will keep going for that. I don’t see things coming back unless California has comparable rebates or incentives. I want it to because I live here. I know they’re trying, but they haven’t gone far enough. Some films will take advantage of those, but I don’t think it will bring it all back until it is close to the level of other locations.
Sebaldt: I pay attention to where I shop. If there are four stores, and they all have the same product, and in this case, it’s a good crew, I’ll go to the place that saves me 15 percent. The problem with California is that we don’t have anything comparable, even to other states. We have got to look around this country, and say, ‘Who gives the best rebates? Let’s beat the best rebates in the rest of the country to bring projects here.’
Rahhali: Make Hollywood what it was. I’ve lived here for 21 years. I can count on one hand the films that I’ve worked on here in terms of production. I’ve always flown everywhere else to film. I’ve done pickups on films here, or reshoots in some cases, but it’s very sad that Hollywood, the hub of all cinema exports worldwide, doesn’t shoot films as much as it used to. I would love to film here entirely, but I’ve never done it.
Final Destination: Bloodlines is in theaters now.
Featured image: Brec Bassinger as “Iris” in New Line Cinema’s “Final Destination Bloodlines,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo credit: Eric Milner/Warner Bros.
In The Studio, the fast-talking movie executives who make and sell motion pictures to mass audiences might use “on the nose” as a pejorative. But sometimes, the obvious solution can’t be denied. For show creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, there was only one place to set their behind-the-scenes look at how cinematic sausage gets made: Warner Bros. Studios.
The Burbank, California backlot serves as headquarters for the fictional Continental Studios. Run by Rogen’s Matt Remick and his fractious minions (Ike Barinholtz, Catherine O’Hara, Patty Leigh, Chase Sui Wonders, and Kathryn Hahn), the studio co-exists in an alternative universe alongside the “big five” Hollywood dream factories that originated in the 1920s. Rogen and his team enlisted production designer Julie Berghoff to make his imaginary fiefdom seem authentic. “What I was trying to do is to create a space that allows the audience to feel the lushness and the history of a real Hollywood studio,” says Berghoff, who won a 2017 Emmy for designing The Handmaid’s Tale.
Speaking from Atlanta, where she’s working on an Amazon Prime project, Berghoff explains how Frank Lloyd Wright, mid-century modern master John Lautner, and a 9,000-square-foot soundstage served as the foundation for a 2025 incarnation of old-school glamour.
In designing Continental Studios, you basically created a home base for the entire series. How did you arrive at the look?
I researched the Big Five [Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal, Disney, and Sony Pictures], looked at where they came from, and how their backlots were set up. We needed to know what already existed out there and then figure out how Continental fit in with the Big Five.
Chase Sui Wonders, Seth Rogen, Kathryn Hahn and Ike Barinholtz in “The Studio,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
So Continental Studios needed to evoke some of that old school 1920s-1930s vibe while having its own identity. Architecturally, who did you turn to?
We decided we wanted the studio to be designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who came to California in 1915 and was influenced by the Mayan revival at the San Diego World’s Fair. We liked the materials he used at the time, and also liked the feeling of the architecture being kind of tomblike, which correlated with the way filmmaking has its ups and downs. We also wanted the studio to have a very strong, angled structure that felt heavy.
Where did you build the space?
It was built from scratch on Stage 23 on the Warner Bros. lot.
How did you prepare for the construction?
As always, I started out with a complete ground plan, then made a rough three-D model that I taped onto our stage floor. It was almost 9,000 square feet, and we had a seven-week build. I wanted most of it to be made of plaster, because you can mix in the colors you want [with the plaster] and then just seal it with paint, which helped because I was also set decorating, so this was fast and furious. We painted that beautiful ceramic floor in earth tones, like sandstone, and I mixed emerald-colored glass specks into the plaster, so if the light hits the floor in a certain way, it feels a little bit like the Emerald City.
L to R: Ike Barinholtz, Chase Sui Wonders ], Kathryn Hahn, and Seth Rogen. Photo: Apple TV+
It looks like the studio lobby is packed with details.
We did little pockets of storytelling with Claire Coffman, my decorator, almost like a museum with little remnants of the studio’s history, like the last Oscar they won or a hat that Elizabeth Taylor would have worn. I also put Cucoloris in the window that had the branding of Continental.
Seth Rogen and Ron Howard. Photo: Apple TV+
What is Cucoloris?
It’s a film term for a mesh ornamental device in a window that translates a design so that when sunlight comes through the window, it projects a shadow of the design into the space. I designed a Cucoloris with the letter “C” for Continental.
So, you built the interiors for Continental Studios on the soundstage. Where did they situate the exterior, which we see every time Matt walks up the stairs into work?
The exterior was built literally on the steps to the Warner Bros. Television building. I drove all around the lot and decided that the building was best suited for the exterior. I built the first story of the exterior and basically snugged it in between the trees. When Seth drives up in his golf cart, walks up the stairs, and goes through the doors, that’s when we cut into our stage set.
Seth Rogen in “The Studio,” now streaming on Apple TV+.
In “The Oner” episode, everything is shot in one continuous take while Sarah Polley directs a movie on location at this glamorous L.A. house. Where did you find that home?
That’s the Silvertop house in Silverlake, designed by John Lautner, also known as the Reiner-Burchill Residence. I lived in Silver Lake for 15 years and walked past that house many times. It’s at the top of Micheltorena Street and looks down over the Silver Lake reservoir. The house changed hands two or three years ago and became available, so that’s definitely a house I suggested. Stacey Buckner, my location scout manager extraordinaire—she and I scoured a lot of architectural houses for each character.
Ex-studio boss Patty, played by Catherine O’Hara, also has a great-looking mid-century modern home where she yells at Matt for stealing her job.
Patty’s house is actually Kelly Lynch’s home, also by John Lautner. We wanted to shoot at a different Lautner house, but there was construction going on, so Catherine helped us get in there. Kelly was very gracious about letting us into her home. The view was spectacular, and then we showed Patty dragging Matt from room to room. In this show, the characters are always moving.
Catherine O’Hara and Seth Rogen. Photo: Apple TV+
Nobody’s sitting still, that’s for sure.
Seth told us, “Coffee is very important to me,” so the coffee station we put in his office had to be a very authentic Italian espresso machine that didn’t make noise but made bad-ass coffee. We always needed to have certain things for our locations: beautiful views, great mid-century houses with movement through their spaces, and a lot of light.
The Studio shoots in Los Angeles, where you live. Did you appreciate being able to work locally with a local crew?
I’ve never worked anywhere else in the world with as much love for filmmaking, professionalism, and craftsmanship as Los Angeles. To see all these working people toiling away on something we pictured for our story, and then to be there on the studio lot for five or six months straight? That was like a dream come true.
How did you take advantage of Warner Bros. backlots to shoot movie snippets within the show, like the Paul Dano action movie, Ron Howard’s film with the boring ending, Alphabet City Street, or Johnny Knoxville’s projectile diarrhea zombie movie Duhpocalypse?
The Paul Dano action movie was filmed on Midwest Street. For the Ron Howard movie Alphabet City, I looked at Taxi Driver for [inspiration], then I’d just go round the backlots and suggest “How about if we do this one here, that one there?” A lot of scenes involved Matt on his golf cart driving to the sets, so we gave that a lot of thought.
Were you able to use the studio’s various departments to dress the sets?
Yes. It was really fun to create these little stories outside the stage doors. Christmas! Gladiators! Robots! We’d ask set dec: “What do you have ten of?” We were literally using what Hollywood is famous for – prop houses, costume departments, and wardrobe – and then leaning on all these assets that have accumulated for years to be able to tell stories within the stories.
The Studio is streaming in its entirety on Apple TV+.
Featured image: L to R: Ron Howard, Anthony Mackie, Chase Sui Wonders, Seth Rogen and Catherine O’Hara. Photo: Apple TV +
The first trailer for Darren Aronofsky’s crime caper Caught Stealing has arrived, and it’s doozy. Austin Butler stars as Hank Thompson, a former high school baseball phenom turned bartender at a New York City dive. But don’t cry for Hank, his life is pretty good—New York is the greatest city on Earth, of course, and he’s got an amazing girlfriend named Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz), so things are going pretty well all things considered.
Yet there’s a significant vibe shift when Hank, being a nice guy, agrees to watch after his punk neighbor Russ’s (Matt Smith) cat. It turns out that Russ is involved in some highly sketchy, very dangerous business with a host of unsavory types, including Hasidic, Puerto Rican, and Russian mobsters. All of these folks are taking a run at Hank (he gets punched repeatedly throughout the trailer), but he hasn’t the foggiest clue why. He’s gotta find out, and fast, before he becomes a casualty in a war he doesn’t even understand.
The cast for Aronofsky’s caper is incredible—joining Butler, Kravitz, and Smith are Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Regina King, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Griffin Dunne, Benito A Martínez Ocasio (aka Bad Bunny), and Carol Kane. Aronofsky directs from a script by Charlie Huston, based on the books Huston wrote.
This is Aronofsky’s first film since his 2022 drama The Whale, which netted Brendan Fraser an Oscar for Best Actor. At CinemaCon, Aronofsky said that with Caught Stealing, he wanted to make “something that was a lot of fun.” From this first look at the trailer, it appears he’s pulled it off.
Check out the trailer below. Caught Stealing hits theaters on August 29.
For more upcoming films from Sony Pictures, check out these stories:
The satisfactions of Tony Gilroy‘s Andor were such that many viewers comforted themselves when the series came to an end on May 13 by immediately turning to Rogue One, the 2016 feature film that Andor served as a prequel series for. Such has been the power of Andor—it’s been hard to let go, and there’s no better way to keep the rebel spirit alive than by following Cassian Andor’s (Diego Luna) story to its bittersweet conclusion. Rogue One is really the only way to wean yourself off what’s been one of the most deeply gratifying Star Wars stories ever told.
The journey of Cassian Andor from reluctant rebel manque to becoming one of the key architects of the Death Star’s destruction—detailed, you might remember, in George Lucas’s 1977 Big Bang event movie, Star Wars IV: A New Hope—is the backbone of Andor. Yet what has made the series so relentlessly compelling is how the galactic struggle that Lucas conjured between a scrappy, often squabbling rebel alliance and a ruthless fascist Empire was brought down to Earth, so to speak, and into the streets, in Andor. Lucas gave us a battle between good and evil that was stark and colossal and shot through with Jedi masters and Sith Lords. Gilroy and his team grounded the struggle with people (and aliens) who wouldn’t return as Force Ghosts when they perished in the cause. In the place of the Death Star obliterating Leia Organa’s home planet of Alderaan, Andor gave us the massacre on Ghorman, all the more horrifying for being so up close and personal.
While Andor is nominally centered around Cassian, in reality, the series was a thrilling ensemble story, tracking a growing alliance of rebels, many of whom aren’t dashing pilots like Cassian or DH-16 blaster-toting guerrilla warriors like Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker). These are disaffected civilians like Cassian’s adoptive mother, Maarva, a former mechanical salvager who, as a member of the Daughters of Ferrix, became a key figure in the growing resistance. Or moles within the ISB (Imperial Security Bureau) like Lonnie Jung, who existed in a state of perpetual paranoia and who paid the ultimate price to deliver key information to rebel spies like Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) and his ally and eventual successor, Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulua). Andor follows politicians like Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), who eventually becomes the de facto leader of the alliance, while giving key moments to smaller players like Thela (Stefan Crepon), a hotel clerk in Palmo who tells Cassian that “rebellions are built on hope,” a line that returns in Rogue One.
Helping frame this story of the rebellion’s many authors was cinematographer Christophe Nuyens, whose mission was to lens the first six episodes of season 2. While Nuyens is adept at framing and differentiating the many planets and terrific set pieces that Star Wars fans are familiar with and count on, he also helped bring the series to street level, turning events like a wedding and meeting a partner’s parent into thrilling sequences. We spoke to Nuyens about what made Andor such a compelling series and how he framed the struggle against fascism on such a personal level.
On a personal level, how does it feel to work on one of the most critically acclaimed narratives in the entire Star Wars galaxy?
I feel honored. One of my favorite Star Wars movies isRogue One, so I was honored to be asked to work on the first six episodes of the prequel to that film this season.
Andor is, of course, a part of the broader Star Wars universe, but it has consistently felt unlike any other Star Wars film or series. Were there any conversations about how Andor‘s aesthetics and storytelling stand apart from more traditional Star Wars stories when you came aboard?
We didn’t have a big brief about any Star Wars link. I think the most important thing is that we stayed in the universe of the first season of Andor, which is, I think, one of the most human Star Wars stories ever told. For the look and feel of the series, they gave us quite a bit of freedom.
What were the sets like for season two, which hops around the galaxy, from Coruscant and Chandrila to Ghorman, Mina-Rau, and Yavin 4?
It’s a big mix. A lot of it was built on stages at Pinewood and Longcross. For example, on the backlot of Pinewood, we built the plaza [of the Ghorman city of Palmo], which was beautiful and enormous. We also built the streets of Ghorman there. Longcross was where we filmed the jungle bits, on Yavin 4, because Longcross is an ancient military district, so there’s a lot of forest there. We built out bits of forest, and honestly, it looked like I was shooting in Vietnam. The art department on this show is incredible. Luke Hull, our production designer, did such beautiful work. It was a pleasure to light and film on those sets.
Was the central square in Palmo on Ghorman largely a practical set?
It was a practical set; the hotel was there, the entrance of the ISB offices was there, and the bar was there. All of that was practical. The stairs were there, too. The only thing that wasn’t there was the second level, which was all VFX extension. There was so much detail put into those sets.
That was the pitch, actually! Tony’s pitch was that it should feel like a town in Italy or France. So we started looking for references, and the code name for the set ended up being Turin. It’s really based on a mix between the architecture of France and the French Resistance, and where it’s located on the planet is more like the north of Italy, in the mountains. It was really nice to play with. When we started brainstorming about Ghorman and how the light should look, Tony was so precise about what he wanted for us that it was a gift to start looking for references and execute it.
How did you approach keeping your eye on the narrative and human element of Andor, which is such a striking depiction of the courageous acts, both big and small, of people resisting a growing dictatorship?
We had a lot of prep on this series, and for every scene and every set, we’d read the script several times, generate ideas, and look for references. There was a lot of prep, and we were always looking for a flow between scenes. At the end of almost every episode, there’s a pile of edits going between different planets and different moments, and it was important that those scenes flowed into each other. The camera moves, the lighting flares, and all of it has to connect. We did a lot of shot listing, pre-vising, and testing. That’s the good thing about having that prep: we could test to see if things worked.
We used Venice cameras, the same as the first season. The only thing I changed was that I used Ultra-Vista lenses that cover the full sensor. Rogue One was shot on Alexa 65mm, which is a large-format camera, so it was important to go to a larger format, open the scope a little bit, and raise it a little bit toward Rogue One.
How did the three-episode-at-a-time releases shape the way you approached your work on the first six episodes?
Oh yeah, because we each did two sets of three episodes, it was really important that every three-episode arc felt different, both in lighting and feeling. For example, in the first three episodes, we said, Okay, you’ve got Mina-Rau, it’s a sunny planet, and it should feel like everything is good, but suddenly, everything starts to collapse. You have the wedding on Chandrila, which is also sunny, so in those first three episodes, the sun is coming in, and there’s a little flare and a warm feeling. Then, in the second three episodes on Ghorman, it was like a city in the Alps in winter. So light-wise, I was always thinking about the north of Italy in winter, and we’re shooting at the moment that the sun is behind the mountains. It’s still day, but the light is very blue. We took the approach that those three episodes felt a bit darker, a bit moodier. We really tried to differentiate those blocks of episodes.
Let’s talk about when Mon Mothma kind of loses it at the end of the wedding in episode 3, “Harvest,” where she starts dancing…
There was a lot of back and forth in that episode. In the beginning, when we were reading the scene, we read it as a night scene. We knew Tony wanted to have a scene where Mon is losing it, it should feel a bit like a nightclub, and we were thinking about ideas both in the Star Wars world and in the Andor world to create something like that. Then suddenly, in a meeting, Tony said, ‘No, no, no, it’s a day scene, because on the other planet, everything that’s happening is also a day scene.’ So we came up with the idea that the wedding starts at noon and then throughout, the sun is going down, so by the end of the episode, the sun is so low that everything is flaring, and it becomes quite a contrast. But to do that, normally you’d use a green screen, but a green screen is difficult to do that kind of lighting, and the windows are overexposed. So after a lot of discussion, we decided that maybe we should use an old technique—a painted backdrop.
A painted backdrop in a Star Wars series is delightfully retrograde.
Yeah, we painted the backdrop of the mountains we used in Barcelona for the exterior scenes, and I’m so happy we did it in-camera, because it’s one of my favorite scenes. It’s so not Star Wars, but it’s a scene I’m quite proud of. Those differences are what’s really nice about Andor. You have Yavin 4, which is like the old Star Wars movies, it’s dirty and darker, and then you’ve got the ISB, which is white, like everything with the Empire, white and bright and monotone, so there are so many looks in the show, it’s so nice to play with.
Do you have any favorite sequences from the first six episodes?
Yes [laughs]. The scene between Dedra [Denise Gough], Syril [Kyle Soller], and Syril’s mom Eedy [Kathryn Hunter]. The scene in their apartment was so nice to film, and they’re so good. It was so funny because the whole crew was sitting over there, and we were all saying, ‘We know this experience!’ It’s an exaggerated version of what we see with our parents or our girlfriends, and all the details and all the extra things they brought to that scene was really so nice to film.
I love that, of all the incredible sequences and high-stakes moments you filmed for this season of Andor, your favorite was a domestic scene between a couple and one very domineering mother.
It’s a really awkward scene, and it’s so nice to play with that awkwardness and underlying tension. We used a lot of fixed shots, and we tried to emphasize the tension with the camera. I really love that scene. When I go home happy, it’s not because I did some great lighting or great shots, it’s because I shot a good scene, and that was a day when I shot a good scene.
Co-created by and co-starring Stephen Graham, Netflix’s four-part series Adolescence has been a widely viewed hit for the streaming site. Nothing about casting the show, about an otherwise ordinary boy, Jamie (Owen Cooper), who has been influenced to such a malign degree by his online life that he becomes capable of murdering a classmate, Katie (Emilia Holliday), was standard operating procedure. Each episode is a single take, and finding an actor young enough to play the difficult role of thirteen year old Jamie and do so while shooting repeat one-shots was no small feat.
Knowing that discovering the show’s Jamie would be a long process, casting director Shaheen Baig (After Love, Peaky Blinders) looked for adult leads at the same time. She cast parts like DI Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters), the cop who first brings Jamie in for questioning, and Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty), while the search for Jamie across Yorkshire and northern England ran in the background. Prior to his arrest, Jamie lives with his family in a pleasant, unspecified Yorkshire town, and Baig kept her hunt regional, both so that actors wouldn’t have to do accents and the series’ many younger players could easily go home after work.
The work itself was structured atypically, with each episode requiring a rehearsal week, tech week, and shoot week, and it was non-negotiable for actors to be available for the whole period. Also unusual: having gotten down to a shortlist of four actors for the role of Jamie, after choosing Cooper, Baig and her team gave the other three finalists roles in the story, which is a rare occurrence. “I think that is a really positive note,” she said. “There was inclusivity across the board, and that was one of the joys of it.”
Adolescence has been lauded for its chillingly apropos script, but the series’ authenticity also comes from Baig’s meticulous casting choices. We had the chance to speak with Baig about putting together a stellar cast for one of the year’s most resonant new series.
What is your process like when a show’s creator is also the star?
It means you have this wonderful shorthand with the team. Stephen was really involved in the casting process. A lot of us had worked with each other before. It felt very much like we were in sync, and that’s rare. Sometimes you can spend an initial moment just getting to know everybody, and everyone has a slightly different idea of what the show is, but on this one, we were all aligned.
He is incredible. We searched all over Yorkshire and then in a couple of cities in the north of England. We did street casting, used social media, contacted youth groups, sports groups, drama groups, schools, anything you could think of, really. We were looking not just for Jamie but also for other young people in the story. We also looked at professional young actors. But it was a very wide, lengthy search.
What were some of the particular qualities you were looking for?
This was an unusual job, and the nature of the one-shot was not just for the young actors but for the adult cast. It was almost like a piece of theater. You rehearse and rehearse and rehearse, and then you shoot. It’s continuous, and you redo [a certain] amount of times a day. We needed really robust actors across the board. For Jamie, we saw some brilliant young people for the role. We got down to four, and they were all fantastic in different ways. We knew we needed somebody who wasn’t afraid of repetition, and somebody who was able, every time we did it again, for it to feel fresh, to feel original. Owen just had that capacity. He wasn’t scared of the process. I don’t think he realized, until he got into rehearsals, how the one-shot would manifest, but he was very focused, he did the work, and he listened. He worked really closely with Phil [Barantini, the show’s director] and Stephen, and I think he displayed, in those final screen tests, the ability to lock in and want to do the very best he could. It was an extraordinary sort of focus for somebody so young.
How did you cast Erin Doherty as Briony, Jamie’s clinical psychologist?
Erin is a brilliant actress. We had worked together on a series for Disney called A Thousand Blows. She was one of the leads, along with Stephen, on that show. We talked about a lot of different people for that role [of Briony]. Erin’s done a lot of theater, so she has that work ethic and [knows] the technical aspects of it. And also, she’s a really brilliantly truthful actor. We knew she would be able to embrace that way of working. I don’t think it’s for everybody. It’s fairly terrifying to shoot like that, but exhilarating. Once we’d all decided it was Erin, it was a no-brainer. She was coming straight off another job, so fair play to her, because we shot Episode 3 first. For Erin and Owen, that was really tough. But once Owen was able to manage that, he could manage anything, I’d say.
Christine [Tremarco] is a great actress. Stephen has known Christine since they were kids. When we were talking about actresses for that part, we only talked about a very small group of people. It’s such intimacy in Episode 4. It’s a really difficult episode. Christine is someone he has massive respect for and feels really comfortable with. I knew that Stephen and Christine would really take care of Amelie [Pease, who plays Owen’s older sister Lisa], because it was her first job, and that Christine and Stephen would have this really natural bond.
How did you put together the huge cast for the high school?
We gave parts to a lot of the young people we saw throughout the whole audition process. We kept bookmarking. When it got to making the decisions—and this was a really lovely, special thing about the job—collectively we said, we’d really like to give a whole bunch of people parts in the series. We also used a lot of local young people, because we needed big crowd scenes. The production embraced the community that was on their doorstep.
Out of that episode, Katy’s best friend, Jade, really stands out.
She’s incredible. It’s almost like you could make a film just about her story. [Fatima Bojang] does something so brilliant with that part, because she’s really memorable. When I finished the series, I kept thinking about her. That was the real beauty of her performance. It was a difficult part to play, and she gives you so much back story, she gives you layers, [even though] she doesn’t have lots of screen time.
What was the general approach to casting supporting roles?
Across the board, it was really a matter of workshopping, working with smaller and smaller groups, and working out what their instincts were. Phil really loves to work with natural instincts, so that’s what we did. Some roles were slightly tweaked for those young people to embrace what they were naturally bringing to those workshops. We did do script work, but we did a lot of improvisational work with them as well, throughout the audition process, to see where their imagination was, and to see how quick and fast they are, because when you’re working on something that’s essentially shooting live, anything can go wrong at any time. We needed to have really imaginative actors who weren’t afraid to improvise, because sometimes in those situations you have to.
